TACTICA:Imperial Guard Advantages in Fifth Edition
Much whining has been leveled against Annihilation missions for being unfair to the Imperial Guard. The supposed counterpoint of the Guard having a lot more troop choices has similarly been beaten to death. While an Imperial Guard army built to be effective in all missions will inherently have more KP than a similarly built army of any other race or force, the difference isn’t that great for most armies, and can be overcome by simply killing every opponent model. Similarly, a Guard army could have a massive number of troop units on the field, but at a cost of very limited ability to kill enemy units. Since I know some set of players will want to discuss these issues, I brought them up so we can set them aside and get on to what matters – why the Imperial Guard is one of the strongest armies to take in Fifth Edition.
Advantage #1
True LOS benefits those with the greatest range the most. We have the potential to have the most long range firepower of any force, so get those tanks out there.
Advantage #2
A 4+ cover save is very easy to come by for infantry. This makes our gun lines roughly twice as survivable, while providing no benefit at all to MEQ against AP4 or worse weapons. Buy lots of Autocannons and Heavy Bolters, and generate armor saves.
Advantage #3
Doctrines allow us to deploy all our infantry advantageously. Drop Troops is now incredibly useful, and Light Infantry means that you can almost always set up your weapons to have good targets from turn 1 on (not in Dawn of War), or flank in to threaten distant objectives and weapons. No other army has as many deployment options as the Imperial Guard, so use these to your advantage.
Advantage #4
Hellhounds.
Advantage #5
Changes in blast weapons favor low ballistic skill shooters. There are no more partial hits for blast weapons. All blast templates now scatter, which means our frag missiles are more likely to hit something. Mortars kill more Orks than battle cannons.
Advantage #6
Wound allocation makes our weapons better, while providing less benefit to our enemies. Since our opponents rarely do enough wounds to hit every model in a unit (and when they do, the unit is usually completely wiped out anyway), we don’t end up with a lot of special models killed early. Conversely, we tend to do a lot more wounds, so our MEQ opponents end up with more chances to lose specials models earlier.
Advantage #7
The changes to close combat improve our ability to kill MEQ. Now that a very small squad of MEQ can generally defeat any Guard unit in close combat in a single close combat phase and cannot consolidate into a new close combat, we are no longer forced to have counter charge units around to try and keep a single assault squad from rolling down our entire line. This means the points we spent on Rough Riders and other tricks are now available for even more guns.
Advantage #8
The last and most important advantage of the Imperial Guard is one we’ve had since Third Edition. Nothing in our army is a linch pin, either in points or effectiveness. Use the inherent expendability of our men and machines ruthlessly, and you will find yourself winning a lot of games against any opponent.
