Warhammer 40K: The Imperial Guard Are Poised To Takeover In 9th

The new 9th Edition rules are looking to be a godsend to the Imperial Guard.

Throughout 8th Edition the Imperial Guard, sometimes known as the Astra Militarium, were an “almost there” faction. They sat on the cusp of greatness with a strong codex and some powerful units. However they never quite made it into the big leagues on their own. While Guard had a lot of strengths, 8th’s rules made a lot of their tanks, a large part of the army, underperform. As a result Guard proved stronger in soup lists, where they formed an integral part of several top armies, providing bodies and CP, while allies did a lot of the heavy lifting. 9th however seems poised to make some big changes that could put Guard on top. Let’s take a look at why this is.

Mono Army Lists

Guard, while good, were always overshadowed by soup lists. I think in many ways Guard lists ended up being under developed do to a preference to soup. We never ended up seeing a ton of mono-guard lists get played. 9th seems to be pushing the game more towards mono codex lists with the way CPs work. This is overall I think good for IG who have a lot of strengths as a mono-codex army. They have a broad pool of units to pull from and can fill most roles an army would need. In addition they can, even with point increases, build strong brigades allowing them to take whatever they’d like.  Even if they need to spend CP on getting more detachments its not a huge loss for Guard. They’ve never been an army that really relied on stratagems to work. Unlike some factions their strength has always been in their units.

New Forgeworld

Imperial Guard have the more Forgeworld units that any other faction, with around 60 vehicles and two whole army lists. A lot of these units however are underwhelming and not particularly viable. We’ve been promised a complete overhaul of Forge World along with 9th and Guard have the most to gain from this. Assuming that more of the Forge World units get buffed and become viable for use that could push Guard into a real position of power. Of course there is the chance that they will lose some to Legends, or that they won’t actually improve, but for now it is something to hope for.

Tanks and Tanks Oh My

The last couple days we’ve seen some of the new enhanced rules for tanks coming out and Guard more than any other faction are well placed to take advantage of these. We’ve seen tanks getting the ability to fire into combat, with restrictions, vehicles no longer getting a -1 to hit when moving, and improvements to blast weapons. Guard sit at a confluence where they are pretty much the most affected faction by these changes.

Shooting into combat is a big deal for Guard tanks as they are one of the few factions with no access to effective vehicles with the FLY keyword. This has hamstrung Guard in way that it hasn’t other factions since Guard tanks are a such a key part of the army (other factions without flying tanks, such as Chaos or Sisters of Battle, don’t rely on vehicles nearly as much). Getting to fire into combat thus is a major boost to guard tanks, a great deal of which are armed with flame weapons, Hellhounds just got a nice boost.

Guard also likely have the largest number of blast weapons out of any faction, with a massive verity of them being mounted on tanks, more than other factions, or carried by troops. The improvement to blast weapons is thus a big buff to them. Now a lot of armies use the Catachan trait to counteract the randomness of multi-shot weapons. This change isn’t necessarily better than that trait  but it does free up Guard armies to be less reliant on it, or combined with it makes your shots even less random. All of this buffs a ton of Guard tanks.

Lastly not taking a -1 to hit when moving is huge for Guard. Guard have a relatively poor BS with most units hitting on a 4+ and very few re-roll auras. This has meant that Guard are forced into having a pretty static armies, as moving and firing with most units put you a 5+ to hit, spray and pray range, and getting damaged at all very quickly meant your chances of hitting stuff with your big expansive tank went to nil. This is doubly true of IG flyers which by and large don’t have any way of ignoring penalties from moving, meaning even when unhurt most of them would be hitting on 5s. While other armies dealt with this same issue, many of them either have access to easy re-rolls or went from a 3+ to a 4+ and remained pretty accurate, so this is another nice boost for Guard.

Final Thoughts

Overall we will obviously have to see how 9th shakes out, and what new Codecies bring, but it seems a lot of changes will benefit Guard units. In particular Guard tanks, of where they have more than any other faction, are about to get a lot better. This along with other changes seems primed to help Guard out. As a big IG player I’m pretty stoked about this and its getting me excited for 9th. Hopefully it pans out.

Let us know what armies you think are getting the biggest boost out of 9th, down in the comments! 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.