How To Beat IG

[entendre_entendre]

You want to beat IG? You have to neutralize whatever his biggest threat is right away. Now this seems vague because it is. You have to look at his list and your own list and see what is going to mess you up the most. For example:
Your opponent has a Manticore and a LR Executioner. Both of these are huge threats, but you only have enough firepower to kill one a turn. Which do you try to kill first? At this point you have to look at your own list and see what could mess you up more. Are you mechanized? Kill dat Manticore before you're stuck in your DZ. You're running an Assault Marine BA list? Kill the Executioner first, your power armour laughs at AP4 even if it causes instant death.

This is the kind of thinking you're going to have to use to crack open the shell of IG. There is no one tool for doing this unfortunately aside from massed assaults, which 6th does not favour on the whole. Also: focus fire on one target until it is no longer a threat. Even shaking that Executioner removes its primary threat, but you do need to deal with it next turn. Hull points help you here as many guard lists rely on vehicles to do the heavy lifting. A librarian with Objuration Mechanicum can be especially annoying if only for the automatic Haywire hit.

With your Tau, use your railguns to reach out and touch him in his deployment. With TLoS,you should be able to find any hiding artillery units. Abuse your shrouded 3+ cover tanks to the extreme and try to limit the amount of fire incoming to your units. Getting into a straight up gunfight with Guard is a risky game that is stacked against you currently. DS your suits into his backlines will shift his fire, but they can be wiped in a turn of shooting fairly easily if they get straight up turned on by his entire army. A refused flank can help minimize incoming fire, but he'll probably still be able to range you.

With your Marine armies, if you roll Hammer and Anvil you're probably screwed. He'll probably deploy within 12" of the board edge you come to him. Depending on the mission however, you may be able to bait him into coming to you by placing objectives in his half of the board, but closer to the centre, forcing him to move from his (presumed) cover camping positions. This can be use to spring board assaults closer to his main lines.

Drop Pods are an easy way to get up and close. Just keep in mind that his entire army WILL try to kill those units that drop in his face. You can use this to your advantage by distracting him with these 'expendable' units while the rest closes in. The pod is also useful for LoS blocking. This could work with your BA. Drop the pods turn one- run and odd number, and never drop just one, so you'll want 3+ (one can be empty if you want) to be an actual threat- to drop a lot turn 1, hide behind the pods for cover, take pot shots, assault turn 2 if still alive. While this is happening, the rest of your army is charging forwards hoping to be in a position to threaten targets from turn 3 onwards. You will take heavy casualties, especially on the pod squads, but you are facing Guard on their best deployment, so you shouldn't expect a walk in the park.

Assault can also be a problem if you assault a blob squad with flamers and Straken nearby. 20-50 guys with 2-5 flamers + overwatch + counterattack + stubborn = brutal for any assaulting unit. Mind you, that unit will be 200-450 points depending on setup. Tying something like that up even for a turn or two can be useful even if you get clubbed to death. Just try to see what he's going for and try to limit his strengths.

Hope that helps.

[Learn2Eel]

Fast close combat armies tend to screw Imperial Guard over pretty quickly. It depends on what type of Imperial Guard list you come up against though. Outshooting them typically won't work.

[Mr Mystery]

If you've got Sternguard, I'mma go ahead and state the obvious....

Melta and Flamer Combi-weapons. Should prove sufficient threat to attract their attention, and if you come in via drop pod, you can potentially do serious damage before the inevitable deulge of retribution fire. Key to this, as with many tactics is to try and spot his dependant units. If he has something he has obviously based his army around, removing that can prove painful. If you can time this correctly (tricky of course due to deepstrike!) you can do this whilst making an overall push with your army. Opponent is then left with the quandry of whether to split his firepower, and if not, what does he want to concentrate on.

IG deal exceptionally well with piecemeal attacks, even with just the humble lasgun. If you can conspire to approach with multiple threats, they face a much harder task.

For my Necrons (who are yet to face IG I admit) I intend to do this with Tomb Blades with the particle thingy (if I'm lucky, I literally can't miss!) and my fliers, whilst my infantry push forwards, or pull back as the battle dictates. I'd imagine my solitary Doomscythe will attract a lot of firepower, simply because it's Deathray can potentially bum a lot of tanks in a single shot. Tomb Blades should prove just resilient enough to draw significant firepower, especially if they can demonstrate just how nasty 5 S6 blast templates can be against infantry packed in a tight formation. Other than that, cross my fingers and hope my generally ubiquitous gauss weapons can mess him up!

[DarkLink]

Sternguard are an excellent choice. 2-3 combi-flamers and plenty of combi-meltas will let you hit squads in cover and kill a couple of his vehicles, and still have melta for a second round of killing so he has to deal with you. Dual squads in drop pods should work well, and you'd still have a third elite slot open.

[Judgeman]

I fought against IG recently with standard marines and BA allies in which I decided to go in flyer heavy borrowing a friends stormraven, my opponent simply could not deal with three flyers coming at him, like many IG army's I've played he relied solely upon blast templates to do heavy damage, with this nuteralised the army crumbled after a few turns of strafing his tanks and nailing command squads and other priority targets such as hydra's to protect his army. After which I was free to close in with rhinos meeting very little resistance.

[Sainhann]

I fought against IG recently with standard marines and BA allies in which I decided to go in flyer heavy borrowing a friends stormraven, my opponent simply could not deal with three flyers coming at him, like many IG army's I've played he relied solely upon blast templates to do heavy damage, with this nuteralised the army crumbled after a few turns of strafing his tanks and nailing command squads and other priority targets such as hydra's to protect his army. After which I was free to close in with rhinos meeting very little resistance.

Would be interesting to see how that would fare against a mostly Imperial Guard foot army that only has 4 Chimeras in it.

186 Guardsmen and the above Chimeras.

But depending on the type of Imperial Guard army that you expect to face would determine on just what would be good against it.

If tank heavy you would want fire power fire power so that you can hull/destroy them.

Against an Imperial Guard army like mine (heavy on the foot troopers) then Flamers and other blast templates weapons.

Yes close combat can chew them up but when there are 186 on the table and that you can only chew up one squad at a time with a single close combat unit that is not a good away to go.

Because after you chew up that squad your unit will the prime target for the rest of the army.

[DarkLink]

Multi-charge.

[Sainhann]

Multi-charge.

True, but a Imperial Guard foot army has lots of things to charge and when the Imperial Guard player know that his Guardsmen are nothing but cannon fodder and can care less if 1-3 squads get charged at the same time.

Because since they are guardsmen those ten guys will either be killed or they will break from the close combat.

Thus leaving the victors standing there to be shot at.

When you have 186 infantry models losing 40-50 of them still means that there will be 136-146 left.

The best model count that I can get with Space Marines is 54-63 models at 2000 points and most armies will have far less than this.

My Imperial Guard is design knowing that I will lose guys (they are just cannon fodder). Space Marine and many other armies are not.

[Pendragon38]

Thunder Fire Cannons = dead IGs, that's all I'm gonna say

[Force21]

Thunder Fire Cannons = dead IGs, that's all I'm gonna say

+1

I play mostly foot guard with abut 100+ guys & a few tanks...

thunderfire cannons/Whirlwinds & anything thats AP 5 or better & ignores cover makes infantry heavy army's (like mine) sad panda bear...

the biggest problem with trying to counter a Guard army is... what type oh army it is... like mine....mostly troops & some armor to back em up.

but you could run into full armored lists with like 6 Chimera's, Russ's or Hellhound's

Artillery lists can be real bad too...3 Basilisk's...Manticore's...ugh...that can be bad...


Now if you know what you are going up against...like going to a tourny that has alot of the same guard list...then it is not to bad, just focus on what the key/theme/or what carrys that army....like 3 Russ's blasting your army away... you should make a list that stops or half the amount of firepower that the tanks shoot like 1st turn...

or kill the Company Command Squad if the list is made around say like Creed/Kell or old "Iron Hand" Straken...or if its a Flyer list bring lots a AA... Etc...etc.

The Guard Codex I think is one of the most powerful as it has quite a few options...

anyway its a bit late & I may be rambling but... its just my .02 cents.