Treads and more Treads

[Deleted]

Allright, so I recieved some advice this last weekend and decided to get serious with my guard army. I plan to make them mechanized without the mechanized doctrine (based on past advice.) Their fluff is a regiment obsessed with speed, risk, gambling and basically anything that can get you an adrenaline high.

These are my doctines so far:
Rough Riders
Grenadiers
Storm Troopers
Sharpshooter

I'm undecided on my last one and so if there are any mechanized advisors out there with tactics for this type of army your help would be great.
Also, what should I buy first I already have two squads of guardsmen. (sorry about the number of questions)

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

from what you posted about their fluff, you should do the 'special equipment: chem inhalers' doctrine! it's like combat drugs that make them fearless essentially

outside of that, you might consider dropping doctrines all together. hear me out.. the only thing you're getting from your doctrines right now is sharpshooters, but you're looking at using a >ton< of troops that don't benefit from or qualify for the sharpshooter doctrine. if you drop doctrines all together, you get to add priests ('praise the emporer and kick some a$$!'), techpriest enginseers ('we are the borg...resistance is futile...' seriously though...fixing your chimerae that get immobilized or de-gunned on a 2+ ain't bad!), sanctioned psykers ('damnit, I rolled "no useable power" AGAIN!?'), a chimera full of ogryn or two backed up by a squad of ratling snipers may not be a bad way to go!

if you want to rock out the doctrines, however, that's totally understandable. the thing is, that grenadiers and stormtroopers are NOT "guard infantry" so don't benefit from doctrines like die hards and close order drill and iron discipline - stuff I'd normally recommend. actually, you might wanna check and see if chem inhalers would even apply to them...it may not :s .

if you want to spend a doctrine point on a special rule, you might consider something like 'cameleoline.' it'll buff all your support squads (which will be the shooty ones benefiting from sharpshooter,' so you'll have some synergy there). again, you'll wanna check and make sure that cameleoline only effects 'guard infantry' units (which I believe it does).

so yeah - further doctrines should be aimed at buffing your shooty support element (if what I see about your list is true in that you're going for grenadiers, storm troopers, and rough riders to charge with a firebase hanging back with sharpshooters to support).

a last thought would be to sink the doctrine point into 'carapace armor' for ONLY your roughriders. there's some kwirk in the rules that allows you to select doctrines just for your rough riders...I'd have to bust out the 'dex and look it up to give you more info but I know it's legal to take carapace armor and have it only effect your rough riders.

hope this stirs up your creativity a bit and gets your mind headed toward some awesome inspirations for your army

[Deleted]

Very Cool. Thanks that's given me alot to think about. The guard army is alot more complex then I imagined.

So My next question is what doctrines are suggested for a mechanized force? I've heard about this combat multipliers thing and I wonder how it can be applied to a mechanized regiment in doctrines.

Thanks.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

well, if you're looking at going with the mechanized doctrine, then I recommend sentinel squadrons in place of heavy weapon squads. unfortunately you can only stick one squadron of sents in your HQ at which point you have to ask yourself "is a squadron of sentinels more valuable than a hellhound or rough rider squadron?" cuz ultimately, you only get 3 fast attack choices then you're done in that dept.

sentinels are really a decent source of mechanized fire support, especially if you've got some scary threatening units like 2 or 3 leman russ demolishers charging straight at your opponent's lines. hellhounds also fall into the 'high threat' category that people generally freak out and dump heavy weapon fire into till they blow up (while disregarding the other stuff on the table)

you might consider a basilisk to sit back and shoot as you seem to be interested in taking the fight to the enemy.

if you go with infantry platoons mounted in chimerae then you might look at some doctrines, but I would caution about getting too expensive with your guard infantry. too few models is unhealthy for a guard army. generally the more the merrier is a good way to go....and you want to be very very merry!

[sammy1979]

i'm with tB i play a vanilla guard, with bags of armour and rat's/ogryn's and though the doctorines are all right, "often for me they fail to achieve what i want, and hamstring my choices" if you stay vanilla you can field the lot,
but to add to what Tb says perhaps include lots of rough riders over sentinals for fast attack, this is because if your facing smurfs the hunting lances, "though a one trick pony" are great @ getting rid of assault smurfs and lots of the other nasties that can shred or melta bomb your armour. on a sucesfull charge these fella's can almost be certain of taking a few smurfs out, and if your lucky a lot of smurfs.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

I've never used rough riders so I default to sammys wisdom on the matter...but damn the burnination a hellhound can dish out just makes butterflies of happiness stir in my stomach ^_^ thinking about it!

[Deleted]

yeah sitting back isn't really my style.

So instead of focusing on elite troops. Storm troopers etc. I'm going to focus on making the infantry powerful. Im going to head to my think tank (closet) and get back on what I come up with. THanks to for the help Sammy and TurtleB.

[Deleted]

Having a good fire base set up, ie Infantry platoon covering a basilisk, gives you the anvil and can be done for one-third of a playing force, leaving you a good amount of room to put in the maneauver element (Chimeras, Russes, Sentinels, Hellhounds) that comprise the hammer.

Then its play test, play test, play test. I have 2 different and complete guard armies, with a third one planned in the works, can't be too wrong. hehe