Choosing a Guard faction?

[Deleted]

Hey all, I don't know how to choose a faction. How is it done, by color of the uniform? Any advice would be great!!!

Thanks ;D

[Goddess of Darkness]

Anything that appeals to you....it will be your faction so you have to like it.

It could be a multitude of things:
Fluff
Colours
Even their personality comes into it for some players (stubborn, love to run in and rip everything up)
You could just look at one and think.....them thats who i want

GoD

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

most people find the line of guard minis they want to use the most then ask themselves 'is this a DIY (do it yourself) regiment where I make everything up and go for an individualized feel, or is this a 'codex regiment' - one where you'll be using the fluff that your army is apart of a regiment in an established codex or other GW book.

at this point most people are adressing the color issue. this is essentially "I have a bunch of cadians but I like the colors black and bright orange" or something. if this is the case (as color choice is an absolutely HUGE issue, you'll find that alot of people go down the DIY regiment road at this point. if you choose colors you don't absolutely love, then they'll look worse and worse to you over time and you'll fall further and further out of love with your army, which is bad for a guard army since you'll commonly have your real life morale tested by the IGs 'not so elite' feel and tendency to struggle where other armies have an easy time. guard has glaring weaknesses, and people have a fairly easy time exploiting them if you don't protect them fiercely.

if you've picked colors that aren't 'traditional codex regiment' colors like the good ol' catachan green and commando khaki for cadians then you should really do a DIY regiment. if you like the doctrines of, for example, the cadians, you can always say 'oh they may not have the same uniform color but they're still a cadian regiment .. they're the Cadian 233rd (or something). this way you've explained how you get cadian doctrines but have a more individual paint scheme. the only thing to watch out for is blatantly breaking the fluff with regards to doctrines and the look of your army. Cadia is a world locked in perpetual war and everyone born on Cadia will one day join the guard. thusly they have mass-produced equipment supplied to them on a continual flow level and wouldn't be as likely to do that black and orange theme when their standard is green and tan (though you could say that your army was the house guard for one of the nobles of a fiefdom on Cadia and was more flashy or something like that). still, Cadia tends to equal earth tones and a general theme centered around camoflauge patterns to aid the trooper in the survival effort - not something that will get him spotted from a mile away. so you want your fluff to be believable based on the colors you pick.

remember, when designing your paint scheme that if you want realism, your guardsmen generally don't want to be seen. they will go for a uniform and armor that hides them so they don't get shot. if you had to wear the fatigues and flak jacket or whatever, what color would you want it to be on the battlefield? this is a good question to ask yourself regarding your colors.

so lets assume you've figured out that you want to use catachan models and give them earthy brown fatigues. can you give them catachan doctrines? yes. can you give them cadian doctrines? sure, just say they're a light infantry or scout type detachment. can you make them death korps? this one is a bit harder sell - deah korps have the whole nuclear holocaust feel about them with the rebreathers and gear to allow them to survive in a post appocolyptic world. you won't find any of them running around in vests with no shirt on, so you probably don't want to go there.

if a codex regiment looks cool to you, research it. see if you can find a way to fit the army you see in your mind into the pre-established picture of that codex regiment. if you can find a spot where you can slide your army into the story in a plausible way, then by all means, you're entitled to do so if you please.

if you don't find a codex regiment that you really like, then remember there's countless billions of guardsmen across the imperium. feel free to make one up from scratch and let its story unfold from the first time you take your army on the battlefield!

my army started as a codex regiment, then became a non-codex regiment using codex doctrines, and now it's becoming a whole new non-codex based force that still uses codex doctrines. it's just how the armys story has developed over time.

hope that helps a touch

[Deleted]

Yeah... for example, my Jaegeran Blitzkorps is a bunch of Stormtroopers and a load of tanks... they're designed to go in and engage the enemy quickily at medium to close range. Paint schemes black greatcoats and red gore carapace armor, with the Death Korps of Krieg skull motif on thier gasmasks. Im working on them as being extreme shock troop material for my fluff. I'm also getting ready to play a fellow Heavy Infantry IG player near here and our excuse for playing two IG against each other ( other than the fact its the first test game with my new IG ) is that my unit had just finished an operation against a chaos foe and after that, my troops carry out the extermination of the civilian population. His troops are deployed to stop me from killing innocent people, by attacking my troops haha.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

nice fluff

I used to like saying my friendly vs friendly battles were virtual reality training simulations where my army would sit down and get plugged in and so would the enemy and we'd be facing off on a virtual battlefield for training purposes.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the help everyone, it really helps.

My color scheme is the catachan green armor, and khaki fatigues on cadian models. I could very well say they are cadians, but I plan to try out a variety of doctrines during the time with my guard. Also, they way I'm seperating squads doesn't fit with the Cadian fluff. I'm doing roman numerals on the shoulder pads.

So if I do decide to just make them a whole other regiment, do I just make up any name I think sounds cool for the army?


Thanks again! ;D

[Deleted]

Yeah man, any name that suits you, it'll be awesome

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

as far as cadian gear goes, there's a few options.

first, you could make a cadian regiment, like the 23rd cadian heavy infantry or whatever you thought sounded good. you could say that this regiment has formed its own training traditions over time or maybe that since it's cadian, the noble who is the armys leader has trained all the men in his fiefdom to fight in a certain way and he has alot of men so the company is made up primarily of troops from his fiefdom geared up with special equipment he has aquired (cameleoline, chem-inhalers, whatever).

second option is you can say you have an army from a regiment on some other world that just gets cadian equipment. cadia mass produces guard infantry equpiment since 70% of the planets population is currently a member of the imperial guard. the other 30% being the women and children who're too young to become whiteshields (conscripts). so yeah, Cadia makes a ton of gear and it exports its excess so that it can afford to import equipment that it doesnt manufacture itself (like certain types of tanks and imperial navy aircraft etc).

hope that helps some

[Deleted]

Once again, thank you everyone, I love posting here, it always helps me more than I could have expected

[knight (M.I.A)]

Tboy Cadia gets most of it's equipment from other worlds.
Armaplast armour and tanks from Agripinaa, Lasguns from Kantreal and perhaps they just produce their heavy equipment themselves. Cadia doesn't have the production capabilities to produce for themselve very much, as nearly 100% of the population of Cadia is serving in the military, so who should produce?

Most of the Lasguns used in the Imperium are produced on Kantreal (that's why it is called Kantreal Pattern MkII (or III I'm not sure what type it is) Lasgun)
The Armaplast armour is a standard issue product from the Forgeworlds, too. So you can assume that the normal Guardsmen look nearly everywhere the same, unless they use special equipment which they normally have to produce for themselves as the Forgeworlds don't have the time to produce for every single world their special equipment.

And for the colour problem:
Nearly every regiment/planet can have/has it's own kind of parade uniforms but if there is a successful colour scheme that proved useful during fighting many regiments adopt the scheme. At least that's what is written above the Regimental Colours Gallery in my Codex.
Even if there are some regiments who don't fight with special combat uniformsand use their parade uniforms for that, too (Mordians, Praetorians and my own Regarian Rifles)
My regiment for example doesn't want to equip all troopers with two sets from uniforms as they:
1. Have enough troopers or better too many troopers to do that
2. They gray/red colour scheme is somewhat good in cities

And there are other regiments which just use camo-schemes as they have proven useful during battles. My Elyrians for example use the 122. Cadian Battle for Vogen scheme as they mainly fight in mountains or cities.

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

thanks for the info knight. I think there is/was a planet that is pretty heavy industry in the cadian system though - I remember it coming under attack during the eye of terror campaign a few years back.

[knight (M.I.A)]

That'd be most likely the Forgeworld Agripinaa that delivers most of Cadia's heavy equipment.
Khai Zhan produces most of the food for the Cadian sector (Battle for Vogen) and it's pretty important now, after Abbadon left Cadia as a rock with lot of fortresses on it after the last Dark Crusade...

[Turtleboy(AWOL)]

hmm yeah, Korolis is in the cadian system and produces weapons grade atomic materials as the main purpose of the planet.

Solar Mariatus is the rock on the outskirts of the cadian system and is recorded as the 'source of much war material' probably ores and such.

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

my regiment is from the snowy moon of morium a moon is the cadian sector. it gets it's uniforms and equipment from cadia (so they're basicly cadian shock troopers with a different paint job). they have held out against two absolotly masive chaos invasion. the second one was put down as the biggest enemy invasion on record in the cadian sector. my regiment is the morium 5th infantry. they are the best regiment from this planet.

[The Refined Gentleman (M.I.A)]

my paint job is
primary--skull white
secondry--goblin green
weapon--skull white & mithril silver#
boots and gloves--chaos black
skin--bronzed flesh

[Deleted]

wow knight, this is no offence but i bow down to the head nerd.You relly know your stuff when it comes down to the background for this game.I love background and think that it helps to flush out the game.I can't stand people that play for years and couldn't tell you who gork or mork are...all they are interested in is destroying their oponents.My hat is off to you and turtleboy.
back to the subject.What i did was when i was trying to decide on what IG army to do i looked at all the models( back then you could see like 6 different IG metal minis in blisters and boxes) and chose which i liked best or made me think of a hero.Then i formed my core army around them.
The name of the army you can just come up with out of your head or in the current codex and the previous one there are alot of names you can use also.A million different worlds, i'm sure one of them will have what you are looking for =).