Imperial Guard, First Game

Today I had my first new Guard game. 1500 points VS another Guard player with their first game with the new dex too. 4x4 table down the local GW, simple kill points.

I was actually surprised at the size of the forces considering it was 1500, I know guard are cheap but we got a lot of models in. The lists were similar, mainly infantry back up by tanks of some variety. He'd taken Creed and got Guard traits 5 and 6 so Creed was knocking out 4 orders every turn at 18". My Company Command Squad got preferred enemy. What I learned from this game was a couple of things.

Tank Commanders are awesome. Pask was in a Vanquisher with an Eradicator near by, using the tank commander shoots first at something else order they destroyed a transport then tried to blast the squad apart (bad scatter saved them). Shoot then smoke was another annoying one as last thing I needed the Russ's I couldn't really hurt to have is cover as well.

Fixed size blast of Deathstrikes. With Deathstrikes now having a fixed, 10" blast and there being a 10" blast marker it's much easier to work out what exactly has been hit by the nuke. Also firing on a 3+ on turn 2 then 2+ on turn 3 means they are much more likely to fire, their job then is to drive up the board at full speed and burn stuff with heavy flamers and just generally be annoying.

Wyvern's are filth. I used a squadron of 2 for a mere 130 points. They are surprisingly accurate and put out a lot of wounds. "Oh but they're AP6, they wont kill anything" the internet says. Doesn't matter what the AP is, when your squad is taking 21 wounds on 10 guys you're going to be taking a lot of casualties.

First Rank Fire + Scions. I ran my Scion unit as 10 guys, 2 hot-shot vollyguns, Taurox Prime with Missiles and Autocannons for 250 points. They went up with my 2 chimeras and when the Scions jumped out they First Rank Fired at a unit of vets and just wiped them out with no problem. 21 lasgun rounds, a las pistol round and 4 vollygun rounds will do that :P

Orders on Command Squads. Specifically the Master of the Ordinance. An artillery round with tank hunters, ignores cover or even split fire is a powerful thing, especially for only 20 points.

Like I said in a different post, I'm going to enjoy using this book.