Well ladies and gents, I know it has been a long time since I have written anything about the Imperial Guard, the state of Warhammer 40k, or miniatures in general. Well I wanted to make sure you all knew I had not forgotten about you, and that, from time to time I will be indeed posting about them. I also will be, in general posting more often about many a things. Tomorrow you all should see a post about another tabletop game that my FLGS players and myself have gotten HUGELY into and are about to run our first tournament for...
but lets get back into what you came here for, the codex....
Well first of all, we all know it is no longer called the Imperial Guard.... it is now the Astra Militarum.... ya I am not going delve to deep into this change except to say that I get the business reasons for it in order to copyright the name... but otherwise it is a dumb re-branding done at a time when GW could ill afford any more negative publicity, and this definitely was negative for all those who had spent money putting labels and naming things with the Imperial Guard idea. I shall stop myself now before I lose my temper...
Onto the interior of the codex itself. It is impressive with its art and background stories, they are enjoyable to read and look at, if you are a fan of this kind of stuff, it is still worth it, even if some stories are just reused from other codexes, the pictures of all the various imperial guard regiments is nice to see again and they are high quality.
Now to the meat of the codex, the units and how they function. One thing is immediately clear once you glance through the codex, the lack of special characters is astounding you get a total of 7, 4 of which are all in the same unit in the Company Command Squad (or whatever it is renamed, if it is). However, luckily enough almost all of the special characters are solid, if not impressive, except for one... Strakken... he is simply put, far to overpriced, for nothing worthwhile... 130 points of shit in a bucket is still just shit in a bucket. He is by far the least impressive and overpointed model I have seen in awhile.... As for best value... you have to go with Pask...
What about the rest of the codex? We will just do a brief overview of it all (keep in mind I am sure I will miss some units and things)
HQs:
Solid all around, moving Primaris Psykers to be just addons is nice giving you the ability to take more order giving units. The upgrades to both Orders in general and the command squad is nice. Also the upgrades to priests and engineers (omg IG get Power of the Machine Spirit) are GREAT as well, helping provide for a well rounded HQ slot, though I am slightly disappointed in how they decided to regulate how many commissars a army can take by basing it off how many CCS and PCS you take.
Tank commanders rule.... seriously... if you don't know why... go pick up the codex just to read for a bit... they are just GREAT. (Pask especially)
Elite:
Ogryns and Bullgryn or whatever you call em... still a tad overpriced, but now that you can put them into Valkyries make them an interesting choice, putting a bunch of 3 wound, toughness 5 armor 4/5 guys with power mauls dropped in the face of any unit will disrupt an enemies thought process.
Stormtroopers are amazing now, being able to take them in a platoon type format allows you to take a lot of them without having to ignore the rest of your fun elite choices, and now that hot shot lasguns benefit from First Rank, Second Rank fire. Also them having their own PCS that can give them orders is REALLY nice especially because you do not -have- to take them
Ratlings are perhaps still the best value in the entire game, at 10 points a model they now have shoot and run, along with still having cloaks and bs4 sniper rifles... nothing more needs to be said, they are great.
Psykers.... interestign change... they could be good? I wish they had an option of a special power only they had or could drop it for the base powers
Troops:
Platoon, it still is good, grabbing one provides an additional commissar... i mean they havent changed much except no special characters... a solid unit
Vets are an improvement all around at being 10 points cheaper (even if they did lose krak grenades) along with their upgrades being cheapers (10pt cloaks and snare mines, 15 points armor upgrade) These guys will still make up a bulk of your troop choices and provides amazing firepower.
Dedicated transports, all three are solid, if a bit overpriced in my opinion when comparing them to others, still i think the Chimera rises above the rest with its extra armor,
Fast:
Rough Riders are just bad when Mogul is gone... enough said
Scout Sentinels are still a decent choice at 35 pts per but...
With the cheapening of Armored Sents.... well... they just got a whole lot more interesting of a choice and would like to hear how they play out.
Hellhound and variants didn't change much so they are still ok... just hard to fit into lists with the rest of the Fast slot options
Vendetta and Valk... well the points raising in the Vendetta was understandable... but the loss of troop capacity? I just dont get it...almost nothing you can have can actually be put into the vendetta now, so what is the point?
Heavy:
Where do I start here, with the raping of the gun batteries? Or with the changes to the Russes.... ok ok.. start on a good note right?
So most Leman Russ variants got a nice reduction in points to balance out what they did, most obviously being the Punisher... GREAT value now, and worth taking.... but.... why does the Demolisher need to be 170? I mean... seriously? with its short range its more likely to get dead before it gets off more than one shot, if you are lucky to even get that. Over all they got a bit better... minus some frustrating head scratching and though its only fair that the Executioner Plasma Cannon got gets hot... it still makes me sad...
Manticore is the exact same, along with the Basalisk (the second still overpriced for its armor value and being open topped)
The Death Strike Missile got huge upgrades with only suffering minuses from weapon destroyed now, no longer from shaken and stunned, and it shoots off starting at a 4+, so far more likely to be able to launch one during a game! As a huge fan of this heavy choice I am indeed stoked about it
Ahem.... As for whats missing... oh ya THE ENTIRE HEAVY BATTERY GROUPING! WHERE IS MY FUCKING MEDUSA, MY GRIFFON, and so forth.... GRRRR..... just dumb.... no reason to take these out, they were barely used by the majority of players, and they were one of the few places where IG could take away cover saves with decent AP value.. but not anymore... so stupid... ~sigh~
ok... ok... I will settle down... so what is it that I think over all about the guard codex? It is pretty good.. its a solid codex that compete with a lot of the big boys now... with one minor exception.... Eldar... I still don't see an answer here for Wave Serpents... as a matter of fact they made the codex worse at taking them out over all... Ah well... we shall see what comes with the ever impending 7th Edition of the game that seems destined to arrive at any moment... perhaps it will bring people back to the fold... but here at my FLGS? None of the regulars have played a game in quite some time....in face a lot are selling their models in frustration and anger, taking bad deals to get into other mini games. Will a new edition save this ever decreasing local fan base? Not likely... GW would have to REALLY rethink a lot of things to bring back most of the players it lost in the last year.
For now we locals are playing Firestorm Armada and greatly anticipating the release of Spartan Games ground based combat.... we shall see what happens, perhaps it wont be good and GW will draw us back in, but with how balanced and fun Firestorm Armada is and how much people are loving it.... I somehow don't see how Spartan Games could fuck it up enough not get us to at least try it out for a time...
Well until next time, burn some heretics, kill some mutants and do it all... for the Kurak Alliance!
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