Whilst searching for new blogs to follow I somehow ran into this site. They have a bunch of Imperial Guard vehicle templates for download, which you then print out onto card stock and build a bunch of tanks from. Some of these templates are pretty damn cool, with some overlaid layers that need to be glued to card of .5 or 1mm thickness to give detail to the model.
As a total cheaparse this kind of thing really gets my imagination going. I always had a soft spot for the 4th edition Armoured Company list, and you can build something pretty similar these days (though inferior) with the Imperial Guard codex. So I started to think about how I would build an Armoured Company - and to make it as difficult for myself as possible I decided to aim for a measly 1500 point army. I'm sure its easy to expand from there.
In order to keep in the theme of not spending any money, I am going to use paper cutouts for the infantry models too! Haha just kidding, but I will save money by picking up a couple of boxes of Wargames Foundry Sci-Fi Greatcoat Troopers. This will supply all the infantry I need.
Obviously we need to start with the tanks! 6 Leman Russ Battle Tanks with no fancy options or upgrades comes in at 900 points. This leaves me 600 points left for troops, which should be enough with a bit of luck. I am obviously going to need to squadron these tanks, so 3 groups of 2 seems the logical way to go.
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
The Battle Tank has a 72" range Strength 8 AP3 Ordinance Large Blast, which is a very versatile weapon. Ordinance lets you re-roll to penetrate armour on vehicles, so each squadron has a very good chance of taking out a light tank each turn. Also when firing at troops hiding behind their wrecked vehicles, Ordinance shots draw line of sight from the point of impact on the blast so they don't get a cover save. Thanks to Ghengis Vaughn for pointing out that this is wrong. Only Ordnance Barrage weapons can ignore intervening cover.
I looked through all the Leman Russ variants and, whilst all have great abilities, most lose the duality of the battle tank to handle both vehicles and troops with equal strength. Also this is definately going to be a gunline army that will need to make every round of shooting count, so I wasn't really interested in any of the weapons with a range less than 48". The major weakness of the Battle Tank is against AV 14 (and 13 to a lesser extent) and 2+ saves.
In the end I decided to take the Vanquisher variant to complement the rest of my company. The Vanquisher is 72" range Strength 8 AP 2, and you roll an extra die when penetrating armour! Awesome to take out those Land Raiders and Terminators from a distance. Sure, they will be less effective against armies without tanks, but at least you can take a wound or two off a monstrous creature? Anyway I couldn't think of any other way to reliably deal with land raiders whilst staying in theme.
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Vanquishers (310)
I do have a weakness here against monstrous creatures to some extent. At least each tank has a hull mounted heavy bolter which might help.
OK so on to troops. Well the obvious start is to take two veteran squads in Chimeras, and a command squad in a Chimera.
Company Command Squad - 3 meltas, chimera (135)
Veteran Squad - 3 meltas, chimera (155)
Veteran Squad - 3 flamers, chimera (140)
Err right, so that leaves me 160 points. Well I reckon I'll need another troops choice, and I'm worried about my ability to handle hordes, so how about another flamer squad? With the remaining 20 points I can pick up a couple of hunter-killer missiles to hopefully pop a transport ready for a Leman Russ barrage on the troops inside. I'll spread these out between the different squad types, so that if i need to move a Chimera in the first turn of one type or another, I can still fire both. Ideally I would be better off giving the veterans autocannons I suspect - but I won't be able to build a heavy weapons team with the models I'll be using.
Company Command Squad - 3 meltas, chimera (135)
Veteran Squad - 3 meltas, chimera, HKM (165)
Veteran Squad - 3 flamers, chimera (140)
Veteran Squad - 3 flamers, chimera, HKM (150)
And thats it! Well it was easy to spend my points without hardly dipping into options, but I am happy with the finished product. 6 AV 14 tanks and 3 scoring units. Here is the finished list.
Imperial Guard Tank Company (1500)
Company Command Squad - 3 meltas, chimera (135)
Veteran Squad - 3 meltas, chimera, HKM (165)
Veteran Squad - 3 flamers, chimera (140)
Veteran Squad - 3 flamers, chimera, HKM (150)
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Battle Tanks (300)
2 Leman Russ Vanquishers (310)
Now I am no Imperial Guard expert, so I would love to hear your feedback on this list - both minor changes and drastic overhauls. Please let me know what you think!
I'm already thinking about changing the Vanquishers over to Demolishers (I would just need to drop the remaining HKMs to pay for this). It lets me instant-kill toughness 5, really scares Terminators and Sanguinary Guard, and will be just as good at penetrating Land Raiders I reckon. They will have to move forward unsupported, but at least they have rear armour 11. And of course large templates are great against horde armies.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a pretty hefty list you have there. A couple of points/questions for you to consider.
ReplyDelete1)Ord. template weapons are still considered to be shot from the direction of the shooter. The point of origin rule for blast templates comes from barrage weapons ( Basilisks, Manticores, Mortars, etc.)
2)Is the command squad for a fluff hq? If so completely ignore this point. If not you may want to consider a Primaris Psyker instead. They are much cheaper and you could possibly wrangle the additional points for another Melta Vet squad w/the surplus. I personally run 2 with my squads because they are walking multilaser batteries. I stick them in with my Melta Vets and let them rip. 2D6 24" Str 6 shots are always nice to have around.
3)If you do want to run w/the command squad you could also consider throwing in an astropath to help you with your reserve rolls( or a master of the fleet to mess w/your opponents). They can be pretty situational but I personally like how they change up the game.
4)For the vet transports I always throw extra armor on my chimeras so they can't be stopped unless they are immobilized. That has saved me from certain defeat on more than one occasion.
5)As far as the tanks go, you cant really go wrong with a 'Russ. Any flavor, any day of the week they are a fun way to make things dead. If a good tank hunter is what you need then throw Pask in the vanq w/a lascannon. BS4 with an additional +1 str to your armor pen rolls if you sit still is just murder on armor.
6) I can never get flamers to work the way I want them too :(. I try to run a group of flamer vets (with one heavy) w/shotguns and a demo charge as an "Assault" group but they never seem to make their points back up. I think the problem is you dont get as much bang for your buck w/ hatch fired flamers. You have to get out to use them to their full effect or position your chimera in such a way that your butt armor is showing which can be a very bad thing. I am going to try putting mine in a Valk to see if maybe a flying fire group will work better.
All in all though its a fine list. You will have plenty of blunt force to rip through pretty much anything out there. It'll just be a matter of fine tuning it to match your tastes. Good luck and as always:
The Emperor Protects
Thank you very much for such thorough feedback Vaughn.
ReplyDelete1) The internet lies! Once again I find an obscure 40k rule that I have not correctly memorised - I have updated the article accordingly. Thanks Vaughn.
2) The command squad can give Bring It Down orders - but they aren't scoring. You know what, you just might be right. This would free up the points I need to add some vehicle mounted heavy flamers, whilst still having three scoring melta vet squads. Might even be able to squeeze in some autocannons. Needs playtesting!
3) Yes both are cool, but the points are not there. Especially like the Master of the Fleet to mess with those trying to avoid my alpha strike.
4) In my experience stunned is quite rare, and usually not the end of the world. I can think of better uses of 45 points.
5) I'd be reluctant to spend points on someone like Pask when that just makes his Tank the target priority, and the points could go towards another tank.
6) I can see how that would be a problem. Now with the extra points you have found me, I will change them to melta anyway and put the flamers on the vehicles.
Hey! I was just fixing up the formatting on this article and it reposted as if it was new - but it's still got the old comments...
ReplyDeleteAnyway I did start building one of these and it was very time consuming. Still something I'd like to try but its going to take an age to get 6 done!
Ah yes, I remember my very first Baneblade was a papercraft model that they gave you in White Dwarf! Ah, remember when White Dwarf encouraged build-your-own models?
ReplyDelete