building a guard army from scraps..

[Captain Caceres]

hi all,

new to this forum and just returned to the hobby from a long long long hiatus (circa 10 years).

Just looking for some advice as how to build my guard army. I basically found a box of stuff in my loft from my early teens, badly painted and damaged and have salvaged what I could from a mixture of fantasy and 40k, various different armies. The most successful reclamation was of a small collection of catachan troops and some other guard stuff, see below,

Company command squad and an oop sergeant.
about 20 standard troops (lasguns the odd heavy flamer etc)
a chimera
a leman russ
a sentinel (scout - bought second hand from ebay a couple of weeks ago)
and lucky for me an oop model of Commissar Yarrick

Just ordered the latest IG codex and full edition 40k rules as to be honest i played very little when i was in my teens and just sort of collected and painted. Keen to get into the table top gaming side of things now so just looking for some advice from some current IG players in how develop my force and what to buy next !!

Apologies for any NOOB mistakes...

Ill add some pictures of my freshly stripped and repainted guard as they develop...

thanks in advance for the advice,

'For the Emperor...'

[tanukioni]

My advice would be to get more guardsmen, they are your bread and butter.. with 20 guys you could deploy them as vets with the CCS as the HQ so you could get the min 2 troops one HQ.. not much else unless youre playing stuff like patrols or kill teams or something like that..

after that it depends on what you like about the guard, giant blobs of infantry? armoured columns? airborne? or maybe a total hybrid..

[Architech]

after that it depends on what you like about the guard, giant blobs of infantry? armoured columns? airborne? or maybe a total hybrid..

Guard are pretty versatile with what I would say would be 3 broad genres. Armored Company, Mass Infantry, Veteran Infantry. Decide what you want based on 'cool-factor' and looks and battle style, then we'll help you build

[Captain Caceres]

thanks for the advice guys, just picked up a copy of the new codex so gonna get deep into that first of all. Quite like the idea of having lots of infantry with a few mobilised vet squads for tactical purposes maybe with meltas/plasmas etc. then maybe Marbo to come do some damage too....

although whats your guys view on Marbo?? worth having him in your army?

cheers

[Michael]

I love Marbo. Many people say he isn't worth it, but I always take him just for fun.

You need to realize that he is a one shot weapon though. He comes in next to the target you want to destroy, throws his satchel charge and than dies.
It's a 50/50 chance he'll either do a lot of damage, or just die without having done anything. Either way, he is always good for some laughs. Sometimes yours, sometimes your opponents.

And he's just like 60 points or so.

[The Dark Pwner]

I swear by him. I used marbo ever since i started and havnt looked back. Most of the time he DSs in and blows a squad to high heaven. i think in 2 games he missed, but in one of those he then survived 2 turns later and blew up a vindicator with a meltabomb...it was FCKING WIN!

[Captain Caceres]

Well that settles it, at least if he isnt particularly effective in a game he has only cost 65 points, same as a tooled up normal squad, but the potential to really p*ss somebody off if does some damage.

as the guard are not brilliant at CC would you DS him in against a good CC squad to try and eliminate that threat or just get him blowing up some tanks?

[The Dark Pwner]

just what ever will die to a S8 AP2 peplate...something exspensinve really. power armour better, but make it vets...followeed by terms...but he's still a great tank hunter. DS behind a tank and get the rear armour with S8. still have meltabombs in later terms. and his pistol isnt to bad either. he can make his oint back and more in any game.