Inciting the Mob: IG Hordes

As many of you may have noticed, I am adding to my Imperial Guard army with Catachan infantry garnered from Ebay auctions. I netted 48 of these buggers for around 25 bucks, so I was not too picky with the condition they were in upon arrival. For the record, I hate getting models that were assembled with super glue...

Anyway, after repairing the models, swapping around kit, and constructing the two I was missing from spare bits: I finally have a full platoon of infantry. I managed to outfit each sergeant with one of those really huge-and-mean looking swords/knives, enabling me to count them as either power weapons or regular CCWs as the list requires.

I even had enough bits to construct a PC squad with all flamers, to give a further assault-oriented edge to the unit. I've been playtesting a few ideas, and I have some results:

If you plan to do any assaulting: blob (combine) your infantry squads up and keep them light. Don't stick any heavy weapons that will weigh them down. Straken is an expensive character, but he is a godsend if you are going to be doing any rousing infantry charges. Furious charge and counter-attack are not special rules to be taken lightly, as they can exponentially increase the effectiveness of this platoon on the charge. 5 Sergeants with powerswords on the charge = 15 power attacks made at S4... as effective as a 5-man vanguard squad with power weapons (albeit at lower initiative). What's more, is all those 45 infantry to the rear are great ablative-wound-takers. Your Sergeants can just shrug off the attacks onto their lesser brethren, and keep fighting on.

Low leadership? Worried you will take more wounds than your opponent? That's not always a bad thing. Let them fail that leadership test... as long as you have your Company commander behind them to give the "Get back in the fight!" order, this will put the squad in a prime position to let loose with those lasguns. That sort of volume of fire is bound to do some damage, even on venerated Space Marine units. My last playtest pitted a list that included this platoon against a Blood Angel list, and this platoon was able to eat up two assault squads and a tactical squad without taking significant casualties. How? What they couldn't kill outright in the assault, they would decimate with a fusillade of lasgun rounds after the regroup. It was a bit risky, but the 10 point addition of a vox to each the infantry squad(s) and the command squad made it worth it. Counter-attack made them receive charges like champs too, getting the extra attack (if not the S and initiative bonuses).

This platoon type is spendy though, and can only ever focus on one target at a time. It is also awful-slow, and requires decent deployment space. Let's not forget to mention the monotony of moving 55 infantry models just for one turn... and moving them every time you assault or receive a charge... it is quite a task. Experienced horde army players may be used to this, but it is new to me. If you are like me, you much prefer to push a couple tanks around and get right into the shooting.

For that reason, I probably will not make horde IG my preferred style, just because I am too lazy to move that many infantry models. Just be aware though, that these kinds of armies have their merits. Don't underestimate the Queen of Battle, the poor bloody infantry.

For the hobby aspect of it, I am not looking forward to painting another 50 infantry models like I did last month... But hopefully since I don't plan on them being integral to my list for this month's competition, I won't have to meet a deadline to getting them done.

So what are some of the ways you run your IG platoons?

Until next time,
--FP135