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The re-release of Codex: Imperial Guard comes at an
auspicious time. Finally the Cadian Shock Troops plastics
set is available and suddenly there is a whole new flavour
of Imperial Guard army to be collected. The Imperial
Guard have got to be the easiest army to identify with,
being fundamentally, well, human. They are pitted against
the might of hideously powerful alien killing machines
and prevail through determination, firepower and a bayonet
with some guts behind it. Moreover they are well-equipped
with some of the heaviest weapons imaginable mounted
on their awesome battle tanks. This alone makes the
army a favourite of the tread-head or 'tank fancier'
fraternity which I must confess to being a member of
myself.
I had expected the task of reworking the Imperial Guard
codex to be a relatively easy one (fool that I was).
Naturally enough though life cannot be allowed to be
simple and the arch-daemon of awkward timing flapped
maliciously into the picture. Before the release of
Codex: Imperial Guard the preceding codex would be Codex:
Eye of Terror. Pretty obviously any campaign set
around the Eye of Terror would inevitably involve the
Cadian Shock Troop regiments and these would therefore
have to be one of the armies covered in the campaign
codex.
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This made things tricky as the Cadian list would have to
initially dovetail with the old Imperial Guard codex and then
seamlessly switch to point at the new codex when it was released.
Equally importantly I had to be sure that the Cadian rules
fitted within the broader context of the Imperial Guard and
wouldn't be invalidated by the new Imperial Guard codex. The
consequence of all this is that it seems an age ago that I
sat down and tried to list what issues I wanted to address
in the new Imperial Guard list.
Essentially the old list seemed to be rattling along reasonably
well. I had two main observations about current Imperial Guard
armies and practices. Firstly the Imperial Guard armies I
saw all seemed to be remarkably similar in composition - each
seemed to be based around a Demolisher, a Leman Russ and a
Basilisk. None of them seemed to make much use of the Elite
options on the list and all of them preferred to not actually
move if they could help it. This made them a bit predictable
and I wanted to give the army some diversity back. I had to
be fairly cautious though because if I overdid it then the
Imperial Guard army might become a human wave of bayonet waving
maniacs capable of trampling over the likes of the Tyranids
and that would just be wrong.
Secondly there wasn't much that made them visibly part of
the Imperium of the 41st millennium. Commissars were not being
used that much and there wasn't any other weirdness to mark
Guard armies apart. I have always been fascinated by the 'real
world' armies of the 20th and 21st centuries and understand
that a lot of players use the Imperial Guard army as a sort
of homage to them. Warhammer 40,000 is big enough to absorb
a homage and still have its own distinctive qualities though
and I wanted there to be more Imperium madness available.
My answers to these problems were deliberately minimalistic.
I did not want to create a new Imperial Guard army, just make
a few interesting tweaks that wouldn't annoy anyone with an
existing army. More...
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