The Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard to you between 40K players out there) are the foot soldiers of the Imperium.

Personally one of my favourite armies, the Guard have a vast amount of datasheets will allows for varied list bundling. Now more than ever thanks to the 10th edition rules refresh you’ll find some decisions harder on what you’ll take with you.

Do you go for masses of Guardsmen, flooding the objectives? Or do you roll up with as many tanks you can take? Perhaps a mix of both? Hell, do you just go pure ordnance….

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for giving us access to the rules a little early, and you can download them right now off WarCom!

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Army Rules

The overall army rule for the Guard are Orders.

Instead of having different tables of orders, here they’ve scaled them back to just the one table that can be issued out. Whilst your options are more limited I believe this is easier to manage and I don’t think many could disagree.

The only Officers who can hand out orders to tanks are Tank Commanders and the Lord Solar himself. The rest of your officers can only issue orders to Regiment units. 

Detachment Rules: Combined Regiment

Born Soliders as a rule is back, albeit a little different. 

You can still auto wound (Lethal Hits in the new edition) however you have to be stationary for it to work now. If you move your troops, they do not get Lethal Hits.

Enhancements

We’ve got 4 Enhancements available for the humble guardsmen, some of which are better than others.

• Death Mask of Ollanius: If the bearers unit fails battleshock, then it subtracts 1 from its Objective Control score, rather than not score at all. Handy.
• Drill Commander. Bearer’s unit gets Lethal Hits on a 5+ rather than a 6+, however don’t forget you need to remain stationary.
• Kurov’s Aquila: A once per battle enhancement that you use when your opponent wants to trigger a strat. This enhancement makes that strat cost 1CP more. Disruptive
• Grand Strategist: Your officer gets to issue an additional order. Pretty sure you’ll see plenty of people taking this.

Every strat has its use. I wouldn’t say the guard have a particularly fun or inventive strat, but they all perform an important job potentially. 

Stratagems

Time for stratagems, and we have a few very fun strats to choose from! 

All very flavoured for the guard and all could be used in every game. 

Let’s check them out:

• Reinforcements: This is a favourite, and is also a little bonkers. For 2CP, regardless of the phase, as soon as that unit is killed you can use this strat to replace the unit with another, that goes into strategic reserve to bring on in your next reinforcement step. If you had any characters attached to said squad though, sadly, they don’t come back. Makes sense.
• Suppression Fire: Pick a guard unit and an enemy unit (but not a Monster or Vehilce). So long as you score at least one hit, the enemy vehicle will be -1 to hit when they come to shoot.
• Fields of Fire: Works like concentrated fire. Basically if you choose another Regiment unit to shoot an enemy unit that you have already shot at, you can improve the AP by 1.
• Expert Bombadiers: This was in the old book a specific Death Korp strat. So long as a voxcaster has eyes on a target you want to shoot at, you can use this strat to be +1 to hit with indirect weapons at said unit, negating the -1 to hit for being indirect. Very Guard like strat!
• Inspired Command: Another very cool ability. In your opponents command phase you can use this to issue a command.
• Armoured Might: Pop this one to have -1 damage to one of your tanks in your opponents shooting phase.

Key Units

Where oh where to start. There are new rules EVERYWHERE. 

However, I think the Guard have one tank (of many flavours) which is deserving of us picking. The humble Leman Russ:

• Battle Cannon: Your everyday workhorse, the basic, take it as it is, battle cannon Russ. It’s special rule concentrates on grabbing objectives. If you shoot at an enemy unit you always re-roll 1s to hit. Neat! Now, if you shoot at a unit within range of an objective you don’t control? Well, in that case full rerolls to hit for you. Mental
• Demolisher: This one can target enemy units in Engagement range and suffer no penalty to shooting. Firing cannon ball shots into your opponents unit at point blank range with no debuffs!
• Vanquisher: Sadly it has lost its ignore invulnerable saves (which is a rule that is hard to come by on this edition). Instead you can reroll your wound rolls if shooting Monsters and Vehicles. Oh, it’s damage 12 too (but only one shot, so make it count!)
• Punisher: Still 20 shots with no AP, however so long as your target is not a Vehicle or Monster, you gain the Devasting Wounds keyword.
• Executioner: Everyone’s favourite plasma tank now adds 1 to hit rolls, so long as the enemy unit is below half strength.
• Exterminator: The tank no one ever uses now has a very useful ability. So long as you land a hit on your target, all other shooting from your army that targets that same unit gains an extra AP on their ranged guns.
• Eradicator: Another variant rarely seen on the battlefield. It can fire at units in engagement range with everything it has, and not have to suffer the penalty to hit.

Their is one other type of Leman Russ, the Tank Commander. He can have any of the available turrets however he does not get the rules listed above for said turret.

Instead he gets two of his own special rules. Vox-net allows him to issue an order up to 12” away and Death Befitting an Officer which is vey cool. When he dies he gets a round of shooting him as if it was the Shooting Phase and on the same stats as if he hadn’t taken a wound.

Finally, he can issue an order to a tank (Squadron keyword).

Summary

Like with all other data sheets, the guard have had sweeping changes, and I can’t say (with hand in my heart) that I’ve seen any which make me sad. The changes seem to be to make the unit fit its role better or to add fun to the army. 

Like to think we’ll see more variety in list building moving forward. 

Tally ‘ho!

Published by David Jennings

Born and raised in Crewe in Cheshire, Dave is a geek through and through. Enjoys designing and managing websites. View all posts by David Jennings