Brotherly Love

Happy Good Friday everyone and in the spirit of being good and loving I am going to ramble for a while about Imperial Guard and Space Marines, how they interact in the books/fluff, how their players interact, and my own views will be spattered on throughout.

The Imperial Guard is the faceless billions that represent mankind’s true strength. For the most part they are well disciplined and have a massive amount of weapons to get any job done. I really like the specialization that each Imperial Guard regiment has in the books, you have heavy infantry, light infantry, Storm Troopers, Cadian shock troops, Catachan jungle fighters, Krieg siege masters, Elysian droop troops, and the list goes on and on. It is my great wish that IG would become more customizable and it is possible that a new codex will give them access to an armory to do just that, and increase the point cost of those incredible flyers! Being able to customize the feel of the standard infantry squad would be incredible, pay extra for carapace armor and suddenly you have heavy infantry without having to go for storm troopers. Will it happen, probably not but I will continue to wish for my guard buddies out there. The strength of the Imperial Guard is in its diversity, each regiment has its own strength with the companies that create that regiment further enhancing that specialization and balancing it out, on the other side of that coin there are missions that certain regiments do not do well. Do not expect Elysian droop troops to hold a fixed defensive position as well as Cadians, and don’t expect Catachans to be willing to sit down for a long siege like Death Korps of Krieg. Of course there is more than just infantry out there; they have armored regiments, light, heavy, and super heavy, mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, cavalry, all that fun stuff. There is one issue I have with IG and that is the people that play them. Now don’t get offended IG players that happen to read this, I just have yet to meet one that doesn’t constantly complain about their army. They complain about the amount of veterans they have to take, their tanks are vulnerable to units a, b, and c, Ogryns are useless, and the list of complaints goes on about as long as the list of IG regiments. If you are a serious player that does tournaments and the only thing you play with is Vets with 3x Plasma with flyers then I feel for you, but if you are a casual player that has a casual group of friends then it is time to use your imagination! Come up with an IC that allows you to add new things, work out a points cost with them, experiment with it and have some fun. A truth I have found with IG players that love their army is that they could care less if they get beat so long as they can play the type of army that they want to play.

Space Marines, the Emperor's finest, his grandchildren and all that stuff. This is the love it or hate it army, I have yet to meet someone who is neutral about them. Neutrality is saved for the Tau, which have been released with all sorts of new awesome stuff and I can’t wait to play against. I will admit that I am biased towards Space Marines; I find them to be incredibly flavorful and full of fun combinations. I do not enjoy the "top tier" Space Marine armies and I fully understand the grief people have with them. My first army was a large Space Wolf Blood Claw army, WS 3 marines...yes please? I eventually switched to Blood Angels because I fell in love with jump packs and created an all Descent of Angels list which I enjoyed for a few months before 6th ED told me I could not do that anymore :(. Space Marines have a character that will allow you to run any army you want to. If you want all terminators say hello to Logan and Belial, stern guard have Pedro, assault marines have Shrike and any Blood Angel, and there is of course a million different options when Forge World is brought in. I am going to be a bit greedy and ask where is my HQ that can Heroic Intervention with my Vanguard Vets??? This is why I think IG players dislike SM players so much, they see the options that are available to them and want that kind of variety. Yes having power armor can be incredibly forgiving to a player that makes a mistake but I will never agree with someone that claims SM armies are point and click.

Maybe it has to do with the books; Space Marines are almost always jerks to guardsmen unless they are Salamanders, Space Wolves, or Captain Titus from the Ultramarines. It is the haughty attitude that so many of the marines towards their unaugmented counterparts that can sometimes lead to the same attitude on the table top, something that IG players resent, which is understandable. I see this from the new players the most, a guy or girl will read a Space Marine book then get into the game and just assume they are better than everyone else because that the sort of mind set they have. Then it is a bit of a 180 if a person reads the Gaunt’s Ghosts books where a guy with a lasgun can snipe a Chaos dreadnought to death. I have only read the first three books and rather enjoyed them, but for a light infantry regiment some of those guys have plot armor stronger than ceramite.

To end this rather long post, and bless you if you have taken the time to read all this, both armies along with the people that play them, and write for them have their strengths and weaknesses. Take both with a grain of salt, IG players are going to be grumpy at tournaments or when playing an unfriendly game, and SM players might have a bit of a superiority complex even if they get slaughtered. When it comes down to it at the end of the day don't piss on each other, there is an Eldar player around there somewhere, pick on him ;)