Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. Let's talk about the Imperial Guard.

First things first, I haven't done anything in this site for a while now. I think it's been a week or so since my last post, that's because i got terribly sick. And just to make a long story short: I'll never ever go near a BBQ again or inhale huge amounts of smoke. Take my advice people, smoke is bad for your lungs.

But while I was dying in my bed ,while my mom berated me for being dumb enough to not move away from smoke, I remembered a post i had made a while ago in this site about Warhammer (specifically the game Dawn of War). It was about me rambling about skeletons and war or some stuff that didn't make sense, but it gave me an idea; "Hey Warhammer has a bunch of races and units we can talk about, instead of just making terrible skeleton jokes. Why don't we do that?"

And just like that, I decided to write some stuff about every playable race in the game whilst killing them all with Necrons in the campaign!

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DISCLAIMER: Warhammer 40k, for those who don't know, has a sizable amount of blood and gore, so if you don't like blood I recommend you read something else.

So, for today's post we'll be talking about everyone's favorite race, the Necrons! the Imperial Guard!

Who are these guys?

The Imperial Guard (or Astra Militarum because why not) is the name of the army defending almost every single human planet in this setting. They're basically a world's army and they're made out of billions of unhappy people that don't want to be there (mostly) and the rest (usually the superior officer's whose job is to shoot the unhappy soldiers in the head for disobeying orders).

You still with me? Good, we're just getting started:

Most Imperial Guard armies that people hear about consists of your hundred of unimportant Guardsman (the simple footmen of the army and sometimes a "veteran" who leads a group) a Commissar (the guy who shoots people in the back of the head) and a General (who sometimes doesn't even appear). I say "most" because the Guard is the "weakest" army in the lore of 40k and they die too quickly to actually know what resources they may have.

_{Pictured here, from left to right, is Governor-Militant General Lukas Alexander, A Commissar and a bunch of Guardsmen.}

Why, you ask? Well for one they're an army made of people forced to join, two, they have flashlights for guns, and armor composed by the galactic equivalent of cardboard while every other army in this setting has... actual guns and armor and three, their main strategic approach to combat is "drown the enemy in corpses".

Their tactical approach to stuff (rush in and hope to kill something before you die) wouldn't be so bad if it was human's fighting other humans or something similar, the problem is that they are not fighting other humans (in most cases) but rather, the alien races of this setting.

_{Here's a regular Imperial Guard vs Anything fight. In this example, they're shooting some Necrons (me)}

To explain it better, I'll use an example: The Space Marines (40k's poster boys) have their bodies enhanced with extra organs and stuff to make them the "perfect" soldiers and they still have difficulties fighting against the other races, so if a super powered human in a suit of power armor has difficulty to fight aliens what hope do normal people, like guardsmen, have? The answer is: they don't.

_{A bunch of Space Marines get killed in the intro of this game, just to prove my point.}

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But if they suck so much what's the point in playing them?

I've forgotten to mention that they also have artillery, a lot of it. The problem with the guard is that they have the resources they need to win, they just use them in the wrong way and that in of confrontations against anything the writers make their superiors dumb, so that they die in the stupidest ways possible.

Before we continue though, a few concepts/clarifications so that you understand some of the next stuff i'll be talking about:

1-A squad in this game is made out of three or so characters (usually) so 1 Imperial Guard squad = 4 Guardsmen. This doesn't apply to vehicles, so 1 vehicle = 1 car for example.
2-Most squads, with the exception of vehicles and others, have morale which is decreased thanks to certain weaponry or because a squad takes too many loses.

_{Here's a basilisk, the most important vehicle of the IG; it's just artillery on wheels with an ungodly range.}

With this in mind let's talk about the actual Imperial Guard, the one in the game: These guys are actually pretty good(no, really). The guard starts weak, their basic infantry is weaker than a Space Marine or Eldar squad, but the important thing to keep in mind is numbers, they start weak but become strong thanks to their numbers and powerful vehicles.

_{The key to playing IG is to always have more Guardsmen than you can count. Oh, and lots of artillery.}

But not only do the Guard have a ridiculous amount of units at their disposal (units that are very cheap to produce) they have a lot of vehicles they can use to support (or to carry) their units to victory. For example, the previously mentioned Basilisk (Its motto is: If it can see it it can shoot it).

In addition to their numbers and vehicles they also have "commanding units". Now, every race in the game has them and most are just super units with some skills and a decent amount of health, but these units are one of the most (if not the most) important part of the IG as a whole. Their skills help every squad they're put in, either making them immortal or restoring morale for a unit and every other unit in close range.

The most famous of commanding units has to be the Commissar, the guy whose only skill is to shoot people in the head to replenish the morale of the squad he's currently leading and any other squads that may be close.

They also have other cool units, like the Kasrkin (or Stormtroopers) who are basically Guardsmen equipped with a stronger flashlight that actually does damage and suits of actual armor and then there's the Ogryns who are considered to be the heavy infantry of the guard(because Stormtroopers are veteran Guardsmen and it's actually rare for a Guardsmen to survive their first day of combat), don't ask more about them, their backstory is weird.

_{Here you can see all commander units, from left to right: Commissar, Priest, General (the "Hero" unit), another Priest and a Psyker, we don't talk about those).}

_{Here's a group of Kasrkin alongside a priest.}

_{...And here's the Ogryns, I forgot to take a picture of them while they were alive.}

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Let's talk about their Stronghold now:

In Dark Crusade (that's the expansion we're playing) the campaign mode consists of a game of monopoly taking over territory (preferably your opponent's turf) and defeating your enemies in their stronghold, which is like their Headquarters, so if they lose there they're eliminated. Every single race's stronghold has a different gimmick and the Guard is no exception, so let's see what it's all about:

There's a cinematic that plays when fighting against them, which shows this giant thing here:

That's a Titan's arm and a Titan is a giant (very giant) robot of death, so expect this thing to pack a mean punch.

Right as you start you're assaulted/ambushed by Guardsmen inside vehicles that break into your base, which can put pressure inside of you if they manage to kill some of your units since you'll have to replenish those numbers while they just send wave after wave of Guardsmen (granted, they give you some time in between attacks) which becomes difficult because this disrupts your building order; You'll have to spend the resources to build a turret into replenishing your numbers.

But this doesn't matter since we're playing as Necrons and Necrons are overpowered.

As you keep progressing through the stronghold, Governor-Militant General Lukas Alexander uses everything under his command to stop you, from air strikes to non stop artillery that will mess up your units as they try to get back into the battle. Oh and some of his own men rebel against him or something, typical for the guard when there's no commissar around to shoot rebels in the head.

He also sends an assassin after your "Hero unit" (or in this case commander) who is invisible and can only be detected by units with Stealth Detection. This gets annoying after a while.

Then there's the Baneblade (pronounced: "IT'S TEH BEINNBLEEID" and sometimes "Beyblade") which is literally the strongest unit the guard has, and the strongest unit in the game of its type (it's a "relic unit", and also the strongest relic unit).

_{In all of its glory.}

_{The baneblade, sadly, did not survive this battle. It did take some of my Necrons.}

And then you cross the path right in front of the Titan's arm...

...And all the units you sent to cross that little path are now dead.

Which doesn't matter because we're playing Necrons (undead robot skeletons).

Sadly, at this point everything interesting of the Stronghold is over, what remains is just a home stretch to the Guard's main base. Sure, you can take control of the Titan arm and shoot any of his units(or yours) as they cross over but at that point is it really worth it to spend 5 or so minutes building stuff to control a weapon that fires in only one direction? It's not like Alexander has much firepower or men left...

Overall, I'd say this level is pretty good; it shows the strongest parts of the Guard, from the reluctant soldiers who rebel as soon as their commanding officer is dead, to the incredulous amount of artillery and vehicles the Guard uses to stomp their enemies to death. And more importantly, it also shows their main strategy pretty well: To drown their enemy in corpses.

I also got some really cool pictures of the final assault though, so I'll finish this post with them. As always, thanks for taking time to read this and I hope you enjoy your day, see you guys next time.

_{The Necron's most powerful unit, The Monolith laying waste to enemies.}

_{Some Necrons with skin pajamas trying to sleep.}

_{The Necron Lord, leading his forces while avoiding incoming attacks.}

_{The final final push, where the enemy base is completely open to the Monolith's attacks.}

_{The battle report, Necrons win.}

_{Some extra pictures I took, which I think look quite "Warhammery".}