Imperial Guard

"Duty and Honor."

Click here to view all the troops of the Imperial Guard.

 

In the tabletop strategy game, Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard are the largest body of fighting men and women in the Imperium of Man.

 

Overview

The Imperial Guard is a colossal military organisation, consisting of many billions of men and women from millions of different worlds and systems within the Imperium. Each regiment is a force of between five hundred and ten thousand fighting soldiers, supported by a huge array of light and heavy armoured vehicles. Each regiment also has its own entourage, consisting of support staff, camp followers, suppliers, tech-priests, doctors, religious leaders, and the like.

Guard troopers are organised under several levels the most common being the Regiment, A regiment consists of 4 to 6 companies, a company includes between 50 and 200 soldiers. When a regiment becomes too small to become combat effective it is merged with other units into combined regiments

The Imperial Guard are far more numerous than the Space Marines who are deliberately curtailed to some 1,000 chapters of 1,000 Marines each. The contributions of some planets to Imperial Guard regiments over the ten thousand years of the Imperium runs into the billions, if not more. The Imperial Guard are constantly at war, freeing worlds from Chaotic or alien influence, or defending them from the same. However the Imperial Guard are reliant upon the Imperial Navy for transport as a means of controlling over-ambitious generals.

 

Gameplay

The first edition of Warhammer 40,000 included rules for a force known as the "Army." Later their name was changed to "Imperial Guard."

The Imperial Guard as first introduced (in White Dwarf 109) was bound by a series of rules relating to its command structure. Squads of units formed platoons under a command squad. Units that were separated from the command squad were more limited in action. The initial imperial army could include besides the basic squads, Rough Riders (a form of mounted trooper), penal troops, human bombs and Abhumans (see below). Vehicles were limited to Rhinos, and Land speeders.

Because of the low points-cost of each individual Imperial Guardsmen, Imperial Guard armies often have a much larger number of troops than most other armies. In addition, they enjoy one of the largest selections of vehicles available in Warhammer 40,000 such as the Leman Russ Battle Tank, a stock standard tank with many variations, the Basilisk which is a heavy artillery platform with a massive range and the Chimera which acts as a lightly armed troop transport. This is a stark contrast to the Space Marines, the other imperial army, whose infantry are costly(but effective) and whose vehicle equivalents are drastically weaker than their IG counterparts(take the Leman Russ, main battle tank of the IG, against the Space Marine Predator, the main battle tank of the Astartes. The Leman Russ both far out range and over power the Predator).

The nature of the previous incarnations of the Imperial Guard meant that it was generally more appropriate tactically to hold a position and fire all you had at the enemy troops, mostly because the Guardsmen were woeful at close-combat fighting. This style of play, while not outdated in Fourth Edition, is not entirely in sync with the nature of the latest Codex. Many "doctrines" allow the Imperial Guard to become better in close-quarters combat, upgrade their armour to be more effective, or even utilise squads of Storm Troopers where one would normally utilise Infantry Platoons.

As an example, an Imperial Guard army designed to fight Tyranids could select the "Hardened Fighters"; "Die-hards"; "Carapace Armour"; "Xenos-Fighters: Tyranids"; and "Drop Troopers" doctrines to field an army of infantry trained specifically to swoop down from the skies to meet the close-combat specialist Tyranids on their own ground.

General tactics of the Imperial Guard include heavy use of Armoured units to weaken or destroy the enemy at long range and light infantry to swarm the enemy with a mass of lasgun fire(the average guard army of standard size could boast a potential 100+ shots. Against Space Marines mathematically 5-6 of those shots are fatal for the marines).

 

Abhumans

In addition to humans the Imperial Guard also contains several types of abhumans - species evolved from humans that differ markedly from the norm. The two species most commonly found are the Ogryns (the counterpart of the Warhammer Fantasy setting ogres) and the Ratlings (the equivalent of the halfling/hobbit).

In the early edition of WH40K there were also beastmen. These were half human half animal, the parallel to the Chaos Beastmen of the Warhammer Fantasy world. These fought as part of the Imperial Guard; their motivation, as subhumans, being the chance to prove themselves in their face of their obvious physical corruption. In later editions they were removed from the Imperial Guard to appear in a more logical place alongside the ranks of Chaos.

In White Dwarf issue #303, an official article was published featuring Doctrines to allow Imperial Guard armies to take units of other types of Abhumans. The article featured Beastmen (Homo Sapiens Variatus, not quite as extreme as the original beastmen), Mutant Slave Levies (ordinary mutant slaves rounded up for cannon fodder), Feral Ogryns (even nastier and more primitive than regular Ogryns), Nightsiders (originating from worlds of perpetual or near-perpetual darkness, little to no ability to see but perfect warriors for Night Fighting missions), Afriel Strain Soldiers (genetically engineered from DNA taken from great heroes of the Imperium, who were better soldiers but were very unlucky and unpopular), Subs (relatively genetically stable but still hideously deformed mutant sub-breeds) and Gland Warriors (Imperial Guardsmen implanted with special organs and glands that secrete combat-useful chemicals, such as stimms and pain-killers).

The concept of the abhuman was revived in White Dwarf 303 (March 2005) where it was made clear that those not too inhuman in appearance were tolerated while cloven hooves and beast faces were outright abominations.

 

Appeal to players

The primary appeal to Imperial Guard players of the Warhammer 40,000 game is that the Guard are 'human'. In a game filled with genetically modified supermen, alien mystics, and all-consuming hive-minds, the Imperial Guard are just soldiers. Carrying a lasgun and wearing flak armour (commonly believed by fans to be the most ineffective standard equipment in the game, and referred to as the "flashlight or laser pointer" and "T-shirt"), the Imperial Guard are forced to rely on sheer numbers, massed-fire tactics, bayonets and courage to win their battles.

Secondly, the Imperial Guard has the largest range of tanks and armoured vehicles of any army, and have been heavily supplemented by the Forge World Imperial Armour series of books and resin kits. This appeals to the 'treadheads' (or 'tank-lovers') among the player community, and was catered to in the third and fourth editions of the game by the release of rules for an Armoured Company composed entirely of tanks. This army list can also be used to field Siege Regiments comprising of forward Artillery vehicles. It is Chapter Approved for the 2006 Tournament circuit, whether or not it will be included in 2007 remains to be seen.

The various Imperial Guard regiments produced or described by Games Workshop draw on a variety of historical and fictional inspirations. In the earliest editions, the Imperial Guard were very homogeneous in appearance and there was no visual distinction between regiments other than colour and decoration of their uniforms.

Some of the most obvious stylistic links are:

The Cadians fighting in the 13th Black Crusade were developed to be a generic force representing any modern or science fiction armed force. In previous (Second and Third) editions, the Cadian Shock Troopers were heavily styled on the United States Army as well as the Mobile Infantry from the 1997 movie Starship Troopers and the United States Colonial Marines from the 1986 movie Aliens.

Modellers have converted several of the released (and unreleased) regiments to conform to numerous armies past and present, from the ANZACs of the Battle of Gallipoli, to British and French armies throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

In addition to the various historical armies one of the most attractive parts of the Imperial Guard are the Commissars. They are represented akin to stereotypical Soviet political commissars, simultaneously exhorting the troops to greater efforts and summarily executing anyone showing signs of cowardice (the favoured line of the commissar in Dawn of War was "If you will not serve in combat then you will serve on the firing line!").

 

Notable regiments

There are millions of worlds contributing Imperial Guard Regiments to the Imperium's defence, each world having its own methods of training, its own unique equipment, and its own specialisations.

Even so, the regiments of certain worlds stand out, and are renowned throughout the Imperium for their deeds, strengths and methods of combat.

 

Imperial Guard ranks

The diversity of Imperial Guard regiments mean that there are literally thousands of variations on officers' ranks throughout the Imperium. However, local variations are generally tied to a basic standard list of officer ranks, for determining comparative seniority between regiments, a tentative hierarchy of which might be as follows:

Two other notable officer ranks exist amongst the Imperial Guard. Commissars (almost certainly modelled on the Soviet political officers of the same name) are individuals attached to Imperial Guard regiments for the purposes of maintaining rigid Imperial discipline throughout the Guard. The rank of Warmaster is a title issued by the High Lords of Terra to a military commander (usually a previous holder of the Lord General or Lord Marshal rank, or else an Admiral of the Imperial Navy) when one overarching leader is deemed necessary to command a crusade of historic magnitude (examples include the Warmasters Horus, Slaydo, Macaroth, and Lord Commander Solar Macharius). A Warmaster’s military authority is absolute within his assigned area of operations, and it is for this reason that a Guard officer desiring this rank must be seconded by two Admirals of the Imperial Navy (similarly, a Naval officer holding the rank must be seconded by two Generals, or other senior staff officers, of the Imperial Guard). There is seldom more than one of these individuals in the entire Imperium at any one time. While it is said that a commander with the rank Lord Solar is higher than a Warmaster they are actually the same rank. On occasion the rank Warmaster, due to its association with Horus, simply falls out of favour and is replaced with Lord Solar.

Other ranks of import to the Imperial Guard are the Imperial Commanders, who have authority over the standing forces on an Imperial world (generally held by the Planetary Governor of the world in question) and the Lord Commanders of the Segmentae Majoris, a primarily administrative rank whose incumbents are responsible for overseeing and directing the Imperial military within one of the five Segmentae of the galaxy.

All remaining troopers are enlisted soldiers. Like the commissioned ranks, the enlisted rank structure can vary wildly from regiment to regiment. However, the Imperial Guard does have a very basic enlisted rank structure:

Others mentioned include Bombardier, Master Sniper, Colour Sergeant and Command Sergeant. Again, other variations exist based on planet of origin, Crusade or Army group etc. Some Sergeants in the Imperial Guard are known as 'Veteran Sergeants' but this is not generally an actual rank - Veteran Sergeants are either very experienced holders of the Sergeant rank or senior NCOs. The evolved Ogryns and Ratlings seem either to follow no ranking system at all or some internal ranking system, although they are obliged to obey Imperial Guard officers. Some Ogryns are given surgery to augment their intelligence, a process known as "Biochemical Ogryn Neural Enhancement" (BONE). Ogryns that receive these modifications are able to act as middlemen between humans and other Ogryns, and are often known as "Bone'eads".