The Imperial Guard is the most important and by far the largest fighting force of the Imperium. War is a fact of life in a hostile universe, so the Imperial Guard is constantly active throughout the galaxy defending human worlds, attacking hostile aliens, and battling for possession of newly discovered planets.
Every world in the Imperium has its own army to defend it against raiders, pirates, and rebels. These local armies are maintained by the planet's own ruler and are known as the planetary defence forces. Even though these forces might number several million troops this is not sufficient to withstand a full scale enemy attack, although it is plenty for the purposes of defending against localised attacks. In practice, the main role of the planetary defence forces is to serve as the personal troops of the planet's ruler, in which capacity they are used to protect him against internal rivals as well as from off-world threats.
The Imperial Guard is raised from the planetary defence forces and organised into distinct armies. When a new army is to be raised, the Adeptus Terra determines which of the Impefium's million planets is next in line for recruitment. Some planets have small populations and are only liable to recruitment once every hundred years or so, while other more populous worlds provide more troops and may be chosen for recruitment two or three times a decade. Once a planet is selected for recruitment an Adeptus Mechanicus recruiting officer from the Departmento Munitorum of the Adeptus Terra visits the world and inspects its fighting forces. If the officer is satisfied with the fighting qualities of the planet's best troops he recruits whole regiments into the Imperial Guard.
A typical regiment may be between two and six thousand men strong and as there are over a million worlds in the Imperium the potential number of recruits is enormous. The size of an individual army depends on circumstances, but it is quite common for armies to include more than a hundred regiments in all. Once enough regiments have been selected the troops are shipped out to their assembly point at the war zone. Because each army is recruited at the same time its troops tend to be of more-or-less the same age. Each regiment will be from a different world, but they will fight together from then on. None of the regiments ever return home as the cost of moving such large bodies of men from one side of the galaxy to the other is simply too great.
I decided to make a new army list for the Imperial Guard because I didn't like the way the infantry were being represented in the list. The Imperial Guard is supposed to be the largest human army in the galaxy but, infantry wise, the curret Imperial Guard army isn't up to par. For example, you make have a total of 21 infanrty units (3 command stands + 18 infantry stands) but that isn't the biggest army in Epic. A Space Marine detachment may have up to 22 stands in it (Captain + Librarian + 20 Space Marine stands). And the Imperal Guard doesn't even come close to an Ork warband which is allowed an astounding 42 stands (Warboss + Weirdboy + 40 Ork boyz stands)!!!
The unevenness is further compounded by the amount of firepower an Imperial Guard detachment can bring to bear. If an Imperial Guard, Eldar, Space Marine and Ork detachment/host/warband were chosen simply from heavy weapons units than the Imperial Guard would come dead last (9 heavy weapons squads - 18 Fp)! Even behind the Eldar infindels (who can take up to 10 Dark Reapers - 20 Fp) !! This is totally unacceptable!!!
Hence, I am redoing the army list to better represent the large size of troops the Imperial Guard can call up. First, infantry squads can be chosen as Support, so a detachment could potentially have up to 38 stands!! Almost as big as an Ork warband and so much bigger than a Space Marine detachment. Second, Heavy Weapons will be taken as 2 units per squad as well as being able to be chosen for Support. Now, you can have a detachment that can bring a whopping 72 Firepower (36 Heavy Weapons squads) against their enemies!!
A note concerning Commissars: I don't think Commissars should give Imperial Guard units the Hero ability. As Eldar Exarchs do not give Aspect Warriors the Save ability, neither, I feel, should Commissars. So I have decided to allow Commissars to give just a +1 Assault to any infantry unit that has one, but Commissars do not give infantry units the Assault abilty, thus the Range of the unit stays at 30cm, it just gives the unit a +1 Assault. Futhermore, the cost to include a Commissar is now only 3 points instead of 6.
Also, after a recent purge in the Imperium, Ratlings were determined to be creatures of Chaos and have gone the way of the Beastman in the Imperial Guard. Of course, they threw out the Ratlings after they trained human soldiers in their knowledge of infiltration and now the Imperial Guard have Stealth Squads.
And here are the army lists for the Imperial Guard:
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