Dawn of War Codex

So, people keep telling me often that Imperial Guard benefits from an incredibly strong early game, but I've found that Chaos players can just go double grenade heretics, double CSMs, and 1 Havoc squad.

If you are an IG player: I can;t really think of anything that can handle the double grenade heretics at t1 except for maybe double sentinel, but the double CSMs seem to pretty much wipe Sentinels with no problem.

If you are an IG: Opening strategies include:
Lord General: 2 GMs, no sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter and try rush to t2.
Inquisitor: 2 Gms, 1 sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter; and try hold ground until t2.
Lord Comm: 3 Gms, maybe a sent, and maybe 1 cata/ hwt/arti, and try somehow win.

My problem right now is the the Chaos players always just overwhelm in t1 with their high quality units. On maps that are wide open, retreating all the way back to base pretty much loses me huge momentum that I probably never got to begin with. And by the time I have 3 GMs, the Chaos player generally has his double csm and double heretics. I can't push out, and I can;t retreat. Either way, I'm going to lose the game.

There's nothing that IG has that can fight a Chaos squad 1 for 1, especially since Heretics give so much value for their cost 2 grenade volleys is all it takes to wipe out a GM squad, and not even catachans can suitably survive 1 volley.

Are there any experienced players willing to help me out, because as an IG player, the game is over before it even starts; mostly because once I hit retreat; I lose my power farm.

Part of me thinks that I should go for mass GMs and Senti game, and try go 4 GMs and 2 sentinels and 1 arti spotter.

PS: What is up with Guardsmen regen? I can have a full squad of guardsmen each at 50% hp, and it takes close to 2 minutes for them to heal back up. At this point, I'd rather they be half dead and spend the rec, because there is no way I can bring them back into the fight in a cost-effective way.

I think the main problem is that IG don't have anything that can out range units. GM heretics can just sit back and shoot down hunkered GM squads without taking any return fire, that means the IG player has to push or retreat and both are not advisable.

How does an IG player push against units when they are getting out ranged and out shot (lack of cover)?

Well, if i see nades blob i just build spotters. They are dealing with them pretty well. Then, you can also make an additional catachan squad for more disruption to make nade heretics completely useless. Then, give to commissar (im playing commissar, you should use go, go, go ability i think) power sword - this thing just rape chaos and give lot's of speed and disruption to commissar. Then just walk in the middle of the enemy army with senti and use stomp - congrats you have won the engagement. And even if you didnt - you wont lose it as well, if your micro doesn't suck at all.

What Dandy said is my usual technique.

I also like to get stomp for my sent and catas as t1.5 purchase. Grenade barrage their ranged blob, Rush the sent in for a stomp - I usually hit the tics if I can to stop them using their barrage ability. Rush my hero in to tie up a csm squad in melee, do the same with the catas whilst using shotgun blast on the tics if the stun has warn off. And pewpew them up with my 2 x gm squads.

I'm still learning and everything but this seems to work pretty well for me. Gotta focus fire their hero at some point as well - PC dot hurts so much!

Kim Jong Skill wrote:So, people keep telling me often that Imperial Guard benefits from an incredibly strong early game, but I've found that Chaos players can just go double grenade heretics, double CSMs, and 1 Havoc squad.

If you are an IG player: I can;t really think of anything that can handle the double grenade heretics at t1 except for maybe double sentinel, but the double CSMs seem to pretty much wipe Sentinels with no problem.

If you are an IG: Opening strategies include:
Lord General: 2 GMs, no sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter and try rush to t2.
Inquisitor: 2 Gms, 1 sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter; and try hold ground until t2.
Lord Comm: 3 Gms, maybe a sent, and maybe 1 cata/ hwt/arti, and try somehow win.

My problem right now is the the Chaos players always just overwhelm in t1 with their high quality units. On maps that are wide open, retreating all the way back to base pretty much loses me huge momentum that I probably never got to begin with. And by the time I have 3 GMs, the Chaos player generally has his double csm and double heretics. I can't push out, and I can;t retreat. Either way, I'm going to lose the game.

There's nothing that IG has that can fight a Chaos squad 1 for 1, especially since Heretics give so much value for their cost 2 grenade volleys is all it takes to wipe out a GM squad, and not even catachans can suitably survive 1 volley.

Are there any experienced players willing to help me out, because as an IG player, the game is over before it even starts; mostly because once I hit retreat; I lose my power farm.

Part of me thinks that I should go for mass GMs and Senti game, and try go 4 GMs and 2 sentinels and 1 arti spotter.

PS: What is up with Guardsmen regen? I can have a full squad of guardsmen each at 50% hp, and it takes close to 2 minutes for them to heal back up. At this point, I'd rather they be half dead and spend the rec, because there is no way I can bring them back into the fight in a cost-effective way.

In essence it's the curse of the sentinels. They're very strong at high level and balance this match up in T1 but they're also kinda meh at lower level.

Try using a defensive multilas turret and turtle up middle of the map at a choke point (map dependant) and keep your gm at max range repairing it. You'll probably have to dance back and forth around tic nades a bit if he tries to hit your gm repairing it, but if he does that you can just move back and he'll have to step into range of the turret if he wants to keep chasing you. If he tries to rush cl/pc to burn it use your sent to stop him with stomp and then instantly retreat the sent while focus firing with your gm before stun runs out. He should have a reasonably hard time pushing on a supported turret (or hell even 2 if he's spending that much) and can use that to at least reach T2.

The biggest problem is their inability to effectively deal with suppression when on even footing with a chaos opponent.

There are two hard counters to suppression early on - jump infantry, and longer ranged weapons (ex - grenade launchers). IG do not have a grenade launcher, nor do they have jump infantry. They have catachan grenades, artillery squads, and sentinels, but these only knock back the unit temporarily, which means you then have to engage in close range within a very small window of time in order to actually deal with the suppression. If imperial guard had a fast melee unit like banshees and hormagaunts this could be used to give them time to charge into melee, but IG has no comparable unit at T1.

Basically, having only brief knockbacks means the onus is still on you to take the initiative to run in and attempt to overwhelm the enemy forces before their suppression team sets up again - and Imperial guard are absolutely the least effective race for overwhelming in T1 (especially against chaos). Sentinels have no melee attack and only moderate damage (plus charging them into combat is extremely dangerous without catching the enemy off guard). Guardsmen have nearly non-existent melee and very poor ranged damage early on. Overall IG have little overwhelm potential, and yet their only counters to chaos suppression are overwhelm tactics (especially since a protracted shooting match is impossible against a plague marine with praying cultists).

If sentinels had a melee attack (something which is fully consistent with the tabletop game BTW) then they could be used to tie up suppression teams. I don't know if that would solve all the IG woes, but considering that Chaos has superior melee, durability, suppression, and the longest-ranged weapons, something should be done.

That is not to say IG won't ever win a T1 fight, but the odds have to be much more in the IG players favour than his opponents.

Oddnerd wrote:The biggest problem is their inability to effectively deal with suppression when on even footing with a chaos opponent.

There are two hard counters to suppression early on - jump infantry, and longer ranged weapons (ex - grenade launchers). IG do not have a grenade launcher, nor do they have jump infantry. They have catachan grenades, artillery squads, and sentinels, but these only knock back the unit temporarily, which means you then have to engage in close range within a very small window of time in order to actually deal with the suppression. If imperial guard had a fast melee unit like banshees and hormagaunts this could be used to give them time to charge into melee, but IG has no comparable unit at T1.

I am very new to Elite Mod, but I believe you underestimate IG artillery spotters. They can be very effective against setup teams. First of all, they have Smoke Shells that can be used to decrease the weapon range of setup teams (50% for 10 seconds). In addition, they can also call in Mortar Shells to disrupt blobs of heretics while your gurdsmen and sentinels focusing them. Taking into account the low amount of heretics' HP this can force them to retreat. But the most important thing about them when comparing with jump troops is that they can simultaniously counter two targets (using Smoking Shell on Havocs and Mortar Shells on heretics' blob) while ASM should choose who they have to attack first.

too add on to that, while IG may not have many designated 'pushing' units, their overall T1 pressure can compensate. they can easily overwhelm the opponent in the first engagements with the sentinel, and they are designed to hold ground very well with the sentinel and multilas turrets. for the most part they can focus fire SUT's off the field after some initial disruption from either catachans or spotters. if you're playing as the LC, the loss of melee tics allows him to run up from a flank and go to town with his power sword. holy brazier on Inq is also really good in that matchup. LG also has that suppression resistance armor.

Strats aside, here is a quick economic breakdown of the builds from the OP:

Chaos: 2 nade tic, 2 csm, havok - 1410 / 70 - 5 units
This includes no Eternal War (50/15), AC or Commander upgrades.

On to the IG side. When you say cata/hwt/arti spotter I assume you are saying pick one and only one? Lets use the most expensive, cats (300/30) without demo man (75/20) for now. So against a Chaos player who has 5 units plus commander, you are fielding (assuming sarge on all):

Lord General: 2 GMs, no sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter - 680 / 30 - 3 units (50% less spent)
Inquisitor: 2 Gms, 1 sent, 1 cata/hwt/arti spotter - 980 / 30 - 4 units (30% less spent)
Lord Comm: 3 Gms, maybe a sent, and maybe 1 cata/ hwt/arti - 975 / 30 (assuming the cat and no sent) - 4 units (30% less spent)

Each of these builds is exceedingly greedy against a heavy T1 opponent (30% less req/power spent, and 1 less unit). No matter what race matchup it is, if you spend a solid 500 / 40 less then your opponent AND have 1 less unit fielded, you are going to get pushed back hard. It has nothing to do with a race being OP, you are simply under investing in T1.

A number of posters (and the OP) touch on the idea of spending more. I highly recommend this. Double tic, double CSM is already a heavy T1 build, adding a Havok and upgrades on tics even more so. You have to either know how to very effieicnetly counter it, or at least invest a comparable amount. With a budget of 1410/70, you can field an IG army that looks like this: 3 GM + sarge, cata, spoter and hwt. This will run you 1480/80, which is a bit more then the chaos player spent, but due to the nature of IG economy, you will have lower upkeep and bleed (if kept to GMs) will be cheaper. You can easily swap out a cata for a 2nd spotter too (which will lower cost and upkeep significantly) to really screw over the tics.



A couple of other notes:
GM actually heal very quickly, because of how many models in the squad. Tacs heal at .5 hp per second and so do GM. BUT! GM have 3x more models, so the total hp is going to go up 3 times faster (4 if you have commisar).
IG are not "out ranged" - they have some of the best T1 ranged compositions in the game.
Dealing with a single setup team is very easy as IG - get an artillery spotter and maybe a setup team of your own. Dealing with 2? Get 2 spotters. Focus on mixing Smoke + move army up to fire and using the artillery call in just behind a setup team to knock it's models forward, where your ranged army can light them up.

Kim Jong Skill wrote:PS: What is up with Guardsmen regen? I can have a full squad of guardsmen each at 50% hp, and it takes close to 2 minutes for them to heal back up. At this point, I'd rather they be half dead and spend the rec, because there is no way I can bring them back into the fight in a cost-effective way.

It's because you retreat them at 3 or 4 models out of 9 or 12. When you reinforce them to full models at base you'll end up with 6-9 models at full hp and 3-4 with 10hp so it takes longer for the overall hp to go up.