Give me advice vs Imperial Guard

I am playing my mates IG next week. He has loads of troops, tanks and valkyrie. How do i defeat him? Last Time he wiped me pretty quick.
The list I am running with is an Archon with Incubi in a raider. 4 boats with warriors and splinter racks. I have 3 venoms but i cant work out which true born to put in them. Plus i have 2 ravagers.

Whats the best way to handle guard? What are the priority targets. I have 11 Dark Lances and am thinking about another 2 in a sniper born unit on obe of the venoms.

Primary Guard targets can really depend on the mission and deployment and map - they have a lot of stuff that is bad for us.

Can you give me a betterfeel for his list? By 'tanks' do you mean only Leman Russes, or is he packing Chimera as well? Anything else in th emix, like a Manticore or outflanking Sentinals or anything?

By 'loads of troops' I'm guessing he's going blob squad a bit - what does he do with his blobs, do they have Heavy Weapon Teams? Does he move them forward or does he sit back with them?

What does he pack in his Vendettas? How many Vendettas does he field?


Also, final question - do you want to change your list at all, or simply hear the best tactics available for that specific list?

Regards,
Thor.

I mainly played IG and recently got into DE, so I think I can help. You want to setup your forces to go 2nd, behind cover or in reserve/outflank, thus his 1st turn is mostly a waste.

focus on taking AT in your list as most of the DE weapons already have AI. grotesque works pretty well if you got the models. taking small units of wyches with AT capabilities blasterborns, lots of combat drugs on available units. haemies to give important units their pain token. mid size reaver with AT helps too.

Thanks thus far!
@Thor- mainly leman russes . His infantry is big blob with heavy weapons and he stays still generally.
he doesnt take a Vendetta only one Valkyrie which given my lack of air can be a pain, unfortunately i dont own a plane yet!
I am happy to change the list but all I ahve to add or replace is some wyches, grotesques and a chronos.

Here's an old post from me about how I deal with guard infantry: Against infantry guard I would definitely want a couple of Raiders full of Wracks to get right up in his face turn 1. Go flat out with them and draw the fire of his whole army, he HAS to make them no.1 priority. Remember they are T4 with FNP as standard so half as likely to die from exploding Raiders as our other troops.

I always use special markers for blown up Raiders to mark the area terrain they end up inside, but a piece of card in the right shape rectangle will do, so that's a coversave followed by FNP. Another thing to consider is, make sure both those raiders have Grisly trophies and are 6" maximum apart after going flat-out. This will give re-rolls on leadership tests provided one of the Raiders survives, and with 4+ Jink that is quite likely given lasguns can't just glance them to death at S3. This makes it much less likely to be pinned or fall-back. Also note that an Acothyst ( Wrack sarge) is one point of LD better than a non ancient Haemo, for the same purpose.

Now, when you assault consider challenging, if your opponent accepts then you are practically guaranteed to stay in combat through his next turn, if the odds of destroying the whole unit are too high, consider attempting a multiple assault. Remember, Wracks with 2 pain tokens have furious charge, so a unit with a haemonculus hit guard on 3's, wounding on 3's with re-rolls, even against marines on charging turn, Try to swamp his lines, tying up as many units as possible at once, remember, losing charge bonus attacks for disordered (multiple) assaults isn't necessarily a bad thing in these circumstances. You just need to prevent large blocks of guard from shooting.

If you can pull this off you should have less trouble picking off other parts of his force at will. I have had success with this tactic against guard. Against infantry heavy guard, for example, they can be really effective though, especially when you're using disordered charge tactics to ensure you won't entirely wipe out your enemy until the end of their turn.

With good strategic placement of models,2 units of 10 warriors with a Spilntercannon/Shredder each can engage 2/3 units of guardsmen each. The trick, of course, is to wipe out most of your primary target with the 'cannon/shredder/Sybarite's pistol whilst being in position to commit most of your models to secondary targets. If you 'overlap' your targets, ie. have as many of your units simultaneously engaged with as many units as possible at the same time, the odds are very much in your favour that one of those 4-6 infantry squads will somehow pass their morale test at the end of your assault phase, meaning that as every squad of Kabalites has at least one model engaged with this particularly heroic squad they are safe from shooting in your opponents turn.

Yes, this tactic is very army specific, with only really Guard and equivalent being viable victims of it, plus you do need to be employing 'raider-rush' tactics (in the case I recall I had 7 Warrior Units up in his face turn 1) however, the shredders were really useful to ensure the primary target squad was all but eliminated as a fighting force allowing me to only send one or two warriors in as a 'token' engagement and focus my assault on the other units. This enabled me to slaughter my way through 4 infantry squads and 2 heavy weapon teams in 2 assault phases, practically winning the game by turn 3.

I dont have enough wracks for this tactic but i can take on board the idea of being aggressive...i guess if i sit back i will be outshot anyways so I may as well go hell for leather! Thanks for the advice

Yeah, get straight up in his face with as many units as possible. Same applies to Warriors/Wyches whatever. Get as much engaged as possible as early as possible.

The great thing about us is that we can and WILL outnumber every army. Yes even guard, Even if you have 50 warriors and he has 150 guardsmen. We have the speed to pick our fights not him.
I fight my buds guard almost every time i play.

Deploy your army in one corner, (Be ballsy, dont worry about pie plates lol we are an army of hedonistic, drug frienzed murauders afterall, dont forget that!) And focus on one section of his force.

With guard hell be spread out and using up alot of space so sytematically take him down piece by piece, always use your Archon and incubi raider to draw fire (Because it will, so use this to your advantage) Lots of warrior raiders, ravagers are great. you will always outnumber his guard this way. 30 guardsmen and a couple tanks is childs play for 50 mounted warriors and two ravagers each turn.


Take my word for it. Hit him relenthlessly and always play with your balls to the wall Hahhaha good luck, bro!

Oh and psych him out! put your objectives in his deployment so he hunkers down! hes vulnerable this way!

A victory!!! I beat him 5-3. I put everything on the table and just pedal to the metal up into his face. Cleared him off his objective which was worth 3 points then contested mine in the last turn. I killed his warlord and got linebreaker. He got first blood, my warlord and line breaker. Overall I was happy with my game but it was very bloody. Basically i did not stop moving and made a few lucky jink rolls. It was a revelation! Thanks for the advice !! Balls to the wall indeed