Psychology and Mind Games

One of my favorite aspects of the hobby is the battle of wits and, if I'm feeling particularly evil, mind games. Now The real key to mind games is doing the unexpected, and for IG that's three things: massive reserves, HQ's, and snipers.

Massive reserves are the easiest, simply pull another two hundred men out on top of your force, and watch their expression change. To take advantage of this, downplay your army, and keep them hidden in your travel case or whatever. Downplaying your army should be easy, just get your ass kicked, and throw a bit of a fit, then when he is over confident and overextending his frontline, launch the counter attack with a massive platoon or two, and watch him burn.

Now HQ's are surprising as well, because of orders and mainly Straken. Straken is the strongest human being... ever, including space marines. He is strength 6, Primarchs are only strength 4. Anywho, he is also a fantastic leader, and only around 90 points. Now the key here is to create an aura of awesome around him. Given a medic in his command squad, he has 3 wounds and feel no pain, and 3+ save, and toughness 4, unarguably the toughest IG model around. So, either, march him out, and put him and his squad in cover, and let them get shot up (this only works with people you play regularly) and let them get frustrated at how much firepower they have to pour in to take out 5 men. Or march him out and wipe out large units of crappy infantrymen, and let them watch in horror as a few men take out a platoon. Of course the second is best, because it gets kills, but in the long term, the first approach makes the strongest impression. Also Orders are important with HQ's because we are the only army that gets them a lot of players won't know what they are about, so use that to your advantage.

Lastly and most difficult to master, are the snipers. Now the best snipers are the ones they will totally ignore in most missions, and those are 3-5 squads of Ratlings (Hobbits). Now they key here is to have your opponent disregard them, which in all but annihilation they should, also feel free to make a distraction, a nearby demolisher or platoon works great. Then use the Ratlings to snipe at their HQ, if you get lucky, you can take out a whole bunch of stuff. Best of all, there is no harm done if it doesn't work, they were only 30 points.

Killing is My Business...

A lot of people overlook snipers in the Imperial Guard, and I don't know why. I have two veterans I currently field, one for offense Grae's Grenadiers (covered in a previous article), and another for defense, they are the subject of this article.

With Cameleoline they are afforded the stealth special rule, and with snare mines, they are even better on defense. Now the reason I don't field my snipers as part of a special weapons team, is those only have BS 3, and don't have stealth or snaremines. Veteran's have BS 4 and all that snipery goodness. Now what makes snipers worth it? Well for starters they lend a fantastic weapon to the unit, it can take anything out, regardless of toughness on a 4+, and on rolls to wound that roll a 6, it is an instant wound, regardless of any saves. On top of that, it counts as pinning, and has 12 inches on a normal rifle. This saves my but against Tau, which are easy to pin, and hate it when you have them in range, and they don't have you in range. I use my snipers for all sorts of things, and just to make sure that the job gets done, they have an autocannon in the unit.

The sniper rifle is truly a great, and overlooked weapon, it can deal with light-infantry by pinning them, and heavy infantry, even monstrous creatures, with its rending rule, and the fact it ignores toughness.