It's been discussed so many times since this Forum started. Apart from other reasons, a group of guardsmen is too big of a hitbox to control. Imagine the gameplay.. Imagine the amount of butthurt, hate and dispair that will pour into the forums. I'd hate to see Crusade like this from the bottom of my heart As much as I'd love to see Imperial Guard in the game as a controllable faction, they just don't fit the concept
They really do fit the game if done right, you could very easily turn guardsmen into viable combat units when in groups because the Lasgun isn't weak it's just that getting 40 or so hits on your target by yourself is very goddamn difficult which is why there are so many of them, all you need to do is turn them into a defensively focused faction for some aspects and then give them the artillery and vehicular support to go on the offense with an unstoppable armoured collumn and artillery to decimate entire enemy forces then to support their infantry even more, make their grenades cost little to no requisition points, their weapons should be next to free and their respawn timers pretty quick, probably the fastest in the game. Stormtroopers/Kasrkin could also be included those guys are basically as close to a Space Marine as an adult regular human can get, they're still quite a bit off but they are close so you could arguably turn them into a more tanky guardsman with more firepower. Longlas snipers that are able to hit targets without having to account for recoil and bullet drop by much but doing the least damage of any sniper rifle in the game, still enough to kill in something like four hits. Grenadiers with hotshot lasguns/hellguns and various specialist weapons plus grenade launchers with krak grenades for dealing with chaos spehs muhreens or if they're Lost and Damned, loyalist spehs muhreens. Ogryns would be a must, those guys need to be tough and capable of literally charging through close quarters decimating everything they come across, including marines, and while that may not be the most lore accurate thing considering the durability of power armour it's most likely a sacrifice that would have to be made. Commissars to execute a player in order to give everyone around him a massive rate of fire, damage and health increase and give the executed player basically an instant respawn on the Commissar so he doesn't get annoyed. Sergeants to rally squads around him and provide massive health and accuracy buffs to keep his men in the fight and keep them firing on their targets even as guardsman after guardsman die around him. Imperial Guard could so very easily play like a Red Orchestra 2 faction, give them the weakest guns off the bat but with potential to deal massive headshot damage with a maybe 25% chance when hitting the head, give them massively powerful artillery that should be able to easily clear out 20 chaos marines in a single blast if not more, give them the Leman Russ with the firepower to push on through so much incoming fire and perhaps although it might sound ridiculous, the baneblade would be very interesting to see in this game, the amount of firepower that thing has would be insane and would support their faction so much.
I do agree completely. You don't have to explain to me how cool regular humans are, since I appreciate Imperial Guard greatly. It is interesting to play a simple man in the not-so-simple circumstances, not only persevering but winning. They rightly take their place in the Warhammer world. But.. You can't really create a good playable faction with them in the Eternal Crusade, since Militarum relies on flexibility, discipline and interoperability. Artillery, air support, reconnaissance.. If the Eternal Crusade was about the Imperial Guard with everyone playing them - then no questions asked. We have another Battlefield in the Warhammer setting. Which is great But in the Eternal Crusade.. You simply cannot create a good gameplay with Imperial Guard since you have only that many people playing, you know? And you cannot really play around the IG strongest points of why they prevail, which I've mentioned above. The concept of the game revolves around greater and more self-sufficient elite units. Units that rely on numbers, support and service branches (air, infantry, artillery, specops etc.) are NPC in the Eternal Crusade for a reason. Like tyrannids That being said, I'd love to see IG as NPCs and see them in all their militant glory
It is possible to put them into Eternal Crusade but of course they won't have their ridiculous numbers like they do in lore so Behaviour would have to tweak a few things to make them a competitive faction and their discipline and reconnaissance can easily be portrayed via binoculars or something in order to get a number count on enemy forces or sergeants to keep the morale and health/damage of nearby guardsmen high and commissars to execute a player and offer him an instant respawn so that nearby guardsmen will be able to fight harder but air support, artillery and all that could very easily be something squad leaders/fireteam leaders or just war council get access to in order to provide support for the infantry on the ground. You can very easily tweak the guards in order to make them more effective and turn them into a competitive faction considering that in lore an accurate group of probably about 50 guardsmen could very easily hold out against a significantly larger force assuming that they have good positioning and aren't missing their shots much, the lasgun isn't weak it's just that everything else kills them before they have the chance to use it properly so perhaps give it the chance to do massive damage as i said previously, I recall reading somewhere that a chaos marine was actually 1-hit killed by a lasgun shot to the eye as it fried the brain. You can't give them their insane amounts of numbers because of course there wouldn't be that many people but you could easily make up for it by tweaking their units to be a bit more effective and while it may not be the most lore accurate thing ever it would allow everyone who likes the Imperial Guard a chance to play their favourite faction in this game that will probably attract every 40k fan to come and play and besides, I'd love to finally fight alongside our squishier allies in the emprah's name rather than just see them on the sidelines or shooting at the Space Marines. Guards being focused on support isn't really a reason not to include them because artillery could very easily be put into the game at the disposal of perhaps squad leaders that purchase an upgrade in order to shell the enemy with a single volley, their air support could also easily be a call in for squad leaders and you could very easily give the guardsmen a way of becoming hardened veterans or something for carapace armour in order to be more durable if need-be but i think that having the guard be effective when you have about 10 people shooting the same target sounds fair, it would allow them to be realized in this game and would bring a lot of people into the game who may not have played it before, I've got several friends that will play this but really want the Imperial Guard added so it would be very disappointing not to have them in at some point. Tyranids are an NPC race because they are so perfect for it, their entire strategy revolves about being a horde race and the only NPC races will most likely be horde races or the ones in the underworld because programming smart AI for the surface would lag everyone to the point of not being able to play unless there are only like 15 smart AI on the map. I'm just so goddamn sick of the Guard being left to sit on the sidelines or fighting against Space Marines, just for once i want to fight alongside 'em in the Emperor's name rather than just see them doing absolutely f all or shooting at space marines.
We have to finally accept what the Guards truly are, that the Guard's greatest strength is in it's greatest weakness. There is no shame in it, they are one tough sons of bitches, blood of the Empire. But let us remember that the game is about elite supernatural forces battling with each other: Marines, Chaos SM, Eldar. Orks are more of a "hordey" race but they do have some elite units that can fight said marines any day. In the Empire, Marines are a strike force. And not just a strike force (since Guard can do this job too), they are a hammer of the Emperor: they come where even the Imperial Guard (a force to be reckoned with), with all their power and military might cannot do anything. THIS is why Marines exist in the first place. An ultimative weapon of the Empire, to give that extra push where others fail, leverage against the unimaginable horrors of Warhammer Universe where other men fail. This is why Marines exist in the first place, this is their purpose. They wouldn't exist if the great Empire's army would have sufficed. They push forward, they are superhumans to the point that they are almost not human whatsoever. They don't just strengthen IG numbers, since IG have they are own elites to mix with the army. They come as a solitary self-sufficient groups. Groups that faceroll with litanies and fanatical devotion to the Ideals of Humanity, Imperial Credo and the Emperor himself Emperor's Warriors. How can you jump higher than that? But they would have been nothing without the Imperial Guard. Point is, for some reason it is hard for IG fans (and I consider myself on of them) to accept IG role in the Empire and be PROUD of it. Not mentioning the role of others. There is no superpower in the Empire - one part cannot exist with the other part. They are different and contrasting and everybody has it's important role to play. Imperial Guard is the power that holds the sidelines, standing *guard* at the borders of the dominion of Man, it's what they do and they are fk-ing best at it. Constructing fortifications is the great strongpoint of the Guard for a reason Everyone in the Empire does their job. Guards guard (sic!) the dominion of Man and provide backbone of the Empire, Space Marines push against the most extreme circumstances, tech-priests do their thing. You cannot substract one from another. Buffing guardsmen up, as you suggest, means taking away not only Guard's uniqueness, but also undermining Marines and damaging the Empire's integrity which we have now
All of the forces in this game are things that Imperial Guard would be fighting daily and their greatest strength being numbers in lore would have to be negated in the game a bit because there would most likely be less guard players than Space Marines but it is a completely plausible idea to have the guard added to this game with offensive capability under the support of artillery and vehicles and defensive capability with perhaps buffs from squad leaders and their artillery. Marines exist as the strike force when the Guard have failed so it is completely plausible to have Guard in the game as long as they are allied alongside Marines in order to push against their foes, it would be completely possible to have the Imperial Guard in this game as long as their playstyle vastly varied from say Eldar or Space Marines, they would play with a big emphasis on defense but with some offensive capability, they have artillery capable of leveling continents so they should be more than capable of finding a good position to hold down in long range fighting for artillery pieces to get into range in order to shell the enemy and when enough of them are dead, charge forward and gut the buggers in melee, this has been done plenty of times in 40k lore and while Guardsmen are mostly designed to hold the line there is no reason why they can't go on the offense and slowly push that line forwards until they take over more and more territory until victory. Marines also exist for when you're trying to push against insane amounts of enemy targets or firepower or something so horrifying a normal man would collapse yet they endure thanks to their mental training but the Guard are still capable of pushing forward and whilst they may not push forward as quickly as Space Marines they can still advance on the offense and win a campaign doing so if their artillery and vehicular assets are put into play correctly and intelligently. No one asset of the Imperial Military whether that is Space Marines or Guards can protect the Imperium alone so they do have to fight together which is another reason why i would suggest allying Space Marines and Imperial Guard in this game, you could very easily have Space Marines be the line-breakers when Ogryns don't suffice and they would also be a very nice asset to have when trying to clear out manufactorums or other close quarters combat areas and the Space Marines would benefit from artillery assistance as well as far more powerful vehicles to support them though this would create a problem for the Orks & Eldar who may need additional factions or something else to support them before the Guards could be added. I accept that the Imperial Guard's role is to hold the line but by no means are they incapable of pushing forwards and securing territory meter by meter, they can be incredibly defensive or they can have a smart commander who puts artillery and vehicles to good use in order to push forward and break through the enemy and as they drown under a sea of artillery shells and lasfire they learn to fear even a regular guardsman. All I've been suggesting with these posts is ways for the Devs to include the Imperial Guard in EC and i know that it is completely possible to include them as a race that requires a lot of teamwork with very high rewards for working together, nothing is more satisfying than having had a hard fought fight to hold on for artillery support and then have your artillery rain death upon your enemy and charging forward to kill any survivors, I've had things like that happen in Red Orchestra 2 and it was bloody amazing, all they have to do is balance them around the idea that their infantry isn't their strong point unless playing as a specialist like Kasrkin or Stormtroopers or something and then give them very powerful artillery and vehicular support, I'm repeating myself here a little bit but this is a completely viable way of putting them in the game and sure you might have to make some changes to the guard to make them more viable than they may be in lore but the same thing has to be done to Space Marines, you don't want marines going around slaughtering everyone and barely taking any damage.
We are repeating each other's points, really Only difference being that I think that implementing player-controlled Guard is too risky and opens a great deal of room for errors and faulty game-design and, in a long run, can be a bad idea due to the nature of the Imperial Guard (with all great respect towards them) and the nature of the Eternal Crusade. While you are convinced that it is quite possible for them to do, if not now but maybe in future I guess only devs hold the true answer to what either you or I are saying
Suppose we'll just have to wait and see what the Devs decide would be best for the game, might be easier to make that decision once the game comes out and we see how the game plays too.
To make IG a worth playing faction in EC you would need to rape the lore. Player dental bills would skyrocket as they grind their teeth to dust when playing the game and seeing IG guys going head to head vs astartes and xeno abominations ... and winning. Since they need to be able to win, otherwise there is no point to play them in a game. There are only so many people that will play this game, utilizing the imperial guards main strategy of "Give the enemy a meatgrinder and then choke it with enough flesh to jam the blades" wont be an option.
