Imperial Guard are coming in hot with new rules from Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good. Check out an in-depth look at everything new for the army!
Coming from The Glacial Geek on YouTube, he’s done an incredible breakdown of all the rules and datasheet changes coming inside Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good. Check out everything that the Imperial Guard and Tempestus Scions will be bringing to the table.
All The New Imperial Guard 40k Rules From Greater Good
Pick Your Own Custom Regiment Rules
Following the normal theme of things, (starting with Space Marines) The Imperial Guard will have access to a table of twelve different rules. You can pick two and mesh them together to make your own custom Regimental Doctrine.
The first page of Doctrines is super well rounded. However, for the most part, they seem to care mostly about Heavy weapons, Infantry, and some vehicles. This is all to be expected as its essentially what guard is known for! Doctrines that jump out to us are Disciplined Shooters and Fire from the hip. Being able to advance up and essentially Firing 8 shots (at -1 to hit) with any rapid-fire 2 weapons!
Jumping right in, this one is worded a bit weird for the “Type characteristic” of a weapon. But it looks like this is basically the reroll your number of shots for Catachans, except, like for whoever has this!
In the same way, you can make it so your Guardsmen proc Rapid-Fire weapons 3″ before the Tau Fire Warriors can! (unless they’re Borkan) -That’s a pretty spiffy one but only recommended if you were going to be taking a ton of value infantry.
If you want to roll out an armored column, there are some dope rules you can pick from as well. Keeping your tanks grouped together will let you overwatch on a 5+ instead of the normal 6+. If you think about the consequences of having a Stormlord overwatching on a 5+…there can be devastating results out of that one. It’s basically a free Defensive Gunner Strat. NICE!
Rounding out the doctrines there’s an interesting emphasis for melee. Lords’ Approval plus Slum Fighters can give you -1 ap and extra hits on 6s in melee. While probably not competitive, it’s an interesting option if you want to take a different route with the guard.
On top of that, you can heal a wound back on a 2+ each turn for all of your vehicles. But if you spike a 5 or a 6 on that roll, you can heal D3. This is really good if you’re going to be absolutely saturating the board in things like leman Russes and Chimeras. If your opponent has so many targets to pick from, they may cripple one and decide to deal with another…Meanwhile, that tank could repair enough to soak up a few more shots when your opponent turns back to deal with it. Overall, it’s not bad but it has its niche uses.
Imperial Guard New Tank Ace Rules
Instead of choosing a Warlord Trait, you can select a Tank Ace ability to apply to one of your eligible Astra Militarum vehicles. Alternatively – or in addition if you want to include two Tank Aces – you can spend a single Command Point to use the Tank Ace Stratagem…
Now, you can have a max of two Tank Aces in your force…But what does being a Tank Ace give you? First of all we should note that the Tank Ace isn’t limited to a Leman Russ…You could even give this to a Baneblade/Shadowsword if you wanted to!
Starting out with the Good’ol Leman Russ, they get a solid 6 traits, all of which seem pretty decent. Two of my favorites are Slow and Purposeful to reroll wounds of 1 and Armoured Rush. Both of these accomplish two opposite objectives, either rushing around the battlefield or holding your gumline.
Being a Tank Ace essentially unlocks a tree of exclusive rules. Looking at Weapon Expert, you get an additional AP which can be brutal on the mass of fire coming from the Stormlord or maybe tack on more armor-melting power with the relic 3-flat damage battle cannon from Vigilus.
Support Aces and Super-heavy Aces are next up and cover all the rest of the armored tanks in the army from Hydras to Baneblades. Full Payload appears to be amazing, anytime you would roll for a damaging characteristic, instead, you get max damage automatically. Steadfast Leviathan also seems to have some interesting possibilities…
Oh. and speaking of Super Heavies… you can give them your Regiment rules even if they’re in an auxiliary detachment, meaning you can have them overwatch on a 5+ while they hang around other Vehicles as we mentioned earlier.
Imperial Guard Stratagems
The first set of 6 here seems to cover a few key points. Powering up your vehicles, and powering up your shooting phase. Splash damage makes a Hellhound reroll wounds against targets with cover, while Direct Onslaught adds 1 to hits for a Manticore or Wyvern.
If your opponent has a tendency to use cover and have those annoying 1+ armor saves, you can spend a CP to have your Hellhound reroll all wound rolls against a target…That should help uproot Eliminators that are being too aggressive.
The second page gives a few more options and is a little more open-ended in purposes. Shooting phase, opponents shooting phase, psychic phase, and even charge phase, you’ve got options at a bunch of points in a turn. Hail of Fire is the only Strat more than 1 cp on this page and lets a Leman Russ get max shots if it targets a vehicle, making a heavy d6 become an oh-so-sweet heavy 6.
For another cheap Stratagem, you can bring a small contingent armed with something like lascannons or maybe hunter-killer missiles and add 2 to your hit rolls. That’s pretty good considering they don’t ignore heavy and you’ll almost always want to move them to at least sit on an objective/cover a flank. It’s just another way to get more use out of a less-than-optimal unit.
Tempestus Scion Regiment Rules
Starting off, Crack Shots gives your entire force of hotshot lasguns more potency. Being the longest-range of any of the other Scions, they’ll be able to start throwing down shots a bit before most other ground troops can. This is great for sitting back on objectives while still making the most of your points by firing their guns, which at -2 AP, is nothing to joke about.
Death from the Dark is one of the coolest ones out of the list, essentially doubling the number of units lost for morale. Even if you kill two Primaris units from a squad, they’ll have to take a -4 Ld check.
These dudes are cool because their Infantry is jacked enough to tote things like lascannons and heavy bolters without suffering the -1 to hit penalty. On top of that, you’re encouraged to bring plenty of transports to your game, giving them +1 to hit as soon as they jump out of the truck.
This is just random value. You can either spam cheap weapons and proc as many 6’s as possible or bring high-quality firepower like plasma and hope you spike a few rolls here and there. Just remember you also have to be within half range.
For Prized Weaponry, you can say hello to all of your lasguns being a whopping -3 AP…This is like all of the Space Marine doctrines rolled into one as it affects EVERY weapon.
For these guys, they’re similar to the Predatory Strike rule from above. However, they get exploding hits when they target the closest thing and it’s only for infantry. This might be the weakest of all the new rules.
Tempestus Scion Relics
Tempestus is getting some serious love in this book, and the relics for them are no exception. Refractor Field Generator giving a 5+ Invuln to models within 6 inches seem super strong. While Distraction Charges give models within 3 inches of the character Tau like grenades in overwatch that make the assailant half the charge result if it hits.
A spicy relic coming to the 32nd Thetoid Eagles (the doctrine that gets exploding 6’s to hit when shooting within half range) is called the Fire of Judgement. It’s a two-shot pistol that all you have to do is hit with. Plus with Scions improved BS, you’ll be able to comfortably max-out your mortal wounds for this slam piece. The cool thing is that if you shoot within half-range and get a 6 to hit, you’ll be able to squeeze out another mortal wound!
Tempestus Scion Warlord Traits
Each of the Tempestus Regiments gets a special warlord trait to match. Two great options are Keys to the Armoury which gives the warlord a reroll 1s to hit 6-inch bubble, always a nice thing to have. While Precision Targeting makes it easier for you to hunt enemy characters by removing the cover from him while within 6 inches of your warlord.
With the Master Vox warlord trait, you’ll be able to issue commands from inside a vehicle to units within 24″….There’s not any other rule like that in the game and definitely useful in this unforgiving Sniper meta. Just keep your T3 commander nestled in a Taurox and have him tell the others to die for Big E.
Tempestus Scion Stratagems
Keeping on the Tempestus support train we’ve got the first page of stratagems for them. Precision Drop seems super nice as it lets you get out of an air transport at 5 inches away from enemies instead of the normal 9 inches, perhaps flamers will be a good idea. Advanced Counter-Measures seems awesome as well when switching to hover it’s usually a “feels bad” that you lose hard to hit, but now with this stratagem, you won’t!
As for the stratagems, you can spend 1CP to drop within 5″ of the enemy and completely forget about needing to roll for dead models. These guys are highly-trained and could drop from zooming ships in their sleep. This stratagem will most definitely be used. Especially for alpha-strike plasma squads.
As for the second set of Stratagems Elusive Hunters and Drilled to Perfection seem to be strong options. Elusive Hunters gives a unit -1 to hit while they are more than half of the range of the unit that is shooting them for the turn. Drilled to perfection, on the other hand, gives a massive +2 to overwatch giving you a 50% chance to hit instead of 1/6.
Whew! That was a lot to cover! With Tempestus Scions and Guard coming in STRONG, it’ll be exciting to see how they interact with the Space Marine meta currently!
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After looking at all these rules, what will you be testing out first? Will you be playing all-Guard but with regiment soup?
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About the Author: Wesley Floyd
