Imperial Guard (Warhammer 40,000)

Encyclopedia : I : IM : IMP : Imperial Guard (Warhammer 40,000)

A Cadian Shock Troopers squad

In the tabletop strategy game, Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard are the largest body of fighting men and women in the 41st Millennium Imperium.

Contents

1 The Imperial Guard
2 Appeal to players
3 Notable Regiments
4 Imperial Guard Ranks
5 Notable Characters
6 Novels
7 PC Games
8 See also
9 References

The Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard is a colossal organisation, consisting of billions of men and women from millions of different worlds and systems within the Imperium. Each regiment is a force of between three and ten thousand fighting soldiers, supported by a dazzling array of light and heavy armoured vehicles. Each regiment also has its own entourage, consisting of support staff, camp followers, suppliers, tech-priests, doctors, religious leaders, and the like.

The Imperial Guard are far more numerous than the Space Marines, for while there are only a thousand Chapters of a thousand Marines each, the contributions of some planets to Imperial Guard regiments over the ten thousand years of the Imperium runs into the billions. The Imperial Guard are constantly at war, freeing worlds from Chaotic or alien influence, or defending them from the same.

Appeal to players

The primary appeal to Imperial Guard players of the Warhammer 40,000 game is that the Guard are 'human'. In a game filled with genetically modified supermen, alien mystics, and all-consuming hive-minds, the Imperial Guard are just soldiers. Carrying a lasgun and wearing flak armour (commonly believed by fans to be the most ineffective standard equipment in the game, and referred to as the "flashlight" and "T-shirt"), the Imperial Guard are forced to rely on numbers, massed-fire tactics, bayonets and courage to win their battles.

Secondly, the Imperial Guard has the largest range of tanks and armoured vehicles of any army, and have been heavily supplemented by the Forge World Imperial Armour series of books and resin kits. This appeals to the 'treadheads' among the player community, and was catered for in the third edition of the game by the release of rules for an Armoured Company composed entirely of tanks.

The various Imperial Guard regiments produced by Games Workshop draw on a variety of historical and fictional inspirations, some of the most obvious visual links (note that as of the latest incarnation of Warhammer 40k many of these models are no longer produced):

Catachans: The Rambo films, or Arnold Schwarznegger in Predator
Valhallans: WW2 Soviet Red Army
Armageddon Steel Legion: WW2 German Fallschirmjäger
Praetorians: Late 1800's British Infantry (as represented in the film Zulu)
Vostroyans: 18th Century Russian Cossacks
Mordians: Early WW1 Commonwealth infantry (before the introduction of the steel helmet)
Tallarn: Arabian influences or WW2 Long Range Desert Group
Cadians: See below.

The fourth-edition Cadians; were developed to be a generic force representing any modern or science fiction Armed Force, unlike in the third edition in which they were heavily styled on the United States Army. In addition, skilled modellers have been able to convert several of the released (and unreleased) regiments to conform to numerous armies past and present, from the ANZACs of the Battle of Gallipoli British and French armies throughout the Napoleonic Wars to the Germans of the First World War (Death Korps of Krieg).

Notable Regiments

There are millions of worlds contributing Imperial Guard Regiments to the Imperium's defence, each world having its own methods of training, its own unique equipment, and its own specialisations.

Even so, the regiments of certain worlds stand out, and are renowned throughout the Imperium for their deeds, strengths and methods of combat.

A summary of these regiments can be found at History of the Imperial Guard

Imperial Guard Ranks

The diversity of Imperial Guard regiments mean that there are literally thousands of variations on officers' ranks throughout the Imperium. However, local variations are generally tied to a basic standard list of officer ranks, for determining comparative seniority between regiments, a tentative hierarchy of which might be as follows:

Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard
(Lord Commander Militant)
Lord Commanders of the Four Segmenta
(Lord Commander)
Lord General Militant
Lord Marshal
Lord Castellan
(Captain-General)
General
Brigadier General
Colonel
Major
Captain
Lieutenant

Two other notable officer ranks exist amongst the Imperial Guard. Commissars (almost certainly modeled on the Soviet political officers of the same name) are individuals attached to Imperial Guard regiments for the purposes of maintaining rigid Imperial disclipline throughout the Guard. The rank of Warmaster is a title issued by the High Lords of Terra to a military commander (usually a previous holder of the Lord General or Lord Marshal rank) when one overarching leader is deemed necessary to command a crusade of historic magnitude (examples include the Warmasters Horus, Slaydo, Macaroth, and Lord Commander Solar Macharius). A Warmaster holds rank over any other military officer in the Imperium, except possibly the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard. There is never more than one of these individuals in the entire Imperium at any one time. While it is said that a commander with the rank Lord Solar is higher than a Warmaster they are actually the same rank. On occasion the rank Warmaster, due to its association with Horus, simply falls out of favor and is replaced with Lord Solar.

All remaining standard Guardsman are ordinary soldiers. They seem to be usually divided into three ranks:

Sergeant
Corporal
Private

Again, other variations exist based on planet of origin, Crusade or Army group ect. Some Sergeants in the Imperial Guard are known as 'Veteran Sergeants' but this is not generally an actual rank - Veteran Sergeants are merely very experienced holders of the Sergeant rank. The evolved Ogryns and Ratlings seem either to follow no ranking system at all or some internal ranking system, although they are obliged to obey Imperial Guard officers. Some Ogryns are given surgery to augment their intelligence, a process known as "Biochemical Ogryn Neural Enhancement". Ogryns that receive these modifications are able to act as middlemen between humans and other Ogryns, and are often known as "Bone'eads".

Notable Characters

Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Commissar Yarrick
Nork Deddog
Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt
Colonel Schaeffer (and his Last Chancers)
Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed and his colour sergeant Jarran Kell
Commissar Ciaphas Cain

From the PC game, Winter Assault Expansion Pack.

General Sturnn

Novels

There are several novels featuring the Imperial Guard, published by the Black Library

The Gaunt's Ghosts series, by Dan Abnett.
The Last Chancers Trilogy, by Gav Thorpe:
*13th Legion
*Kill Team
*Annihilation Squad
The Ciaphas Cain Series, by Sandy Mitchel:
*For the Emperor
*Caves of Ice
*The Traitor's Hand
*Death or Glory
Double Eagle, by Dan Abnett.
Fifteen Hours, by Mitchel Scanlon.

PC Games

The Imperial Guard make a guest appearance in the single player campaign of led by Colonel Brom as NPCs and playable units in some missions, and have been expanded into a playable faction in the expansion pack Winter Assault, with the Cadian 412th Infantry under the command of General Sturnn in the Order Campaign.
The Imperial Guard were part of the Imperiums force in , the other two parts consisting of the Space Marines and the Adeptus Mechanicus Titan legions.
The Imperial Guard also make appearances as opposition in the first-person shooter.

References

[Imperial Guard Homepage] from the Games Workshop website. URL accessed on 9 January 2006.

Warhammer 40,000 Articles
Main Armies Chaos \| Daemonhunters \| Dark Eldar \| Eldar \| Imperial Guard Ork \| Necron \| Space Marines \| Tau \| Tyranid \| Witch Hunters \|

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.