Imperial Guard are awesome.
Don't agree with me? I can certainly see why. When you have elite, genetically engineered killing machines, hordes of savage green monsters, soulless robots and technologically advanced aliens flying around the galaxy destroying everything, it can be easy to ignore or pass over simple Human soldiers with lasguns and flak armor. Why would anyone want to collect an army composed of warriors that are so... normal? I personally think that it is specifically because Humans are so normal that they are the most interesting army in Warhammer 40,000.
For me, the background, story and character behind an army is just as important as how it performs on the gaming table. Often more so, in fact. Imperial Guard characters and soldiers are simple Humans like you and I who have been thrown into an impossible situation that they ultimately have no hope of emerging from alive. They face the alien hordes and traitor legions with nothing but their courage, and rarely falter from their duty even in the face of imminent destruction. They have no impenetrable adamantium armor to protect them from the threats of the galaxy. They have no high powered, fantastic weapons with which to destroy their enemies quickly. They have only their lasgun (which, to be honest, is just the M-16 of the 41st Millennium), flak armor (which is no different than that worn by modern soldiers in our present day and age), and the Man standing next to them to rely on in battle. They undergo training that is rudimentary at best and are then sent into the fray, totally unprepared for the horrors they will face on some Emperor-forsaken alien world. The average Guardsman was conscripted against his will, along with hundreds of thousands of others from his planet, as a tithe to the Imperium's war efforts, and wants nothing more than to return back to the home that he knows he will never see again. His friends, family and loved ones, all the places he frequented as a child and youth, they are all dead and gone to him. All he has are his brothers in arms.
I think the character and story of Imperial Guardsmen is definitely what piques my interest in them, because they're just like me. I can relate to them. They're not superhuman. They're not corrupted by the Warp (though that happens sometimes). They're not genetically engineered, nor have they undergone any form of psycho-indoctrination to remove all traces of fear from their minds. They're just normal guys - farmers, factory workers, merchants - who were given a lasgun, pointed up a hill and told "Go kill Orks!"
Imagine you're an Imperial Guardsman now. You're stationed in a rocky outcropping on a rolling hill, overlooking a shallow valley near a dense tree line. You've been stationed here for DAYS with the other nine members of your squad, your mission simply to shoot any Greenskins you see, and ask questions later. Oh, and if you let ANY of them past your position and you happen to survive then you'll be executed for dereliction of duty. The hillside is strewn with the decaying bodies of slain aliens, the rotting, fungal stench almost overpowering. Thinking about it for too long will cause you to wretch, so you pass the time by scanning the tree line for enemies and listening to tactical chatter over your squad's Vox-caster. Every hour or so someone will ask if new orders have come through, but you know they haven't. Every hour or so, the heavy weapons team assigned to your squad will remind your Sergeant that they only have one crate of ammo left for their heavy bolter. Every hour, the same damned thing, broken ever so often by a sudden emergence of Greenskins from the forest. You and your squad mates unleash hell on them, they all die, everyone checks their ammo, and wait for the next wave. Repeat process. The thing is, every time the Orks come back, they do so in greater numbers and get a littler farther up the hill towards your position before perishing. At this rate they'll be on top of you by sundown. And yet your Sergeant refuses to budge. Orders are orders, he says, so you sit tight and wait for the inevitable final push from the Greenskins that will likely result in the slaughter of you and your entire squad.
What balls those guys have! They know that sooner or later they'll be overrun, but they don't budge. Why? Because its their sworn duty to the Emperor and Imperium to hold that hill and not let a single Ork past them. Why are they there? Only the Sergeant knows, if even he does, but its ultimately irrelevant. Not for the Guardsman is a glorious last stand or lone charge into the breech. Their job is to do the dirty jobs, the fighting and the dying, so that the overall strategy for victory will succeed. Who knows why they're on that hill. Perhaps they're simply sentries, there to report the position of any substantial Ork force. But maybe they're the only unit left to protect something of vital strategic importance. They'll never know. They just have to have faith that their Commanders will not callously throw their lives away or forget about them.
They're not larger-than-life warriors, they're not overly heroic, they're not monsters, they're not high-tech, and they're not altogether very powerful individually. What makes Guardsmen awesome is that they're each one of a million rather than one in a million, and they will use their 999,999 friends to make damn sure that your "elite" army of a hundred or so super soldiers is ground into a fine red paste.
Imperial Guard are awesome because, simply put, they're the most Human army in the game.
Nuff said.
~Mr Bad Guy~
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