Characters / Warhammer 40,000: Imperial Guard

Warhammer 40,000 Main Character Index
Imperium of Man: Founders, The Primarchs, Adeptus Astartes (First Founding Chapters, Other Chapters, Characters, Primaris Marines), Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Inquisition, Mechanicus, Other factions
Forces of Chaos: Chaos Gods, Chaos Primarchs, Chaos Marines
Xeno Races: Aeldari (Asuryani, Drukhari) | Leagues of Votann | Necrons | Orks (Characters) | T'au Empire | Tyranids (Genestealer Cults)

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For every hero commemorated, a thousand martyrs die, unmourned and unremembered.

To each of us falls a task. And all the Emperor requires of us Guardsmen is that we stand the line, and we die fighting. It is what we do best: we die standing.

— General Sturnn, Officer Commanding, Cadian 412th

In Warhammer 40,000, the superhuman Space Marines may be among the Imperium's most exalted warriors, but the overwhelming majority of its battles and wars are fought by the Astra Militarum (more commonly known as the Imperial Guard), an army numbering in the untold trillions and made up mostly of ordinary men and women who hold the line in defense of humanity.

The worlds of the Imperium are required to pay a regular tithe in support of its endless conflicts, and part is paid in regiments for the Imperial Guard. Each Guardsman is equipped with a lasgun that while capable of blowing off limbs is among the weakest weapons in the setting, as well as flak armor that most other armies' standard weaponry can punch right through. His training is filled with propaganda and misinformation, his commanders are willing to expend millions of men and machines in a conflict like he himself will expend ammunition, and if he harbors any doubts there are commissars ready to summarily execute cowards and deserters. A Guardsman's individual odds aren't good, but if the Imperium has any resource in abundance, it's manpower.

The Imperial Guard is descended from the Imperial Army that supported the Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade, though after the Horus Heresy it was divided into a separate army and Imperial Navy so that a renegade general couldn't command both troops and the means to deploy them. The Astra Militarum encourages both standardization of equipment and specialization of regiments, allowing worlds or cultures to contribute troops that play to their strengths. Thus, the regiments from the death world of Catachan are renowned jungle fighters, the Armageddon Steel Legions are famous for their mechanized infantry, the Elysian Drop Troops are the Guard's premier airborne infantry, and so forth. This gives Imperial commanders a variety of tactics with which to smite the Emperor's enemies, from aerial assaults to artillery bombardments to armored blitzkriegs, though many generals are satisfied with throwing Guardsmen into a conflict until it is won.

On the tabletop, few armies can field as many soldiers as the Imperial Guard, which is fortunate, as they are comparatively lightly-armed and -armored, and have morale that's highly contingent on their proximity to a commanding officer or commissar. On the other hand, few armies can bring as many weapons to bear in a single Shooting phase as the Guard, so while one lasgun is unlikely to get results, fifty or sixty firing in salvos will. The Imperial Guard is also famous for their tanks, unsophisticated and unsubtle metal monsters deployed in numbers bordering on the absurd, and capable of reducing any target to a smoking crater. However, the key to the Imperial Guard's popularity may be that they're basically normal people forced into unimaginably bad situations, but who can prevail with luck, faith in the God-Emperor, and overwhelming firepower.

A part of the Warhammer 40,000 game since its 1st Edition, the Astra Militarum were initially known as the Imperial Army before later being renamed the Imperial Guard, with the original term being subsequently used for the pre-Heresy era organization. The 2nd Edition of the game saw the introduction of various famous regiments based on real world military forces, with 3rd Edition giving some of these regiments (such as the Catachan Jungle Fighters) their own mini-expansion rules. The 6th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 saw the army renamed again to become the Astra Militarum^note keeping Imperial Guard as the common name, with the elite Storm Troopers also renamed as the Militarum Tempestus Scions and given their own mini-codex. 7th Edition’s Codex: Imperial Agents saw a number of other Astra Militarum units, such as the Wyrdvane Psykers and the Valkyrie aircraft, spun off into their own sub-factions.

The rules for using the Astra Militarum, their most famous regiments^note the Cadian Shock Troops, Catachan Jungle Fighters, Armageddon Steel Legion, Tallarn Desert Raiders, Valhallan Ice Warriors, Vostroyan Firstborn and Mordian Iron Guard and their sub-factions can be found in Codex: Astra Militarum with additional rules published in the February 2020 sourcebook Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good Rules for the Death Korps of Krieg and the Elysian Drop Troops can be found in Forge World’s Imperial Armour Index: Forces of the Astra Militarum book alongside rules for a number of additional tanks, super-heavy vehicles and artillery.

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Tropes in General

• Ace Pilot: The most successful tank commanders in the armoured regiments of the Astra Militarum often become renowned for their abilities and kill count. These highly skilled tank aces will have fought in countless conflicts across the galaxy, gaining skills that set them apart for their fellows. How these aces are represented on the battlefield varies with the edition but usually involves the ace's tank having a superior stat line and/or extra skills.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Some sources, such as the Imperial propaganda booklet The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, state that the majority of crimes and violations of discipline are officially punishable by flogging, execution, or some combination of the two. In practice other pieces of background material indicate that, outside of active combat, the punishment for minor breaches of military law and discipline is decided by the criminal’s superiors and Commissar, and even when a death sentence is deemed appropriate, the sentence is carried out via transfer to a Penal Legion so that they can be punished while still serving the Imperial cause.
• Amazon Brigade: While it isn't represented on the tabletop, the background material for the game mentions that there are entire Militarum regiments composed solely of women, particularly those raised on planets that have a matriarchal society. Some older background information mentions that such single-gender regiments are the norm to avoid fraternisation between troopers but other material, particularly that released during 8th Edition, has seen mixed-gender units become more common.
• Arch-Enemy: Many planets in the Imperium have suffered raids and invasion at the hand of xenos and heretical forces, sometimes for generations, their populations harbouring a deep animosity those who have plagued their worlds. When Astra Militarum regiments are recruited from such worlds, the Guardsmen take their inherited hatred with them and can prove to be especially effective against such foes. While not always represented in the game rules, some editions have represented this by giving Guardsmen from such regiments bonuses against their ancestral foes.
• Armies Are Evil: ZigZagged. While the majority of the Astra Militarum is made up of regular (if badass) human beings who want to live to see another day there are some regiments, such as the Death Korps of Krieg, that are renowned for their brutal tactics, lack of remorse and disregard for casualties. The trope is played straight with the upper echelons of the Astra Militarum command chain, however, who are infamous for their bloodthirsty and amoral disregard for the lives of their subordinates.
• Armor Is Useless: ZigZagged. On the tabletop and in the overall fluff, a Guardsman's standard-issue flak armour is only enough to stop other lasguns, nevermind the heavy weapons varieties of lasguns or the multitude of heavier weapons that the non-human armies use. There's a reason that Imperial Guard armament is referred to as "t-shirts and flashlights"◊ by fans. However, in Gaiden Games such as Dark Heresy and Only War, flak armour is actually a reasonably effective and inexpensive armour choice, and can stop stubber rounds (functionally a World War II-era firearm) and even a shot from a lasgun. It's telling that in this universe, stuff that is regarded as bottom-rung and hopelessly inadequate is stuff that real life special forces would kill to get their hands on. As of 8th Edition's changes to armor penetration mechanics, the humble Guardsman's flak vest is an actually useful piece of body armor on the tabletop. In prior editions, if a weapon's AP stat was equal to or lower than a model's armor save, it punched straight through every time no questions asked, which constantly happened to Guardsmen ^note Armor saves of 5+, most armies standard issue weapons had an AP of 5. Now, if they have an effect at all, it's a reduction in chances to make the save. Being that most armies now lack standard weaponry with values above zero, Guardsmen have gone from almost never getting to even try rolling saves to an actually respectable one-in-three chance of success. The issue of Catachans somehow having the exact same durabilty as Guardsmen actually wearing armor however, still plays it straight.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Some of the Imperial Guard's famous vehicles are mighty on paper, but in practice are over-costed or have too many drawbacks to make use of. This is mitigated somewhat in Apocalypse-scale games, where hordes of powerful vehicles tend to dominate. In-universe, the Imperium would love nothing more than to equip as many of its forces with Baneblades as possible, but the immense difficulty of manufacturing, maintaining, and fueling them leads to massive shortages everywhere.
  • The famous Baneblade tank and its ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL! is a very impressive-looking tank and has impressive stats, but even it lacks the punch it requires to eat up 500 points in a small-scale game. It's slow, is vulnerable in the rear (like all armor), and it's far from invincible: repeated combined tank or heavy weapons fire will do the trick. Failing that, lots of anti-armor weaponry (and everyone packs some form of anti-armor for inevitable Astartes battles). It shines in Apocalypse games along with its even more advanced brethren, but even then often times a Guard player is better off taking a larger number of Leman Russes in squads. And that's just the tactical-level game mechanics, lore-wise its horrible fuel efficiency (due to simply being so massive) and low cruising speed means it's not often able to committed to a battle even if it's otherwise available.
  • The Shadowsword super-heavy tank is a variant of the aforementioned Baneblade, though with some major differences in form and function. It's slow, lacks many of the guns that gives the Baneblade some much needed versatility, it can't fire while on the move, and its main gun can't rotate since it's not mounted in a turret. What makes it awesome? Its main armament is a hideously powerful Volcano Cannon meant to destroy Titans. It can potentially take out a Warlord in a single shot, provided the Titan's shields are down, and it wreaks utter havoc on Reavers and Warhounds, shields or no shields, and its effects on anything less than a Titan goes without saying. Outside of killing Titan-class enemies though, it suffers from egregious Crippling Overspecialization, especially for its points cost.
  • The Deathstrike Launcher, which is more or less a small ICBM mounted on a truck launcher. While devastatingly powerful (its blast zone is an "Instant Death" Radius for nearly everything without Eternal Warrior) and has a massive blast zone, it has several prohibitive drawbacks. Namely there's the real possibility of it missing and wiping out more of your troops than the enemy's, it can only fire once, its minimum range renders it useless on most maps, and it's expensive points-wise. Not to mention that it's lightly-armored and a gigantic "shoot me" sign for the enemy...
• Badass Army: Regiments of the Astra Militarum are often recruited from the best of their respective planets' Planetary Defence Forces, better-equipped than any modern-day special forces unit, and backed up by tanks and artillery that put real-life armored divisions to shame. Put another way, the Imperial Guard are paradoxically a strong contender for the biggest example of this trope in the entire setting precisely because they aren't. Without Bio-Augmentation, Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, Powered Armor, Psychic Powers, or even expensive equipment, the Militarum gets by on good old-fashioned combined arms warfare, reliable mass-produced equipment and massive, grievous casualties.
• Badass Longcoat: Trenchcoats are a common part of many regiments' uniforms, such as the Death Korps of Krieg or the Armageddon Steel Legion. Regiments from ice worlds such as Valhalla usually are issued them as well, though their dress will depend on the local climate.
• Badass Normal: Their whole schtick. In a setting with super-soldiers so augmented they barely count as human any more, hulking monstrosities that can rip men apart with their bare hands, psychic bullet-dodging ancients who train for centuries in deadly warrior arts, undying alien zombie robots, and unstoppable devouring hordes from beyond the edges of the galaxy, one of the strongest factions is basically a lot of ordinary humans with laser rifles and flak jackets backed up by tanks and artillery. Kinda makes you proud, doesn't it? However, that's only counting for regular Guardsmen and Stormtroopers; Ogryns, Ratlings and psykers obviously don't count, and even some of the more impressive people (like Sgt. Harker and Sly Marbo) do occasionally leave you wondering just how "normal" they are.
• Bad Boss: Many officers, commanders and generals spend their soldiers' lives, munitions and tanks like credits in a casino.
• Base on Wheels: Appearing in the background material and the Epic scale version of the game, the Leviathan and Capitol Imperialis super-heavy vehicles are massive, tracked fortresses used by the higher echelons of the Astra Militarum as mobile command centres. Protected by thick armour, banks of void shields and powerful weaponry, these huge vehicles allow Militarum generals to oversee a battle from the front lines in relative safety.
• Battle Thralls: Regiments raised from worlds that have been on the wrong side of an Imperial conflict in the past and have since been reconquered tend to be thought of as "penitent," raising soldiers en masse to fight for the Imperium to absolve themselves of the sins for their ancestors. They tend to fall into the "Taskmaster" type, because rather than fighting grudgingly, many of them are whipped up into a zealous Death Seeker-like state as atonement. The Death Korps of Krieg are an obvious example; the Vostroyan Firstborn are a more downplayed example.
• Battle Trophy: The Guardsmen of Armageddon Ork Hunter regiments regularly acquire trophies from any greenskins they kill and take them back to their headquarters at Cerberus Base. After years of conflict, the walls and ramparts of Cerberus Base are covered with greenskin wargear, teef and skulls that the Ork Hunters have taken.
• Bayonet Ya: The bayonet is nearly as synonymous to the average Guardsman's weaponry as the lasgun that it's attached to. Being forced to use it as a Puny Earthling comparatively weaker and/or saner to one of his many enemies individually is a fairly powerful image.
• Beam Spam: The only way to effectively use lasguns is in bulk. This is compounded even further by the (frequently-issued) 5th through 8th Edition Order "First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!" order, turning lasguns into Rapid Fire 2, so 4 shots per model at half-range.
• BFG: While the majority of the game's factions have their large and powerful Heavy-type weapons physically carried and fired by a single individual, the Astra Militarum avert this trend with the Heavy Weapon Teams that were introduced during the 2nd Editions of the game. These Teams consist of a pair of Guardsmen operating a Heavy-type weapon mounted on a tripod with struts and recoil dampers, one Guardsmen firing the massive weapon while the other acts as the loader.
• Big Book of War: The Tactica Imperium is a collection of countless commanders' combined battlefield experiences, containing advice on topics from barricade construction to force organization. Imperial generals may find it useful, though they have to keep in mind that it occasionally contradicts itself, should not be adhered to too strictly, and some passages are best read as metaphors. Not the case with the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, which is largely just ridiculous war propaganda (though more experienced Guardsmen appreciate it as an emergency toilet paper ration).
• Bigger Stick: Codified in Imperial deployment doctrine. The harder a given force pushes, the more regiments are raised and deployed in response.
• Blatant Lies:
  • One specific Catachan rule has the player roll before battle starts to see if the local Commissar dies to a horrible, completely unintentional misunderstanding behind his own lines. The rule is even called "Oops, Sorry Sir!"
  • The Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, a sort of instruction manual handed out to Guardsmen, contains a lot of these especially, as far as details on the enemy are concerned. It puts forward such gems of information as "Orks are feeble and brittle-boned", "Eldar technology is far inferior to our own", "Tyranids are dim-witted sluggish mindless beasts" and "Tau weapons are puny and require sustained fire to even injure a human being". Of course, such lies are necessary: morale is bad enough without Guardsmen learning that Orks can rip a man apart with their bare hands, that flak armour does jack against Eldar monomolecular shuriken guns, that the Tyranid hordes are guided by a superhumanly intelligent Hive Mind that often humiliates competent human generals, and that Tau railguns can hit with such force that they not only punch holes through tanks but also suck the crew out of the exit hole. This does however beg the question, why they don't tell the Guardsmen the real disadvantages of their enemies (i.e. the Tau's weakness in close combat and lack of heroism, the Eldar's low numbers and lack of heavy weaponry, the Orks' lack of effective ranged weapons and limited tactics)? That said, it actually does encourage exploiting the one weakness that the 'nids will always have, no matter what adaptations the particular batch being fought has: "Shoot the big ones."
• Blue Blood: Many planets in the Imperium have a nobility, and the scions of these families often end up forming entire regiments together. These "highborn" regiments can generally expect their initial equipment to be much higher quality than what is entrusted to the regiments of more common Guardsmen, and (thanks to family connections) their deployment will generally avoid some of the more mundane skulduggery of military duty, but on the other hand they may be first in line for the assignments that will garner them (and by extension their families) the most glory. The high command aristocracy of any given operation will usually keep a close eye on such regiments, as they are seen as crucibles for candidates they can groom for later command roles.
• Booby Trap: During 2nd Edition, one of the Veteran Ability upgrades that squads could purchase was Freedom Fighters. This ability caused hits against any enemy models that moved through woods or buildings that the Freedom Fighters were also inside as the enemy triggered the traps the squad had set.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Lasguns and stubbers are far from the most impressive weapons in the setting, but they're cheap, reliable, and have easy logistics (lasguns can be recharged by any light source, including campfires, and stubbers are just heavily modified firearms). While many players believe that lasguns area as good as flashlights, they are deadly weapons at least on par with modern assault rifles that can blow limbs clean off of unarmored humans and kill the super-human Adeptus Astartes under the right conditions. It's just that all the other armies' standard weapons are ludicrously overpowered.
  • In an extreme example, judging from the fluff and model, the Heavy Stubber is actually a contemporary Browning "Ma Deuce" (M2) Machine Gun, still produced and used thirty-eight thousand years into the future.
  • In a universe with hover tanks, spider tanks, cathedral tanks, aircraft that think they're tanks, and tanks that think they're aircraft, the humble guard makes due with early twentieth-century style artillery, mortars, missiles and (implied to be) a modified tractor with a turret on top. Whatever technological edge or grace they lack, the Guard vehicles more than makes up for in raw reliability and sheer firepower.
• Bulletproof Vest: Flak armour is standard-issue for Imperial Guard infantry, and isn't entirely useless as it serves them well enough against rabble like Chaos cultists, but it can't stand up to the higher caliber weaponry usually fielded by the rest of their foes.
• Cannon Fodder: A popular image for the Imperial Guard, though this varies between regiments and commanders. In-game, this is usually the role of Conscript Platoons and Penal Legions, who can serve as Human Shields for other units. Certain rules can even replenish one's supplies of Whiteshields (conscripts) at the end of a turn if certain conditions are met, incentivizing their treatment as this.
• The Cavalry: Due to the logistics of mustering Imperial Guard regiments together and readying them to make war, a Guard deployment often ends up this by default, reaching warzones where fighting has been ongoing for a while but always arriving in force. Even Astartes, powerful as they are, sometimes find themselves relieved by the arrival of larger numbers of Guardsmen, if only because it frees them up to move onto the next hotspot while the Guard do the more mundane work of full pacification.
• Chainsaw Good: Chainswords are a common melee weapon for Sergeants and other mid-ranking or high-ranking officers, as while they rarely get hold of power weapons, they tend to get better gear than the common grunt who has to make do with a bayonet or knife for close combat.
• Chicken Walker: The Astra Militarum may deploy Sentinels, light one-man Walking Tanks that move on a pair of mechanical digitigrade legs. The Sentinels aren't as robust as conventional armour, but their legs give them an edge on rough terrain, where they can move much more easily than vehicles on wheels or treads. The Sentinel comes in two variants: the Scout Sentinel, equipped with auspex arrays and other detection devices and used for scouting ahead of an army, and the Armoured Sentinel, which is better armoured and armed and used as a mobile weapon platform.
• Child Soldiers: In extreme situations, the Imperial Guard will muster regiments of "Whiteshields" that would otherwise be too young to be considered for normal recruitment. Cadia in particular is so heavily militarized that it uses Youth Armies for training, which includes fighting on actual battlefields.
• Church Militant: This is considered to be an aspiration for the Imperial Guard, though the success and extremity of this heavily varies between regiments; the Tallarn Desert Raiders, for instance, are particularly pious to a fault. The regiments raised from Ecclesiarchal fiefdoms, or "shrine worlds", are often this in a nearly literal sense, though they're considered lay-members of the church rather than armed clergy like the Sisters of Battle.
• Combat Medic: The field medics who accompany Astra Militarum Command Squads are typically Veteran Guardsmen with a degree of medical skill equipped with a medi-pack that, depending on the tech-level of the regiment's homeworld, could be anything from a roll of bandages to a sophisticated auto-diagnostic and treatment kit. In-game these medics have the same combat abilities as every other Veteran in the squad and, depending on the edition, make it more difficult to wound members of the squad and/or heal wounded characters.
• Combat Pragmatist: Many veterans are aware of how terrible their odds are, so they use every dirty trick in the book to get things done, up to and including procuring black market Astartes or Xenos arms. These methods are not strictly speaking legal (as they're not covered in the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer), but every veteran knows that they're only illegal if you get caught.
• A Commander Is You: A hard army to characterise or pin down, being Spammer if infantry-focused, Brute if armour-focused, Generalist if combined arms, and Technical thanks to the Orders system. This is an army defined mostly by versatile and strong vehicles, dirt-cheap troops, liberal smotherings of special and heavy weapons, and a plethora of possible allies including Astartes, Sisters, Knights, Custodes, Adepus Mechanicus or even Genestealers! New strategies are being found every day and you will never be forced to rely on one single gimmick. The primary weakness of the Guard is the commanders, as the Orders system acts as a force multiplier for their flimsy (if numerous) infantry, and the tanks can be easily destroyed if left without support from other squads and characters; synergy is the key to how the army functions.
• Communications Officer: The Imperial Guard has "vox operators" with radio backpacks.
• Compelling Voice: The Astra Militarum relic known as the Laurels of Command is a sophisticated empathic-impulsion device. While it falls short of true mind control, those troops that have been subjected to the proper subliminal suggestions will attempt to perfectly carry out any order that an officer wearing the Laurels will give them. In the 8th Edition rules, the Laurels allow an officer the chance to issue multiple orders to the same unit rather than the usual one.
• Conscription:
  • While recruitment into a Planetary Defence Force or the Astra Militarum is generally left up to each individual planet, many have some form of conscription, particularly if the world cannot meet its Imperial Tithe with volunteer recruits alone or a sudden threat presents itself that requires additional manpower to counter. These conscript units, often called Whiteshields, are typically given only the most basic of training before being sent to the battlefield alongside more experienced units, often being used as Cannon Fodder to protect their more skilled comrades.
  • The more militant worlds in the Imperium often institute a system of universal conscription where the entire population is trained from birth to be soldiers. Cadia was a prime example; before its fall, it was said the planet's birth rate was synonymous with its recruitment rate.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Many elite options for the Imperial Guard on the tabletop are statistically considered to be not worth the cost of just getting even more basic guardsmen.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Deliberately invoked at the regimental level by the Departmento Munitorum when levying Imperial Guard. Any given Imperial Guard regiment will be trained and equipped for exactly one role, be it foot infantry, mounted infantry, armor, or artillery. The intention is to ensure that no regiment can survive long if it goes rogue and must rely on other regiments for combined arms warfare.
• Death from Above: The Imperial Guard has no less than five different artillery platforms for battlefield use, which can be deployed in squadrons, thus letting them drop more shells or rockets on the other side of the table than any other army.
• Death World: Nearly all of the famous Imperial Guard regiments hail from one of these, since the most brutal environments breed the toughest badasses.
  • Catachan stands out as having one of the naturally worst planets to live on for humans (rivalling even Fenris) that's still flush with life.
  • Valhalla used to be a lush Arcadia before a comet made of iron struck the planet, covering it in clouds of dust and altering its orbit, leaving it a frigid ice world whose inhabitants live underground in the massive caves below the planet.
  • Vostroya is a forge world whose surface is similarly frigid, with only the equator being truly habitable.
  • Krieg was turned into this after a 500-year civil war that went nuclear, turning it into a barren, radioactive wasteland. The population sustains itself mainly with vat-grown clones.
• Deflector Shield: Astra Militarum officers are typically equipped with refractor fields, personal force fields that disperse the energy of an attack across the entire surface of the field. In every edition of the game refractor fields have given the wearer a 5+ invulnerable save.
• Determinator: The individual Guardsman may falter, and even an entire unit will rout... but the Guard as a whole will stand resolute, funneling men and machines and ammunition into the warzone against nearly any imaginable enemy, and will destroy the enemy or die where they stand. In particular is the final defense of Cadia, where the Imperial Guard held on even while the planet itself was breaking apart under Chaos assault.
• Depending on the Writer:
  • The effectiveness of individual Guardsman varies from author to author even after the Guard receives a Take a Level in Badass treatment. Some depictions show them as being utterly helpless against everything (except for other humans) without huge numbers and heavy support, while others have small squads of Guardsmen holding the line against entire enemy hordes.
  • Not helping the matter is the inconsistency in the strength of lasguns. In some works (such as Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine), almost every creature can soak up a ridiculous amount of lasgun fire without slowing down, while in others (such as the Ciaphas Cain novels), lasguns are shown to be capable of bringing down a fully-armored Astartes within twenty shots.
  • Depending on the novel in question, the Death Korps of Krieg are either characterized as being cold, but personable or nearly automata-like clones.
• Drill Tank:
  • The Hades Breaching Drill, used as a siege-breaker weapon to undermine fortified positions or breach into a reinforced bunker from an unexpected vector. While not a primary attack vehicle in itself (being more of a tunnelling armored troop transport,) its melta-cutter drill spells death for anything caught in front of its cumbersome path. Note though that Fast Tunnelling is largely averted. The Hades Drill works quickly, but not so quickly it can dig its own complete tunnel, which must be dug by other means so the Hades can use its power to quickly breach the last few meters to the target.
  • Termites, and the super-heavy Mole and Hellbore, are armoured troop transports used by some Astra Militarum regiments that drill through the earth to deliver their cargo into the midst of enemy positions. In addition to the traditional drill, these armoured tunnelling machines use a phase-field generator to speed up their tunnelling. The Termite and Mole originally had models and official rules in early editions of the Epic scale rules system, but were consigned to mention in the background material for the main Warhammer 40,000 game until 2018 when Games Workshop’s Forge World department released models for their Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness game.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Zig-Zagged Trope. When the Astartes are deployed into an ongoing conflict, odds are thousands or millions of Imperial Guard and/or PDF have been holding the line for quite some time already. When the intervening Astartes are credited for saving the day, IG reactions vary heavily between gratitude and relief, sheer awe at the sight of Space Marines, or bitterness about lack of recognition. This of course assumes that Imperial Guard troops or leadership get enough screentime to even seen their reaction.
• Easy Logistics: The Guard's equipment is meant to invoke this in-universe as much as possible:
  • Lasguns are ubiquitous, simple to manufacture, easy to maintain and can be charged by sunlight, campfires and vehicle power plants.
  • The vast majority of the Guard's vehicle pool derive from only three base chassis: the Chimera, the Leman Russ and the Valkyrie. Thus they share a commonality in components that greatly facilitates logistics and repair. For example a set of tracks for a Chimera will just as easily fit a Manticore, a Basilisk, a Hydra or a Hellhound and will have a very similar mode of installation.
• Energy Weapon: The Imperial Guard is the single biggest military organization in the galaxy, and the single biggest user of laser-based Energy Weapons, coming in multiple varieties:
  • Lasguns — The most common weapon, the "old-standby" of the Imperium. A rifle-like laser weapon with greater stopping power than the majority of modern conventional projectile firearms, but still one of the comparatively weakest weapons in the setting. There are many regional and functional variations on the design, some with different settings for rate of fire and damage, but all share certain common core parts and take the same charge packs for ammunition (which can be recharged in a few hours from field generators). This is a big part of the reason they are so popular for a massive organization like the Guard. Tend to be easy to keep functionally clean and keep working in rough conditions. Desperate Guardsmen are known to set them to overload and hurl them at the enemy as an improvised grenade.
  • Long-las — A marksman's version of the common lasgun. These are tuned to produce a killing shot at greater distance, usually sacrificing rate of fire and shot capacity per charge pack to achieve this. Experienced Guard snipers often prefer to equip their long-las with overcharge packs to increase their power per-shot, but this results in even fewer shots per pack, and they need to keep several spare barrels on hand as this wears the barrel out very quickly.
  • Hellguns — An upscaled version of the lasgun, this achieves a greater punch through the expedient of being bigger and pumping more power into it. This necessitates a much more elaborate cooling system, making a hellgun much more bulky and mechanically complicated than a lasgun. Because the power draw is so much higher, many hellguns attach to Ammunition Backpacks to allow a wielder to pour on the fire, though there are variations which use standard charge packs as well. Because of their size, they are often only used by heavy infantry or dedicated elite forces.
  • Hot-shot Lasguns — Lasguns with overcharge packs and special tuning to increase their lethality. The combination of the armor-penetrating punch of the heavier hellguns with the portability of the more common lasguns has made these weapons highly popular with special forces who need to keep their equipment light, such as para-drop storm troopers. However, they have the drawback of wearing out the weapon very quickly; it runs so hot that its components burn out and fuse together with frequent use, making it unsuited to long deployments or situations where supplies are limited. Any guardsmen who is issued one of these must first pass very strict equipment maintenance expertise certifications above and beyond what is expected of a typical guardsmen, as practicality demands that they need to be able to field-strip and replace failing parts themselves. This in turn limits their circulation to mostly elite forces specially trained in their use.
  • Multilasers — Essentially a gatling version of the hellgun, it is a multi-barrel weapon capable of maintaining a high rate of fire. They are usually too big to be used by infantry, but are often mounted on vehicles such as the Chimera infantry fighting vehicle to suppress enemy infantry and light vehicles.
  • Lascannon — Lasgun-tech scaled up to BFG levels. Its capacitors take time to build up the energy needed for a discharge, combined with the time to cool the mechanism between shots, so its rate of fire is fairly low, and all that size means it's rarely completely man-portable (for normal humans at any rate), being restricted to gun carriages and mounting on vehicles. However, it maintains its power over long range and has substantial armour-penetrating qualities, making it an effective anti-material gun. Leman Russ tanks configured for armour-superiority roles often mount them in hull-mounted hardpoints to supplement their main cannon and suppress flanking armour. Bigger tanks like the Bane-chassis vehicles may have them mounted on sponsons, in single or twin variants, to pick off flanking tanks.
  • Plasma weaponry — Not as commonly used as the lasgun, these fire superheated bolts of energy that cut through or vaporise the target. Unfortunately, they are much more difficult to manufacture, with only a few forge worlds still capable of doing so. Also, plasma weapons have a tendency to overheat and explode (shown in the game as the "Gets Hot" rule), but sometimes the extra firepower they provide outweighs the risk. The Executioner variant of the Leman Russ, for example, uses a large plasma cannon.
• Enhanced Archaic Weapon: The hunting lances carried by many Rough Rider squads consist of the traditional lances and spears wielded by cavalry with the addition of a specially shaped explosive charge that allows the Rough Rider to deliver a powerful, one-off attack when charging. How these weapons are represented on the battlefield varies depending on the edition with the semi-official Warhammer Legends rules for 8th Edition giving the Rough Rider a single, attack with a Strength bonus, along with good Armour Piercing and Damage characteristics, when they charge.
• A Father to His Men: While the command echelons of the Astra Militarum are more famous for their uncaring and ruthless attitude towards the troops under their command, many of the most successful commanders have a far closer relationship with their men. Such commanders will often share the hardships of their Guardsmen and gain great respect. The 8th Edition Master of Command Warlord trait represents this with its background text mentioning that the Warlord is able to get the best out of his troops due to his personal knowledge of their abilities and personalities. This is represented in game by allowing the Warlord to issue more Commanders than other Warlords.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: The Destroyer Tank Hunter is a rare armoured vehicle that is built on the basic Leman Russ chassis only with its main weapon, the powerful laser destroyer, mounted in a fixed weapon mount at the front of the tank rather than in a turret on top. Having the laser destroyer in this position gives the Destroyer a lower profile to help with its role as an ambusher and sniper.
• Flanderization: The Imperial Guard is often portrayed as a Red Shirt Army who only ever wins battles via massive casualties and by being egged on by psychopathic commissars. The reality is a bit more complicated. While it's true that there are plenty of commanders such as Chenkov, there are also more sympathetic ones such as Cain and Gaunt, and any number in between. Naturally, the troops under their command run the gamut from Red Shirt to Badass Normal, and many are perfectly capable of holding their own against the galaxy's horrors. It really depends upon the unit in question.
• Follow the Leader: invoked Quick, picture a standard Imperial Guardsman right now. Are you thinking of a man in green flak armour and helmet? That's because the Cadian Shock Troopers have such a reputation as a Badass Army that their designs and doctrines are copied by countless other regiments and PDF forces. There are unique regiments, of course, but the Cadian way of doing things is so widely adopted that it's practically the Imperium standard.
• Four-Star Badass: Not all of the Guard's senior commanders are complete failures. There are plenty of Guard Generals that are strategic geniuses and kick ass just as well.
• Future Copter: The Valkyrie Assault Carrier, the Guard's air transport of choice, is also well armed with a multilaser and missiles. However, even more deadly is the Vendetta Gunship, an up-gunned variant that trades out its lasers and missiles for the massive firepower of three twin-linked lascannons while still retaining its dropship capabilities.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: According to the fluff and art female troopers are everwhere, mostly in gender segregated regiments but mixed gender regiments are fairly common too. If you were only to read the novels you would probably be surprised mixed gender units aren't considered the norm. In the actual models there are no women whatsoever. What makes it especially odd is that the Cadians, who represent the bulk of the models in print, explicitly include every man and woman on the planet.
• General Failure: There's no shortage of Guard generals who got their position entirely through family connections and interdepartmental politicking, and who couldn't command their way out of a wet paper bag. Many follow the We Have Reserves school of Imperial tactics, reasoning that even the most egregious tactical errors can be overcome by throwing enough men at the problem. The most incompetent of them even manage to screw that up. Note that due to Character Exaggeration and Flanderization, these types of leaders get over-represented within the Imperium. If every last general and officer was that incompetent, sociopathic, bloodthirsty, etc., the Imperium would probably have collapsed long ago. The few extreme outliers can be chalked up to any sufficiently large organization having some less-than-ideal leaders in its chain of command.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: Official Imperial doctrine states that Humanity Is Superior and that those loyal to the Emperor will always prevail. Naturally, the reality is much more bleak, but belief in this propaganda is enforced amongst all Imperial forces to ensure that there is some chance of success.
• Hero of Another Story: Whenever the Space Marines arrive in time to save the day, and we don't get to see much of the Imperial Guard holding the line, there's probably more than a few tales of sacrifice and bravery in there that no-one will ever hear about.
• Hold the Line: How an Imperial Guard campaign will probably play out at some point or another. A common sardonic joke among the fans goes to the tune of "The Imperial Guard. It's a thankless job, but if you're willing to stand your ground and give it your all... you just might be able to buy enough time for the Space Marines to take all the credit."
• Hollywood Tactics: They've gotten much better at avoiding this, but sadly there's still the occasional regiment that's led by a particularly incompetent, inexperienced or even ruthless commander. Many of these clowns just settle for the old "keep throwing men and tanks at the enemy and wear them down". Some even manage to screw that up.
• Homage: The Massacre at Big Toof River Games Day display, the White Dwarf battle report Last Stand at Glazer's Creek, and the Praetorian Guard regiment created for them are all a homage to the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift as depicted in the film Zulu with red-coated warriors with superior technology and pith helmets being massacred by a more primitive and numerous foe (Orks in the case of the Praetorians).
• Home Guard: Worlds in the Imperium maintain their own Planetary Defense Forces, and the best of these are sent as levies when it's time to pay a tithe; thus, the PDF is looked down upon by "proper" Guardsmen as ill-disciplined and unsuitable for prolonged engagements, a stereotype it all too commonly lives down to. There are notable exceptions, however, such as the Cadian Home Guard, randomly drawn from the Cadians' highly-trained regiments, and the Ultramar Auxilia, which is led by and fights alongside the Ultramarines.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Subverted. Though they have a reputation as unreliable shots, Guardsmen have average Ballistic Skill, and statistically half of their ranged attacks (of which they make very many) will hit. Actual Stormtroopers shoot as well as Space Marines and have a two out of three chance of hitting the mark.
• Interservice Rivalry: You have the traditional rivalry between the Imperial Navy and the ground-pounders, between Glory Seeker COs and Spotlight Stealing Space Marine companies, between regiments from different planets, and occasionally between regiments from the same planet if their culture is particularly competitive.
• It's Raining Men: They're not Space Marines, but the Guard can make good use of conventional air deployments.
• Jack of All Stats: The basic Leman Russ battle tank is not the toughest, fastest, or most powerful armored vehicle out there. However, its impressive array of weapons can deal with just about any threat, it's quite tough, and while cumbersome it can maintain its rate of fire while advancing at a constant speed, all for a very cost-effective price. Its only weakness is a vulnerability to attacks from behind, which is hardly exclusive to the Leman Russ, and mitigated when the tanks are deployed in squadrons or with infantry support. It also serves as the basis for a wide variety of more specialized derivations such as the Vanquisher tank hunter or Demolisher siege tank.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: While the lasgun is the preferred service weapon, the Guard maintains heavy use of autoguns, heavy stubbers, shotguns and other firearms. In fact, good old artillery pieces are more widely used than heavy energetic weapons.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Astra Militarum as a faction is one of the standout examples of this trope in this far future's grim darkness — a plethora of artillery, tanks and small arms are mustered to blast and shoot the Imperium's many enemies dead from afar because the Puny Earthlings operating these don't stand a chance against these enemies at close-range (except for the Tau). At least, they can have the Ogryns be useful auxiliaries for such melees — or have Ratlings that are a walking embodiment of the aforementioned Long-Range Fighter schtick as they are excellent snipers with utter glass jaws (seriously, they'll lose to Tau in close-combat).
• Made of Plasticine: With their weak flak armor and mediocre Toughness characteristic, if someone shoots at and hits an Imperial Guardsman, statistically-speaking he's probably dead.
• Mega City: Hive Worlds are common sources of Imperial Guard regiments, in part because their large populations tend to result in large numbers of regiments, and because many of these Hive Cities are major industrial centers such regiments tend to require less initial equipment provided from elsewhere by the Departmento Munitorium. Not to mention that many Hive Worlds are simply too large and sprawling to police effectively, so gangs are common deep down in the Underhives. Criminals and gang members can be made into decent soldiers, as they usually know how to handle a gun and aren't averse to getting their hands dirty (or bloody). Of course, turning the rough-and-ready hive-scum into disciplined soldiers does take some training, but that's nothing a Drill Sergeant Nasty (of whom the Guard has many) can't beat into them.
• Mildly Military: Sentinel pilots are used to acting independently and on their own initiative, so wise commanders are willing to look the other way if they advance without orders.
• Mighty Glacier: The mainstay of Astra Militarum tank companies, Leman Russ battle tanks are described as slow and lumbering but powerful and durable. How the games rules represent this changes with the edition with the 7th Edition making it a Heavy Vehicle, allowing it to fire at full effect when moving but reducing its top speed. The 8th Edition rules on the other hand give the Leman Russ higher Toughness and Wounds characteristics than any other, non-Titanic, Astra Militarum vehicle and allows it to fire its main gun multiple times at full effect if it moves under half its, already reduced, movement distance.
• More Dakka:
  • Taking a cue from the Orks, the Leman Russ Punisher variant has a gatling cannon that fires twenty shots a round, theoretically capable of turning entire Ork mobs into goo. You can have up to twelve of them in a standard Imperial Guard army.
  • If that's not enough for you, see the Stormlord, a variant of the Baneblade super-heavy tank equipped with a Vulcan Mega-Bolter, ten rotating heavy bolters, on top of its sponson- or pintle-mounted weapons, and that it can transport 40 infantrymen within. Horde of Orks charging the lines? What horde of Orks?
• My Horse Is a Motorbike: Rough Riders units are traditionally mounted on horses, but industrialized worlds' Rough Riders are often fielded on motorcycles.
• Officer and a Gentleman: The Imperium has a convention of granting parcels of territory to ranking officers during its crusades of conquest. This has the effect of creating noble families with strong military traditions, and established noble families seeking to expand their own domains and influence via taking commanding positions in new crusades. The end result is that the upper echelons of a large scale operation are almost entirely recruited from the aristocracy. The quality of these commanders is quite variable, with the best ones usually coming from families with long histories of noblesse oblige to the Imperium, while the worst tend to be Glory Seekers more used to courtly intrigue with little regard for the forces under them.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: The Imperial Guard, with its vast legions of hardened fighting men and devastatingly powerful battle tanks and artillery, would be an absolutely unbeatable fighting force in real life, or in most other sci-fi universes. A fairly decent approximation of a single Imperial Guard Regiment's fighting strength would be a little bit more than that of a real life first world military, but with much better equipment. However, they happen to live in a universe where being completely superhuman is a fairly common state of being, and hence they tend to come across as this trope when compared to the Adeptus Astartes or pretty much all of the armies they go up against. However, this ironically makes them arguably the most awesome army of the lot.
• Plunder: Back when the Imperial Guard was the Imperial Army, they did quite a bit of this during the Emperor's Great Crusade across the galaxy. Nowadays there's significantly less planet-conquering going on due to the Imperium committing most of its resources to mere survival.
• Power Fist: Sometimes wielded by higher-ranking officers. Because everything else is usually faster than and stronger than Guardsmen, this at least lets them stand toe to toe with some of their scarier foes, although it's nowhere near as effective as in the hands of other, stronger races.
• Power Nullifier: Those Tempestus Primes who serve as guards for the Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica are often equipped with special null-emitters that render them all but immune to warp-spawned abilities. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the Cypra Mundi Null-Emitter Relic available to characters from Tempestus Drop Force Specialist Detachments. This relic, introduced in the Imperium Nihilus: Vigilus Defiant campaign book, gives the bearer a high chance of ignoring any psychic power that targets them.
• Powered Armour: The Armour of Graf Toschenkov^note introduced in the 8th Edition Codex: Astra Militarum is a suit of highly ornate armour fitted with numerous augmetic systems that boost the wearers Toughness and grants the wearer of this relic of the Vostroyan Firstborn greater protection than Astartes Power Armour.
• Puny Earthlings: The Imperial Guard may have bayonets as standard, but few of them have the combination of courage and insanity to want to abide being close enough to use them on the galaxy of aliens, fanatics and Super Soldiers they're up against (unless they're against Tau).
• Put on a Bus: The Cadians and Catachans have plastic kits available, but the Mordians, Valhallans and Tallarns are stuck with metal models that haven't been updated since 2nd Edition, while regiments like the Praetorians are no longer available at all.
• Recursive Ammo:
  • The Manticore Multiple Rocket Launcher has, as its most common armament, a rack of 4 (and only 4) Storm Eagle rockets. A Manticore may only fire one Storm Eagle per turn, and each Storm Eagle breaks into a barrage of 1-3 mini-rockets once the main Storm Eagle reaches the apex of its trajectory. Due to their temperamental nature, Manticores are sometimes distrusted by commanders, but having that kind of potential in firepower makes up for it.
  • The stormshard mortars fitted to Wyvern Suppression Tanks fire shells designed to explode above enemy infantry, showing its victims with countless razor-sharp, aquila-shaped flechettes that scythe through flesh and bone with ease.
• Red Shirt Army: The Imperial Guard on a bad day... and the bad days outnumber the good on any given week. The Planetary Defense Forces are a Redshirt Army for the Redshirt Army.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Depending on the regiment. Some keep fighting until they are too depleted to be effective, then the survivors muster out permanently. Some actually have a fixed length of enlistment. Some combine the two approaches in periodic reorganisations with a trickle of reinforcements between, so a given soldier might be in for two years or twenty. Officers have more of a defined length of service, but talented ones can be called back to the Emperor's service after their retirement.
• Robbing the Dead: Some of the less noble regiments of Astra Militarum will take any opportunity to replenish their supplies from those who fall in battle, whether they are friend or foe.
• Schizo Tech: Particularly pronounced when various regiments meet in the same battlezone—you can see squads with cameoline and cybernetic augmentations fighting alongside primitives mustered from a Feral World fighting with axes and maybe a laspistol, supported by both mechanized cavalry and traditional cavalry that ride anything from regular horses to xenos beasts or genetically engineered mutant horses.
• Sergeant Rock: Probably a major factor to Guardsmen actually standing off against their enemies. Until the Sergeant Rock dies, of course.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • The Leman Russ is the simplest of the Imperial armoured vehicles, but cost-wise it's a very damn good tank, to say nothing of its versatility. In-universe, Leman Russes can be churned out the fastest, sent to battlefields in large numbers, and are so easy logistically, they can burn anything from wood to corpses for fuel. It's not nearly as fearsome as the Baneblade, but superheavy tanks are only available as part of Apocalypse army lists as of the 5th edition, making the good old Leman Russ the backbone of most battles that the Imperial Guard takes part in.
  • The Basilisk is basically a World War II-era artillery piece ramped up to Warhammer standards. It actually dates back to the Great Crusade, but were used by the Space Marine Legions—post-Heresy, the Space Marines prefer air support and find little use in a ground-bound artillery piece, but the Basilisk is very well suited to the ponderous advance of Imperial Guard battlelines. No neat tricks, just a monumentally huge cannon on a Chimera chassis. Like the Leman Russ, it is extremely cost effective.
  • The bog-standard Guardsman is just a human soldier with body armour and a rifle, little to none of the fancy technology or exotic abilities of his counterparts in other armies, looking hopelessly outmatched compared to his exotic, superhuman opponents. However, Guardsmen still pose a credible threat for the same reason that medieval archers used to pose a threat to armoured knights: they can pour hundreds of shots at a target, and while nearly all of them will just harmlessly miss or ping off, they only have to get one or two lucky shots to bring their opponent down, and they don't stop shooting until they get lucky.
  • The heavy stubber is an extremely unsophisticated weapon compared to the bolters and power swords out there- yet is churned out by the billion on forge worlds due to its simplicity, ease of maintenance, and rate of fire. Yes, even 40 millennia into the future, you still can't do better than the Browning M2.... which was first designed in 1918. Older Is Better indeed.
  • Imperial Guard Tactics tends to boil down to "drown it in gunfire until you win", but nothing is more satisfying than unleashing a volley of barrages from a mass of field artillery or rolling over a hundred dice from nearly every single unit. Indeed this is part of the army's appeal; no fancy tricks up their sleeves, just good ol' brute force and lots of artillery shells.
  • The Lasgun is derided by fans as 'flashlight', but there's a reason it is the mainstay of the Imperial Guard weapons. It's so simple, it can be manufactured everywhere, its power cells can last for quite a bit before having to be recharged, and it can be recharged by simple power port, solar power, or even by burning it in a pinch. Burning the power cell also turns them unstable, allowing it to be used as improvised explosive. Lastly, the base Laser technology also give rise to advanced variants such as Hellgun, Long-Las, Multilaser, Lascannon, all the way up to the Volcano Cannon which can fell a Titan.
• The Spartan Way: Many planets have hellish requirements to make it into their Imperial Guard. For example, it's common for recruits, or "Whiteshields", to start off younger than official enlistment age and be sent alongside PDF and IG forces in actual battles. Survivors are then deemed worthy of going through the requisite Training from Hell and even after officially becoming PDF, usually only the best of them will be deployed outside their homeworld, which is when they can finally be called Imperial Guardsmen.
• Taking You with Me: The most loyal and dedicated Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum will sometimes call down fire on their own position if it looks like they are going to be overrun. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the "Fire on My Position" Stratagem that has a 50% chance of causing mortal wounds on an enemy unit close to an Astra Militarum unit when it is destroyed, though the unit must have a vox-caster to do so. It certainly doesn't hurt that being captured by almost everything the Guard goes up against is a Fate Worse than Death, so a quick death by dangerously close artillery is vastly preferable.
• Tank Goodness: A huge appeal of the Imperial Guard. Even the standard Leman Russ is a very good tank, and it (among other, scarier death engines) can be fielded in squads in high-points games. Then there are the dozens of variants, and the even bigger super-heavy battle tanks such as the Baneblade, with their "Eleven barrels of hell!". The multitude of powerful tanks available to the Imperial Guard and the numbers they can be deployed in is what makes them a force to be reckoned with in Apocalypse mode. Special mention goes to the Hellhound family of medium tank. While they lack the sheer brutal power of the Baneblade or even the workhorse Leman Russ tank, they win Rule of Cool superiority by being one enormous flamethrower. For those generals not afraid to get their hands truly filthy, the Imperium manufactures variants that spew poison gas or toxic waste.
• Target Spotter:
  • The Master of Ordnance is an officer who is often attached to the command section of front line infantry regiments to act as a liaison with the forces’ artillery companies. These officers use various auspex-arrays, and other scanning devices, to relay targeting data to artillery batteries behind the front line to call down supporting barrages with far greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving the Master of Ordnance a one-off artillery barrage attack (representing the model calling in fire from off table artillery units) and by allowing the player's artillery units to re-roll long range shots when there is a Master of Ordnance nearby.
  • The 8th Edition Stratagem Aerial Spotter represents the aircraft of the Aeronutica Imperialis acting as spotters for the player's artillery, allowing them to re-roll failed hits.
• Technicolor Fire: The background section of the 8th Edition codex mentions that the multiple flamer weapons utilized by regiments of Miasman Redcowls spew a fierce green fire due to the volatile and noxious form of promethium the regiments uses.
• Theme Naming: Many Guard vehicles, especially those based on the Chimera chassis, are named after mythological creatures such as the Valkyrie, the Medusa, the Basilisk and the Hellhound.
• Token Evil Teammate: Most of the named Imperial Guard armies are sympathetic to some degree, even with their various quirks and oddities. This is with the exception of the Salvar Chem Dogs, an Army of Thieves and Whores who are kept in line with "motivational drugs" and are infamous for their ruthless looting tendencies. There's also the Penal Legions, who are convicted criminals, heretics, and mutants who have to be kept in line with collar-bombs and are usually treated as scum by the other Guardsmen.
• Took a Level in Badass: Up through early 3rd Edition, the Imperial Guard was portrayed as using tactics from 1914, both in the fluff and on the tabletop. After the Gaunt's Ghosts novels came out, the Guard started getting more competent — successive codices introduced the Orders system to buff infantry, even more Tank Goodness, and air support, so the Guard became not just a credible force, but downright dangerous. Not that the Guardsmen themselves needed bigger Balls of Steel.
• Trading Bars for Stripes: Penal Legions, which are often supplied with Explosive Leashes and Frenzon to keep them "motivated." In the unlikely case they survive a campaign, their crimes are forgiven. In the much more probable case of hideous death, their crimes are forgiven. The most infamous of these are The Last Chancers.
• Tyke Bomb: Played straight by numerous planets with a particularly strong militaristic culture and/or particularly large amounts of required manpower for their planet to tithe to the Imperium, such as Cadia or Krieg. Subverted by Catachan Jungle Fighters, who aren't so much formally trained from birth as they are forced to survive on a Death World.
• Unfriendly Fire: If a Guardsmen unit does rout despite the presence of a Commissar, then the Commissar is removed from play. The idea behind this is that the Commissar attempted to shoot one of them to maintain morale, and the Guardsmen shot back.
• War Is Hell: While the trope can make its appearance at times for all the other armies, given that the Imperial Guard are Puny Earthlings that are pushed forward to die in droves against inhuman adversaries by officers and institutions that place humanity over the human being and are the most likely to appear as Shell-Shocked Veterans, the Imperial Guard are probably the most likely to display the trope. To some of their fans, that's even the appeal—why else would anyone want to play as the Death Korps of Krieg?
• We Have Reserves: That number in... well, not even the Imperial Guard knows how many Guardsman are in it, but it hasn't run out yet despite the best efforts of certain commanders. One estimate is five hundred trillion compared to around a million Space Marines (one thousand chapters of one thousand marines). Or to put it another way that's five hundred million Imperial Guard for every single Space Marine. If Space Marines are the tip of the Empire of Mans' spear, the Imperial Guard are the rest of the weapon and the entire man wielding it.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: The Hound's Teeth, an heirloom chainsword of the 54th Psian Jakles^note introduced by Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good, possesses a machine spirit that has an intense hatred of the Aeldari, gaining a wound re-roll when used against these xenos on the tabletop.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: ... every problem looks like it can be solved by simply throwing more forces at it. Other solutions may be more elegant, but given the diverse and constantly shifting (though vast) resources that Imperial Guard high command has to work with, overwhelming force requires the least change in overall strategy. More granularly, this is one of the motivating factors as to why, despite all the awesome variety of combined arms options the Imperial Guard might employ, there are some staggering-looking misapplications of force... like sending a light infantry regiment to take out a bunch of enemy tanks. The Guard is a vast organization, and for the overall strategic goals to be met all the individual pieces have to be moving toward those goals together. But the chaos of war makes it impossible for the deployment of every asset to be micro-managed, and the ideal force to deal with a particular situation may not be available despite the best efforts to make it so. Yet the local commanders will still be expected to make do with what they have, if only because a failure to push toward their objectives on time will threaten the wider strategy. The generals in charge of a particular salient quickly learn to apply whatever force they are given, even when it is widely inappropriate for the responsibility it has been given.
• You Kill It, You Bought It:
  • Imperial Guardsmen rarely have the opportunity to return to their homeworlds, but since troops without anything to gain tend to fight ineffectively, the Imperium has a practice of granting territory on conquered worlds to the Guardsmen who survived fighting to take them. This can create new noble families in time, or found settlements who regard the founding soldiers as ancestor-saints.
  • In a lesser case, most liberated planets become home to a series of bars with names like the "105th," filled with middle-aged, scarred men with blank stares. Robbers or street gangs who venture into said bars can consider themselves lucky for getting out with all limbs attached.

Regiment-Specific Tropes

Attilan Rough Riders

An Attilan horseman with a frag-tipped hunting lance.

"We ride like the wind, my brothers — victory depends on it."

—Kudubai Khan, Attilan Rough Rider

Attila is a world of endless windswept plains, roamed by warlike tribes of nomadic horsemen. In the Guard, they serve as experienced and hardy cavalry regiments, specializing in prolonged campaigns in hostile territory.

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• Anti-Infantry: Attilan hunting lances can be fitted with frag tips, which detonate in clouds of shrapnel designed to clear crowds of enemy infantry.
• Anti-Vehicle: Attilan hunting lances can be fitted with melta tips, which produce focused beams of plasma designed to cut through the heavy armor of tanks and mechas.
• Born in the Saddle: Attila's single continent consists almost entirely of open, windswept plains and steppes, and the ancestors of the Attilans responded to it by developing a highly nomadic culture centered around herding and riding horses. Modern Attilan society is centered almost entirely around these animals, the tribes' endless peregrinations around the world-steppes, and their equally endless warring with one another.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: They're a force of mounted, furred hat-wearing spearmen and warriors based off of Central Asian nomad armies, particularly the Mongols and the Huns, the latter whose most famous leader they take their name from.
• Rite of Passage: Attilan clansmen go through a coming-of-age ritual at adulthood where long wounds are slashed into their cheeks and rubbed with ash to form permanent scars, which the new warriors wear with pride.
• Shock Stick: Attilan hunting lances can be fitted with electrified goad tips, which can cook enemy infantry inside their armor with a single touch.

Armageddon Steel Legion

"Heroes of Armageddon! You have withstood the evil savagery of the Orks, and they have left nothing for you to fear. So raise high the black banners of vengeance — now is our time."

—Commissar Yarrick during the Third War for Armageddon

The Armageddon Steel Legion hails from a jungle-covered hive world most notable for having been invaded by massive hordes of Orks, which remain there to the present day. This has made the Steel Legion very experienced in fighting the green-skinned aliens. Their standard uniforms are trench coats, bowl helmets and face-covering gas masks.

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• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The gas mask and trenchcoat-wearing mechanized soldiers of the Armageddon Steel Legion are straight from the World War II-era German army.
• Gas Mask, Longcoat: The Armageddon Steel Legion wears these as a standard uniform because they come from a heavily polluted hive world.
• Putting on the Reich: Sort of. They have the Nazi visuals but are not any more evil than the rest of the Imperium. Granted, this isn't saying much since all of the Imperium is a Nazi-esque dystopia.
• Skull for a Head: High-ranking officers of the Armageddon Steel Legion will often have their gasmasks fashioned into the form of a skull to intimidate and unnerve their enemies. The most famous such gasmask is the 8th Edition Relic the Skull Mask of Acheron that strikes fear into the hearts of the superstitious Orks.

Cadian Shock Troopers

Any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by age ten was born on the wrong planet.

—Cadian aphorism

The Cadian Shock Troopers hail from Cadia, a legendary fortress world on the gates of the Eye of Terror. They held against the horrors of the Warp for centuries, turning their entire society into an ancillary to the war effort, but were eventually overwhelmed. A few shattered remnants still endure in the Imperium, using their considerable skill and practice in fighting the spawn of Chaos to hold the hordes of the Dark Gods at bay. They wear straightforward military uniforms, and their colors are tan and green.

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• Catchphrase: Ursarkar Creed's pithy mantra "Cadia stands" became one to his 8th Cadian Regiment throughout the background of Fall of Cadia.
• Child Soldiers: Cadia is so heavily militarized that it uses Youth Armies for training, which includes fighting on actual battlefields.
  Any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by age ten was born on the wrong planet.
• Defiant to the End: Even as all of Cadia was being torn to pieces and consumed by the growing Eye of Terror, the vast majority of Shock Troopers remained fighting to their last breath until whatever was left could be evacuated. It is famously quoted that "The planet broke before the guard did".
• Elite Mooks: The Kasrkin are chosen from the best recruits or the most skilled veterans, and are therefore closer to the average soldiers, but can perform on par with Stormtroopers.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Cadian Shock Troops have the worst posting in the Imperium, right outside the Eye of Terror, and can consequently field-strip a lasgun before they learn to walk. They're considered the Imperial Guard's best soldiers and are capable of devastating frontal assaults. Naturally, Cadia is basically a futuristic version of World War II Britain, down to being led by a big, charismatic figure who is seldom seen without a cigar.
• Jack of All Stats: This is the Cadians' regimental hat, as they focus on coordination and tactical versatility along with the sheer ability and discipline. Cadians are generally known for and raising a wide variety of different types of regiments compared to other planets' Guard units, like the primarily-mechanized Armageddon Steel Legion or the sneaky, close-combat survivalist infantry of the Catachan Jungle Fighters. Formerly, their signature tactic was a classically-unsubtle massive frontal assault behind an artillery barrage in a very World War I manner (matching the stereotypical Imperial Guard sense of strategy perfectly), but this changed later (though don't think they aren't still capable of it, because their 100% recruitment rate means they absolutely are).
• The Remnant: The Cadian Regiments as a whole, since their homeworld has been obliterated. True to form, it hasn't put a dent in their morale and combat ability.

Catachan Jungle Fighters

Truly, the Emperor's most fortunate sons.

"We've run into scorpions the size of battle tanks, three men died from eyerot last week, I've sweat enough to fill a lake, my boots got sucked into a sink-swamp, and the trees are so thick that in places, you can't squeeze between them. Emperor help me, I love this place! It's just like home!"

—Captain Rock of the Catachan III "Green Devils," commenting on Varestus Prime

The Catachan Jungle Fighters come from Catachan, the most notorious Death World in the Imperium. The Catachans live their lives in the disease-, parasite- and predator-infested jungles of their world, which has turned them into some of the deadliest fighters and survivalists among unmodified humanity — anybody who isn't a peak of human health and competence doesn't live much past three. They specialize in jungle combat, guerrilla tactics, and extended deployments in hostile environments, and their colors are forest camouflage.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: The 3rd Edition background material mentions that, when fighting against Tyranids on Koralkal VIII, the veterans of the Catachan XVIII, the Swamprats, covered themselves in xenos ichor so that they would build up an immunity to the toxins used by the extra-galactic aliens.
• Band of Brothers: Literally. Catachan units are typically made up of soldiers who have blood relations with each other, or come from the same village.
• Badasses Wear Bandanas: Red bandannas are part of the official uniform of the Catachan Jungle Fighters, renowned the Imperium over as one of the toughest and most violent Astra Militarum forces. The bandanna also ties into the Catachan's Vietnam War/Rambo look.
• Blade Enthusiast: Catachans revere their knives, both as an invaluable weapon and tool for jungle fighting and as a status symbol among their culture. They're so skilled at fighting with them that they'll take down Orks or even Tyranids with them.
• Booby Trap: The Catachan Jungle Fighters are renowned for their use of lethal booby traps to strengthen their defences, using everything from improvised pits and tripwires to more conventional mines and snares to stall and break up enemy assaults. How this is represented in the game differs by edition with the 3rd Edition Codex: Catachans allowing the player to purchase a number of different traps (such as plasma charges or spring mines) as part of their army list, while the 8th Edition rules represent this with the "Vicious Traps" Catachan Stratagem that causes enemy troops to take mortal wounds when they charge Catachan troops who are in cover.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Fighters wouldn't take a bath even on pain of death ^note because they're convinced that washing off their stench will get them promptly eaten by some predator that will notice their lack of ambient smell, are so paranoid about their surroundings that they'd be institutionalized on any other world, and are so infamously Hot-Blooded and gung-ho that they make Rambo look like a Cub Scout. They get away with it because they are the single best at Feral World survival (bar none) and get deployed in any conflict on a world that would literally eat another regiment alive.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Catachans are famous among the Guard for how they rarely seem to take the threat of imminent death very seriously and consequently retain their casual, swaggering and flippant attitudes even in the direst situations. This is largely because, on Catachan, death is always just around the corner even in the best of times, and as such the locals don't really see it as a particularly remarkable thing in itself.
• Chainsaw Good: The Sentinels fielded by Catachan regiments often mount chainsaws designed to cut through the thick jungle foliage of their jungle home. It isn't long, however, before a Sentinel pilot learns how to use these vicious saws in combat against their foes. The 3rd Edition Codex: Catachan rules represented this with the Chainsaw Warrior special rule that granted the Sentinel an extra Attack in close combat.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: An entire army of Vietnam War stereotypes with the tactics and culture of MACV-SOG, plus the appearance of Rambo and the booby traps of the Viet Cong.
• Frontline General: Catachan Officers prefer to share the hardships of warfare with those under their command and take great pride in personally leading their men into battle, throwing themselves at the enemy without hesitation. The 8th Edition rules represent this with the unique Catachan Warlord Trait, 'Lead From the Front', which doubles the range that they can engage the enemy in close combat and gives the officer bonuses when fighting aggressively.
• Heroic Build: Catachans are famed for their tall frames and muscles on muscles, earning them nicknames like "Baby Ogryns." It's not just that they come from a Death World, but one with higher gravity than Terran standard.
• Hot-Blooded: Having survived the notoriously and ridiculously lethal environment of their home planet, Catachans have a reputation for being recklessly brave in combat, eagerly using demolition charges and flamers, weaponry infamous for being a potential danger to the user as much as enemies. This is not to say that Catachans are incautious, but rather that their home planet is so deadly that they become accustomed to danger and anything else seems laughable in comparison.
• Human Subspecies: There is a certain school of thought among Imperial adepts in the Departmento Munitorum that, after ten thousand years of only the strongest, toughest, fastest, and smartest Catachans being able to live long enough to reproduce, they've slowly been evolving away from the baseline human genome and into an abhuman strain comparable to a small Ogryn with vastly superior intellect. Their in-game rules also reflect this somewhat, with their higher than average strength characteristic compared to other Guardsmen and the fact that they gain the same armor save shirtless that a Cadian or Krieger would need to be wearing flak armor for.
• Jungle Warfare: Due to Catachan being covered by a global, trackless jungle teeming with hostile predators, toxic creatures, carnivorous plants and horrifying parasites, Catachans need to be experts at living in hostile jungle environments just to live past childhood. As a result, soldiers mustered from the planet are some of the foremost Imperial specialists at protracted engagements in hostile jungle and forest environments, as they can draw on lifetimes of expertise at dealing with aggressive fauna, dangerous flora, thick growth, absent infrastructure and decaying gear.
• Mildly Military: Catachans tend to be extremely self-disciplined (surviving to adulthood on their Death World of a homeworld demands it) but that discipline rarely resembles the kind of discipline other worlds would recognize as military, since Catachans tend to interact with an almost casual and cavalier ease of manner. To other units, the Catachans come across as extremely independent, sometimes too much, and with a disregard for conventional discipline and traditional hierarchy.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: The absurdly-ripped physiques of the Catachan Jungle Fighters aren't just for show. To represent their above-average strength owing to being Heavy Worlders, all their models have S4 compared to baseline S3 in melee (provided that they have the 'Brutal Strength' Regimental Doctrine).
• Pit Trap: The 3rd Edition background material for the Catachan XXIV regiment, known as the Waiting Death, mentions that they make extensive use of Booby Traps to fight the Emperor's foes, with their most famous engagement involving them turning the entirety of a mile-deep gorge into one massive pit trap. The trap was so artfully constructed, the regiment managed to send the majority of the Ork horde they were facing plummeting to their deaths in an instant.
• Rite of Passage: The Catachan Jungle Fighters have a number of life-threatening rites used to induct people into adulthood, the military, or various command ranks. For instance, some regiments require recruits to slay dangerous predators or to race through groves of mind-controlling brainleaf trees, while others require prospective sergeants to snatch a flower from the middle of the ferocious Venus mantrap plants.
• Übermensch: Just about an entire regiment of them, given that they show general disdain for the standard Militarum methods of warfare compared to their own tactics, they're capable of surviving on quite possibly the absolute most deadly planet in the galaxy outside of the Eye of Terror, and it's implied that they've managed to breed themselves into a strain of abhumans by merit of the fact that the only Catachans that can reach breeding age had to be some of the strongest, toughest, and smartest people in the galaxy.
• Unfriendly Fire: Catachans dislike Commissars, so they used to have a special rule where any attached political officers had a one in six chance of suffering an "unfortunate accident" before the battle — the "Oops, Sorry Sir!" rule.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: While the official uniform of the Catachan Jungle Fighters includes a vest of flak armour, a number of their models have the troopers going into battle shirtless. Despite what the models are wearing however, they all receive the same Save characteristic.

Death Korps of Krieg

"In life, war. In death, peace. In life, shame. In death, atonement."

— Final litany of the Litany of Sacrifice, recited by Krieg Korpsmen when entering battle

The planet Krieg once rebelled against the Imperium. The rebellion was put down, but the survivors were overwhelmed by shame over what their compatriots did and devoted themselves to seeking deadly penance to atone. The modern Death Korps channel this cultural sense of shame by throwing themselves into the harshest, deadliest engagements, seeking honorable death generation after generations to make up for what their millennia-dead ancestors' neighbors did. They specialize in protracted meatgrinder engagements and in taking extremely difficult positions, and wear uniforms and gas masks that leave no part of their bodies uncovered.

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• Bayonet Ya: Kriegers are famously skilled in bayonet charges. As their specialty is trench warfare, they often charge into enemy dugouts and use their rifles as stabbing weapons, making them wore wieldy than if used to shoot them. However, there's one particular piece of equipment they're more notoriously associated with.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Death Korps of Krieg are a force of fanatical Death Seekers who seek atonement through their deaths and are so augmented that they just barely count as human anymore, which creeps other Imperial Guardsmen out and makes them stay as far away as possible during joint-forces operations. ^note This suits them just fine, since their internal emotion dampener prevents them from even wanting such things like camaraderie. This is tolerated by the higher brass because their augments allow them to survive hellish conditions and their legendary indifference towards their own deaths lets them fight through protracted and bloody sieges that would break any other unit.
• Clone Army: The Death Korps of Krieg are mostly vat-grown to make up for the high casualty rate and life in a nuclear wasteland. The Mechanicus see this as abominable but the Munitorum tolerates it because of the results.
• Combat Medic: The Death Korps' Quartermasters combine the role of medic with the technical skill required to recover damaged equipment and the spiritual training to administer comfort to the dying. The Quartermaster is also an officer who accompanies his regiment to the front lines and has the combat skills required to survive the hell of trench warfare. In the 8th Edition of the rules, the Quartermaster Revenant has characteristics superior to a Death Watch Veteran and is equipped with a medi-kit that he can use to heal nearby allies.
• Costume Evolution: During the 3rd edition, the Death Korps of Krieg were a simple recolour of the Armageddon Steel Legion, and as such shared their WW2-era German-inspired uniforms, distinguished only by their black, SS-esque colour scheme. However, as Krieg started to develop its own unique design with new Forge World miniatures, that original aesthetic was abandoned in favour of something more resembling the Imperial German Army of World War I, with feldgrau uniforms and simpler gas masks. The purely German aesthetic would then be mixed in with British and especially French influences, seen in details such as the Kriegers' ridged helmets and the metal crests of their officers. Another change happened when the plastic Krieg Veteran Guardsmen kit was released in 9th edition. The Veterans' design and official paint scheme highlights the French aspect of the Death Korps' aesthetic, with the old feldgrau replaced with the brighter horizon blue, while also bringing their style closer to that of the Astra Militarum as a whole, with more emphasised shoulderpads and helmets. It also harkens back to the original Krieger design to some extent, with black armour (though now limited only to the actual armoured parts of the uniform) and skull-like helmets brought back in full.
• Death Seeker: The people of Krieg are still gripped by collective guilt over their ancestors' rebellion, and believe that death in combat against the Imperium's enemies is the only way they can atone. Unlike the ones assigned to other regiments, the commissars assigned to the Death Krops are not there to shoot people for cowardice or lacking loyalty, but to keep them from getting themselves killed too early.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: By means of their Costume Evolution, the Death Korps have resembled different armies at different times, although always of kinds that would have fit in in one 20th Century European war or another:
  • In 3rd edition, they were a simple recolour of the Armageddon Steel Legion and as such shared their WW2-era German-inspired uniforms, distinguished only by their black, SS-esque colour scheme. Later, their designs would incorporate feldgrau uniforms and simpler gas masks reminescent of the Imperial German Army in World War I.
  • In 9th edition, the Kriegers' design is largely based on that of the French Army during World War I (and, to a lesser extent, their German and British counterparts), with dull blue trenchcoats, gas masks, and helmets with prominent ridges on them.
• Gas Mask, Longcoat: Soldiers of the Death Korps have this as standard uniforms because they come from a radiological wasteland... and also to disguise the fact that they're clones.
• Jack of All Stats: A rather morally twisted example compared to the tactically flexible Cadians. While the Kriegers' signature methods work best at siege warfare, their mission to seek out a glorious death on the most dangerous battlefields in the Imperium means that they'll take practically any kind of mission without complaint if ordered to.
• Martyrdom Culture: The Death Korps of Krieg, if the name wasn't enough to convince you. Once, Krieg was a prosperous hive world with a decadent noble class. The nobles decided to go rogue and declare independence from the Imperium. A bitter civil war between rebels and Imperial loyalists ravaged the planet and eventually the desperately outnumbered loyalists turned to drastic measures. Through a combination of strategic nuking and bloody siege and attrition warfare, the loyalists slowly took back their planet inch by inch over the course of five hundred years until they were able to re-assert Imperial authority. All children are brainwashed from birth to feel only guilt for their ancestors, and to make up for their ancestors' dishonour by fighting and dying for the Emperor, throwing themselves into the bloodiest conflicts and meatgrinders in the galaxy. They are infamous for their iron discipline, fanatical loyalty to the Emperor, and suicidal disregard for casualties. It has been noted that the Death Korps simply don't need Commissars,^note ironically, the Commissars who are assigned to Krieg regiments are there not to drive them forward but to reign in their Death Seeker tendencies so that they do not simply throw their lives away when the larger campaign would be better served by conserving their manpower as their desertion rate is zero and even the rank-and-file soldiers will execute their own comrades if they show a hint of cowardice or reluctance. Individual Kriegsmen don't even have names, just serial numbers.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The "Death Korps of Krieg", referencing both their mercilessness in battle and nihilistic Martyrdom Culture.
• Putting on the Reich: Early Krieg miniatures were recolours of those of the Armageddon Steel Legion (themselves an example of this trope), and further coloured in black with the skull motifs, evocative of the SS. Their interaction with the Steel Legion, with it being disturbed by the Death Korps' suicidal bravery, was also similar to the relationship between the Wehrmacht and the SS. Later redesigns have de-emphasised this aspect of Krieg design in favour of a more broadly German and WW1-inspired aesthetic, and now the only two aspects of Krieg reminiscent of the SS are their death cult and the skull motif on their uniforms.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The Death Korps are the product of a Martyrdom Culture that does the self-inflicted version of this, as each Guardman's ultimate goal is to perish in combat to atone for their ancestors' sin of rebelling from the Imperium (over five hundred years ago!).
• The Spartan Way: Even compared to other Astra Militarum formations, the Kreigers are notorious for their unforgiving training regimen. Real blades and live rounds are used from day one, and their casualty rates are eye-watering. As one would expect by now, no-one on Kreig sees anything wrong with this, since a recruit who dies in training was clearly too weak to fight for the Emperor and was better off removing himself as a burden from the army as a whole.
• Taking You with Me: They have this mentality ingrained into them. A unit given the 8th Edition "Duty Unto Death" Order allows all infantry or cavalry slain in a Fight phase to make a last attack before they perish in an attempt to invoke this trope.
• We Have Reserves: To atone for their ancestors' rebellion, the Korps willingly throw themselves into the most hellish of sieges, and their commanders will expend them like ammunition in human wave attacks. Upon graduating from boot camp soldiers take up numeric designations to ease the tallying of their deaths, and their culture of self-sacrifice is such that Commissars don't have to maintain discipline or morale, but keep the Korps from wasting their lives when a long-term strategy doesn't require it.

Mordian Iron Guard

"They may spend every off-duty minute polishing their shiny boots and marching up and down the parade ground in perfect formation, but don't let that fool you. These men are steel-eyed, cold-blooded killers and I'd as soon have a platoon of them in my force as I would a whole company of other troops."

—Gharan O'hen, Army 212 Chief of Staff, on the Mordian Iron Guard

Mordian is a harsh and dangerous planet of meager resources and eternal night, where survival is possible only under the strict rule of authority. This has caused the Mordian Iron Guard to develop a highly formalized and regimented culture, with a great emphasis on form, appearance and ritualized behavior. Their uniforms are highly decorative and showy, and their colors are blue and gold.

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• Beware the Silly Ones: If you've never faced Mordian troops before, you're tempted to laugh at the bright colors and the miles of braid on their uniforms, and even more tempted to believe that some idiot in the Munitorum sent a company of ceremonial troops to a battle front by mistake. Then the Mordians' line marches up to yours without flinching and unleashes clockwork volley fire, and you're tempted to surrender or run for your life.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Mordian Iron Guard is a very highly regimented unit of soldiers who eschew practical uniform colours in favour of wearing fancy brightly-coloured dress uniforms at all times, even in combat ^note it probably helps that their armor is described as being sewn into said dress uniforms. They also spend as much time marching around in parade formation as they do actual training and go so far as to march in goose-step while being fired on during combat. Everyone overlooks these oddities because they are a Badass Army with competence that gets belied by their appearances and have a reputation for being so disciplined that they rarely if ever break their showy formation.
• By-the-Book Cop: The Mordian Iron Guardsmen are known for being incredibly inflexible, usually not advancing or retreating unless specifically ordered to.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The soldiers of the Mordian Iron Guard proudly wear dress uniforms into battle and fight in close order drill, evocative of the Prussian military. Their uniforms also heavily resemble the dress uniforms of the United States Marine Corps.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: The Mordian Iron Guard come from a Night World subject to frequent Chaos incursions, so their parade-style dress may well be justified in helping tell friend from foe, and to keep the troops fighting and sane in the face of the mind-blasting horrors they are up against. Some enemies even make the mistake of assuming that the flashy colors mean the Mordians are a purely ceremonial force.
• Honor Before Reason: The Mordians' stoicism, unflinching commitment to duty and obedience to the chain of command are considered some of their greatest strengths, but in excess they can also become a problem. For instance, regiments that become isolated from the rest of the army and without explicit orders to retreat will stand their ground, fire into the enemy, fight hand-to-hand when their weapons run dry, and be cut down to the last rather than show anything theoretically construable as cowardice, which often ends in a lot of troops dying for no gain whatsoever; for all that the Imperium embraces its Martyrdom Culture, it still needs its soldiers to achieve something with their spent lives. This has become a particular problem in the Spinward Front of the Calixis Sector, where this behavior has resulted in a rapid and drastic dwindling of the Mordian regiments deployed there.
• Nerves of Steel: The Mordians do not break under fire. Not against daemons, Necrons, Orks, Tau, or Drukhari. The endless drilling and marching has instilled such iron discipline that the men of Mordia will keep fighting in their rigid formations even as they're being torn apart.
• Refuge in Audacity: This is in part why the Mordian Iron Guard is fond of ceremony and dress uniforms, as it distract enemies from the fact that they are definitely Not So Harmless.

Savlar Chem-Dogs

"You can keep that, mate! Won't fetch me more than a few credits on the market anyway. All this death-and-glory crap isn't really my business. I'm in it for the loot."

—Sergeant Joto of the XXIInd Savlar upon receiving a medal for bravery after the bloodbath at Trenia

The Savlar Chem-Dogs are a penal legion drawn from the prison planet of Savlar, where hardened criminals, amoral bandits and assorted scum are periodically rounded up from the prison compounds and shipped out to war with the promise that they can keep anything they take from the battlefield and with the chance to get away from Savlar's polluted environment. They specialize in fighting in highly toxic environments, and wear long coats and facial masks. Their colors are blue and yellow.

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• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Savlar Chem Dogs are a regiment of conscripted criminals and desperadoes known for its drug use and looting.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Yes, they're an ill-disciplind pack of gangers with zero respect for anyone, but they're masters of underground and hazardous condition fighting. All of them are recruited from a world where if you didn't learn to excel at both within a few weeks of arriving, you were dead. By the time the Administratum gets hold of them, they're already seasoned guerilla fighters and close-quarter battle specialists.
• Plunder: The Chem Dogs are infamous for taking everything that isn't nailed down to fund their drug habits.
• Robbing the Dead: The Savlar Chem-Dogs are particularly known for this, and their 3rd Edition Chapter Approved rules include a special rule that stops them from chasing down fleeing enemies as they scavenge anything from boot laces to ammunition for fallen enemies and squad mates.
• Token Evil Teammate: They're an Army of Thieves and Whores kept in line with "motivational drugs" and infamous for their ruthless looting tendencies.

Tallarn Desert Raiders

"The desert, from a distance, can seem to be little more than a barren waste, devoid of feature or variation. We who know the desert can see past this façade, for the dunes can conceal much of significance. Like the sandstorm, we can rise up swiftly to ravage our foes, and vanish as swiftly, leaving no trace of our presence but the damage wrought. As the burning sun and open sky, to walk before us unprepared is to invite doom. We are the desert, and the desert is merciless."

—Colonel Aram Shayan, Tallarn military philosopher

During the Horus Heresy, the renegade Iron Warriors invaded the agri-world of Tallarn and scourged it so throughly that nothing was left alive on its surface, turning the once-fertile planet into a desolate sandy waste. This is also left the entire planet deeply irradiated, and the following clash between loyalists and rebels was fought primarily with armored vehicles. Once Tallarn was retaken for the Imperium, the newly-founded Tallarn Desert Raiders made these events a core of their combat doctrine, becoming a regiment specialized in desert engagements, guerrilla tactics, and armored warfare. While not on the level of fundamentalism, the Tallarn are very pious and devout compared to most regiments. Their colors are desert brown and olive green.

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• Bling of War: The uniforms and gear of the Tallarn Desert Raiders are very decorative and ceremonial. Colored sashes are used to denote rank, while the weapons of officers are inset with gems and precious metals.
• Desert Warfare: As a result of coming from a planet of arid wastelands and endless sand seas, the Tallarn Desert Raiders are specialists in fighting in deserts and otherwise barren environments.
• Expy: They're Warhammer's version of the Fremen.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Bedouin raiders mixed with the Long Range Desert Group, especially their practice of wearing native headgear over their khaki uniforms◊. They also strongly resemble early 20th century Arab armies, such as Omar al-Mukhtar's Senussi rebels, the Riffians, and the Sharifian Army that rode with Lawrence of Arabia. Their piousness and well-honed combat skills is similar to the Afghan mujahideen, and their expertise in armored warfare is reminiscent of the Afrika Korps.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Tallarn Desert Raiders specialize in agile skirmishing tactics, darting among enemy formations to strike at vulnerable or important spots and then immediately withdrawing to seek out another opportunity.
• Horse of a Different Color: Tallarn Rough Riders typically use large, hairless alien animals called mukaali as mounts. These are originally native to the deserts of another planet, Goru-Prime, but have been adopted by the Desert Raiders to their great tolerance for heat, ability to subsist on rough forage and go for long periods of time on little food or water, broad feet adapted for moving over soft sand, and usefulness in carrying heavy loads. They make excellent desert steeds, with their only downside being that they're rather cowardly.
• Tank Goodness: While they're known for their guerrilla tactics, the Tallarn are equally as good at conventional armored warfare, being descended from the Imperial force that fought the largest tank battle in the history of the franchise on Tallarn.

Valhallan Ice Warriors

"As inexorable as the winter cold, as ruthless as the bitter frost, as certain as death — the Valhallans fight only for victory and the Emperor. All else is but a prelude."

—Colonel Kasteen of the 597th Valhallan Ice Warriors Regiment

The natives of the ice planet Valhalla are a grim and stoic people, shaped by the rigors of their planet and centuries of on-again, off-again skirmishing against Orkish invaders. On the battlefield, their troops are grim, determined fighters, willing to grind on through horrific losses and harsh conditions. The Ice Warriors specialize in cold-climate engagements, attrition warfare and anti-Ork operations, and their uniforms consist of long coats and furry hats.

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• Arch-Enemy: The Valhallans deeply despise the Orks due to the losses inflicted on them by the Waaagh that attacked their homeworld, and specialize in fighting and eradicating greenskin forces.
• Determinator: Valhallans do not give up easily, that's for certain. In addition to their regiments being willing to tolerate basically any number of losses to achieve a given objective, Valhallan guardsmen are individually notorious for their fierce determination and Patriotic Fervor encouraged by their culture. Given that Valhalla is a Death World who's inhabitants have survived by building underground cities to avoid the lethally cold temperatures above, and that said planet had to hold off a brutal planetary siege during an Ork Waagh, it's perhaps not too surprising.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Valhallans are grim and determined ice worlders using artillery bombardment and human wave attacks right out of the Great Patriotic War.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: The Ice Warriors' fluff tends to emphasize the ridiculous attrition and losses inflicted onto them by their use of human wave tactics, with Valhallans dying in droves even in successful campaigns.
• We Have Reserves: The Valhallan Ice Warriors come from a planet turned into an icy wasteland after a comet knocked them out of orbit and forced its inhabitants underground... then Orks invaded. They refused to give up and eventually pushed the Orks out. Based on the Red Army at its most infamous in World War II, their regiments are famed for considering a temperature which turns your breath into vapor to be brisk, stoic and resolute in holding ground such that they won't be routed and require annihilation to be displaced, and attack in large waves of infantry after heavy artillery bombardment of enemy positions.
• Winter Warfare: The Valhallans are specialists in cold-biome warfare, due to hailing from a fully glacial planet. They also consider snowball fights and snowman-making to be Serious Business.

Vostroyan Firstborn

"Quiet, you dogs! Are you weak-willed agri-worlders, or are you first-born sons of Vostroya? If you receive an order, you act as if the Emperor Himself gave it!"

—Sergeant Teodor Arinkev, berating new recruits recently arrived from Vostroya

During the Horus Heresy, the Mechanicum-sworn world of Vostroya refused to send levies to the war effort, preferring to keep its citizens to man the factories and manufactoria. It has kept penance for this act by giving up its noble families' firstborn sons to the Imperial Guard, which form the Vostroyan Firstborn. The Firstborn specialize in urban and winter warfare, and they wear red uniforms with tall fur hats.

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• Ancestral Weapon: The weapons used by the Firstborn are lovingly crafted masterworks of the weaponsmith's art that have been passed down through generations. To represent this, the 8th Edition rules give the Firstborn the "Heirloom Weaponry" Regimental Doctrine that increases the range of Heavy and Rapid Fire weapons. While Vostroyan troopers never return home after mustering, new recruits are usually assigned to the platoons of older family members, allowing them to be taken under the wings of distant uncles and older cousins who will eventually pass their weapons down to them.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Vostroya is a forge world full of famed weaponsmiths who are dedicated to their craft. Their weapons, in addition to being passed down through families for generations are particularly ornate in design, having wooden stocks and a sort of flintlock-era look, and often being accented with copper, gold and the like. Naturally, these weapons are often priceless relics, especially older ones which were made with better designs that are harder to replicate and are recovered whenever possible.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: With their tall hats and red uniforms, the Vostroyan Firstborn are based on the Cossacks, complete with the powerful clan ties and the tradition of passing down Ancestral Weapons worth more than the Guardsman wielding it.
• Sins of Our Fathers: The regiment is made up entirely of the firstborn sons of every Vostroyan family. This is in penance for the planet refusing to help out with the Imperium's War effort (as it would have crippled their economy) which almost led to them being declared traitors.
• Taking You with Me: The 9th Vostroyan Firstborn regiment was destroyed during the battle for Karak Prime against a splinter of Hive Fleet Moloch. The regiment had been driven back to a single hive, but the Tyranids were themselves racing against time to consume the planet and move on before its winter season set in, as the falling temperatures would weaken them too much to properly process the world and avoid starvation. The Vostroyans didn't have the manpower and munitions needed to hold out that long, however, and in order to avoid being overrun they resorted to opening the hive doors, waiting for the larger part of the Tyranids to swarm in, and detonating the hive's power plant, incinerating it, themselves, and about 85% of the horde. The remaining Tyranids starved to death over the coming months, killing off the splinter fleet.
• Urban Warfare: The Vostroyans are trained primarily in the ruins of abandoned urban areas and factory complexes on their homeworld, and as such are highly experienced in fighting in heavily built-up areas such as mundane cities, hives, or forge worlds.
• You Can't Go Home Again: While other Guard regimens can, if rarely, return to their homeworlds once their tours of duty are complete, the Vostroyan Firstborn will never see their homes again after being sent out into the stars. Gregorious Sebastev, the protagonist of Rebel Winter, was the first Vostroyan trooper in ten thousand years to see his homeworld again after deployment.
• Winter Warfare: Vostroya is a very cold world, only really habitable around its equator. This gives the Vostroyans a great deal of experience in protracted stays in cold environments, and they are often employed for campaigns in glacial worlds, polar areas, and protracted winter conditions.

Other Regiments

• Combat Pragmatist: The Jopall Indentured Squadrons are known to make use of underhanded tactics when fighting in order to secure victory, such as poisoning the enemy's water supply with toxic waste or allowing their foes to capture vehicles loaded with explosives that are then detonated remotely when in the enemy camp.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Just about every army in human history is represented somewhere:
  • The Praetorians wear pith helmets and red coats and fight in firing lines with wheeled field pieces.
  • The elite Elysian Drop Troopers take notes from just about every paratrooper and air-cav force in military history. However, their lasgun shares some similarities with the FAMAS, and their numerous failed campaigns despite their bravery could be seen as a nod toward the French paratroopers.
  • The Tanith First-and-Only are scouts and woodsmen beyond compare who wear blue facial markings and march to the sound of bagpipes.
  • The novel Fire Cast by Peter Fehervari introduces the Arkhan Confederates, a grey-clad, mechanized cavalry-loving bunch with absurd Biblical names who are basically the Confederate States of America by way of the Inglessa and Louisiana Militias from ∀ Gundam.
  • With their slightly smug can-do attitudes, expensive gear, elite training and immediately distinctive accents, the Harakoni Warhawks are a stars-and-stripes patch away from being American paratroopers with hellguns.
  • The Maccabian Janissaries, fanatically religious warriors whose helmets include ornate iron masks and who fight in tightly organized formation, are based on the armies of the Ottoman Empire.
  • All of these design elements make the Guard popular with fans of realistic tactical wargames, who tend to see this invoked by designing and painting their armies to look even more like certain historical forces.
• Fragile Speedster: On a regiment-wide level, the Elysian Drop Troops' use of grav-chutes and quick aerial vehicles makes them some of the fastest and most agile infantry in the Guard. However, it also means that they cannot use heavy vehicles, artillery or support troops that cannot keep up with them. They consequently struggle in protracted engagments and in holding onto captured territory, and need to rely on Hit-and-Run Tactics instead.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Elysian Drop Troops' high-mobility style of warfare means that they cannot use heavy armor that would struggle to keep up with them, or make much use of fortifications. Instead, they specialize in sudden overwhelming aerial attacks followed by protracted periods of skirmishing, guerrilla tactics and hit-and-run strikes, counting on their grav-chutes to maintain the mobility advantage, and try to gradually wear down their enemy instead of taking and holding land.
• Horse of a Different Color: Rough Riders units are traditionally mounted on horses, but depending on the world they're raised from they can ride on predatory birds, giant lizards, or stranger creatures. Of course, industrialized worlds' Rough Riders are often fielded on motorcycles.
• Indentured Servitude: The people of Jopall are born in debt to their government, and spend most of their lives working to pay it off. Many try to escape this by joining the Jopall Indentured Squadrons, allowing them to pay off their debts by serving and surviving a tour of duty around the galaxy.
• It's Raining Men: The Elysian regiments are particularly good at this — a typical drop operation will involve a few Valkyrie transports coming in fast and low to Fast Rope stormtroopers in to secure an initial landing zone, with larger numbers of higher-flying Valkyries following shortly in their wake to deploy reinforcements via grav-chutes.
• Put on a Bus: While the Cadians and Catachans have plastic kits available, the Mordians, Valhallans and Tallarns are stuck with metal models that haven't been updated since 2nd Edition, and regiments like the Praetorians are no longer available at all.
• Skull for a Head: The 54th Psian Jackals Militarum Tempestus regiment are famous for painting grinning skulls on their masked helmets in an attempt to intimidate their opponents.

Specialist Troops

Commissars

"Follow my example, or I will make you one!"

"I am an Imperial commissar. I will enflame the weak, support the wavering, guide the lost. I will be all things to all men who need me. But I will also punish without hesitation the incompetent, the cowardly, and the treasonous."

— Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt

The Officio Prefectus, also known as the Commissariat, is an organization of political officers that works alongside the Astra Militarum while maintaining its own command structure and bureaucracy. Commissars are recruited from the very best students of the Schola Progenium, and must show absolute faith in the Imperium and a strict dedication to the Imperial Creed. Attached to Militarum regiments, Commissars are expected to lead the warriors of the Imperium from the front, inspiring them to extreme feats of bravery, brutally driving them to fulfil their missions despite the odds, and delivering the ultimate punishment should they fail or show cowardice.

In addition to their battlefield role, Commissars are expected to fulfil multiple rear-echelon duties including the dissemination of information, maintaining morale, enforcing discipline, and keeping petty politics from hampering the duties of higher-ranking officers. In rare cases, a Commissar may also hold a military rank, although this is generally seen as a conflict of interest and only done in unusual circumstances. Far more common is for a highly experienced Lord Commissar to take command of an Astra Militarum force for a limited time, such as a single battle of campaign, so that they can use their years of experience to get the best out of those under his command.

To perform these tasks, Commissars are trained to be utterly fearless, and at times utterly ruthless. Commissars are expected to learn the culture and strengths of the regiments they serve alongside, so that they can better inspire and gain the respect of those he must command. They also have authority, however, to use whatever means to restore discipline, including summarily executing anyone, from the lowest grunt to the highest general, who fails in their duties. The threat of such harsh discipline is considered to be one of the best ways to quickly restore order in the heat of battle, but can lead to resentment amongst the common Guardsman.

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• Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards: The Commissariat generally recruits from orphans, especially those of Loyalist martyrs. However, to actually become a Commissar means meeting the exacting standards for the position: at the Schola Progenium, recruits are encouraged to work together to show how Mankind working together is strong... but are then ordered to execute any of their fellows who aren't quite up to snuff, to teach them that orders are sacrosanct and that mercy isn't offered to anyone, even old friends - hence why so few officers of this rank can be found on the front lines. As such, this is one of the major reasons why Commissars are so infamous both in-and out-of universe for being willing to kill anyone they view as lacking zeal.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Commissars are officers of a sub-branch of the Departmento Munitorum, the branch of the Administratum that handles military logistics. As Ciaphas Cain notes, when a commissar isn't executing soldiers or inspiring at the front, they're normally doing lots and lots of paperwork.
• Badass Longcoat: A Commissar's uniform typically includes a large black greatcoat with red edging and a high collar, although depending on the environment and the particular regiment the commissar is assigned to, this may be modified. In any case, this makes for a very imposing figure on the battlefield.
• Bad Boss: Commissars are outright trained to be this when necessary, using fear of their power and the threat of execution as a blunt tool to force morale.
• Bling of War: Commissar uniforms can get very flashy, especially those of Lord Commissars or Commissar-Generals, making them look like a weird cross between an SS officer and a commanding officer from the Napoleonic Wars. This has the benefit of making a strong impression with Imperial troops and the detriment of making themselves rather noticeable targets...
• Character Exaggeration:
  • Commissars often get portrayed as being ruthless, sociopathic nutcases who use summary execution as their answer to everything, even for minor offenses like chewing gum in formation. While there are certainly individuals like this, Ciaphas Cain^note HERO OF THE IMPERIUM! notes that Commissars are supposed to lead by example (using fear to keep troops in line should be distant Plan B) and summary executions should only be a last resort to maintain order during a crisis. Those who didn't get the memo tend to not last very long with the units they're assigned to, especially if they're paired up with the notoriously unruly Catachan Jungle Fighters.
  • At the other end of the scale, the fact that the most famous Commissars are characters like Cain and Gaunt, who are generally moral men who protect their soldiers to the last, leads to many fans assuming that all Commissars are like them. Cain and Gaunt are ideal Commissars (despite their faults), but they're also pretty exceptional ones.
• Characterization Marches On: In 2nd edition, Commissars were actually a fairly grounded portrayal of real political officers, being assigned by the Imperium's central institutions to coordinate between regiments from different worlds and keep everyone on the same page. They had no rules for executing their own, instead just letting units they led use their very high leadership of 10 due to their inspiring presence and disdain for the enemy. Over time, they drifted toward the memetic, execution-happy joyless disciplinarians and zealots hated by their own men. This shift essentially marked a change from an exaggerated portrayal of real Soviet commissars toward resembling Nazi propaganda about Soviet commissars.
• Commissar Cap: Commissars wear oversized peaked caps with prominent skull imagery, partly to distinguish them from others on the battlefield and partly to get it across that they are meant to be feared and respected. Orks like to collect them as trophies almost as much as they do Space Marine helmets.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: One of a commissar's duties is to ensure that a freshly mustered regiment meets at least the most basic of training requirements, especially in regiments that are largely made up of conscripted civilians who may have never even held a firearm before joining the Militarum.
• Deadly Graduation: The 6th/7th Edition Codex: Militarum Tempestus notes that one of the final tests that a Commissarial cadet could face before they graduate from the Schola Progenium is to execute their closest friend at the training facility. This test is to ensure that the cadet will not hesitate to execute the troopers he is assigned to watch over as he has already killed someone far more important to him.
• The Dreaded: To the rest of the Astra Militarum, from raw recruits to Generals. They're invested with authority that can only be gainsayed by Inquisitors, Arbites, and Astartes, and are not shy about using it if they think it's for the betterment of their regiment as a whole. They're also trained from adolescence to be fearless in battle and ruthless with their men (though newer fluff stresses they're also trained to be practical when it comes to the latter, since being a frothing tyrant at all times will eventually lead to you having a terrible accident).
• Fearless Fool: While Commissars are not actually fearless, they are trained to project the image of being so. Showing contempt for the potential danger the enemy poses may serve to reassure and inspire the Guardsmen they are charged with emboldening, so Commissars are given to showing casual disregard for the potential lethality of a situation.
• Four-Star Badass: Played with. Commissars are not officially in charge of the army, they're there to maintain discipline (also a reason why Ibram Gaunt is distrusted by some of the Tanith he commands, as a 'Colonel-Commissar' is an inherent conflict of interest). In practice, Commissars are expected to have deep tactical insight, as they will judge everyone, even the Lord Solar, and it's not unknown for Commissars to take charge of a regiment and lead an assault.
• Frontline General: While they're not the actual generals per se, Commissars are expected to lead from the front, to inspire and set an example to others. Hence they can usually be found spearheading an assault with their men.
• Hand Cannon:
  • Commissars typically wield bolt pistols (the standard sidearm of the Space Marines), scaled down for baseline humans. They use these as their particular method of execution for deserters and cowards.
  • The Astra Militarum relic known as The Emperor's Benediction is a masterwork bolt pistol available to Commissars that is said to possess a particularly bloodthirsty machine spirit that can sense cowardice. In the 8th Edition rules, the weapon has a higher rate of fire than a regular bolt pistol, does twice the damage and, befitting a weapon used to executing officers, ignores the usual restrictions for targeting characters.
• Happiness Is Mandatory: Imperial citizens are raised to believe Humanity Is Superior, that the Imperium can overcome any challenger, and that they will be more than a match for any opponent they face on the battlefield and to suggest otherwise is blasphemy. Unfortunately since this is a setting in which Puny Earthlings is played straight more often than not, the reality is somewhat bleaker than many have been lead to believe. Thus, Commissars are in charge of making sure that the Guardsmen's optimism about their success is enforced, even despite their evidence of their eyes, lest the entire facade collapse and their chances for success collapse with it.
• Jurisdiction Friction: In theory, the Commissariat is sanctioned to take control of any Imperial Guard or Imperial Navy assets as necessary. In practice, this causes a lot of political headaches between Commissars and high-ranking officers, the latter of whom do not appreciate having their command post taken from them. This also leads to a few awkward (and humorous) moments, such as Ciaphas Cain's personal aide bossing around generals and admirals with impunity. Despite being the lowest possible rank in the Imperial Guard, being part of a Commissar's staff means that he now outranks his superiors!
• Large Ham: Commissars tend to be portrayed as shouting constantly in order to convey orders and grandiose morale-boosting speeches to their troops. Justified in that they need to be loud to be heard over the din of combat and part of their job is to inspire confidence (and fear) in their men. Dramatically making boasts about the strength of the Imperium or threatening to execute those who fail the Emperor is all part of the job. Have a listen to the lines of a Commissar Lord from Dawn of War: half of his orders are grandiose declarations.
• Morton's Fork: While a Commissar being around doesn't inherently make this situation as common as Kubrik Chenkov (seen below under Famous Soldiers and Leaders), it remains a hardly-unheard-of conundrum for Guardsmen with a Commissar within earshot to be forced to choose between fighting against nigh-suicidal odds or being shot by the Commissar for refusing to fight against nigh-suicidal odds...unless they Take a Third Option and manage to kill the Commissar first to get the opportunity to flee for their lives.
• The Neidermeyer: Technically speaking, the Commissariat is not within the Imperial Guard chain of command. Still, few Guard regiments actually appreciate the presence of a political officer, with many outright hating their Commissars. The truth is rather complicated: while Commissars' required duties will hardly make many friends, a lot of them really do deserve the resentment of the troops they are attached to. The rare Commissar who both does his job well and has the utmost respect and admiration from their men is an extremely valuable asset to the Imperial military.
• Obvious Rule Patch: For a while, the way the rules were worded allowed for a Commissar to execute himself to prevent a nearby unit from falling back. This was changed to limit summary execution to its intended purpose.
• The Political Officer: Commissars are each a product of the Schola Progenium, where they are indoctrinated to hold the Imperial Creed above life itself and given an iron will to see the Imperium triumphant. Their role is to ensure that the Imperial forces in-theater have the will to get the job done, no matter how daunting the odds are, and are granted full authority over life and death to see that will enforced. Like their real-life Soviet counterparts, the Commissars dress in distinctive peaked caps and longcoats, their primary job is motivating the troops, and enforce the Imperial line in place of the party line across the unit.
• Propaganda Machine: The Commissariat's role of ensuring the Imperial Guard have the will to get the job done extends beyond the common image of line Commissars shooting deserters or Commissar Lords sitting in on planning sessions to ensure officers are willing to make the necessary sacrifices. They also do such things as publish information to be read to the troops educating them on the importance of the current campaign, and cutting off the rumor mill by relating news from different parts of the front. Said information and news tends to put the most optimistic spin on everything they can to keep the troops' spirits up. Even if major sections of those reports are fabrications, a few sermons from the preachers about the blessed mind being too small for doubt is enough to convince any remaining nay-sayers.
• Putting on the Reich: Commissars' black uniforms, greatcoats and peaked caps are very reminiscent of SS uniforms. This is both to make them stand out from the Guardsmen they fight alongside and to be seen as a symbol of authority and power. It also has an unfortunate side effect of making them targets. Orks especially like to home in on Commissars, partly because to them any 'umie that's wearing clothes that makes them stand out must be able to give a good fight and partly because their caps make great trophies.
• Red Armband of Leadership: Ciaphas Cain, a Commissar himself, notes several times in the eponymous novels starring him that a Commissar's sigil of office is a red sash. The sash is depicted in the cover art for the Ciaphas Cain and Gaunt's Ghosts books, but is generally not seen in the models.
• Rousing Speech: Commissars are trained to give these, to inspire the Guardsmen they watch over to acts of valor. Those Commissars present alongside an officer generally prefer to let the officer give the rousing speeches instead to help reinforce their authority, though one who is lacking in skill can expect the Commissar to give them a few pointers when the troops are out of earshot.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The Imperium is smart enough to keep Commissars around specifically to prevent cowardice or desertions. However, a squad that's had enough of whatever situation they're in will sometimes... remove the Commissar from his position and get the hell out of dodge. In-game, a unit that's been taken over by a Commissar after a failed Morale check gets a boost to its Leadership stat, but if it fails another Morale check despite the boost, it's removed from play, representing the soldiers fragging said Commissar and deserting.
• Sword of Damocles: Commissars act as human ones. The fact that they have authority to execute virtually anyone if they judge their cravenness, incompetence, or other vice sufficient to negatively impact the Imperial war effort is used to motivate those around them to not let themselves be seen as slipping in their duty.
• Too Dumb to Live: As noted by both Ciaphas Cain and Ibram Gaunt, the stereotypical trigger-happy commissar that uses summary execution frequently tends to "die tragically several kilometers from the frontlines." No matter how much authority and intimidation factor a Commissar may have, he is but one man among countless other Guardsmen, and trained soldiers are perfectly capable of silencing a Commissar that's shot one too many of their friends.
• Weapon for Intimidation: One of the reasons Commissars tend to favor bolt pistols is simply because of how loud and messy their effects are, and when they need to control through fear simply having one at hand goes a long way.
• Witch Hunt: The Commissariat is tasked with maintaining the discipline, competence, and purity of the Imperium's troops. The last part involves purging anyone who has fallen to the Ruinous Powers (or is suspected to have done so), which makes them the de facto Judge, Jury, and Executioner when there are no Inquisitors, Adeptus Sororitas, or other heresy-purging groups around.
• You Are in Command Now: Invoked by themselves. When a squad's morale breaks, an Imperial Guard player can choose to have the nearest Commissar execute the ranking officer and rally the squad themselves, taking personal command of that unit.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • Commissars will often proclaim how the soldiers or commanders they're about to execute have failed the Guard and/or the Emperor, to make it very clear why that trigger is about to be pulled.
  • An in-game rule. Units that fail a leadership test will have the Commissar execute a random Guardsman depending on a dice roll so they automatically pass the test. Recently nerfed to simply be a reroll, but that's still useful. In addition, a Commissar lets units use his leadership, granting them a 1-2 point buff. A 4 point buff in the case of Conscripts, which functionally means 4 more conscripts have to die before they even THINK of running.

Sanctioned Psykers

A Primaris Psyker.

"They have their uses, surely, but they can never be trusted. Their continued presence is a threat to our very souls, and no matter how useful they are, I fear that just by associating with them, we are already damned."

—Unnamed Imperial Guard officer

Psykers who have been subjected to the Imperium's ruthless screening, training and winnowing and deemed safe for service in its armies. Psykers are typically attached to Guard regiments but remain a breed apart from their fellow soldiers, feared and distrusted off the battlefield but far more valuable than their unmutated companions when their powers are needed to sow destruction upon the enemy. Most psykers are grouped into Wyrdvane squads, working together to boost their power and counteract each other's weaknesses; only a few are sufficiently powerful and controlled to be considered Primaris Psykers, capable of working alone.

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• Bald Mystic: Almost to the last, models for Imperial Pyskers of all talents and affiliation show them with smooth bald domes.
• Magic Staff: Primaris Psykers channel their powers through staves made of psycho-reactive metal, typically topped with aquilae and other icons of Imperial power. They are made to do this as part of their indoctrination in order to keep their powers channeled and contained.
• Mystical High Collar: The 2nd Edition models for Psykers have high, flaring and decorated coat collars about twice as tall as their wearers' heads.
• Power Limiter: Sanctioned Pyskers carry a number of these at all times, ranging from worn gadgets that bleed off psychic power to neurological grafts that foster greater resistance to malign influences at the cost of dulling their powers. The result is a psyker of lesser power than they'd naturally have, but who is much less likely to be spontaneously possessed by a daemon.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: One of the three models for the Wyrdvane is standing with his hand to his temple as if focusing his power.
• Psychic Powers: The powers that they nurture are for the most part of the kind useful in battle, such as crushing telekinetic force or discharges of destructive energy.

Tempestus Scions

"Storm Troopers work best under maximum pressure, maximum intensity, and maximum danger. When these things are shared with others, they help form a bond stronger than any tie known in the galaxy."

—Attributed to an unnamed Storm Trooper officer.

Stormtroopers, or formally Militarum Tempestus Scions, are orphans plucked from nurseries to be trained in the Schola Progenium as fanatically-loyal special forces units. They're outfitted with improved versions of a Guardsman's wargear such as the hot-shot lasgun, popularly called the hellgun, clad in advanced body armor, and organized into specialized and close-knit squads meant for high-risk deployements in contested battlezones and behind enemy lines.

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• Ammunition Backpack: Most patterns of hotshot lasgun are powered by a large and bulky power pack carried on the wielder's back and give the Scions of the Militarum Tempestus a distinct silhouette compared to their regular line infantry comrades.
• Arch-Enemy: Sometimes an alien invasion will result in an entire generation of children being orphaned in a single incident and inducted into the Schola Progenium together. Once these orphans graduate, they are often formed into a single regiment of Tempestus Scions as such regiments have been found to produce superior results when facing the xenos that slaughtered their parents^note this isn't reflected in the in-game rules, however.
• Elite Mooks: Stormtroopers receive advanced training from their early childhoods, are outfitted with improved versions of a Guardsman's wargear, and are intended for use in high-risk missions as elite, indepdendent combat squads. This earns them monikers such as "Toy Soldiers" and "Glory Boys" from the resentful rank-and-file.
• Fast-Roping: Stormtroopers tend to train heavily in this technique and are the most likely Guard forces to enter the battlefield by rappelling down from a flying transport, forgoing a more cautious insertion when speed of deployment is a priority.
• Shout-Out: The original plastic Storm Troopers and some of the head options for the Tempestus Scion models wear military berets that, in the official colour scheme, are painted dark red. This is a reference to the maroon berets of the British Parachute Regiment who the Storm Troopers/Scions were loosely based on.
• Super-Soldier: Although not the equals of an Astartes, the Scions are hand-picked from the most capable guardsmen, subjected to rigorous training and given minor cybernetic enhancements, and equipped with the finest weapons available. They are entrusted with delicate operations such as assaults on heavily fortified positions or infiltrating behind enemy lines, usually deployed by Valkyrie gunships.

Famous Soldiers and Leaders

Even amidst the teeming, numberless tide of the Imperial Guard, some individuals stand out above all others.

Lord Castellan Ursakar E. Creed and Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell

What do I ask of my officers? Merely that they do their duty with fire in their bellies and a prayer on their lips.

A mysterious orphan found in the ruins of Kasr Gallan, Ursakar Creed was adopted by the 8th Cadian Regiment. Joining the regiment's Whiteshield Conscripts, Creed's genius grasp of tactics and his natural leadership abilities saw him rise through the ranks to become Cadia's greatest general, the loyal and strict Colour Sergeant Jarran Kell always at his side. Following the death of the Cadian High Command at Tyrok Fields, Creed was named Commander-in-Chief and Lord Castellan of Cadia, responsible for the defence of the most important fortress-world in the Imperium. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful, and Colour Sergeant Kell lost his life, Creed's courage and tactical brilliance held off the forces of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade far longer than anyone expected. While Creed himself was not amongst the forces who evacuated from Cadia before the end, the Lord Castellan's defiance managed to turn the fallen world into a rallying cry for the beleaguered Imperium.

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• Ambiguously Gay: It's never stated outright, but it's sometimes hinted that the two of them are lovers. If true, it isn't detracting from their masculinity.
• And I Must Scream: As seen in Hammer and Bolter, Creed is currently an exhibit in Trazyn the Infinite's carefully, curated collection; alive but incapable of movement or escape. Trazyn mockingly placed him on a pedestal marked "The Last Stand of Ursakar Creed".
• An Arm and a Leg: During the Fall of Cadia, Creed lost his arm to Abaddon when fighting him together with Trazyn, Celestine and Greyfax.
• Coat Cape: Creed's model takes the imagery of this one step further by putting a braided closure at the neck of his greatcoat.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Creed's model has a boxy face and profile, a cigar in his hand, and a scowl on his face, making him look rather like Winston Churchill.
• Defiant to the End: One of Kell's knees was shattered and Abaddon's hoisting him into the air by his throat, but it doesn't stop Kell from spitting blood in Abaddon's face before stating "Cadia stands."
• Disappeared Dad: Creed to Ursula, though not by choice as Ursula's mother didn't want her to follow her father into the Militarum and convinced him to not be part of her life. As for the results, see below.
• Dual Wielding: Crossing over a bit with Sword and Fist, Jarran is armed with a power sword and a power fist.
• A Father to His Men: In addition to being a respected strategist that frequently led from the front, Creed was reputed to know when to turn a blind eye in unofficial matters.
• Foreshadowing: When he was found by those soldiers, the child Creed was clutching a pistol in one hand and a copy of De Gloria Macharius, a book about the Imperium's greatest general, in the other.
• Frontline General: Current leader of all Cadian forces, Creed nonetheless still often leads from the front.
• Going Down with the Ship: In Creed's case, it's more like going down with all of Cadia after Abaddon destroyed it...provided Trazyn didn't whisk him off to his museum at the last second.
• Guns Akimbo: Creed wields a pair of hot-shot laspistols; one is the weapon he was found with as an orphan, while the other is a far more ornate pistol. In those editions where a model could only fire a single weapon a turn he had a special rule that allowed him to shoot both at the same time.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kell made sure that Creed could escape from a dire situation at the cost of getting caught with Abaddon the Despoiler, who kills him by shattering his spine.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: If Creed and Kell are not actually in a relationship, they are at least men who have always stood together in their military service since they first met in the Whiteshields.
• Killed Off for Real: Kell got killed trying to save Creed from Abaddon during the Fall of Cadia.
• Last Stand: Creed was supposed to have one of these along with the Cadian 8th, but "a metal giant in a scaled cloak" apparently whisked him away from an imminent demise on the dying Cadia. He'd have been better off dead.
• Meaningful Name: Ursakar, anyone?
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Creed is quiet and stoic while Kell is talkative and personally ensures Creed's orders reach his troops around him by yelling them out and drowning out the din of the battlefield.
• Rugged Scar: Creed has a long scar going through his forehead and eye.
• Up Through the Ranks: Creed began his military career straight from the bottom, surviving as a Whiteshield to eventually become Lord Castellan. He met Kell in the Whiteshields.
• Self-Made Man: Creed was an orphan without any sort of connections whatsoever, but nonetheless became Lord Castellan and even made General while he was forty. It's said that he'd have rose even higher while that relatively-young age for a General if it weren't for his lowly background.
• Sergeant Rock: Kell is gregarious and never fails to bring order out of the chaos of battle to the Cadian troops around him by relating Creed's commands to them despite how noisy things usually are.
• The Strategist: Creed's had a number of abilities such as Master Strategist or Tactical Genius that let him do surprising things with his forces. Fans have exaggerated this to make Creed a Mary Tzu capable of hiding super-heavy battle tanks behind lightposts or Titans in swimming pools.

Knight Commander Pask, Cadia's Armoured Blade

Target sighted! Red Corsairs Predator left of the bunker. See the repair seam on the turret? Steady. Fire! Good shot. Driver, AT mines, steer left now. Gunner! Enemy infantry in crater, eleven o'clock. High explosive, fire! Sponson gunners keep an eye out, there's plenty more where they came from...

— Internal comm log, "Hand of Steel," during Operation Retort (second assault on Fort Lycoss)

Knight Commander Pask is Cadia's most renowned tank ace, with prestigious skill laying waste to countless enemy armoured vehicles; even heretic Titans have fallen to tanks under his command. Pask began his career as a simple gunnery seneschal before rising through the ranks to become the Commander of the 423rd Cadian Armoured Regiment. Rather than accept a more prestigious vehicle, Pask always commands his forces from a Leman Russ Battle Tank that he names the Hand of Steel. Although he wasn't able to fight in defence of his doomed home world, Pask has turned his shame into a cold resolve to destroy Abaddon and his forces.

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• Almighty Janitor: Pask's is a mere Commander but his skill as a tank gunner is so important (and indeed, Pask can destroy Titans with his Leman Russ) he overrides a Colonel in terms of priority when planetary evacuation happens.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • Pask's first demonstration of being good at finding these was when a Ork Deff Rolla crunched the turret of the tank he was in and pulped his commander. Pask took command and managed to get the tank's hull Lascannon aimed at a poorly-welded armour joint on the Deff Rolla, causing the vehicle to flip over from its engines exploding after impact.
  • He pulled off an even more impressive feat by shooting a shell from his tank to strike a Chaos Titan's plasma reactor core, causing it to melt down.
• Boring, but Practical: Despite his accomplishments leading him to be eligible for command of the massive Baneblade tanks after his first Leman Russ tank was rendered unsalvageable from combat with Eldar Fire Prisms, he had the Leman Russ replaced with another and continues to utilize all variants of the Leman Russ.
  • Pask's secret as a tank gunner? "Shoot first and don't miss."
• Combat Pragmatism: Pask's go-to tactic is to engage at maximum range and destroy the enemy before they have a chance to destroy him. He also uses his allied tanks as cover if need be.
• Don't Think, Feel: Pask's skill at using a Leman Russ is legendary and comes more from instinct than experience. It's Deconstructed when it is noted that Pask makes for a poor commander and trainer because he himself cannot put into words how he's so good, leaving his squadmates behind in terms of efficiency, and is actually only good at piloting his own tank, not coordinating a battle with his squad.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Being able to consistently hit other moving tanks at maximum range is what makes Pask such a legend in the Astra Militarum.
• It's Going Down: Pask has a habit of getting his Leman Russ destroyed during any military campaign while surviving himself despite low odds.
• The Leader: Subverted, although he's the leader of his own squadron of elite tank gunners, Pask is noted for not being particularly able as a leader. Having no attachment to his men, Pask doesn't bother training them, neither does he bother give orders since he prefers to focus on his tank only, and occasionally uses other tanks as cover. His squadron follows him nonetheless.
• Mirror Character: To the Tau tank commander known as Longstrike. Both are highly skilled tank aces who won fame by taking out a Titan in a standard-issue tank, and both refuse to move up the chain of command despite their merits already warranting a higher rank.
• My Greatest Failure: Pask wasn't able to make it back to Cadia when Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade came knocking. In the wake of its destruction, he has since turned his grief into righteous anger against the forces of Chaos.
• Named Weapons: Whatever tank Pask is using will be officially renamed the Hand of Steel.
• Nerves of Steel: Despite having his turret crushed in a battle, he still managed to get his tank to take out a Deff Rolla and 14 other Ork armoured vehicles.
• Rugged Scar: Even while fighting from in a tank, his face is heavily scarred.

Sergeant Lukas Bastonne

A Cadian noble who chose the life of a regular Guardsman over becoming a Commissioned Officer, Lukas Bastonne has risen to become a sergeant beloved by his men for his loyalty towards the troops under his command. Possessing a near perfect memory, Bastonne can remember the face of every soldier to die while under his command and he does everything he can to prevent any more from joining the ever-growing list.

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• Blessed with Suck: His Eidetic Memory makes tactics easy for him which paved the way for him to be the most decorated NCO in the Cadian Shock Troopers. It also causes him to remember every Guardsman who's ever died under his command.
• Broken Ace: Outwardly, he is the face of Cadia's dutiful professionalism. Inside, he's rumored to be tormented by the faces of his dead troops that he can never forget in nightmares and has tattooed the names of every one of them on his body in memory.
• Cursed with Awesome: But hey, he's still the most decorated NCO in the Cadian Shock Troopers and remains alive right? The text describing him gives both interpretations.
• Eidetic Memory: Comes in handy for making your tactics adapt to the chaotic battlefield.
• A Father to His Men: Leads by example, is respected by pretty much everyone above, around and below him, and famously returned for a wounded squad member after having extracted the mission's rescue target of an Imperial Governor. Too bad the trooper turned out to be have been infected by Chaos.
• Meaningful Name: Lukas' last name is a perfect homophone for the town of Bastogne, which was the site of the initial thrust of the Battle of the Bulge. And if you know your World War 2 history...
• No One Gets Left Behind: Pulled it off, only for that one to have been found infected by Chaos and requiring a Mercy Kill.
• Put on a Bus: Does not appear in the 7th Edition Codex.
• Rugged Scar: Portrayed with a scar going down from his forehead past one of his eyes.
• Self-Made Man: Born in a family of the Cadian nobility which entitled him to join as a commissioned officer, but he instead entered the ranks of the Guard from the bottom as a Guardsman to quickly prove him worthy of the Sergeant rank.
• Sergeant Rock: Described as dutiful to the point of fanatical, and he's definitely very in control in combat, thanks to his Eidetic Memory letting him understand how the battle is going clearly.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Bastonne's famous for going back for a wounded trooper after having completed the main mission of extracting an Imperial Governor. While he returned home to much celebration, the man he went back for turned out to have been infected by Chaos and had to be Mercy Killed on the trip back.
• The Strategist: Due to his Eidetic Memory, he's masterful at making tactics for his squad to pull through.

Colonel "Iron Hand" Straken, Catachan's Man of Adamantium

"I'll show you how to fight the Emperor's enemies like real soldiers."

Colonel Straken began life as a simple Catachan Guardsman and fought his way up through the ranks to become the commander of the Catachan II regiment, known as the "Green Vipers". Preferring to fight at the forefront of a battle, Straken has suffered innumerable wounds throughout his career and now sports numerous bionic replacements. Holding his men to his own tough standards, Colonel Straken will put those under his command through training drills considered harsh, even by the standards of the sturdy Catachans, but his men are still fiercely loyal to their commander as he is more than willing to suffer alongside them.

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• Colonel Badass: Leads his regiment from the front. Among his numerous battles he's kicked ass through, his nom de guerre comes from the bionic replacement of his right arm after a Miral Land Shark tore it off. He has claimed to have torn the creature's throat out with his own teeth in turn.
• Covered in Scars: He's been injured more than a few times and has such has these in addition to other cybernetic replacements aside from his famous arm.
• A Father to His Men: Famed for never leaving a downed man behind, with a story being that he literally dragged a wounded trooper with him halfway across a continent without stopping at all. His troops reciprocate the care to and always grab him to be quickly patched up and sent back into the fray when he gets injured himself. He tactically does not throw his regiment into conflicts of pointlessness.
• Heroic Build: Like every Catachan, he's mostly muscle and sinew.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Most of his body is made up of bionics to replace the damaged flesh. Namely the right side of his body (including his arm) and his left eye
• Made of Iron: Jokes about his bionics and nickname aside, he's heavily battle-scarred and after a creature that tore off his entire right arm, he just killed it back.
• Man Bites Man: Claims to have used his teeth on the throat of the Land Shark that took off his right arm. Some suspect this was more referring to the Catachan combat knife called "Catachan Fang" he would have had with him.
• No One Gets Left Behind: One of the reasons he is so beloved by his men is that Straken refuses to abandon wounded soldiers with one story from his background information seeing the Colonel drag a wounded trooper across half a continent to get them back to Imperial lines.
• Training from Hell: Catachans are renowned for being some of the toughest Guardsmen in the Imperium, yet even they struggle with Straken's training. There have even been instances where the majority of a platoon vomit and pass-out after one of Straken's light jogs.

Guardsman Sly Marbo, the One-Man Army

A member of the highly elite Catachan veterans known as the Catachan Devils, Sly Marbo is the most lethal fighter and skilled infiltrator to come off the Death World of Catachan. A solitary individual, Marbo prefers to work alone, disappearing silently behind enemy lines to fulfil any mission he is given. Capable of taking on entire strike forces of elite enemy troopers, Marbo has never been known to have failed in his mission and has even felled one of the daemonic Banelord Titans of Khorne. Since the outbreak of the 13th Black Crusade, Sly Marbo is thought to be waging his own private war against the forces of Chaos but the Catachan High Command have sealed all records of his actions.

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• The Ahnold: With Catachans are all based on 80s action stars in jungle movies, one illustration was very clearly Stallone with a headband◊. He subverts the usual Large Ham traits by being The Quiet One.
• The Bus Came Back: Due to his popularity, despite not appearing in the Codex, Marbo received official downloadable rules for the Gaiden Game Shadow War: Armageddon and the 7th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 in May 2017. He also received an updated model and rules for 8th Edition in December 2017.
• Captain Morgan Pose: His 2017 model is doing this on a severed Ork head.
• Chest of Medals: Averted. Marbo has been given every medal in the Imperium at least once, and most many times over, but he's so far gone that he's long past caring. He just dumps them in the trunk and moves on.
• Cold Sniper: Famed sniping skills... and doesn't work with anyone else.
• Demolitions Expert: Has a demo charge to use in the tabletop.
• Empty Shell: Those who hang out with Marbo say that he's terrifyingly, horribly dead inside.
• Expy: As a silent, One-Man Army from a Vietnam war themed Militarum regiment, Sly Marbo is the Warhammer 40,000 equivalent of John Rambo. In addition to this, not only is Marbo an anagram of Rambo, his first name is taken from a nickname for Sylvester Stallone^note the actor who plays Rambo and the 3rd Edition artwork for the character strongly resembles Stallone.
• I Work Alone: Not explicitly said by him, but he is not part of any Imperial Guard regiment.
• Memetic Badass: In-Universe no less, with his fellow Guardmen regaling each other with tall tales of his feats, some of which are even true.
• One-Man Army: Sly Marbo is not part of any regiment and attacks enemy forces on his own through guerilla tactics. So effective is he at such operations, Marbo has even gained the moniker 'The One Man Army'.
• Put on a Bus: Sly was removed as a playable character for the 6th Edition Codex: Astra Militarum sourcebook.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Part of his obvious inspiration. The constant wars have made him an empty madman who does nothing but kill. It's why he's never been promoted.
• Significant Anagram: Marbo is just an anagram of Rambo.
• Sniper Pistol: His "Ripper Pistol" has stats that, for all intents and purposes, pretty much make it a short-ranged sniper rifle.
• Sword and Gun: His ranged and close-combat weapons are his Ripper Pistol and Envenomed Blade.
• Stealth Expert: No better way to be a One-Man Army with literally no one else with you. One of his rules lets him disappear and reappear in a different location on the next turn.
• Universal Poison: The Envenomed part of his Envenomed Blade helps against pretty much any infantry.

Gunnery Sergeant Harker, the Stonetooth Devil

"Back home, I once fancied me a pair of Catachan Devil boots. Killed me half a dozen of the great ugly critters but never found a single one that wore any!"

—"Stonetooth" Harker, to a doubtful Munitorum staffer.

Famous for his incredible strength and courage, the musclebound Sergeant "Stonetooth" Harker of the Catachan II regiment leads Harker's Hellraisers, a squad of the highly elite Catachan Devil Veteran Squads. What he lacks in intelligence, Harker more than makes up for with simple guts and an almost instinctual talent for violence and warfare.

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• BFG: Harker's weapon is a heavy bolter, a weapon that normally takes a team of two men to fire, that he carries as easily as a regular Guardsman wields a lasgun. Harker can even fire the weapon accurately on the move, something that even Astartes struggle with without technological support. This is represented in the 8th Edition rules by Harker's heavy bolter being an Assault Weapon^note meaning it can be fired on the move rather than a Heavy Weapon^note weapons that usually suffer a To Hit penalty when moved.
• The Big Guy: Even among Catachans, he's frakkin' huge and strong.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: The only way we can explain how he effortlessly wields a heavy bolter despite being an entirely unaugmented human being. Heck, the superhuman Space Marines struggle to handle the weapon.
• Choke Holds: A pack of Tyranid Raveners once burst out of the ground to attack his squad. He jumped onto the back of the nearest one and crushed its neck with his prodigious biceps.
• I Call It "Vera": His heavy bolter is named "Payback".
• Made of Iron: The lore describes him as such, however he only has Toughness 3 (same as any other Guardsman).
  "All Catachans have a reputation for being tough, but Harker is perhaps the hardest of them all. While a rumour claiming he chews glass instead of tobacco might be false, he has certainly been known to place his hands into the fire and ignore it, and easily shrug off blade cuts or gunshot wounds. For Harker, pain and bleeding are concerns for weedier soldiers."

  — Codex: Imperial Guard (5th Edition)
• Sergeant Rock: The rock part being especially appropriate.

Commissar Sebastian Yarrick, Hero of Hades Hive

I have followed you too far to fail now, Ghazghkull Thraka. I bear the gift of death. You cannot outrun me. There's no place in this universe where you can hide. I have waited a long time for vengeance. I'm tired but not so tired I cannot kill you. Maybe then I won't see the faces of the dead. Maybe then I'll be able to sleep.

The legendary Commissar whose defiance and leadership abilities proved crucial to the Imperial defence against the forces of the Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Thraka during the Second and Third Wars for Armageddon, Sebastian Yarrick is a living legend to the Guardsmen of the Astra Militarum. A brilliant strategist, a determined warrior and an inspiring leader, Old Man Yarrick has never let his advancing age stop him from doing his duty and has sworn to never rest until Ghazghkull has been vanquished once and for all, and has hunted the Beast of Armageddon across the galaxy.

Commissar Yarrick is the central character in a series novels, novellas and short stories by David Annandale, many of which have been collected into the book Yarrick: The Omnibus.

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• Arch-Nemesis: Of the Ork Warboss Ghazghkull mag Uruk Thraka, and the feeling is mutual. However, Ghazghkull sees Yarrick as a Worthy Opponent because of how long and how well Yarrick's fought against him, to the point that he actually had Yarrick released from capture (after an extended session of slave labor and light torture) because he relished the chance to fight Yarrick again more than the opportunity to kill him. It's a sentiment Yarrick doesn't share.
• Art Evolution: As one of the special characters that has had a longstanding presence on the tabletop throughout the editions, Yarrick has had more than one model. Earlier editions featured him with a sleeker Power Klaw◊ in a Stab the Sky pose with it. This was to accommodate the pewter casting techniques used at the time. Multi-part casting techniques have since given him a much broader kind of pose, as well as updating his Klaw to reflect the Art Evolution the Orks had gone through in the meantime.
• Badass Boast: In Hammer and Bolter, Yarrick loses his arm to Ork Warlord Ugulhard. He promtply kills Ugulhard, cuts off his arm and raises the Power Klaw for all to see, and states "Like for like... which part are you willing to give me?" The Orks flee from this display.
• Badass Normal: Prior to his mechanical augmentations and rejuvination treatments, Yarrick was just a normal human. Yet he was able to hold off an entire Ork planetary invasion, lose his arm during said invasion, kill the offender in retaliation, inspire his men to fight the Orks and keep fighting with an entire arm removed. It's quite telling that some of those above an inquisitor, even Astartes Captains and Chapter Masters respect, listen to and even defend him from their more arrogant peers.
• BFG: His main firearm is not just any bolt pistol like the ones used by most Commissars, but an actual storm bolter. What's even more impressive is that he's carrying the weapon and firing it with one hand, something that should only be possible if he were an Astartes or wearing Power Armor (which he isn't).
• The Chosen Many: Having done it himself, Yarrick was originally a hardline believer in Guardsmen rising up the ranks in skill and expertise, ensuring a potentially endless supply of dedicated protectors for the Imperium at all stations provided recruitment remained steady. Seeing the morale and sanity of whole armies plummet in the face of terrifying odds whether they come from Chaos or the Orks, the commissar eventually realized the value in "legends" for troops to rally behind, and curates his image to become one himself.
• Dead All Along: There are a couple of theories, occasionally acknowledged in the fluff itself, that Yarrick isn't exactly what you'd call "alive" anymore. One is that he's being kept alive by the collective will of the Orks, who believe he cannot die (which is even reflected in his rules on the tabletop). An even more disturbing possibility is that the real Sebastian Yarrick has been dead for centuries and the Yarrick we know is actually a sort of daemon, spawned from the Warp by the Orks' gestalt psychic energy so that there will always be a Commissar Yarrick for the 'ardest of Orks to have a good scrap with.
• Deadly Gaze: Rumors sprung up among the Orks that Yarrick can kill with a look, which is what led him to get the Bale Eye.
• Dented Iron: Yarrick has survived more injury than any one man ought to be able to. His Bale Eye and Power Klaw are just the most visible manifestations of this.
• The Dreaded: Most Orks will actively avoid facing Yarrick in battle. Source material also rather heavily implies that the Orks' regarding him as an unkillable badass has turned him into an unkillable badass. Games Workshop paint jobs of his model always give his skin a greenish tinge, and in the game, if his model is killed against an Ork army, it stands a good chance of getting back up again.
• Eye Beams: After hearing that the Orks assaulting Hades Hive believed he could kill with a glance, Yarrick capitalised on the superstitious nature of the greenskins by having his lost left eye replaced with the Bale Eye. This advanced bionic implant incorporates a high-powered, but short-ranged, laser. In the 8th Edition rules, the laser blast unleashed by the Bale Eye is the equivalent of a half-range laspistol with superior Armour Penetration.
• Foreshadowing: Yarrick losing his arm was set in motion by the climax of Yarrick: Imperial Creed, when he killed a Tzeentchian daemon which seized his right arm during the struggle. From then on he occasionally felt phantom pains in the arm, especially when fighting Orks, and when he finally confronts the Warboss who will eventually cut off his arm, he feels those pains more sharply than ever and realizes that whatever was about to happen was a fate the daemon had set in motion.
• Frontline General: Sebastian Yarrick can be found in the thick of the battle, and isn't afraid to enter CQC with Orks. He even sometimes personally leads the charge against them.
• Hidden Depths: One story notes that while most people think he's an infallable, fearless badass, those that know him personally says that he cries for the souls lost in the conflict, even if only in private.
• It's Personal: Due to having been hunted by them in his youth after they invaded his home planet of Taos III, Yarrick became deeply familiar with Ork culture, tactics, and learned a smidgen of their language. This personal enmity with them cooled as he grew older, and he was fine being deployed to fight anything the Imperium pointed him at, but the grudge was reignited full force once he crossed paths with Ghazghkull on Armageddon.
• Made of Iron: Yarrick has taken an enormous amount of punishment in his career, even near-fatal injuries, but is still going.
• Named After Somebody Famous: His parents named him after the legendary Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor.
• Nightmare Fuel: At the end of Chains of Golgotha, when Ghazghkull releases Yarrick from captivity, Yarrick describes their last exchange as such.
  [...] there is one memory that, above all, haunts me. By day, it is a goad to action. By night, it murders sleep. It lives with me always, the proof that there could hardly be a more terrible threat to the Imperium than this ork.
  Thraka spoke to me.
  Not in orkish. Not even in Low Gothic.
  In High Gothic.
  "A great fight." [Ghazghkull taps Yarrick with a finger] "My best enemy." [...] "Go to Armageddon. Make ready for the greatest fight."
• Old Soldier: Yarrick was scheduled to retire at the time the Second War for Armageddon began, and lived to fight in the Third War which began fifty-seven years later. Even with juvenat treatments, Yarrick is ancient.
• Power Fist: Actually an Ork Power Klaw, which he took from the Ork Warboss that cut off his real arm as a replacement.
• The Power of Hate: One thing he believes that mortals do better than Space Marines. He holds that while Space Marines are capable of great fury and determination, their lack of fear limits the kind of fight-or-flight madness that can spur a normal human to destroy the terrifying by the Power of Fear.
• Reassignment Backfire: Herman von Strab intended Yarrick's assignment to Hades Hive as a punishment for going over his head and requesting reinforcements from the Imperium. Unfortunately for the incompetent and traitorous Planetary Governor, rather than dying as he had hoped, Yarrick was put into the perfect position to stall the Ork advance and become the famous Hero of Hades Hive.
• Retired Badass: Crossed with Mandatory Unretirement. He had been pulled from the Guard and Kicked Upstairs to a sunset posting in a guard recruitment and training office in one of Armageddon's secondary hive cities until he reached his retirement age for political reasons (he had deliberately turned a blind eye to a coup that removed a planetary governor who had been hamstringing his unit's strategy to stop an Ork incursion). Then Ghazghkull showed up and he returned to the front lines and has stayed there ever since.

Captain Al'rahem

Be swift and silent — as the breeze that crosses the dunes without stirring a grain of sand.

Imperial records show that there have been two captains of the Tallarn 3rd 'Desert Tigers' named Al'rahem. The connection between the two, or whether they are actually the same person (through the vagaries of Warp travel) is unknown.

The first Al'rahem commanded the Desert Tigers during the Macharian Crusade. This Al'rahem is most famous for his campaign against the Chaos-worshipping inhabitants of Thoth where he joined with the world’s untainted native tribesmen to launch a hit-and-run crusade against the followers of the Dark Powers.

The second Al'rahem commands the Desert Tigers at the end of the 41st Millennium. A natural leader, the contemporary Al'rahem is well respected, not only by his own men, but also with the Guardsmen of almost every regiment he has fought alongside. A cunning and patient commander, this Al'rahem prefers to thoroughly reconnoitre enemy forces before striking at their weakest point.

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• Cunning Linguist: The original Al'rahem was so good at linguistics that he quickly learned the language of the N'Go tribe native to Thoth — a people and planet isolated from the Imperium until the Desert Tigers set foot on the planet in the Macharian Crusade — in enough time to aid them in their war against the Chaos-worshiping majority of the planet.
• Expy: While the Tallarn Desert Raiders generally seem like Bedouins in space with IFVs, (the first at least) Al'rahem has a background suspiciously like Lawrence of Arabia himself. He is a charming individual that learns from a desert tribe fighting a losing war, and leads them to turn the tide by having them do Hit-and-Run Tactics against their foes. After their war ends, he returns to his own people (explicitly noted in Al'rahem's background).
• The Captain: Despite being a company commander, he mostly mandates the logistics to subordinates to leave him able to lead his troops personally.
• A Father to His Men: His leadership, linguistic skill, charm and intellect make him respected by his troops and any regiments which ally with his.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: As the Tallarn Desert Raiders are apt to do — the original Al'rahem had his troops do this with the N'Go to help them win the war they were losing before, and the current one regularly employs the same style of tactics.
• One-Hit Kill: His Claw of the Desert Tigers is a power sword that inflicts instant death regardless of the enemy's toughness.
• Put on a Bus: No longer available as a playable model in the 7th Edition Imperial Guard Codex.
• Shrug of God: This Al'rahem may be named after the one who served Macharius himself, a descendant of him, or even the same person (if travel through the warp did something to explain this).
• Sword and Gun: The current Al'rahem wields a Plasma Pistol and the Claw of the Desert Tigers power sword.

Commander Kubrik Chenkov

Stubborn and dour, even by the standards of his stoic people, Kubrik Chenkov is the commander of the Valhallan 18th 'Tundra Wolves' who has become infamous for his brutal and merciless tactics. While Chenkov prefers to bury his enemies under wave after wave of infantry, caring little for the lives of his men as long as he gets results, Chenkov is not above risking his own life and will usually be found personally leading his men into the killing fields. Due to his ruthless tactics, the Tundra Wolves have been all but wiped out a number of times but a steady stream of conscripts from Valhalla ensure that the regiment is always ready to die for the Imperium.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Chenkov's general... "tactic" is "Send in All of Them, shoot anyone who doesn't want to". That being said, he is apparently capable of something resembling subtlety as him doing this upon a fortress once was just a distraction for demolition crews to breach it.
• Bad Boss: Commander Chenkov fully believes the maxim of the Imperial Guard being expendable, and hurls men to their death without respite, pity or remorse. His violent temper flares at the slightest sign of disobedience and cowardice, and his men march to their deaths without hesitation because they know he will certainly kill them if they refuse. He routinely orders men to march across minefields to clear them for his tanks or to charge enemy positions to hold valuable targets in place so he can deploy artillery and be assured of getting his targets. It's mentioned that, in addition to his standard practices, he once executed one million troops to use their corpses as a bridge. It is rumored his bolt pistol has killed more cowards than enemies. Put it this way. He's such a Bad Boss that any Commissars that get assigned to his forces are afraid of getting summarily executed by him.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: When he was first introduced during 2nd Edition, Chenkov was the embodiment of the Valhallans' Determinator nature and their unwillingness to give up no matter the odds. It wasn’t until later editions that he became the General Ripper he is known as today.
• Frontline General: He throws his troops into nigh-suicidal situations... but doesn't shy from being there himself. To invoke his own brand of "motivation", naturally. It's about the only good thing one can say of him.
• General Ripper: The Imperium considers this a desirable trait in its commanders, to a point, but Commander Chenkov is on the extreme end of the scale, even by their standards.
• Human Resources: In a very basic manner. Chenkov reportedly once had a million of his own troops executed so their bodies could be used as a bridge.
• Karma Houdini: He's an unimaginative, temperamental fool who sends millions of men to their deaths without a flicker, but has received multiple commendations for it, because he tends to win his wars with particular speed in exchange for the massive casualties. Most famously, he brought an end to the year-long Siege of Kotrax by storming a heavily defended citadel without any armoured support or siege weapons, costing ten million Guardsmen their lives in a single action, for which he was awarded the Merit of the High Lords for quickly ending the fight.
• Morton's Fork: The dilemma posed by any soldiers under his command — do I follow the orders for suicidal missions he's going to give me, or get killed by him shooting me for cowardice if I don't?
• Mythology Gag: Commander Chenkov basically references/embodies the bog-standard characterization of Imperial Guard commanders in earlier editions of the game.
• Put on a Bus: Does not appear in the 7e Codex. In exchange, his "Send in the Next Wave!" special rule is now available to all Valhallan colonels as a faction trait.
• Sword and Gun: He fights with a bolt pistol and power sword.
• Suicide Mission: He's very much like Zapp Brannigan in that with him in command, every mission is a Suicide Mission.
• Token Evil Teammate: In the 5e codex, every leader-type special character is either A Father to His Men or a Sergeant Rock. Then we have Commander Chenkov...
• Trial by Friendly Fire: A common tactic he uses is ordering troops to engage in close-proximity with enemy forces, ensuring they won't disengage before the artillery fire he orders smashes their locations. How necessary this is when he does it is not clear.
• We Have Reserves: His entire foundation of martial philosophy. He actually has a special rule called "Send In the Next Wave!" which allows him to instantly get a new squad of Whiteshield recruits if the squad he's leading has mostly or completely been wiped out. As long as he can stay alive, he can keep doing this near indefinitely...
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Commander Chenkov does have other options besides "drown them in human waves". He's just too unimaginative and unsubtle to use anything else. When he does do other stuff, the other stuff inevitably relies on the lynchpin "...while I'm trying to drown them in human waves".
• You Have Failed Me: Don't want to entangle yourself with enemy forces so they can't slip away when he calls artillery on their position, or do head-on assaults on fortified fortresses? You're literally dead to him, by his bolt pistol.
• Zerg Rush: 99% of Chenkov's character in a nutshell.

Mogul Kamir

It is not enough that I achieve victory — my enemy must suffer total defeat. It is not enough that I kill — all my foes must die. It is not enough that I succeed — all others must fail!

— at the conclusion of the Twenty-Third Quadrant Suppression

A ferocious warrior even by the standards of the warlike Attilans, Mogul Kamir became the chief at the age of 13 after slaying his uncle in single combat. Kamir's uncontrollable lust for battle led the young warrior to lead his tribe in the conquest of numerous other tribes until the King of Khanasan, the Imperial Governor of Attila, offered him a position in one of the planet's famous Rough Rider regiments. The prospect of a lifetime of battle against the mightiest foes of the Imperium appealed to Kamir and he quickly accepted, rising to prominence as one of the fiercest cavalry commander within the Astra Militarum.

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• Blood Knight: He joined the Imperial Guard because the combat he was finding on his own planet was getting to be not challenging.
• Child Prodigy: Chieftain of his own tribe at thirteen. Chieftain of twenty tribes by fifteen.
• Colonel Badass: Attilan soldiers fight ritualistic duels to prove themselves worthy of riding with him, so respected is he.
• Dead Guy on Display: he's got plenty of warlords' skulls adorning his hunting lance.
• Expy: United tribes of vaunted equestrian nomads through conquest? He's so totally Genghis Khan. His fame and bloodthirst also make him one to Attila the Hun.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Has a bionic eye and arm, linked together make his hits on target.
• Mechanical Horse: Rides a cybernetic steed presented to him by a grateful Adeptus Mechanicus after saving the manufactorum world of Loxar IV from the Necrons. Before then, he kept running his horses to death with charges and counter-attacks.
• Put on a Bus: He doesn't appear in the 7e Codex.

Colonel Schaeffer

You are all here because you are scum. But you are the Emperor's scum. You have skills that are useful to our Immortal Lord and whether you wish it or no, they will be made use of.

As the commander of the Thirteenth Penal Legion, the so called "Last Chancers", Colonel Schaeffer leads some of the worst criminals and psychopaths that the Astra Militarum has ever produced. Preferably, the Thirteenth will be thrown into warzone after warzone, whittling them down until the survivors are ready for the suicide mission they were initially recruited for. When time is of the essence however, Schaeffer will hand pick his warriors from the worst scum of the other Penal Legions, keeping them in line with his own fearsome skills and reputation. Over the years Schaeffer has led the Last Chancers on many missions, from the T'au Empire to raiding the Eye of Terror itself and although Schaeffer has always succeeded in his mission, he is usually the only survivor.

A number of the suicide missions undertaken by Colonel Schaeffer and the Last Chancers have been chronicled in The Last Chancers series by Gav Thorpe.

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• Bad Boss: Schaeffer's Harsh Discipline rule ensures that the Last Chancers automatically pass any Leadership tests required. Their lives are forfeit, and they are only stayed from execution because he allows it.
• Colonel Badass: He has never failed to complete a mission, ever, even if it costs him his limbs, eyes, or even his spine.
• Cigar Chomper: Schaeffer is rarely seen without a cigar; his model even includes one.
• For Your Own Good: For all his bastardry, Schaeffer earnestly believes that he's doing his men a favor, offering them a "last chance" to redeem themselves before facing judgment by the God-Emperor.
• Implacable Man: Has a reputation for calmly walking through hellish battlefields virtually untouched by any harm, even as people die all around him. For the most part this is in-universe exaggeration that keeps him Shrouded in Myth; he has had numerous grievous injuries across his career, but they are all flawlessly repaired by organic-specializing tech-priests.
• Older Than They Look: Thanks to the "repairs" he has received across his career, he has lived more than three times the normal human lifespan and continues to serve as though in his prime.
• Put on a Bus: Schaeffer doesn't appear as a playable model in the 6th edition codex.
• The Stoic: Known for being unflappable, only displaying a quiet disdain for the convicts who serve under him.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Schaeffer's career has cost him his eyes, spine, and left arm. However, thanks to his success record, the Inquisition has arranged to have him healed with cloned replacement body-parts (or parts taken from the condemned in the case of his eyes.)

Lord Commander Solar Macharius

What is the strongest weapon of mankind? The god-machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus? No! The Astartes Legions? No! The tank? The lasgun? The fist? No to all! Courage, and courage alone stands above them all!

Thought by many to be the greatest commander in the history of the Astra Militarium, Macharius led the forces of the Imperium in the most successful campaign of conquest since the Great Crusade itself. A brilliant but impatient strategist, Macharius respected martial prowess and courage above all other traits and cared little for the fates of the worlds he conquered once his forces moved on. The Macharian Crusade, as his campaign became known, conquered almost a thousand worlds and was only stopped by his followers' fear of what lay in the darkness beyond the edge of the galaxy. Macharius died soon after the conclusion of his Crusade and was declared a Saint by the Ecclesiarchy.

The story of Macharius' conquests can be found in The Macharian Crusade series by William King.

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• Achey Scars: Had an Old War Wounds special rule that meant his Weapon Skill and Attacks characteristics would be determined randomly.
• Badass Boast: "Those I cannot crush with words I will crush with the tanks of the Imperial Guard!"
• Bling of War: Heavily stylized, gold-plated armor, including angelic wings on his helmet and a gold-plated bolt pistol. Here's him on a book cover◊ providing clear contrast to the Guardsmen around him.
• Expy: A pretty blatant one of Alexander the Great, complete with weeping after seeing stars that would go unconquered and his post-death Succession Crisis.
• Four-Star Badass: In a setting where it takes the Imperium decades to conquer or retake single planetary systems, it's a testament to Macharius' prowess as a commander that his Crusade conquered a thousand worlds in seven years.
• Posthumous Character: He lived from 356-400 M41, making him hundreds of years dead by the game's "present" time.
• Put on a Bus: As a result of the previous trope, Macharius hasn't appeared as a playable model since the 3rd edition codex.
• The Strategist: Had a Master Strategist rule that let his army always go first. This is less useful than it sounds.

Nork Deddog

Da Sergeant Major asked me what my job was an' I said it was to, uh, do what I was told. He said I was a genius and gave me another medal. I likes da Imperial Guard!

The most famous Ogryn in the Imperium, Norg Deddog has gained a reputation as a tough and loyal bodyguard who has saved the lives of over a hundred officers of the Astra Militarum. Considered highly intelligent by Ogryn standards, Nork is still uncomfortable at the more formal events he is required to attend while carrying out his duties and he feels great relief when he is able to return to the battlefield. Nork is incredibly single-minded in the execution of his duty, ignoring all other concerns in his effort to keep his charge safe, and has become one of the most highly decorated abhumans to serve in the Astra Militarum.

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• Cigar Chomper: In later editions' artwork as well as his model, he's portrayed with a cigar in his mouth.
• Dumb Muscle: Like all Ogryns, Nork is dumb as a post, but he's a little smarter than most Ogryns in that he can write his name, speak in full sentences, and count on four fingers (with his thumb confusing him).
• Literal-Minded: When a wounded officer he was protecting suggested Nork get a first aid kit from a wrecked Chimera, Nork obligingly dragged the vehicle twenty yards across the road to said officer. Ogryns really don't like getting into cramped transport vehicles.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The name of one of his special rules. Killing Nork in melee triggers a final flurry of attacks, as he refuses to die without first trying to stop the ones trying to hurt his friends.
• High-Class Glass: Surprisingly, he seems to be wearing one! It's never been explained why, but we can probably assume it's fooling no one.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Once did so, simultaneously also jumping on the enemy who threw it (the enemy is more of a large stain now), and barely noticed his resultant shrapnel injuries.
• Undying Loyalty: The reason why he fights, and how he can pull off his Heroic Sacrifice. Also the name of a special rule of his; if a Commissar executes the commander that Nork is guarding, the berserk Ogryn will immediately kill the Commissar for doing so, who was clearly Too Dumb to Live anyway.
• Use Your Head: His Thunderous Headbutt special rule. Nork also managed to kill Ork Warboss Uglurk Gitsmasha with a Headbutt so violent, it hurled him out of the dugout they were in and into an acid river nearby, and all the Orks surrounding him chose to retreat rather than face Nork.

Ursula Creed, Lord Castellan of Cadia

In the wake of the Fall of Cadia at the end of the 41st Millenium, the Astra Militarum regiments from the shattered planet lost their leader, Ursakar E. Creed, to parts unknown. In his place, his daughter Ursula has taken the mantle of Lord Castellan of Cadia, displaying the same tactical wit and unflinching resolve that earned her father the position before her.

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• Artifact Title: She still carries the title of Lord Castellan of Cadia despite the fact that the planet is both shattered into innumerable pieces and the wreckage was swallowed up by the Eye of Terror when it cut across the galaxy to form the Great Rift. Make sure that she doesn't hear you mention the unnecessary and inaccurate nature of her title.
• Generation Xerox: Something her mother tried to avoid by asking Creed to not be part of his daughter's life, but it didn't work and she followed him into the Militarum anyway.
• Guns Akimbo: Like her father before her, Ursula dual wields a pair of archaeotech pistols with great effect.
• Heroic Bastard: She was the product of a brief affair between Creed and a chamberlain to the Governor of Theta Sykan.
• Heroic Lineage: Being the child of the Cadia's final and most well-known Lord Castellan, it comes with the territory.
• Tragic Keepsake: Ursula wears her father's tattered old greatcoat over her armor. How she managed to get ahold of it when Creed was wearing it when Cadia fell is unknown. (He probably owned a closetful of them.)

Lord Commander Solar Arcadian Leontus

• Frontline General: In the proud tradition of many Lords Solar before him, including Macharius.
• Loophole Abuse: Technically speaking, as Lord Solar his remit to command the armies of the Imperium only extends to the defense of Segmentum Solar itself. He has led numerous campaigns far from its borders, under the argument that it's the best way to protect Holy Terra from its more distant foes.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Not him, but his cyber-augmented horse, Konstantin, named after the original Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes.
• Older Than They Look: Despite appearing to be no more than middle-aged, Leontus has been leading the armies of the Emperor for over a hundred years, thanks to his rejuvenat treatments.

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See also Gaunt's Ghosts, Ciaphas Cain, The Last Chancers, Astra Militarum, Only War.

Also see the Abhuman section on Warhammer 40,000: Current Imperial Factions for information about Ogryns and Ratlings and their uses in the Guard.

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A good soldier obeys without question. A good officer commands without doubt.

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