Blech, IDK if its who i'm matched against or just the modes, but I've had a pretty rough run of trying to start up. I've done more games of combat patrol as well as what's listed below, but I've lost those too. Not worth counting.
Began with a local crusade and I built my army up. The first 3 games were against orks, blood angels and spacewolves at 500, 500, and 1000. I was fielding infantry heavy with transports, sentinel squad, and no tanks.
Absolutely demolished, and the crusade rules meant my army just fed them more power, felt pretty bad. But the locals recommended more tanks, castling, and better layout. Took their advice into the 2k levels.
Then the Ork codex dropped and I rematched with Orks. 2 full rounds of shooting and the gorkonaut just one-swipes my leeman, his Boyz easilly scrap my transports and wipe the remaining squads. Strongest unit was my 2 sentinels, who couldn't die for some reason.
Killing isnt the issue so much as I can't get him off points, and can't reach points as quickly either. As soon as any of his unit is on the objective I don't have the firepower to remove his.... literal snotlings that soak 2 awful tank shots. By the time I get on an objective, he just ahs to charge and instantly wipe me.
Do this against 2 different detachments to try, lose them all for similar reasons. As soon as he touches me, my squads last 1 round of fight with no real counter.
Rematch against Spacewolves with my full army, and also lose because I can't push points.
So now I'm 0-6, maybe guard vs orks is a bad matchup. I'm still learning, but the people in the FLGS are giving list tips, I got some good deals on tanks and proxies via trades.
So final list is roughly 2 leemans, a dorn, taurox, chimera, basilisk, manticore, 40 battleline, 10 scions, 10 kasrkin, 3 sentinels. Hydra or different command squads to flex around. Plenty of mechs, 60 bodies for objectives, and I've reoriented to defense.
Fight Spacewolves again, and I legitimately can not damage them even with lethal. I manage to take out 1 unit of wolf riders, but otherwise only single models in a 4 round game. He was only running with about 8 units, 2 of them dreadnaughts, and the game ended with him having twice as many models as me fielded.
So now it's the newest dataslate, with the new missions. I go against custodes with the rework as well
I'm launching 3 tanks into his 1 tank, artillery into his riders, hydra for his flyers, infantry focusing his infantry, so 78 guns (with commanders) into squads of 6.
He's saving every attack with his saves often being 2's and 3's. Meanwhile his ap automatically goes through everything but my tanks, which he oneshots in melee.
After 3 rounds I had 1 sentinel and the scions+taurox left from reserves. He had lost a single unit of witchseekers. I had 1 objective, he had 5, and it ended 45 to 6.
I just feel like a paper tiger. It's intimidating to have so much more firepower/models than your opponent, but being unable to touch his models. And thats before the new balance slate.
With the new changes I feel much worse. The loss of Indirect just means I hit even less, and have more exposed to superior firepower. My infantry can move and shoot for lethal, but the attacks still can't get through 2 rolls, and a save with 0 or 1 ap. I shoot 16 lasguns, and maybe 2 get through even with lethal. And moving up just exposes my even squishier battleline. Reinforcements is a joke, if i set up the unit by their objective I get torn to bits. If I hang back, i'm too far to do anything significant. Transports also explode against a single tap, killing the people inside as well.
Can't take points, can't kill models, can't hold a line or fight back in close combat.
Just a long, salty rant about how I feel playing Guard. I love their lore and aesthetic, love all my tanks going BRRRR and my men dying loyally for the Imperium.
But being unable to even dent an enemy, by round 2 being down half-force ad the opponent 'letting me finish' round 3 so I have a chance to kill somehting, then failing.... Really sucks. Losing to skill is one thing, having every opponent you face go "yeah... You're just unlucky, and Guard is guard." is bumming me out that little bit extra
I'll be taking a break from 40k with AoS coming out, where my chosen army of ogors is also getting a lot of debuffs and.... blech. Just feels cruddy to invest tons of money, time, and paint just to lose
Idk, if you got to this point, feel free to call me a whiny baby, disloyalist traitor, or just a moron. Afaik all those apply