Household Guard - Unit Guide (english)

Household Guard
In the background there is a colorful mix of veterans, exhausted legionnaires and foreign mercenaries and equipped with various weapons, the Para Bellum look more like mercenaries in plate armor.

Overview & gameplay

Mainstay with the Noble Lord, moderate costs and equally moderate values. With D3 and R3 you can handle small attacks of opportunity quite well, but if the opponent hits with too many attacks or even cleaves, the Household Guard falls faster than you would like. On the offensive they are not really outstanding with only four attacks and Clash 2. Cleave one doesn't change that.

But the Armsmaster gives you the option that they can repeat every six in the clash or that you get +1 clash if a Noble Lord joins the regiment. This can significantly improve the regiment offensively and defensively if you declare him a warlord and thus have a Clash 3 regiment which can repeat every six in the Clash and D - defense rolls. Unfortunately, it costs us one of the two warlord positions and, as is so often the case, they absolutely want/need the supremacy of the Imperial Officer in order to be useful. They are also the only regiment that can benefit from Regalia and become Dauntless. This means you can't break them and they are always inspired. That's nice and not at all nonsensical for larger blocks. But overall they need more help/upgrades than other regiments to become useful. Don't get me wrong, infantry that want to fight and have Movement 5 is difficult to sell and always sucks without high speed, lots of attack dice or outstanding defense values, but with Vanguard they can at least take part in the fight and as veterans they don't necessarily need Noble Lord anymore. Since you don't currently have any medium infantry that can distribute, this is a welcome choice in infantry armies.

The popular regiment size is 5 or 6 stands and as long as you protect the regiment well, you can do useful damage. I also like to play 9 stands because I have the feeling that most enemy regiments can easily wipe out 4-5 stands in one round and I like to be able to hit back..

Veterans
If we don't want a Noble on foot, we can still bring the Household Guard to clash 3 and repeat sixes in the clash. This is a good option, but most of the time it is not taken into account because the regiment with D3 R3 is too vulnerable to damage and if you decide on a noble with a horse, then you usually play more Household Knights and invest the points in them this.

Relentless Drills
Support is essentially a bad rule, as it is almost always better to deploy a regiment wide rather than deep. Up to 5 wide is absolutely legitimate on most maps and you don't lose any attacks. However, since the Gilded Legion and Household Guard already have Support 2, you can reach Support 3 here and only have a loss of one attack per stand. Since Relentless Drills cost nothing, it is an interesting choice, especially for larger blocks, if you are short on points or doesn't want Veterans for his list.

Conclusion: A useful option for infantry armies that need a lot of support from characters, officers or items to function well.