Guards as Anti Infantry

Hi I would like someone to give me info on guards AI capabilities. Are they better close or long range? What difference does their upgrades make? How do they compare to penals?

Their anti-infantry is good, but not great. It'd be good if you're fighting weak infantry, but assuming you're fighting Grenadiers and Panzergrenadiers, you won't get a lot of damage down range. Guards have 2 AT Rifles, which are not good at Infantry fighting. This means they only have 4 Mosin-Nagants to do damage with. Their accuracy is better at close range than long, so use them close. I'd also recommend getting DP machine guns to improve anti-infantry ability. DP's should push them far enough ahead to beat Grenadiers consistently.

Penals do a lot more damage than Guards due to having 6 SVT Rifles as opposed to 4 Mosin-Nagants. But Guards have 1.5 armour putting their survivability on-par with Grenadiers.

I've been running a lot of my offensive strats using guards. They are okay, better than conscripts that's for sure.

I think it's a good choice especially considering how vehicle heavy a lot of OST players tend to be.... I run a T2 strat when playing guards. So i've always got some supression (MG) down range of the guards so to assist if any grens come at me.

The guards AT and light vehicle damage is too good to pass up sometimes, plus they make very good units to crew enemy weapons with.

they have pretty decent AI, occasionally killing a gren model here and there. but what shines is their ability to nade and stay on the field.

their effective hp is 800, for a 6man squad with 1.5 armour. they can certainly outlast grenadiers regardless of upgrades.

they are quite monstrous when they vet up too.

I've played with all the Soviet infantry extensively.

The stats thread is stickied on this forum so you can check it out.

With Guards, they have the advantage of 1.5 armor vs 1 for penals, conscripts.

As far as anti-infantry go, they stink without the DP upgrade. The DP upgrade is decent, but inferior to the LMG of the grenadiers or the G43. Their munitions grenade is overpriced for its effect but necessary.

They are probably around the same or better than penals in a firefight if they have the DP (60 muni) upgrade.

Personally, I find them to be supporting infantry like conscripts. The core of my army is conscripts, and then I'll have 1 or 2 Guards squads to fight light vehicles or chip down/button German tanks. The Guards' AT are good against the rear of German T3.

It is simply uneconomical to have an army of penals or Guards. You will be wasting a lot of manpower, pop cap, and munitions on a specialized unit.

Guards are defensive with good range and the ability to destroy cover with their PTRS rifles while Shocks are offensive with smoke grenades and higher dps on the move.

Guards support Maxims and AT-guns and help nullify offensive pushes while also soft-countering flanking light and medium vehicles.

Shocks pair well with snipers and mortars with their mobility and dps to force retreats and bleed models.

Of course you can play with them however you like but these seem to be the intended uses.

I've heard that guards pair with snipers very well. Could anyone shed some light please? Share your experience.

Guards are mediocre as anti infantry. Their PTRS AT rifles have a 5% chance to instantly kill infantry, and when the RNG god doth shine down upon thee it can mean very good news. The grenade is potent but expensive, and is best saved for when there is a favorable clump to blow up. The DPs are a nice addition, but I find their overall dps to be lacking against infantry. The 1.5 armor allows them to stay in fights a little longer, and at close range the DPs are fairly lethal.

Snipers and Guards are one of the best combinations in the game. In the current meta many soviet player choose to get early elite infantry via 1cp shocks or guards. This allows you to have those elite troops face off against T1 and T2 german units.

When a soviet player gets 2 (or sometimes 3) snipers, followed by guards, there is very little a german player can do to effectively counter. You are protected against infantry and light vehicles, and any squad that takes a volley of 2-3 sniper shots will retreat, because the next volley means a lost squad.

Many players are expecting to see guards and shocks moved to 2cp in the next patch. This would change the meta slightly for sniper/guard spam, allowing a German car to potentially come out and harass snipers before the guards arrive to counter.

Guards are mediocre as anti infantry. Their PTRS AT rifles have a 5% chance to instantly kill infantry, and when the RNG god doth shine down upon thee it can mean very good news.

The PTRS is the worst anti-infantry weapon in the game and it does not have a 5% insta kill chance.

Guards PTRS rifles have 5% accuracy at close range, down to 2.5% accuracy at max range. A single PTRS round does 40 damage, which is not enough to kill a full health model, except snipers and ostruppen.

The average DPS of a single PTRS at close range is roughly 0.4; meaning that on average, a single PTRS will kill one model per every 3:20 minutes at close range. At max range it's half of that, meaning that a single PTRS will kill about 1 model for every 6:40 minutes of firing at long range.

Yea, the Guard's AI is from its 4 x mosins. This makes them worse than conscripts and penals if you don't give them the DP (60 muni) upgrade.

So you can get a decent AI unit, but at a high cost (360 MP, 60 Muni). The AI of this unit is however, still worse than an upgraded grenadier squad (240 MP, 60 Muni) but it compares with the no flamethrower penal squad.

Maxims and conscripts with molotovs are much more cost effective at AI.

With the current meta, I think Guard should be given "Hit the Dirt", because short of sniper + Guard to SU-85 combo, shocks are better in every way.

Guards have 4x Mosins but they have higheraccuracy. Guards do the same damage without the dp lmg as a vanilla gren squad.

Penals do 50% more damage than vanilla grens.

The dp lmg slightly increases guards dps but not to the level of penals or lmg grens.

In essence for all practical purposes you get a vanilla gren squad with two models that allows you to retreat when grens would be dead. So in essence anything with better ai then vanilla grens has better ai than pos Guards.