[Only War] Imperial Guard Basic Training

This is something I thought that I'd check with you guys. The point is that as I run 40k I'm not in love with tales of hilarious incompetence non-stop and so decided to suggest that the Imperial Guard has some form of basic training requirements which soldiers on off-world deployment must fullfill. Now things can get rough, deadlines short, officals corrupt or the situation desperate and corners are often cut but this is the idea of what kind of floor the Imperium has for soldiers sent to fight in the Imperial Guard.

The purpose is to both give characters some basic skills as could be expected from soldiers and also to, in my opinion, make the Guard feel more like an actual army and fill some weird gaps which in my opinion, as a person who don't enjoy constant satire, thinks should not be there. And the idea isn't to create super soldiers but rather soldiers that makes sense has in having some basic preperation for the task they are given.

Fluff

After the rise of the new Regent of the Imperium in Robouto Guilliman there have come new directives regarding the Imperial Guard personal. All Imperial Guard personal must complete basic training but these requirement do not apply to PDF-soldiers who can be equipped pretty much however the planetary rulers may want them to be.

Rules

All Imperial Guard Characters gains the following additions after everything else, regiment, speciality etc. has been calculated and done. If a character has as Skill or Talent that is given for free, add +1 to the Characteristic of the Aptitude that is connected with said Skill or Talent. If that would be the Aptitude "General" then the player can put the +1 whereever they like.

Characteristics

WS and BS cannot be under 30
S, T and Ag cannot be under 30 (27 for psychers)
Int and Fel can reach any low, no limits here
WP och Per cannot be under 25 (30 for WP and psychers)

A Characteristic that is blow the limit is put up to reach the minimum limit.

Skills

Navigation (Surface), Common Lore (War), Common Lore (Imperial Guard), Dodge, Parry, Awareness, Survival

Talents

Weapon Training (Las), Weapon Training (Low-tech)

I don't think its really satire making parts of the Imperial Guard incompetent. It's supposed to show how the Imperium is hardly a cohesive whole and you get a grab bag mix thanks to its Byzantium on steroid themes after the shattering of its more centralist control and strong leadership after the Horus Heresy. Your going to get guard regiments where they're no better than a PDF force then you have Cadian regiments where they're incredibly disciplined and are a very effective fighting force.

The guard is kind of a microcosm for how big, disorganized, and barely functioning the Imperium really is. It might feel weird looking at it and then the modern US military which is arguably one of the most elite and competent conventional fighting forces in the world. The Imperium is not that though. It's a crumbling empire where its military is a mix of excellent to straight up bad.

Training also doesn't have a standard. There's no central schools where the bulk of guardsmen train. It's whatever the regiment gives them. The change to Guilliman in charge gives a good excuse to introduce basic training though... but even then I expect the process of implementing it to be painfully slow. Fun thing to explore though with characters being the "new breed" and how that works with older guardsmen in the regiment.

Solodice wrote:

I don't think its really satire making parts of the Imperial Guard incompetent. It's supposed to show how the Imperium is hardly a cohesive whole and you get a grab bag mix thanks to its Byzantium on steroid themes after the shattering of its more centralist control and strong leadership after the Horus Heresy. Your going to get guard regiments where they're no better than a PDF force then you have Cadian regiments where they're incredibly disciplined and are a very effective fighting force.

I agree that large parts of the Guard are and should be incompetent. The thing is that the incompetence I am more inclined to is reactionary high command, internal infighting in Imperial command and a lack of match between forces deployed and the task at hand. I don't like the feeling that the problem lies in that the Imperial Guardsmen sucks as soldiers or are generally jokes.

Also I'm afraid I'm a bit of a, or rather a large, fan of the ancient and medieval Grecophone world so in my book Byzantium isn't a benchmark of being bad. In particular in regard to its incredible resilience towards being surrounded by enemies on all sides and hammered relentlessly by enemies often more powerful than themselves.

Solodice wrote:

The guard is kind of a microcosm for how big, disorganized, and barely functioning the Imperium really is. It might feel weird looking at it and then the modern US military which is arguably one of the most elite and competent conventional fighting forces in the world. The Imperium is not that though. It's a crumbling empire where its military is a mix of excellent to straight up bad.

I see your point about a micro- and macrocosmos of the Imperium. Yet I honestly wasn't looking at the modern American military when I made this suggestion. I was more looking at the period of 1870-1945 and in particular the late Imperial Russian Army. The idea isn't that the Imperial Guardsmen should be elite soldiers but rather have at least the level of training that Russian and French troops has in 1914. I just want them to not be meme-level kind of soldiers.

Solodice wrote:

Training also doesn't have a standard. There's no central schools where the bulk of guardsmen train. It's whatever the regiment gives them. The change to Guilliman in charge gives a good excuse to introduce basic training though... but even then I expect the process of implementing it to be painfully slow. Fun thing to explore though with characters being the "new breed" and how that works with older guardsmen in the regiment.

On this I agree. The idea isn't that there are central schools but rather than from Terra Guilliman has issued a very low set of requirements that soldiers deployed in the Imperial Guard are to fullfill, either when they are brought from the planet or trained on the ships. Like knowing how to dig a poor and shallow trench, like knowing that when an artillery barrage is unleashed they are to take cover, that there's something called a "sniper", how to build a wind shelter, a rough idea about how a compass and a map works together and so on. Maybe even use matches to lit a fire and that every man knows the basics of how a lasgun, which I've understood to be the most common Imperial weapon, works.

And I agree that such a reform should be slow, although since I want to have an effect in the game I figured that its better to just implement it rather than having more complex rules around it partial and gradual introduction.

Totally agree about the RP potential between new and old breeds of soldiers, and even more so between officers from before and after Guilliman starts to throw his weight around to, attempt, to shape things up a bit.