I started thinking about warhammer40,000 awhile ago and have finaly decided to start but i can't decide between imperial guard or the tau please help

Looks like you want quite a shooty army, as Tau and Guard both excel at that.

Personally I say go with imperial guard. I just despise Tau. I hate the models, idea, play style (roll dice till you win). At least with guard theres plenty of manoevering and combat, but Tau is just shoot run shoot run.

Games with Tau are boring in my opinion, but tell us more about why you want to collect either army. What do you like about guard, what do you like about Tau?

Get Imperial Guard. FEAR THE LEMON RUSS!! :phantom:

I like the imperial guard because of their abilaty to shoot and swarm the enemy with massed fire power and i like their models

I like the tau because of their abilaty of shooting

Imp guard are cool, but personally I can't stand painting hordes of models, so I would go with Tau.

go with the guard...they seem to have more room for specialization....plus firing and charging with a horde of humans is always a fun sight on the field :D

Yes especially when they are heading towards a horde of tyranids. I'd go with the tau myself blow the crap out of the humans is fun too mangiling them with rattling gun mangling humans is just plain fun

i gotta admit aswell games with Tau are boring as its just shoot-run, shoot

I would go with guard they are more or less a blanced army .
Tau army just tend to stand and shoot then run away and if jsut one of youre opnent units reach you in combat then youve basically lost unless that jsut happned to be part of yuore plan.

I play guard. My bro plays Tau. Tau=Craphead's army. All above on shoot run shoot run is true, its a boring play army, but I'll admit nice fluff.

Tau are a lot of fun- my flatmate (and regular opponent) plays with Tau. They can win big or lose big, depending on how you use them, but they're certainly not boring.

Equally, however, Imperial Guard offer a great deal of flexibility and choice. It's a tough decision and one I don't envy. I'm getting Guard, but my Tau flatmate has also chosen to collect guard....so I really couldn't say which one appealed more. :) Good luck.

i have decided to go with the imperial guard because of the way you can specialize your army and tweak them th exact way i wanted to

Even so I think that the Tau have cooler models

I think that the tau do have the cooler models but the imperial guard have alot more specialization and they have alot more different models. When I decide to start a new army i will probaboly go with the tau.

As you get better at the game and able to understand and use the many intracacies, you will appreciate the far greater number of options the Imperial Guard will give you.

More varied tactics - not just stand and shoot, but CC, flanking as well, special characters, special units (gaunts ghosts etc)
More varied Codex - all the different armies you will be able to take using the doctrines to tailor it to how your style develops
More useful models - play Tau, and you are stuck with Tau - Play Imperial Guard, and you may branch out into any number of the Inquisition armies, or Armoured company for examples
More likely to be involved - This is worldwide campaigns etc, nothing happens in 40K without the Imperium being involved somehow, you are not just a tac-on. Where have we seen this before? SOC was full of tac-ons, Armaggeddon and Cadia campaigns both revolved around the Imperial Guard. Tau were a tac-on in Cadia, and werent a thought in Armageddon!!!
Extended lifespan of the army - this one is a longer and deeper facet. Tau is an army created to entice new players (ie anime, Asia spread of GW, cartoon drama generation of current youngbloods...) into the game, and has fluff that doesnt quite fit with the Gothic genre of the game. Imperial Guard is so core (ie Imperial) to the game, they will alway exist, get upgraded, get new models and so on. Examples where armies that dont quite fit? Chaos Dwarves in Fantasy, Squats in 40K - they eventually stop being supported then die a slow death as less and less players field them.

I actually dont believe at this point you need worry that Tau will disappear soon, but over time, I can see them becoming the Wood Elves of 40K, an almost forgotten, almost supported army.

I dont think they will become the woodelves of 40k there very popular and have alot of models borught out for them.
To be honest if i had to choose between either of them i wouldnt choose either(not my style).
To be honest when i first started collecting i borugh nearly every single codex there was and then decided, than agian that was in second edtion so.
I hope you guard amry does good.

:D You couldn't say it better! ^_^

Thank you for the support! Cheers.

I must admit if i didnt despise the guard (an ork and chaos player here) youre argument would of persuaded me to start collecting them.
You are right thou guard are jsut so dam flexible theres so many combers and as well as that they also have a sort of edge over quite a few of the other armys...numbers with hard tanks.
To be honest there isnt another 40k amry which i can think of which has that hard tanks and that many numbers.
But theres jsut something that i dont like about them.
*Rembers the armageddon campaign and how many orcs died then*

I got a chance last night read the codex properly and Miquel Von Lichten you said right.

Dreg, you are right - they cause me all sorts of problems as well. I am usually a Dark Angels player, but like to run all sorts of other armies (Tyranids at the moment) and Guard is one of the few in the game that I dont have at least 1500pts of.
Exactly as you said it, between the massed lasguns, copius heavy weapons and super hard tanks, Imperial Guard are difficult to beat. I have only beaten them in the hands of anyone decent once, and that was with Dark Eldar.

In my mind there is no question which army of the two to collect although I collect neither.

Yeah the same here tau are to dman easy to beat if one combat unit gets to them there scrwed (my 8 berzerkers got ot there line and killed 65 fire wariors and 20 kroot big gw battle i had a squad of 12 berzerkers and 30 slugga orcs and i killed the most).
But like i siad before i collect a new army i buy the codex and have an in depth look to be honest Tyranids is another im iffy with.

In all fairness, those berserkers can chew through most units, not just Tau. They're just really good combat unit.

Especially agisnt units that have 2+ saves cus the axes reduce them 2 4+ hahha.
Trust me 20 terms viruse 12 zerkers get anhialted if zerkers charge.