I'm trying to put together some "starting out" lists for Epic new-comers, so I thought I'd throw this out there for comments from the community. Lemme hear your thoughts.  

=== IMPERIAL GUARD ===
Strengths: Large armour formations, super-heavies, long-range artillery, and cheap infantry.
Weaknesses: Their troops die easily.

One Imperial Guard Infantry Company box set for ₤11.75/$20.00
One Imperial Guard Leman Russ Tank Company for ₤29.35/$45.00
Total spend: ₤41.10/$65.00

You could combine these units several ways to make a 1,000-point army, going with either an armor- or infantry-focussed force. One possible combination would be:

Infantry Company (17 units, 350pts)
1 Commander
12 Infantry
2 Ogryns
2 Snipers

Tank Company (10 units, 650pts)
9 Leman Russ tanks
1 Leman Russ Vanquisher

Tactica
This Imperial Guard army wins by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. Aim to achieve the Break Their Spirit and Blitzkrieg victory conditions.

Sorry to complicate things but I'd definite suggest recommending newcomers could buy the Forge World epic models as alternatives to the SG ones. They're much nicer models and the pricing is the opposite of what you'd expect - elsewhere FW models cost a large premium on the normal models, for epic a lot of them are much cheaper than the SG ones e.g. you could buy 12 Imperial Guard tanks for £19.60 compared to £29.35 for 10 for the SG ones. With the Orks from FW you can get 6 for £9.80 or you can get £11.75 for 4 - less than half the price per model.

Cheaper prices for nicer models, with more weapon variety and accuracy to the W40k models could pull more people in, while some of the - in comparison - frankly ugly and too small scaled SG sculpts could put people off some (very true for the flyers and larger models, but still applicable for the others).

I reckon I'd take on a 1,000pts IG army that included a LR company with my Ultramarines, so long as I could tailer my forces.

Just make sure you take that out first and there's your BTS objective. Not necessarily easy to pull off, but possible.  

When I was learning to play epic a friend and I had a 1000pt game where I brought a LR company. We both expected me to crush him, but it was surprisingly close, mainly because he hadn't taken any big formations, so every turn I could only hit one small one (while he danced around me).