Are royal guards worth putting in a imperial list?

I've tried them once but they didn't seem to do very much in the game I played with them

It was a list with royal guards, terro, a dewback, 2 ejets, and an officer

The whole plan was for the royal guards to move up first to tank some shots and possibly pull the enemy out of position followed by the dewbacks who try to get into a position to retaliate against the enemies that are attacking the royal guards and tank subsequent shots after they move up. The jet troopers move in to add more fire power and try to stay behind the dewback or terro and near the royal guards

I've had a problem of figuring out when is the right time to engage the enemy and usually end up moving my guys around towards objectives. The one match I played with this list was One Mans Trash on the landfill map. I blew down the door to the land fill and collected and scored a crate with my dewback and the officers bonus order movement in the first 2 rounds but we both had most of our units near the door near our deployment zone that connects to the hallway that leads to the other deployment zone. My opponent opened his side and because he had elite HKs, bossk, and 2 elite weequays I didn't immediately open the door to charge in until he split off his weequays to the terminal on the opposite side of the map during round 2. During that time my dewback was out of position to help with the charge down the hallway and later got shot down by focused elite weequays without doing anything other than turning in a crate. I destroyed my opponent after losing terro and a royal guard so my idea of what I wanted to do ended up working out but it still felt like I was dragging my feet too much at the start.

The royal guards felt like they did very little but they only were attacking bossk since terro destroyed the HKs early on, the royal guard's free block much weaker than I thought it would be, but possibly because bossk was the main threat and has consistent damage output due to the automatic +2 damage ability.

How do you initiate an attack against your opponent? Are royal guards worth the 8 points?

RGs aren't as popular as their pre-nerf counterpart now, simply because

old: hits like a truck, unrestricted def buffs + focus all around, high speed, high HP

now: damage is laughable, restricted buff + triggering focus, high speed, relatively good HP (due to all those fancy new command cards, like "Assassinate")

What this means: you'll rarely see Royal Guards as the main attacking forces. Their roles are now "split up, stand back and buff other people, attack only when necessary"

If you want an attacking melee force, go for ePigs

Are they still worth the 8pts? Depends. Competitive tournament maps? No, there are better units (ePigs, eWeequays, HKs) for 8pts. At home? Probably, depending on the map & mission you guys are playing

I won a local tournament and have been doing fairly well in a vassal tournament that is currently running with a set of eRGs. If you like something, find a way to make it work.