Saturday, May 30, 2009

Hardened Vets (1)

With the release of the latest codex, my interest has once again been drawn to the Imperial Guard. From a gaming perspective, the new codex offers some interesting units and tons of Independent Characters. From a hobby perspective, it offers a brand new set of tools to customize and create cool and unique units and minis.

The Concept...
One of my favorite units from the previous codex was the Hardened Veterans. I love the fluff...grizzled, battle-tested veteran troops with access to special training & weapons. The new codex eliminates the one thing I disliked...limited squads. Now I can field an entire army of veterans as troop choices. Very cool!

For my first veteran unit, I went with the Grenadiers option and decided to add some short range punch with 2 meltas, a flamer and a missile-launcher. I also modeled an alternate HW with a heavy bolter. Some possible deployments would be dropping them from a transport or by exploring some Scout/Outflank options.

So anyways here they are, in all their glory...


The Recipe...

  • Torso: SM Scouts
  • Legs: SM Scouts
  • Arms: SM Scouts
  • Heads: IG Catachan
  • Weapons: SM Scout shotguns, missile launcher, heavy bolter
  • Additional Weapons: IG flamer, GW melta(mail order),various bits

The Process
...
The basic body assembly should be pretty straight forward, the scout bodies don't allow for a ton of posing options but one can still get a little creative. The bulkier SM Scout bodies are perfect for the carapace armor that Grenadiers wear. The Catachan heads are a little big compared to Cadians but they fit in we with the scout bodies. The tubing around the neck also gives a re-breather feel to the figure, to represent an "airborne" quality.
I shaved off the top rail of the shotguns to make them seem a little less "huge".


The sergeant is a pose I saw in a forum somewhere and I finally had the opportunity to recreate it. The plasma pistol was a simple hand swap. I took the chain sword, arm and all, from a SM model. It did require some cutting and filling but it came out pretty decent. Since this build I have found some better head choices for this guy, but oh well.

I also attacked a Cadian vox-caster and used some parts to represent integrated comms on one of my veterans.


I guess that's it for now. Next time I will go over the paint scheme that I used for these guys and how I approached the overall look of this unit.



The war goes on,
Hessler

2 comments:

Admiral Drax said...

Nice work, matey - and welcome aboard!

Col. Hessler said...

Thanks!

Cheers