Project Chem-Dogs: Part 1

After my cancellation of Project Sulaco, I promised myself that I'd spend a few weeks thinking before starting another. Having cycled through a few ideas and placeholder projects, I ended up revisiting my brief infatuation with Ramshackle Games Iron Brothers range of proxies for the Astra Militarum. While the Orks of 40k are my first love, I've always like the idea of a Guard army from the same setting. The underdogs, the rank, the file, the conscripts, the big tanks, and so on. This led to research into prices and models. I took it on myself to see how much the 40K AM Combat Patrol was, and how easy it would be craft my own equivalent at a lower cost. 9 pages of notes and a rummage through the bitz box later, I was confident it was doable. And that the regiment would be the Savlar Chem-Dogs.

So, whom are the Savlar Chem-Dogs? Well, they are basically what happens when you recruit a Guard regiment from a prison planet. The process is byzantine, but most worlds in The Imperium of Man are expected to provide soldiers as part of their tithe. Think taxes, but if taxes might also be paid with raw resources, war materiel, and human sacrifices. That last one is not a joke; The Emperor eats souls. These soldiers have to be equipped to a common standard due to the logistics and practicalities of the setting, but beyond that regiments can differ a lot in character and speciality. Does the Imperium acknowledge and exploit these strengths? The answer is somewhere between kinda and maybe not. The Imperial bureaucracy has been known to forget about entire planets, so you might end up with silliness like sending 2nd Desert Mongooses to New Snowdonia because the scribes don't acknowledge the difference. Regiments raised from worlds with notable martial traditions tend to be used with more thought, but sometimes you just have to send what you have. The Chem-Dogs first came to notice as part of the Third War for Armageddon, in a desperate need for troops. Reading between the lines a bit, but not really, I feel the general rank and file wasn't hugely impressed by this, as serving the Golden Throne is considered an honour, and these criminals don't deserve it. Of course, the Imperium operates penal units as routine, and your average Hive World will recruit from their incessant gang warfare problem, so its not like its unprecedented. The Chem-Dogs merely skip a few steps. And are allowed to keep whatever they take off the enemy. And take drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

 

TVTropes calls this sort of thing "An Army of Thieves and Whores", and features an exploration of the concept. Its something that fascinates me as a fictional device, although the most extreme of real-world examples are monstrous. On the one hand, you have colourful characters, underdogs, bastards, and maybe some personal redemption. The Dirty Dozen, the Suicide Squad and such. On the other? Well, if you're at the point where you’re emptying a local prison for recruits, things probably aren't going well. Seriously, Vlad, nothing says "brutal, desperate, and incompetent" quite like using prisoners for meatwave tactics in the 21st century, but I digress. Anyway, aside from appealing to my tastes, the Chem-Dogs present me with good modelling opportunities. These never had official models in the first place, and with the kleptomania angle kitbashing is encouraged. The fact that these chaps are depicted as wearing heavy duty gasmasks with shaven heads means that I don't have to paint faces if I don't want to. Plus Wargames Atlantic has caught my attention for having some nice plastics, including some in prison jumpsuits. So, this was all looking to be pretty fun, but before spending any money on those nice plastic prisoners, I set myself another barrier first: make a prototype. As luck would have it, I would chance on an absolute bargain before the prototype was painted. Thus committing me to the project in some form… I would tell myself off for lacking discipline, if it wasn’t such a good deal. I mean, it was an old, pre-name-change, Imperial Guard Cadian Battleforce for 50 quid. Its older models, sure, but that has its advantages, and the modern combat patrol box is £95 RRP for a comparable amount of stuff. I’m pretty sure this resolved a bunch of kitbashing requirements. I also couldn't stop myself from getting some Cannon Fodder too. Anyways, the prototype.

The admittedly rough prototype is a Stargrave mercenary model with greenstuff accoutrements. I'd actually tracked down a low quality scan of the original kitbashes and their Chapter Approved rules, and used that as a jumping off point. The tricky bit was the cabling, but the tinybeads from Project Sulaco came to the rescue. It was fiddly, but once strung on a wire the effect spoke for itself. Painting then followed, where I split the difference between the original scheme, and the more recent "Orange is the New Black" trend. The idea is that the soldier is midway through replacing his prison clothes with looted items, although the base model is somewhat better armoured than the production ones will be. I’m still getting my eye-in with respects to the orange, but I think its table-worthy in a GRIMDARK sorta way. The plan going forward? I'm not going to specify to much at this stage, I don't want to set myself goalposts only to hit myself with them. In the short term, I intend to make a squad of 10, and make some decisions then. After that? a force of 500 to 750 points, with an eye towards Xenos Rampant. Wish me luck.

Oh, and before anyone comments; it has not escaped my notice that I'm going from the cheerfully brutish kleptomaniacs of the orky Deathskull clan, to the cheerful and/or high brutish kleptomaniacs of the Chemdogs.