Having a nice selection of pristine sprues, but a waiting an order of bases, the initial week of actual work was mainly about feeling things out and recasting a few bits, before blitzing things over the weekend. The old battleforce box had examples of largely all weapons available to the guard footsloggers, although not always in abundance, hence a variety of two part moulds. There was much trial & error, but I did eventually get useful bags and "officer's weapons". I did also manage to get kinda-passable meltaguns, although the grenade launchers resisted, and I decided to kitbash them instead. Given the raw numbers of guard, you can go through a lot of weapon upgrades, so its good to have spares if you need them. What was complicating the process was that I hadn't quite decided what kind of Battleline grunts these were gonna be.
Now, I fully intend to keep this project flexible and system agnostic, but as this is a 40k thing I have to be vaguely aware of what's a legal unit. Of the current rules, I found myself torn between the classic Infantry Squad and the more specialised Death Korps of Krieg. Now, I like the Krieg. In a sort of horrors of the Western Front way, or cultural memories of trench warfare sort of way. This could easily have been Project Krieg. They are also gasmask boys, and while they are not on drugs, they are a weird death cult, so there is a certain "counts-as" argument you could make there. Eventually though, I decided against it as the DKs don't necessarily fit the style of play I want, so I went for the Infantry Squad, safe in the knowledge I could always switch later by exchanging weapon dudes.
The models I'm working on currently are the Wargames Atlantic Death Fields Cannon Fodder 02 (Females). These are part of their system agnostic sci-fi range, the company apparently specialising in low cost but seemingly good value plastics. The only complaint I have is that these don't come with bases. As to why I've chosen the female box over the slightly more numerous male box, well, at at the risk of embarrassing myself, I've painted basically no female 28mm models before, and I wanted something different. Orks are masculine in much the same manner as laughing at farts or having a football riot, so going for a squad or two of heavily armed ladies is a novelty. Hell, I think I can manage a 50/50 gender ratio with what I have so far. My only concern was accidentally going into the realm of incel cringe and fetishism, and that's not a look I want. If I wanted some of that, I'd be building Drukahri or Battle Sisters, not Guard.
As
plastics go, these girls are straightforward, being fixed posed in
the body, but having lots of arm and head options. I find the
crouching body to be great for weapon specialists, using one as part
of a Missile Launcher team, although it edges into the
possibly-too-distinctive-pose problem that those
marines had. There's a variety of heads, and a few more robot hands
than I was expecting; an observation, not a complaint. Weapon options
are however a touch thin on the ground, although I knew that going
in. Its nothing a decent bits box can't handle, although I find the
energy weapon a touch indistinct by itself. I added a bead to the
business end. I put a squad of ten together in stages, first bodies &
arms, sculpted rags on top, before preparing the gasmask heads
separately. This was a process of slow and careful work, but the bulk
of the painting was done in an afternoon, much quicker than expected.
There's still refinements to make, but its definitely table-worthy.
The skin actually came out okay for the first time ever, and I
free-handed some arrows on there. Yeah, I’m not happy with the
powersword arm, but its passable in a hoard army, and otherwise I’m
pleased.
As for what I'm planning for those old school Cadians? Well, I'm not running them as Cadians, that would be boring. I think I'll do them Catachan scouts/speedbumps given their stockier proportions. Visual language, and all that? Call 'em the Prison Gym Bros or summat? While I don't want to run the entire army like that, lest it be too similar to Orks, there is a brief bit of fiction where they do scout stuff and burn things. So it fits.
Hopefully I’ll have something to show of them next week.
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