Righty, part 3. I'm acutely aware of my attention span and the "pile of shame" concept. As such I'm going to alternate between units as much as possible, thus keeping things relatively fresh and varied. I decided to make up some of the old style Cadians I’d brought, but as mentioned, I’d build them as Catachans.
I
suppose I should talk about the Catachan Jungle Fighters a bit. The
short version is that they are Vietnam-era Americans as filtered via
the Rambo and Predator movies. The actual planet Catachan is a Death
World of hostile jungle, which is actively resisting human settlement
and full of very hostile lifeforms, the most genteel of which is
probably the Catachan Face-Eater. People from there make for good
survivalists and scouts, with an indifferent attitude to danger. Its
basically Space Australia, but with more trees, and fewer soap
operas. The Catachans were also notable for being one of few guard
regiments to get plastic kits, alongside the Cadians, and it was like
that for a long time. Its just a shame that their basic troop kit was naff
at the time of release, some twenty odd years ago, and against all
sense is still on sale today. In terms of game mechanics, the Jungle
Fighters have waxed and waned a lot; they actually had their own
spin-off codex back in the day, at other times edged into being melee
specialists, but right now are a Battleline unit with some minor
buffs and some very limited weapon options. Its the old Tankbusta problem, GW limiting their options to exactly what's in the kit. No
doubt this will remain the case until they get a Kill Team release.
That said, Jungle Fighters have the advantage of being notably cheap,
the benefits of the Scout rule, and a modest boost to AP in the first
round of a melee. What I would use my unit for would be either
objective control stuff, and/or being a discouraging response to
things that try to charge my gunline.
So, with these chaps, I took a similar approach to squad 1 last week. That is a fairly conventional build, with rags and bags added atop, preparing the gasmask heads separately before final assembly. I went for two flamer dudes in a nod to the old lore, although as and when I do another squad of these, I'll probably do Grenade Launchers. Flamers are a weapon that make a lot of sense for a unit that's gonna get close to the enemy, but grenades are more versatile. I also opted for a more elephantine gasmask style as it was somewhat easier to drill into the heads that way. Details such as straps were GS sculpted, including an entire backpack, although a lot of their stuff was spare Ork bits and surplus lasguns. That Stargrave Mercenaries box also played a part.
This turned out alright, although I'm still perfecting my techniques. I think Ive got a handle on the gasmask bit, although I'm not quite there with the skin, and there’s a few minor mistakes here & there. Its good enough for now though, I just need to get more practice in with the rank and file before working on any officers. With the above squad complete-bar-drying by Sunday afternoon, I started working on some Heavy Weapons Teams too. I wasn’t able to get these completed in time for my Tuesday cut-off, but here’s a picture of them in-progress.
I’ll talk about them a bit more next week.
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