Part 6. Time for big concepts but small model counts. Yes, the brass. I made my first Officer. Well, an Officer in a Platoon Command Squad.
Platoon Command Squads are a unit with a bit of history in the whole "army composition" thing. The idea of leaders having a bodyguard is pretty common, of course, but with the Guard you tend to see squads of five as the default. This is both thematic and practical, as the Astra Militarum puts a big focus on the command structure, and the Officers in question are always very squishy. In times past, the basic Troops unit for Guard was a small army in its own right, having two squads of 10 and a command squad as the bare minimum. I mean, 25 pairs of boots isn't a bad number for a typical and feature complete marine force, is it? For a horde army, its a bit middling though. This incidentally is why that old Cadian BattleForce I got wasn't viewed as a great deal at the time, IIRC, it wasn't a lot. As a combat unit, the modern Platoon Squad functions as a general purpose support, with a diverse selection of synergies involving the order system, various specialist equipment, and merging with other squads. The latter is relatively new to me, but you can bolt such a unit onto a big squad of soldiers, thus maximising buffs and granting the otherwise fragile command squad some protection. A blob squad, basically.
I'd initially planned to piece these together from leftovers, like an Iron Brothers Mortar team and some Stargrave Mercenaries, but I’d had a bit of a rethink since. I like the Wargames Atlantic stuff more, and I’d found a reseller doing single sprues that helped with the gender ratio of the army. I was also thinking more about how best to use these in a blob squad. So my first Platoon Command was gonna be Cannon Fodder ladies with an officer based on the Les Grognards sprue from the same company. These scifi French guys were another candidate for this project due to them having heavy weapon and cavalry kit, but they ultimately weren't the vibe I went for. Their slightly more "fancy long-coat” look was however a decent fit for a Chem-Dogs officer, presumably rank has some benefits, and so it was.
The officer in question, "Big Fi-Fi", would be the point where I abandoned subtlety, grafting on a resin robot arm from Ramshackle Games, and a plasma pistol. This is probably over the top. It is over the top. We can no longer see the top. But we have a lot of women in this force with bionics, and I don't want there to be any possibility of an opposing player not realising whom is running the show. In so far as lore justifications are needed, Lt Fiona Myers suffered critical damage to her augmentic arm, and hurried for a replacement lest she be "retired". A nearby Techpriest was then quickly convinced/threatened/horses-head into providing a replacement. Thus Fiona received a generous and completely voluntary donation of an arm formerly belonging to a combat servitor, and she hasn't looked back. Some Catachan weirdo keeps sending her Cease & Desists, though.
The
comms operator and heavy weapon team are also highlights I feel. I
was running low on vox units, so I made a mould to make more. This is
always an imprecise process, but I leaned into it. I replaced the
antenna with bits of paperclip, and compensated for lost detail with
putty. The lascannon needed a touch more creativity as I had already
used all the stands, and I needed to create a carriage for it. Using
the bulky cabling and battery as reference, I built one up from toy
car wheels and assorted bits, before adding a recast trigger and a
bit of putty to round things out. I was struggling a bit for space on
this one, and I eventually need to figure out a good way to have crew
actively firing these, but it works. Painting continued in the now
usual manner, which look good, although rougher than I would have
liked. I may have used too much dark grey. I’d also ran out of
grass tufts, and used some old flock instead for the bases.
I
also worked on the last ten Cadian/Catachans, in-between the "drying"
steps of the above. There's not a huge amount to say here, except
this was benefiting from experience, and these had a similar vox unit
to the above. These weren't quite finished in time for the Tuesday cut-off, but I got most of it done, and I didn't feel like rushing. I however do wish that I'd remembered that Catachans can't have grenade launchers, so these will probably be actual Cadians this time. With those now assembled, I now have a basic 500 points
force for 40k and a solid Xenos Rampant force. I did make a rare
attempt to play, and I have found a sparing partner, but our dairies have yet to line up. On the subject of things that didn't quite come together in time, I did receive some Ogryn proxy models, and I've also received my tanks. Between these deliveries, and the bits I have to make another Command Squad, I can start thinking about the next 500 points.
We'll see which I feel like doing first.
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