This project started from boredom and a frustrating weekend, just after I finished those Chimera proxies. Real life progress had stalled, and I'd spent a few months doing various non-40k things, which was okay, if not especially deep. Nor were the IFVs, if I'm honest. So, after the local nerd shops failed to offer fresh distractions, I decided on some infantry. But what infantry? Krieg is still worthwhile even after points increases, but I'd done that fairly recently, Cadians still boring if competent, but I was leaning towards Catachans as a mini-project. Also, I’d found the following in the old 4th ed codex, which presented an argument that the modern Catachan template was a better fit than I thought. Old school Savlar Chem-Dogs got a deployment rule, a melee rule that was rather lukewarm, and liked flamers. That certainly sounds like the 10th edition Jungle Fighters unit, even if the whole "on drugs" aspect and weapon options are things that Krieg does better.
Now, my initial inclination was to get a box of the male Cannon Fodder sprues from Wargames Atlantic. You get 30 lasgun dudes for less than 10 GW Cadians, and that's a very tempting value proposition even if you have buy bases separately and kitbash some weapons. However, my research indicated they were very similar to my preferred female versions with fewer options, so decided against it, if only for variety. This led me back to Stargrave in general, and the male Scavengers sprues in particular. These actually line up with the original Savlar look a bit more than the Orange is the New Black vibe I adopted. Longcoats, laden down with stuff, mismatched kit, and so on. Its not a complete match, but this would not be a straight-build anyway. Two things clinched it. 1) The sprues had mêlée weapons I could easily give the sarges, and 2) I still had a silly amount of Cannon Fodder lasergun arms spare which would replace the projectile weapons which otherwise didn't fit my style. So, one box of Scavengers, 20 models, and if that worked out, maybe a command squad?
As a kit, the scavengers have a somewhat unexpectedly supernatural angle. There's parts to make zombies, and some hooded heads which have a strong cultist vibe, with the latter bit putting me in mind of the KKK. Its fairly versatile selection of bits however, and there's any number of AdMech, Necromunda, Chaos or Genestealer adjacent projects you could make here. However, by it's very nature its not a uniform bunch of guys. This is where the kitbashing comes in, and the aforementioned Cannon Fodder arms. The arms needed a bit of finagling, and the addition of green stuff mods to compensate for proportional differences. These are meant to suggest shoulder pads, but it was a mixed success at best. The heads, often sourced from the bitzbox, were modified with greenstuff gasmasks. There wasn't as many backpacks as I would have liked on the sprue, but I had plenty of cannon fodder ones. The flamers were also kitbashed by mixing Bulldog flamethrowers with GW parts. Vox units were made from offcuts, cable ties, and paper clips.
For painting, I decided to mainly browns and in batches of 10. I started with the lasguns to feel things out, favouring Vallejo English Uniform, German Grey, and Gunmetal over a Trench Brown spray. For several of these, a resemblance to characters from Fallout: New Vegas became apparent, especially with the use of GW Skrag Brown in places. The basic technique here is the same as most of my infantry, just swapping orange for brown. I still need to refine the colour choices here, but Agrax Earthshade saved the day. I must remember to trust the process...
These turned out all right, as a last minute, free-form, keep-me-sane-ish project. There’s a few imperfections, but they clearly tableworthy. The plan now is do a command squad as their own article, benefitting from lessons learned. After that? Dunno, there might be something in this squad+command format...
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