Project Chem-Dogs: Part 2

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.

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.