Mordian 7th Regiment, the rebirth!

I know this may come as a shock, but I actually did some work on my guard! I'll pause briefly while you recover from this stunning development.

To recap my history with the Mordian 7th Regiment - Ever since the Rogue Trader era, I've been enamored with the Imperial Guard, and my very first guard army was an attempt to recreate the army listed in the 40k Compendium. Since then the mighty 7th has held a special place in my heart, though I've never quite managed to complete the list in its entirety. The last version came very, very close however, though it was beleaguered by small hobby missteps that eventually culminated in my selling off the majority of it - It got to the point where I felt it would be more fun to rebuild than to repaint!

Chief among these is the fact that I didn't give them the correct paint scheme. Early on in the painting process I was (still) working on the Adeptus Mechanicus, and I cunningly decided that I could use the guard as Skitarii if I went with red and grey. According to the Compendium however the Mordian 7th's livery consisted of black fatigues trimmed in red to represent their hive ganger origins and their company motto "In the dark, blood will flow").

So I assembled a new Commander Evin Eldro and his command squad and set about trying out the 'correct' paint scheme. So far I'm pleased with how they're coming along. The dark blue/black fatigues with the red piping is reminiscent of the dress blues worn by the majority of the Mordian Iron Guard, and gives the impression of what they would look like if they donned standard guard flak armor. The breastplates on the Commander and the Standard Bearer are from the Empire Greatswords kit, and were chosen in an attempt to mimic the Rogue Trader-era guard command miniatures. I think I'm going to paint the medic's flak armor white to help distinguish him as the medic a bit better than he is now.

The tanks will be painted in a black and red scheme as well, as shown by the Bane Wold I'd painted a while back, and I think I'm going to keep the tank crews in red.. All in all I'm actually looking forward to dive back in to the guard!

Back to the Guard - Bane Wolf completed

...And it's about time too! I've been neglecting the Mordian 7th of late and figured it was high time to rectify the situation! In order to ease back into it, I decided to finish off the Bane Wolf that has been sitting forlornly primered on the 'to-do' shelf. I went with an homage to my previous Hellhound inasmuch as rather than doing the standard grey/red scheme I went with a black/red combo that makes the tank look a bit more menacing. The Hellhound (and variant) crews are known for being a bit individualist (if not completely mad) so I felt the tank should look a bit different than the rest. It doesn't hurt that a predominantly black paint scheme is rather quick to do when it comes to tanks!

I definitely enjoyed building this model much more than any Chimera variant that I can remember. I will definitely say that the re-cut kit goes together like a dream, but even so, I was disappointed that GW has seen fit to 'dumb down' the kit's contents. I truly feel that the customization potential of the kit has been significantly reduced with the loss of the individual track and bogey style of its predecessor. On the up side, fearing this to be the case, I'd stocked up on the old kit for use in future projects. I really need to do the same with a couple Leman Russ kits before they're superseded as well... Following this I intend to finish up a couple models to fill in a few gaps in the painting chart, before I turn my attentions back to the remaining Crimson Fist vehicles.

I had a chance to play a game against my friend's spanking new Blood Angels codex list this past weekend, though once the game got going I neglected to take any pictures. There was so much going on looking up new rules and such that it completely slipped my mind until we were packing up and I realized the camera was sitting unused in the corner! We ended up playing a 3500 point game of Planetstrike, as it seemed only fitting that the inaugural game with the new BA codex should be one most suited to their style of play As the defender, I decided we'd be fighting over a spaceport, and included a couple models for terrain purposes - the Aquila Lander, the Thunderbolt and of course the new Old Crow models. I definitely think they added a little flavor to the battlefield.

Suffice it to say the Blood Angels more or less butchered my army by the top of turn 4, though the Mordian 7th did manage to give them a pretty good kicking before they were essentially wiped out. The new codex is brutal, though some of the brutality is likely a function of playing a high point game where the marines can really bring some of their more frightening models to bear. At a more reasonable 1500-2000 points I think the guard may have stood a better chance - I basically ended taking 2000 points of a 'hardcore' army and 1500 points of fluffy albeit questionably tactically sound units that the BA tore through like a bag of wet leaves. Ah well, as a guard player I don't get too worked up over losing. Hah!