40K Friday: The Work Continues - Praetorians and Tyranids

 

My two "building" armies right now both made some progress. Not a ton, but a little.

The new command squads are now on 28mm bases so they won't fit into my 25mm movement trays. I was tempted to put them on 25s but I'm trying to go by current rules so now I get to deal with this. Base size used to be tied to figure size - now apparently it's tied to status. Maybe I'll just velcro them to the damn things.

I did manage to finish the Praetorian command squad, probably the first of 3 or 4. I had to stay with the banner since this one is going into the big combined unit and that +1 OC is a difference maker. For the weapons guy I stuck with a melta gun as I figure it will make the most difference if something gets in close. Having 3 of them altogether should be a bit of a deterrent as even the guard should land a hit or two at that point. For the officer I went with a bolt pistol and a power sword. I just am not that big a fan of a Strength 6 power fist and I don't really like the way it looks on normal humans most of the time. I think of these guys as being more about the swords than maximum efficiency so the power sword is good enough for me and it just looks better! 

At least it will make them easy to tell apart - "Wings Up" and "Wings Down". Years ago with Battletech I had a pair of metal Marauders named "Leans Left" and "Leans Right" so this is not a new thing for me. 

I also finished a pair of "winged tyranid primes" - the character/leader units from the Leviathan set. For itself it only has a bunch of melee attacks but it can join a unit of gargoyles to stiffen them up with "synapse" or a unit of warriors to give them Sustained Hits 1 which is a pretty nice buff.  I wonder if they might be useful just flying around solo doing actions, interfering with gun batteries, or jumping on lone characters. I might try it with one of them.

Modeling-wise I changed up the wings on one of them as the default downward pose is ... fine ... but I certainly wasn't going to have two like that in an army. 

I may have a chance to try them out this weekend as aside from the M&M game I'm also supposed to play Boom-Gun Brother Brandon in some 40K and I'm leaning towards taking the 'Nids. It'll mean throwing a bunch of un-painted and base-coated stuff on the table but that's not exactly uncommon around here. I'm going to try to get a few more units together before that game but even now it's reasonable progress for January. More next week.

40K Friday: More Praetorians

 

I didn't get a whole lot more done this week - just one more squad of neo-Praetorians. Animal acquisitions took priority this week. So yes we added a few more critters (local cat rescue) and getting them sorted out before the impending deep freeze meant almost no mini-working time. I was trying to get the command squad for this unit done as well and it will probably happen over the weekend as the M&M game will be cancelled due to weather so I will have some extra time. 

IG infantry squads are a little strange now. They start at a 10-man unit but they can go up to 20. Now that's not strange as in prior editions you could go up to 30. The weird quirk is that you get two sergeants, and potentially two comms guys. You also still have the ridiculous weapon restrictions per-squad so it's no more than 2 of any special weapon per 20 man squad when you can take 4 total. So instead of taking say 4 plasma guns you can only take 2, and then the other 2 have to be something else. 

Pretty much took all the options I didn't take in the first squad - Sgt has the autogun, took comms guy, various alternate poses like the grenade-tosser

This is another just plain dumb rule coming from the policy that a squad can only be comprised of what comes in the box. By definition, when building a guard infantry army I am going to be adding multiple boxes of guard infantry. In my case I am aiming for probably 3 of those big squads with a couple of 10-man units available for moving around or riding in chimeras. So around 100 infantrymen. This means I might want to specialize my squads into particular loadouts. Among other things this makes them easier to run as taking say, a pair of melta guns means I have one extra weapon type to worry about. Instead, what we get is having to take a melta and a grenade launcher (this is in one 10-man squad) which means I have two weapon stat lines to track alongside the ever-present lasguns. It could be worse - check out Plague Marine squad options sometime - but in a guard army which tends to be all about uniformity it really stands out. 

With 10th edition they brought back leaders joining units - which  I like - but with guard it's not just individual characters. You can have a 5-man command squad join up, which gives you a 25-man unit, and then you can have another character join it - like a commissar or a castellan or something similar. So one "squad" ends being a 26-man unit with all kinds of different guns and gear and special rules mixed in. I mean, it's kind of cool to have this level of customization in 10th - as it's rare these days - but it is a little strange to put it together as a new component in 2026. Oh, and you can then add in an ogryn bodyguard too, so 27 men, er, "unit members".

Inspiration

Then of course the command squad causes further weapon loadout chaos as two of the five members can take special weapons ... and the set comes with 2 complete sets of each: flamer, plasma, melta, grenade launcher. There are no restrictions on doubling up. So a 10-man infantry squad can only take one of any given type, but a 5-man command squad can take two?!

Now one of the tropers who can take a special weapon is also the guy who starts with a banner so in a big squad like I'm talking about here the +1 OC is almost required. An OC bump on a 20-something man unit is just too potent to ignore. But  ... you don't have to merge your command squads into another squad - they can run around on their own, say in a vehicle, and that would be a good place to take double plasma, for instance. 

Though this does mean that if most of my command squads are going into large ground-pounding infantry squads, well, I'm going to have an extra set of special weapons left over from each. Those sure would look nice in the hands of say, another line trooper in there ... but no. GW says that's just too much!

So you could end up with a 27-man squad with 4 melta guns, 2 grenade launchers, 16 lasguns, 3 pistols of various types, possibly an autogun on one of the sergeants, and a ripper gun on the ogryn. Simple, eh?

And yes, I'm the guy that bought 4 combat patrols when I found a deal a year or two back so I have options and I doubt I'm the only one to do that ... it's the Guard! You can't go small building a guard army! I have a fair amount of older stuff but I'm trying to start fresh with this army and make it conform to all of the modern ... innovations ... of 10th and 11th edition 40K ... however that turns out. 

And for any old-timers that might be wondering no, you can't flip two guys to a heavy weapons team in each squad anymore. They only come in the separate unit now. It was not always the best choice even in the old days but it was an easy way to drop a lascannon into your gunline and have it shielded by the rest of the squad. Not anymore!

Anyway there's the latest on the Praetorian Project! More next week!

40K Friday: The Praetorian Adventure Begins

  

Last week I was a little tired of building Tyranids and I was sitting there in my hobby room and I just decided there was no reason not to go ahead and start building my new Imperial Guard army. Sure, there's some splitting of effort n that case but I've been hitting the 'nids pretty hard and I don't want to burn out on them. Plus I want to make sure that my concept is going to work and that it looks good so I needed to see some examples built. So I did ...

Those are modern/current guard infantry models with head swaps to the Wargames Atlantic "Bulldogs" pith helmet heads.  I built a full squad to see how it would all fit together.

Now imagine them with red jackets, white helmets ... like those guys up above.

I was worried that the heads might not look right but after putting a squad together I think they look just fine - the helmets stick up more so they do have a different profile but that's kind of the point, right? I love that they come with backpacks right there in the kit now for everyone but the sergeant as that does add something to the look. I think these new troopers fit the Praetorian look even better than the older plastic Cadians. 

And yes, this is not a new thing for 40K. People have been making custom guard regiments by mixing and matching parts for years, especially head swaps. Hell those original versions up above are just head-swapped Mordian Iron Guard, albeit done at the pre-casting stage. These guys have had a surge of interest in recent years with many options coming out for pith-helmeted-Victorian-looking space troopers. That boxed set and the huge "Battle of Big Toof River" thing back in the late 90's really stuck with some of us. The Wargames Atlantic ones are the ones I like most right now as each sprue comes with multiple head options so I can use the piths for this army and with the rest of this kit I can build some very Mordian looking troopers as well! Circle of life right? 

So my thinking here is a mostly infantry & artillery based gunline army for the core of the force. I have some sentinels and some rough riders to add in for some mobility. I also have 3 ogryn squads I'm leaning towards putting into some custom chimeras just to mix things up as well - and yes, I do have ogre-sized pith helmets for them. I want to get more built before I really start locking in to a certain force org but that's the pencil sketch concept for now.

There will also be tanks...

I have a Leman Russ company + set aside to team up with this army going with the desert-ish paint scheme. I like my red-coated infantry but I like my tanks too and the guard have a lot of cool ones. I'm actually ahead on getting those done - mostly because they're easier to get to this stage. I like the idea of being able to go mostly infantry with some tank support or mostly tanks with some infantry support - it should be fun. 

One thing I had to accept early on is that this army will be very much not a Warhammer store-friendly force. Lots of 3rd party bits, kitbashes, and 3D printed vehicles and bits as well. Now this is not really something I care about a great deal as I don't play in their stores or go to their tournaments but it was a little bit of a weird feeling as it already will have more custom work than even my orks at this stage. I have a lot of old stuff in my orks but most of it is GW - or at least it's made from GW parts. This army is just straight up whatever fits the very specific look I want. 

For now I'm thinking slow and steady progress. 10th edition guard (and presumably later) can deploy as a combined unit of two 10-man squads plus a 5-man command squad plus a leader officer of some type so I'm going to try and get the rest of one of those done this month alongside more tyranids and see how quickly I can get some kind of playable force. I'm not worried about points at all yet, just getting the parts into shape.

More to come!