Imperial Guard Priest

This week has seen some pretty extensive modelling going on.  After finishing the latest update of my Background Book, fluff has been given a bit of a break for a while while I clear the backlog of unfinished models in my collection.  A while back I had a serious re-org of my modelling area, which involved putting all the unbuilt models away in a drawer.  Very tidy, but unfortunately some have sat in there for quite a while now.

One of them is the Imperial Guard priest, an old-school GW model that I bought for fear of all the metal models being discontinued (which incidentally looks likely).  It's a classic model and although the zealous Priesthood aspect is not one the Palladians go in for, it's too nice a model not to get.  On top of that, writing a Tactica for HQ Units made me realise that the re-roll on the charge is too good to pass up.

The final effort on the manuscript.

For painting, I decided to avoid the coloured robes depicted in 'Eavy Metal's effort and go for something a bit more monk-like.  This resulted in undercoating different areas of fabric with different shades of brown (like Dark Flesh, Mournfang Brown, Scorched Brown, etc) then using some Army Painter: Soft Shade to give some shadows to the whole thing.  This was remarkably quick, and left me with plenty of time and patience for the centrepiece of the model, the book-on-a-stick.

I love getting my teeth into some nice detail freehand painting once in a while.  Last year, some of you may remember I spent a week brushing up (pun not intended) on my freehand skills when painting insignia on WW2 models - I wrote a bit about it here.  I did a little research and found a page of manuscript to copy - see the results below.

The bronze-gold armour was a good
practice run for the priest.

I really like the brass edging to the book, and my Chaos commander from last week was excellent practice.  Some of you were good enough to offer some advice.  Chris from over at SOPW helped me out:

I think I can help with the gold finish you are trying for. The trick is to do a final highlight that is a mix of silver and gold. It can be a bit tricky to get the mix right but something like 1 part silver to 5 parts gold usually will give you the over polished look.

And I duly tried this.  Not wanting to end up with a nondescript metalic sludge, the silver was very subtle but I think it makes a difference.  As for the script itself, I'm generally quite pleased although the consistency of the lines of text is a bit random.  And it's a bit thicker than I was going for.  But it looks okay from a distance, which is what I was going for.

With that out of the way the rest of the model was siplicity itself.  To cheer it up a bit, I painted my favoured hazard stripes on the chainsword (love those hazard stripes!)  Also, I painted what may well be the last autogun left on a 40K model!  Anyone care to correct me on that?

Anyway, it was a joy to paint and fairly straightforward.  The whole thing took about three hours, including drying time.  I'm hoping to try him out in a 40K game soon but only as a rules experiment, as priests are not favoured by the Palladians.  Too much shouting and waving of arms: very unsoldierly.

As for what's in store, me and Headologist are planning a Necromunda campaign soon, which means lots of gang-building and terrain construction.  We've both been doing some but I'll tease you by saying Headologist has a truly stunning piece of scenery in the works - hopefully he'll be able to share it with you soon.  I've got one more update of desk-clearing models to do, then there'll be a little Necromunda spot hopefully.

Anyway, until then hope you're all well and good luck with the dice!

The Colonel

New Imperial Guard Background Book

Long-time readers may remember last year's Background Book - a book of homemade fluff on my Imperial Guard army.  Well, I've been chipping away at rewrites for almost a year now, and I'm very pleased to announce Edition 2.0.

The 'change log', if you like:

• A toning-down of the zealous, futuristic tone of the text to a slightly more neutral style - for ease of comprehension.
• Added several diagrams and summary charts, especially on Recruitment, to clarify some of the tings which were laboriously described in blocks of prose.
• Addition of a section on rank insignia and some uniform pictures.
• A complete Order of Battle, with strengths and ammunition/equipment holdings.
• Some correction of errors, omissions and continuity bloopers.

Chaos Commander

Hi everybody - once in a while, I'll buy a model just for the sheer fun of it.  This is the story of one of those days.  I was at my local model shop, loudly lamenting the loss of specialist games, when the owner showed me a dusty cardboard box.  As a GW retailer he has long since stopped selling blister packs, but had a few left over at knockdown prices.  Mostly old LOTR stuff, but in the background I saw an old 'Lucius the Eternal' figure lurking, and picked him up for a steal price.

Halt! Papers Please!

After a lot of 40K stuff over recent weeks, I think it's time for an update to my World War 2 forces.  Since August (which was WW2 month last year) I haven't really done much on them and Headologist and I last did a battle in October.  Not forgotten, just on the back burner really.

So I was clearing out my modelling area when I decided to do a few bits which have been sitting on my desk for yonks - mostly the old WW2 stuff you see before you.

Think the signposts and guard huts are from West Wind's Berlin or Bust range, but can't really remember ... the Kettenkrad is from Warlord Games.  Enjoyed painting these as it gave me chance to work on my freehand painting.

Tactica Imperial Guard: Heavy Support

Ladies and Gentlemen ... the moment you've all been waiting for:  Tactica Imperial Guard, Heavy Support!!!  The fifth and final episode in the Tactica Imperial Guard series, we're now going to look at the big beasts of the Imperial Guard.

We sat through silly horses, we sat through puny weapons teams and we sat through weak infantry.  Space Marines laughed, Eldar mocked and Necrons just ignored us.  Now they shall know fear, for it is upon them!

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.  Here we go ...

Tactica Imperial Guard: Fast Attack

Welcome back all, for part four of five in my ongoing Tactica Imperial Guard series, this time it's Fast Attack.

Before we plunge into the depths of the Codex, you all deserve a quick update as things have been moving over the last few days:

• I've been guest blogging over at DYHAF, with a little spiel on GW and their latest controversy, which I like to call 'Faeitgate'.
• Picked up a cheap Lucius the Eternal model from my local store, which I'm going to paint up and use as a generic bad guy for our campaigns.
• Ordered a bunch more metal IG models now they might well be dying off ... including priests, old commissars, sergeants and demolition charge Catachans.
• Finished a long-time overhaul of my Palladian fluff - expect a post on that soon!

Tactica Imperial Guard: Troops

The latest installment in the series on Guard tactics, which takes a look at the Codex unit-by-unit, basically looking at how good all our units are.  This has stirred up quite some discussion on the previous posts, so hopefully we can carry on as we started when we look at the mainstay of the Guard - nay, the Imperium - the humble Troops.

Imperial Guard troops are an oddity.  The options available are staggering - you can get veterans, heavy weapons, conscripts - and everything in between. Stuff that would fill up another codex entirely is to be found neatly packed in the two troops pages of the codex.  It's perfectly possible to build a very competitive army incorporating all the required specialisations just using Troops slots.

Tactica Imperial Guard: Elites

Continuing my series of posts on Imperial Guard tactics, today I'm going to be looking at those mainstays of the Guard battleplan - Elites.  These nails units offer up an enormous range of specialties  not to mention fantastic modelling and painting opportunities.  But like all Guard, they're generally not that tough and can run up a hefty points bill if you let yourself run away with it all.

(Should also mention that the prices given in all these articles are taken from GW direct - you can usually save at least 10% by going through another supplier.)

Tactica Imperial Guard: HQ Units

Hello again everybody!  Been a bit of a quiet week this week as I've been working pretty non-stop, but glad to say normal service has been resumed. Quick modelling update:

• After Commissar von Körtig, I'm carrying on with more Penal Legionnaires - with a few new purchases from Victoria Lamb that I'll be reviewing in a post later this week
• My good pal Headologist is still neck-deep in his dissertation so there are no games on the horizon, but we are tinkering with a few fiction ideas, hopefully we'll be getting to the stage where we both do a weekly serial on some kind of joint story.

But that's all by the by.  Today, I wanted to introduce what I hope will become a semi-regular slot on the blog of Imperial Guard tactical guides.  I'm going to be looking at the codex, unit-by-unit, and sharing a few thoughts.  Maybe one or two new players might get something out of it, and I'm sure it will stimulate some discussion amongst the longbeards out there!  I notice from my servo-printouts (Blogger dashboard) that my infrequent tactics posts tend to get the most comments.

I wouldn't desribe myself as a competitive player - I play to win, but for me the game is more about fluff.  Having said that I've been a Guard player for the better part of a decade so I hope I can share some thoughts that will help you.  I'll be taking into consideration lots of factors in the 'unit review' - as well as lethality, coolness, the model quality, and cost (in pounds not points).

Quick disclaimer - this is not a 'do-this-do-that' guide, more of a discussion starter.  So please forgive any minor errors in this, but feel free to let me know in the comments section and I'll amend.  It's informative, not infallible.

Finished: von Körtig's Backscratchers

Hi all!  After last week's update to the Penal Legion, I've been busily painting away for the last week.  This is what I've come up with.  If you missed it, this is the link to the concept/construction post.  I'll let the pics do most of the talking here!

One thing that's missing is a flag (thanks for the idea for that Chris), just need to wait until Bitzbox have one in stock again.

Commissar-Captain von Körtig himself.  Very pleased with how he turned out in the end.