Imperial Guard (Pt. 4). Aerial support

I know, I said that I would like to have finished with Imperial Guard before year ended, but it seems quite impossible task. Anyway, let's advance a little. Today, the Valkyrie aircraft.

Another aspect of my obssesive way to understand the personalization of my minis is related to the interior of vehicles. See what I mean:

Yes, that white thing is the first-aid kit. It seems that everybody forgets abot that and I belive it's essential in any transport!

That was a (failed) attempt of red light flashing. Not ready for jumping out yet!

A sight of the interior, showing the aircraft in battle condition:

You expected it clean? Get out to the field and let's see how long does anything keep clean

The bench belongs to the Forge World resin kit with this wonderful crew:

Elysian parachutists, recycled as an assault team for my Regiment

Amazingly detailed minis indeed

 Here's the complete interior, including the artillery crew:

We're crowded inside!

The colour and identification system is just the same I've already shown you:

Circles for Infantry, squares for armoured vehicles... Triangles suited well the aerial support

The door handle is not part of the kit, it's an improvisation of mine: just a staple glued to the door ;)

I've become quite fond of detailing kits with little signs and indications, as they are part of real military vehicles. Caution signs, instructions and so.

Decals which I painted over and tiny signs everywhere

Not much improvisation on the cockpit, just painting the detailed interior:

A real cockpit has way many more buttons, but what the hell, it's a sci-fi figure...

I placed a HUD to improve the model. It' just a little piece of transparent plastic with random signs painted on it :)

As this is Warhammer 40,000, I couldn't put the signs in English. They are all in Gothic (plain Latin). So there's no "watch your step" but "cave pedes", and no "air intake" but "aeris ductus":

I know you can't read them but believe me, they're there

The final result is this:

Ready for duty

Okay, this is it!

Have a nice end of 2012, we'll meet again in venturous '13. Happy new year!!

Imperial Guard (Pt. 3). Vehicles

Imperial Guard again ;)

If I already showed you how I identify infantry units, you can expect for sure that I'm doing the same with vehicles:

Bulky and dirty

I use the same system, but exchanging the circle for a square symbol, which represents armoured units.

Yeah, it's in the sponsons

Not very original, but effective

 The essence is just the same, with little variations, due to the nature of an armoured unit. The Regimental number goes above and then you can see the "Company" and "Platoon" numbers. Well, talking about armoured cavalry and artillery units you should use terms as Squadron, Group, Battery... but Warhammer rules don't make that distinction, so I dont't want to mess you up.

Plain scheme, I didnt want camouflage patterns

You can see the designation number for the tank itself on the turret, being coherent with the marks on the sponsons. The above Leman Russ Tank is the Third Vehicle belonging to the First "Platoon" of the Second Company.

And so it works for any other vehicle:

On these numbers you can tell that the 4th Company is an Artillery one

First "Platoon" is formed up with Basilisks, the Second one with Griffons

I've been encouraged to use decals for the numbers. I should have done so, but I didn't have enough numbers that size, so I finally did them freehand (can you call "freehand" painting numbers? Well, whatever).

I did use decals (and painted on them to unificate colours) on other models:

Too clean, too clean!

Besides painting over the decals, I greenstuffed the guy, the original miniature was entirely bald

I also did the same here with the Imperial Eagles. They're decals which I painted brown:

Again, the same identification system

I ran out of decals, so I had to figure out an impact on the front of the hull

Ooops! Watch your step!

Finally, I'm showing you a car from Antenocitis Workshop. I fell in love as I saw this one:

Resin and metal

I had to get a pair of GW minis inside:

Awful photo, as usual

It suits perfectly to Warhammer scale. You can see it here beside a Tauros Venator from Forge World:

I should replace the weapons to "warhammerize" the model

Well, that's all for today. It's difficult to play with all these models at a time (Apocalypse games are pretty difficult to set up within my schedule), but it's worth painting them.

I'd like to post the rest of this Guard before the year ends, let's see if I'm capable of it...

Imperial Guard (Pt. 2). Organization

It's becoming really difficult to post anything these days (BTW, merry Christmas everyone there! )

I told you I was going to talk aboul personalizing armies. In this case, my Imperial Guard.

It looks that gaming nowadays has become a challenge to put up together the most uberstrong minis, never mind if they're absolutely unrelated each other or whatever, just to see "who's the best general" or "who plays better than others". I don't get it, but I guess it's fine if you find it fun. But for those of us who come from the old school concept, gaming was just a matter of fun. Our better aim was never winning a game, but playing and enjoying it. So all the point was (an still is) creating. Creating a story, building up an army and giving it its own personality.

So this is what I tried with my minis. Do you remember the old way of identifying Imperial Guard units, with coloured circles?

This image's copyright belongs to Games Workshop, etc.

For my army I decided to go on that concept, but making it a little bit more military, i.e., not sticking all these colours on camouflage fatigues ;). This is what I ended up working with:

Right shoulder pad

On one shoulder, the pad displays the Regimental number (XVII in this case) and the Company number (6)

Left shoulder pad

The other shoulder pad displays the Platoon and Squad numbers, 2 and 4 in this case. So, a Guardsman showing these symbols could be easily identified as belonging to the XVIIth Regiment, 6th Company, 2nd Platoon, 4th Squad.

One thing that everybody seems to avoid in wargames minis is the aspect of making an army look... well, military. And that means details. It's not enough just painting your figures in camo pattern to make it appear like anything else that a bunch of partisans. You need to make it look credible. So you need to make sure that all those tiny details show up to make it real. One aspect is the organic adscription to a determined unit. The other is about ranks. Soldiers need to identify each other with a simple glimpse, and that is provided with current uniforms. In order to bring this down to my minis, I had to design a rank emblems system.

These are my own personal Imperial Guard ranks:

Colonel

Lt. Colonel

Major

Captain

Lieutenant

Second Lieutenant

Sergeant Major

Master Sergeant

Staff Sergeant

Sergeant

Corporal

Guardsman

 So yes, each mini in my army has any of these distinctive emblems:

Guardsman and Corporal. 3rd Platoon, 2nd Squad

Sergeant of that Squad and Lieutenant of the 3rd Platoon. Note that the scheme for the Officer is up and down, instead of left and right.

Captain of the 6th Company. Both shoulder pads are the same

Another final example:

Guardsman, 6th Company...

3rd Platoon, 1st Squad

It's not complicated. As a matter of fact it looks quite intuitive, I hope. It certainly works for me and helps to the general lookings of my Imperial Guard. These small details make the minis unique and are easy to replicate in any uniform pattern with the proper colours.

That's all for today. Merry Christmas again and let me know if you find this useful or if you think I'm going nuts, hehe.

More things in a few days!