Search the Community

Fellow Guardsmen! It's been a long time since my last report to Terran High Command! I hope the Emperor can forgive me. But the 409th is ready to emerge from winter quarters and hit the campaign trail once again. Real life demands not withstanding, I plan to get back to the business of putting more boots on the ground and shells in the air. I tried to find my old PLOG thread only to discover that it had been so long since my last update that it had been archived! Disgraceful! I'm fixing to keep this thread from suffering the same fate. I have to admit, it's no coincidence that the arrival of 8th Edition and the new Guard dex coincide with this army coming off ice. The new regimental doctrines sound very fluffy and fun to play with. I plan to try them all out just for kicks since I run my own homebrew regiment. Since it has been so long, like YEARS, since I last seriously posted, for those who don't know about the 409th, it's primarily an infantry based Guard regiment that is inspired by the American Civil War. I've seen random threads here and there on the old Intertrons in the past that were loosely inspired by ACW themes, and always had a mind to tackle it myself. I'm using a lot of third party kit which gets kind of expensive, but I think that this theme demands more than some simple head swaps to achieve the effect I'm going after. It's been a pretty long slog, but the 409th slumber'd for long enough and my boys have their dander up! Anyway, I figured the best way to start the new thread is with a PARADE! Who doesn't love parades, especially military parades glorifying the Emperor! So, I'll start there with some beauty shots of the boys I have all painted up ready for battle: Command Section: Here's a couple shots of the ranking officers, the Senior Officer in the middle and two Junior Officers. And their Regimental Advisors: Master of Ordnance, Astropath, a Fleet Officer and a Priest in there for good measure. And here's the CO with his command squad retinue: Bonus: Checkout my old count-as as Color Sergeant Kell in the back on the right - never got around to actually modelling the actual COLORS he was supposed to be entrusted with, but hes got the power fist and 'power' sword - the only chain sword in my army! Also included for bonus fun, an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor I painted up about the same time as I was doing this regiment initially, in case he ever needed to commandeer the regiment on Inquisition business: I don't really remember where I found this guy, pretty sure he's some kind of Privateer Press mini. Elites: Well, I guess these guys are Elites now, which honestly I feel is not optimal, but oh well, gotta sell those stormtrooper sprues! When I initially envisioned an ACW inspired army on the table I had thought I'd have entire platoons (in game terms) worth of infantry patterned in different uniform styles taken from famous civil war units. However, this is not as feasible as I foresaw from a cost and time standpoint. It became more practical to run Veteran squads in some of the more exotic unit patterns of the day, rather than try and run entire platoons this way. It just costs too much!! In-game it actually works pretty well as a way to distinguish Vet squads from your standard infantry squads, and easily explained from a fluff standpoint - as units gain seniority they appropriate unique attire befitting their veteran status. Anyway my first Veteran squad is patterned after the famous Union Iron Brigade. They were also called the Black Hats since the appropriated Hardee hats as part of their uniform instead of the typical kepis and forage caps. These guys are pretty much all Victoria Mini parts, but the heads are special. Steve Barber miniatures online has a massive range of historal minis for different eras and lots in the 28mm scale. And while historical 28mm is usually too small to be compatibile with heroic 28mm, they do have lot and lots of 28mm historic heads and their heads happen to scale extremely nicely with VicMini scuplts. They also work with GW as well, but mate with VicMini perfectly. I use the Steve Barber heads in this project extensively, they are a near perfect fit for this kind of conversion. Here's more of the squad: The special weapons in initially modelled for this squad was melta, back when melta vets were the hotness. But I guess the hotness is plasma now, so I suppose I'm going to have to go back and bang out a few plasma Vets for the squad. The 'melta' arms are all VicMini and really look the part for the aesthetic. Next Vet squad: these guys are patterned after the 11th New York Fire Zouaves. I really wanted to do some Zouaves units, but pretty much chickened out, since I don't really trust my greenstuff-fu, and no one out there is making baggy Zouave-style pantaloons in the 28mm heroic scale. So these guy are my compromise since they were a Zouave unit when they mustered in at the beginning of the war, and had a different uniform, a silk uniform that fell apart during their initial campaign! This is closer to the unit's second uniform, were they ditched their jackets and adopted dark trousers to replaces the baggy zouave pants that had disintegrated. Back in the old dex, (I'm talking 5th Ed. when I was heavy into planning this unit out,) There was no regiment restriction, and Harker was an interesting addition for a veteran squad. Zouaves drilled in light infantry open-order tactics - running these guys as light infantry infiltrating harassers was what I intended. This squad has sniper rifles - cheap and cheerful harassment weapons, inspired by the 'sniper' rifled muskets of the era. This squad is lead by my 'count-as' Harker. Is he even IN the next Dex or just the 8th Ed. index?? Well, he's a cool conversion anyway, don't know if he'll find the table for a while. And speaking of snipers, these guys can run as their own counts-as rattlings (although I do need a few more) or as part of a command squad for the BS3+. They are inspired by Berdan's 1st and 2nd US Sharpshooters. They were special regiments that recruited soliders who were proficient with the rifled arms of the day and could actually aim (most couldn't). They were used often as skirmishers at the divisional level instead of fighting in traditional two-rank battle lines. These guy are my own count-as Commissars. Every civil war regiment usually had a Sergeant Major, who was the senior NCO of the unit. Anecdotally these guys were known to be tough as nails and unflappable. In my fluff, these guys are senior NCO's who get inducted into special Officio Prefectus training programs and come out the other end as Sergeant Major Commissars. I always intended to get a couple actual Commissars painted up, but never got around. There's more I'd like to do for these guys to make them really stand out as Commissars on the tabletop. And here's another 5th Ed. relic: my counts-as Marbo. I think the Index still let's you run him?? But maybe its just Shadow Wars now? He was fun one to convert, but doesn't have a place right now in an 8th Ed. army. Pity.

So, this is my first post on Bolter & Chainsword. I’ve been a long time lurker, but finally thought I’d share what I’ve been up to. I’ll use this thread as a log for my Ultramarine forces, which is my primary collection. I’ve been interested in the hobby ever since I was a kid, and collected various things since then, but I’ve only really been playing for the last couple of years. I have a mate locally who also plays, so I manage to get the odd game in each month. We don’t use mega competitive armies, just try various units and combos trying to keep it fluffy, although we are looking in to some local tournaments, and i'm considering going to a birng and battle evening at my local Warhammer store in the near future. We managed to play a couple of games today, and i managed to make some notes, so I thought I’d try and make a little bat rep which I’ll post in a moment which I hope you'll enjoy. Any feedback on list, style of the report, etc is welcome. I'll try and get my pictures onto the laptop and add them to the next post if possible.