How much is too much?

[DerSchlankeMann]

I'm running a post-apocalyptic Guard army (maybe a project log to follow after Christmas, if I remember), and I was curious: what do you think is too much, when using post-apocalyptic fluff (think Metro 2033/Last Light)? Essentially, I'm hoping not to be that guy who says his army is perpetually running low on ammo fluff-wise, but still manages to run six artillery pieces.

[alex567]

If you want to run six artillery pieces it'd be fine, you could say that all the mass weapons of war were used up during the apocalyptic escalation and they've discovered an old artillery cash or something, that was left to disrepair at the start of the engagement. It would A fit into your armies fluff and B give you awesome opportunities to paint some pretty cool and rusty vehicles! Especially with the new effect paints. As long as you can come up with a suitable excuses for it its never too much!

[Aqui]

I don't know much about Guard regiments outside of what's in Gaunts Ghosts, but I would think that it's entirely plausible to have a fair number of artillery pieces, but due to erratic or unreliable supply lines, they aren't always fully loaded with ammo, or are always awaiting repairs. Rather than leave them behind (potentially for an enemy to take control of and use) the regiment in question take them everywhere in the vain hope that one day they can use them to full effect

[JeffTibbetts]

40K fluff is really all about excess. It's up to you how far you want to go but I've never seen a movie or video game that I think would be too much for 40K. I think you should look into a group of Death Korps of Krieg that somehow got separated from their main group or something. Might be fun. Or at least Iron Guard if DKOK are a bit too rich for your blood. 

[Argun]

For fluff reasons, why not have your infantry running low on ammo at the start of the campaign, whereas the artillery was the one who got resupplied? 

[WarriorFish]

I'm not sure how a Lasgun runs low on ammo, Argun :P

 

I agree with Jeff, you can't have running low on supply too much in 40k as it doesn't fit with the excess of fire power usually associated with the Guard. Best thing to do is fluff in poor supply, but only so far as they don't have access to what a normal regiment would. Maybe something like they have some fabricator ship/convoy/thingy with them that produces their supplies but they're constantly having to keep it fed from worlds they fight on?

 

That way you can have your fluff cake and still shoot it!

[Pariah Mk.231]

You could have them as something like the Boomers from Fallout: New Vegas, cut off from resupply, but have access to a large, yet steadily dwindling, source of heavy munitions. If you want your basic footslogger to have reduced access to ammunition, you could say that after a lengthy period of having to rely on unreliable means of recharging their las-cells (heating them in a fire), they now suffer from a greatly reduced capacity and often fail with heavy use, requiring frequent reloads and weighing the troopers down with the need to carry an excess of partially charged cells.

 

The standard lasgun is also fairly durable and easy to maintain, but without a supply of replacement parts and a shrinking pool of skilled techseers to oversee repairs, each trooper has had to become responsible for seeing to his own weapon (something that goes against the Primer), requiring a fair amount of patch-work and jury-rigging (and offending the weapon's machine spirit to boot). Mismatched colours on different parts of the weapon could be used to reprsent thm having to make do with any available materials. Maybe even use different marks of lasgun from the various Guard ranges available, even within the same unit, with some men using the Cadian lasgun, others using the Catachan lascarbine and yet others using the lasgun from the Imperial vehicle sprue with the folded stock.

 

You could also make their armour and uniform heavily damaged and patched, or certain parts replaced altogether with pieces scavanged from battlefields, scrap metal used to cover damage, mismatched fatigues and so on. As an example, if you're working with Cadians as a base, you could have some men with Catachan pants, or missing their sleeves or helmets, etc.

Maybe the regiment is engaged in heavy city-fighting, and the changing fortunes of the war makes a permanent HQ a risk, requiring every trooper to carry extra equipment as the regiment frequently relocates, represented by everyone being modelled with backpacks. Perhaps some items of gear have completely run out of ammo (such as the standard autopistol sidearm) or fuel (Chimeras being scrapped so the heavier tanks can use their fuel, or vice-versa) and can no longer be used, or have even stopped functioning after crucial components couldn't be replaced (such as vox-casters). You could claim that the regiment has had to give up using flamers because all available fuel has been gathered to keep the tanks or field generators running. You might avoid certain weapons that have become unusuable due to conditions, such as plasma weaponry becoming extremely unstable and thus abandoned.

Your soldiers may have even gotten creative with the materials they have and improvised some new toys, maybe they've run out of autocannon rounds, but due to their heavy-bolters all being damaged beyond repair, they now have an over-abundance of heavy-bolter ammo and have found a way to modify the autocannons (using any parts that could still be salvaged from the heavy-bolters) to fire the heavy-bolter rounds. You could represent this by modifying the autocannon to maybe have a shorter barrel, and have a heavy-bolter ammo box attached instead of an autocannon one, and just count them as heavy-bolters. You might even refrain from projectile weapons altogether and say your regiment is down to using various las-weapons (gun/cannon/multi) because they can at least still (unreliably) charge the power cells, or restrict weapons with a high rate-of-fire as the troops need to make every shot count due to dwindling stores.

 

You could even have the regiment forced to resort to recruiting local gangers and other less-than-reputable sorts to replace loses, allowing you to either scatter some more 'colourful individuals' amoung the squads, or maybe represent them with a Penal squad or even just Conscripts. These guys could sport something that marks their affiliation to a particular group, such as tattoos, scarves/bandanas/arm-bands, or some sort of exotic item, maybe a dyed feather hanging from their belt (there are plently of feathers in the Empire Statetroops kits) or a local signature weapon (maybe use the hand weapons from the Skink kit).

[teblin]

I'm running a post-apocalyptic Guard army (maybe a project log to follow after Christmas, if I remember), and I was curious: what do you think is too much, when using post-apocalyptic fluff (think Metro 2033/Last Light)? Essentially, I'm hoping not to be that guy who says his army is perpetually running low on ammo fluff-wise, but still manages to run six artillery pieces.

 

In Metro 2033 the Rangers discover a huge stockpile of arms in the lower floors of D6. Maybe something similar could have happened with your Regiment.

[DerSchlankeMann]

Could I have them using autoguns instead of lasguns? Also, should I post up any fluff I have?

[Argun]

IIRC, autoguns have the same statlines as lasguns, so I don't see why not!

 

Oh, and fish: in one of the GG books, I believe it was the assault on Phantine, the Ghosts were seriously short on ammo, and got resupplied with the wrong packs. Yes, lasguns do run out of ammo, though it takes a few firefights!

[DerSchlankeMann]

Also, here is fluff. Probably should have posted that first, but eh: 

 

"This world is a death-trap. I do not know how the people here can stand it. There is no sunlight for almost half the day, and when there is sunlight, one still has to worry about the things that go bump in the night. Or rather, screech in the sky. But does that bother a single goddamn person on this planet? Nope. Bloody lunatics, the lot of them. If I was them, I'dve gotten the hell out of here as soon as I could." - From the logs of Rogue Trader Iosif Danel, logged 212.M41.

 

"The Imperial Tithe has not been collected from Karnobil in over two hundred years. Granted, that's not for lack of trying. The first tithe ship that was sent reached the planet's surface and then...nothing. No updates, no captain's log, nothing. The second fared just as well, but at least we have record of that. The ship touched down, and the captain and crew made ready to step out onto the planet's surface. According to the audio recordings picked up at the crash site by myself and Inquisitor Landerson, those crew-members that didn't choke to death on the planet's poisonous air as their filters slowly ran out were carried away by the...things that circled in the sky." - Log of Adminstratum adept Karl Jansen, attached to the retinue of Inquisitor Andrey Landerson, charged with investigating the disappearances of the two tithe ships sent to Karnobil, 490.M41.

 

"'The sons will bear punishment for the sins of the father', they say. Well, whoever 'they' were, I hope they let our sons get off lightly, because, by the God-Emperor, we have sinned." - Log of Colonel Evgeny Koroshilov, I Regiment, Karnobil PDF, two weeks after the Reprisal, 200.M41.

 

+++TIMELINE BEGINS+++

80.M41 - 9th Savlar Chem-Dogs and 144th Krieg Siege Regiment make planetfall on Karnobil to clear out Waaagh! Gutstompa.

100.M41 - Ork infestation cleansed, 9th Savlar allowed settlement rights.

120.M41 - Imperial government set up with the express purpose of farming military recruits. Karnobil PDF formed.

160.M41 - Blighted Dawn movement formed. Ostensibly a secessionist movement, they are in reality a Chaos cult dedicated to Nurgle.

207.165.M41 - Artymska Hive Incident: all of Artymska Hive is systematically put to death on suspicion of being collaborators, cultists, or both. All told, seven million people die in the next week as the Kernobil PDF goes from hab block to hab block, killing any people they find.

170.M41 - The open rioting in the streets reaches a head when Eugin Karsikov, Imperial Governor, is dragged from his podium during a speech and publicly executed. His bodyguard kill twelve men in an attempt to break through the crowd to get him back.

180.M41 - "Peace" is restored to Karnobil. All widespread rebellion suddenly ceases, and the Blighted Dawn are believed to be dead.

338.200.M41 - In a move twenty years in the making, the Blighted Dawn movement rises up and strikes at the Imperial governor's palace, cutting off Imperial governor Ivan Denisov and high command of the PDF. Fighting in the palace rages for three days as the governor, his aides, and the rest of the high command try their best to hold off the insurgents attempting entry to the palace.

341.200.M41 - The leader of the Blighted Dawn, Ismail Dudin, emerges from the palace holding the head of Governor Denisov. The populace cheers.

345.200.M41 - The last of the four days of fighting that commence as the I, II and III regiments of the Karnobil PDF go to ground, retreating into the metro stations beneath the planet's surface.

346.200.M41 - Operation Dawnhammer commences. Special operations members of I regiment, Karnobil PDF detonate suitcase-sized nuclear devices in every city on the planet, sacrificing themselves so that the planet might be cleansed from the taint of Chaos. This operation is henceforth referred to as 'The Reprisal' by the survivors of I regiment and the members of II and III regiments.

360.200.M41 - Colonel Evgeny Koroshilov recites his now-famous Reprisal Day speech to the remnants of the Karnobil PDF, now the only living people remaining on the planet.

+++TIMELINE ENDS+++

[WarriorFish]

I was referring to the fact the power packs can be recharged in sunlight, it effectively means infinite ammo :) Autoguns in 40k scale are identical in stats to Lasguns so that will work nicely, though you'll have a lot of fun trying to source or mod them for every model...

 

Fluff seems good, though I question that anyone hearing the name "Blighted Dawn" wouldn't immediately identify them as nurgle heretics and purge them with fire :P

[hendrik]

the lasguns indeed form an issue. in addition, this list will always be at a disadvantage since you're trying to make a disadvantaged army...which could lead to you not liking to play the army( always losing can get boring after a while.

 

anyway, there is nothing wrong with stating that an army is running low on ammo, and yet still field an optimal combat load out... a couple years in belgium we had an "ammo"-crisis since we had only about 1 bullet left/soldier in our national army due to restock issues etc. While this ment we needed ammo desperatly it didn't mean our active combat groups (mostly UN mission, pirate patrolling in somalia etc) went into combat with only 1 bullet...

now this is only the belgian army we're talking about, a tiny little european nation right above france and next to germany (NO not the netherlands! the little spot below those!), think what such a world wide thing would mean!

todays earths population is estimated at +-7 billion. Now lets assume that in the 40th millenium war izs everywhere and roughly half the population are either military, or at least have a personal sidearm. even with only 1 bullet left that's still 3.5 billion rounds, which should suffice for a little while...

the only way i personally would represent the "low on ammo and material" theme is by giving all the armour a well used look, maybe even with some hastly repairs/ extra welded on plates to make sure the vehicles etc are decently protected since they are so valuable

 

in addition:

mad robot miniatures makes some nice guns!

http://madrobotminiatures.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=9_12