Saranian Light Infantry.

You remember how the cigar chompin’ colonel figure in the A-Team (George Peppard) used to say ‘I love it when a plan comes together’ ?  Well, this post links this post about the Division Liaison Team sent to the Cadian 127^th, which talks about the Saranian Engineers;  and this this post here, which talks about combat tracking.  You see ?  There was a plan ! And this one has taken about eighteen months to hit the blog, although it hit the table at the beginning of June.

PVP Studio Shot A

The Saranian Light Infantry are, historically, an offshoot of the Saranian Engineers.  Saran is a relatively modest blue planet in a system with three large mineral rich asteroid belts and three gas giants.  Additionally, there are sixteen other planets of various sizes in the Saran system.  The Saranians are primarily void hardened miners; a dangerous and unpleasant but vital economic activity.   Mining activity either takes place or has taken place on every one of the celestial bodies.

PVP Studio Shot B

The skills of generations of miners have led to the Saranian Combat Engineers being a sought after asset within Imperial Guard formations.  The Saranian Engineers themselves were often used for battlefield reconnaissance, as described in the Engineer Liaison Team post.  Their various talents in this field have also led to the formation of several light infantry units, primarily used for battlefield recce, surveillance and target acquisition (STA).   This tasking was built on the back of their Engineering based reconnaissance capability.

On Parade with 17 Korps Photo 1

As time passed the Saranian Light Infantry have evolved to embrace their new battlefield role; still priding themselves on the STA capability, but fully engaged with their flanking and screening tasks.  Recently, the 5^th have had personnel on the 72AG canid handler cadre and each company now includes five geneered pursuit hounds; extending the units search and destroy capability considerably.

On parade with 17 Korps Photo 2

In line with their light role, they are often equipped with vision enhancing equipment, to enable them to better carry out their recce tasks, and underslung grenade launchers, as they often operate without any other heavy weapon support.

PVP Studio shot of Command Group.

At the moment, they are the light element of 902 Div, which makes them a part of 17 Korps and are generally employed on interdiction missions, controlling terrorism in occupied Randstadt.

The dogs (actually LotR Wargs) will use the EoT chaos hound statline.  As previously discussed, the sights and underslung GLs are from Anvil Industries and the heads are the good ones from the Wargames Factory’s greatcoat stormtrooper set.  Some of the torsos are Maxmini’s combat armour torso.  Conversions and paint byPVP.

When the first of these figures were assembled, they were initially going to be household troops for one of the dignitaries of Devos IV; however they quickly became the LI to go with the Wargs (tracker dogs !) and so were all put together CESFAW (Carrying Enough Stuff For A War).  This still wasn’t enough so I used up my surplus sights from the HWS and then bought in the ancillaries from Anvil Industries.  I am pleased with the way they turned out.