Kado 540th.

Readers will recall that the Valhallans form the backbone of 903 Div, as most of the rest of the Division either didn't turn up, or when they did arrive, were not quite what was expected, or were already on the planet and already part of the rebellion. 

I had a chance to pull the valhallans out.  The Kado 540th, nominally 'Y' Company.   As you can see, but the time they get to the Basillica towards the end of the Siege of Xyphonica, a significant proportion of their strength is made up of other units. 
 

 

As you can see here, there are minis here where the basing is aat three different stages, so there's work to do there in getting them all to the same stage.

    

One of the Sergeants.   This one particularly was painted by PVP.

  

 

Captain Chenkov as the company commander.  Because of course you want him in your army list somewhere. And why not actually in a Valhallan unit ?   

Rifle squads are a mixture of metal Valhallans, metal Pig Iron Kolony Militia and plastic greatcoat bodies with metal pig iron heads.

 

And in a matching colour scheme, the Macrons.  The officers.   

The Macron Rifle Squads, there are three of these. 

 

These ladies are part of the VV Special Police, formed in the period of termoil immediately before the war and rolled into the Imperial Guard when they got there, seconded to the Kado 540th at the outset of the war, but only really used once the seige begins and the Valhallans find themselves short of manpower.

      

And they're supported by add ons such as psykers, penal squads, commissars and there'll be priests as well. 

Anvil Industries Armoured Commissar

 

I suspect that you've seen him either on the Anvil 'site or another Iggy blog/instragram/fb.  There's always space for a carapace armoured commissar in one's iggy list.  Who else is going to inspire your elite stormtroopers to even madder deplyments in the face of World Eater beserkinators ?

I was going for leather for the coat - dryard bark (a nice dark brown paint) with three or four layers of Nuln Oil over the top. Not perfect, but sort of does the job (?).

Blogger has started posting the pictures in the reverse order of when they were selected.  Which is annoying and sometimes means it's easier to ditch the whole thing and start again. 

He does look suitably inspiring.  I'd invested in Dave's 'the art of...' kickstarter and this inspired the choices made here; hopefully you can see the not-actually-part-of the-real-colours purple in here, to evoke steel and shadow, and give a little depth to the whole thing. 

In truth, almost all of the photos in those books are against black or dark backgrounds; it is art, after all and the moody and atmospheric photos are just a part of that.  But I can't help feeling that photographing miniatures sympathetically is a huge part of those books.  Nonetheless, I remain inspired by the contents and this fellow represents me trying something slightly more in their style that what I would have done beforehand. 

Environmental concerns - extra post, to give a chuckle, perhaps.

 

So the sorry saga begins here and I soon decide that I need to stop and get some gloves on. 

 And yeah, I've been washing them in a bucket - forunately the weather is pretty benign at the minute, I can rise them, leave them on the Brick of Scrutiny's table to dry and they can stay outside in the shade.  The main culprit was already deceased, probably through ingesting plastic.

He/she may look peaceful, but these little twats have eaten most of Admiral and Mrs Drax's worldly goods as well as most of Austrailia.  And their behaviour in my garage isn't condusive to a long lasting peaceful co-existance, either. 

That's not weathering, it's mouse shit. 

Needless to say, a new plastic container with a fitting lid has been obtained for the air armada.

Renegade Enforcers.

 There are 'Enforcers' in the Vraks books Heretics and Renegades army list. 

These ones will do for Devos IV.  Former noviates of the Ordos Masonica of the Adpetas Sororitas who tended the Basillica on Devos IV.

Chaux Na M'rsee had spent quite some time in her formative years riling against the Patriarchy, so sparing the noviates the fate of most of the Ecclesastical personnel; bending her influence to make them useful.  It turns out that despite being an unarmed part of the Adeptas Sororitas, they were attuned to Khorne rather Slannesh, but it's still a win for freedom and self determination as far as she's concerned.

Counts as Inquisitorial Team for the forces of freedom and self determination

An interesting adversary for an Inquisitor; she (for it is a 'she') could be run as almost anything.

An interrogator, perhaps, or a warrior.  And the heavy stubber servitor could also be a warrior type.

The shadowy cultist figure could be a sage or a mystic.  The handcuffed prisoner is their penitent.

And the other two shady looking assassin types are more properly warriors.

But you can imagine this crew escvaping from Xyphonica and disappearing into the Daniverse to plague our inquisitorial teams in the future, in pastures new.

 

Troops Choice thought exercise 2

 Do take a look at this picture, count the iggies...

I have blogged about this before, but there is room in the game, IMHO, for alternate configurations for Iggies.  The obvious one of these is based on what you can wring out of the system in DoW.  So there is no limit on the number of infantry squads; in your troops choice you go nuts on the number of infantry units here, but bear in mind that you'll have two troops choices and have to cram in everything else so the defining limit, rather than 2 to 5 squads, is the number of points you're going to splurge.

Out with the boring ol' officer and four redshirts.  Your new command squad is an officer (obviously in 5Ed he's there to dish out orders), two Kasarkin/Stormtroopers, a priest, a commissar and a psyker.  To replicate the DoW feel, the officer should also have an auspex and the Master of Ordanance's ability to call for fire.   Keeping it DoW, this would be your HQ choice and you wouldn't need a PCS for the platoon of rifle squads - you could rationalise this in-universe by holding up the generous helping of advisors for the squads.  Of course you could be a bit more Tactica Imperialis and pick a PCS for the platoon, but your opponent might then require you to forgo the advisors.  Because broken. 

The squad has fourteen bodies: three of which can be armed with special weapons.  And of course there's a sergeant.  These fourteen man squads cannot take Hvy Wpns, but can take one 'advisor' who will actually take command of the squad, with the sergeant only taking charge if the advisor is killed.  It's possibly worth upgrading the sergeant with a power weapon (again, a late game DoW upgrade is 'power bayonets' for the whole army) if you're expecting heavily armoured opponents.

So we have a squad with a Stormtrooper

And this one has a Preist.

And this squad has a Pskyer (He already knows what you want).

This one has another commissar ("Follow me and obey !"). 

Addionally there are three elite choices, all 0 to 1.   A vindicare assassin, a mob of Ogryn and a squad of stormtroopers.  I'd pick a priest for the Ogryn for that extra punch on the charge and a commissar for the stormtroopers for a power fist.  

Heavy Wpns teams would individually also be troops choices, but that's a single team as a choice.  So with six troops choices you could have a platoon and five HW teams.  They're all separate choices so there's no need for unit coherence there, they can be scattered where you like.  

DoW has chimera that can take three squads. But let's not go there.  One might apply the DoW limits for the numbers of vehicles (max of two Leman Russ, one Baneblade), but the normal points cost of vehicles is probably control enough for game balance (although I'd love to take a nine hellhound list, te he). 

So no conscript blobs, no penal troops, no veterans and a paucity of officers issuing orders.  IDK how this would actually play.  but interesting to consider vs the other thought exercise.