Despite having prepped a whole load of figures for the challenge in advance, for some reason I decided that I absolutely had to do these figures next and so I built, primed and painted them over the last week or so! I’ve long ago stopped trying to attribute logic to this hobby of ours…..
So please find below some pictures of some Imperial Guardsmen who also happen to be Beastmen.
Beastmen are obviously a classic of fantasy fiction and in the 80’s, Games Workshop included their version of them in their “Warhammer” universe in the Chaos armies (armies dedicated to worshipping dark gods and wiping out civilised peoples). When GW started “Warhammer 40K”, they carried a lot of their standard races over into the new universe and Beastmen were one of the races who made the journey across from the fantasy realm to the sci-fi one. Now, “Chaos” wasn’t very big in the new 40K universe, I guess they thought that those who ran the Imperium were terrible enough people….. so the Beastmen joined the Imperial Guard, the normal army men of the imperium, as opposed to the space marines, who varied mightily across the galaxy in their arms, armour and training.
The Beastmen were, along with sci-fi halflings (now ratlings) and sci-fi Ogres (Ogryn), tagged as “abhumans” and put into squads to go and duff up the enemy at close quarters. One might wonder why a fascistic and fanatical state like the imperium would tolerate what it would consider to be less than humans? The answer is both practical and brutal. The imperium is constantly fighting thousands of wars throughout its dominion. These would range from sector wide conflicts to small raids by pirates and other alien races. So the imperium needs fighting troops….. lots of fighting troops.
As part of the lore, Beastmen were told that they had failed the Emperor (the corpse man/god at the head of the Imperium) by being born the way that they had been. They were told that the only way to be forgiven was to fight for the emperor and kill his enemies, otherwise they should be executed. As you can imagine, abhuman troops were given a minimum of training and shoved out to the worst of the jobs, unappreciated by the other imperial troops. One quote from the original White Dwarf magazine which introduced them and gave them some background really stuck with me: “I do not doubt the Emperor’s wisdom in allowing such tainted abhuman filth to serve him, but my men shall not serve alongside them”Carab Culln, chapter masters of the Red Scorpions Space Marines. In the game, if you took abhuman troops, you couldn’t ally in Space Marines. I certainly found myself feeling sorry for the Beastmen.
This was one of the defining features of the Imperium to me in those early days, how unpleasant, uncaring and judgemental it was, but how it was willing to squeeze every last drop out of its resources as it clawed its way to survival in an uncaring universe, surrounded by threats, even whilst demeaning and devaluing it’s people. And the Beastmen were shown as absurdly grateful that they had a chance to “say sorry to the Emperor” by fighting and dying in his name given the way they’ve been born.
These figures are slightly less bestial than the original Beastmen, who are complete with cloven hooves, but I decided that this mutation would probably be a spectrum and so these ones are mostly Human, but with horns and bestial features. They’re made from a combination of the old catachan jungle fighters plastic kit, Cadian weapons and Ungor heads. Weapons are lasguns for the most part, with a couple of flamers (I figure these are cheap and disposable enough to be given to such troops) and a pistol each for the sargeants.
I thought I’d show the attitude of the imperium forces to these abhumans by giving each squad a scroll….. not just any scroll mind you, these are scrolls that are signed by the imperium’s representatives to confirm that the beastmen will be absolved of the sin of being born as they were if they fight for the emperor. And this is where the Istvaan V planet connection comes in…….. These troops have been betrayed, as there is no absolution, just a sentence to fight for the emperor until they are killed and they will never get to leave the imperial guard.
Beastmen are broadly out of the 40K canon these days, but reading about the “War of the False Primarch” project inspired me to do these, as it is set relatively shortly (in galactic terms) after a crippling civil war which nearly destroyed the imperium. As such, desperation for men and materials would rarely have been greater and so the press ganging of such troops could likely have been common.
Simple enough scoring, 20 x 28mm figures for 100 and a planetary bonus for 20. And time for something a little more light hearted for my next entry I think!
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Now THIS takes me back! I LOVE Rogue-Trader-era GW nostalgia, and this fits the bill perfectly. Jamie has outlined the perfect description of the "Imperial Guard" of that era, and the, shall-we-say, "governance" of the Imperium that required the service and sacrifice of these soldiers, along with a propaganda complex that reminded them they were lucky just to have that opportunity...certainly as the politics of our own time have darkened somewhat, I find GW backed away from the political commentary that was once more explicit (and warped), that produced troop selections such as the Beastmen and Ogryns, and used to produce art like this to support them:
Anyway, this post is great, not just for nostalgia, but also for the clever interpretation of the planetary location, and the invocation of the War of the False Primarch. Plus, for the first time ever, you have shown there can be an actual use for the otherwise utterly dreadful Catachan models. 120 points, well earned, and I am tossing in three points - two for Rogue Trader nostalgia, and one for showing an actual use for plastic Catachans...
