From StuartL - Bad Luck Badabians - 210 Points

Hello again.

    In my second post this week, I am concentrating on one of my ongoing projects, painting up an army for the Tyrant's Legion for the Badab War campaign in Warhammer 40,000. I already posted up a few models for the army, and the models today will be joining them on the table-top.

    As I said in my previous post on the subject, the Badab War is about a small group of secessionists trying to break away from the Imperium of Man and starting a small civil war in the process. The main focus of the setting is the various chapters of Space Marines that get dragged into this conflict, but there are some other forces involved. The original story of the campaign was covered in White Dwarf 101 which was published way back in 1988, but was later revamped and updated in two gorgeous hardcover books from Forge World, Imperial Armour 9 & 10. Included in those books is an army list for the Tyrant's Legion. 

    The leader of the secessionists knew that eventually the Imperium was going to come knocking and so began an aggressive expansion of his forces. First of all, he ditched the Codex Astartes (the rulebook for Space Marine chapters) and began adding thousands more marines to his chapter, the Astral Claws. He also began recruiting the population of the worlds under his control to augment the marines. By assigning and dispersing marines to help run the base-line human forces across his fledgling empire, he was able to disguise the build-up of his forces and provide a serious combat advantage to the regular forces.

    While the captain I posted in December will be the leader of the legion forces, the army list allows for a command squad to lead the auxilia troops. This provides the regulars with better leadership, as the marines literally only use the auxilia as human shields. (They gain a rule that improves their cover save at the cost of a few regulars if the enemy draws line of sight through a regular unit).

    Next we have a unit of Armsmen. These are the professional soldiers who were drafted into the legion. They are about the equivalent of regular Imperial Guard, though their unit composition is a little different as they don't follow the usual platoon structure of the guard.

    And finally we have the Auxilia Cohort, a mass of 20 conscripts that exist only to catch enemy bullets. They are one of the cheapest units in 40K on a per model basis and will get mulched by the first thing that even looks at them. When I used this unit back in 5th Edition, I considered myself lucky if they killed a single enemy model. Their massed lasguns will occasionally hit something, but it is the two flamers in the unit that do the heavy lifting of trying to remove a single marine from the board before they are ground to a pulp.

    To differentiate between the units (as they all use the same basic Cadian models), I opted for transfers on their shoulder armour. The command group gets diamonds and skulls, the armsmen get a number and a winged skull icon (the Imperial Guard insignia) and the bullet-catchers receive a roman numeral and a blank pad.

    The full force of troops is 40 models, plus one crew served weapon. Everything is from Games Workshop, but the model range has been refreshed and embiggened since I bought these. As GW minis, they are covered in skulls which is great news for my ongoing duel, plus I added a few in the form of transfers as shown above.

Scoring these models we have:

40x 28mm minis = 200 points

1x crew served weapon = 10 points

TOTAL = 210 Points

For my duels:

Skulls +111 = 144 Skulls

Legions +205 = 345 Points

From Millsy: Flashlights of the Emperor! This is quite the collection of Astra Militarum (or as we grognards like to call them, Imperial Guard) but in terms of the total forces of the Imperium a mere mote in the Emperor's eye. Even so, the merest trooper may have an impact and should never be discounted when he fights with the zeal only the Emperor can inspire.

I really like your choice of colours on these. The mix of grey uniform and blue armour gives them a really consistent, military feel which is just the ticket. An excellent addition to your existing force!