Vehicles and Hardened Ikwen Fighters

So my current 15mm army project is nearly 'finished' which is to say finished until I get round to my planned expansions.

 Just some final chip and scratch fixing and then varnish to go.

I never actually intended this to be more than a small insurgent force supplementary to some of the other forces in the pipeline and I also never originally intended to combine the Ikwen and other aliens into the organisation but the project just kind of took off in my head once I started getting paint on metal and now I envision a few different elements and organisations. I plan on a 'regular' force with more up to date equipment and and a less adhoc OOB and I'm thinking of incorporating Loud Ninja's Neek aliens into that the same way the Ikwen are part of the insurgency alongside the humans. Maybe the Horgosi too. I'll have to see. One thing I want to try to make clear in my fluff and hopefully in moddeling and organisation is that these different sophonts/species/thinking sacks of goo are all genuinely working together and no one set of sophonts is dominant or seeking dominance over the others. This is a little hard to portray with just military units (while I have ideas for mixed special operations teams and the like the different aliens tend to be grouped into homogenous squads due to their similar physical abilities and to reduce problems with language etc.) so I may have a go at some civilian conversions some time in the future. I'm also considering iconography for my faction but essentially this will be a socialist/anarcho-communist faction (with your usual factions, but for the puposes of the army/setting/gaming they will broadly be working together). While 'space reds' are a pretty common theme in wargaming, especially 15mm, lots of Neo-Sovs! I have yet to come across a version that isn't a bit Command and Conquer Red Alert cartoon bad guy commies in space, maybe I've just missed them though. (I love Red Alert incidentally, especially Tim Curry's part ..... SpaAAYacE). So I'm going to try and bring a more 'realistic' (whatever that means when there is aliens and lasers) and less automatically the bad guys approach to the idea of a radical socialist faction in a science fiction wargame setting, as well as try and (let's be honest, probably fail hahaha) get away from cold war politics a bit.

SO, I'm starting prep on my vehicles and two squads of hardened Ikwen fighters, which are slightly rough in casting (I'll have to model a couple as having lost eyes but honestly that just makes them look even harder) but really impressive models otherwise.

Also I lost the hatches to the TheSceneUK not-BTR so I will have to put another order in for some vehicles and ask very nicely if they will send me some replacement hatches. I'll probably get more tanks and infantry while I'm at it.

I also have these guys I got from Ral Partha when I was ordering Earthdawn books from them, not sure what to do with them yet and whether to include them in this force, I'll see how I feel when I start painting them.

So that's all my news for now. thanks for reading!

Forge World, Ultramarines Legion Herald

I have had my eye on one of...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^these for ages for something to paint as a one off project. I always thought the Ultramarines were a frustratingly underdeveloped part of the 40K fiction. For all their 'vanillamarine' presentation and glory hogging (the Ward 'spiritual leige' era being the most obviously egregious) fluff there was some really intriguing stuff just waiting to be developed.

Ultramar being, effectively, the unnoficial capital of the Eastern Imperium. Ultramar being itself something of a sub nation within the Imperium. And their propensity for breaking codex tradition when it suited them, such as forming non codex tyrannic kill squads, refitting a battlebarge with increased firepower at the serious expense of Astartes carrying capacity etc etc. (I theorise this was largely an accidental by-product of unimaginative writers trying to keep the codex chapter interesting) Meant that, between the lines, you actually had an extremely divergent chapter, only instead of strictly doctrinal or genetic/gene seed divergence the Ultramarines were politically divergent. There was hints of Byzantiums succession over Rome in there. Really interesting. Apparently people in the Black Library thought similar things because we got 'Imperium Secundus' in the Horus Heresy, and now the Great Rift meaning Ultramar really is the Byzantium of the setting, 'Imperium Nihilus'. This has meant that the Ultramarines have become significantly more interesting and their more exciting elements haven't been left to implication and head canon amymore. Very nice.

So I'm looking forward to giving this model the best paint job I can manage and maybe a little vignet for it to sit on.

Some solid progress made on my 15mm SF stuff.

The idea behind these troops is that they are far left irregulars/guerillas (think republicans and the various left wing groups such as the international brigades involved in the Spanish Civil War) made up of diverse sophonts (humans and ikwen being the most numerous currently) fighting to overthrow a tyrannical regime. Currently these will represent the greener, less experienced and well trained elements of the resistence working with what they have/can liberate and operating with a pretty loose OOB. They are intended to look like they are used to operating in the field for long periods of time carrying everything they need with them, so the vehicles will be quite laden with supplies.

I have plans to do a more 'regular' irregular element with more uniform uniforms and a more set OOB (something like a mini motor rifle battalion) using the same miniatures but relying on the painting and modelling to show the difference in their setup and docrtine. I'm also hoping that the ikwen will get expanded so I can have a similarly developed force of those alongside the humans in the future.