The Thin Red (Dead?) Line

Last friday I played a game of 40k against my friend Ron and his marauding band of Orks. For the first time in years I used my all infantry imperial guard army, consisting out of one platoon of Praetorians and two platoons of Mordians, supported by ratlings, battle psykers and roughriders. I spent some of my precious (cough) time painting up the last models and was looking forward to trying them out in Sixth edition. Below my proud army on parade.

4th Hollan 'Emperor's Own' Motorized Line Infantry Regiment, 3rd Company, 'the Ostriches'

Grenadiers, psykers and company scout troop sentinels

2nd platoon and the Lancers

Captain Smith, Ponsonby, Arthur C. Drake and his command squad, with Roger the Ostrich, the company mascot

The battle itself was an enervating affair. The table setup looks quite open, but the walls across the centre of the table blocked a fair bit of line of sight. Each of us had an objective to defend, and we played across the length of the table. This meant that I didn't have much chance to capture the enemy objective. The only unit capable of reaching the enemy objective were my outflanking sentinels. I decided to dedicate one full patoon on my right flank to try to assault the enemy objective. They were supported by the mortars, psykers and ratling snipers, whose task would be to try and take out as many of the orks between third platoon and the Ork objective (which was left to a few late arriving gretchin to defend) as they could.

the battle field, with my objective just out of sight behind the bunker

Flight of the Intruder

When the ork flyers came out, I noticed that they looked less 'orky' than I expected, and that with a little love and DIY, they could make a very reasonable imperial ground attack fighter craft. below some foto's of my current work-in-progress Imperial Guard Vendetta-without-transport-capacity.
 

For the build I used the pilots and their seats from my Valhallan Valkyrie. Since I painted it's widows an oily brown, I had noneed to put them in the Valkyrie. The lascannon heads originate from a number of cadian heavy weapon team sprues. Other than  cutting and filing some ork-bits of not much more needed to be done. All that remains is to make the cockpit windscreen fit properly.

Mustering the Infantry

This week I have a game of 40k planned against orks. Because I haven't got the new chaos codex yet, I decided to bring out my Imperial Guard foot army.Since I intended to finish this army this year as well it seemed like a good time to try and at least finish some more models for the match.

just out of storage...

Since it's only 1500 points, I can't use many extra units. I always use three platoons of three squads, costing me about 1000 points. Next in are my rough riders and ratling snipers. My psyker battle squad has been three guys short for the past few years. Last year (Sinterklaas) I got the last three as a gift, but never got around to paint them.

So now I have! All that needs to be done now is base about 120 guardsmen.....

pre-Devlan-Mud-Dip

Hopefully I can post a few pics of the battle and the army in full after the game friday. Below a small preview of the first platoon of the 4th Hollan ' Emperor's Own'  Line Infantry Regiment, 3rd company ' The Ostriches'.

1st Platoon + auxiliaries