Medieval/WW1 Imperial Guard Project (Pic Heavy)

[MrAnderson]

So let begin with the "long time lurker" thing. I've been watching this forum for ages, got lots of inspiration off you fine artists. Now I've decided after about a four year absence where I've just painted whatever I wanted without actually putting thought into army building, I've decided to make a rules legal army again. However I wanted it to be a modelling and painting challege, using as little standard GW models as possible.

I quickly decided on an Imperial Guard army with a difference. I wanted a cross between a medieval world look and a First World War look. With this in mind I scavenged a number of Cadian arms I had lying around and then bought these off ebay:



Two bags of Bretonnian Men-At-Arms. Perfect.

I promptly opened one up and took out the pieces that I would need:



With a snip-snip here and a snip-snip there I tried to get Cadian arms to fit onto the body of the Man-At-Arms. This was going to be more difficult than I anticipated:



However! Not to be disheartened. There was a solution!

[MrAnderson]

And a couple of minutes later:



The arms looked a little out of preportion, but I concluded that seeing that this is an Imperial Guard army, nobody is going to notice a couple of overly long arms. Nevermind, get back to work!

An hour or two later and I had extinguished my supply of spare Cadian arms, but had 7 fully made Medieval Soldiers:





All that was required was to clean up the mold lines and green stuffing, make some bases and paint them ( and approx. 93 more of the buggers). This is going to be a long, long Project Log.

[cookiescrumble]

Looking very good, nice theme going there.

What are you going to do for vehicles, or is it an infantry force??

[MrAnderson]

Looking very good, nice theme going there.

What are you going to do for vehicles, or is it an infantry force??

Not really 100% decided, but I think it's more likely to be a couple of Basilisks and that will be it. Keep it primarily infantry as is in keeping with the WW1 style. Theres gonna be lots of Mortars and stuff as well, lots of Heavy Bolters and Autocannons and light on Lascannons, Plasma Cannons and more high-tech stuff. Thats all only a rough idea though.

[McMullet]

They look really good.

An original theme, and a very original way to execute it!

[Great_Destroyer]

really sweet, might have to try this Idea out the look great! get making more!

[Col.Gravis]

Looking very nice, cant wait to see how this progresses!

You say your sticking largely to 'low tech' weapons, are you gonna use 'standard' models or have you got some conversions for these in mind at all?

[no-use4a-name]

Hey, your work area is waaay too organized. I hope you didn't clean up on our account.

I like the start so far. And, the Basilisk(s) would suit this army fine.

[MrAnderson]

Not really sure, I'm currently researching stuff like that. At the moment it's the troops I'm concentrating on.

Though the idea of using the Empire Mortar might be fun.

[EDIT] I just got a new desk actually. I predict that it won't be very organised for long.

[Col.Gravis]

*nods* Could be interesting, would fit he role of a Heavy Trench Mortar with little work maybe look at a PomPom gun for Autocannons and a Maxim or Vickers Machine Gun for Heavy Bolter?

[MrAnderson]

Yeah, I certainly like the idea of putting wagon wheels on the guns, especially on the ones that will make up the Heavy Weapon teams.

[cerealkiller195]

looking good when i did mine (many moons ago) this is what they looked like

[The boyz]

Those Imperial guard look very cool indeed MrAnderson. Some very nice conversion work there. I like the idea behind them too, a cross between WW1 and medieval soldiers does sound great. Looking forward to seeing some more updates.

[MrAnderson]

Quick update. Found another set of Cadian lasgun arms so I made another grunt:



And I decided that a Mortar team wouldn't need Lasgun arms so I whipped up on of those:



Which means that I actually now have a 10 man squad completed on the first day of the project. Pretty good going I reckon.

[maraxis]

I would be interested in seeing how you paint them, are you going to use a pattern to symbolize a particular lord or are you going to use earthy/drab colors as that was what the poorer folk could afford?

[MrAnderson]

Earth tones definitely, I don't like bright colours.

I've picked a palatte consisting of Scorched Brown, Graveyard Earth, Catachan Green, Codex Grey and Chaos Black, plus Boltgun Metal for weapons and other metal parts.

[Red Skullz]

Looking very sweet bud!

As for tanks. To keep the WW1 theme I would suggest the following:
- basilisks are static "light guns", with horses. Like the first artillery operated
- tanks, WW1 was the war when tanks first where introduced with some rather insane designs. Do some googling and you`ll find lots of inspiration for very characterfull tanks to add for your force and still keep it within the theme.
- do cavalery, use the rough riders rules

Now keep us posted ya hear, I`m subscribing this one

[Melchor]

Looks good!
I've tried it myself once, and found it a nice fit.

Don't forget to add Rough Riders!

EDIT: For the Rough Riders, use either the mounted Men-at-arms, or kislev horse archer legs with appropriate torsos.

That's what I would do anyway...

[noneedforaname]

try looking up alkett's(sp) oddities. a bunch of task specific prototype tanks some of which were very odd.

[MrAnderson]

Rough Rider are indeed going to be used. They are great counter-attack troops as well. I will probably go down the route of getting some metal legs and then chopping off the Men-At-Arms torso. The legs can then be used with Cadian torsos for the officers, or perhaps stormtroopers/hardened veterans. I definitely want a deep striking Melta Gun equiped squad with parachutes (not strictly WW1, but this is the 41st Millenium).