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Building my first guardsmen


War Angel

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Made sure I posted this in the right section this time...

 

As the title says, I’ve bought my first 3 infantry squads, and a heavy weapons squad. I’m thinking I will need to buy a command squad before anything is playable.

 

My question for you all, how do you build them? My first thought was to glue weapons to the torso then I would have a good idea of how to put them on to the legs so that they look natural, and finally the heads.

 

Second question; per your advice I’m building the heavy weapons squad with pure mortars. For the infantry I remember I was advised to give them vox casters and I want to say plasma guns? How important is it to give the squad leader the chainsword and pistol?

 

Third question; I never decided on the HQ choices, which I need two of. It seems two commanders would be the best, which leads to the question of how to get the models for them.

 

Fourth question; at what stage in their progress should I post pictures for everyone?

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Absolutely the right section War Angel. :thumbsup: 

 

My question for you all, how do you build them? My first thought was to glue weapons to the torso then I would have a good idea of how to put them on to the legs so that they look natural, and finally the heads.

 

I like to blue-tac things together first to get a feel for the position before glueing it all together. Heads always come last for me and it can really influence the feel of the miniature.

 

Second question; per your advice I’m building the heavy weapons squad with pure mortars. For the infantry I remember I was advised to give them vox casters and I want to say plasma guns? How important is it to give the squad leader the chainsword and pistol?

 

 

The Squad Leader (Sergeant) is the only dude that can take a Chainsword and Laspistol, so yup, it goes on him. :wink:

 

Plasma guns are great when nestled in cheap infantry squads, but you're not going to find any in the boxed sets you've bought - conversions using bits from other kits or the standalone special weapon Cadians pack. (bad value for 2 dudes - 1 with Meltagun, 1 with Plasma)

 

Third question; I never decided on the HQ choices, which I need two of. It seems two commanders would be the best, which leads to the question of how to get the models for them.

 

 

Company Commanders are the bomb - it's all about throwing out orders. As for models - The command squad boxed set has bits, otherwise you could try and chase down the old pewter models. 

 

Or just kitbash, like I did:

 

platooncommanderonetitle.jpg

 

Fourth question; at what stage in their progress should I post pictures for everyone?

 

 

At any point mate, we're here to give feedback. :smile.:

 

-Ran

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To the first question: you don't need to glue them to the torso. They're sculpted to be glued via the hands.

 

2nd question: infantry boxes don't have plasma guns, you need to buy command squad boxes for those. I'd build the grenade launchers from the infantry box. As for voxcasters, you'll get mixed opinions. I'd recommend that you build them and decide after trial and error whether you want to pay the points for them. You can always tell people that they don't actually have voxcasters. Remember your box will let you build 2 sergeants, 2 grenade launchers, 2 voxcasters and 2 flamers, and your only allowed to have 1 voxcaster, Sergeant and special weapon per 10 man squad. Also, sergeants can only use a pistol (or boltgun) and a melee weapon. I recommend Laspistol chainsword as they're free.

 

Question 3: company commanders are inside of command squad boxes.

 

Question 4: whenever you want.

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That’s a really cool kitbash, I may have to use that for some inspiration. So, two company commanders, get myself the command squad so I can build the plasma guardsmen, and it sounds like I should just build three (for three squads) grenade launchers just for the hell of it?

 

 

I want to name these guys. Something along the line of “75th Fidelis (blanks)”

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Space marines' special weapons will fit just fine for cadians. Use flamer and grenade laucher hands. GL-hands: just cut the gun off the right hand and place what makes you happy (plasmagun in most cases). Flamer-hands need a little more cutting: flamer, hose, a pack under right hand and plasmagun's butt. You may leave flamer's belt on place to glue it to a new gun, will look great if you do all things right. Marines' boltguns can be used for any suitable model, e.g. sergeants, commanders. There are sets of lasgun arms which don't have left hand on a lasgun, use them too.

Edited by Shamansky
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Made sure I posted this in the right section this time...

 

As the title says, I’ve bought my first 3 infantry squads, and a heavy weapons squad. I’m thinking I will need to buy a command squad before anything is playable.

 

Second question; per your advice I’m building the heavy weapons squad with pure mortars. For the infantry I remember I was advised to give them vox casters and I want to say plasma guns? How important is it to give the squad leader the chainsword and pistol?

 

 

With the heavy weapon squads, if you want choice; I would recommend only gluing the dudes on the bases so you can place the mortars on if you want them to be a mortar team or a tripod and your choice of gun (autocannon, lascannon and heavy bolters all dry fit the tripod). This will give you a wider range of options.

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That’s a great idea!

 

What do people typically add to their bases? What are some conversion options? Is there any large photo galleries I can check out?

 

What is the general census on female guardsmen?

I'm cool with female guardsmen... then again I served with women in my aviation battalion, so that may have altered my view on things...

 

As for heavy weapon squads, you can mix the missile launcher in a normal squad by just using two normal guys, so that can help stretch the models further too.

 

I have a preference for grenade launchers, Autocannons, missiles and mortars from my days of playing guard... I usually picked a theme that I was going for and picked weapons that worked with it... for example: my Air Mobile unit used Grenade Launchers and Missile launchers only as they had a nice portable look. Whole my Mechanized Unit packed melta and mortars, again they looked like things easy to redeploy from vechiles.

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What is the general census on female guardsmen?

They are well established in the background, so go ahead!

 

For Cadians you would not have to convert anything: men and women would look identical with this type of body armour and helmet. If you want to add distinctive female features, you could search the AoS range (especially the Aelves).

 

For Catachans you will need some sculpting for the torso though, preferably different arms too. Outside of bodybuilding competitions you will not find any woman as packed with muscles as the Catachan sculpts. :biggrin.:

 

Once Sisters of Battle get their plastic range you will be spoilt for choice!

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So I managed to get around to making the blouses for the females. Next I have to make a belt to cover up where the plastic meets the greenstuff. The final step is to figure out if I want to make helmets for them, and then I guess I have to make backpacks for them, because the ones I have don’t fit them the same as they fit the males.....

 

7SzjVbS.jpg

Me7m8Eu.jpg

 

Please ignor the lack of heads.

 

 

 

Also, how do you get plasma guns? The command squad only had one lol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just learned that apparently a cheap tournament tactic is to include 32 guardsmen into your list to boost your CP. that makes me sad because I was basicly doing the same thing, but because I wanted to paint up a particular uniform and still get to use them. I guess it’s less cheap when I include the heavy weapons teams and special weapons.

 

40Hgir1.jpg

Edited by War Angel
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Hi.

 

Just wanted to pop in and wish you luck with the project and give you a look at what I did with one squad of Mortars from my plastic Guard army (the one I'm currently working on is purely Anvil resins).

 

http://i64.tinypic.com/2ujox75.jpg

 

The sandbags are actually from Tamiya's 1/48 scale barricades box.

 

I really like the Tamiya 1/48th stuff as it seems to fit well with the stuff even when it's not a 100% scale match.

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