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Questions on infantry duties, specialisms and roles


apologist

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After a (very kind!) gift of a pile of Elysians, I'm looking to expand my Lamb's World guard:

23.jpg

 

To help give them some individual character, I'd like to give the units some specialist equipment/posing to reflect their duties within the regiment. Problem is, I can't think of too many visually different roles. 

 

Knowing that the B&C has a number of serving and ex-soldiers, I wondered if I might pick your brains for ideas on duties and roles that infantrymen and women might take on; as well as other ideas for visually distinguishing them from others.

 

My Lamb's World army is (very loosely) based on a mix of Dark Age Wales; movies like Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down; and WWI British troops, but I'm very happy to bring in ideas and roles from throughout history and across the world. It all adds to the mix!

 

So far, alongside the more 'standard' line infantry you can see examples of above, I know I'd like to include the following:

  • Assault pioneers – distinguished by beards, and equipped with felling axes, mine detectors, grappling hooks and the like.
  • Dog handlers – distinguished by... well, dogs.
  • Sentries – distinguished mainly by posing, but is there any specialist kit that can be added?

...and that's it. I'm hoping there are some other ideas for subtly distinguishing these new squads. Can you help?

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Other possible roles are:

 

1.  Military Police

2.  Engineers

3.  Grenadiers

4.  Clerks

5.  Military Bank

 

Way back, I considered doing a list based around 3 basilisks where all the infantry were basically rear-line, non-combat soldiers drafted into combat duty to protect a battery of heavy guns.  I was thinking of having the above units, converted to have type writers, musical instruments, etc led by a senior officer and the old female commissar model converted to be wearing house coats, as if they had been roused out of bed to defend the guns.

 

Never got done, as my conversion skills likely weren't (and likely still aren't) up to the task.

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Dr. Ruminahui’s rear units idea reminds me a bit of ad hoc formations you could do like the Luftwaffe field divisions, basically left over Air Force personel pressed into service as infantry. So you could do something of any branch of service pressed into work as infantry they might have slightly different uniforms and more basic gear.

 

Sentries could have special kit like binoculars (or whatever the 40k equivalent are called; they’re on tank commander sprues and heavy weapons), night vision gear (anvil and mad robot have heads with NVG).

 

Other ideas for specialist infantry could include:

 

1. reconnaissance/scout troops (they might have backpacks for operating ahead of lines, would have bare heads or hats no helmets, and would have more camo than line troops).

2. Penal troops (would probably more ramshackle, might have less gear, could add chains or penitential tattoos depending on how extreme you want to go, could be an option for a squad with lots of character since these would be troops who arent good at conforming).

3. Paratroopers (like scouts would have more gear for operating behind enemy lines)

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It's a half past two in the morning, and I'm pretty enervated, so this won't have anything like the level of specificity, detail, supporting citations, or clarity of information/directness-of-referencing-of-half-remembered-stuffs that I'd like it to; but here's a few thoughts: 

One obvious idea is scouts / recon; which could potentially also lead to forward observation teams; and, for that matter, 'ranger'/jaeger/ghatak style veteran units teams, who may or may not also be specialist anti-tank or anti-air teams [think the old Soviet approach of having dedicated two-man RPG teams that were outside/in addition to ordinary squads - after all, rather easier to hide two men in a bush to lay down an ambush than it is a fire-team or full squad]. I've done/am doing some of pretty much all of the above in my various mortal-auxilia/guard/looks-like-guard projects; utilizing silenced weapons [think the Delaque flechette-gun, I think it is] , knives and space marine scout heads, for instance; or adding scopes to auto-rifles , made from primaris bolt-rifles ; etc. etc. 

In fact, going from there, one idea is very much special and heavy weapons squads. These days, many modern militaries have settled upon a more 'flexible' approach of parcelling out anti-tank, and other squad support weapons to line infantry units [indeed, in some cases building a rifle-squad *around* one or more of these sources of power]; but particularly in the first half of the 20th century, there was a lot of the opposite approach - rifle-squads sans heavy weapons [coz supposed to be maneuvering, and "marching fire", with light machine-guns not always being a thing] being supported by dedicated machine-gun squads, for instance. You could therefore do something like that - not so much a 'traditional' Imperial Guard heavy weapons squad, as something a little closer to your line infantry, except equipped with heavy stubbers [or equivalent]. This idea could be slightly shifted, to something akin to the B.A.R. 1918's semi-intended "marching fire" role; rather than the more 'static' HMG style approach we often tend to to think of with Militarum heavy weapons use.  

Going a bit further/broader with the 'differentiated line infantry' approach, you could also do dedicated close assault units - equipped with shotguns, or lascarbines [or, er, las-shotguns or whatever those Van Saar weapons're called] , rather than lasrifles, and optimized for much shorter-range firefights; potentially also with close combat weapons to go with that're a bit better than a knife each. 

This may or may not lead to 'heavy infantry' concepts, depending upon whether you want ot have a go at doing carapace armour. Perhaps an elite formation recruited from the same world, but different in some other way. The 'veteran' concept opens up a whole lot of modelling options for ways to get an individual unit to 'stand out' - whether it's traditional unit panoply that's at odds in some minor but noticeable detail from the rest of the force [e.g. everybody's got playing-cards in helmet-bands?]; or much more heavily individually customized loadouts. Or potentially rather odd choices that nevertheless may look cool like having the entire squad in forage caps [there's a rather legit one with some cool shades in the Cadian HQ box], or with interestingly severe haircuts or facial hair [i recommend the Orlock box heads.] 

Another possibility, is purgation squads, equipped with flamers; they may have a battlefield role of ... setting things on fire, but *lots* of it; cleansing ahead in particular sorts of terrain, or burning things wot need to be expurgated ... or laying down very, very nasty counter-charge walls/sheets-of-flame when in the defensive. 

Something which we don't often see, or seemingly consider in 40k, is electronic warfare ; possibly because it takes a second stage to (sanctioned) psykers, astropathic divinations, and tech-priests and suchlike. It could be interesting to do either some escorts for any/all of the above, or a dedicated team whose job it is to move and then employ man-portable equipment which can do this sort of thing. Particularly if it enables 'spoofing' or 'shielding/stealthing' deployments to confuse the enemy, in addition to interdicting their attempts at interfering with tech, comms, scanners, etc. On a related note, you could also have small field shield-generators, or communications hubs, operating under a similar [escorted/manned] principle]. 

Actually, building upon the 'support' idea, you could also do combat priests [which, in 40k, is a tautology, I know - but you know what I mean. organic chaplaincy detachment which are a direct part of the regiment and thusly equipped. It'd run into some ... stuff around the Decree Passive, arguably - but from memory, a lot of your projects are set around the Age of Apostasy anyway soooo ; and in any case, the argument would be that they're Guard who're piously serving the Emperor, with a chaplaincy function, rather than men of/under the Ecclesiarch(chy) itself] 

You could also explore different deployment/logistics options. For example, ironic as it is given they're Elysians you're basing these off, deep-striking paratroopers/grav-chute users, or valkyrie-transported; i'vea lready kinda mentioned infiltrators; and you could additionally experiment with motorized or mechanized squads, with appropriate vehicles, and shifts in squad loadout as a result. 

Come to think of it, you could also try doing Whiteshield or other conscript style auxiliaries; or, at other ends of the spectrum, penal units, or schola progenium secondments [like trainee commissars or something] . 

Indeed, you could even bring back the concept of 'remembrancers' from the Crusade-era; have some nearly-at-retirement point (or not up to full front-line active duty) veterans attached to the force, whose job it is to , well, record things. This could also be done as something along hte lines of 'embedded journalist' approach. Except, ths being 40k, the line between non-combatant reporter, and 'shoot with camera *and* lasgun' may be a hard one, with much more of hte latter and nearly nil of the former, in evidence. 

Forward-surveyous? Occupation forces? Garrison troops? Medical company? Tech-cult initiates? 

Light(er) infantry? Head-hunter team with a special objective in mind? 

specialist preferred enemy particular anti-xenos unit, in the manner of Armageddon Ork Hunters? 

life-guard for a decorated/noble officer? 

Inquisition secondment? 

'cavalry' [or recon] analogue, except utilizing genestealer cult dirt-bikes rather than horses or whathaveyou? 

The most logical thing to do for sentries, other than posing (which may incldue some slackers, smokers, and other less-enthusiastic/bored participants in the detail), might be small ear-piece comm gear [a much more effective way to raise an alarm] ; sensors or scopes, or er .. flashlights ; and if you're being rather high-tech/creative, the potential for further modelling efforts around (laser) tripwires, ground-pressure sensors, pheromonic detectors, you get the idea. One thing I like about the Delaque heads is that with their augmetic eyes, earpieces, 'scouter' style over-eye HUDs, they kinda look the part for this sort of thing. 

I'll have a further think once i've had some sleep, and maybe checked out your [excellent] blog and other such things a bit more to get more of a 'feel' for what sort of doctrinal approach your Lamb's World guard are running on; and see about putting some more 'proper' ideas up. 

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