Wargames Wasteland: Imperial Guard (Warhammer 40,000)

Trooper Dunnery hunkered down as another shell detonated nearby. It had been raining ordnance for almost a day. The falling of night hadn't even slowed the shelling down. The cornfield that the battalion had been yomping through was just a tattered wasteland of burning crop-stubble, craters and corpses. The rest of his platoon lay scattered around the crater, Dunnery himself pinned in place by spattering small arms fire and the shrapnel-hit he'd taken to his leg.

Smoke clogged the air and added to the cloud-cover; the moons were entirely blotted out. The only light came from burning fires, tracer rounds and weapons fire, both small-arms las-flashes and detonations from heavier munitions.

The noise, too, was deafening. Dunnery's ears had been ringing for hours and he probably couldn't even have heard a vox signal even if his receiver hadn't been shattered by a hunk of spinning shrapnel. The vox receiver had undoubtedly saved his life.

The crater was in was suddenly lit by flashes of blue-white light panning across, making stark shadows. The lights were coming from behind Dunnery, so presumably they were friendly. Probably. Searchlights, he figured.

Dunnery detected a difference in the way the ground was trembling, too. The sporadic hits from shells was being underwritten by a more regular "Thump!, Thump!, Thump!".

He could hear it now - a metallic, mechanical sound, repeadtedly punctuated with a "Thump!". It sounded like a - no wait!. Two? More than two?

"Great Emperor's Throne!" Exclaimed Dunnery. "Sentinels! Yes!"

The sky lit up again - this time weapons-fire from the walkers as sentinel squadron followed sentinel squadron, laying out sheets of multi-laser fire, great spears of lascannon blasts and gushing swathes of flames from heavy flamers.

"Burn, you xeno scum!" Screamed Dunnery. "For the Emperor!"

This page is intended to showcase my Imperial Guard army.

A note on the models

I've been collecting this army since about 1990. As you'll see from the photos below, most of the troops in the army are old "Imperial Army" models from Warhammer 40000's infancy. I have added modern tanks, flyers and walkers to give them the armour support they need.

This army is a really eclectic mix of models. When GW first started producing Imperial Army models they didn't have a particular fixed look to them. The idea that every model in the army would be wearing the same armour just didn't seem to figure in. The result was a rag-tag look that I liked a lot.

That changed when the first plastic models were released as they were all similar to each other but as they were still a little different from the metal models that had preceded them you could mix them in and swell your army for not too much outlay.

More recently I added a few modern Catachan models in here and there to further increase the size of the army.

A note on the paint jobs

Since painting these models my painting has improved a lot. I decided, though, that apart from the tanks and walkers and a few minor touch ups I was going to leave the original paint jobs intact. So all troops are as originally painted (the only exceptions being that the officers' hats & cloaks have been updated and all the "special" and "heavy" weapons have been updated to match each other and look a little more weathered). A couple of models have moved from one unit to another and so I have updated the little flashes of colour that I tried to use to make each unit look cohesive with it's fellows but distinct from other units. Aside from that all that is new is the paint on the tanks and walkers. As I recently added the Valkyrie and Baneblade to the army and their paint jobs were so much better than those on the Chimeras, Hellhound, Leman Russes and Sentinels that I had at the time (and of which I've added a load more to the army anyway) I just had to repaint the whole of my armoured contingent.

One of the things I wanted to do with this army is to get away from the "everyone has the same flesh-tone" thing that a lot of people (GW included) seem to automatically produce. I live on a planet where we have humans with black, white, red, yellow and olive skin tones (to name a few) and I see no reason that all those branches of humanity won't make it into space and I wanted to reflect that in this army, so you'll find a number of skin colours in this force.

All that said, I'd ask you to bear in mind that in many cases this was the first real army I'd painted and was proud of. As such a lot of the paint you'll see below is my original "still learning to paint" work. The exceptions are the Vehicles and Walkers - they stood out so badly as my painting improved that I have as I've already mentioned, repainted them all to the same standard.