Absolute Wins in the Cadian Infantry Painting Shed

I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts about being back into the Guard in a big way, and I wasn’t kidding.  

To recap, I built my guard army originally as some infantry to accompany my Imperial Knights, back when soup was a thing.   Having a core of three infantry squads and two heavy weapon squads (plus a a few characters) gave a sense of scale to the Knights.  But having done the hard part of making a Guard force (the infantry) it seemed rude not to add a few more things so I could field the Guard on their own.  In came three Leman Russes, three Sentinels, and to try and bulk out the non-vehicle section without painting even more guardsmen, a squad of Bullgryns and a squad of Ratlings.  Suddenly I was sitting on 1,500 points.

But now, starting to treat it as its own army project, the main issue was... its relative lack of infantry.  Frankly, this was frustrating given how much effort had gone into painting so many men, but Guard really do get swept off the board with a dustpan and brush, and 30 infantry don’t go far.  I really, really needed more dudes.

OK. Fine. Paint more infantry.

Step one was to finish off the built and sprayed infantry squad I’d had way back when the Last Stand box came out near the end of 9th edition.  With a bit of experimentation (documented here) I found a way to paint Cadians that I didn’t hate quite so much.  Enthusiasm overflow also got Minska Lensk painted up, to be used to replace Lieutenant Wright.  She’s done some incredibly heroic work in the last few games she played in, including surviving a close encounter with Magnus the Red, and was owed an upgraded model.  Next to her was Castellan Creed.  No, not her, him.  He’s been in my collection for ages so it was great to finally get him done. What an incredibly charming model.

Next up I picked up a couple of boxes of Kasrkin.  I adore Kasrkin, I have 20 of the original metal models (plus weapon options) in black for my inquisitorial stormtroopers, and I’ve been wanting to get some of the new lads for ages.  As I already had the Warhammer+ Kasrkin sergeant, I used the spare sergeant from one of the boxes to convert into a Kasrkin lieutenant (using Castellan rules). 

But,  they’re infantry, and infantry are hard to paint…  and I already had one Chimera, but for two squads of Kasrkin I wanted two Chimeras.  This means that really, building and painting two tanks is kind of like making progress on painting the squads themselves.

So, getting completely distracted from painting more infantry, I picked up the second Chimera, and whilst I was at it, a Hellhound.  And sure, that sounds like a bit of a jump, but I was a little worried that with 11th edition fast approaching and the changes to cover rules, the Hellhound would be in high demand.  And it was. Most places seemed to have sold out of them. 

This Chimera is, fittingly, something of a chimera.  I’ve given it a 3rd party turret (a replica of the sadly no longer available Forgeworld autocannon turret, because I think it just looks so much better), a different 3rd party set of track guards, a hunter-killer missile from a Horus Heresy kit (the official Guard ones look so bad) and then turned the las array into closed firing ports with some simple plasticard.

Whilst I was at it, it seemed rude not to paint the Hellhound, which also got an HH-HK but otherwise got less conversion work.  I did swap the end of the hull mounted heavy flamer, which is a design straight out of 2nd edition (how old is that sprue?!), for the one in the previous edition of the Cadian command squad.  

To paint them I followed the same method I used before for my Leman Russes (Lemans Russ?), but this time I left off all the track parts that weren’t covered by track guards.  They got sprayed Leadbelcher and stuck on afterwards.  It’s a minor time saver on painting, but I also found the tank putty getting stuck in the tracks annoying, so I still consider this worthwhile.  I also sprayed the Hellhound fuel tanks Leadbelcher.  It’s easy enough to leave the top piece and small side walls off, as well as the rear hatch, and the fuel tanks can drop right in.

Great. Vehicle distraction completed. Back to the Kasrkin. Back to the infantry.

It was at this point that my copy of the Armageddon Cadian Defence Force arrived.  Obviously, nothing could hold me back from building and painting some adorable new vehicles.  I did consider moving on to the newer dark and light green paint scheme that GW have started using for the newer vehicles, but it honestly doesn't give me that strong classic Cadian vibe I like.

I didn’t do anything special with them, they really are gorgeous as they are.  I took a chance and left the weapons unglued and unmagnetised, and this paid off.  Once painted they hold in just fine and can then be easily swapped.  I also left the wheels and tracks off and the commander out of his cupola, for easier painting.   I have an idea about porting the Crucible of Champions Sentinel Commander rules over to the Hippogriff, since the vehicles are extremely similar, so the commander in the cupola will mark that one out.

 

OK, bonus distraction complete, time to get more infantry done. Except that I really did want to have a crack at the Centaur, and, um, well:

I decided to leave off the crew.  (Charlie: Heaven forefend you paint some infantry...)  Tom: As cool as they are, it would look weird when the vehicle is unoccupied, and, to be honest, also when fully occupied too.  I decided to paint the Centaur plain green, to play up the “basic truck” vibes.

In conclusion, my attempt to paint more infantry has resulted in five new vehicles. Which means it's definitely time to paint some Kasrkin.

The thing is, that Rogal Dorn battle tank from the Cadian Defence Force box is right there. Right. There.