Imperial Guard armies are literally vast, so it is easy to get distracted by the multitude of possible units you can include in one. For this reason I prefer to always start an army with what I consider a 'core' formation. These are large formations that you will almost certainly construct the rest of your forces around. For the Guard those are really Infantry, Mechanised Infantry, Tank or Artillery companies. Out of these for me the most useful straight off is a Mechanised Formation with its mix of infantry, transport and armoured support, an ideal fast moving centre for my forces with lots of units to soak up any blast markers.
For the Guard units I used the current editions plastic Imperial Guard infantry, to which I added six of the metal Chimeras. For the Command Unit I simply based a selection of heavy weapon and infantry figures around a command figure. For a bit of character this one has an Ogryn bodyguard. The Salamander Command Vehicle is from Forge Worlds resin Epic range, however if you were using this as part of a Tournament army then the Salamander would need to be replaced by another Chimera. I have kept mine in the formation as it was originally built that way during development and later changed in the final rulebook. To achieve the Steel Legion colours for the vehicles they were first undercoated with a black primer before being given a base coat of codex grey. Over this a black ink wash and fortress grey highlight was applied prior to the camo patches being painted in a mix of rotting flesh and bleached bone.
For my second upgrade I included a Steel Legion Tank Support squadron of three Leman Russ battle tanks. A bit of heavy armour never goes amiss so I felt adding the squadron would give the formation lots of mobility and plenty of punch. For a formation of this size, Hellhounds would also have been a great choice and will certainly be added to the army at a later date replacing one of the upgrades depending on who they are being fielded against. The Demolisher on the right is part of another unit that has been seconded to the company for a particular battle, as can be seen by the 'Stygies Bridge' campaign badge on the side of the turret. The final company upgrade was a Hydra anti-air battery. As the chances of this formation being the target of an enemy ground attack mission, some anti-air defence can come in very handy. Although I could have used one of the metal Hydra units, I much preferred the resin Forge World version as it matched the Hydra's in my 40K army. Naturally if I find that no enemy flyers are being used I can drop this unit in favour of another upgrade, most likely the aforementioned Hellhounds. There is still quite a lot of detail painting to finish on the vehicles as well as markings, but nevertheless the formation is ready to game and will certainly see some action before I start on the next formation. With that in mind, two more formations are already starting to shape up in principle on my workbench, Armageddon Tank Company and the powerful Steel Legion Artillery Company. Most likely these will be started in the next few weeks so keep your eyes peeled for part 2. | Next: Armoured and Artillery Companies | | Back to Steel Legion Introduction | Back to Epic Armageddon Introduction | |
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The basic
formation includes a Command Unit with Salamander transport and twelve
Infantry units plus their Chimera transports.
As a Steel
Legion Mechanised Infantry formation is a company level core choice, it is entitled to
include a number of Support Platoons and upgrades. Lacking much in the way of heavy weapons
my first addition was to include a Fire Support Platoon which consists of four
heavy weapon teams. As the formation is part of a mechanised company I will
also need to provide some Chimera transports for them, but I will leave that
for another day. Like the units in the main formation I picked out the
uniforms in bubonic brown and highlighted them with a 50/50 mix of bubonic
brown and bleached bone. The same colours were also used to pick out the
autocannon heavy weapons. For all of the infantry bases a fine sand was first
applied with watered down PVA glue which, once dry was given a black ink wash
and a graveyard earth and bleached bone dry brush in that order.