Ah, yes, mere Infantry. Poor beggars...

More Epic stuff I painted ages ago and never got round to photographing today.

This time it's the turn of my Imperial Guard and in particular the Infantry. The downtrodden, underfed, underpaid grunts whose main job it seems is to die in the mud...

Think I prefer the view (albeit similarly dystopian!) from the 80's.

The 9th Necromundan Regiment in action during the Scouring of Ralgor

Talking of Necromundan Regiments, I decided to go with the 7th Necromundan - the Lucky Sevens. Can't remember why I originally settled on this regiment back in the day (the surviving plastic Guard minis can be seen here), although I do remember them being mown down on a regular basis by my gaming mate's Cyclone Terminators - all three of them...

No do I remember them being mentioned much in Rogue Trader or White Dwarf other than these colour scheme references for their tanks -

Not sure about the bright red tracks on the Sevens Land Raider!

The Rhino looks a little more sensible.

  Nowadays the choice seems to sit well as an ironic comment on my legendarily bad dice rolling abilities!

It doesn't look like there was a great deal of background material written about this regiment (all the better for me to make it all up!) at the time and they seem to have been similarly ignored with more recent updates of the 40K universe other than morphing into a Cadian Regiment. So their Regimental history will have to be forged by me and whatever battles and campaigns they take part in... I must say they've already done me proud in beating off Ollie's Orks and holding their own against Warlord Paul's traitorous Squat and Marine alliance - unfortunately heavy warp storm activity prevented any reports of the engagements being transmitted (that and I forgot my camera!).

Anyway, enough waffling - on with the Guard, or Imperial Army if I'm gaming the Horus Heresy I suppose.

The Emperor's Day Parade would go on - city or no city!

The Beastman Company advances through the ruins of the main street, spearheaded by a supporting Robot detachment. Yes back in the day, the Imperial Army even recruited Mutants! Apparently many of the Beastmen living under Imperial rule are so ashamed of their mutations that they feel duty bound to atone for the sins of their flesh by giving their lives in the service of the Emperor. Cunningly I chose certain colours for their shields and didn't paint any Imperial designs on them so that I could use them in my (WIP) Chaos army as well.

The Tactical Company - back bone of the Guard and great for swamping and holding objectives and soaking up the casualties. Even the hardiest of foes has got to think twice about a massed bayonet charge of 150 well drilled Guardsmen! Robot support detachments give them a little armoured muscle.

Assault support detachment with a plethora of pistols, jump packs and a mean Close Assault Factor of 1! Skulking in the ruins are the slightly more useful Support detachment whose Lascannons give them 2 attack dice and a -1 saving throw - watch out Titans, those Void Shields are going down! Behind them are the valiant Rough Riders whose main job is doing a great impression of the Charge of the Light Brigade against whatever enemy artillery is hiding at the other end of the table, There's something about the idea of expert horsemen plucked from their home (and usually backward) planet, plunged into the nightmare technological battlefields of the far future and given explosive lances that really appeals to me!

Imperial Bike Squadron - also useful for lightning raids against isolated objectives and enemy artillery. Behind them are more detachments of Assault and Support Infantry.

Colossus Robots...

... and Conqueror Robots. As I said earlier, great for stiffening up the troops and they're a bit easier to program than in Rogue Trader! Other good points are the fact that they aren't affected by psychology and they don't give away victory points for being broken - they have to be totally destroyed.

 And finally the all important Commissars - just in case anyone had second thoughts about going over the top... Also good to have around to issue orders if all the nearby HQ units have been shot up - can't have the Chain of Command being broken now!

That's it for now folks, although there's still the armour and artillery to come...