Cadian 101st and Friends

So, for the past year I have been learning Warhammer 40,000 with my Astra Militarum and getting to know them as an army (also in Grim Dark Future, but that’s another project). However, I have been playing a lot of them in Grey and Undercoat Livery as I’ve not had the space to setup a painting space and get some colours on.

With the release of the new Guard releases that GW is working through I thought that this was the time to go back to basics, reappraise what I want this army to be and work on getting a complete table top ready army.

My goal here is takes small chunks of the army that are either being upgraded or simply existing models that need finishing off and tackle them one by block by block to get them build and painted as an incentive to keep working on them, rather than build it all for play and then be left with a mountain of painting to tackle.

With that in mind, let’s start with what I am working with as the project start.

The Infantry, the core of many a Guard force.

Not a lot here to surprise anyone familiar with playing the Astra Militarum. Three squads of Infantry, each comprised of Sargeant, Vox operator and 8 lasgunners.
These are accompanied by a series of special weapons troopers. These have been switched in for lasgunners as and when as I’ve played over the last year.

Following on is the command echelons I have been using: a Company Commander, a Commissar, a Platoon Commander and her Command Squad.
This is the area that is certain to receive the most immediate change as, as anyone who has gotten to know the new Codex can see, a lot has changed about how these all work, particularly the Command Squads. More on that in a later post.

Next, the Armour.

The proverbial cavalry, which no Astra Militarum army is complete without (not when when of the players in my local Crusade runs Chaos Knights anyway).

The fighting vehicles are a Leman Russ and Hellhound platform. The former I typically run as a Tank Commander and the later as a Devil Dog for that much needed anti-armour counter punch. These are both magnetised for a lot of pieces so I can chop and change so they’ll likely not see much in the way of work until the infantry is done simply because they will do the job till then.

After them comes the Chimeras. The Cadian 101st is a Mechanised Infantry regiment (at least at the point in it’s service I am basing it on but that’s a story for another entry) so these fit the bill. I tend to use them to run Infantry up the board before they deploy on or near objectives. If nothing else the Chimera acts as very literal armour for the troops inside so they don’t have to run through the open spend the extra turns jumping from cover to cover. With the new Mechanised Infantry doctrine I don’t think these will be going anywhere anytime soon and these may in fact gain some siblings but, as I intermated, Infantry first.

Speaking of which…

Seeing as the way Infantry works has changed so considerably, particularly with regards to command units my first priority is some of the new Cadian Shock Troopers and Cadian Command Squad from the Cadia Stands box. There’s some reinforcements ordered as my first block will be to get all four of the platoons squads, the platoon command and the company command as the first “block” to build and paint (spoiler: I actually already started on these but more on these in a future post).

These will form the bedrock of the Infantry part of the Cadian 101st Mechanised Infantry and be ready for the new rules. So next I think it’s time to look at the Force Org for these defenders of humanity, where they come from and how I intend to represent them on the table top.