Verthandi Free Rangers - WHM-6K, GAL-200 and Infantry
The second installment of the Gray Death Legion Project I took inspiration from the novel 'Mercenary Star', the second in the GDL trilogy which details the Legions adventures of - well basically acting as a Special Forces ODA team conducting Unconventional Warfare. An interesting take on the universe this has all kinds of interesting logistical elements like the need to maintain extensive Mech repair sites; as well as the practice of hiring mercenaries from Galatea. The Kuritans serve as foil once more in this book and generally paint the Draconis Combine in a harsh light - which is also true to most everything before Heir to the Dragon.
This novel focuses on the GDL as they train and raise a guerilla army to fight the Kurian occupiers on a world of little strategic importance known as Verthandi. The guerrilla force is known as the Verthandi Free Rangers and spend there days hiding int he jungle only to emerge into the cities or grass plains to raid supply depots or cause other mischief. Early in the book the GDL is forced to land and engage Kuria forces on a beach - among the units fighting them is a company of Galleon
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| Galleon Lt Tank |
light tanks. After much shooting and chaos the GDL triumph with a little help from their guerrilla friends who capture a number of Galleons. These later make an appearance alongside the intrepid hover jeep mounted infantry and the guerilla generals Warhammer in an ill conceived and disastrous assault on Kuria positions int he capital.
The general in charge of the guerrilla force is James Thorvald who pilots his familied ancestral Warhammer only to find his doom at the hands of the Kurian defenders. For this project I drew inspiration from this failed attack on Regis, the capital city, by the insurgents. Since the world had been occupied for sometime and is a boarder planet I choose to use Kurita variants for the units.
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| Warhammer - Modern Sculpt |
So for Thorvalds Warhammer I settled on the WHM-6K which drops the machine guns for more heat sinks (which required some snipping on my part on the model) and two Galleon Light Tanks - the kurita GAL-200 models. This was my second attempt at Infantry; the first I will include in a later post focused on Vega and the 4th Succession war. The infantry are described as riding armed hover craft into the battle which basically seem like hover jeeps with some machine guns on them to me; so I choose to represent this part of the force as Mechanized Infantry (Hover) with Rifle load outs since hey - insurgents get the basics, nothing fancy here. I chose a 6mm 3d print infantry model which is pretty basic - not bad overall.
For the representation of a hover jeep as described in the book I choose to go to a Brigade Models Shinigama Combat Car. This company makes outstanding miniatures for Sci-Fi use and I will absolutely go back to them for other infantry and infantry vehicle stand ins.
I chose to paint these in a jungle tiger stripe given the preferred hide out was deep in the Verthandi jungle which kept the Kuritan occupiers at bay. A note on the infantry models - I scaled them to a squad per hex; so for hover mechanized forces that's 5 troopers per squad, 4 squads to the platoon. But I intentionally left it vague so they can be played as squad or represent a full platoon. If you look closely the back of each infantry hex is labeled 1 thru 4 so you can designated which platoon/squad is which on your record sheets. I got some 3D printed hexs with cratering on them for the infantry model to add some texture to the base; I think it looks pretty good. Overall very happy with the infantry minis.
In terms of painting all the vehicles received a Vallejo U.S. Olive Drab base coat. After that I used a Grey Black to do the tiger strips. For weapon glow effects its my standard Baharath Blue in the barrels. Gunmetal gray and Agrax Earthshade give the vents and barrels some detail. For the Warhammer I used the tesserect glow for the cockpit, but for vehicles I am leaning towards something that looks more like glass. In this I used the Vallejo grey blue - which stands out prominently on the hover jeeps and works well on the Galleons drivers hatch. The infantry were based coated in Army Painter Combat Fatigues which give them a nice bright contrast to the Stirland Battlemire base from Citadel. I used grey black for the rifles and US Olive drab to paint the helmets to give the infantry some detail. How some of you paint actual skin tone onto faces at this scale is beyond me... Used swamp tufts from Army Painter for some added jungle effect. The infantry are based on the 3D printed cratered hexs just to add some detail and texture to the infantry models.
As always if you want to try it out - and I recommend this scheme; it looks bad ass on the tanks especially, check out the links below to pick up all the paints discussed.
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