Imperial Guard Steel Legion – A Hobby Project
| Imperial Guard Steel Legion - A Hobby Project |
| Steel Legion - First Army List |
| Kitbashing Steel Legion Special Weapons - The Options |
| Raumjager vs Steel Legion vs Cadian Shock Troops - Kit Review |
Introduction
Earlier in my hobby streak I repaired and primed an Imperial Guard Armoured Sentinel, an impulse buy from Ebay. It is my first Astra Militarum model and it has re-ignited my interest in building an Imperial Guard force.
Like many I can not bear the look of the Cadians or the Catachans kits though. Years back I would have gone for a Vostroyan regiment but they are no longer available in GW’s Webstore and although of course the old ones are still knocking around on ebay they tend to go for premium prices.
I am not a GW purist so I have looked at 3rd party alternatives like Victoria Miniatures and Anvil Industries but it would be nice use their alternative Imperial Guard to supplement the originals rather than replace them entirely.
Steel Legion Available on GW’s Webstore
Today however I made two discoveries that have tilted me towards the determination to make a Steel Legion regiment instead. The first discovery is that the Steel Legion is the only remaining old school metal Imperial Guard regiment that still has some of its line stocked in GW’s webstore and for a pretty reasonable price too. [EDIT: no longer available except as made to order, sadly]
The ten man metal Steel Legion squad is currently £20.50, which given the 10 man plastic Cadian Squad is now £22.50 at the GW store, that is almost a bargain. A fair counter-point to that observation is that discount retailers like Element Games will have the Cadians on offer at a discount but probably not the Steel Legion. See what the current discount is here.
Admittedly this ten man squad is the only original Steel Legion product still available from GW, the officer, special and heavy weapon crews have been discontinued, but the ten man squad is still a pretty useful saver if reasonable alternatives can be found for the others.
The load out for the squad is pretty reasonable too although obviously not modular for being monopose metal. The squad has a sergeant with laspistol and chainsword, a missile heavy weapon team, grenade launcher and the rest are lasgun caddies. It has no vox and no flamer but otherwise that is a load out that suits me.
Wargames Atlantic Raumjager Infantry
The second discovery is that an obscure company called Wargames Atlantic have a plastic kit called the Raumjager Infantry which has a fair approximation of the Steel Legion look. Even better, it is crazy cheap, £25 for 24 mooks. If the GW metal squad looks like a relative bargain at £2 per dude, then how cheap is just £1 per dude? Ebay seems to be the best place to source it and thankfully it is available in quantity, new in box at its regular cheap retail price. See if it is still available here.
The kit has some limitations it must be said. It has no sergeant options that fit with the Astra Militarum’s odd tendency to kit out sergeants for melee. There are no heavy weapons or command bits like vox-caster, medi-kit, flags or officer stuff.
It does have some special weapons though, a not very useful machine gun which might do as an autogun, an approximation of a plasma gun and helpfully a decent looking flamer. The rest is all wall-to-wall mooks but at least the laser rifles are passable as some pattern of lasgun. Steel Legion do not use standard pattern lasguns anyway according to the lore.
Another limitation in their use as Steel Legion is that there are not quite enough fully enclosed helmets for all the models it can make. Without a kitbash some of the mooks will be open face which is not really fitting for Steel Legion.
Other Steel Legion Alternatives
For this project, the above two kits will allow for Steel Legion infantry to be pretty well covered but we will need to look further for officer, sergeant and other bits. Anvil Industries have a few bits that might fill those holes and also of course some of those bits can be raided from the Cadian Command Squad kit and possibly even the Tempestus Scions kit.
All in all these two discoveries mean that a Steel Legion themed Guard Army can still be done inexpensively even compared with a standard Cadian look. Of course Steel Legion are all about the armoured vehicles but even Steel Legion will have some infantry, even if they are mechanised.
Future Instalments of this Series
With that said, I will begin ordering the kits and in future installments of this hobby project series we will kitbash them altogether. In the immediate next installment I will draft up rough army lists using the 6th edition Astra Militarum Codex and the Mont’ka book released for 7th edition. See you then.
| Imperial Guard Steel Legion - A Hobby Project |
| Steel Legion - First Army List |
| Kitbashing Steel Legion Special Weapons - The Options |
| Raumjager vs Steel Legion vs Cadian Shock Troops - Kit Review |