Civs 40k Narrative Collection

The imperial guard have always been my favourite 40k faction, the regular human facing against the big bads of the 40k universe.

Whilst in my head it would be nice to imagine in the 40k universe I would be a space marine, humanities finest warrior, I know deep down I would be a humble guardsman at best, so this is where I chose to imagine my gaming.

Helpfully with 3d printing getting an epic guard army was super easy, there are some great files online full of all the infantry and tanks a guard officer could dream of.

Once printed, I painted my 3d printed guard army in a white and grey theme (probably influenced by star wars in some fashion) with a blue base to add some colour. (I’ll add pics later)

I then decided to paint up a 28mm guard force, nothing special, no rare tanks, no special characters, just your bog standard infantry platoon and supporting equipment like sentinels and a chimera. I’m not even going to give them a tank, they’re somewhere else in the sector. This force was to represent the epic force but in a zoomed in battlespace. Same uniforms and camo patterns, same blue bases, same campaign.

Whilst your usual 40k force taken has a ton of special troops and ultra rare heroes i wanted mine to represent the more average force. The guard platoon or the ork mob full of standard boys. I always like to see the average force played as thats what I think 40k battle would be like.

I’m currently working through this 28mm force so will add pictures and info as I get them done.

The story would follow a group of cadians being deployed to a world overrun by orks.

It would start off small and build from there. The skirmish level would get no bigger than a platoon and some support weapons for the cadians and for the orks probably many many boyz with the odd vehicle or special unit chucked in to represent what I saw as the “normal” ork mob.

Once past that we would be into epic scale, including some adeptus titanicus forces and maybe thrown in some battlefleet gothic action, though this may be more narrative and less based on any game play.

I’m very much coming at this from the human view point, after all who wants to see the plucky human overcome by the vile xenos greenskin.

I’ll flesh this out in time, giving the world and the protagonists names, deeds and laurels as they go on to earn them. Companies/mobz and characters will rise and fall.

For now im using it to tie all my forces in the 40k universe together and give it all some wider purpose.

This is my second time around collecting in the 40k universe and I wanted to come at it differently. Rather than collect each army/force independently why not have them as part of a grander campaign which i could use to tell a story and help myself immerse more into the whole 40k universe.

Now 3d printing has become a thing I got into playing some epic after missing out the first time.

I have always thought 40k belonged at the epic scale, 28mm was fine until you started introducing weird things like a supporting basilisk on the front line. Epic for me was how you played out those planetary invasions or sector wide defences.

It’s from here the idea came, probably very much influenced by the PC game final liberation. I would collect an epic guard and epic ork army. I’d then collect 28mm “zoomed” in forces so I could simulate smaller skirmishes and similarly collect some battlefleet gothic fleets for both factions to represent the wider space engagements.

This wasn’t just going to be a stand alone army, these were all going to connect and tell the story of a single campaign, from system wide fleet defences all the way to the smaller skirmish games I could play it all out.