Over on birdsite, a question was raised about kitbashes. Now, this chap is one that regularly comes out and gets paraded around when it comes up, because this dates back to the era when converting plenty of miniatures involved getting out the jeweler's saw and a roll of putty. Metal miniatures, man! Those were the days. What occurred to me as I posted the old picture of him was that this year, 2024, marks 18 years since the Medusa V global campaign for which I converted and painted this miniature for my then-new Cadian army.
Eighteen years old. I needed a second.
To mark the occasion, I printed off a backdrop and tried to get a slightly more cinematic photo of him that'll hopefully last another eighteen years or so that I can drop when someone asks about converting old miniatures. This miniature was the company commander for my Cadian force, and there was a neat little bit of fluff in one of the campaign booklets which said that armies which spent 'fifty days on the line' became known as Knights of Medusa. In GW Gloucester we counted it as battles fought in the campaign. My Cadians racked up 60-something battles over the course of the Medusa V campaign - one of the benefits of working in-store back in the day with the gaming tables out more or less constantly! The core of my Cadian army are all, still, Knights of Medusa. I've thought occasionally about repainting them, but then I wouldn't be able to tell apart which figures were there for the original scrap, and which were their replacements.
Anyhow! This guy features parts from four separate metal miniatures. If you can recognize and name where they're from, you get a prize.
If research an memory servers, this is the Codex that gave Guards
- The Platoon organization: or as 1d4chan put, "I heard you like Force Organization Charts, so I put a FOC in your FOC." You could take, as your Troop choice, a Platoon, that came with a Platoon Command squad, and at least 1-2 trooper squads, and then build upon that with Special and Heavy Weapon squads, etc., and, iirc, a single Conscript squad. I think gamers always hated it, so what we have today are essentially Combined Squads (🤮🤮🤮) and Orders (🤢) - none of the fun old limitations. The biggest conceptual downside for me would be that fielding two full platoons at 28mm is insane.
- Doctrines: what if the Regimental rule system was meant for cultured adults? If you wanted to use it, you immediately have up on some special troops - could rebuy them - and get additional fun stuff via doctrines, like Grenadiers allowing you to take non-infiltrating Stormtroopers as troops and so on. Imagine that, having both bonuses AND tradeoffs. Wild! The closest thing you can find today are in 30K with the Imperialis Militia rules and the newly-introduced Solar Auxilia regiment rules.
It was also in use in the 4th Edition. While it wasn't particularly good as far as I can tell*, the 4E rulebook itself is perfect, coming with a lot of hobby ideas as well as rules for campaigns, asymmetric Kill Team games, and even paper terrain.
4E also saw Cities of Death released, which just oozed with that same creative energy.
