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I am looking for some help and advice Dakka!

So one of my long standing goals has been an IG army, specifically a Steel Legion or DKOK army. Like most people, I baulk at FW's prices; I like the models, but my wallet doesn't. So I would like to try and build a DKOK army to a budget. Having looked at the options (and I'm ruling out using the Cadian body / Pig Iron head swap), I think the best way forward is the WarGames Factory shock troopers models, both for price and aesthetic. So I would like some opinions from WGF owners before taking the plunge. I have had a look at the sprue pics they have posted but had some further queries:

1. Clearly the sprues contain both 'normal' guardsman and an option for a grenade launcher guardsman, but do the sprues also have options for vox, medic, standard bearer etc? Obviously, I want to buy a few sets and have enough to make both the bulk of the force and the command squads. I couldn't see from the sprues or the site if this was the case.

2. I want to make roughly 2500 points worth to fit in line with the rest of my armies. For the IG veterans out there, how many guardsman would I need for that size force? Obviously, it depends on the other options taken in the list but roughly speaking, how many guardsman for a 'standard' list for that points value?

If anyone has any other suggestions for how to go about making up a DKOK army, I would be much obliged. It may be that there are other mini manufacturers out there who also produce similar proxies that can be used alongside the WGF stuff.

All tips appreciated!

I was going to try and use the Greatcoats to expand my DKoK army. The problem with them is that they arent the size of a normal Guardsman, they are closer to a Spacemarine in size. If you are useing all of them then I guess it would be ok, but if you mixed them with regular DKoK they would look kind of funny. Other then that though, they are a really nice set and for the price you can't beat them.

Point taken. Not sure it is possible to do an entire army of WGF models given that I have to consider heavy weapons teams and CCS (assuming I can't make them from the WGF sprues) so it looks like some conversion or kit-bashing is mandatory.

You can do the CCS from the box. The bits from normal GW bits will look ok on the Greatcoats as the GW stuff tends to be oversized. One thing that I was thinking of doing to make things look "right" was to use space marine special and heavy weapons. i'm not sure if that would fit you vision for what you want as an army though.

When I found out about the size differance I considered dropping the idea all thogether, instead I'm just slowly and I meen slowly building that army. You can do a Vet, Mech DKoK army relativly cheaply.

Can anyone link me to a decent IG list that I can use to get a guesstimate of prices? Want to work out what I would need to order from WGF + all the other relevant GW bits.

Catyrpelius wrote:The problem with them is that they arent the size of a normal Guardsman, they are closer to a Spacemarine in size.

This is an even bigger problem with DKoK or Elysians as they are quite well proportioned (i.e. thinner than usual for GW)


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filbert wrote:Can anyone link me to a decent IG list that I can use to get a guesstimate of prices?

What sort of list? Chimera spam? Blob squads? IA Kreig List? How many points?
An effective guard list can have between 40-200 guardsmen.

Well, if you're looking to do DKoK on the cheap Wargames Factory is not the answer. That's not DKoK. They never will be. The only similarity is that they both wear greatcoats, it ends there.

Anyway, to answer your questions:
1. IIRC, there is little in the way of options on that sprue. WGF has said that they were going to put out a command kit/heavy weapons kit, etc. at some point in the future (probably still a couple years away knowing them).

2. It depends what kind of list you run. If you're using an infantry heavy force, you could cram 300 guardsmen in there (with minimal upgrades). If you're taking a lot of things like tanks/artillery, etc. then significantly less.

chaos0xomega wrote:Well, if you're looking to do DKoK on the cheap Wargames Factory is not the answer. That's not DKoK. They never will be. The only similarity is that they both wear greatcoats, it ends there.

I hate to agree with this but it is absolutely correct. If you really like DKoK or Steel Legion but are planning to settle on WGF you will be disappointed. I have some of each and I just don't think the WGF guys are anywhere close to the other two. The detail isn't as good they really just don't look like imperial guard.

Honestly I would suggest buying a squad or two of DKoK every once in a while and taking a year or more to complete it. Yeah it will cost you more compared to getting the WGF stuff but I very strongly believe you will be much happier in the end. The DKoK models are some of the best SciFi models I have ever seen. Just a pleasure to look at and paint.

brettz123 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Well, if you're looking to do DKoK on the cheap Wargames Factory is not the answer. That's not DKoK. They never will be. The only similarity is that they both wear greatcoats, it ends there.

I hate to agree with this but it is absolutely correct. If you really like DKoK or Steel Legion but are planning to settle on WGF you will be disappointed. I have some of each and I just don't think the WGF guys are anywhere close to the other two. The detail isn't as good they really just don't look like imperial guard.

Honestly I would suggest buying a squad or two of DKoK every once in a while and taking a year or more to complete it. Yeah it will cost you more compared to getting the WGF stuff but I very strongly believe you will be much happier in the end. The DKoK models are some of the best SciFi models I have ever seen. Just a pleasure to look at and paint.

A thousand times, this. Just paint them slowly and work your way through. I've only finished 4 of my 6 kriegsmen in the past few months, but they're easily some of my favourite models, and I look forward to buying some more some time in the future.

Well here's my review

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/310155.page#1819036

I've got another 54 on their way so I guess I like them.

Quick summary, they're great with head varients and weapons, for 3 bodies you get 3 bullpups, 3 lasers, a grenade launcher, a flamer and a pistol. You'll need to get heavy weapons and meltas and plasma from a bitz site or GW. Cadian arms look fine on them so you can use the power weapons and fists from the command box.



As you can see they're taller than Necro minis, I still haven't broken out my Cats or Cads to compare.

Also they really do not look like Death Korps, that was the original goal but the guns are (IMHO) too high tech. You can work on them or accept them as they are but they are not DKK clones.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Also they really do not look like Death Korps, that was the original goal but the guns are (IMHO) too high tech. You can work on them or accept them as they are but they are not DKK clones.

Exactly. You're doing both Forgeworld and Wargames Factory a disservice by trying to substitute one for the other.

You could also look at WWI historicals, I think renegade and Westwind both do them.

Another option would be Bret men at arms with IG las guns and pig iron heads, but thats probably costier than FW.

It's not necessarily that I am looking for an exact DKOK copy per se, but rather that I like the whole style and aesthetic. To me, DKOK (and Steel Legion as well) look like WW1 German troops in space.

Shall have a look at the historicals that KK suggested. I think the answer to this question is either going to involve a heap of money and/or time (FW) or a whole load of proxy/kitbashing, which I don't particularly excel at.

KK - have you got any links or comparisons of the historical stuff?

I also wanted a DKOK army, but they are too expensive. I have bought several WGF shocktroopers and many of them were assembled with Cadian bits.
They will never be Death Korps of Krieg, but they do look nice with Cadian weapons and the Vader helmet. Besides, the color scheme and basing also help to give some similarity.

Nice stuff Pinto, but why did you replace their flamers and GL with the GW ones?

WW1 heads can help as shown here



But have to agree, both of them look way different and if you are a modeler/painter, you'll probably find great joy in actual DK models

I really like the look of the Renegade stuff that KK linked and I think I am going to theme my army around their WW1 later war German troops, happily with gas masks. They also have maxim MGs that can double up as heavy weapons teams with a little conversion, plus some artillery that I think will make a nice retro autocannon team.

I like WGF grenade launchers, but the shoulder pads are quite different, so I didn't use them. As for the flamers, I just used the GW ones, plus stripped down space marine backpacks, some cabling and lasgun parts to make a heavy repeating laser, or hellgun. I like WGF flamers, even added them to a couple of Black Reach dreadnoughts.
The great problem to convert most miniatures to IG is scale. I have bought Victrix and Warlord miniatures to convert, but they are to small to use GW arms. I have considered acquiring Renegade miniatures, but no one seems to have converted them to IG, so, perhaps they are also too small.
Heavy weapons and vehicles shouldn't be so much of a problem. The problem is how to convert 19th century muskets or 20th century bolt action rifles to lasers. Lasgun barrels also look out of place when glued to muskets. Perhaps thin plasticard rods will do the trick.

A few things to note.

-WF greatcoats are not significantly bigger than Cadians, especially if you trim the neck a bit, which needs to be done anyway. They will work fine with Cadian arms an/or guns with a bit of fiddling and will be much more 40k looking than the WF weapons.

-WF greatcoats are considerably larger than DKoK figs.

-If you don't mind the scale of the British style gas masked heads pictured a few posts above, then for DKoK figs, you really want these heads http://www.westwindproductions.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=126_149&products_id=1523.


-Everybody is going to tell you that WF greatcoats modded aren't going to to be DKoK and they are right. However if what you're looking for is some kickin' WW1 german styled IG, they are a great option, especially with some converting and kitbashing.

It has been speculated that, if you trim off the integral base to the model before gluing it to a standard round base, they should then more closely match standard IG height. Of course, space marines themselves are not really in scale with IG so I don't see a huge problem with it.

Pig Iron does some nice heads as well. Neal at the Warstore usually keeps them in stock for relatively cheap (7 bucks or so for 20 heads).

As mentioned elsewhere, when using standard Cadian arms it is easy to get the 40k look without much hassle.

If you use the standard heads included with the kit, you will need to trim the neck more than the one Kid_Koyoto showed as an example for it to look right.



I myself am building a soviet-themed army by swapping the heads for some "Winter Headgear" versions of Pig Iron's Kolony Militia. The Great Coat troopers I have so far seem to fit the scale fine as long as you trim the bases. I'll try to take some comparison pics later if nobody beats me to it.

I have some pig iron kolony heads inbound from Warstore, to create enemies for my german style shocktroopers. I also have some of the west wind gasmasked heads; the soviet ones are not a good match, but the field cap germans look good.
I have cadians, catachans, space marines and a few eldar. The WGF shocktroopers match their scale, being only a little taller than cadians. I did remove the integral base from one of them, eliminating the height difference, but it would be a pain in the behind to do the same for 200 troopers. Basing with sand and grass hides the integral bases.
As for space marines, well, they should be the size of a terminator to look right.

I have some comparison pics in my gallery of a standard Cadian and a WGF trooper ( just having troble putting them in my post), and I find the height to not be a major isure especially with the necks filled down. They are not in the same squads as my Cadian troops, so the diference is not noticible.

I run mine as adeptus mechanicus IG:



They won't be Deff korps, ever, but they are pretty cool, and much cheaper.
If you really want death corps, get death corps, if you want greatcoats, get them, I went greatcoats with IG bits and misc heads, they look great (imho)
but you cant really mix and match, I use greatcoats, with techmarines and the like as sarges/commisars/ect. mixing them with normal IG is a pretty big size difference.
also I chop the "necks" on my greatcoats heads to scale them down a little.

With wargames trim of the base and you will lower them a tad.

manoknok wrote:With wargames trim of the base and you will lower them a tad.

did this with one of mine, and the feet are just a tad fiddly like that. If you're worried about height, trim the neck down some. To give them their "best" look, i trimmed as much of the neck off as i could, so that it looked like the collar was nice and high, almost tucking up under the helmet.