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 Elbows wrote:
That really sucks, and kills any interest I had in doing Guard in the future (I sure as hell wouldn't use boring Cadians). On the plus side I've "almost" ordered Vostroyans about four times this year, so I'm glad I'm not in the middle of a project.

The move away from proper regiments by GW with regard to the IG was probably the nail in the coffin for me. Huge mistake. That army lost any character it had.

That's exacty because people only "nearly ordered" them for like the last 25 years and never actually bought any that those ranges are OOP.
Character doesn't mean anything for GW if that doesn't transfer into sales.
It's the Tomb Kings syndrome.
I know at leats 30 people that were totally 100% going to buy Tomb Kings THIS YEARS for sure like really 100% sure.....in 2002. then 2009.. then 2013...
Everysingle time they are "surprised" about the squat they totally didn't have time to prepare for.

You mistake me for being surprised by this move - I'm not. Imperial Guard are still boring as feth. Hopefully they move to fix this in the future.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Mordians - parade dess. Some say specifically US Marines in dress uniform, but I'm not sufficiently familiar to say.

They were inspired by Prussian uniforms (Source: Tea with the Perrys, Citadel Journal 23).

Everyone always says they’d need three kits for a new regiment, but why couldn’t they do it with just one? The current Cadian and Catachan squad boxes are so bare of bits, you could almost fit all of the command squad’s “extra” bits on there (so excluding the torsos and legs). The same goes for the heavy weapons teams if you disregard the actual heavy weapons. The current heavy weapons sprue could be easily reused for any new regiment. I’d say one box for any new regiment would fit fine? Look at the genestealer neophyte box (the one based on the Cadians with the upgrade sprue): that also includes all the heavy weapon bits.

We know GW are bringing out new guard-esque models with Rogue Trader soonish. It would also not be surprising if new Catachans are on the way... we’re still waiting on Marbo’s ‘proper’ release.

Considering that, from a marketing perspective, it probably makes sense for these models to be the only real options for other regiments rather than just additions to an already huge range.


I expect we will get them ‘made to order’ at some point, but who knows how long that could be.

Honestly, I'm still surprised they have waited so long to discontinue them. I mean, most are quite a bit older than a lot of their players.

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
Which makes me even more sad that all those regiments might never come back even in plastic because of historical influences that cant be copyrighted:(

The models can absolutely be copyrighted. Historical miniatures are protected by copyright (or the appropriate IP laws for sculptures). If they do come back, they'll be more "40k-fied), I imagine - bionic limbs, eyes and skull implants on officers, vox-casters, servo-skulls and that sort of thing.


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 Kanluwen wrote:

A lot of the 'inspiration' mentioned on the previous page is questionable at best. It's outright been stated that the Tallarn are based off the 'Desert Rats'.
The metal Cadians were based off the gear that NATO countries were using at the time.

I've not seen these outright statemets, but I do have access to the entire White Dwarf back catalogue and almost all the Citadel Journals, so if you can suggest where it was spelled out I'll revise my statement.

I did say the Tallarns were based off the SAS / LRDG, but there's some of T. H. Lawrence from WW1 in there too (Lawrence of Arabia). Not the Desert Rats as a whole because none of the Tallarns are in khaki shirts and shorts.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
Which makes me even more sad that all those regiments might never come back even in plastic because of historical influences that cant be copyrighted:(

The models can absolutely be copyrighted. Historical miniatures are protected by copyright (or the appropriate IP laws for sculptures). If they do come back, they'll be more "40k-fied), I imagine - bionic limbs, eyes and skull implants on officers, vox-casters, servo-skulls and that sort of thing.

I've enough Mordians, metal Cadians and Tallarn to anchor a ship at sea and I definitely agree. Great sculpts but other than the occasional eagle there was little to make them 40k.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
It used to be that each regiment was missing a special weapon and a heavy weapon option. For special weapons it was flamer, plasma, melta and, grenade launcher. For heavy it was autocannon, heavy bolter, lascannon and, missile launcher. Was there a regiment that didn't have to following combination of grenade launcher and heavy bolter? Does anyone know/remember which regiments lacked which weapons?

IIRC Praetorians lacked the plasma and had all of the heavies. They may have been an exception to the general rule since they were a very limited production run.

When they were first released, the metal 2nd edition regiments (and the stormtroopers) had three special weapons out of four (meltagun, flamer, plasma gun, grenade launcher) and three heavy weapons out of five (missile launcher, mortar, heavy bolter, lascannon, autocannon). Eventually, all the regiments had models sculpted for all the heavy weapons.

Catachans - meltagun, plasma gun, flamer (meltagun and missile launcher in the box set). The female trooper with a grenade launcher was originally a Games Day exclusive in 1995, and sort of sneaked into the general range (but not the catalogue) later on.
Valhallans - flamer, grenade launcher, meltagun (flamer and mortar in the box set).
Cadians - flamer, plasma gun, melta gun (flamer and heavy bolter in the box set).
Mordian - grenade launcher, meltagun, flamer (grenade launcher and lascannon in the box set. The "classic" standard equipment). A plasma gun model was made later on, but it was either uneleased or only a very limited release.
Tallarn - meltagun, plasma gun, grenade launcher (meltagun and autocannon in the box set).

Storm Troopers - plasma gun, meltagun. They also only had heavy bolters and autocannon available as heavy weapons.

Praetorian - grenade launcher, meltagun, flamer. The special platoon box included a heavy bolter, autocannon, mortar and two lascannon. a missile launcher team was made available separately. They were also the only regiment to get a standard bearer (with no rules).

Apart from Storm Troopers, all of those also had two sergeants, a lieutenant and the Cadians, Catachans and Vahallans hade a vox-operator (the Praetorians have a bugler, which I use as a vox-operator )

Stuff of Legends or the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki should show you all of those.
http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Imperial_Guard_1994_to_2000_-_Collectors_Guide

To answer your question, only Cadians couldn't field a grenade launcher without conversion.

AndrewGPaul you are a gentleman and a scholar.

 Hive City Dweller wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
To something that DOES NOT EXIST?

Yep. Plastic is inherently worse as a medium for high-detail models like the current DKoK line. The only advantage it offers is price, and since I can already buy DKoK kits faster than I can paint them being able to save $5/squad is worthless to me.

While this was true in the past, the current level of detail in plastic kits is as good as resin casts. Everything from last year's Death Guard onward has been exceptional in terms of quality and detail. I mean just look at these glorious sprues:

Spoiler:

At that level of detail I can't see any guard regiments suffering from a remake in plastic.

Absolute max quality is still lower and tradeoff you have bazillion pieces to assemble when resin can be done in far fewer. And GW doesn't even utilize benefit of bazillion pieces by making the new plastic rather monoposed anyway with fixed poses and parts that fit.


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 Kirasu wrote:

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
Dammit, where do people email to put pressure on GW for a last chance to buy? Costumer support?

People could have done that over the last 2 decades by buying them. One of the main rules of business is, never believe a customer that says "they'll buy something soon", especially in a hobby full of impulse buyers. If people wanted these, then they would own them.. since they don't own them then they probably never actually wanted them.

Ah yes of course how stupid of me. Every player has thousands of euros worth putting all the time and models gets painted immediately. Yes how silly of me. I'm just unusual one with limited income and taking time to paint existing models. Others obviously can buy all the models they want immediately including trio of warlords and top of that the models even paint themselves!

 Albertorius wrote:
Honestly, I'm still surprised they have waited so long to discontinue them. I mean, most are quite a bit older than a lot of their players.

I figure they wanted to keep metal Sisters around but didn't think they'd sell enough to keep the machines running, so they kept around metal Guard to add volume.

Now that Sisters are on the way out, the same low volume problem exists for Guard and so they get dropped.

That's my take anyway.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Ginsu33 wrote:
What I am tired of, is the lack of knee pads, gloves, and a hydration pack on their backpack.

If only someone made 28mm modern tacticals... *sigh*

(1/72 is widely available, though...)

Spectre and Empress miniatures come to mind, but you'll only get head swaps out of Empress, while Spectre are full body figures I believe.
Pig Iron have these really nice heads though:

Always thought Al'rahem was meant to be not-Lawrence of Arabia.

Anyway, I can't be annoyed by this because if I really wanted any of these I'd've bought them by now. Still, I can see why people are annoyed.

For my part, I have tons of metal Cadians, Tallarns and Mordians. Never much cared for the others (other than the Voystroyans).

I just wish there had been a forewarning, I would have probably bought couple of Vostroyan officers more.

This happens all the time. my local supermarkets stop stocking the cider I like, LGS stop stocking the paint ranges I use, and other minor irritants.

I heard that the Imperial Army is being reinstated to "assist" the guard with Cawl pattern equipment and man power.

Fluff is roughly that Grandpapa Smurf thinks the Guard are unsalvageable as an effective force. He also feels scions are influenced to much by other factions to trust.

So he decides he better call cawl to get something sorted.

As someone who owns way too many Guard armies already (4 of GW/GW-inspired origin, 2 from other manufacturers), a bit of heads up would have been nice. I might have grabbed a few Steel Legion heavy teams, but that army is still fine in terms of troops really. I'm sure some of the alternative producers will start filling in soon for those regiments that aren't already represented. I do somewhat dread the idea of Vic making Steel Legion though; I already have enough of her product lying around but mixing in a few female troopers would certainly be a siren's call.

It does suck for the folks who can only regularly find games at GW stores though. Have to wonder if there's a grander GW plan at work here that will be revealed in due course.

 Krinsath wrote:

It does suck for the folks who can only regularly find games at GW stores though. Have to wonder if there's a grander GW plan at work here that will be revealed in due course.

Always.

 Ginsu33 wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Ginsu33 wrote:
What I am tired of, is the lack of knee pads, gloves, and a hydration pack on their backpack.

If only someone made 28mm modern tacticals... *sigh*

(1/72 is widely available, though...)

Spectre and Empress miniatures come to mind, but you'll only get head swaps out of Empress, while Spectre are full body figures I believe.
Pig Iron have these really nice heads though:

If it's modern style tactical gear you want, you'll want to check out Anvil Industry. They have a ton og modern style tactical gear. Mad Robot has some, too. Mad Robot also makes parts based on the defunct metal Guard lines, too. So if you want squads of Steel Legion, Mordians, Tallarn, Vostroyans, Valhallans, or even Rogue Trader era Guard, Mad Robot makes all of them.

Crying shame these were some great models.

I was definetly in the 'I'll do a Guard army someday' camp but now I'm out!

They were great lookins models but im a bit on the fence about them, on one hand they provided the guard with diversity (outside 3rdpart). However on the other hand in an army that uses so huge numbers of troops you will quikly run into that your platon mostly look all the same since their poses were limited.

I will still miss the Steel Legion but hopefully we will get some kind of replacement.

I own both steel legion and valhallan armies. The disappearance of the range means I won't be able to expand my armies in the future, though to be fair the only things I've brought in the last couple of years were some of the valhallens that came as part of a made to order last year, and the main thing I want is some valhallan missile launcher teams which have been OOP for years.
I had always planned to buy some more steel legion lascannon teams to convert to autocannons using bits from the plastic cadian's, but haven't got around to it. Guess I never will now.


Still hoping we get a made to order for the praetorian guard one day. I'd Literally buy a whole army in one go if it happened.

Once again, if you want X, but missed out, and are now finally opening your wallet, eBay is over there...

Huge volumes were produced, and it's not hard to find things that are brand new. It's also not hard to find things in canonical paint scheme. And if it's badly painted, it's not hard to strip them down to bare metal.

And being allmost entirely 1-piece metal, this stuff lasts almost forever, so there will be plenty available 10, 20 years from now.

Yeah but there is the problem of prices and irregular availability on ebay.
Sure, the basic troopers are quite easy to obtain at reasonable prices.
However, if you need officers, special weapons, heavy weapons, the quest starts to become tricky.
The reason being that these were already phased out years ago.

Note that these specials / heavy were relaunched briefly for the very first "made to order" commercial operation.
A made to order fiasco that only lasted less than a week-end !

The problem gets exacerbated with Vostroyans.
They are the most recent range (2006), were already somewhat expensive at their start, so the supply is lower than on second edition ranges, such as Valhallans.
And important models such as mortar HWT, the officers trio were already missing years from now.
They are sold at prices of 20 to 35 £ a piece now. this could only get worse in the near future.

my bet is they are listening to the cries of millions of terran souls ... and the OOP process is the first step ... heck they said themselves marbo will return in the future ... what a better way than new catachan ... and hopefully more for the rest later

... again wishful thinking but if we got sob soon in plastic ... what's stopping regiments from getting their due update? ... could be something like necromunda as part of a boardgame or maybe killteam bands ... who knows really

 Ravajaxe wrote:
Yeah but there is the problem of prices and irregular availability on ebay.
Sure, the basic troopers are quite easy to obtain at reasonable prices.
However, if you need officers, special weapons, heavy weapons, the quest starts to become tricky.
The reason being that these were already phased out years ago.

Note that these specials / heavy were relaunched briefly for the very first "made to order" commercial operation.
A made to order fiasco that only lasted less than a week-end !

The problem gets exacerbated with Vostroyans.
They are the most recent range (2006), were already somewhat expensive at their start, so the supply is lower than on second edition ranges, such as Valhallans.
And important models such as mortar HWT, the officers trio were already missing years from now.
They are sold at prices of 20 to 35 £ a piece now. this could only get worse in the near future.

If you are patient and planning the army for the long haul, ebay is certainly doable. I haven't seen any cheap Valhallans lately, but I know I got Chenkov and a 3 of each special weapon they were made with for about 30 bucks (incidentally this was about 1 week before the made to order where all 4 model types showed up). With patience, you can easily get a full guard army for fairly cheap there - the key is to parse through the garbage of "pro painted, 50$ per model!" bits. Also note - most of those individual pieces listed for 20-35$ each have been up for a long time, don't judge by the listings that won't sell, judge by the ones that actually get through.

I can't even see the ebay prices rising over much, considering about 2/3 of listings for metal guard models have been listed as "oop" for years on there, regardless of whether they were or not.

And if not ebay, you can always check the swap shop here, or go over to bartertown.

If one can wait 20+ years while the item is in the shop, one can wait 20+ days while the item is on eBay.

If you want a last chance to buy the regiments it doesn't hurt to send an email to GW and they might listen. Many of us are paying great amount of money on our collection straight from GW and an email to costumer support is something they wont have a problem with.
If there is enough of interest there is a chance that they actually listen.
When they pulled tomb kings and bretonnia they came back for a second time after being sold out, giving all those who were left out a last chance to buy.
Of course sometimes products go. But a last chance period is not unreasonable at all, they even have a category on their website that is called that, and they usually use it but not at this time for some unknown reason.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If one can wait 20+ years while the item is in the shop, one can wait 20+ days while the item is on eBay.

What if say I had only started playing 40k in the last year and had started collecting Valhallans in the last couple of months. Do you then class me as someone that has had 20+ years to buy them? What if I was a teenager who'd only just got into the hobby recently?