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The standard guardsmen model has a sorta hump on the back of his flak vest. Obviously this is how the vox and flamer fuel tanks attach, but besides that, what's the point of it? In the space marine game the guardsmen models have it, but considering from what I gather the vest is not very technologically advanced I simply don't see the point of having a hump on the back.

I've started cutting that extra bit off and flushing the surface so it looks less awkward.

I guess I'd like to know how a vox and fuel tank hangs on to a guardsmen in the fluff. If it's just a big magnet, that's a bit silly.

In the fluff - referring to Gaunt's Ghosts novels, for example - soldiers carry much more stuff than the body armor shown on the models. They carry webbing and pouches to stuff magazines and grenades into, they have musette bags where all the stuff not fitting in the webbing goes, water bottles, additional hip pockets and so on. In the fluff, they look like your real-world soldier from some time between WW1 and today, full of stuff.

In the fluff, they are described looking like this. This is just an example, however, you know how diverse the IG can get...


Unfortunately, all those details are probably hard to model and even harder to make to look good, so we have bare-flak-armored torsos with a "magnet" at the end for vox and flametanks. I can assure you fluff will deliver a mixture of standard carrying straps, harnesses and robust buttons to connect parts of the equipment of an Imperial Guardsmen.

Indeed, my guardsmen models have simply too few pockets! Need moar...stuff!

But yeah, as long as I'm not cutting off some life support system that's oddly placed on their backs then all is well.

I thought the same as you when I first started. In the end, I decided that it wasn't worth the time and effort to snip it on every single model, so I leave it. I rarely even notice it.

Just a small thing: But the backpacks from the heavy weapon teams fit on them aswell.
Or the medpack from the Cadian command squad.

loner wrote:Just a small thing: But the backpacks from the heavy weapon teams fit on them aswell.
Or the medpack from the Cadian command squad.

As do the packs that come in some of the forgeworld kits.

As far as I can tell it's just there to be a lug to hold on the aforementioned backpacks. Other than that it's just a little bit of detail to add to the model.

I have no sources on this, but logically, I believe the flak vest is a standard issue vest, and the lug is simply the section you attach any expansions to the vest. Think of it like a vest with strips of velcro, meant to hold something, but you don't need to have something there; much in the same way, the lug is such a strip.

Plus I imagine the Imperium is issuing these vests in the trillions, and they're not about to choose between making a custom medic/flamer/vox/pack-mule vest plus "regular fatigues", and just one vest with an expansion option, and all standard gear able to be attached to said expansion.