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The Krieg helmets are just as much French as they are German, honestly. That ridge is right of an Adrianne. I wouldn't call their Death Riders French Cuirassier, though - Germans were the lance-users in that war.

Overall they are a very interesting looking force and it is a shame GW / FW has produced so few unique regiments as late.

Tallarn - I'll sign off on them not being Taliban. I came into 40k after 2001, so the connection was "obvious" enough that I didn't really double-check. As is, I do have a story-crafting use for some figs, so I should probably pick some up eventually - basically rip-offs of the Fremen, who dwell on a planet my main Guard force is attempting to assert control over.

The default Mordian color scheme (blue with red piping) always reminded me of the USMC dress uniforms, personally.

Steel Legion did have that WW2 fallschimjager feel but I always just took them to be generic sci-fi troopers, really. I'd considered even using them for my late-era Soviet-themed Guard force but ended up impulse-buying Cadians (and headswapping them anyways).

Apparently Mordians are based off of 19th century Prussians.

Makes sense; Prussian discipline and all.

(Digging the C&C quote in your sig, CthuluIsSpy)

 Infantryman wrote:
The Krieg helmets are just as much French as they are German, honestly. That ridge is right of an Adrianne. I wouldn't call their Death Riders French Cuirassier, though - Germans were the lance-users in that war.

Overall they are a very interesting looking force and it is a shame GW / FW has produced so few unique regiments as late.

Tallarn - I'll sign off on them not being Taliban. I came into 40k after 2001, so the connection was "obvious" enough that I didn't really double-check. As is, I do have a story-crafting use for some figs, so I should probably pick some up eventually - basically rip-offs of the Fremen, who dwell on a planet my main Guard force is attempting to assert control over.

The default Mordian color scheme (blue with red piping) always reminded me of the USMC dress uniforms, personally.

Steel Legion did have that WW2 fallschimjager feel but I always just took them to be generic sci-fi troopers, really. I'd considered even using them for my late-era Soviet-themed Guard force but ended up impulse-buying Cadians (and headswapping them anyways).

I agree that the Krieg helmets are almost as much Adrian as Stahlhelms, mostly due to the ridge, but also considering the badge worn on the front of the helmet, and the variations on that badge as worn by officers, cavalrymen and grenadiers. That's something the French kind of did with their Adrian helmets.

Everyone employed cavalry armed with lances at the outbreak of WW1, not just the Germans. When I referred to the Death Riders as "Cuirassiers" that had to do with them wearing carapace cuirasses/breast plates (Cuirassiers, Hussars and Lancers were of course historically different things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer

Tallarn are supposed to good at tank warfare, which fits the Desert Rats prototype.

Soviet era uniform:

 Infantryman wrote:


Tallarn - I'll sign off on them not being Taliban. I came into 40k after 2001, so the connection was "obvious" enough that I didn't really double-check. As is, I do have a story-crafting use for some figs, so I should probably pick some up eventually - basically rip-offs of the Fremen, who dwell on a planet my main Guard force is attempting to assert control over.

Fremen makes perfect sense.

The original 40k was just a goofy rip-off of just about everything. I mean that in the nicest possible way, the game borrowed everything and didn't take itself seriously. I still remember one of the mission scenarios from rogue trader was that a cult had formed on your hive world based around the premise that a vast, floating pudding would descend from the sky to make life better for everyone. You'd just caught your mother (grandmother?) reading a pamphlet called: the pudding is coming, 10 reasons why you should believe. And that was the breaking point where you needed to do something about it and play the mission.

Over time they added and built on it, so it became more of it's own thing, so you could kinda say at this point it is original based on how they pieced everything together, but at it's heart it's still derivative. But at the same time, it started taking itself more seriously and some people don't like that.

I've talked to people who didn't like it at all and explained how it started, and they were like: oh yeah, that's actually pretty cool. Not that they'd still play it or anything, but understanding its roots helped them appreciate it a bit more.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Fremen makes perfect sense.

Indeed; I've got this Needlessly Involved (tm) fluffathon going on that's basically thinly veiled references to Dune (more especially the Dune 2 / Dune 2000 video game). Fitting, considering where 40k sources a fair amount of its own ideas

Zingraff wrote:
Tallarn are supposed to good at tank warfare, which fits the Desert Rats prototype.

Good point; somehow forgot about the tank aspect. Probably time I go and brush up on my IG-tropes; I kinda jumped back in directly to doing my own fluff.

When I first encountered the 40k universe through a copy of Titan Legions in the early '90s (which I never bought or played), the thing that really drew me in was the use of Gothic architecture, which was both easily recognizable and obviously anachronistic. I've always felt that GW's willingness to borrow openly from their reference material, is one of their strong points, because as someone else said here, that taps into a common understanding of the kind of story you want to tell.

Take IG tanks, for example, they're obviously designed to look like early 20th century tanks to make us think they're outdated and archaic. In other sci-fi universes you might be told that the ships or the surroundings are ancient and crumbling, but unlike 40k, which deals in riveted steel slabs, most other sci-fi universes aren't able to convey that as effectively.