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Not sure if belongs here or 40k discussion.

I have lots of spare imperial guard heavy weapon team weapons, and was looking for a way to get some use out of them.

I searched online for similar ideas but could not find any, so I figured I would ask the experts at DAKKADAKKA.

A big part of the hobby for me is scratch building, I enjoy researching, developing, visualising then realising ideas.

Growing up in England the hills are littered with these tiny, well hidden little forts from WWII. Almost like a short concrete porta loo with firing slits! I think the idea was so that if the Nazis ever made an attempt at invasion, every old farmer with a gun would be a stubborn thorn to remove. I think they were called pill boxes.

The IG heavy weapon team kits come with some slightly more temporary entrenchment (sand bags, etc) and I wondered if scratch building a little bunker for each team in a heavy weapon squad would be pushing things a bit far? From what I can tell a heavy weapon team in game would be unlikely to move much, so there shouldn't be too many pill boxes flying around the table, once deployed they would probably stay put.

The 'how to build wargames terrain' book gives ideas of how to build fortifications of this size, so I will probably be using that (along with pictures of WWII pill boxes/bunkers) as a guide for how to assemble these pieces, but with an emplaced heavy weapon sticking out from one facing. One Idea I was toying with was making the bunkers so that I can push my three heavy weapons teams together in base to base contact to form a big bunker complex (maybe I could make some ruined versions of these bunkers too for swapping out as each base becomes a casualty?)

Obviously an advantage to this idea is I won't have to spare (m)any guardsmen bodies/legs to make these models, do you think doing this might come across as cheap and/or gamey?

Although I failed to find similar ideas already executed, I did manage to find something from real life that was close to what I was hoping to achieve:



Would something like this on a heavy weapon team base be good for a heavy weapon team squad?

For most counts-as questions there are a few things that need to be answered.

Is the base size the same?
How is Line of Sight affected?
Are there any other issues that could be construed as modeling for advantage?
Is it cool?

I personally wouldn’t have an issue with it. If the basic profile is roughly the same as a HW team, you shouldn’t run into many problems. Particularly if you can get it to look awesome. Rule of Cool covers many sins.

IIRC you draw LOS from a models eyes, so you should have some sort of optics/targeter that’s about the hight of a guardsman. Which should also be about as high as the bunker. The other LOS issue that might come up is that instead of a weapons team that you can more-or-less see through, your pillbox is going to block sight to things behind it. Might get some MFA calls for that. One thing that helps with this on the table is to concede any arguments to your opponent. Or have a stock mini to substitute to resolve any questions.

If you want to make them connect, I might suggest hexagonal bunkers that fill up the base. Switching to square bases would work, but as that’s a clear mechanical change, might cause issues for some.

Thank you for those thoughts, Nevelon, especially for the alternate basing suggestion, not something I had thought of. I'm fairly sure some old weapon teams came on non-round bases (catachan missile launcher perhaps?) so at least there is some level of precedent there already.

I had given some thought for LoS to and from the model (I figured the guardsmen would be crouched inside the partially dug in bunker, which would be about the height of a standing guardsmen, so would match the height range of traditional weapon teams), but I did not give thought to how the model could end up blocking line of sight between other models. I think the simplest thing to do in this regard is just allow my opponents to treat them as transparent for line of sight, but shooting through them still provide cover as it would with any other model?

As to the eye issue, I'll include vision/firing slits in the model with the gunner/spotter's head visible for drawing the model's line of sight?

I’ve got guardsmen with lascannons on their shoulders, so be careful how far back you want to go to look at precedent. Sticking with more modern bases is safer. I think 2-3rd missile launchers were on cavalry bases, not 100% sure though.

Now get modeling!

I'll produce some rough mock ups with corrugated card and plasticine to see how it feels!

Not sure if it's exactly what you're going for but I used some of these as inspiration on a similar project. All credit to Asherian Command.

If it's for the sake of theme, go for it. If nothing else it would be an interesting sight to see.

If you want to just get a few extra teams out of your sprues, might I recommend scavenging tank parts and other techy bitz and make them look like automated defense turrets?