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After a (very kind!) gift of a pile of Elysians, I'm looking to expand my Lamb's World guard:



To help give them some individual character, I'd like to give the units some specialist equipment/posing to reflect their duties within the regiment. Problem is, I can't think of too many visually different roles.

Knowing that the forum has a number of serving and ex-soldiers, I wondered if I might pick your brains for ideas on duties and roles that infantrymen and women might take on; as well as other ideas for visually distinguishing them from others.

My Lamb's World army is (very loosely) based on a mix of Dark Age Wales; movies like Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down; and WWI British troops, but I'm very happy to bring in ideas and roles from throughout history and across the world. It all adds to the mix!

So far, alongside the more 'standard' line infantry you can see examples of above, I know I'd like to include the following:

* Assault pioneers – distinguished by beards, and equipped with felling axes, mine detectors, grappling hooks and the like.
* Dog handlers – distinguished by... well, dogs. Anything else?
* Sentries – distinguished mainly by posing, but is there any specialist kit that can be added?

...and that's it. I'm hoping there are some other ideas for subtly distinguishing these new squads. While it'd be best if the roles are properly part of the Company (rather than attachments like the cooks or tank crew etc.), I'm open to all ideas. Can you help?

I can only speak from an American Army perspective, but I can give you some rough outlines of organization and roles. I won’t bore you with exact numbers and unit structure, since I feel like you mainly care about how to differentiate your dudes with the equipment they carry.

A standard infantry platoon has your standard riflemen, special weapons, NCOs, and communications specialist. So you would have several guys in standard kit, and a few machine guns/grenade launchers. Pair this with at least one guy with a radio and at least one guy who looks like he’s in charge (officer or NCO) and you’ve got basically a bare bones infantry squad. Platoons are often attached with what we call “weapons squads.” These are your heavy hitters, with anti-tank weapons and bigger machine guns. Also often attached are indirect fire teams with mortars of varying size depending on what kind of unit it is.

The nuts and bolts comes down to combined arms. You want your regular ground pounders to be supported by machine guns and indirect fire. Your Fire Support Officer (FSO) and forward observers will coordinate larger artillery and aircraft. Armor (tanks and armored personnel carriers) need basically the same support as infantry, but is fast and killy and can defeat enemy armor. Engineers create barriers and defenses or come in an blow up the bad guys barriers and defenses. Cavalry scouts go out ahead of the main force to find the enemy, map terrain, and select routes. Everything works in tandem to kill bad guys.

Now that’s probably a lot of info you don’t really care about, so I’ll try to summarize with some named roles of people you can try to kitbash.
1. Special weapons
2. Radiomen
3. NCOs and officers
4. Mortarmen
5. Scouts (make em sneaky and with radios, binoculars, ect)
6. Heavy weapons crews
7. Fire support officers or forward observers (maybe some binoculars or scopes)
8. Engineers (give em bombs and stuff)

Infantry role is to take and hold ground. But it is versital enough that you can add in the rolls of combined arms to increase the effectiveness of the basic dogface.

You do that by basing your Platoon around a command and control element with two or three weapon Squads split into teams. the infantry is versatile by design, so they don't need to be clustered around the weapons teams.

Squad based on two teams. The team should be five, with one of each 5 with a special weapon., Squad of 10, 3 squads make a platoon, three platoons make a company, with an additional Heavy Weapons platoon made of 6 heavy weapons. (2 heavy weapons per squad in the heavy Platoon.)
Squad composition- Squad leader- 2 special weapons- 1 squaddie with commo and lasrifle, plus the 6 other las rifles. Platoon based around the concept of special weapons heavy weapons fire, with the las rifles as mass fire per target.

With that you need a command section, one commo, one Lt/ CPT, in addition to a ministerial section of a priest per squad, and 4 or five commissars, depending on how much of the Emperors grace you ,ay or may not have to enforce.

In addition, you need a Forward Observer (FO) section, a Sniper team/ teams if that isn't one of your picks for a special weapon. An Armor Officer and 3 tanks plus a mechanized squad in support of the tanks with a load out of the heaviest weapons kit you can put on an IG squad.
Ratling Sniper squad or platoon, Ogryn Squad or Platoon in support of the command system ( They work as a stopgap until you sweep in with additional force to shore up the anvil squad).

Air support/ TACAIR with someone to call in air strikes, such as the thunderbolts, the Anti air squad, such as stinger team/ Balisk/ Hydra.

Additionally, you can add in the Sentinel squadrons, which I wholeheartedly include when I play Guard as easy fast mover heavy weapons platforms that don't waste manpower.

THEN you can easily go mechanized infantry, which would then put each of your squads into a humble Chimera, supported by no less then two tank platoons.
9 tanks in the background firing all over the table from defilade, with the infantry pushing forward, the chimeras get hit and become pill boxes as the infantry push forward taking ground.

OR Go Elysian and go full air assault/ airborne as the troops get dropped in, rally on a position, and close and hold the enemy as reinforcements come in on turn two or three.

If you have the orbital bombardment, you can call for fire, as well.

With all of that- base your squads around the heavy weapons teams. They are there to keep the heavy weapons teams alive. The special weapons are just part of that.
Command and Control, because their Moral is dicey, even on a good roll, so you have the Commissars and Priests in there, ( not to mention when they bring in for weapon loadouts.)
The ratling/ Ogryns are there in support. Nice to have, But not Got to have.

And armor. You play guard, get armor out there. 1 Tank squad of 3 or 3 of 9, and a super heavy. Get armor.

You can also get yourself some support sections, such as a Ministerium, an Inquisition team, Commissar training squad, rough riders ( Bikes or mount) Penial Platoon, Last Chancers, and also, depending on the scale you want to work from- air support elements/ Navel troop/ Jump Infantry.


THEN, you could always go my personal favorite- Assassins/ Sisters/ Special Ops/ Engineers Who favor surgical strikes and heavy support platforms.
Thereby you base a heavy mechanized based Infantry squad, then have the sisters and assassins in support.

Hope that helps.

Attached MP squad with appropriate markings for your sentries?
Could mark the K-9 similarly.

Squad designated marksman? Not scouts or snipers. Standard troop with an optic, and possibly different rifle, to reach out and touch someone beyond the effective range of the squad.

Engineer squad designated by extra explosives like satchel charges?

Combat life saver? A little extra medical training, but not medic quality.

From a practical POV, you might want to look at the list of specialists from Killteam.

For basic guardsmen squads:
Leader
Heavy
comms
demo
scout
sniper
veteran

Are Designater Marksmen actually a thing, or just something Halo user to.crowbar in another type of standard infantry weapon? If they do exist, 1 or 2 out of each squad could be toting better rifle optics or a slightly different gun.

D'oh... ninja'd

Sappers? A few IG kits come with shovels and picks...

Spent 10 yrs in the infantry.....most of it was cleaning, raking lines in sand, mowing grass, picking up garbage, PT x2 day, more cleaning, polishing floors, so make some of your models wearing pt belts picking up garbage on the roads..

Of course when in the field we trained ...but in the rear with the gear we did all the jobs nobody in the army wanted to do