In Death, Atonement: Death Korps of Krieg!

Ah, 40k. I have mixed feelings about the game that once featured heavily on this blog. In short, I was having a bit of a lull. I was finding it hard to enjoy the actual game aspect of it, and while I’m far from being a competitive gamer, I do like the game to be fun at least for me, and given the condition of the Guard in this edition right now, its a rough time to be a Guardsmen.

However, I realized recently that while I can be somewhat jaded about the actual game, that doesn’t need to affect my love of the hobby. And while my Gallipoli project is awesome, it requires a lot of work, and money; Victoria Miniatures is a great company, but certainly not the budget option!

I had a recent Team Yankee transaction, a fairly large one, get cancelled due to stock issues. This left me with a fairly large hobby fund, and since I’m an addict, I reinvested it immediately into more miniatures….but oddly, that purchase was a substantial amount of “Veteran Guardsmen”, the Kill-Team release of plastic Death Korps of Krieg!

This was an interesting choice….I never was keen on them before. I enjoyed the Siege of Vraks Imperial Armour books, when I last got a chance to borrow a copy and read them. Dead Men Walking was a good novel. But otherwise, the grim Franco-Germanic aesthetic was not my jam. That, and the constant “shovel memes”, which innocent enough, were however extremely annoying. The joke lost its effect very quickly, and the Regiment getting typecast as suicidal lemmings was not a great look.

However, both the fact that these were now available in plastic, and the fact that I watched a great series by Oculus Imperia on YouTube about the Siege of Vraks which is superbly well edited and narrated, which brought back my interest in the grim men of Krieg. And I have my own lore for this specific Regiment, which will be an Assault Korps held in reserve most times, waiting for a breakthrough in the attritional warfare the Death Korps often find themselves in. These were mentioned in the Siege of Vraks material, as well as the Fall of Orpheus book which features them fighting Necrons.

These originally released as part of a large box in August 2021, but are now available separately. While I imagine these will be re-boxed as part of standard Astra Militarum release(although, hope is the first step on the road to disappointment…), I jumped the gun a bit, and ordered enough to fill a brigade, which is 12 full infantry squads. I was gifted two of them, but even still, that is absolute madness.

The kit is excellent. While more exaggerated in proportion compared to the rather slender Forgeworld versions, this makes them robust, a point in their favour. I love FW usually, and the actual style of their Krieg is more up my alley, but the cost made that prohibitive. The weapons here are considerably larger, but are much more durable.

The real “marmite” is the gas-mask….the change in design didn’t please some in the player base, myself included. However, a YouTube video showed how easy it was to remove that element of the design, so I shaved that part off. While I was at it, I also removed the skull from the back of the Lucius Pattern Lasgun. I found that part a little too “on the nose”, so to speak. The FW versions are very utilitarian, which I preferred. It took very little work to remove the skulls from the weapons, and the result is a return to a very rugged, less toy-like weapon.

The kit allows for a lot of swapping of the arms, which I intend to use to full effect to make all of the models look fairly distinct. I do have 11 squads after this, so that will be worth it!

Now, when time came to paint these, I thought of a lot of different ideas. But one picture I found online was someone who did these with WW2 Waffen SS camo. I wrestled with the idea for a bit, as I wasn’t overly keen using historical schemes from Nazi Germany on the regiment often mistaken as being solely German influenced. But here is the thing…

My own queasiness aside, it looked really, really good on that model I saw. And so, Rule of Cool won out. I hope I don’t run into too many issues over it though!

I got the paint from a store in Toronto that is really good at supplying Vallejo colours, so I was able to follow Sonic Sledgehammer’s guide for painting Waffen SS camo, which I will link at the end here.

I then washed the model in the usual recipe of Agrax Earthshade applied liberally, then sopped up so its not messy. After that dried, a quick highlight of some parts and fixing stuff was followed by an application of a new Mud Diorama paint I’m using by MIG. While it takes considerably longer to set then Stirland Mud, the cost saving is incredible, and it looks just as good, if not better! I imagine it will take some sealing before its fully ready though.

Let’s have a look at the model!

All in all, I’m very happy with this! As a test model, this showed me when and where to apply certain paints, and it should be repeatable among the hundred or so men that will follow. Even if its not the best paint job in the grand scheme of things, the effect of so many in the same uniform should look really good!

But alas, I have work tomorrow, so the rest of the Squad will have to wait until another night. Feverish assembly of the dour men of Krieg will have to happen as well, which given my tweaks will take some time!

So, I will catch you in the next one. I’m really happy to have Warhammer 40k return to the blog, after quite the absence! Happy Wargaming wherever you are, and wait for the whistle to go over the top, Guardsmen.

Useful links!