It is has been five years since the last Astra Militarum(excuse me, Imperial Guard!) codex. Five long years, and for much of it, it has been an uphill battle as other armies get prioritized, editions shift core gameplay, and models begin to look more and more dated.
However, finally, the time for a new codex has arrived. I got my Cadia Stands Army Boxes a while back, and my ongoing concussion has been, to be frank and honest, absolutely brutal. It has taken me almost a week and a half to assemble a Command Squad and Infantry Squad, a task that would have previously taken hours at best.
But, defending the galaxy from terrors without and within is not a job for shirkers and complainers. It is a task for the men and women of the Imperial Guard. And, for the Cadians, a new model line lives up to these lofty tasks.
Many other blogs have covered the models and rules in detail, and unfortunately, I cannot type my usual long posts right now. So I will show you what I have managed to get done!
I’m really pleased by the new models. My health having to come first means a significant delay in getting out content related to this release, so bear with me.
The Cadian models were the first army I ever had, and my old lore for my homebrew regiment, the Whitefall 1st, is something I’m keen to draw upon. While I will definitely talk about that more later, for now, the teaser is this. They are a First Founding regiment of the planet Whitefall, a planet settled in early M41 by Cadian guardsmen given right of conquest. The local population, pious but stubborn, took many long centuries to be fully brought into the fold. Their own religion was a local variation of the Imperial Creed, but one that dated back many thousands of years, as the planet had been all but forgotten by the Imperium at large. It was only through the Sabbat Worlds Crusade that it was rediscovered, and a heretical uprising from some local Clans put down.
The culture, then, is a mix of Cadian martial pride and local customs. The recent Indomitus Crusade needs manpower, and battle-hardened but depleted Cadian regiments were amalgamated into the planets first Regiment. The Cadian diaspora formed the NCO and Officer corp, while local Whitefall recruits helped fill the gaps in the fighting men.
I will expand upon this later! For now, my head requires as much rest as I can.
Happy Wargaming wherever you are, and remember, while the Emperor Protects, so must we!
“To each of us falls a task. And all the Emperor requires of us Guardsmen is that we stand in line, and we die fighting. It is what we do best: we die standing.”–General Sturnn, Cadian 412th
Not by Strength, By Guile 
While I’m a big fan of the goofier “Heroic Scale” look of the older Cadians, these really are incredible looking. Excited to see more of the project. Until then, rest up!
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Slow and surely! It’s going to be agonizingly slow to catch up.
I know what you mean; there are elements of the old Cadians I adored that didn’t make the cut. But this reimagined look really adds a hard, gritty edge to them. Ironically, while 40K is probably at the most “noblebright” edition thus far, these models are much like what I imagined Cadians looked like back when I first starting reading 40K lore back in 3rd-4th edition, at perhaps it’s most bleak.
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Now that is a nice mini! 🙂 Here’s hoping your health improves and you can slowly but surely get some more of these troops painted!
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Those new minis look great.
Hope your health improves too.
Cheers,
Pete.
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