An extract from the Personal Journal of Commissar-General Marwood

The new campaign rules are sorted, a new army is built, but before we go to war it would be good to find out a bit about the heros that will lead the way...

A personal chronology of events leading up to the destruction of the Imperial Navy Frigates Hansa and Hahndorf, commencing the battle on Hotel Delta Eight Fifty Five Twelve B.

Day 31:

Sitting in my cabin on the Barbarossa – I managed a minute to myself.  Finally, this is the last leg of my trip. All I have to do now is rendezvous with the three frigates; the Hansa, Heidelberg and Hahndorf, as they prepare to leave the Reductus Sector, conduct one last DPPR whilst on board the Hansa, and then enjoy the ride to Praetoria. From there, it is a short jump back to Bakka, back to comfort, back to my glum desk – just the way I like it. This trip hasn’t been particularly rotten; I only had to administrate the ‘cleansing’ of two Psykers. Cleansing. After all these years I’m prepared to say it; I murder people. It’s my job. ‘Commissar-General’? What they really mean is ‘Chief Executioner’.

The Thunder Guard's arrival on the Grand Cruiser Praetoriae Vindictam.

(Four posts in two days- staying at home with a cold has done wonders form my blog!)

Here is a short narrative of an officers of the fleet regiment's initial meeting with several Thunder Guard officers aboard the Grand Cruiser Praetoriae Vindictam.

Expeditionary Lieutenant Creswell opened the wardroom hatch and stepped into the anteroom for the fortnightly officer’s game of Mordian Holdem. Seated at the long-table in the room's centre, were five cavalry officers from various regiments of the Thunder Guard. Creswell was momentary caught off guard. He had not expected the Thunder Guard to embark until the following rotation, but obviously they had arrived early.

Reforming my Imperial Guard (part 2) (and the truth about my dark addiction)

The second part of reforming my Guard are my Praetorian miniatures. I have been conflicted with my blue coated Praetorians for a long while. I really like the fleet regiment aspect that I reverted back to in April- that’s not the issue. There is still a little bit of me that wants to paint some red coats. Not so much for the historical aspect but from the point that I love the original look of them. I realised I felt this way when people would say 'sham you didn’t paint them red'. In truth if I didn't care then that comment would mean nothing, but there was always a little part of me that would say 'yeah, kinda wish I had'. 

So why didn’t I paint up some read coats? I collected lots of praetorians and I wanted to paint them all the same, cos you know - 'that’s what you have to do'. But in reality (and here is my dark secret) I have way too many praetorians for one army. I’m not saying this to brag at all, in fact I’m a little ashamed that I got so addicted to buying them that I have this many. How many I hear you ask? I'm not sure, but more than 500. I haven't counted them any time recently. It was my dark secret, my 'crack' praetorian addiction.

Here is a photo from a year or two ago when I stopped buying them. I tried to pull them ALL out but I ran out of time and room on the table : / 

Yeah, it’s a lot I know. It’s almost unbelievable, especially considering what they sell for now on eBay.

The point is I do have enough to paint up more than one army. This allows me to keep my blue coated fleet regiment- for nostalgic reasons, and do other things too. What I would like to do is a few different small armies. These are at various stages of painting but here is what I have in mind:

Praetorian Sailors? Yes, I think there is such a thing!

Ahoy! With the anniversary of the sinking of the titanic on the weekend this post has gone slightly nautical.
In light of ‘The Pacification of Montar VII’ big-game that has been proposed for Jan 2013, I have decided to temporarily rename my regiment. Well, not so much a new name but re-issuing their old name. You see originally I called the regiment “The 1^st Expeditionary regiment of foot”. They weren’t a standard line regiment but a Praetorian fleet based regiment sooo that somehow justified why they weren’t red.

The thing is however, all Imperial guard regiments leave their home world and travel with a fleet finding war where war is needed. On realising this (and the massively frustrating point that Praetoria doesn’t exist on 40k star charts) I renamed them so they weren’t from Praetoria.  

Now I do want them to be from Praetoria once again, at least for a while, so they can take part in the Montar campaign – provided I can get to the other side of the galaxy in time. Also I do still like the original feel of a non ‘army’ regiment from the Navy or Airforce, like our Ausy Airfield defence guard (equivalent to UK’s Air Force regiment) or navy marine style forces.