Rogue Trader Penitents and Guard Officer

Rogue Trader-era figures for the Painting Challenge

Happy new year everyone.  I continue to get shit-canned over in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (I highly recommend you check it out - lots and lots of amazing work to be see there, including great submissions from fellow Conscripts Byron and Dallas). But I did get a nice batch of painting done over the holidays for the Challenge.  Up first - another group of figures from the "Golden Era" of sci-fi skirmish gaming - Rogue Trader - a squad of Penal Battalion troops and an Imperial Guard lieutenant.

Nice collars lads...these squads did not have officers, but I kind of bashed the blurry one up front into a sort of leader

In the grim darkness of the far future, just about everything is a crime, I think.  So the ranks of chain gangs in the Imperium of Man were never short.  These prisoners could "volunteer" to serve as a "penitent" in the Imperial Army. Thus the "Penitent Squad" was an option for an Imperial Guard commander of the Rogue Trader era. 

Ten troops armed only with lasguns, but the fun only starts there.  They can be equipped with drug dispensers to whip them into a frenzy. And in case that didn't work, they all wore explosive collars.  Not to harm others, no - these charges were focused toward the wearer!  These were "motivational" tools.  If the squad ever faltered in combat, an Imperial tech would blow up one of the collars, "reminding" the penitents of the proper level of devotion to the Emperor required...

Bright red vests of shame

These castings beautifully captured the dystopian aura of the Rogue Trader era. Unfortunately they are a bit mono-posed.  I think GW only ever did two versions of these bodies, and they looked the same. On the other hand individual expression would probably have been frowned upon amongst the penitent troopers. It was still a lot of fun to gather these suckers from EBay lots and paint them up! 

I think the the Penal Battalion is still around in the current version of the 40k game - it is, in fact, one of the few legitimate uses for the sculpted vomit piles otherwise known as "Catachans". But they do not have the, shall we say, "charm" of these old sculpts, even accounting for the mono-pose issue.

Imperial Guard lieutenant  from the RT era

The Lieutenant was the lowest-ranking senior officer available for the Imperial Guard player.  Often seen with just a pistol, his actual basic equipment included a lasgun, so I gave one to this fellow.

It is very hard to like the current Cadian figures when you see what used to be...

It obscures his lovely breastplate, but gives him a bit more of a front line action feel. I love the old school officers from the Imperial Guard. I just need to do up another command section for him!