Old School 40K Crimson Fists Scout Squad

First, apologies for not having posted anything in such a long while. I'm currently on vacation, and I am using some of this time to catch up on blogging as well as working on my miniatures, so hopefully this week and the following weeks, I'll have more content for you to read.

While my last post featured a ten-man Crimson Fists scout squad for Warhammer 40K, I had mentioned that five of those minis were from the Space Marine Land Speeder Storm boxed set. However, I felt that it was silly to put five boltgun-armed marines on a vehicle whose best purpose seems to be delivering a small squad up close and personal for an assault, something boltguns aren't well suited to allow.

So then, who do we put in the LSS? These cranky old cusses, that's who.


These are five very old Space Marine scouts given to me by my 40K buddy and fellow blogger Darkwing from over at Arcadia Prime. The three metal models (#'s 1, 4, and 5 from left to right) are as-is except for the addition of a couple grenade packs. The second model is plastic, and I gave him a modern bolt pistol because the original is just hideous looking (I actually think the metal scout bolt pistols don't look half bad, considering). The scout sergeant in the middle is, I think, a little more recent (and by that I mean still probably from the early 90's), but I got rid of his crappy-looking bolt pistol and his ugly chainsword and instead gave him one of the new pistols and a power fist, which was originally a Space Wolf 'fist that I converted by carefully removing the wolf's head emblem from the back of the hand.

And before anyone comments, I am an absolute crap painter. I'm especially bad at painting faces, and it's made all the worse by the fact that these supposedly near-juvenile scouts all look like mohawked clones of Ernest Borgnine. I suppose my mediocre painting skills are one of the reasons I was attracted to Necrons and Orks for so long - both races are pretty easy to paint, the first because they are fairly simple, the second because, well, they are supposed to look messy and ramshackle. Regardless, here they are - my first painted Crimson Fists.

I've heard tell that five close-combat scouts loaded in a LSS (which can be armed with a heavy flamer for close-in support) make for a nice disruption unit. Their Scout abilities, open-topped nature of the speeder, and the overall speed of the unit means that it can threaten most any enemy unit on the table, especially good for going after vehicles or fire support units that can be threatened by these boys in close combat. I highly doubt they'll survive the whole game, and probably won't perform all that well every game anyhow, but I'm looking for a unit that's interesting for me to play, not necessarily something that will win games every time.

My next miniatures-related post should feature some Space Wolves, so stay tuned.