Regimental Reporting: Making the most of the Cadian kits

Welcome back to the Officers Mess!  The focus of my recent hobby time has been split between slapping paint on some more random fantasy models and readying the next Cadian Infantry Squad for the paint table.

It's very simple to buy a Cadian Infantry Squad kit, build all the 10 men and say "done", but unfortunately you don't necessarily get all the options you want for your squad in that box! In simplistic terms a fully equipped Infantry Squad will contain:

• One Sergeant
• One Vox Operator
• One Special Weapon Trooper
• One Heavy Weapon Team (2 Troopers)
• Five Lasgun Troopers

The Cadian Infantry Squad itself contains 2 sprues which will each build a Sergeant, Vox, Special Weapon (albeit flamer or grenade launcher only), and a varying number of Lasgun Troopers depending on how many of the other options you build.

Sarge, Flamer, Vox

The Command Squad is our next port of call.  This is a very versatile kit that provides the Officer models (HQs) needed for a Cadian army, and also provides other useful bits, including a full set of special weapons (plasma, melta, sniper rifle and so on), and Vox, Chainsword, etc.

Plasma, Melta

For Heavy Weapons we need to invest in the Heavy Weapon Squad box. I have a bit of love / hate relationship with this kit; it contains enough models to make 3 kneeling Heavy Weapon Teams, and a full set of Heavy Weapons (Mortars, Missile Launchers, Lascannons, Heavy Bolters and so on).  You can build your Heavy Weapon Teams, but are left with a bunch of weapons and a lack of men and tripods, etc. to use the weapons with. However with a bit of resourcefulness we can use these bits with other kits to build more Heavy Weapon Teams (as we shall see).

Rat-a-Tat

 All three of these kits are available on the shelf at your local Warhammer store. There's a fourth kit we also need to discuss; the direct only Easy To Build Cadians.  This is a dirt cheap little box containing mono-pose 5 Lasgun Troopers.  I ignored this kit when I first started the Cadian 82nd and with hindsight that was a mistake; by bulking out your army with these grunts you can make the more versatile kits go much further and save some money!

Pew Pew!

Let's build ourselves a simple starter force using these kits, maximising the use of the 3 core kits, and supplementing them with Easy To Build Troopers as needed.

Let's start with:

• One Infantry Squad kit
• One Command Squad kit
• One Heavy Weapon Squad kit

And from this we'll build:

• 3 Sergeants, 3 Vox Operators, 3 Special Weapon Troopers (in combination from the Infantry and Command kits).
• 3 (non Missile Launcher) Heavy Weapon Teams of your choice, using the Heavy Weapon kit infantry models

And supplement these models with 15 Easy To Build Lasgunners, giving a total of 3 Infantry Squads (each with Sarge, Vox, Special, Heavy & 5 Lasguns).  This also leaves 6 models remaining to be build from the initial kits.

Lets add a second Infantry Squad kit, from which we'll build 2 Sergeants, 2 Specials and 2 Vox Operators.  Using the remaining 4 models we will build 2 Missile Launcher Heavy Weapon Teams with spare bits from the Heavy Weapon kit:

60mm MDF base available from an Internet near you

And we'll supplement these with 10 Easy To Build Lasgunners, giving 2 more fully equipped Infantry Squads.

Using the 6 remaining men we will build:

• 2 Company Commanders
• 4 man Command Squad (for example Medic, Standard Bearer, and another Missile Launcher Team)

In total this gives us a Battalion comprising:

• HQ: 2 Company Commanders
• Elite: 1 Command Squad
• Troops: 5 Infantry Squads

Not a bad starting point for an aspiring Guard Commander.  The take away point is to use the Easy To Build kit to provide the bulk of the regular troopers allowing you to maximise the versatility and use of the core kits, saving yourself money in the process!

Whilst writing this article I've been thinking about how to make even further use of a Heavy Weapons Squad kit; I'll ponder that a bit further and blog my conclusions/experiments in a future post. Thanks for stopping by read this post and see you again soon!