Commander's Corner

Zdravstvuyte, Tovarichi!

Okay, we are now past the Jewish holidays of Rosh HaShannah (New Year), Yom Kippur (Atonement), Sukkos (Feast of Tabernacles) and Simchat Torah (end/start of the reading of the Scripture). With much merry-making, eating and drinking under my belt (and over it) and as my blood sugar begins to return to normal, we can resume examining that most noble of Imperial Guard Regiments - the redoubtable Ice River Guards.

The most obvious change is that the Ice River Guards have their very own domain name - http://www.iceriverguards.info, the old site will remain up to redirect visitors to the new site for the foreseeable future but all domain updates will be done exclusively on the new site.

Anyway, I have just added up my Imperial Guard collection and it weighs in at a whopping 5000+ points (and growing) and all of it painted! I have a recon company, a light armor company, and artillery grand battery and a light infantry company - I can field a frakking Guard BATTALION at one time! Now all I need to do is find an apocalypse game...

I have begun painted a Space Marine Army for my son in the colors of the Maccabees, so he will be having input on their fluff going forward. He's only 10, so I'll be helping him to start out.

I am painting Orks right now which will be my 3rd fully painted 40k force, behind my Guards and Tyranids,  to be followed by my Chaos Marines and Tau (which will complete my planned 40k collection).

Once again, though, we turn our attention back to the Lyubov - having spent so much time with their enemies - as I revisit the regimental organization.

At first blush, organization is easy enough - the various Apocalypse supplements make it clear that an Imperial guard company is 3 squadrons or platoons plus a company command. This has lead me to rethink my overall SO&E (Slate of Organization and Equipment). The regiment would therefore logically be composed of three or more battalions, each battalion would have 3 companies. (Extending this upward, a brigade would be three regiments and a division would boast three brigades - but units larger than a regiment are strictly ad hoc formations). Looking for inspiration that would not be a blatant rip-off of something out of the Black Library and that would fit my collection, I came across an old Journal of the Traveller's Aide Society - issue #9 to be precise - which had the TO&E of the 4518th Lift Infantry (The Duke of Regina's Own Huscarls). Now the 3rd Imperium boasts a much higher technology than the Imperium of Man. In Traveller terms, the Imperial Guard are TL 10 at best while the Huscarls are a TL 15 unit but that was okay since my final product would not be identical to the GDW IP. The 4518th has 6 battalions, each composed of 4 companies. Three are lift infantry, one is armor, one is lift cavalry and one are drop troops. To convert this to serve the 18th Lyubov, I scratched the drop troops since the infantry companies are drop qualified (air assets are attached at the battalion and regimental level) and replaced it with a recon battalion. The lift infantry became light infantry and the armor and cavalry stayed as they are. The SO&E is reproduced in the Lyubov codex and as a PDF for those who are interested.

The 18th Lyubov have been detailed to the mining world of Mammon III to put down a minor rebellion - the genesis of this campaign comes from a book I bought remaindered about 20 years ago called Handbook for Space Pioneers, it was published in 1979 and is a bit of utopian tripe typical of late 70's science fiction but it also details eight planetary systems with great detail. I have used it for Traveller, Star Trek and Warhammer 40,000 games many times so it was well worth the $8.00 I paid for it at a used bookstore near campus when I was a grad student. I have redone the map to give me a canvass for the campaign and will be adding Imperial Armour style updates for the campaign as it progresses.

Dosvedanya,
Comrade Colonel Andrei Bertavich

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