Death Blades Land Speeder

An Imperial Land Speeder assigned to the 9th Necromundan "Death Blades" for recon duties. The land speeders of the Imperial Guard, although rare, are most often used for scouting and reconnaissance where their superior mobility can be utilised effectively. The 9th Necromundan use a variety of different units for gathering intel, including sentinels, specialist infantry, abhumans such as ratlings, light cavalry and land speeders like the one shown here.

As they are few in number, land speeders are most commonly assigned to other mobile formations like assault platoons, rough riders and sentinels where their rapidly deploying heavy weapons act as a valuable force multiplier.

The speeder shown below is attached to F company green platoon, where it provides close heavy support for the grav-chute deploying infantry platoon. This speeder is armed with a multi melta for anti tank duties, and an underslung heavy flamer for anti infantry support. The varied loadout indicates that green platoon were most likely being rapidly deployed into a zone defended by a mixed force.

Note the small arms being used by the crew, indicating that the speeder is about to engage or be engaged at close quarters. Due to the nature of green platoon's rapid deployments all assets are expected to assist with forming a beachhead or breakthrough at close quarters during the stages immediately after a drop. For the former gangers of Necromunda who excel at combat in close confinement, missions such as this are undertaken with a reasonable likelihood of success, albeit at a high rate of attrition.

One of the last of my old metal Imperial guard units, this land speeder has been in my collection for a long time.

It languished in the painting queue for longer than it should due to a couple of reasons:

1. I didn't have a resin base for it that matched the rest of the army.

2. I couldn't easily fit it into the restrictive list structures of recent versions of 40k.

In the end I just decided to give it a plastic base, similar to all of my other non-Necromundan armies. It will do for now, until I get a batch of new ones down the line, or sculpt my own, use texture paints or something.

And luckily for me, 8th Edition 40k came around. So now I can take a space marine land speeder in an Imperial guard army, without having to take two troops choices, an HQ choice, or other marine choices I didn't want to take.

So this guy will use the rules for a space marine land speeder, but will just be a fast attack choice attached to one of my other Necromundan formations in the army. I've been waiting about 15 years for that type of army building flexibility!

The model itself is unconverted, with a fairly standard "Death Blades" paint scheme, complete with unit badge, helmet stripes and plenty of grey and black. Note the 20+ year old mold line on the heavy flamer muzzle, that only appeared in front of me after I'd taken the picture. *Sigh.*

I wanted to put a bit of red on the model, as I'm using it as an accent colour for the majority of the models in the army, and at the same time I wasn't sure what colour to go with for the visors, so settled for red.

The rangefinder and targeting lenses, and the glowy jets I did blue to add a nice accent. And most of the rest is utilitarian grey and black.

The armament itself is a mixed bag, but that's kind of ok in 8th edition as you can split your fire to target different units again. So as long as I zoom it near a heavy vehicle and an infantry unit it should still do okay. Vehicles even have close combat attacks now too, so at last the crew shooting with pistols almost make sense again too. Hooray!

But most of all I'm just looking forward to using this old veteran model again. It's been quite a while since I've used it in a game, so it should be fun to get re-acquainted. And blow stuff up!