Marauders: Commando Platoon

The third and final 10 Marauder section has been completed this week to make a total of thirty Commando's ready to see action. Being an old historical wargamer I do like to see a proper platoon of infantry on the table making up the backbone of a force, even a sci-fi one.

The Marauders are naturally quite good in melee with 2 dice per model and I've bumped up the ranged threat with the addition of a HMG and Missile Launcher to the squad. The HMG automatically adds Pinning to the squads fire output and the Missile Launcher has AA & AT capabilities and can (if required) fire at a different target to the rest of the squad.

Painting up the models has been a bit of a chore as despite this being a new hard plastic kit the sides of the models have almost no detail on them so you end up having to guess where the detail is and try to paint it on. The heads have also been cast in such a way that they have the seem down the middle of the face. Fortunately I had some resin heads printed off which did not have this issue. The one plus was that the arms for the weapons go together really well so I had none of the faff often associated with weapons being held by two hands.

The whole gang painted so far including my Deadzone Strike Team

Marauders: First Squad

A good backbone of solid infantry is (in my view) the best place to start any army so here is the first of three planned Commando squads which will make up core of my Marauder force.

This is a 'new' sprue released a couple of years ago to replace the old restic models which made up my first Marauders strike team. TBH I much preferred the style of the old Marauders and having gotten hold of the hard plastic kit the detail isn't great. Especially on the sides of the models the detail is really poor and almost needs to be painted on as it doesn't exist. The 3d printed versions I've already painted up aren't much better but at least you don't need to guess at details on them.

But, I've got one squad done and I've gone for two different heavy weapons in the squad to add some flexibility. The HMG adds Pinning in and the Missile Launcher gives some AT/AA threat to my basic unit.

Marauders: Rippermech

Imported from Warpath Epic the Rippermech is probably the largest ground vehicle that Firefight has. It came out as the three year Vault reward a few months ago and I've been working on it on and off since then.

I'm not sure it will be a regular feature in a 1500 points list but could perhaps be more useable at a larger points game. It counts as both a Command and Support option and comes in at 190 points with the additional Flamethrower.

It has reasonable firepower and comes with an orange command dice with it's command aura giving re-roll 1's to shooting and melee for Goblin units. If you are going to make use of that order you need to be rolling a decent number of dice so it's probably only Gruntbots in melee who roll enough dice to justify 2 command points.

As you can see it is a big beast and certainly towers over it's shorted cousins.

Deadzone: Marauder Strike Team

Having completed most of the strike team the other week it's good to have gotten the Commando units completed this week.

These are all resin prints from the Vault and printed as single pieces apart from the heads.

I had a couple of extra regular Commando infantry printed off as it's nice to have spares but the 200 point list only requires two to go alongside the three Mawbeasts as unlocks. 

I prefer to have a list with a bit of everything and whilst this is more melee focused it has a decent ranged component and some fast 2/3 models for grabbing early objectives or rushing into the enemy lines.