Ultramar Defense Auxiliary allied contingent

o/

All of the painted ones.

This week I was working on my 'loyalist' Imperial Guard contingent (which is miniscule compared to my Renegade Guard). Mainly in the form of painting their new Basilisk and finding them an identity. I spent quite a while perusing Lexicanum going thru the lists of planets, Imperial Guard regiments, etc. Found some interesting ones, even some whom I'd never heard of, yet have quite a bit of back story. But nothing really jumped out at me, aside from the Ultramar Defense Auxiliary. 

So what if the lightning bolts are going different ways.

First off, it seems that in general, everyone seems to despise anything to do with the Ultramarines (I once had a U-Marine army for just that reason), and second, the infantry was originally intended to be used in a Tyrant's Legion army, and already had blue berets and unit patches (ultramarine blue as it turns out...).

Most Ultramar Defense Auxiliary armies I see, are just as blue and bearing just as many ultramarine icons as the Ultramarines themselves. That's just fine for the parade ground, but on the battlefield? If they had power armor to hide behind, then sure, but for mere grunts? Umm...no, leave such foppery to the Mordians and Praetorians. While not obligated to tithe regiments to the Imperial Guard, several hundred UDA regiments have done so anyways, and these guys will be from one of them. 

 For infantry, I'm using the old, original IG Storm Troopers, which as I said were to originally be used for the Tyrant's Legion as mercenaries (guess they're redeeming themselves in their new role). Rummaging thru those that I got from Rogue.Trader.Voril and Dylan Gould, I took the pick of the litter and dumped the rest onto ebay (where despite being in such bad shape, they sold for far more than I expected). I have enough for an allied contingent using the 6th ed rules (its a good thing too, sergeants go for stupid amounts on ebay!)

Starting off, for the HQ I have a command squad equipped with an autocannon, an old metal Catachan Lt. as the commanding officer, plus a master of ordinance and master of the fleet. For troops, a single vet squad with three meltaguns, and a sergeant with a bolt pistol and power sword. Fast Attack I have a sentinel (still on it's sprues) acquired from Sonsoftaurus via ebay, and for Heavy Support the Basilisk that Screech gave me for my birthday. So for such a small contingent (about 500 points), it really feels like these guys have come from all over!

I simply painted over the Lightning decals pictured above to match the unit colors.

Ya know, I seem to have forgotten just how much that I enjoy painting tanks. This Basilisk for example, I cranked it out in no time! I wonder if its just Guard tanks though? I have several SM tanks that need painting, but for whatever reason, have had little to no urge to do so.  As I said in a prior post, this is a 3rd hand tank, so little things like the driver's hatch being upside down were left as is. I also left the pseudo cheese cloth/camo-netting in place as I figured that removing it would expose whatever mess was underneath. Instead I re-flocked it. However that looked too uniform, so went back over it with a brush to take some of the flock off. I succeeded in  both making it look more ragged and getting flock all over the friggin place (was a hellova mess)! Painting over the decals was much easier than expected and links the tank nicely to the infantry. I've decided that the direction of the lightning bolt differentiates infantry and armor units.

Anyways, at this point most have probably put this post into the TL;DR category & just looked at the pictures and captions before moving on. So will stop rambling here. Hope everyone has a good holiday weekend! I'm going to Hive Angel's wedding Saturday, and then meeting my family in NC to do some white water rafting, hiking, etc., for the weekend.