Resurrecting this ancient post to talk about something that’s been bothering me since the early 2010’s and has only gotten worse with time; the Cadiafacation of the Imperial Guard Astra Militarum. Just to get this out of the way I’ve been doing this hobby since 2000 so forgive me if I indulge in a bunch of ‘I’m old enough to remember’s, but I’d like to think I qualify to talk about this subject.
“The most diverse fighting force in the galaxy” was and I think still is one of the key descriptors of the Guard, billions of soldiers from across a million worlds, all with their own cultural quirks, tactics, doctrines and so on. The Guard and Imperial High Command were really just some Warsaw Pact/NATO in space having the juggle a bunch of different peoples, some with rivalries and friendships, those who’ve read Gaunt’s Ghosts will know what I mean. This diversity is exemplified in these two pages here, and it is still my favourite pair of pages in any codex, so many different uniforms and potential stories out there. Of all the armies in 40K, the Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum was really the most ‘Your dudes’ army out there; back in the day when Games Workshop was fine with you using stuff they didn’t make White Dwarf were completely cool with running features on Guard armies that were made from various model kits of real world armies, lore-wise you could completely justify yourself in having an army that looked like Greek Hoplites wearing samurai helmets, as long as they had lasguns and a few Aquilas if you could convert it you could play it. Now in fairness this is all still true, albeit Gdubs can get funny if you bring non-GW products to tournaments. However in the most recent Codex we went from having a generic Imperial Guard infantry squad to a Cadian squad, i.e. even if you’re doing the old 'counts as’ routine, those lads are technically Cadians (or Catachan or Krieg) and play as such. I’m old enough to remember when you could take 'regimental doctrines’ and tweak what bonuses you wanted your chaps to take, and true in the current edition you can take detachment rules so they can be an armoured regiment or a siege regiment (which is more streamlined in fairness) but it’s not quite the same.
Now this is all boring crunch stuff and new editions come out every few years, but it’s a symptom of a problem that’s been going on for a while, and that’s we’ve gone from having loads of Guard regiments to 3 if you want to count those old-ass plastic Catachan from (checks notes) twenty-seven years ago (people were making fun of this back in 2011 BTW). It used to be normal to see some generic Guard regiment in the background art or some video game but since the Fall of Cadia (RIP) pretty much any depiction of the Guard is of those fine chaps and chappettes from the fortress world. It’s not as though I hate Cadians or anything, but it’s a little tiresome that when Commissar Yarrick gets a new model reveal he’s commanding a bunch of Cadians and Kriegers defending Armageddon, it’s like having Ultramar being defended by the Salamanders and the Dark Angels with nary a blue boy in sight. Now hopefully this will all lead up to some Steel Legion reveal but given that this would have been the right time for it I’m not holding my breath. Yarrick will lead the Cadians and Kriegers across Armageddon and if you want to play as Steel Legion you’ll just have to shave off the Krieg helmets, because otherwise they’re completely identical (that’s sarcasm by the way). In the lore we still see guys like the Steel Legion, but because Gdubs are so up themselves with their whole 'no model, no rule’ thing that they can’t even depict another regiment in a cool CGI reveal, it’s just sad really.
I do understand that making half-a-dozen variants of the same infantry squad just so I can field the Glob Shittos would be a stretch, but if we’re going to make every Guard regiment a Cadian or Krieg variant, is it really too much to ask for an upgrade sprue like we get with the Space Marines? Can we really not just have an 'Astra Militarum Infantry Squad’ and have some head and arm swaps available? When we have about 300 different flavours of Space Marine would a new plastic Catachan Squad be that much of a ballache? You could easily have the Mordians or Ghosts as a Kill Team squad (especially the Ghosts, good grief). Beyond that can we please get someone other than Cadia to be in every media depiction of the Guard? Thank the Emperor for Darktide, scummy as it may be for charging an arm and a leg on a bunch of recoloured skins I’m so damn happy that we get people like the Valhallans available, if only the upcoming Dawn of War or Total War could be so brave as to let us play as someone other than Creed’s golden boys.
Who knows though, maybe we’ll get a plastic Sgt.-Major Morrow along with a Black Library book about his exploits at every battle in Imperial History.
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