Anvil Industry - Trench Fighters, the Opening Salvo

Anyone following Anvil Industry's latest project will probably already be aware that They're finally going over the top this week. For those of you who missed it, let me fill you in.

A few weeks ago I did a review of Anvil's Regiments; modular resin infantry kits that offer a huge variety of cool parts and customization options. The range is getting a massive expansion this week with the first wave of Trench Fighters releases. These additional parts feature a huge number of new options, with enough great-coat toting  gasmasked badassery to have any Imperial Guard player salivating with anticipation.

After my last review, I got talking to Anvil, who kindly sent me a sample of the new range that arrived this Saturday. I'll be doing a full review soon, once I've painted up a few of them. For the minute I thought I'd share the first few miniatures that I built to showcase the kind of thing that you can create with a nice selection of bits. Everything I've used is entirely from the Trench Fighters range and everything is Anvil Industry.

The skull-faced helms were too cool to resist; they're certainly imposing with the new trench legs and torsos. My favorite part has to be the captain's hat though; no army should be without a sprue

of those if you ask me!

The fun of these sets is that they really let you make something of your own. As it was for the review, I wanted to go with a look that I think will be popular, but equally you can really go off the rails and design something totally unique. For fun, I've done a piece of background for the unit that could fit in most sci-if universes, and I'd encourage anyone with these to do the same and really have fun with it.

Warriors of Zod

Ignored and forgotten by the galaxy for over 1000 years, the people of Balomar IV had returned to a feral state; eking out an existence hunting through the ruins of their once proud civilization. That was until they unearthed the holy Zod from deep underground. A colossal machine of unknown origin; Zod was a supercomputer that once formed the core of a great interstellar ship. In their ignorance, the primitive people determined it to be a God and set about emulating their new patron deity, and living by its edicts.

Centuries past, and industry returned to the planet. They reverse engineered what they could and gleaned holy knowledge from sacred data stacks; with each file decompression being hailed as a devine event. Their priesthood stood in awe of the machine as it trailed off numerical data that they interpreted and acted upon with fervor. Over time, wars were fought at the machine's command and the balance of power shifted over the whole planet from one sublime edict to the next. Whether the machine was really commanding its followers, or merely tracking astrological phenomena, nobody can say, as the gates to the High Temple of Zod have been sealed for 100 years. 

In battle, the warriors of Zod fight like religious zealots; their belief in their God is absolute. They daub their skull-faced helms with chalk derived from the processed remains of their fallen enemies, in homage to their ancient past; all the while singing hymns in binaric machine code and exclaiming holy co-ordinates in muttered voices. Many are the worlds that have scoffed at the primitive appearance of their invaders, only to discover the fury of their reverse engineered archeotech weaponry.

Stay tuned, as I'll be working on these and more over the next few days.