Traitor Imperial Guard

In the 40k universe most of the fighting done by the imperium of man is against other humans, traitors, heretics and just rebellious folks that the imperium of man wants to put its big old boot on and squash. They can’t be doing with any girly reasoning, you like it, or get killed. Now this happens on many scales, from skirmishes between the enforcers and local heretics on a hive world, to corrupted governors waging war on neighbouring worlds.

This sort of warfare is abundant in the books, such as the Eisenhorn trilogy or the majority of the Gaunts ghost’s series, and in fact it’s the latter that has put the idea of traitor guard in my mind. I can’t help but feel this isn’t represented in 40k anywhere near enough. With out traitors, cultists, or any form of human chaos follower that’s not superhuman it gives the feel that every day the guard (and marines for that matter) are up against aliens or chaos space marines.  Hell, even a few mutants running around would make me happier. This should be a rarer occurrence than the games make out. While the chances of another lost and the damned rule set coming out is so minute it’s not worth thinking about, the only way I'm going to see traitor guard on the table is if I use a forge world list or have a counts-as list. And what would count as traitor guard better than anything else? Well guard I would imagine.

So with that premise in mind, why not make a traitor guard list? First things first, do they follow a specific god or chaos undivided?  Now I have always been partial to two of the chaos gods, Nurgle with all his rotten disease spreading friends and slaanesh, and their desire for perfection and sensation. Out of these two the most practical and easiest to represent would be Nurgle.  Green and browns, rot and pus, also gives me more options for characters and tank conversions. With Slaanesh pale pinks and purples would be best for the guardsmen, but I struggle to think of ideas for other units and commanders. So Nurgle it is then.

Looking at the guard codex a lot of possibilities arise, here are the following counts as I can com eeup with right now.

Guardsmen – Traitor guard

Conscripts – Nurgle mutants/plague zombies

Commissars – enforcers of chaos

Lord Commissar – Executioner of Nurgle, one who defiles the innocent and kills the pure (also some one to prevent my traitors running)

Rough riders – Any one remember the old muties from gorkamorka? Perfect

Iron hand Straken – A chaos marine who has taken charge of the traitors, giving them a strong commander

Ogryns – Big mutants/spawn

Storm troopers/ Veterans – Chosen of Nurgle, a band of warriors more Nurgle like than the rest.

Tanks – Tanks

Priests – priests of Nurgle

So they could be quite a fun little army, not competitive in the slightest, but fun nether the less. A large back bone of guard backed up by tanks and zombies and mutants. Maybe some rough riders for good measure. I have always wanted an army like this and maybe I will make one, right now I have 10 forge world renegades who I am playing about with, I need to come up with a good colour scheme then they are good to go. I'm not going to make this army competitive or strive to collect is quickly, I'm going to take my time and slowly build it, giving the models as much detail as I can. Well that’s all for now, I know it’s not my usual post time, but I just wanted to throw this out there.