Veteran Unit 'Linebreakers'

Back before I began work on this army there was a section of the original Rogue Trader rulebook, concerning the Astartes, which really caught my eye, and made me want to create a unit which represented the idea. Here is the extract:

"Space marine assault squads are equipped with hand-to-hand combat weapons such as chainswords, power swords and bolt pistols. Entry into buildings, or through the reinforced hulls of space craft, is gained using a las-cutter or phase-field generator. As the first wave of attackers goes through, casualites are always very high. The first troopers into the breach are almost inevitably shot dead instantly. Inclusion in an assault squad is a great honour. There is never any shortage of volunteers for suicide missions such as this."

To me, the idea of rushing through a breach in a wall, despite the risk of almost certainly being blown to bits, seems to fit the character of the World Eaters perfectly! I've given this squad the equivalent of 30k riot-shields, and armed one of them with a las-cutter proxy in the form of a kind of acetyline melta-cutter.



You can imagine the guy with the torch melting a hole in the wall, while the rest of the squad with shields wait bunched up behind him, ready to rush through.



As with my other units, I have helped designate a Veteran unit by using a mix of armour types (seen here are mk3 and mk4, although there are also mk5 and mk6 in the squad). I've also tried to model a fair amount of battle damage onto their armour.

The shields are WFB ogre gut-plates - as much as I would love to lay claim to this idea, it was actually that of 'Lonewolf', who frequents some forums such as Greatcrusade and B&C.



A close-up of the marine with the Acetyline torch. Its essentially a broken up Imperial Guard flamer, with a little tubing attached.

In game, the unit counts as Veterans, with the torch acting as a melta-gun equivalent.