Saturday, August 25, 2012

Viliani Imperial Reconaissance Troop

Recce/recon units simply fascinate me.  I'm not sure if it's the mission (get out there and be shot at) or the fragile nature of the units.  I do know that, given a choice, I'll happily take the reconnaissance group in a wargame.



Which brings me to my Imperial Recce troop - poor buggers. In my Traveller universe, the First Imperium is stingy as far as vehicles go.  Infantry is the poor relation - 12,000 worlds yields a lot of blaster-fodder, but tanks cost money; to build and to transport.

Still needs a gunner...

So, for efficiency's sake, most Imperial vehicles do the work of two - either transporting two squads/sections or performing double functions.

The recon troops also act as artillery spotters.  Since they're attached to the artillery, they can also carry the company mortars, which means they are responsible for placing them, with crew, as well as recovering them. And they get to look for the enemy.

Difficult to do well?  Of course, but that's life in the Gisadia Ziru Sirka.

Some readers might remember these from a previous post - except that now I've added dedicated drivers and carried troops. Miniatures are GZG Japanese Corporates, the drivers are a conversion (since there's no telling when Jon T. will get back to this particular line) with the head and shoulders of the Japanese troops atop GZG generic vehicle drivers.  The hover-vans are old Force XXI 15mm  - the Vilani like big vehicles.  Force XXI hasn't come back into production, sadly.

I love the Force XXI aesthetic, and greatly miss not being able to add to my Force XXI collection. I do wish these would come back into production...Ω


2 comments:

David said...

Those Force XXI acavs look a little like the GZG acavs here and Jon has released a couple of new ones including a command vehicle and an ambulance (which would make a nice, covered aircusioned apc).

kmfrye2001 said...

Kobold, I just had a look at them, very nice, and tempting, too.

Thanks for the tip.
Keith