Ars Victor - 15mm Miniatures for the Empire of Man

I recently wrote a small review of the Ars Victor boardgame with an eye of using the rule with miniatures before being interupted by supper... I've been thinking a bit more about it and here are the minis I'm leaning toward for the Empire of Man faction.

Ars Victot Empire of Man unit tokens. Picture from editor website.

The faction units can be split in three thematical categories...

Not-Space Marines 

They come in several variants (read in 3 columns: name of the Ars Victor unit, 40K equivalent and signature attribute):

• "Medium" = "tactical" Space Marines = baseline unit
• "Jump" = "assault" Space Marines = jump packs
• "Heavy" = "devastator" Space Marines = missile launchers
• "Cavalry" = bikes = bikes
• "Light" = scouts = sniper rifle & camo cloak
• "Assault" = "terminator" Space Marines = power armour

Altough they are a bit more lightly kitted than you old Space Marine, I'll go with 15mm.co.uk SFA troopers: a few other ranges provide the variety of roles I'm looking for but it's one of the only one with jump pack troops...

Picture from manufacturer website.

• "Medium" = 15mm.co.uk SFA SMG Troopers
• "Jump" = 15mm.co.uk SFA Jump Packs Troopers
• "Heavy" = 15mm.co.uk SFA Support Troopers

Not-Space Marines needs suitably heavy-duty looking bikes with I found at The Ion Age... Not sure if I can do an head swap for a SFA Trooper one or just get away with the paintjob doing all the work...

Picture from manufacturer website.

• "Cavalry" = The Ion Age Prydian Army Khamel Tracked Bike 

For the scouts I really wanted miniatures with a camo cloak yet needed at least a couple of different poses if I didn't want the unit to look to much like a Napoleonic battalion.

• "Light" = Oddzial Osmy New Vistula Legion Snipers

Last but so not least, the not-Terminators: the illustration on the token doesn't look that much more beefy that the other troops, but with the "tough" and "teleport" special rules, the energy sword and over the shoulder missile laucher, what else could they be. I've been hesitating a lot here, looking for more or less "human sized" miniatures. But then I though GZG Cyclops Battlesuit, towering above regular infantry looking "Brutes"/ogres in the eyes and I remembered the perfect miniature for this project:

Picture from manufacturer website.

• "Assault" = Ion Age Havelock Battlesuit

Not-Imperial Guard

From a gaming point of view, the only unit that really falls into that category is the "Conscripts", but if you look at the "Field Gun" and "Mortar" drawing, the weapons crews clearly look like they were the same uniform... To clearly mark the distinction between not-SM and not-IG I've decided to embrace the "40K IG = WW2 in space" meme...

Flames of War Soviet SMG company (well a single base of it). Picture from manufacturer website.

• "Conscript" = WW2 soviet infantry, I'll probably going to use mostly (only?) field caps one to further differentiate the not-SM and not-IG stands.
• "Field Gun" = 15mm.co.uk Heavy Laser Canon + WW2 Soviet artillery crew
• "Mortar" = sci fi mortar + WW2 Soviet artillery crew

Feral warriors

They come either on foot and mounted and I've thrown the Brute/Ogryn into that category based on the leather thong they all seem to wear. I though about some post-apo miniatures for them, but again wanted to make them clearly stand out of the rest so I went feral all the way to fantasy miniatures.

• "Scavengers" = Copplestone Casting Barbarian Heroes, I've heard lots of good about those miniatures, here is a chance to use them.
• "Lancers" = Copplestone Casting Barbarian Cavalry, either as they come of with some lizard mount sourced from somewhere else?
• "Brutes" = 15mm.co.uk Ogres

Picture from manufacturer website.