Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Pics of the Week: Death Korps of Krieg

This week we take a look at the Death Korps of Krieg, and I was amazed at how little artwork I really had on this army. One of the armies that I have always wanted to collect is the Death Corps. Its price is one reason I have not ever started it, or perhaps it was not the price of the army, but a that cadians were cheaper to start.

Pics of the Week happen every Tuesday where I share from my Warhammer pic library. I collect these all the time from all over, and sharing them is just fun.



via Lexicanum
Krieg was previously a prosperous Hive World in Segmentum Tempestus specialising in manufacture and trade that was under the rule of the council of Autocrats. However, as time passed, the debauched and decadent Autocrats began to become paranoid that an outside threat would take their power away from them, and thus began to increasingly fortify the world from outside threats. Eventually, the Autocrats also began to resent the influence of the Administratum on the planet that they considered to be their own.

Finally, in 433.M40, the High Autocrat declared himself independent from the Imperium and renounced the Emperor as his divine master. Krieg was then locked in civil war. Much of Krieg quickly fell to the rebels except for Hive Ferrograd which came under the command of the now infamous Colonel Jurten of the Krieg 83rd Imperial Guard. Under strict orders to not let Krieg fall but with the promise that no fleet on the scale that was needed to invade a planet was available, Jurten decided that Krieg would either belong to the Emperor or to no one.

On the day of the feast of the Emperors Ascension Jurten unleashed a counter attack of atomic cleansing that was to turn into a great purging. For days Krieg was engulfed in a sea of nuclear fire. Krieg's ecosystem collapsed and the planet was engulfed in a nuclear winter. But the civil war dragged on. The survivors from Jurten's purging were forced to exist in underground bunkers or deep in the radioactive chem-wastes, as their descendants do to this day. From the self-annihilation of their home world, loyalist troops slowly retook their world inch by inch over 500 years. From this the Death Korps were born. Krieg was finally returned to the Imperial rule in 949.M40

They are most famous for never flinching, even in the face of sudden death and they see their deaths in war as penance for the heresy of their ancestors years before. They are a dedicated trench and siege warfare force and perform best in wars of attrition. The Death Korps of Krieg regiments routinely volunteer for tours of service in the most dangerous warzones in the Imperium which means they have earned a fierce reputation across the galaxy.