Horus Heresy Project: Abhuman Helots, Imperial Squats

Time for a much needed posting. After having hit my last project goal of painting 2000 points of Necrons I decided I wanted to switch gears back into Horus Heresy mode. I already have 2000 points of traitors (EC) painted up, but I felt like I also needed a force to represent the loyalists. I couldn’t quite get into the mood of painting yet more power armor so I considered my options, which there are a few non-legion armies available for Heresy Era gaming. I narrowed down my choices to an Imperial Cults and Militia list. By far I think this is one of the most flexible armies available and it appears in volume 5. I used to play a small Squats army in 2^nd edition 40K and saw that this army could be replicated somewhat by taking the options of Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots. Some of the other forums out there like Dakka Dakka and BoLS have shown the Technomartyr Studio conversion before. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any comprehensive project log for someone making a Squat themed ICaM army. That is what I would like to do over the following months.

This army would represent one of the Homeworlds that allied with the Imperium against Horus, but also has a history of fighting xenos threats during the great crusade. I will have more vehicles in this army than in my EC traitors.

I already had a small amount of minis already painted that I will integrate into this list.

Classic Squats in all their glory

I think one of the hardest parts of a project like this is building up a collection of models from a discontinued range. Luckily I can find most of what I need off of Ebay, but I also wanted to do some converting based off of WHFB (AoS) Ironbreakers and Space Marine Scouts for my Grenadiers. Having to have a minimum of 20 in my army I thought this conversion would be more sensible than using Exo-armor or Hearthguard minis. This conversion is fairly easy, I only needed to do some trimming for the shoulders and filing down the feet. Some green putty is needed to close some gaps in the arms. I also used a Death Korps of Krieg backpack to give it more of a future battlefield element.

I will also be using some classic Squat plasics to represent my lighter armoured militia.

 

I’m gathering up more minis to fill out this army and hopefully I can make enough progress to display on this forum. Stay tuned for more!