Horus Heresy Project: To Be Loyalist or Not...

 

 

 

 

 

One of the cool things about building my Heresy era Emperor’s Children Legion is the availability of Loyalist and Traitor characters. I would eventually like to build them all up giving me versatility of going with either side.

 

 

So much easier to sculpt hair when the head is separate.

 For this article I wanted to show off my Saul Tarvitz and Lord Commander Eidolon. The Saul Tarvitz is very close to other conversions I have seen online, which uses the body of the Space Marine Master of the Fleet. I did some additional putty (green stuff) work on the head to better match the artist rendition of him. The other bits include a standard space marine arm with added Empire wizard sword. The pauldron on the right arm is modified by shaving is down in places and adding putty over the gaps.

 

 

 

Overall I am satisfied with the assembly. I will give an update on this once painting is complete. In my next article I will detail how I built up Lord Commander Eidolon and a basic Legion Consul with spare bits.

 

I used the crest from a Warhammer Slaanesh Champion and ground it down to fit the Mk 4 helmet

The backpack is an old Chaos Space Marine Backpack that I chopped up.

 

 

Horus Heresy Project: Emperor's Children Troops

I’ve been putting some consistence work into my Horus Heresy era Emperor’s Children Legion over the last month and a half. I had some basic ideas of where I wanted to go with this army since in playing a Legion Astartes list you have an army capable of being fielded in many different ways. In a previous article I showed off some of the assembly steps and prototype paint scheme. I have neared completion of my first 10 marines wielding bolters. As my army progresses I want to make it more of a mid-range/assault based army. Eventually I want to field my Primarch Fulgrim and he is built for close quarters fighting. Units that I am in process of building are assault marines and Kakophani.

 

 

 

I really like the Liche Purple scheme washed with Leviathan Purple. It slightly differs from the Forge World guidelines which call for Hormagaunt Purple. After I get all the paint down I apply my decals. The use of Microsol has helped with application. It softens the decal allowing it to attach to the curved surfaces of the pauldrons easier. Just brush on a thin layer right before setting the wet decal on the surface. Soak up the excess while positioning the decal where you want it and voila!

 

 

Microsol used in conjunction with waterslide transfers saves on much frustration!

 

Hobby Tip: Basing Before Primer Application

 

 

 

I have seen a lot of painting articles out there that call for basing the model as the last step. For a long time this is how I would base my own models, but I would often dust up my just complete paint job or splatter some base paint on a foot or leg unintentionally. This would cause unnecessary rework and I considered changing up the order of steps. I thought that perhaps basing the model would be more appropriate during the assembly step just prior to the primer. There are a lot of scenic basing techniques that follow this very method. If you are just following this simple process do your basing in this order and see if it improves the time it takes when the model is complete.

 

 

Termites that got the sand bath

1.       Apply a white crafting glue that is dilutable with water (Elmer’s works if you want a cheap solution. Use a standard brush (not your best) to spread in an even layer.

My slightly frayed glue brush

2.       Coat or dip in a sandy medium. I prefer the Citadel brand, but there are plenty of cheap options available. Lightly tap off the excess sand.

3.       Use about a 50/50 mix of glue and water. Lightly dab the mixture onto the sand to create a light sealant over the top. I usually apply this step fairly quickly after shaking off the excess sand because I can relocate grains of sand that ended up on the model back onto the base per my intent.

4.       Allow to completely dry before primer application

 

Hopefully these steps will save time for those of you new to building minis or those who are looking for different techniques.

 

 

The finished termite

 

Flames of War Battle Report Germans vs Soviets (Late War)

Hello Comrades,

I dusted off my Soviets this weekend and played some FOW at my FLGS Panzer Depot in Kirkland. The game size was 2000 points which takes about 3 hours to play at a relaxed pace. My friend Walter was running a late war German Armored list while I fielded a reliable late war Strelkovy army out of the Red Bear book.

This was my set up. The mission required me to place my entire army since I was the attacker and the Germans got to defend with reserves. There were only two objective on the table and they were well defended by his Jagtigers.

On turn one I rushed forward at a normal pace. I thought about moving on the double, but I would incur double shots from the Jagtigers and that would spell the end to my armor in no time.

One objective lay in the open field and that was my best bet for victory since the other object (the Tiger wreck) was too well guarded.

I took a limited air support and it was reliably arriving to deal with the Jagtiger in the open.

The Germans had made a desperate attempt to halt my advance within the first 3 turns. I lost nearly all of my tanks and my Katyushas weren't doing as much damage as I thought they would.

The Germans were inflicting heavy damage to my infantry with their artillery and armor, however I knocked out their only anti air defense mid game which was the first major blow I was able to deal this game.

The turn after the Germans lost their AA I was able to knock out one of the 400 point Jagtigers with my air support. My infantry was still struggling to break through, but the right side of the German defense wasn't going to hold under much pressure.

After two brutal assaults under the iron fist of my commissar I was able to destroy the German infantry hiding in their foxholes and claim the objective. The German reinforcement Stugs arrived too late to alter the course of this battle and the Soviets were able to claim victory.

Emperor's Children Project Progress

Jeremie here giving an update on my Horus Heresy project. So far so good with the Emperor's Children paint scheme. I have been working on these for the last month along with some other projects (Dark Elves and Flames of War Soviets).

I decided to paint the armor with liche purple and highlighted with 50/50 emperor's children and liche purple. The base is done in a charcoal black basecoat followed by a heavy drybrush of graveyard earth and light drybrush of administratum grey. I opted to use decals for ease of not having to do freehand painting. I highly recommend using Microsol when applying decals since it softens them and makes application on curved surfaces much easier.

I expect the rest of the unit of 10 to be completed within 2 weeks which means I painted up 10 marines in a months time which is fairly good pacing for me.

Horus Heresy Project

I recently have gotten back into building a Heresy era army. This has been on my to do list for quite some time. It was only with the steady releases coming out of Forge World that made this project easier to do, but at a price. This will be one of my more expensive projects due to the large amount of Forge World models that this project will require. I know that there are cheaper conversion options out there, but I considered the time factor involved of all the converting and decided to pay the higher price in order to have a faster assembly and focus on the painting portion.

Some friends in my gaming group decided to build a Heresy era army together in 200 point increments so as not to break the bank and allow ourselves time to build and paint up our forces. Once a month we will schedule a game day to test out our Heresy era armies. Our first set of games will be Kill Team rules. Eventually we will move on to battle scenarios out of the Heresy books from Forge World. Once we have forces large enough (around 1500 points) we will start participating in the Horus Heresy gaming events that one of my FLGSs hosts about once a month.

I invited my friends to provide updates on this blog for what they are building. I will share in this post where I am at with my first unit of Space Marines. I decided to go with Emperor’s Children for my legion (to be later supported by Ad Mech) since I have a Fulgrim sitting on my shelf that I ordered last year. I went with a fairly basic look for my marines since they are the grunts of the legion, I did some bit swaps for the sergeant since I wanted his pose to be more dynamic.

 

 

Getting back into Warhammer Fantasy (brief battle report)

It’s been awhile since I have played a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but with the new End Times supplements being released I have a rekindled interest. What I did was get together with one of my gaming buddies and we played a 750 pt game. I ran a Chaos Daemons army themed around Tzeentch and my opponent ran a Lizardman army heavy in skinks.

 

We are trying out a new protocol that I have never fully employed in my games of 40K or Fantasy, but is a big factor in what this hobby is all about- running a fully painted army! I had a friend recently return from a trip out to France and he stopped in a GW store just to see what it’s like and he said everyone had a painted army, even the younger kids. I would like it if we did more of that in my gaming community because nothing looks more lame then running unpainted armies on the battlefield. Enough of that rant.

 

The game started off with a bang, the winds of chaos were strong in Tzeentch’s favor. My units avoided getting sucked back into the warp while the Pteradons and Chameleon Skinks weren’t so lucky. I blasted the skinks with Tzeentch’s fire from the Changeling and the Pteradons suffered the ill effects from the winds of magic.

 

 

 

The battle was in my favor for the first 2 turns, but by the 4^th I was struggling once the Lizzies closed in for close combat. The Changling got lucky and bested the skink general in close combat, but every subsequent turn the skinks and kroxigors would wear me down. Even my Flamers and Screamers couldn’t break them.

 

On the 5^th turn the skinks and kroxigor units finished off my remaining Flamer unit. Lizards won the day.

 

Even though I lost I have been inspired to work on more WHFB and get some more games in. (and yes, I do know that I don't have the right bases... Working on it)