Horus Heresy Project: Fulgrim the Illuminator Complete

I feel like a mini celebration is in order. I have completed the Emperor's Children Primarch after hours of meticulous detail work. After many months of waiting until I had painted up some other legion marines I thought the time was right to tackle Fulgrim. He will definitely be the centerpiece of my growing army.

 

 

At first I had completely assembled Fulgrim before painting. After making some progress I decided it would be better to partially disassemble in order to catch the details easier. 

 

I am a big fan of Vallejo paints and used the copper metallic as a basecoat for my gold. The purples are done using old Citadel Liche Purple which has just the right hue that I was looking for. Everything else on the paint conversion charts doesn't quite match exactly. I also applied a lot of washes on most of the model, the exception being the pteruges, the hair, and the feathers.

The Forge World Primarch's out of the character series are some of the most impressive models I have seen. I look forward to finally using one of these legendary characters in my army after years of wishing Games Workshop would make them playable.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar first battle and initial reaction

Age of Sigmar has been a contentious topic as of late since this has been one of the most drastic rules reboots since Warhammer 40K 3rd edition. I thought that I would withhold my judgment until I at least had a chance to play a game to see what it was like. I can remember not liking 3rd edition 40K when I first saw the rules, but in time I grew to like it and couldn't quite justify sticking with 2nd edition 40K. The only thing to do now is play a game.

I had a friend over and we had to establish some ground rules since AoS is a really loose set of rules. We based our forces off of a leaked set of tourney rules used by a Games Workshop store. We were allowed to take up to 5 Battlescrolls, max of 2 characters, no duplicate named characters, and only one monster per army. Each unit could have no more than 15 wounds. Seemed fair enough!

I decided to field a purely Tzeentchian daemon army while my friend brought his Skaven Plague Monk army.

My army consisted of:

Lord of Change
Tzeentch Herald on Disk
Pink Horrors (10)
Flamers (7)
Screamers (5)

 

My opponents army consisted of:

Lord Skrolk
Plague Furnace
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)
Plague Monks (15)








We set up per the normal instruction and deployed along the short table edges. The Skaven finished setting up first so they got the first turn. It was a sudden death mission because the Skaven outnumbered me by over 1/3. I wanted to utilize the mobility of my army and made the sudden death choice of having my Herald on disk survive 6 turns. Knowing this after set-up didn't give the Skaven many options so they all moved forth knowing that the target was within my deployment zone.

My 1st turn was more eventful. Most daemons have the ability to allow chaos wizards to summon that unit being fielded. I decided to summon another Lord of Change since I had a spare in my collection. My roll was successful and much to the chagrin of my opponent I got a free greater daemon. To add insult to injury I was also able to summon a unit of 3 flamers. I moved the rest of my army into position to delay the Skaven horde and kept my Herald back on the arcane graveyard that helped with spellcasting.

On the next turn we had to roll off. I was hoping to get the high roll thus getting back to back turns, which would be quite devastating for my opponent. I ended up losing the roll and waiting for the Skaven to position for my impending charge.

The Tzeentch daemons set forth on turn two and I was going for a strong right hook with most of my army while my horrors bought me time on the other side of the battlefield. I had no successful summoning on turn two, but the flames caused 6 wounds to a nearby plaque monk unit before the screamers charged in to cause another 6 wounds. The Skaven didn't cause any casualties to my screamers so my battleshock roll was an auto success. The plague monks weren't so fortunate. They auto failed due to the high amount of wounds taken and lost the remainder of their unit.

Turn 3 saw the Skaven counter attack. Again, they won the roll off and got to start the round. The next nearest unit of plague monks charged my screamers and managed to cause a fair amount of wounds. I had two screamers left to counter attack causing three wounds. After battleshock I had one screamer left and the Skaven lost 3 more plague monks. On my 3rd turn I disengaged my last screamer to do a fly by attack and positioned to wither the plague monks with another round of shooting attacks.

It was by the end of turn 3 that my opponent wanted to concede the game. With having taken so many losses and not able to keep up with my summoning he didn't want to continue the uphill battle. I was in agreement. My army was cheesy mainly because of the summoning. It was too easy to pull off.

Unfortunately without points this system lends itself to some easy abuse. It may work out well right out of the box, but for established players of Warhammer more fine tuning will definitely need to take place. I don't feel completely negative about the game however. It does have some merit. I like how it's fast paced and the rules are free.

Here's a quick summary of the pros and cons:

PRO

Free rules
Fast paced
Easy to comprehend

CON

No structure for army building
Over simplified all phases of the game
Too much randomness

After the game I had a conversation with my friend and we both felt that Age of Sigmar would have been a good addition to the GW lineup of games, but it is not a suitable replacement for the Warhammer Fantasy we have played all these years. I won't be playing any more AoS for now. I hope to see more structure added to the game and then I will reconsider. If no changes are made I foresee a lot of veteran players dropping off in favor of other systems.

Horus Heresy Project: Lord Commander Eidolon Complete

Moving forward with adding traitors to my Emperor’s Children Legion I have finally completed Lord Commander Eidolon! This project started months ago (original post here) and put on the back burner in order to finish some of my loyalist units first. Right now Eidolon does not have a miniature, but there are lots of great bits out there to convert him. I wasn’t too keen on some of the old artwork on him and preferred to base my conversion off of the descriptions listed in the novels (the few that exist). He is described as wearing ornate power-armour decked out in gilded decorations and is taller than most astartes. He also favours wielding a thunder hammer and has the patrician features of his Primarch Fulgrim. In addition to the descriptions I also wanted to give him a jump pack upgrade so he can join my assault marine squad and give them added value. He also employs the bio-modification bestowed by Fabius Bile, the death-scream. It is only fitting that I have him without a helmet so he can effectively use his sonic attack.

 

 

 

This conversion is an amalgamation of various bitz. The body is from a palatine blade, the hammer arm is from one of the chapter masters set, and the pointing arm and head is from the space marine command squad box. I used some of the Emperor’s Children brass etch from Forge World on the jump pack and left pauldron. The only part that I had to sculpt was the hair. I used green stuff for my sculpting.

 

I decided to do a fair amount of freehand painting because this is one of my HQ options and wanted it to stand out apart from the other marines. I attempted a marbling effect on one of the pauldrons because I thought that plain white would be too bland for someone like a lord commander. The opposite pauldron has the eye of Horus to show the bond between the two legions and the knee pad has an eagle’s head profile. I also added some line designs to the loin cloth.

 

 

Horus Heresy Project: The Kakophoni

The Emperor's Children Kakophoni are the newest addition to my growing army and the first exclusive traitor element so far. My intent was to start off with a core of loyalist units led by Rylanor and Saul Tarvitz and then finish the army off with all of the traitorous elements. I liked the idea of having some flexibility to play in support of either faction if I were to take part in any future campaigns.

 

 


I really enjoyed painting this unit up because it was nice change from painting basic legion marines. My army lacked long range anti-infantry firepower and the Kakophoni are designed to wreak havoc on infantry.

 

I have a 40k Chaos Marine army with some Slaanesh elements and wanted to show a progression from Proto Noise-marine to current Chaos Noise-marine.

Horus Heresy Project: Ancient Rylanor Completed

After many long weeks I have finally finished my Emperor's Children Rylanor the Unyielding. You can check out my original post here:

http://fulgrimsstage.blogspot.com/2015/03/horus-heresy-project-ancient-rylanor-in.html

I truly enjoyed building and painting this model. The Contemptor Dreadnought is one of my favorite models and the Emperor's Children variant is one of the most detailed. Rylanor is at the top of my list for most liked characters out of the Horus Heresy novel series and I wanted to make sure my table top version looked presentable. When considering how I would paint him I consulted some of the references out of Vol I, Betrayal.

Dreadnought image out of Vol. I Betrayal

I was impressed with the lion etchings in the knee joint so I did some freehand work in an attempt to capture this image.










I added a brass etch laurel on the left arm to set Rylanor apart from the other contemptor dreadnought that I am near completion on.

Now that I have completed the last elements of my loyalist Emperor's Children I will begin working on the traitors. I've painted enough Emperor's Children at this point where I feel comfortable enough to get Fulgrim completed along with his Phoenix Guard retinue.



Horus Heresy Project: Emperor's Children Xiphon Interceptor

I had just completed the assembly of the Forge World Xiphon Interceptor and I'm looking forward to getting this easy to assemble kit painted. I think the quality on recent FW products has improved considering the fact that my lascannons came nice and straight. I only have to fill some gaps in the wings and vertical fin.

I'm a big fan of brass etched iconography and added enough on so there would be no confusion as to which legion this fighter belonged to. I might add some smaller decals in places when I'm almost finished.

I decided to paint the pilot separately since I wanted to detail the cockpit interior

Rules wise I think this fighter will be a good counter to the Fire Raptor, which will be included in one of my friend's heresy army in the near future. I get a jink bonus for added defensive bonus and my rotary missile launcher rolls 3 dice instead of 1 on the vehicle damage chart.

Horus Heresy Project: Tactical Support Squad

My Emperor’s Children army continues to grow with the addition of a tactical support squad. Currently in 30k most armies that people are playing are marine legions. This may change down the road as 30k opens up to more xenos choices, but until then it is good to be running some plasma gunners in any army. This unit is quite high in points for just 5 marines so I’m looking at getting them a transport in the near future to give them some added protection and mobility.

 

As far as painting technique goes I’m getting more comfortable with applying some source lighting on my models. I like how the plasma coils pop out more because of it. I decided to model the sergeant with a combi-bolter because I wanted him to stand apart aesthetically and didn’t want to lose him to an overheating gun.

 

I haven’t used this unit in a game yet because I’ve been holding myself up to a very high standard of only using fully painted models in my 30K games so I’m excited to bring this level of firepower in. Hopefully I won’t suffer from plasma overheating to often!