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)

 

WWII display at Miniature World

Just got back from Miniature World in Victoria BC and was thoroughly impressed with the various miniature displays. The pics below are from the WWII scene depicting a battle in France near the end of the European theater. Looking at these is inspiring me to dust off my late war Soviets for Flames of War.

Epic Armageddon Project

I have recently had a renewed interest in a classic GW game called Epic. It’s currently supported by the online community after GW decided to pull the plug on supporting their specialist games line. It’s more properly known as NetEpic Armageddon these days.

Funnily enough my interest was rekindled by the Squat race being added back into the rulebook fluff in the 2 most recent editions of Warhammer 40K. I had some old models from second edition in my display case and thought how cool it would be to have an actual list back in Warhammer with all the awesome warmachines that they had available in Epic. I thought it was a long shot if this were to ever occur in 40K, but then I was thinking that it would be fairly easy to get back into Epic and I could run a Squat army in that game.

I did some research online and found that the rulebook is currently free as a .pdf, which is nice because I wanted to avoid have to spend $50.00 on any books (here’s looking at you hard-bound codecies)..... There is also a living army list (it receives updates based on playtest data) that covers a wide variety of Epic scale armies. Some lists are clearly listed as Tournament Ready to Experimental. Although my primary interest was in running a Squat army I was also eyeing some future project armies like Necrons and Dark Elder, “but GW never made those armies!” I can hear you say. That’s correct, but there are other industrious hobbyists out there that have. Keep in mind, GW defends it’s IP seriously. I personally feel it is to their detriment in some situations, but it’s their ‘right’ and some would say ‘obligation’ to do this. Exodus Wars makes Edenite models that make convincing Necron infantry. You can get “death bot” or “space pharaoh” models off of Shapeways for their vehicles. You could event design your own if you are good at 3D modeling. Onslaught Miniatures makes Stygian minis that make convincing Dark Eldar units in Epic. If you would prefer a classic line of Epic minis there is also plenty being listed on Ebay for cheap to average prices.

So in summary, NetEpic Armageddon is:

• Relatively cheap to play. My 2000 points of Squats cost my around 120.00 USD
• Supported by a dedicated group of people on the Tactical Command forum
• Grimdark in theme and designed well rules-wise
• Super easy to paint up

I will be posting my works in progress and would eventually like to see if my community is interested in eventually doing an Epic League/Campaign.

Assembly of my brotherhood warriors

My 40K Squat Warrior paint scheme was transitioned to Epic

Thoughts about the hobby community

 

I decided today to start this blog because I wanted share some of my hobby knowledge with the wargames miniatures community. I have benefitted a lot from others sharing their ideas and I wanted to start sharing what I'm working on and techniques that I employ. I have been into miniatures since 1993 starting with Hero Quest (which I didn't paint) and later on moved to basic D&D. I began to play AD&D 2nd edition shortly afterward. In role playing games I got into the assembly and painting of miniatures. These were mainly Ral Partha minis and I still have them in my possession surprisingly. I had little to no skill when painting and it showed, however it was a start into a hobby that I am still passionate about today. I was always interested in the combat aspect of D&D so I would naturally be attracted to other games that focused on combat. In January of 1997 I was introduced to Warhammer 40K and was instantly hooked. The internet was a new thing in my area back then and I didn't quite have a lot of the resources that I now take for granted. I had plenty of frustrating experiences working with the more complex Citadel models and if my gaming group were more knowledgeable or we had an outside source for that knowledge then I would have saved myself wasted hours. I would occasionally pick up a White Dwarf Magazine if it had a useful painting technique, but other than that it was a slow process for me. I think that the best way to build your skills in this hobby is to find a physical community that has "hobby nights" every now and then where you can all share what you're working on. If that is not available then find an online community (usually on a forum) that is receptive to people asking basic hobby questions. I will try to keep this project alive for anyone who is interested in what I have to share.


-J


Here are some of my current in-work projects. They range from NetEpic Squats to Flames of War Soviets.