12th Painting Challenge Entry - More Solar Auxilia

Solar Auxilia from Forge World

Well it has been slower going these past couple of weeks for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but I haven't stopped painting yet. I'm still aiming for my 1500 point target.  To help me along, my 12th submission is another 20-man Solar Auxilia Lasrifle Section, 28mm resin figures from Forge World.  These figures are part of GW's "Horus Heresy" setting.

Command group - officer a back left, comms fellow kneeling in front, vexilla on the right

Another view of the command group

This unit is practically identical to the first one of these units I painted for the Challenge, part of a budding force of Loyalist troops who will make a stand at some point against Horus and his pretenders. The Solar Auxilia are deployed in platoons called "tercios" in the game (I think a "tercio" was a type of unit used by Spain back in their Imperial heyday?).  Each "tercio" has three sections of troops - either 20-man groups of these regular troopers or some veterans.

A selection of individual troopers

Rear view of the same three fellows

With the exception of the officer, all of these fellows are armed with lovely baroque-looking lasrifles.  The Forge World game writers went through a lot of trouble to give an appearance in the rules that these lasrifles might amount to something in the game itself (you can augment them with a "collimator" - sounds more like a medical procedure, but I digress).  But don't fool yourself - these guys will die by the bucket-load, particularly going up against Legion Space Marines.

Officer on the right, with comms guy assisting in direction of the section

Another view of the firing line

They will not do much on the table, but they look great! And when you ditch the 7th edition rules and play Rogue Trader instead, they are a lot of fun on the table top too.

Love those wonky back packs, with the pulley/bellows thing (respirator is my guess, but who knows or cares?)

I like the little "canteen" (at least I think it is a canteen) hanging on the hips of many of the Solar Auxilia

Is he changing the "collimator" perhaps?

Many lovely poses in the package

As before, I am totally smitten with these figures.  The sculpting is tremendous (even if the casting quality, as usual with Forge World, can be a bit uneven).  The mix of themes influencing the sculpting is fun and pulled off perfectly.  Even better, these figures are refreshingly free of the stupid skulls and other childishly gloomy iconography which have come to plague nearly all of GW's figure designs over the years.

Here are all of the Solar Auxilia painted so far - 40 troops

This represents 2/3 of a "tercio" for the Solar Auxilia

Each Solar Auxilia "tercio" has three units, and the third one is up in the painting queue.  However, a sudden painting diversion has appeared as I attempt a "crash" project for a completely different period, game style and scale...stay tuned for more on that (and lets hope I can get it done in time...)  In the interim, these 20 fellows got me past the 1000 point barrier as the end of the Challenge comes in sight.