Horus Heresy Battle Report and New Game Mat!

Some of the Conscripts gathered last Thursday evening for our first in-person game in some time. For a variety of reasons we decided on a Horus Heresy game - mainly because both Conscript Greg and I (especially Greg) have painted a lot of new models that hadn't yet seen tabletop action. In addition, I wanted to try out a new game mat I bought some time ago but hadn't a chance to get out for a game. So I sent out the invitation along with a request to refrain from attending if you were feeling unwell, and to wear a mask if you were coming out. And to bring your own snacks of course :-)

How good does that mat look with the ruined buildings, eh? I'm really quite pleased with this product. It comes from the good people at urbanmatz.com in the Czech Republic, and it is fantastic, a nice neoprene mouse-pad type material that rolls up fairly easily as well. It came with its own storage bag too, for a quite reasonable cost of 57.77 euros. Unfortunately the only shipping method is FedEx, and that's where the pain comes in... but let's not talk about that. They also sell some really cool pre-painted resin buildings that Conscript Dave and I have added to our terrain collections.

A few little funky touches spread around the table. The Slurm machine is a must for the thirsty Legion Space Marine.

Of course any Heresy game has to incorporate the "God Box 2.0". What a great little piece of scatter terrain.

I'm not going to go through the battle in detail... honestly, the point of the game was less to play out a battle and more just to get together and put some figures out on a good-looking wargame table.

The battle itself pitted my own IV Legion Iron Warriors against Conscript Greg's superb VI Legion Space Wolves reinforced by some X Legion Iron Hands Space Marines.

 

One of the big draws of the game was to get Greg's and my new Storm Eagle aircraft out onto the table. They are certainly monsters in game terms!

Loyalist dreadnoughts take out an Iron Warriors dread.

Greg's new Space Wolves Vindicator also made its first appearance. Unfortunately the Iron Warriors Havoc team posted in an upper-storey window (five Marines each with a lascannon) were able to knock it out.

Speaking of the Havoc squad, here they are...

The IV Legion Medusa siege gun never quite lives up to the hype in my mind... high strength and a good gun, but I always forget that the range is only 36".

 

The Iron Hands Medusan Immortals cower take cover behind the promethium pipeline, guarding the (new) GF9 Power Generators.

A closer look at the Immortals.

IV Legion command squad advances. Apothecary is visible at left... to me the Apothecary in 30K is much like Brad Marchand. If he's on your team you love him, but if he's on the other team you hate him with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.

Iron Warriors approach an Imperial statue, as yet untoppled by peaceful protestors or otherwise.

 

Space Wolves Terminators teleported in to ruin the Iron Warriors' day.

Iron Warriors Siege Tyrant Terminators sought to return the favour, but their missile racks didn't quite do the massive damage they have done in past games.

 

Legion Medusa blown up by Space Wolves Storm Eagle.

Like I said, in the end it wasn't necessarily about playing a game, so we won't go into how badly the Iron Warriors got hosed. But it was great to get a few of the guys together, push around some figures, and oooh and ahhh about the great models and terrain. Unfortunately we seem to be on another upswing in the pandemic so I don't anticipate any in-person get-togethers again anytime soon, but we'll keep collecting, painting, and waiting for the vaccine...

In the meantime stay safe and healthy everyone!

Iron Warriors Primarch Perturabo and Iron Circle Battle-Automata

A mighty group here... I've now finished painting Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors Legion, and two Iron Circle Ferrax-Domitar Battle Automata. Three very large models!

We'll have a look at the Iron Circle battle-automata first. These are robots, of course - creations of the Adeptus Mechanicus modified by the Primarch himself to serve as his personal Honour Guard. Apparently Perturabo assembled six of these machines as his "Iron Circle" following an incident where an Imperial Fists kill team managed to infiltrate his flagship, the Iron Blood, following the Battle of Phall.

The Iron Circle are armed with Graviton Mauls and Karceri battle shields, as well as shoulder-mounted Olympia-pattern bolt cannon. The models are very straightforward to assemble, with the exception of two elements...

The legs, often a particular bugbear of mine, assemble easily due to the fact they go together in only one way. I often have problems assembling legs since it can be tough to ensure that the hips and pelvis of the model are level. However there's no problem this way with the Iron Circle robots.

One of the difficulties, however, is pictured above - the long power cable stretching from body to left hand. Of course, modelers have significant flexibility in how the model is assembled and that precludes Forge World from providing a "pre-formed" length of cable. Their solution is to supply a straight resin cable and instruct modelers to heat it in hot water and bend it to suit placement on their particular model. You can guess how this goes in many cases... resin is insufficiently bendy and breaks into pieces when it's being bent to shape. This is exactly what happened with Unit 1. To fix it I had to run a piece of stiff wire, bent to shape, between the unbroken ends of resin cable I glued to the body and fist. When I was happy with the shape, I rolled thin cylinders of greenstuff and attached them to the wire, matching the cast resin cables. The final step was to build and attach the bronze cable stays, again out of greenstuff. Arrrgh.

ANYWAY... the Karceri battle shield looks pretty cool painted "chevronny" in the good old IV Legion style. The shields were extensively chipped with a mix of Rhinox and craft black on the yellow parts, and Leadbelcher on the black parts.

Unit 2 was painted in the same way - base Leadbelcher, bronze parts Brass Scorpion, yellow parts Zandri Dust/Averland Sunset, the whole washed with a mix of Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil.

Here's the second beef I had with assembly - similar to the power cables, the ammo belts for the bolt cannon were straight resin pieces meant to be heated and formed to shape. Well screw that - I knew what was coming, so just cut some straight pieces of belt and attached them to the cannon.

The maul is a wicked looking weapon!

The cables on Unit 2 actually bent and formed very well - this is what they're "supposed" to look like.

The Iron Circle robots absolutely tower over regular infantry models - in the foreground is a Space Marine in MKIII armour.

Now on to the big man himself, the Primarch Perturabo. I've actually been finished the model for awhile but figured I'd combine the post with the Iron Circle bots that were just completed over the weekend.

Lots of silver paint on this fellow also. I like the head sculpt but having seen another hobbyist's conversion of Perturabo wearing a helmet, I kind of wish that Forge World had given this as an option. After all, gritty siege specialists don't often run around without head protection.

The provided display base is ridiculous and over-the-top, and actually took a little bit of thinking to figure out in terms of assembly. It's completely impractical for any kind of gaming use, of course, which leads to my work shown later in the post.

Perturabo can wield Forgebreaker, the massive Thunder Hammer forged by Fulgrim and used by Ferrus Manus (save Ferrus!), primarch of the Iron Hands Legion. The hammer was given to Perturabo by Horus the Warmaster himself, following the death of Ferrus Manus in the Drop-Site Massacre on Isstvan V.

But wait! There's more! As the display base is pretty much unusable for gaming, I rigged up some magnets to base Perturabo on a 40mm base, using one of the parts from the display base as well. The magnets work fine but be mindful of polarity as always!

Finally, I magnetised Perturabo's right hand as well, so he can be played without Forgebreaker if desired. Again, all it takes is some small magnets sunk into his wrist and hands.

Forgebreaker and bare right hand

Gaming base

Display base

As Conscript Greg pointed out in a recent text, we seem to be headed for a GIGANTIC Horus Heresy game as soon as this lockdown lets up. I have to say that Perturabo and his Iron Circle Honour Guard were pretty satisfying to paint despite (more likely because of) the limited palette and simple techniques used. They sure look impressive I reckon!

Stay safe everybody!

Heresy Iron Warriors Legion Storm Eagle!

Well, it's finally done - my IV Legion Storm Eagle. I'm not going to go into a bunch of detail on how the build went... suffice to say it was a bit of a b!tch. The Storm Eagle has somewhat of a reputation as a challenging kit to build and I reckon that it's well-earned. In fact when I had the kit in hand, I ended up asking a fellow gamer who's done some commission work (including building Storm Eagles) for various Conscripts if he'd be interested in building this one for me. "Too booked up with commission work, sorry" was the response. When I said I wasn't in a rush and could wait, he said "sorry, I'll pass. Too much work." I certainly don't blame him one bit... but like I said, I already had the kit in hand so I had no choice but to crack on myself.

The kit actually went up in an evening and a bit. I strongly recommend some specialty tools for constructing it though, specifically giant spring clamps and two-part epoxy - JB Kwik-Weld is my preferred product. The long side panels of the fuselage are prone to warpage and really can't be straightened with hot water, they're too large and thick. But as long as the floor and top pieces are straight the sides can be made to conform when clamped together. I actually left out the interior bulkhead as it didn't fit well but the build is plenty strong even without it.

The kit does have some amazing detail - the cockpit is fully kitted out with blinky lights and screens. A pilot is provided too but I supplied the Legion MKIII helmet to give him some Heresy flavour. Does anyone make a dismounted Space Marine pilot? Or would that just be a Space Marine?

One incident of the build was the necessity to seal up all the doors to make the model fit together - anyone who can build this thing with opening ramps is a star in my book. The fit around the ramps on my kit was fairly poor and required some plasticard strips added as well as filling with greenstuff or JB Kwik.

The wings and engines fit acceptably well. I decided to stripe the control surfaces of the wings, as some striping was needed to fit the Iron Warriors theme. I didn't want to go overboard though. IW decals are from the Forge World IV Legion decal set and the "14" numerals are from a WW2 German aircraft decal set I had in my decal folder. I'm still pondering whether to add "IV" decals under the canard wings.

Lots of silver paint on this bird! The basecoat is Iron Warriors with panel-highlights of Leadbelcher, washed twice with Nuln Oil and sponge chipped with Mithril Silver. The gold is Brass Scorpion with Nuln Oil and Reikland Fleshshade washes.

I ended up striping the nose of the aircraft as well and I think it turned out OK. It was a little tricky to make the various angles of the stripes work across the surfaces though. The yellow is a base of Zandri Dust with Averland Yellow over top, washed with Agrax Earthshade and sponge chipped with a mix of Rhinox Hide and craft black.

Top view of the aircraft showing the twin dorsal-mount Vengeance Launcher missile racks. Honestly the setup seems somewhat sketchy to me as these air-to-surface missiles have to fire straight out over the top of the Storm Eagle's hull... but 40K so whatever. Unfortunately I couldn't manage to completely straighten the lascannons :-(

Construction of the rear ramp caused some problems due to poor fit of the kit parts. I solved this by supergluing everything down and filling gaps with greenstuff and plasticard. Sadly one of the plasticard strips I was trying to fit fell inside the aircraft and since it was all sealed up already, will stay rattling around in there permanently... argh.

The nose again showing the twin heavy bolters. I elected these over the multi-meltas because strafing.

I think the pilot really benefited from the addition of the MKIII helmet.

Here's the aircraft on the ground with a couple of Legion officers.

Simple groundwork to fit in with the rest of the army - Rhinox, Mournfang, Steel Legion Drab with grey rocks and some barbed wire.

I'm really looking forward to getting the Storm Eagle off the ground in a game, or even using it as an objective or even just scenery. It really is a cracking model and once built, reasonably fun to paint, especially in a colour scheme as simple and forgiving as the IV Legion's. Hopefully we'll be able to get in a game in person before the end of summer... but now it's over to Conscript Greg to paint a Loyalist Storm Eagle. Escalation waits for no man!

Cheers and stay safe everybody...