New Contemptor Dreadnought for Sons of Horus

"Will you welcome the Warmaster?" Contemptor dreadnought for the XVI Legion

More fresh forces for the XVI Legion in this post.  This is a Contemptor-class dreadnought armour for the Sons of Horus.  Somewhere inside the machine is the near-death remnants of a Legion Marine, wounded seriously in action and deemed "worthy" of being permanently entombed in a powered and armoured walking machine. He gets to live on, fighting with his battle brothers through this big suit of power armour.

Heavy plasma gun - a very scary, all-purpose weapon useful for cooking loyalists to just the right consistency of heated vapour...

Life in a dreadnought likely sucks for the Marine inside (even though the fluff tends to portray them as these wise old veterans that somehow manage to hang out between battles). But it's great overall for the Sons of Horus as they benefit from having this fellow strutting around the battlefields of the 30th millenium, zapping enemies with a heavy plasma gun, dousing them with a flamer (inside the mit of the power fist) or just straight-up punching them to bits with a super-large power fist.

Dreadnoughts are a bread-and-butter support system for Space Marine forces, and the Legion marines are no different - save for their "Contemptor" variants are more powerful and perform better than the 40k variants.  Equipped with a heavy weapon, a close combat weapon and some decent armour, the dreadnoughts are very versatile in the battle, able to engage hard targets like vehicles or sweep away infantry.

View of the power plant etc on the rear - I suspect the carbon emissions are an issue...

Forge World has released Legion-specific sculpts of the Contemptor dreadnought hulls for just about every Space Marine Legion (or maybe all of them by now?) and this model is the hull for the Sons of Horus.  The XVI Legion as a group has some, er, "issues" ongoing *cough* and you can tell by the design of their Contemptor dreadnought - lots of skullz and spiky bitz seem to inform their "world view", I suppose a reflection of the grim future and in particular their home world of Cthonia, in which the principal economic activity appears to be murder.  No wonder they want to follow the Warmaster - they need some hope!

Anyway, back to the dreadnought, the original model had too many skullz for my taste, so I shaved quite a bit of that silliness away prior to painting.  In particular the pile of skullz hanging from chains between the legs, and the bunch strung along the left leg. It's still pretty spooky with those things removed, with spiky bitz on the legs, "hips" and torso, but at least there are no skulls hanging from chains on this particular model.

I quite like this version of the shoulder plate - and the big power fist is ready to smash things in the name of the Warmaster...

The skullz may be lame, but I quite like the XVI Legion iconography on the torso and shoulders, so overall it was worth the hassle.  I augmented the sculpted markings with just a few decals, including some of the weird geometric scribbling decals normally found on the Word Bearers, courtesy of a "Betrayal at Calth" decal set.  With the spiked features and ominous icons, he already appears to be on a bit of a dark path, but I think the designs add a pleasant little hint of additional corruption.

"Let's go for a walk...a walk of hope...that's right..."

This machine will join a "Contemptor Mortis" I painted last year to double up the dreadnought support available for the Sons of Horus. Looking forward to a Horus Heresy game soon for him to make his debut!  As a newly painted model, I'm sure he won't blow up on the first turn or anything like that...