Alpha Legion Praetor

Hello - my name is...Alpharius...?

 Some more meandering painting progress from the lake.  This is a Praetor from the Alpha Legion, building on the command figures I painted a few weeks ago. Most 30k gamers will recognize the figure as the plastic Ultramarines command model from GW's "Betrayal at Calth" box set. I was not crazy about this model, but since I have accumulated a couple of those boxes, and I thought I would try putting at least one of them to use on the table.  I don't have any Ultramarines on the go at present, so I decided I would paint him up in the colours of the XX Legion, the Alphas.

Chain fist for...solving problems...yes, that's it..

The figure is sporting Cataphractii terminator armour, carrying a fancy "combi-weapon" that is both bolt gun and melta gun, as well as a nutty chain fist for that more up close and personal work 30k Legion commanders are expected to handle.

The decals from Forge World really came in handy on this figure

As I said I was not crazy about this figure. For starters, Space Marines should wear their helmets - it's dangerous out there! And there is something about the sideways angle of the pose that is at odds with the ominous armour and big guns.  Seriously, when you are that big and well-protected, just turn around and face whatever it is, and shoot it!

Whacky cloak? Of course! It's 30k, after all...

On the plus side, the ornate details on the armour are nicely done, implying a higher rank without anything too over-the-top, and providing a lot of spots for decals and Legion icons, allowing you to customize the figure to the Legion of your choice (assuming you don't wish to be painting the lame dopes of the XIII Legion).

More view of the real-estate on the armour for the decals from Forge World

The side-angled focus of the pose is not my thing, but he is certainly looking dramatic overall, what with the cape and the fancy weapons. Based on the practices of the XX Legion, I think we can assume this fellow's name is...Alpharius?

Up next, some more grunts for the XX Legion...

Alpha Legion Heavy Support Squad

Missiles anyone? Heavy support for the Alpha Legion

Blowing sh!t up in the 30th millenium is quite the task, one that Space Marine Legions take very seriously.  Often they rely on scary vehicle or whacky dreadnoughts.  For city-sized wrecking jobs, they have their friends in the Titan Legions.  But often a job you do yourself in the most satisfying, so when the foot-slogging elements of a Space Marine Legion want to blow something up real good, they deploy heavy support squads. Here is one such unit for my slowly-growing Alpha Legion collection, armed with missile launchers.

After all, why fire one missile launcher at something when you can fire five missile launchers at something, right? I love 30k :)

Unit sergeant with his whacky comb - love the Mark IV Marines!

Forge World shoulder pauldrons are wonderful

These are plastic models from the "Betrayal at Calth" box set, augmented with shoulder pauldrons and transfers from Forge World.  I really love the plastic Mark IV Space Marines and since I purchased too many of them, I ended up with enough missile launchers to outfit a whole squad. So I just went with it...

Decals from the Alpha Legion transfer sheet

What is extra fun about these particular sculpts is that they are a shout-out to the original "shark fin" style missile launcher from the Rogue Trader days! It is great to see these little shout-outs throughout the whole line of Horus Heresy figures from GW, and definitely adds to the fun for a nerd like me!

While I love the old RTB-01 plastic marines, I have to say these were a little easier to assemble...these kits are quite fabulous.

What is the target? Loyalists? Other rebels? You never know for sure with the Alpha Legion...

Ready for action on the table...

To achieve true Legion-era excess, this should be a 10-man group sporting missile launchers, but, insane as I am, even I only have so many plastic Mark IV Marine sets, so five will do for now! Plus, I'm sure these guys will be able to blow up all sorts of stuff with five missiles launchers, right??

10th Painting Challenge Submission - More Alpha Legion for 30k

Some folks in the Painting Challenge thought I had switched completely over to painting fantasy stuff.  Wrong! It was more Alpha Legion deception! Fresh recruits for Alpharius...

It has been fun to be painting some stuff connected with Warhammer Fantasy again, but I can't forget my main focus for this edition of the AHPC - and that is getting 30k stuff done.  My 10th submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge got me back on that track with a squad of five tactical support marines carrying plasma guns and three tactical marines carrying their standard boltguns.  The models are plastics from GW's "Betrayal at Calth" set, with some add-ons and transfers from Forge World.

Tactical support squad with plasma guns

Comms trooper on left, vexillary on the right

I love the little read-out screen on the comms trooper

The so-called Tactical Support Squads carry various specialized weapons to provide some heavy firepower alongside the regular rank and file marines.  Plasma guns are useful is carving up armoured targets.  In the Horus Heresy, the opponent is often another Marine, so these weapons will come in handy in situations where even the heavily armoured witnesses need to be dealt with...

Customized bits from Forge World...expensive, but lovely sculpts

Some detail on the back packs

The three tactical Marines are just extras from the first two tactical squads.  Adding these three models frees up some of the "beakies" I had previously painted to form their own small seperate unit if I feel like it.


These models are just a ton of fun to paint, very well done by GW.  And I know it is a silly expense to incur, but I also love the accent packages from Forge World.  The sculptors hit it out of the park, and sprinkling the custom bits throughout the units is a lot of fun, and I'm thrilled with how they have turned out.

#Horus4Hope taking shape...

Every so often it is fun to put a group shot of the progress so far.  This is the Alpha Legion group that has been completed to date - 31 marines to this point! This could even represent a bare-bones force on the table.  They will need some support - vehicles, maybe dreadnoughts...or just more infantry.  We'll see what comes next!

The Chaplain urges you to feel the love...

Stay tuned for more Challenge submissions next week...and be sure to visit the Challenge pages to see the incredible work from hobby folks all over the world, including others from right here in Winnipeg. There is lots of great work to check out.

Sixth Challenge Submission - More Alpha Legion for 30k

More lads from the 20th Legion

My Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge submissions are getting repetitive, but here is (surprise, surprise) more 30k.  This is a second tactical squad for the 20th Legion, known as the Alpha Legion.  There are ten fellows wearing Mark IV power armour, plastic kits from the "Betrayal at Calth" box set, and a pair of Forge World "beakie" marines wearing Mark VI Corvus Armour.

I painted a white knee plate on this crew to help tell them apart from the first bunch

The beakies are carrying special weapons, and can be swapped into the squad to create a unit of legion veteran troops as opposed to a vanilla tactical squad.

Comms trooper on the left and vexillary on the right

Some examples of the custom Alpha Legion heads from Forge World - nice dabs of character

The embossed shoulder pauldrons, transfers and a few of the helmets are upgrade packs from Forge World.  The helmets are available in packs of 10, and you can sprinkle the heads from one package across several units to add a bit of additional character to the overall force.  With the Alpha Legion, a lot of the custom heads have a beakie, or modified modified beakie look as well.  The looks-cool-factor is high with this bunch.

Mark VI armoured troops from Forge World, probably my favourite models...

Love the "shark fin" style missile launcher.!

As I said previously, while the plastic Mark IV armour kits are very nice and fun to work with, the Mark VI armour sets from Forge World are a pure joy, a hidden gem for Space Marine junkies like me.  No skullz...great proportions...beakie helmets...and they mix perfectly with any plastic or resin spares or accessories.  It is everything you get from the old RTB 01 plastic box, but with better proportions and full compatibility with all of the bits out there.  I have a small and declining stash of these models, and I expect I will sprinkle them around the different forces in my collection so each one has a dash of "beakie" look to them.
\
When I contemplate how much fun the "beakie" models are, I'm surprised Forge World was ever allowed to release the Mark VI armour kits.  After all, they are connected to the heritage and original inspiration of the game, and Space Marine players and collectors love them - in my experience, both of those seem to be deal breakers with GW.  I imagine it all played out as some kind of dysfunctional corporate situation, where the Forge World guys had to sneak the designs online...


GW corporate tool: "You are not selling those old 'beakie' Space Marines are you? You KNOW we are not 'in' to that anymore..."


FW designer: "Of course not, Liege - we would never stoop to releasing anything that popular, connected to the collective positive experiences we all shared when we got into this hobby. That is fully against..."


GW corporate tool: "...against the business plan! As it is, this whole 'Horus Hesresy' thing seems dangerously popular, and we may have to give it the ol' 'specialist games treatment' at any minute, before more players start to enjoy it..." [makes throat-slashing gesture]


FW designer: "Not to worry, Liege - ensuring the best priced Horus Heresy models are only found in box games few people are actually interested in playing is doing a trick to ensure it is still harder for a gamer to get into the Horus Heresy than it otherwise might be..."


GW corporate tool: "Right then - get back to designing that new special character, Skully Bonerz McSkullz, King of Kaos Kookiness - he will be a special release, front page of a White Dwarf, etc."


Anyway, I digress...but the Mark VI Corvus Power Armour suits ARE getting harder and harder to find on Forge World's byzantine web site, and I'm sure it is only a matter of time until word reaches GW leadership that these beautiful models are available for sale, and the sculpts are withdrawn from the web store all together...

Putting the "me" in team - the Alpha Legion...

So a total of 12 models in 28mm, good for another 60 points or so. The completion of this unit provides the absolute bare bones of a force for the tabletop - two troop choices (tactical squads) and an HQ (the chaplain).  This is next to nothing under the current iteration of the 30k/40k rules, but would be plenty for a game of Rogue Trader, or even just enough to wreck things for someone as some "allies" - and with friends like the Alpha Legion, who needs enemies?

This bunch is ready for action, but will require some reinforcements before they have any impact on the table...

Up next? Well, no prize for guessing the setting, but hopefully I might change up the scale...or not...whatever it is.  Be sure to check out the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge page to see all of the great submissions from folks all over the world!

Fifth Challenge Submission - The Alpha Legion

The Alpha Legion arrives on my painting table

My fifth submission to the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge features a new Legion for my 30k collection - the 20th Legion, known as the Alpha Legion.  The Alphas have one of the more entertaining back stories among the numerous legions featured in GW's "Horus Heresy" setting.  The other Legions have elaborate histories - some noble, some bloody, nearly all grim, and all with long service in the endless wars which abetted the rise of the Emperor and the establishment of the Imperium.

Veteran Sergeant on the left, Chaplain on the right

Back view of the officers

The history of the Alphas, on the other hand, is not well known, and this was on purpose.  They started off as a black ops, special forces-type organization, used by the Emperor and his senior officials for specialized activities of the sort that archivists were not meant to record. Eventually the demands of the "great crusade" were such that this force was elevated to the status of a Legion itself, and they became the 20th - and final - of the Space Marine Legions. One of many decisions the Emperor would likely come to regret...

Vexillary on the left, and a communications trooper on the right

Rear detail on the communication and vexillary models

The last Legion established, but taking the name "Alpha", is a contradiction action that fits well with how the Alpha Legion rolls.  Where the other Legions strive in the shadow of their elaborate histories to pursue greater causes and honour their ponderous histories, the Alphas just seem to be trolling the galaxy.  The Alpha Legion is all about wheels-within-wheels, schemes, plotting, subversion, spying...like a Space Marine Legion-sized version of the CIA, complete with its own military industrial complex to sustain its machinations. They can do all of the standard, scary, appear-in-orbit-and-destroy-your-world Space Marine stuff.  But before they would bother, they will probably have wrecked on the pension funds, crashed the property markets, illegally seized the leases for resource extraction and rigged the elections.  If all that wasn't enough fun, then fine - orbital assault.

The Alphas built a galaxy-spanning network of informers, agents and contacts, even infiltrating the other Space Marine legions.  They spun endless webs of information and misinformation, mixing freely and spreading them widely. As such, they were disliked and distrusted by their brother Legions.

In particular, they had problems with the Iron Warriors (or just seemed to provoke the worst in them).  I know Dallas is toying with doing an Iron Warriors force, so I hope this bunch might spur his project along at some point...

Some Alphas in Mark IV armour

The embossed shoulder plates are from Forge World...an expensive addiction, but I love how they look

The outbreak of the Horus Heresy was almost a happy coincidence for the Alphas - I suspect they were planning to just run around a blow sh!t up, whatever the Emperor and then Horus ordered.  Although they sided with Horus in the Heresy, the Warmaster had difficulty controlling them.  The Alphas would interpret orders as liberally as they liked, and had so many schemes going they were just as likely to fight the rebels as the loyalists.  Their main operational motto is "no witnesses".  With a bunch like this, there are a lot of possibilities for fun scenarios!

Mark VI "Corvus" power armoured figures from Forge World - the Alphas are often portrayed employing these classic "beakie" armour suits, much more so it seems than the other Legions

As an aside, if you are a Space Marine dork like me, you will fine no models to be more fun to build than these Mark VI suits from Forge World - the price is eye watering, but these are faithful to the original RTB01 plastics - you will love them

The other reason I wanted to collect this force had to do with their colour scheme. They are often seen in a blue, or blue green, with a metallic sheen, the colour of a sports car.  The downside to this cool look is that it almost always seems to involve an airbrush, a general deal-breaker for me. I tried for a couple months before the Challenge started to find a way to come up with that cool metallic blue without an airbrush, but just couldn't make it work.  So I came up with a different blue-green approach - it's not a cool, metallic-looking finish, but I'm still pretty pleased with how it is turning out and there is no airbrush involved.

Chaplain for the Alpha Legion...given their approach to the universe, I expect this guy would be into irony more than anything else

This model will do as a command figure for the Alphas until I can get some more command troops

Can you feel the "faith"?

These models were a ton of fun to paint.  They are a mix of plastics from the "Betrayal at Calth" box set, with some upgraded bits from Forge World, and some resin Mark VI power armour marines from Forge World.  The Chaplain is the "Kurtha Sedd" plastic figure from the "Betrayal at Calth" box set, painted to be an officer/command figure for the Alpha Legion.

This submission has 11 28mm infantry models, but two of the models were test paints from before the Challenge so they don't count, so this netter another 45 points.  Almost at 200 points now, and still planning to bend the brushes with more 30k stuff...

Second Challenge Submission - World Eater Terminators and Heavy Support Marines

Feel the love...more lads from the 12th Legion

My second submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is more 30k Marines from the 12th Legion, the cute, cuddly and progressive chaps known as the "World Eaters". Whether your world is run by a deeply flawed totalitarian or exists as a fluffy, enlightened sunny-ways democracy, the World Eaters will appear in orbit and render the whole thing down to particles without pausing too long to consider "why". In this, they were ideal tools for the Emperor's so-called "Great Crusade", and even more useful to the Warmaster Horus when he launched his rebellion.

Terminator squad from the World Eaters

Wrecking everything in sight is a lot of work, even in the far future. The troops assembled here should make an important contribution to those efforts thanks to their heavy armour and/or absurdly large guns.

The unit Sergeant has a fancy sword, and the thing up top is supposed to be a grenade launcher, but perhaps is some kind of future go-pro system so Angron can have a record of any carnage these chaps are involved with

I need to find a way to make these power swords look fancier, but he'll do

The first part of this submission contains a five-man unit of Terminators, Space Marines wearing even heavier armour than their regular foot-slogging buddies.  Teleporting to the battlefield to face down and BBQ opponents which give even regular Space Marines a moment of pause, the Terminator Marines with their big guns, power fists and bulky armour enjoy choice assignments in their Legion duties.

I quite like the double-drum ammo clips on the so-called "combi bolters"  and the chap pointing looks like he means business...

If you carried a big flame-thrower like this fellow, and your job is wrecking sh!t, why you would be on top of the world, so I did this fellow up to look like he's giving a fist bump - "fire FTW!"

While the deeply flawed rules mechanics of GW's 40k rules system make these figures real losers on the table, from the collecting and fun point of view, these are great models and entertaining troops to the deploy into games.  The models are plastics figures from GW's "Betrayal at Calth" box set/game, the model set that keeps on giving...

Heavy support squad with Plasma Cannons

The other part of this submission is a five-man unit of heavy support Space Marines.  The 30k setting has a vast buffet of devastating weapons to choose from, and the Space Marine Legions are well-fed in this respect.  These particular weapons are plasma cannons, heavy energy weapons useful for obliterating any opponents that might appear. And where the Terminators are not nearly as useful on the tabletop as their back story might imply, these chaps exceed the hype, wiping out entire groups of absurd loyalists with relative ease.  Your so-called "Emperor" can't save you now...

The 30k setting is about overkill - why shoot just one big science fiction gun at something, when you could shoot five of them at something?

These models are Mark IV armoured Space Marine models from Forge World, purchased years ago.  In the spirit of the Challenge, I thought it would be good to get to a long lost projects of years past such as this bunch, at least in the early stages...

Forge World decal sheet came in handy with these models

So in all this has ten 28mm infantry models, good for another 50 points towards my overall total and my 30k side duel. Stay tuned for more 30k as the Challenge progresses...

First Challenge Submission - 30k World Eaters

Troops of the 12th Legion, ready for action in GW's Horus Heresy

The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is back again! It's great to be back in the madness.  This submission was my first on to the Challenge, submitted just before Christmas.

Unit officer, equipped with power claws/back scratchers

When it comes to painting I don't do well with plans and I'm not much for focus, but I am hoping to come out on top of my 30k side duel, so that is where I am starting this year.  This is a unit of Space Marines and a Dreadnought from GW's Horus Heresy setting, known colloquially by nerds like me as "Warhammer 30k". 

 

These fellows are carrying small flame-throwers...tasty...

These troops are from the 12th Legion, known charmingly as the "World Eaters".  While the Sons of Horus have a sort of pride-of-place in my 30k collection so far, the World Eaters are there too, some of the first 30k models I painted.  I have had these models gathering dust for over a year, sitting with primer on them, waiting for brush attention.  Curt's Painting Challenge is always a good spur to tackle projects like that, so I did these guys first.  They are the first new World Eaters added to the roster since September of 2014...that doesn't seem long ago to me, but man, time flies.

 

Regular assault grunts

While the comically homicidal nature of the World Eaters does not represent the finest efforts of GW's writers, I'm not that mature and I still enjoy the Legion.  I can see the Sons of Horus hanging back while letting these guys go in first to absorb some damage before they swoop in to finish things off (and take credit for any overall success).

 

Some weathering and chips painted on to make them look a bit worn

The World Eaters are fun to paint and you can make them look a little rough and ready without spattering blood effects etc. on the models.  That is the effect I tried with this group.  White is tricky sometimes, and I had a few problems on some of the models, but they got some heavy weathering which helps the problems go away :) The Forge World decal sheet was extra handy for helping add little bits of character and customization to the models.

The infantry models are assault marines, sporting jet packs and equipped with heavy, short-range pistols and flamethrowers as well as the chainsword, the ubiquitous face-wrecking device of the grim and dark future.  

 

Rotary cannons are always the best in any sci-fi situation

The assault marine models are resin castings from Forge World - you can tell, as some of the jump packs have some appalling mold lines.  Forge World has great sculptors, but their casting quality is often indifferent at best...

 

Power unit at the back...not carbon neutral

The larger model is a Dreadnought, a heavy armoured support unit for the Space Marines.  The Dreadnoughts can be configured with a wide assortment of different weapons for different purposes.  It is armed with a Kheres assault cannon (rule: rotary cannons are always awesome) and a power fist to punch large obstructions rather directly in the face.  This is a plastic model from GW's "Betrayal at Calth" game - a bit of a disappointment in terms of how wooden it looks, not GW's best work, but certainly easier to assemble than the resin ones from Forge World.

 

Large power fist ready for large punching work

There are ten 28mm infantry models in this submission, but one of these models is a test model, painted prior to the Challenge, so the squad should be worth 45 points.  I can't remember what a Dreadnought counted for, so I'm thinking it's like an artillery piece - 10 points?  So that will be 55 points.  A small step toward my goal of 1000, and more importantly, a small step toward revenge against JamieM!