A Tale of Heresy Gamers. Month 6: Jingle Bells

MERRY XMAS! Let’s see what our Warlords have done this month!

What is the Tale of Heresy Gamers challenge?

This is the Warlord’s journey. The path of power, or of ruin. The Tale of Heresy Gamers charts army selection, choice of units, painting woes, and victories! We’ll be capturing every triumph and misfortune of coming to grips with a new system and a new force. This will be a series about the collecting of a new army for Horus Heresy 2.0. It will focus on the collecting and painting side of things, but we hope to bring you some insight into how the collection plays on the tabletop. Charting the development of an army from conception to finish is one of my fetishes, and I get to indulge in it with all my friends.

Want to join in the Tale of Heresy Gamers? Read how at the bottom!

As we hit the month 4 wall, will the Loyalists or Traitors have more staying power?

LOYALISTS

My first Joker! I want to take it easier and enjoy xmas with the models I have painted already. Will catch you in January!

Taleofheresygamers November Blog

Hi all, Rob from the Edge of Empire Podcast here, still battling on with the Challenge, & in this particular instance… Winning.

I’ve completed my 3000 points, nicely rough & ready with hopefully a Rogue Trader air to them. (That’s what I was aiming for anyway! Its a quick scheme, its simple & easily achieved, I tend to take on too many projects to strive for perfection so #finishednotperfect was the name of the game from month one.

So without Fuher ado Here’s a converted Corswain I did Before the new Mini came out, cost of living & all that I’m not investing in the official mini, as beautiful as it is, just yet.

Taleofheresygamers November Blog

And finally a Plastic(almost) Sicaran Arcus, the new plastic chassis with a 3D printed Turret. I think there’s a lot of potential legwork to be done with the plastic Scorpius now, those launchers would go a good way toward a Magnetised dual purpose turret with normal Sicaran Accelerator cannon & Arcus Launchers If you didn’t mind buying the Scorpius just to build a standard rhino from it.

And that’s it. 3000 points completed since V2.0 launch, not to the insane standards of the rest of the warlords but I’m pleased to have gotten these completed & knocked out. The looser vibe was really nice to work with too, not obsessing over smoothness & a vain attempt at perfection, just belting them out, simple steps, maximum impact & I think they’ll look nice on a table together.

I’ll have to see what else Myles has in store, I’d be well up for something like this again I think something something old world something something.. get me some bases I can cut myself on… bring on the corners!

However before then I’ve rather optimistically bought myself a Golden Daemon ticket, so Have to avoid painting any figures for that, and I’m also within sight of the end of a mammoth 22 engine Adeptus Titanicus project, and theres also 3000 points of Custodes wip that have just had a nice shiny new book…… WITH ASSASSINS!

If I can get some games played I’ll check in with the results of those ( I’ll have lost no doubt) but I’ll sign off by saying a big thanks to Myles for inviting us here at Edge of Empire. If you don’t already then give us a listen & you can follow us on @edgeofempire or my personal stuff on @elplebian

Cheers all!

At the end of last months article, I mentioned that I was going to start painting my squad of Ursurax, and that I wasn’t sure whether to keep them modelled as per their Heresy v1.0 loadout (all Power Fists), or break them up and rebuild them with a Heresy v2.0 legal loadout, ie six with Lightning Claws and three with Power Fists. Well, after much thinking and gnashing of teeth, I decided to keep them as they were. They were very expensive FW resin models, and I felt that I wasn’t prepared to wreck them (or buy replacements) just because someone had decided to mess around with their weapons options in the time since I had built them.

As for the progress that I have made in painting this month.. Well the Ursurax and two Magos-Dominus are both very nearly complete! Both have all their basecoats done, and have a few minor details left to go. I was planning on gloss lacquering the Ursurax this month as well in order to move onto decals & oil washes, but the weather has been so truly awful in the UK this month that I haven’t had an opportunity to go outside and spray anything. I’m hoping to resolve that this week if I can.

I also (foolishly) purchased my first batch of Mechanicum reinforcements: A Thanatar-Calix, and 12 x Thallax. The Thanatar is fully constructed already (he’s a BIG boy!) and the Thallax are just about to hit the manufactorum for assembly, pending a fresh delivery of Gorilla Super Glue. These units should eventually help to elevate my Mechanicum army from a mere Allied force to a fully-fledged army. I very much doubt that I’ll get them painted up during this series of Tale of Heresy Gamers, but it gives you an idea of which direction I would like my army to head in.

In other news, I took my Iron Hands to a 4-player game at the weekend. I joined forces with a new Dark Angels player to take on the combined Traitor forces of Emperors Children and Death Guard, and played out a Dominion/Dawn of War Mission. The Dark Angels Inner Circle Knights Cenobium were a fearsome force: they took out the best part of two squads of Death Guard Terminators whilst my Iron Hands did what they do best: Sat on Objectives for as long as possible and soaked up a staggering amount of enemy fire. My Legion Scout Sniper Squad set themselves up at the top of a disused Bastion tower and held an Objective for the entire duration of the game without taking a single casualty! I used the ‘Company of Bitter Iron’ Rite of War which allowed Medusan Immortals to be fielded as Troops, gain Hatred (Traitors), and the Line Unit Type, which enabled them to hold off against the rapidly advancing Emperors Children until the end of the game. The Loyalists won!

November:
A bit of a slow month this time for me but I managed to make some progress. I finished up a heavy support squad armed with iliastus pattern assault cannon.

These guys have put in work in recent games so they deserved to be painted!

I went for the blue helmets as a throwback to the 1st and 2nd ed Warhammer 40k blood angels scheme which was one of the driving inspirations behind this whole army so it was great to see the scheme ‘in the flesh’ after living in my mind for many months.

Going forward I plan to do 5 more models to round out the squad and also do a lascannon support squad plus perhaps one other.

 

Joker this month. What can I say, it’s Xmas!

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TRAITORS

How do you keep interested in a project when mass painting? You start to invent storylines.

The two sgt’s above – they really do not get on. They were part of a mass intake of recruits, flash indoctrinated into the way of the Sons of Horus. They have no understanding of who they are fighting, or why. A rivalry developed between the 2 when training and was chosen to lead the squads. One has more of a conquerer lean, showing dominant traits of leadership.

The other is much more of a head hunter. Think Magua from Last of the Mohicans.

It’s these day dreams that make painting 40 infantry bearable.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A Tank sized distraction

 Hi folks I’ve been a naughty boy this month and I’ve been distracted by a certain Myles and Anuj and their recent Tank obsession, so I crumbled, and ended up painting a Space Wolves Deimos pattern Predator!

The plan was to continue on with last months raptor squad, however, Myles’s absolutely stunning Kratos inspired me so much, I went out and got some new weathering products and decided to finish painting some predators i had already air brushed!

The idea was to continue with the heavy weathering style I’ve done previously but this time i wanted to up my game when it came to the tracks. MIG do a fantastic range of pigments and enamel washes and I picked up some Rubble and brick dust coloured pigments and they’ve worked a treat. I also found that not actually painting tracks metal reinforced the “realistic” look. If you look at real world tank pictures online you’ll see that they often have little metal colours or tones on them. I also used various streaking grime and enamel pin washes for green vehicles (this a warmer brown coloured wash) to add to the weathered nature of the tank.

I learnt a tonne painting this vehicle and now that I’ve refined the order of painting/techniques, it should mean that the next few vehicles will be painted much quicker, hopefully in Night Lords colours!

Hello traitors and loyalists a like. It’s your boy Craig here with and update on my Emperor’s Children army. I was a bit of a space case last month and forgot to submit my article last month and that’s why you didn’t hear from me. Not this month, not this month I say.

So, I have made some headway on the EC and have about 1500 points painted and ready to do battle and battle they did. Ales and I have gotten several games in over the last few months, having our armies do battle and man I am loving the way the Emperor’s Children play. They are hard hitting and fast, their play style suits me perfectly and my own style of play. This combined with the fact that I enjoy painting them so much, has boosted them to the top of one of my favorite armies I own. I have already begun planning to expand the army past the 3000-point mark. The army looks absolutely stunning on the tabletop and is some of the best work I have done today.

The games with Alex have been fast paced and a total blast, both armies specializing in close combat and higher mobility have proven interesting. Games workshop has done a fantastic job giving two armies with similar tactics their own feel. With both armies being fast moving closes combat monsters, they both have a very unique feel and style. With neither army feeling like a copy and paste of the other one. The games of Horus Heresy 2.0 that I have played have been fantastic and I am quickly getting the hang of the new rules. This rule set has been an improvement for the most part over the last edition and I look forward to playing many more games of this edition in the future. Till the next time keep the Bolters true.

So I “missed” last months issue by attending Malmö Wargaming Weekend 6, but Myles managed to put up a few pictures for me just before it was posted. This also gave him a month to try and catch up a bit, so wasn’t all bad ;-p

Anyway, the event was amazing and I have 5 (6) brilliant games against some great guys I had never met nor played before. The event was spread over 2 days, with 3 games Saturday and 2 Sunday.

My first game was against the legend @Companyofbitteriron, aka. Kornel who had come down from Norway. He ended up winning, by quite a lot, but we didn’t take it to seriously and probably chatted most of the time. His boxnaught was MVP for sure as it managed to hold Abaddon and his Justaerin engaged in Close combat for 3 rounds…

Was an absolute pleasure to see his amazing Iron Hands in the flesh.

I faced my first Kratos in the second game against the Salamanders, which was surprisingly represented by 3 players at this event. Here I learned that Dragon’s Breath flamers are quite good in Liber Panoptica. I honestly can’t remember who won, I think he did though, the mission was pretty fubar but in a good way. You gained points by loosing your own units and I didn’t loose that many and killed too many of his. The Reavers and Justaerin were very good in this game.

3rd. Game was against a guy who was relatively new to the game, but he did bring a Warhound titan, which my army was not tooled to handle. It was still a great fun game and I managed to completely surround his Land Raider with his Warlord and retinue embarked in and then glance it to death, so I took that as a win while the Warhound annihilated the rest of my army.

We then went out for food and beers, and then Tonka and I decided to have a cheeky 4th game. This was probably my favorite game of the event, as we didn’t care about the mission (to a degree where we completely forgot to count the score) and just had an amazing chill game. The hobby definitely won that one. 

4 full 3000 points games in a day is not recommended though! But the fun was worth the pain the following day.
First game on Sunday was against my danish mate Jens with his Armoured Space Wolves list. Only infantry he had was Terminators and everything was in Land Raiders and a Spartan, with a few Deredeos on the back line. I was massacred, but still enjoyed to game a lot, partly because it was the only game where I didn’t have to speak english.

Last game was against Kristoffer (@void_assault) and his beautiful Ultramarines. We actually also faced each other at MWW4 last time I went. Back then he won, but I managed to win this one. So next year will determine the winner! (if we play again). Was a fantastic game, where we at one point basically switched deployment zones, because he had so many transports and I had a lot of deepstrike.

If you wan’t to hear a more detailed breakdown of the event, listen to episode 34 of “The Merchant Princelings” podcast, big recommend.

I’’ve rambled for too long now, better end this now.

Until next time
Chris

* I won best army, which I was very honoured to. You can clearly see it in the picture (if Myles include it), happy to win, annoyed to be photographed :-p

This month I finished a 10 man squad of Night Raptors. I’ll be honest; these were a slog. I limped over the finish line. I actually started these a couple of months ago. Since then, they’ve rarely been on my painting desk for more than a couple of hours. But the Tale of Heresy Gamers marches on. So I buckled down and got them finished for fear of being publicly shamed. All of you big batch painters out there are sickos.

As for the actual unit: These guys are mostly outfitted with Nostroman chainblades. These grant +1S, Shred, ap3, and rending. Since jetpack infantry are bulky, it will be pretty easy to outnumber most targets in CC; turning on the Night Lord legion rule “A Talent for Murder” which grants a +1 to wound. Long story short these hit like a truck; for the small cost of half of your army lmao.

I’m out of half painted units. Lets see if I can do the impossible and paint a unit in a single month for the next article.

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If you would like to join the journey please write an introduction to your project and post it up on your social media with #taleofheresygamers. Every month keep apace with the warlords in creating your own collection.

For the Warmaster.

For the Emperor.