Sons of Horus test models

I've decided to collect the Sons of Horus for my main pre-heresy force, seeing as they're the legion who drew me into 30k in the first place with the original opening trilogy of the HH novels.

With this in mind, I've been trying to find a good colour scheme for them. This a lot harder than it sounds. They're described as having ocean green armour, which is great - when you're imagining it- unfortunately its a very hard colour to translate to a model in a way that looks good

So over the last few weeks I've painted dozens of test models for them, experimenting with different mixes of greys and greens and I've whittled it down to a few of the best. Now I need your opinion: which one (if any) works best? What improvements could be made? Most importantly of all though, do they look like Sons of Horus?

So which is the best?

(I should note that as these are all very different models, in various stages of completion,  pay attention to just the green of their armour, rather than any other factors)


1, Eggadon?..

 2. Ekyzrie and Tarvuss?...

 3. Goldaron? or...

 4. Maladron?

Personally I'm leaning towards number 2 or number 4, but I wanted to see what you guys thought. I've deliberately not included the recipes I used, as I don't want how complicated the scheme is to affect peoples opinions - I don't mind taking the extra time on each model if the end result looks good.

So there you go guys, let me know your thoughts and opinions.

Lots of WIP Thousand Sons

In contrast to yesterdays Space Wolves, I've decided to show my Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons, as the Forgeworld releases have triggered a wave of motivation within me to work on them

These have been a constant WIP for the last year, as I pondered which codex to use  to represent them. I think I've finally settled on using them as normal Thousand Sons until the Battle for Prospero FW book comes out, as the current buzz about Tzeentch units in the new 'dex is sounding quite tasty.

Anyway, on to the models. These aren't anywhere near as finished as my wolves, but I'm slowly working on them.

As you can see they've got the post-heresy helmets, which happened to denote members of the Scarab Occult before the Rubric. Every single model is going to have one of these helmets or go bare headed, as I want the force led by Arhiman, so the entire army is going to be Scarab Occult.

Game-wise these are going to be used as chosen, mainly because they're carrying a variety of close combat weaposn (they were orginally built as Grey Knights). I may end up giving these guys Jump Packs at some point and fielding them as Warp Talons with the mark of Tzeentch, but I'm to wait until I have the book in hand before I decide for certain.

This guy still needs a backpack, but as you can see, he's been modelled casting a spell. I avoided using traditional yellows and reds for the flames for two reasons. The first was so it wouldn't clash too much with the red armour, the second being that these flames are warp-spawned so wouldn't look natural anyway and the third and most important one was that I can't paint natural-looking flames to save my life!

 This guy is the closest to a finished model I've got at the moment. I just need to finish up his weapon arm, then attach him to the base and he's ready to go. I've included him so you can get a fairly good impression of what the squad will look like when it's finished.

As you can see, I've continued the purple flames across their weapons too, although I do need to sculpt more on. It started out as being there because i was going to use them to represent GK Purifiers (I may still do from time to time as allies for my Sons of Horus), but after settling back on the CSM codex again, they'll probably be for show, or representing combi-flamers if Chosen get the option for them

The blades themselves are scratchbuilt and attached to thunder hammers handles. I would have preferred to use Tomb King kopesh blades, they never seem to be in stock on bits websites and I've got no use for the rest of the kit, so it's not worth buying them brand new


I'm hoping to have these guys done by the end of next month, just in time to mark their anniversary of sitting unfinished on my desk, then I can move on to other shiny pre-heresy goodies

Wolves progress

It's been a while since I showed some painted stuff, so I thought I'd show you some of the progress on my Space Wolves.

First up, Hrogar is nearly finished, bar a few highlights and battle damage.

I quite like how he's turned out, considering he's the first of my Space Wolves I've actually completed. As I said before, each model in my army is going to have his own name and backstory, so here's what come up with this for him:

Solid and dependable, Hrogar has served as a Shield-Brother in the White Wolves for over half a century, proving himself to be one of the most reliable members the Company of Tra, standing alongside Berek Oakheart and Myord Ulfricson as exemplars of his profession.

He earned his wolf tail during the war on Tinus, forming part of the force that broke through the chaos lines in order to rescue their fallen wolf lords remains and piloting the Thunderhawk through the storm-wracked atmosphere with a hunters grace to make their escape, even while under attack from flocks of skeletal gargoyles. Given the events that followed, it is perhaps little surprise that Hrogar takes no pride in the accolade, yet he wears it still out of remembrance of his fallen lord and will do so until the day he is avenged

I know it's fairly simple, but I wanted to start with basic marines and keep the more interesting ones for later - they can't all be glorious heroes of legend, after all. Don't worry if there's any references in there you don't get quite yet, all will be revealed when I unveil the background for my Great Company as a whole.

Moving on, next up are a couple of Wulfen that i've converted up.

 

 The first is meant to represent more of a berserker type character rather that a true Wulfen, whilst the other uses a VC Ghoul King arm to show the curse on one arm, whilst carrying a bolt pistol in the other to show that he can still use ranged weapons- he is part of a Grey Hunter Pack, after all.

 

And finally (for today, at least) we have the Wolf Priest that I converted up back when sixth edition first came out. They hadn't defined what kind of power weapon his Crozius was at the time, so I gave him both an axe and a maul, so I could choose at the start of the game which I wanted him to have. Now that it's been clarified to be a maul though, it's just there to look cool.

It's a very simple conversion, utilizing the space marine captains cloak, parts from the space wolves sprue and chaos weapons to give him a suitably brutal look. You'll also notice that he has a Narthecium backpack, taken from an old metal Apothecary. I included it as a nod to the role that Wolf Priests play within the chapter, as both Chaplains and Apothecaries rolled into one. They used to have rules to reflect this, but Phil Kelly obviously decided that that giving out Feel No Pain like other Apothecaries was a little over the top for them, so I've had to settle for just a cool looking conversion instead.

I'll bring you more soon, I've been very busy over the last few days, so expect lots of updates across most of my armies very soon, probably this weekend

Tree

I think I'm one of the luckiest guys in the hobby, having a girlfriend who not only supports my hobby, but actively wants to take part in it.

We decided to have a hobby afternoon the other day and while I worked on trying to find a good colour scheme for my Sons of Horus, she decided to make a tree, as we're sorely lacking in scenery at the moment. This is what she came up with:

It's made using a method I remember seeing online, which used florists wire twisted together to made the trunk, then just adding fake foliage to the trunk and gluing it to a base- simple yet effective

 It's not quite done yet, as there's still work needing to be done to the base, but I thought I'd post it up anyway, as it's already far beyond anything I could produce in the same amount of time.

She's already talking about addng a cool looking Wood Elf character to turn it into a diorama.

A Plea to the Community

Can I ask a huge favour from anyone going to Games Day UK?

I really want the FW Horus Heresy book, but can't make it to Birmingham this year. I don't want to have to wait for general release, so I'm turning to the community for help.

Is there someone who's going that would be willing to pick up for me and send it on to me? (Obviously I'll send the money to you beforehand).

If someone can help me I'd be eternally grateful.

Plans for 40k

In an effort to keep me motivated with my 40k projects, I've signed up for the 2012/13 Tale of 40k Painters on Warseer, with the goal of painting 2000 and 100point points of Space Wolves and Pre-Heresy Marines (probably Sons of Horus) respectively.

With set points worth of models to paint each month, it should focus my mind nicely, as well as giving me a sizable fully-painted army of each to play with come this time next year.

Plans for my September submission are simple enough: 1 ten man Grey Hunter Pack and 1 five man Legion tactical squad equivalent  (I don't want to paint anything else yet until I know what's in the HH book).

I'll let you know how I get on