Lupercal!

I'd be lying if I said that it was only recently that I got hard for heresy. Space Marines have always been my jam when it came to the forty-first millennium, no matter how much I convinced myself that the Inquisition or the Imperial Guard were the best humanity had to offer. When Horus Rising was released I read that bad boy in a week and by the release of Galaxy in Flames I was posting daily on the OG 30k forums (now the sadly quietening The First Expedition). So when Forge World released Betrayal back in (holy hells was it really) 2012 I was ecstatic. However I immediately thought "oh balls" when I realised this was Forge World and a standard squad of legionnaires would set me back the better part of all my monies. Smash cut to 2015 and the release of plastic MKIV Space Marines and I was frothing at the mouth to jump aboard the Heresy train.

That was 2015, when I was a poor and impoverished student. This is 2017, when I'm still poor and impoverished but at least I have a source of income now. And that means sweet, delicious, plastic crack.

Let's blame Martin, though, for me actually getting in gear and raising a 30k army. I had started a Word Bearers force when Betrayal at Calth came out (I still have the Gal Vorbak sitting unpainted on my desk) but they didn't manage to hold my interest (after over a hundred Blood Ravens, crimson is a bit boring to paint now). So I was at a loss as to what legion I wanted. I knew there were a few requirements for who I'd choose:

• They had to be a traitor (unless they were Imperial Fists)
• They had to have a paint scheme different from their 41st millennium counterparts (unless they were Imperial Fists)
• They had to have an easy to paint en mass scheme (unless they were Imperial Fists)
• They had to have some sweet fiction to read about to get pumped up about (unless they were Imperial Fists)

So naturally I chose the Sons of Horus,

The choice was obvious

If I was going to play a traitor legion, I might as well play the traitoriest of traitors, the boys who lead the charge and almost toppled an entire galaxy. They are conquerors and murderers and fallen heroes, the perfect bad guys without becoming parodies of themselves (coughWord Bearerscough). Plus I used to have a Black Legion army back in the early days of 5th Ed and had just finished reading Talon of Horus (quite possibly my most favourite Black Library book right now). So really it was a no brainer.

I had ten MKIV Legionnaires left over from my year old BaC boxed set and quickly snapped up ten MKIII Legionnaires and smashed out two veteran tactical squads. For once I actually managed to construct a list that I liked quickly and painlessly (more on that at a later date) and at its core were twenty of Horus' finest, so the plastic legionnaires were a fantastic start to the force.

This picture made me far happier than it should, although that may have been the glue fumes

When it came to building the veterans, I wanted to run with a"legion of heroes" idea: every single legionnaire in the Horus Heresy is still a Space Marine and therefore a Greek tragedy-esque hero worthy of his own stories, only now there are hundreds of thousands of them tearing face and taking names. As such, the legionnaires were built with a baseline degree of uniformity whilst making sure each model was still an individual in their own right. No two models have the same mix of armour (and only 4 or 5 models wear complete suits of MKIV or MKIII armour) and among the HH plastics I mixed in some CSM backpacks (the unreliable Anvilus-pattern power plant is prone to overheating according to Betrayal), cabled torsos from the Tactical Squad set and close combat weapons from the CSM Raptors set (Martin's already sang this kit's praises and I agree wholeheartedly with him). A few Space Wolf bits (namely heads and a power fist) completed the look I wanted. 

Namely, this. Look how brutal he is!

With twenty legionnaires built (missing shoulderpads that will one day arrive from Forge World) it was painting time. The biggest dramas people seem to have with the Sons of Horus is how to achieve that sea green plate armour - some like to use military grab greens or olives to make the models quite dark and muted, others tend towards the greyer end of the spectrum (a look originally inspired by the old Horus Heresy trading card game and the front cover of Horus Rising). Forge World used a metallic scheme that I don't think worked as well as it has done for the other legions (namely the amazing oilspill scheme of the Iron Hands or that gorgeous indigo of the Alpha Legion), plus I've never been a fan of painting metallic armies anyway, so matt colours it is for me!

A lot of people swear by airbrushes when it comes to painting 30k armies, and I wholeheartedly agree if you're painting masses of tanks and infantry. I could have put in an order for Forge World for their Sons of Horus-themed paints and smashed out the basecoats (and zenithal highlights) for all twenty legionnaires in under a day, but that would have required waiting forever for the paints to arrive and I'm impatient. So instead I turned to GW and their wonderboy, Duncan Rhodes and scooped up a bunch of Kabalite Green paint. 

                                   

I swear this man is a bonafide hero. 

I made a few tweaks towards Duncan's method, namely adding in a midtone between the Kabalite Green and Dawnstone highlights (saving the pure grey for very fine edge highlights). After reading a few blogs and the March White Dwarf I'm also leaning towards using this midtone to add chips and scratches to break  up the big flat panels, but then again that's a lot of effort and I'm lazy as well as impatient.

Heresy never looked so good

And that was that! My first three Sons of Horus were an absolute joy to paint and were almost ready to take the war to the Imperium. All I needed was to add their boltguns (painted separately because I may be lazy, but I'm not uncouth) and to add tufts of dead grass to their bases. 

I really should get some shoulder pads for these guys.

Ten legionnaires down, ten more to go. Then there's the Heavy Weapon legionnaires. And the Terminators. And the Reavers. Oh and let's not forget Maloghurst...

Damn it Martin, what have you gotten me into?