How can you collect Horus Heresy models without painting up some Sons of Horus? You just can’t. Or, at least, I can’t. So, here we are. Did I paint these guys, just so I could justify painting Horus Ascended?…
I will let you decide while we dive into Project: Speartip and the various Sons of Horus I painted up for it so far.
First in the Breach
I have been collecting miniatures for a long time. For years now I have been doing so like its my calling in life; that’s the nice way to put it. You could also say that I have been a crazed fucking model hoarding beast and I would not be in a place to argue. I came to realize fairly quickly that random model purchases didn’t do me much good. I ended up with cool lookin’ shit in my collection but not particularly useful or playable armies.
That all changed when I started planning ahead. For sure, it made my Pile of Shame grow at an exponential rate, because I could daydream a badass army and burn a paycheck at a pace that far outmatched my painting ability.
And I paint pretty quickly. So that says a lot…
Fast forward a few years and I started painting opposing Heresy armies and found myself with a large but disjointed fully painted Word Bearers army (started with a lack of planning or even a thorough understanding of the game) and a far more focused Ultramarines collection painted up as well. I hadn’t even finished either of those projects in a meaningful way and I was already planning (and purchasing) secondary ally forces for each. I added Iron Hands, Salamanders and Emperor’s Children to Shame/Awesome hoard. I had plans for Raven Guard, too (and by had, I mean “has since happened”). Guest what army I never had planed to paint.
You guessed it: Sons of Horus.
Had Games Workshop not designed such a glorious model as Horus Ascended, I would most likely not be writing this article. Sure, I would have bought the Loken v. Abaddon set to paint up and display, having loved both characters in the novels. But, I don’t believe I would have planned an Ally of Sons of Horus otherwise. Damn. Well, it happened, Horus is glorious and I fuckin want one. So, it’s time for a plan.
First in the Breach
Over the past few Heresy projects I have defaulted to creating a painted playable Zone Mortalis list as, in my humble/obsessive opinion, it’s a great way to start a Heresy Army. It gets a core of infantry out of the way, which in my head, is the most tedious part of an army. Afterwards, its easy to add some more specialized units and vehicles. I saw no particular reason not to do the same with my Sons of Horus.
Some models from a Age of Darkness launch box were allocated to Sons of Horus colors, as a test for paint schemes and such. With no plan fully formulated at the time, I painted some random Tartaros Terminators, and some mark 6 Marines as a Support squad. One of the extra “praetor” models that I didn’t know what to do with became a commander for the XVI Legion as well. Then there was an extended pause. The project never really materialized and I moved onto Iron Hands and Raven Guard. Eventually, one of those dangerous encounters with Connor happened. Once again, bad ideas flowed through my head and my wallet wept. But, I had an idea of what I wanted from my SoH army.
After successfully scrounging together the units from the extinct Sons of Horus Support Cadre I crafted a ZM list and got to building. I would use many of the models I had already painted to make the first stage of the project reach completion sooner.
The list would need some melee unit options to take advantage of the Sons of Horus legion rules and aside from that, the confined spaces of a Zone Mortalis list makes for fertile ground to get into a close quarters brawl. You need to be ready to get charged and hold ground. As I usually do, I started the list off with a Dreadnought. The plan would be to go all-in on the melee options, running it as dual-fisticuffs. It would have meltaguns in both hands and a havoc launcher to give it some extra shooting: as a bonus, the small blast from the launcher would take advantage of the bonus to wound with blast weapons in ZM. Luckily, I had a dreadnought painted, albeit without that exact weapon/arm selection painted up on the model… whatever, close enough for now.
After the patently necessary Dreadnought, I wanted a couple hard hitting units. The obvious choice was a unit of Justaerin, and I wanted to use the Tartaros terminators that I had already painted. The lightning claws on the Tartarus would make quick work of opposing power armor units and the elite Justaerin could fight anything else. It was then that I decided upon a Pride of the Legion list, as I could qualify the Tartaros unit as my one compulsory unit of terminators or veterans to count as a scoring unit.
I spent time trying to get the artificer armor Praetor with the massive cleaver into the list with a command squad, since the generic character was already painted. The character and Volkite support squad I painted up left too little space in the list for other scoring units to stand back. Sure, the command squad wound count as scoring, but if they weren’t moving forward with the Praetor, they were being wasted: they are a take the objective unit, not a sit on it after style unit.
Thinking back to the conversation with Connor that kicked the whole thing off, I thought about putting Abaddon in the list, and using the Justaerin as a command squad. The Justaerin would deploy along with Abaddon for no extra deployment points, and would reduce the overall units I had to deploy, making it easier to get all of my units on the board with extra points for potential flanking opportunities. Sure, Abaddon would get no use out of his Warlord trait, but, the dual specialist weapons and excellent weapon skill would make him a formidable opponent. So, Praetor out and Abaddon in.
I had some hard hitting units and a nasty named character to lead them. There was a previously painted Volkite unit, that I would say are armed with Chargers so that they would be cheap as possible. I had a despoiler squad built already, which could hold objectives for me and also accept or make a charge and get the Sons of Horus bonus that in the first round of a melee, the Sons of Horus models are one harder to wound. Or, at least I thought I did while I was planning. When it came time to start painting a few months later, I found that I had an assault squad, not a despoiler. I fixed that with some mk6 marines sitting around unbuilt and the new heresy melee weapon kit, both of which were squatting in my pile of shame.
Also within my pile of shame, I had a handful of old mark 4 Marines armed with Vokite chargers and bearing the out of print breacher shields from back in the day when Forgeworld was releasing Badab War models. I got them in trade and had held onto them to make them Ultramarines to support my shield wall army, but, I also needed to stop hanging onto shit for years. You’re traitors now! Time to paint them in traitorous colors.
With that, I had a 1500 point Zone Mortalis list planned, built, and partly painted already. I also realized that I could easily scale it up to 1750 with the addition of a 10ish man Reaver squad. So I had that going for me as well, but that is probably a Phase Two Tyson problem. Let’s get the first 1500 good and ready first.
Colors of Horus
When it came time to paint the rest of the force I had settled on, it went particularly easily. I had already figured out the paint scheme for the green models. Airbrush a layer of Lupercal Green across the entire model after priming it Mechanicus Standard Grey. Once this stage was complete I hit the model with Sons of Horus Green from around the top to build up the volume, followed by another layer directly down onto the head and shoulders to enhance the zenithal highlighting.
Turns out I made myself a bit of a problem as well, but we will return to that in a bit. I used Black Legion contrast to go over the gun casings, backpack details and shoulders. Leadbelcher was applied to parts across the models as was Retributor Gold layered with Liberator gold across most of the golden surfaces such as shoulder pad edges or armor studs.
Eventually, it was time to get Abaddon and his bodyguard painted up. One of the things that I loved about painting my Dark Angels for 40k was the three different armor colors built into the lore. This allowed me to paint a larger force without getting tired of painting only one color. While the normal units of the Sons of Horus are sea green with black accents, the most elite of the army are painted black with red accents. Brilliant.
FIrst I had to fashion a Justaerin wielding a legion banner: luckily the new(ish) Legion Command Squad kit comes with two different banner options, I got a command squad built in Mk6 armor and had a banner left over to kitbash onto a terminator. With very little effort, I got the plastic banner onto the resin terminator.
The Justaerin Terminators were primed black, and I followed that with an airbrush layer of Abaddon Black. How appropriate is that, huh? A light dusting of Corvus Black from above got the models prepped and ready for details. There was a lot of trim. There were a lot of metallic paints to be honest, and that took forever. The leather pteruges, select shoulders and the Eye of Horus were painted Khorne Red, then edged with Mephiston.
The majority of the sea-green Sons of Horus models were painted when I decided that I simultaneously loved the color and disliked how similar they felt to other Marines I have painted. I know, I know. A Space Marine is a Space Marine. But the green was too similar to the Dark Angels that I have been painting since nineteen-ninety-fucking-seven, and not dissimilar enough from the Salamanders that I have lined up for an upcoming project.
Spending far too much time on Warhammer pages on Facebook and doom-scrolling through Instagram, I had seen some impressive paint jobs and color schemes. Too many. Too many artists that spend more time on a single model than I do on an entire squad. I looked for something I thought I could do to change up my process, something that would make the biggest difference with the least amount of additional time sunk into the models.
When it came down to it, I decided on adding a grimdark tint to the models by using Streaking Grime enamel wash. It’s intended use was to add a running greasy weathering effect to add realism to models like tanks and battleships, and is used in moderation. Well, not with Warhammer miniatures: in order to add a gritty realism of dark and dingy war-torn soldiers. Here we are at problem I alluded to previously.
A significant portion of the sea-green models for the project were fully painted and based. A few even had minor glow effects from glowing Volkite weapons. While I should add transfers and a little battle damage before the enamel is “applied” but I should do it before bases are done and glows added. I say applied, but really, it should be “caked in” as the Streaking Grime is absolutely lathered on the model. Then is abandoned to its fate for a short while to stain the paint job, before being mostly wiped off.
The effect is great, and I am totally happy with it. I am excited to add more to this army and keep practicing this new process and hope to try it on other army projects. In the end, it didn’t turn out to be a big problem. Sure, I had to repaint the Volkite glow on the Support Squad. And much care was needed to avoid adding the enamel patina to the bases that had already been washed and drybrushed. The few areas that I fucked up the bases were covered with grass tufts. Then base rims were repainted. With that, I had a 1500 point painted army.
Too bad the q-tips I used to clear away most of the enamel left teeny-tiny fibers all over the minis. I cleaned them up. Then I took 4k pictures. Swearing ensued. I literally could not see the fibers while the model was in my hands, but there it was in glorious high-definition detail. I got tweezers out and used my magnifiers, but, apparently, at x2.5 magnification I still couldn’t see them all. Because I cleaned them all painstakingly over an entire evening and redid the photos. The fuckin fibers were still there. not a lot, but enough to piss me off. I proclaimed Fuck-It! and resigned to find a new way to clean up the models after the Streaking Grime stage, and posted the pics into this article with a sense of defeat and disgust.
At least you can’t see them while you’re playing…
Lupercal!
In retrospect, I find it funny that I didn’t conceive of making a Sons of Horus army way back when I started planning. I mean, I asked Kera what Traitor Legion she wanted me to paint up to join her Word Bearers. She chose Emperor’s Children and I never looked back: Traitors are for the wife, I side with the Emperor thank-you-very-much. Plus, I don’t really care for the classic Horus model. On the other hand, they go well with the World Bearers as starting the whole damn thing. Anyway, now I have some more models slated for the Sons of Horus occupying space in the Pile of Awesome.
Horus Ascended has been out of stock every time I have had hobby money available. Because, of course I have a painted army but don’t even own the model that inspired me to build and paint to go along with it. Soon. Hopefully very soon, there will be a painted Horus Ascending shown off here.
Tyson
Obsessive and neurotic collector of little plastic men, novels about the same little plastic men and paints to make the little plastic men pretty. Married to Kera, who puts up with him and pretends that she doesn’t hear him speaking to the little plastic men in between making pew pew noises in the hobby room. Requires adult supervision. A menace to himself but rarely to others. More beard than man
