Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard Rotor Cannon support squad

While the Spireguard was initially intended to be a predominantly "Armoured Company" type force (to contrast against the heavily infantry-based Thousand Sons from the previous incarnation of the army), from a gameplay standpoint having only the bare minimum of two troops choices is less than ideal. I'm hesitant to go hog-wild and build a whole bunch of new models however, as I'll inevitably make the wrong assumptions and build a mess of models that won't be viable with the upcoming lists from Inferno (the next Heresy book from FW).

However, I did have a squad of Spireguard armed with Rotor Cannons built with the very basic starter paint job on 'em, and with the weather being so nice I figured I'd finish 'em off over the weekend!

Pretty straightforward to knock them out, and gives the army another Troops choice to hold objectives. While the Rotor Cannons aren't particularly high strength or low AP, nine of 'em certainly drop a lot of dice when fired - sometimes quantity has a quality all its own after all! Now it's just a matter of starting to fiddle with army lists. I have to come up with a 1000, 2000 and 2500 point list for the upcoming event - looks like there's just shy of 3000 points built and painted (granted, 615 points of that is the Stormhammer) so there may need to be some further models built and painted to make up the numbers. I have had a hankering to add a trio of Sentinels to the force...

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard state of the army

Got some interesting news recently, turns out there's a Horus Heresy narrative event coming up at the end of the month surprisingly nearby - The downside is that in the time between now and then it's highly doubtful that the bases I've been waiting on will arrive and still allow me time to finish the Thousand Sons. As I'd sold off the Geno Five-Two and the Alpha Legion is basically a shelved project, that means it's time to bring the Spireguard out of deep storage and see what there actually is.

The plan was that the Spireguard would be a heavy assault/armored company sort of list, I think we can say mission accomplished! The recent rumors suggest that the Spireguard list in the upcoming Forge World book will use the Solar Auxilia list, which honestly I'm happy about as the tank options in the SA list are better suited to my vision for the force. That does mean that I needed to whip up a couple extra infantry models to make the units list-legal, to the tune of a vox- and vexilla-bearer for each 20-man squad.

Luckily it's been very agreeable weather of late, so I broke out the ol' box of bits and knocked together the four requisite models. Did a read-through of the old painting posts I'd done to re-familiarize myself with the paint scheme and set to work!

Painting up four models turned out to be a snap, and with the exception of the Stormhammer, and the transfers and weathering on the KV-2's, the army is surprisingly complete! That gives me three weeks to paint approximately 7,000 rivets and finish off all the tanks to the same level. Should be rather doable, and it's been fun to get back into the swing of the Thousand Sons scheme!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Prospero Spireguard Khalophis Victrix-2 Tanks Painting Continues

Got a little more brush time in this weekend than is usual, and managed to get the trio of tanks up to the "off the assembly line" stage, prior to the addition of waterslide transfers and weathering. Despite the fact that three days ago we got 19" of snow, this afternoon it was almost 60F and I was able to get the initial sealant pass on 'em. Gotta love springtime in the Rockies!

As has been pointed out, technically speaking the "Ragnarok" tank is a post-heresy designation, from the War World of Krieg during the 500-year war from 433-949.M40. That said, it's also a long standing trope that technology in the 41st Millennium is more often rediscovered from ancient archives rather than newly designed, so it's not a great stretch to assume that some STC Construct tank matching the silhouette of the modern Ragnarok existed during the Heresy. Since the Ragnarok is obviously just a 40k-ed up Soviet KV-2 from the 1940's, I figured I'd give them a nod and call these "Khalophis Vixtrix-2" tanks to give 'em a little Thousand Sons-y feel as well.

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Chilliad complete!

We had 14" of snow dumped on us overnight, so I'm working from home today. That allowed me a little time over lunch to get the flock on the remaining members of the Geno Five-Two, and get 'em all laid out for a family photo before they get boxed up and in the mail!

The models here represent the remnants of the Dancers company following their mauling at Tel Utan in the novel Legion. I'd designed it as a basic allied force, with a few extra HQ choices for variety and narrative reasons.

Uxor Rukhsana Saiid is joined by her support staff, and the unit's marksmen who form a sniper team. They served with distinction in the games that I've played with 'em!

Hetman Peto Soneka is similarly joined by his command squad, as well as Genewhip Boone and his prods.

 

Bashaws Lon and Shah lead a 20-man squad each, providing the backbone of the force. The Gene-Bred regimental upgrade means they prove to be tough to shift of any objectives they take!

Lastly, the army is backed by a heavy weapons squad, bringing some light anti-tank punch to the party. Overall a rather enjoyable project to work on - it was really fun to kitbash up the models like I envisioned them in my head while reading the novel!

Sort of in between projects at this point, still in the bits-and-kits gathering phase for the KSons and there's a couple projects on the horizon but nothing concrete. May be time to do a few more Inq28 models to keep the mojo workin'!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Command and Recon squad painting (almost) complete!

Had a relatively quiet Friday evening and Saturday morning, and managed to crank out a fair chunk of 'the fun stuff' from the Geno Five-Two! Naturally, the penultimate step in virtually all of my painting projects involves taking a picture of 'em and then realizing all the little things here and there that I've missed when reviewing the pics for publication. Doh! Nevertheless, here's some pics of the recent batch of not-quite-finished minis to (very nearly) roll off the painting line:

Leading things off is Hetman Peto Soneka (generously donated to the cause by the always-awesome Dai of The Lost and the Damned and the Stunted) and his command squad with a Voxcaster and (what will eventually be) the Company standard. The other three members of the squad are armed with Heavy Stubbers, which I've always liked as a support weapon.

 

Next up is the recon squad, all armed with sniper rifles. Tried to come up with a camo pattern that matched the bases for the cameoline cloaks, and decided to go with yellow interior lining to tie them in with the rest of the force. They performed admirably on the table recently, as well - very nearly taking down a Bloodthirster all by themselves!

Lastly are the Gene-whips, Franco Boone and his prods Roke and Pharon - with the leadership of the auxilia lists being on the low side, the addition of the proto-commissars is a welcome addition!

I missed the weather window on these and woke up to snowfall this morning, so there's still plenty of time to go in and fix up all the little misses and errors. After that's done, it may be time for a brief Inq28 break, as a fun little package arrived on my doorstep earlier in the week...

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Autocannon teams painted

Cracking along with the Geno Five-Two, feeling like I have the paint scheme dialed in pretty well at this point, and was able to bang out the Autocannon heavy weapon teams over the last couple nights. Really been nice getting back into the swing of painting once again!

Still waiting for it to warm up enough to do the initial sealant pass and get the static grass on. Up to 45F tomorrow they say, but that's still well into what I consider the danger zone for spray sealant. Better to wait for warmer days than risk 'em frosting over, I think... In other news, the long-awaited heads finally arrived after being lost in the warp for weeks. Time to crack out the greenstuff and get the rest of the infantry re-capitated! Once that's done, all the infantry will be built, which means at this point the only thing I'm still missing are the three Leman Russ tanks I have planned for the army. 

In Legion, while they mention the Geno had tank support, other than the Centaur there isn't a specific name/variant mentioned, so just to be a little different I'm thinking about going with the MaxMini Gothic KV-2, as I quite dig the quasi-Ragnarok look which I think suits the Heresy vibe of the army. I'll likely leave off the side sponsons and swap out the hull weapon for a proper lascannon. Gotta wait to rebuild the hobby fund a bit first - too much coming in and not enough going out of late!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two infantry squad almost done!

There's always a point when painting a model where I think "this looks like garbage, ugh", which is where I'd more or less left off on the models yesterday. Intellectually I know that pushing on and adding the next couple steps generally absolves that feeling and I was able to sneak a couple more hours of brush time last night and this morning and got the models up to a point where they're really coming into focus and I'm starting to be quite happy with 'em!

Still a bit of clean-up and detailing to go - there's always one or two models that missed a step here or there in the batch painting passes. Once that's done they'll get some static grass and a sealant pass, but seeing as the high is supposed to be about 20F today that's not going to be happening. Argh!

Sadly it's seemed that the second wave of heads I ordered from Meridian Miniatures has been lost in the warp, it's now been six weeks since the order was placed. I've been in contact with 'em and they've assured me that they'll make it right, but that does mean the rest of the Geno are headless and on hold. Guess that means it's time to start getting some of the associated Alpha Legion models painted up! Sort of a fun aspect to this project, the two disparate paint schemes of the two halves of the army means that if I get tired of painting one set of colors I can switch over to the other. I think the purple/green of the Alphas should set off nicely against the yellow/black of the Geno when all is said and done!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two infantry squad painting begins!

Could it be? After what seems like ages, I've finally had a couple hours to put paint to miniature again. Huzzah! Not a particularly exciting bit of progress to show, but progress nonetheless:

The dark grey/black uniform with the yellow capes which turns out to be pretty striking, but until the rest of the detail gets picked out (belts, boots, glareshields, etc) they look a little drab at the moment. The red of the bases should set off nicely against the yellow capes to give the models a bit more pop, and the color wheel suggests that they ought to get a little blue spot color somewhere as well. Easy enough on the bashaws and their power swords, so I'm leaning towards making the glareshields blue as well, should help draw the eye.

So far so good, hoping to get another couple hours in over the weekend!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two fire support squad built

So it turns out I was overestimating exactly how much space the gunners would take up on the bases for the autocannon teams, once I'd gotten the crew all built I started experimenting with positioning and for the most part was able to fit two per base in such a way that they make interesting vignettes and should still be easy to paint.

Rather pleased with how they've turned out so far and quite looking forward to getting some paint on both these and the first infantry squad. Unfortunately it's been rather chilly of late and I've not had much luck finding a time to get them primered. Argh!

Shuffling the army list around a bit to account for the upcoming heresy plastics (the Alpha Legion allies may be taking up a bit more of their share of the 2500 point list I'm currently building towards), so the lascannon team bits have gone into the Closet of Doom for use with the Prospero Spireguard army that lies in wait for the Thousand Sons to rise again...

...And with the upcoming plastics, they may very well do so sooner rather than later!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - first Geno Five-Two squad built!

Over the last few days the final bits have arrived and I was able to get the first 20-man squad of the Geno Five-Two Dancers Company built. I thought I'd write a bit about my miniature build/posing philosophy, as folks sometimes remark on the natural/dynamic poses I get with the miniatures, and that comes down to a couple key concepts I utilize when putting 'em together.

Starting off, you gotta stick the legs down to the base, no crazy surprise there. After that I'll generally attach the torsos to the models, generally alternating between having them 'straight on' with the hips, canted around to the right about 45 degrees or canted around to the left about 45 degrees. In general real life movement, one's torso doesn't usually twist much farther than this, and when the models are turned much farther than that, the miniature starts to look a bit 'off'. Once the torsos are firmly attached, I'll note the position of the feet, and imagine an angle drawn between the points of the toes (#2 above) as that will act as a bit of a reference guide for the next steps.

On many models carrying a rifle, it's held across the chest in a fairly predictable position, and the torso twist applied in the earlier step will inform where the muzzle of the weapon ends up pointing. Where possible I try to lean towards torso/weapon positions such that the muzzle falls within the angle described by the feet in the previous step (#1 and 2 above), as that approximates a braced firing position. Models whose torso is canted around to the left will naturally have the muzzle of the weapon fall outside the angle of the feet (#3 above), but that's okay as we'll discuss in a moment. In order to get a model to point a rifle held across the chest all the way around to the right, the model's torso would have had to been twisted far beyond the 45 degree mark and would look anatomically inaccurate (so generally I don't ever end up with any built models that would look that way), but there are character models brandishing one-handed weapons that may 'break the rules'. In those cases, I try not to have the weapon pointing at a more than 90 degree angle from the line drawn through the opposing foot (#4), as that would mean the model would essentially be aiming behind it which can look rather awkward.

The last step is the head, positioning of which is very important. The main rule I follow here is that the angle of the feet is more important than the position of the weapon when deciding which way to point the head. Where the muzzle of the weapon weapon lies within the angle of the feet, I tend to have the model's head sighting down the weapon, as that results in a natural-looking firing position (#1 and 2 above). When the muzzle of the weapon points outside the angle of the feet, the head should STILL face somewhere within the angle of the feet (#3 above), as that results in a model that appears to be advancing with his weapon held at the ready prior to assuming a firing stance. The exception applies for characters with one-handed weapons, and in those cases the head may be canted a little further around to sight down the outstretched barrel, but I stick with the 90 degree angle from the opposing foot rule here as well.

Bashaws Lon and Shah here are examples of the one-hander rules. In these cases I dry-fit the arms onto the torsos first before gluing the torsos to the legs, to ensure that the weapons positioning wouldn't violate 'the rules'. Lon's sword and pistol ended up lining up nicely with his feet, and as his sword is the obvious direction of interest, his head was aligned to sight down the blade. Shah on the other hand sights down the barrel of his pistol which is just shy of a 90 degree angle from the torso. Canting the torso around such that the weapon falls within the angle of the advancing feet meant that it would have violated the 45 degree twist rule, so that means instead his head must point outside the angle of the feet in order to align with the pistol, but by keeping it to within the 90 degree angle from his right foot it still looks like a natural pose as no single element of the body is twisted around farther than would be natural.

Not sure if that explanation makes a lot of sense, but happy to answer any questions about the method!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Fire Support Squad begins

Sadly Real Life(tm) continues to eat up the majority of my time recently, but I did get a big box o' joy from Victoria Lamb Miniatures on Friday which was a nice way to end an otherwise rather irritating week! The box included the remaining legs and torsos for the Geno Five-Two infantry squads, a bunch of arms and weapons (that will be going into the spares bucket now that I have the integrated arms/weapon sprues on the way), as well as all the bits to make up the heavy weapons for the Fire Support Squads. I was really impressed with the kits, super crisp castings and the ones I've built thus far have gone together like a dream!

I did manage to squeeze in enough hobby time over the weekend to get the bits washed and dried, and put together the first five of the heavy weapon carriages. When all is said and done there will be five autocannons and five lascannons, which should give the army a little extra punch. I'm considering how I want to do the crew - considering putting one member on the 60mm base with the gun, and putting the second man on a separate base to facilitate wound tracking, or possibly just having both members be separate - I'm finding the carriage takes up a surprising amount of room on the base and I'm afraid packing both crewmen on will make them too busy (not to mention rather hard to paint).

Heresy Era Alpha Legion - Dreadtober Contemptor almost done!

Wonder upon wonders I had a half day on Wednesday and got a little hobby time in! Thought I'd crack on with the Contemptor and more or less finished it off to the 'factory floor' stage. Touched up the symbols and silver, and added a touch of orange and gold for spot colors. It's been a little too rainy to risk trying to seal it however, so any further weathering and waterslide transfers will have to wait until it dries out a bit!

 

Still experimenting with the bases - In Legion the desert sands of Nurth are described as being red-hued however I didn't want to go full Mars red with it (for fear of it being too cartoony against the purple of the models), so a more subdued reddish brown it is! Starting with Vallejo Dark Flesh as a base coat on the dirt, it was then drybrushed with Earth then washed with the ol' Devlan Mud analog (Strong Tone Ink from Army Painter). To give it some variety but still be desert-y, some of the more exposed chunks of rock get the sandstone treatment starting with a base coat of Earth, followed by successive drybrush passes with Khaki and Bone White. It too was then given the Devlan Mud wash. To be truthful the wash stage mostly consisted of using the "slop it on the whole darn base, you cheating hack" method. Hah! Since I ordinarily paint the rims of my bases in Dark Flesh, I thought it might be refreshing to switch it up on these models and go with a lighter rim painted in Earth to set off against the darker terrain. It's workable, but I'm not 100% sold on it quite yet.

  

All that remains is a little flock to give it some life and a sense of scale! I didn't like my usual green mix when I used it on the earlier test models, so this afternoon  I ordered up three different tins in varying tones, with the intent of creating a combo mix - The arid straw color will form the backbone of the mix, with just a couple tablespoons of the other two just to give it a few blades of color here and there and stop it from being quite so monochromatic.

While I was faffing about waiting for various washes to dry on the Contemptor, I started assembling the first of two squads of the Dancers company of the Geno Five-two. I'd ordered up a whole mess of separate 'universal rolled sleeve' arms and a mess of lasrifles, but to my horror when I was looking back over the catalog I noted that Victoria Lamb does sprues of rolled sleeve arms with integral lasrifles identical to what I'd ordered and would undoubtedly save me hours of hobby frustration. Argh! One sheepish follow-on order later... No worries though, the universal arms will come in handy to build a couple characterful models, vexillaries, vox operators and the like!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two test models built!

I got home yesterday and found the long-awaited package from Victoria Lamb waiting for me! Unfortunately there was a bit of a mix-up and the lasrifles I'd ordered were missing from the box (though a quick email to VL sorted the issue), but there were enough bits to knock together a couple test figs to see how everything goes together.

So without further ado - Hetman Peto Soneka and Bashaw Lon! Everything went together like a dream, with the minor matter of the heads. The ones I'd ordered from Meridian Minis don't come with necks but a bit of greenstuff sorted that right out!

Rather pleased with 'em overall - looking forward to building more of 'em once the lasrifles show up! In other plans for the army I'm seeing a lot of "Dreadtober" posts, so I've dug out the Alpha Legion dread I'd picked up at GenCon and have it soaking in preparation for assembly!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five Two, the LVO plan unveiled!

So Real Life(tm) has been kicking my butt over the last couple weeks and I've gotten almost nothing of note done on the hobby front. On the plus side, now that I'm back from vacation I could finally order up some bits for the Geno Five-Two and they're starting to arrive! Unfortunately, so far it's heads and bases, with none of the middle bits to connect 'em. Argh!

That said, with two potential 40k travel destination events rapidly approaching I figured it was time to sit down and really figure out an army list. That'll also help me sort out what I need to buy and really stick to just the models needed for the events - gotta be a bit more frugal this time as the ol' hobby fund is relatively low at the moment. The LVO is coming up a the beginning of February, at 2500 points so I did some fiddling around and came up with the following - Auxilia with the "Gene Crafted" Provenance, backed up by a small allied force of Alpha Legion. The idea behind the force is that of Peto Soneka's "Dancers" company prior to their getting mauled at Tel Utan, and the Alpha Legion units that were also in-theatre at the time.

Ends up being 75ish Army troopers and support weapons, 31 Marines and a trio of battle tanks. Competitive? Probably not, but it's fluffy as heck and should be fun to play! It'll be amusing to see 'em get mauled in every game just like they do in the books, while the Alpha Legion doesn't show up until the very end when it's far to late to save them (due to my terrible reserve rolls). Hah!

I did fiddle around with the models I'd intended to use for Uxor Rukhsana Saiid and her attendants to get a feel for some basic color schemes. Rukhsana is mentioned wearing a black uniform and a grey stormcoat at one point in the novel so she works out pretty well. The other models are the female arcadians from Victoria Lamb, not going to be used in the army list but were done up mostly to test out the scheme. I'm going with some desert bases from Secret Weapon for the final project, I like the color achieved on these but will likely be going with a different static grass color (something more blonde/straw colored), as the green just doesn't do it for me.

Getting excited to actually come to grips with the project!

Heresy Era Imperial Army - Geno Five-Two Chiliad

So as I near the finish line for the Thousand Sons (as the Prospero book isn't coming out for quite some time), I've been considering what my next Heresy project is going to be and I'm scheming on building up a small force of Imperial Army based on the forces in the book Legion - The Geno Five-Two Chiliad, and a tiny allied force of Alpha Legion to accompany them. As most of my projects go, the intent is to do a small 2000 point boutique army. It will become a 5000-point monster in due course. Hah!

Starting off with the command squad for the Geno Five-Two portion of the army, which means I needed a unit of female troopers. Victoria Lamb's Arcadians to the rescue!

I'm planning on doing these ladies up as Uxor Honen Mu and her command squad, and building up a few units of the Jokers led by Hurtado Bronzi using the male variants of the Arcadians - though I'm planning on holding off on the order/assembly of them until the book drops so I know exactly how the units are laid out in the heresy army lists.

They are described as wearing capes so I'll be using the VL camo cloaks as well. From the book it sounded like the Geno didn't have much in the way of heavy tanks, but they do mention that they were outfitted with Centaurs, which is a vehicle that I've always wanted to build but never had a good reason to!

In other news, this is post #499 - Going to have to come up with something fun for #500!