Sons of Horus (the beginning)

 I've been collecting Warhammer 40,000 for decades now and was an avid reader of the Index Astartes and Horus Heresy books, so when the Horus Heresy boxed games were released with whole squads of old patterns of Space Marine armor I jumped on the opportunity to get a bunch of cool minis. Unfortunately for those minis they languished in a closet while my ever shifting attentions turned to my latest hobby project. Several collections of 15mm minis and still ongoing narrative 40K campaign with friends later and I have turned my attentions back to those minis hopefully in time for them to see some action on the tabletop for Age of Darkness Second Edition.

It's gonna be a while before we get
to this stage.

So where does one embark on journey that was abandoned once before? At the beginning of course, well inside a stack of bins filled with parts and pieces of temporarily discarded in a mix of apprehension and lacking attention. This time however I was older and wiser and more eager to finish these minis than I had been when I bought them (this what I tell myself anyway) so I dig in with both hands and extricate the needed parts and pieces. The first couple things I find are some converted Mk IV marines that I actually made to be Imperial Fists, I've always like the Sons of Dorn and have had an army of them in the past, but I also remember deviating from my original intent of building the Betrayal at Calth box as a bluefor and opfor. Under the stalwart defenders of the Imperial Palace I find what I was really interested in, my Sons of Horus Reaver Squad with jump packs.

When I had originally put these together I remember being conflicted about if I liked them or not, they were fine but they didn't resonate the way the art from the Horus Heresy books did with me. I wanted better, I wanted something fitting to field on a tabletop and proclaim victory for the Warmaster, I wanted cooler Space Marines. I gathered up all the kits I had from the Betrayal at Calth and the Burning of Prospero, I dug through all my cast off bits and organized as many as I could from the Chaos Space Marine kits and unusual bits that would breathe some life into my conversions. Many afternoons were wiled away by building backpacks and multi-part torsos while Law and Order played to drown out the existential dread... (stares off into the endless dark)

Out of this state emerged something better than my original concept. A force that would be more representative of the image of the Sons of Horus in my mind. I had plenty of components but I realized that to really make a collection that I could be happy with I would need some things I had neglected to get my first go round. Luckily a number of things had changed in the time in between the release of the Horus Heresy boxed games and my second attempt for Age of Darkness Second Edition.

I got started by adding the chains and trophy skulls prevalent in the Forge World art. The chain was easy enough to source, a single pack of fine jewelers chain from Amazon had me blunting my flush cutters. The skulls were quite a bit more in price as I went with the GW skull accessory kit but I was determined not to cut corners and leave myself feeling disappointed like the first time. I wanted to encapsulate the brutality of the lore in the posing and adornment of the minis, and to help with this aspect I added lots of bits from the older Chaos Space Marine kits, flayed skin behind holsters and pouches, long spikes with skewered human skulls, hooks and spikes added to arms and armor for maiming those who would stand against the Warmaster! (More than once I was asked to keep the maniacal cackling down by my partner.)

The extended building and conceptualization process really allowed my to cement an aesthetic that felt right. That's not to say that there weren't setbacks or changes in the way I was going about doing some things to my Sons of Horus force. More than once I would build several minis only to go back and change their poses or strip off their arms to replace them with something more desirable for my opinion what they should look like. I had to learn how to best attach those menacing trophy chains, something that until this project I had little experience with. Overall though things were progressing, I was getting two or three steps forward for every setback and soon my desk was covered with little traitors.

The whole project was becoming quite the undertaking but it was working and I could see my progress materialize as this vague concept was made into a collection of minis that I was really pleased with. Like all things my Sons of Horus army was something that could be broken down into stages and I was nearing the end of that first phase. I was fast approaching the time when I would have to knuckle down and paint this little horde of minis (gulp), especially if I wanted to get them ready in time for what I knew was coming sometime this year, Age of Darkness Second Edition. 

As you can already tell from the fist picture in this post the painting definitely happened, but I'll save going in to that for the next post in this series. I'm optimistic that my renewed excitement for my Sons of Horus and the upcoming Horus Heresy releases will drive more regular content on this blog. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far and I hope you've enjoyed my thoughts, maybe it will encourage you in some element of the hobby or I might even see you on the battlefields of the 31st millennium.