Epic: Let's Paint Solar Auxilia Tanks

I've painted the space marines from my Legions Imperialis box, but when I get around to playing it, I'm pretty sure I also want to try including some Solar Auxilia tanks as allies.

**

The first thing I did was rebase my Imperial Navy flyers from Aeronautica Imperialis for Legions.

I really like the dark green I painted my Aeronautica, and it matches my Titans, so I think I'm also going to make my Solar Auxilia vehicles the same color. I tried a base coat of Black Green and a drybrush of Luftwaffe Camo Green, but I wasn't really happy with the result, so it's plain Luftwaffe Camo Green for the Aethon Heavy Sentinels.

My reasoning is that both the Navy and Auxilia forces have been attached to Legio Venefica for so long that they've adopted the same color scheme for ease of identification.

Then it was on to the fun stuff: the tanks. I started with the entertaining lozenges that are the Malcador tanks.

And moved on to the Leman Russes.

With the basic rules, i.e. pre-Liber Strategia, there was no reason to take the basic battlecannon Russ over the Vanquisher, so that's how I built mine.

The Legions core set came with enough space marine tanks to build 2/3 of an armored company, and the Auxilia got the same. So I needed to pick up some super-heavies to be able to field a company, and with my regular Titanicus opponent threatening me with his Titans, I had to pick the Shadowsword. I built the other tank as a Stormblade, and they're both very handsome beasts.

And so here's my armored company!

Finally, since I have a pretty strong inkling that I'm going to be fighting a Titan Legion, I went and bought some Valdor tank destroyers. The shock pulse ought to come in handy knocking down void shields and screwing with the Titans in general, and besides, I really like painting little tanks.

I wanted to be able to paint the gun under the covering, so I left that off for priming.

And here's the end result.

**

What can I say? I adore tiny tanks, and want to paint more of them.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 16: Age of Darkness

He wanted to weep, but the last two years had turned his heart to stone.

 - Rules of Engagement, Graham McNeill, in The Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness

This time on Let's Read the Horus Heresy, it's another short story collection, called Age of Darkness.

**

McNeill opens with a story about some Smurfs doing combat simulations; it's not bad, but they really are the most boring legion. Liar's Due by James Swallow is a really good Alpha Legion story, and after this and Nemesis, I'm kind of a fan. Nick Kyme's Forgotten Sons is, sadly, also very forgettable.

The first Horus Heresy novel I actually read was by John French, and this collection has his story The Last Remembrancer. I quite liked it, and on reading it, I realized why I've developed such a dislike of Rogal Dorn. He's a bully. I'm not sure I've seen an appearance from him yet where he doesn't threaten to murder people for crimes like disagreeing with him, or telling him something he doesn't want to hear.

Chris Wraight's Rebirth is a visit to the ruins of Prospero, and speaking of bullies, the comparison made in it between the World Eaters and Space Wolves is very apt. The World Eaters are a tragedy: genetic super-soldiers literally driven insane by their desire to emulate their deeply damaged Primarch. So far in these stories, in their interactions with the other legions, the Space Wolves and Leman Russ just come across as hypocritical assholes. Y'know, sorcery is terrible, unless a "rune-priest" does it. I freely admit I never liked the faux space viking thing, but it's not as if anything I've read so far has made me change my mind.

Gav Thorpe's story, The Face of Treachery, was just flat and boring. Little Horus, by Dan Abnett, wasn't really anything that special, but the quality of his writing really is head and shoulders above everyone else. I still like the Luna Wolves because of Abnett, and am trying to resist adding yet another legion to my Epic collection. Rob Sanders's Iron Within is a decent enough story about some loyalist Iron Warriors, and Aaron Dembski-Bowden finishes on a strong note by taking everything that was good about Descent of Angels and running with it.

**

So far, these anthologies have been a bit of a mixed bag. Both ones I've read have had some really good stories, a couple of bad ones, and several very forgettable ones. A I write this, though, Black Library are charging 6.49€ for an anthology, and 3.49-3.99€ for a single short story, so basically if there are two stories in an anthology that I'm interested in reading, it's actually cheaper to get the whole thing. So maybe I'll be reading a few more.

Let's Play Cuba Libre

Mmm... organized crime.

 - Homer Simpson, Last Exit to Springfield, the Simpsons, season 4

I remember seeing a copy of Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War, 1954-62 at our friendly local gaming store and thinking to myself that anyone who makes a board game out of the Algerian war has got to be mad. Of course, I now know more about GMT Games and can testify that they are, indeed, quite mad. Still, I was intrigued by the idea of an entire series of counterinsurgency games, and since the publishers themselves suggest starting with Cuba Libre, that's what we're going to do.

**

The first impression I got was sheer delight at how small the game board was! We're used to games taking up the entire table, so it was a delight to have some actual elbow room. Despite its tiny size, the board is very functional, and the cards and wooden pieces are excellent.

We're playing as four factions fighting over Cuba: the government, Fidel's rebels, the Revolutionary Directorate of 13 March, and the US Mafia. While the government is trying to hold on to power and suppress the rebels, the rebels are trying to control enough territories to overthrow the government, while the mob is trying to keep its casinos open and make money. While all factions have different win conditions, I was very interested in the asymmetrical nature of the Mafia faction, so that was who I played as.

Cuba Libre is a card-driven game, but in a very clever way: players don't hold cards in their hands, but a card is revealed from the deck, and then the top card of the deck is turned face up. So there's always one card in play, and you can see what the next card will be as well.

The icons at the top of the cards determine the order in which the factions act that turn. In that order, they can decide to pass, play the event, or conduct operations on the map. Once two factions have played, play moves on to the next card, and the factions that took an action last turn have to sit the next one out. In some cards, like Herbert Matthews above, you pick one out of two possible event outcomes.

It's a very clever system, which forces you to think quite hard about your decisions every turn. Furthermore, victory points are scored whenever a Propaganda card comes up; they're distributed throughout the deck, one per quarter.

We started as we went on: I was trying to open casinos and amass wealth, the Directorio massed in the central highlands and Fidel's gang founded bases in the east. Santiago de Cuba attracted huge amounts of police, military and guerrillas throughout, and somehow none of them got much done. The most miserable people on the island must have been the unfortunates who lived in Las Villas, which was constantly being shaken down for resources by the Directory's guerrillas.

When the game ends is determined by when the last Propaganda card comes out. If the deck is prepared properly, it should be in the final quarter of cards: one of cards 40-52. In our case it was card number 49. So with the third Propaganda card showing up surprisingly early, the last campaign turned into a bit of a slog. However, in the end, the Directory won a surprisingly tight game.

We all enjoyed the game and found it quite simple to pick up and play on a weekend day. The asymmetry between the factions and the card-driven system are excellent. I've put in a P500 order for Pendragon, the COIN game set in Roman Britain. Before it shows up, I'm pretty sure we'll bust out Cuba Libre again.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 15: Lorgar: Bearer of the Word

The Tower of Infinite Lords was less impressive than its name suggested.

 - The Horus Heresy: The Primarchs: Lorgar: Bearer of the Word, Gav Thorpe

Greetings from Kor Phaeron! The Lord Phaeron! The Bearer of the Word! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!

 - Castora, herald-slave of the Covenant of Vharadesh, probably

I decided it would be a good idea to follow up The First Heretic with Lorgar, to stay on a Word Bearers kick. This one's by Gav Thorpe, who was something of a controversial figure back in the day in the Warhammer hobby. I read a short story of his in Tales of Heresy, and it wasn't great. In this Primarchs novel - they don't seem to be numbered - he's taking us to the Word Bearers' homeworld of Colchis.

**

The book starts with a bunch of impoverished nomads on a desert planet, who come across Kor Phaeron's Mad Max caravan. Because I mean of course the religious fanatics are a desert people. There actually hasn't been a whole lot of orientalism in the Horus Heresy series so far, but Lorgar goes a long way toward fixing that. I half expected Kor Phaeron to have a harem.

Anyway the nomads have discovered a remarkable child in the desert. It's Lorgar, obviously, and Kor Phaeron takes him into the caravan and starts teaching him the faith. Even though there's an actual sandworm, it's a lot more Mad Max than Dune, because the religious content is really just thinly veiled Chaos worship. No human sacrifices, daemon-summoning or that kind of thing (yet), but it's very obvious that the Powers who rule Colchis are the Chaos gods.

Lorgar is instructed in their worship, but when he starts having visions of the Emperor and C. Magnus the Red, he replaces Lorgar as the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla and starts preaching the faith of the One, who will soon descend to them from the sky. Lorgar goes on to take over the biggest religious organization on Colchis, the Covenant, and unify the planet into a theocracy, while Kor Phaeron is an evil bureaucrat.

The problem is that this is all incredibly boring. It's not a bad story, but Thorpe's prose is so lackluster that nothing feels like it matters. Again, Lorgar is a sympathetic character, and so are several of the others, while even Kor Phaeron gets some good moments. But there's nothing exciting, interesting or memorable here, not even any really interesting fluff for wargaming. Given that the Primarchs ebooks currently cost twice as much as the main series, I would strongly recommend avoiding this even if you're a Word Bearers fan.