Let's Play Warhammer Renaissance: The First Sheep Raid of Dudesdale

I have had the great pleasure of playing my first game of Warhammer Renaissance! We played a 1000-point game, with two players on each side: I brought a 500-point Khorne warband and allied with the Skaven to fight the Bretonnians and their Dwarf allies, in what I have dubbed the First Sheep Raid of Dudesdale. We had an excellent time.

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This was my army list:

Chaos Hero Thekla von Grauschädel - 135 points

 Mark of Khorne, additional hand weapon

The Scholars of Brass and Blood:

9 Chaos Warriors - 162 pts

The Moon Dancers:

5 Marauder Horsemen - 115 pts

 +10 standard bearer = 125 points

5 Bloodletters of Khorne - 80 points

For a total of 502 points. My Skaven allies fielded a block of Clanrats led by their general, a unit of Skaven Slaves, a Warpfire Thrower, some Poison Wind Globadiers, a battery of Jezzails and some Giant Rats.

For the objective, we rolled an 8 for Take the Relic: we would be fighting over an arcane landmark in the center of the table. Ordinarily, it would provide extra Winds of Magic cards to the first wizard to reach it, so we decided instead that the first character to reach it could draw a random magic item. One of the other players had brought some sheep miniatures, and they were placed in the middle of the landmark so we'd have something to fight over.

Here's how we set up the terrain.

We drew each player a random magic item or rune, as appropriate; mine was the rather underwhelming Silver Sigil Sword, for +3 Initiative. Our host also owns a full deck of Chaos Gift cards, so I would have them at my disposal - for better or worse! As this was such a small game, I would only draw one Gift per turn.

In proper Warhammer Renaissance fashion, we drew our deployment onto a piece of paper, and then both sides simultaneously deployed their units. Here's the Chaos-Skaven deployment and battle plan:

My Marauder Horsemen deployed on the far left, in hopes of flanking the enemy, with the Bloodletters and Chaos Warriors heading right up the middle to capture the objective. The Skaven infantry massed on our right, accompanied by the Warpfire Thrower and Globadiers, with the Giant Rats taking the right flank and the Jezzails in firing positions on the hill.

I apologize for the improvised movement trays! Facing us were the forces of Dudesdale and their Dwarf allies:

In the center were the dwarves, with one unit of infantry led by their general, and a unit of Thunderers, as well as a Flame Cannon on the hill. The Bretonnians deployed a huge unit of archers on the left flank, next to some foot knights, with five crossbowmen on the hill and a regiment of Knights on the right.

I have to admit that my heart sank when I saw the Bretonnian Knights in their panoply directly opposite my samurai rabbits. I didn't think there was any way I was going to win that fight, so at this point my hope was to draw the knights out into jezzail range, and maybe at least tie them up for a turn so that the Bloodletters could get at them.

Dudesdale won the die roll to go first, and we got the game started!

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Turn 1

Seeing the Khorne runes and the seething mass of rats before them, the Dudesdale forces opted to not move, except for the archers on their left taking position on the hill.

All the action was in the shooting phase. The crossbowmen on the hill let loose at the Bloodletters, only to see their bolts burst into flames midair as the daemonic aura easily repelled the attack. The dwarf Flame Cannon took aim at the Chaos Warriors, and the dwarven gunnery was dismayingly exact.

Two Chaos Warriors fell.

On our turn, we advanced into the teeth of the enemy fire. The rat-men surged forward while my Chaos Warriors made contact with the objective, and the Moon Dancers used their Fast Cavalry mobility to skirt around the edge of the woods, keeping the abandoned watchtower between themselves and the enemy knights.

The jezzail teams fired at the flame cannon, hitting both the machine and the crew, but failed to score any wounds. Meanwhile, my hero being the first to reach the arcane landmark, she secured the magic item hidden there, which turned out to be the Shield of Ptolos.

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Turn 2

Again, the Dudesdale line stood and waited for us to come to them, with the single exception of the knights, who, with appropriate Bretonnian hauteur, advanced at a stately pace slightly past the watchtower.

The ensuing shooting phase was pure murder. The crossbowmen took down three Bloodletters, and the archers and Thunderers cut a bloody swathe into the Clanrats. The flame cannon scored another direct hit, and I failed all my saves, leaving five Chaos Warriors knocked out of the battle! Luckily my units passed their panic tests.

When our turn came, Khorne decided he had had enough, as I drew Lose Gifts, immediately discarding the only other card I held. To be honest, I couldn't blame him; I thought the battle was over after that shooting phase.

Still, we weren't going down without a fight. While the remaining Chaos Warriors and Hero took cover by the ritual stones and the Bloodletters marched on, our flankers charged. The Skaven Packmaster drove his Giant Rats up the hill and into the Dudesdale archers, and with a resounding rabbity banzai, the Moon Dancers charged the Bretonnian Knights!

In the shooting phase, the Skaven jezzail teams switched targets to the crossbowmen, knocking down three and forcing a panic test, which the survivors failed.

On the right, the Giant Rats killed an archer, but lost the combat by a considerable margin and fled, which caused the Skaven Slaves to panic!

On our left, the Marauder Horsemen lost one of their number, but brought down two Bretonnians.

That was enough to win the combat, and the Bretonnians promptly failed their break test and fled off the table!

I tried to restrain the Moon Dancers, but they also failed their Leadership test and galloped off the table in pursuit!

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Turn 3

At the start of turn 3, I had a total of five models left on the battlefield. Everyone else was playing Warhammer, I was suddenly playing Age of Sigmar.

On the Dudesdale left, the archers charged the Poison Wind Globadiers in front of them, who fled into the woods. In the center, the dwarf infantry advanced and the flame cannon hit the Chaos Warriors once again, killing one of the two survivors. Thekla was also hit, and even the Shield of Ptolos couldn't protect her, and she fell.

I now had three models on the battlefield! Luckily, at the start of our turn, the Moon Dancers returned and galloped for the hill. Since my lone surviving Chaos Warrior couldn't claim the objective all alone, she and the Bloodletters charged the dwarves. On our right, the Clanrats charged the Bretonnian foot knights.

In the shooting phase, the Skaven Warpfire Thrower supported my fight in their inimitable way by firing into the mêlée, broiling some dwarves. The jezzails fired at the Dwarf Thunderers, but to no effect.

My daemons and Chaos Warrior did very little damage; in return, the dwarves killed the last Chaos Warrior and one of the Bloodletters. The last daemon failed its break test and disappeared into the warp, no doubt to face Khorne's fury.

Meanwhile, the Clanrats wiped out the foot knights!

The exuberant ratmen charged on as far as the hill, not realizing that this put the entire enemy army behind them.

**

Turn 4

The dwarf infantry advanced to the objective, while the archers continued their pursuit of the fleeing Skaven, charging and wiping out the giant rats. Meanwhile, the dwarf crew frantically wheeled around the flame cannon to shoot at the oncoming Marauders, but for the first time in the battle, they missed, overshooting the Moon Dancers completely.

On our turn, the Skaven Slaves continued to flee, blocking the line of sight of some of the jezzail teams on the hill.

The clanrats reformed and made for the Dwarf Thunderers, while my Marauder Horsemen charged the Flame Cannon.

The Warpfire Thrower team fired at the Dudesdale archers, hoping to make them flee off the table. Eight of them died in the flames, but the archers passed their panic test.

The jezzails sniped one of the dwarves holding the objective, and in the close combat phase, the Moon Dancers avenged their fallen comrades by wiping out the flame cannon crew.

Their overrun move carried them straight into the flank of the Dwarf Thunderers!

**

Turn 5

The homicidal (raticidal?) Dudesdale archers charged and wiped out the last remaining Poison Wind Globadiers, while the dwarves reformed to face the enemy. In the close combat phase, the Moon Dancers tore into the Dwarf Thunderers, killing half of them and sending the survivors fleeing.

On our turn, the Skaven Slaves fled onto the hill and created an almighty mess with the jezzail teams.

The Clanrats charged the dwarves, determined to seize the objective or die trying.

Unable to charge, the Moon Dancers moved to contest the objective and flank the dwarves if the game went to a sixth turn.

The mêlée was bloody but inconclusive, and when we rolled for a sixth turn, we didn't get it, so that's where the game ended! As darkness began to fall, both sides beat a retreat.

With both sides wreaking carnage on each other, our victory point totals were closely matched. And since both sides had one unit close enough to contest the objective, no victory points were awarded for it, making the game a draw.

**

That was a very hard-fought and eventful game, and we had a great time. I want to thank my opponents and my ally for an excellent game, and I'm very impressed by how smoothly the rules worked. We set up and played the game in a little under four hours, which is kind of impressive.

Since we had a lot of small units, mêlée combat was especially deadly, with units breaking or even being wiped out in just one round of combat. This also really underscored how important it was to get the charge! In general, there's a very authentic Warhammer feel where anything can happen based on the luck of the dice, and I love it.

As for my army, I'd have loved to have seen my Chaos Warriors or Bloodletters in action properly, and maybe if I hadn't failed so miserably in rolling saves, it might have happened. But then again, they absorbed all that firepower, which let the others get to close quarters.

My Marauder Horsemen were clearly the stars of the show, and I'm beyond delighted by their performance. Getting the charge against the Bretonnians was key, and clearly Khorne rewarded their bloodthirst. I'm pretty sure I want more Marauder horse, and also more infantry! Maybe a larger block of Marauders wouldn't be so easy to annihilate at range. Also, maybe a mounted character would actually have made it into combat!

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To sum up: Warhammer Renaissance is great, and I can't wait to play more of it.

Since neither side managed to secure the objective, the sheep went unclaimed. I imagine that all armies will have sent their people to recover the wounded and salvage any equipment they can; certainly Khorne won't let his warriors escape his service that easily. The next dawn will reveal a scorched and bloody battlefield, and grazing around the standing stone, some very confused sheep.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 39: Alpharius

I am Alpharius.

 - The Horus Heresy: Primarchs: Alpharius: Head of the Hydra, Mike Brooks

The Alpha Legion are still one of my favorite legions, but I haven't really formed a very solid picture of Alpharius yet. Mike Brooks is here to fix that.

**

Way back in Horus Rising, the remembrancers attached to the Luna Wolves played a prominent part in the story to highlight how superhuman the space marines were. Beyond them, the Primarchs were mystical, almost otherworldly.

Several years and a pile of novels later, the space marine point of view is the default, and Primarchs are too often just boring. I complained about this when I read the Primarchs anthology, although there are worse offenders. At first, Brooks's Alpharius comes off the same way: distant, impersonal and mundane.

In the first part of the book, which owes a lot to Dan Abnett's Blood Games and Praetorian of Dorn, young Alpharius tests the defenses of the Imperial Palace. It's not bad, but it's also not great. The story picks up when Alpharius is secretly united with his legion and goes crusading. Of course, because they're the Alpha Legion, they can't just be crusading, but have to have a secret sidequest, which leads them to join the Dark Angels in the Rangdan Xenocides and fight the Slaugth.

This second part of the book is much better, and makes the whole thing worth reading. There's good stuff here, including a welcome nod to the gambit roulette nature of the Alpha Legion's cunning plans when unrest they've fomented on a planet threatens to derail their super-secret mission. Also of note is an entirely positive portrait of a same-sex couple with a child, which is a welcome change from the quasi-fascism of some Black Library authors.

I already liked Alpharius and his legion; now I like them more. Alpharius goes on the Do Read list.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 38: Konrad Curze

Corpse-grey Tsagualsa turned under the light of a sickly star.

 - The Horus Heresy: Primarchs: Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Guy Haley

As I've said before, reading the Horus Heresy books has made me into something of a fan of the Night Lords and their incredibly goth primarch. So when I looked at the list of Primarchs novels, I had to get the Curze one.

Sadly, this was a mistake. Konrad Curze has the dubious distinction of being the only Horus Heresy novel I've read that has nothing of substance to add to the Warhammer canon whatsoever. It takes Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords trilogy, rehashes the things it said about Curze, and fills in a few bits that weren't explicitly spelled out by Dembski-Bowden, while adding nothing that would matter at all.

This book came out in 2019; the Dembski-Bowden novels were published 2010-12, and the omnibus came out in 2014. So barely five years after the omnibus, Black Library puts out this boring executive summary of what Curze was like in it. Why they did this I cannot conceive.

In general, I feel that a book shouldn't be critiqued for what it isn't. I mean this in the sense that this is the book the author chose to write, and criticism should assess that book, instead of saying they should have written something else. In this case, though, I'm breaking my rule, because of how bad this particular decision by the author is.

As I said, Curze sulking on Tsagualsa (which I keep thinking is Tsathoggua) has already been covered in the Night Lords trilogy. So far, the other Primarchs novels I've read were set before the great events of the Horus Heresy, but not this one. That's what I don't get at all. I mean yes, Curze's backstory as the Crow on planet Cyberpunk Gotham has already been told, but surely not all of it. We've barely had any glimpses into the Eighth Legion before the Heresy, or how Curze shaped them in his image. You'd think this would be significant, because by the time we properly meet Curze in Shadows of Treachery, he's already on the brink of starting his own personal Curze Heresy. So in this case, I do feel a strong sense of disappointment that the Primarchs novel on Curze chose to cover no new ground at all.

So yeah, not worth your time or money.

Warhammer Renaissance: Let's Paint Chaos Warriors

My main wargaming project right now is building a Warhammer Renaissance Chaos army from what I already own. I've already got some Khorne Daemons, and in Renaissance a Chaos army can be either Chaos Warriors, Beastmen or Daemons, or all three combined. Obviously that's the most fun, but at under 2000 points, it means the army has to be dedicated to only one Chaos god. So it turns out I'm building a Khorne warband.

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My first unit is some Marauder Horsemen. I've previously used the Samurai Rabbits from Eureka Miniatures' excellent Pond Wars range for my Stormbun Eternals and the Loyal Zootopian Lancers. Reading some Usagi Yojimbo gave me an idea, which led me to Warlord's Samurai Horsemen. I was originally going to field them as Rough Riders in 40k, but now they have the perhaps dubious honor of being the first full unit to join my Warhammer Renaissance Chaos warband.

Stillmania compels me to name each unit and provide them with a background, so:

The Moon Dancers

Long ago, in the land of Nippon, six samurai were so consumed by the way of the warrior that they lived only for battle and killing. Their daimyo, sickened by their bloodthirst, banished them from his service, making them rōnin, warriors without a master. As their infamy grew, no-one in Nippon would retain their services. And so the six rōnin headed north into the Chaos Wastes, where they dedicated themselves to Khorne and now ride under his bloody banner.

Six Marauder Horsemen with a standard bearer are worth 138 points.

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In addition to the horsemen, I also own a whole regiment of twelve Chaos Warriors, assembled and undercoated, who've sat on a shelf for so long that they were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Since our first game will be at 750 points, with a maximum points value per unit of 200, I can't field all twelve of them; ten Chaos Warriors add up to 180 points.

I think it's funny that I painted these specifically for Renaissance, which is basically an Oldhammer project, and I kind of accidentally made this the most grimdark unit I've ever painted. But I wanted them to look like proper fantasy villains, and I think I did.

The Scholars of Brass and Blood

Siegfried Totenbaum, High Professor of the Altdorf Polytechnical College, decided to experiment with an innovative new teaching technique called the group project. His students were divided into groups and told that their grade, and therefore their entire future, now depended on the success of their group project.

The first student death occurred two weeks into the project. Several fatal accidents followed, later escalating into outright murders and open warfare. Soon Totenbaum had been assassinated and the Polytechnical College was engulfed in flames. The only known survivors were a group of students who swore an oath to Khorne, overcame their enemies, and fled through the sewers as the College collapsed above them. They now roam the Chaos Wastes as warriors of the Blood God.

The obscure elven tome Totenbaum got his idea from, known by its Classical title Rota Magna, is believed to have been destroyed in the fire.

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Now all I need is a character to lead the army. A while ago, Archon Studios made a 28mm He-Man miniature game. I bought it on a whim; I watched the Filmation animated show religiously as a kid. So here I was, thinking that I need a Chaos Hero with something I can plausibly pass off as an Icon of Khorne from the magic item list - and I remembered I also got the Teela expansion.

I think she looks pretty good in Khorne's colors!

Of course we have to give her a name, so:

Thekla von Grauschädel

Born in the lowly hamlet of Grauschädel in Reikland, Thekla was sent to work as a maid for a local wizard. Slaving away in his household, Thekla developed a passionate hatred for her master and all magic-users. One of the older servants taught Thekla to read, and in the wizard's library, she found tomes with rituals for the destruction of magic-users. The wizard was such a brutal master that many of his servants soon joined a cult dedicated to his murder, and with young Thekla's leadership, he was soon dead and his manor burned to the ground. Thekla and the other servants fled into the woods, where she soon became their leader. The cult activities continued, and Thekla eventually drew Khorne's eye and earned his mark.

**

Together with some Bloodletters, I now have a tiny Chaos army for Warhammer Renaissance, and I'm hoping to get to try a game soon!

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 37: Angron

Jochura woke, if the brief, shivering yield to his exhaustion could be called sleep.

 - The Horus Heresy: Primarchs: Ghost of Nuceria, Ian St. Martin

I've read all of the main series Horus Heresy novels that I'm going to, but before I move on to the Siege of Terra books, I want to read about some of my favorite Primarchs. Now, I did already read one of these, namely Gav Thorpe's Lorgar, and it wasn't good. But what with After Desh'ea, First Heretic and Betrayer and everything, I really do like Angron and the World Eaters. So I'm reading what Ian St. Martin did with them.

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First up, I've got Ian St. Martin's short story Ghost of Nuceria. It's a brief look at Angron doing his best Conan the Barbarian on Nuceria, just before the climactic final battle of his ragtag gladiator army with their former overlords. Probably the most important point of the story is that the Emperor is a dick, but then we kind of knew that already.

From there we go on to the Primarchs novel, Angron: Slave of Nuceria. I think a content warning is in order, because the book starts with a slightly grisly surgery scene. It's set after Angron's been reunited with his legion, and they're trying to figure out how to implant copies of Angron's rage implants, the Butcher's Nails, in everyone. Angron has ordered this, but not everyone is very happy about it, especially centurion Mago of the 18th company, who's our main point-of-view character.

About half of the book is Mago, Khârn and the rest of the World Eaters trying to force a recalcitrant planet to return to compliance, while dealing with Angron's erratic and murderous behavior, and debating the wisdom of the Nails. When the legion fails to enforce compliance within Angron's arbitrary timeframe of 31 hours - a day on Nuceria - he goes berserk and starts murdering marines, until the legion's Librarians manage to shut him down. One of the Librarians falls into a coma and starts reliving Angron's memories of his time as a gladiator on Nuceria, which makes up the other half of the story.

Once again, those of us who know the fluff know how this all ends, but it's still a well-written and effective tragedy. Angron is just a really shitty, violent dad to his legion. He humiliates them and kills them when they don't live up to his impossible expectations, and is just generally an asshole to them even though they do their best to be good little legionnaires. The aggression, sulking and unpredictable violence are more than a little familiar to anyone who's survived abuse as a child or by a partner, which does give the story an extra dimension.

Having said that, it's also very easy to understand why Angron behaves the way he does. Not only does he still have the rage implants in his head, but the Emperor snatched him away from his comrades in the middle of their climactic battle, and forced him to take charge of a legion he never wanted. Combine that with Angron's insistence on the World Eaters also being implanted with the Nails, and I'm sorry to say that this instalment of power armor space opera is actually about transgenerational trauma.

In that trauma, Emps is the original shitty dad. The more Horus Heresy I read, the more obvious it becomes that the whole mess is really the story of the Emperor's complete mismanagement of the whole Primarch project. The way he treats Angron is just awful, but it's not like the World Eaters weren't a problem before he showed up. They were already rebelling on their own, and if we recall that Curze and the Night Lords were doing pretty much the same thing, and the senseless humiliation of the Word Bearers and the Thousand Sons, Emps had a pretty good civil war brewing without Horus doing a damn thing.

I've said before that the Horus Heresy is at its best when it's understood as a tragic space opera, and there are few more tragic characters in it than Angron and his legion. If I ever collected Horus Heresy loyalists, I think they'd definitely be World Eaters. Maybe I'll build a 28mm World Eaters Librarian and hope it satisfies this urge.

Anyway, Angron: Slave of Nuceria is a perfectly decent Horus Heresy book, and I'd recommend it to anyone with any interest in the World Eaters.

Let's Paint Warhammer Renaissance

A while ago, I was introduced to Warhammer Renaissance. Bizarrely living on a Facebook page, it's a fan project to take the 4th-6th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules and make them, well, better. I'm interested in trying it, as I should have some folks to play with, and more to the point, a huge pile of Warhammer Fantasy miniatures from back in the day. If Epic was my first love in wargaming, I did also own the 4th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle box, but got to play far too little of it. This is as good a time as any to fix that.

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Making something out of my chaotic collection of Warhammer Fantasy miniatures is very appealing to me, both from the obvious financial standpoint, but also on a deeper level. As long ago as 2019, I read a blog post from a Warhammer hobbyist, written shortly before he passed away. It made me resolve to try to finish modeling projects before starting new ones, so I did: I built some Warhammer 40,000 armies and actually played games with them. I followed that up with a New Year's resolution to not buy any new miniatures in 2024, which I think I mostly kept.

Then in 2025, Legions Imperialis showed up, and I've really enjoyed painting and playing it. I also feel that I've gone about it a lot more responsibly: I have no untouched Legions kits in my collection, and the unpainted stuff all fits in a single Legions Astartes Battle Group box. I'm quite happy about this.

So now it feels like the next logical step in this process is to go back to all the Warhammer Fantasy stuff I've bought over the years, and try to build some workable armies out of that. I'm going to try to do this with an absolute minimum of new purchases. This will make a serious dent in my stash of unpainted miniatures, and that makes me feel quite good.

What's more, we're going to be approaching Warhammer Renaissance through Stillmania. For those of you who have yet to hear the good word, Stillmania is an approach to wargaming named after Games Workshop writer and designer Nigel Stillman. It's basically the antithesis of the current meta-chasing, win-at-all-costs tournament culture.

For me, Stillmania means coming up with heaps of fluff for my army, but especially in my current circumstances, it means that I'm building a Warhammer Renaissance army out of what I have, and playing that army. I'm looking forward to it.

**

At a guess, I could probably build three, if not four, whole Warhammer Renaissance armies from what I already own. The easiest one to get into playable condition has to be Chaos; not just because the models cost a lot of points, but because I have so many of them already. For starters, I bought a Wrath and Rapture box back in the day, so I already have a bunch of Daemons we can get into Renaissance shape.

I started with the Juggernauts I'd painted earlier and once fielded in a game of 40k. I'd given them grey bases to match my 40k minis, but it didn't seem appropriate for fantasy models. So I came up with a sort of hell-themed basing scheme of Vermillion with a German Camo Black Brown drybrush:

I like it.

Yeenoghu got the same treatment, and while I was at it, I also painted the base of my Skull Cannon of Khorne to match, even though it doesn't exist in Renaissance.

I'm still kinda happy with the job I did on it, though, so maybe one day...

**

Wrath and Rapture also came with Bloodletters, and this project finally gave me a reason to paint them.

I never really thought much of Bloodletters, but they're kinda growing on me. Here's a closeup of the flag for pride month:

**

I'm very happy to have this project underway!

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 36: Titandeath

The spires of the Phalanx formed a cityscape as glorious as any once boasted by Terra’s orbital plates, now all the more impressive for lack of suitable comparators.

 - The Horus Heresy: Titandeath, Guy Haley

As a diehard Adeptus Titanicus player, I'd actually been looking forward to this book. We already got some very good Titan action in Legacies of Betrayal and some glimpses of god-engines in Vengeful Spirit and Tallarn, so it's about time the Titan Legions get a novel of their own.

**

Luckily, Guy Haley doesn't disappoint, and Titandeath is a very competently written and entertaining Horus Heresy story. It follows Legio Solaria, a loyalist Titan Legion whose command crews are all-female, and their battles with the traitors of Legio Vulpa at Beta-Garmon. I liked the characters, and there's a good balance of battle and personal narratives.

Titanicus players take note, there are several named Titan classes that I think have never had models. There's a tiny Titan: "a Rapier class scout, a lighter, swifter machine than even a Warhound", and several medium ones:

The balance of their engines was of middling classes – Reavers, Nightgaunts and Carnivores – but the aggressive manner in which they deployed them made up for the relative paucity of heavier machines.

Lexicanum identifies a Nightgaunt as a sub-type of the Warlord, but it's clearly described as a Titan smaller than a Warlord in Titandeath. We want these in Titanicus and Legions!

I'm also entertained that they're fighting over Nyrcon City, which I invariably read as Nyrok City. I mean I suppose I can see Fulgrim having an Andy McCoy phase. Again, I have to be honest and say that I don't fully understand why the two sides are fighting over this particular star system, but then I rarely do, and real-world wars and battles don't always make sense either.

**

So I liked Titandeath, and shockingly, it's the last main series Horus Heresy novel I'm reading. It's kind of appropriate, too, as Horus and the gang are now ready to start their assault on the Sol system. I think I still want to read a couple of the Primarch novels, and then I'll do some kind of summing up before hitting the Siege of Terra books. It's been a journey.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 35: Slaves to Darkness

The cloaked figure walked across the plain that had been a mountain.

 - The Horus Heresy: Slaves to Darkness, John French

This is the last print book available in the Horus Heresy main series, so this part of the project is nearing an end. I just enjoyed John French's Tallarn, and his short story was one of the best bits of the otherwise boring Burden of Loyalty. So I was a little surprised to find that getting through Slaves to Darkness was a slog.

Seeing as how this is the thirty-fifth Horus Heresy book I've read, it may just be the case that I'm getting a little tired of them. But Slaves to Darkness felt like one of those middle volumes of trilogies, where everything is either setting up the finale, or some pointless fluff around it.

Slaves to Darkness follows several characters: the Iron Warrior Volk and Son of Horus Argonis, who are with Perturabo's fleet; Horus's equerry Maloghurst; and Zardu Layak, Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers. The bunch of them are trying to marshal the traitor Primarchs for the final assault on Terra, and get Horus to recover after he's been wounded by Russ. Lorgar and Layak go looking for Fulgrim through the Webway, and the Iron Warriors go find Angron.

The trouble is that none of these characters, or the quests they're on, are particularly interesting. The action sequences feel formulaic, repetitive and pointless, and nothing meaningful happens at any point. At the end of the story, the traitor Primarchs who are going to assault Terra are there, like we knew they would be, and the entire novel leading up to it has felt like a waste of time.

My thesis at this point is that a successful Horus Heresy novel has good battle scenes, interesting characters and an amount of power armor soap opera. For the battle scenes to feel meaningful, we have to care about the characters and what they're doing, and the power armor soap opera is there to make the action mean something. Slaves to Darkness is too much power armor soap opera, with very few interesting characters and battle scenes that aren't really tied in to the soap opera at all.

I don't know, maybe I'd feel different if I read this with fresher eyes, so to speak, but this was a very disappointing experience. Avoid.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 34: Burden of Loyalty

Gritty ochre dust clings to the dead warrior’s open eyes.

 - Into Exile, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, in The Horus Heresy: The Burden of Loyalty

It's an anthology! The last one, as it happens; the Horus Heresy series is drawing to a close. It starts with a Gav Thorpe story starring Space Woofs, and I can't think of many things I'd like to read less, so I skip it. Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Into Exile was all right, but I have to say that I was disappointed by how boring Rob Sanders's Cybernetica was. Yes, it's got piles of fluff on Mars, but you can't help thinking that McNeill did all of this so much better in Mechanicum.

Luckily David Annandale's Binary Succession in this volume is much better, and the John French psi-titan story is so good that it demonstrated once again that he's the Black Library author who's made me miss the most subway stops. This is followed by Chris Wraight, and no matter how well he did with the White Scars, the Space Woofs are just as boring when he writes them. Finally, it's Dan Abnett with a decent enough short story starring his Perpetuals.

I have to say that this was a very poor quality anthology. I think the problem is the same one that's been present through the entire series: the loyalists are just really boring.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 33: Tallarn

The last Titan left on Tallarn bore the world’s new master across the dust plains.

 - The Horus Heresy: Tallarn, John French

I don't think it's a coincidence that some of my favorite Horus Heresy novels are the ones with barely a Space Marine in sight. Nemesis is the most prominent example, and I'd say I enjoyed Tallarn just as much, if not more. Or I mean technically this is an anthology, I think, but all the stories are by the same guy.

Later on in the book, some marines do show up, but at least they're interacting with non-marines a lot, and the Alpha Legion is also there, which is always fun. Tallarn is still mostly the story of people in tanks, on a planet turned to a toxic hell by virus bombardment, and that's what makes it so good.

The star of the show is definitely Tallarn itself. The sheer claustrophobia of driving tanks around a totally poisoned planet, where one tear in your protective suit means immediate, gruesome death, is powerfully conveyed and sticks with you. At first it's a mystery why anyone could possibly be bothered to fight over a place like this, but that gets turned into a plot point, which is satisfying.

If I'm honest, the plot itself isn't that great, but I was certainly entertained, and Tallarn goes on my Do Read list.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 32: Master of Mankind

"Father."

 - The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind, Aaron Dembski-Bowden

We've encountered something of a rarity on our journey through the Horus Heresy: a decidedly mediocre Aaron Dembski-Bowden joint.

Master of Mankind takes us to the Webway, where the Custodians, Sisters of Silence and Machine Cult are fighting an endless horde of faceless daemons. Our protagonists are a pair of Custodians, who are very stoic and loyal, and make Imperial Fists and even Smurfs seem like incredibly diverse and fascinating characters. The only bright spot is Arkhan Land, who actually seems like a person.

On the other side we have Drach'nyen, who is, well, quite boring. Beyond that, the only named opponents at any point are a couple of traitor Titans. It's an interesting choice to tell an epic civil war narrative with absolutely no personality at all on the other side, and it's by far the biggest problem with the story.

We also get some space-operatic visions from Emps which one of the Custodians is experiencing. Sadly, they're also not very interesting, and I can't help thinking that Dembski-Bowden's abilities are being misused quite badly here.

Master of Mankind takes place in the Webway, and we're pretty definitively told that the Emperor's "Great Work" was securing access to the Webway, but then Magnus shows up and inadvertently lets the daemons in. Once again, it begs the question: why on earth did Emps not tell Magnus what he was doing? I'm starting to be pretty strongly on team Magnus Did Nothing Wrong, because so far, I don't understand why Emps didn't tell Magnus, or for that matter Horus, about the whole thing.

Overall, I have to say this is a very disappointing novel. If it was anyone else, I'd say it was all right, but when it's the guy who wrote First Heretic and Betrayer, and I just finished his Night Lords trilogy, I was definitely expecting more. Miss this and you won't miss anything.

Let's Read Warhammer: The Night Lords

The First Heretic inspired me to read more Dembski-Bowden, and more about the Night Lords' Primarch, Konrad Curze; then Shadows of Treachery made it worse. To be honest, I knew next to nothing about the Night Lords before this reading project, except that their colors are dark blue and red, and they like skulls. They also have a potentially hilarious legion trait in Legions Imperialis where if they kill an enemy HQ unit, everyone close enough takes damage.

I started with the short story The Abyssal Edge. A grievously wounded Imperial Navy officer is assigned to the Night Lords as an archivist, and comes across some disturbing information about a clash between the Night Lords and the Thousand Sons and their Primarchs. It's a good little story, written well and effectively. There were also good Night Lords short stories in Eye of Terra, and a whole ADB novella in Shadows of Treachery, as well as a Graham McNeill story where Curze kicks Rogal Dorn's ass. Curze was also just about the only good thing about Unremembered Empire. So suffice to say that at this point, I'm becoming a fan.

**

The obvious next step was to pick up the Night Lords omnibus, and read it while waiting for my copy of Master of Mankind. However, in the foreword to the omnibus, Dembski-Bowden waxes lyrical on Simon Spurrier's Night Lords novel Lord of the Night (2005), which, it turns out, is available as an ebook. So I started there.

Lord of the Night follows two characters: Captain Zho Sahaal of the Night Lords, and Interrogator Mita Ashyn, a sanctioned psyker of the Ordo Xenos. Zho Sahaal drops out of the warp and crashes on a hive world where Ashyn is rooting out xenos cults, and all sorts of hijinks ensue.

It's an unexpectedly excellent book! Both protagonists are great characters. Sahaal is as insufferably emo as his primarch, but also does an excellent Predator impression. Ashyn's travails in her Inquisitor's entourage sometimes feel a bit too hackneyed, but overall it's a good story, and I like how on some level, I at least kept rooting for the Night Lord. So in that respect, this isn't helping. But I definitely recommend Lord of the Night.

**

The omnibus itself collects Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords trilogy and a couple of short stories. They're all good, and the trilogy itself is superb. I think it's probably the best 40k fiction I've read.

The Night Lords omnibus follows former Apothecary Talos, who's inherited his Primarch's gift and has visions of the future, and is therefore known as the Night Lords' prophet. At the start of the first novel, he's the de facto squad leader of First Claw, Tenth Company of the Night Lords, aboard the strike cruiser Covenant of Blood. The company and cruiser are commanded by the Exalted, who used to be Tenth Company's commander, captain Vandred, but is now a daemon of some kind.

Talos is the main character, but we're equally here for his human slaves, especially his long-suffering pilot Septimus, and the marines of First Claw. As new slaves are captured and new marines join the squad, there's a sort of found family vibe that's one of the main attractions of the story. The other is Talos, who's an excellent character.

The first novel follows Tenth Company as they join Abaddon's current project and participate in an assault on forge world of Crythe, while dealing with schemes and plots both outside and inside the company. Abaddon is still basically the same guy he was in Horus Rising: someone you'd be quite happy to have leading an assault, but not necessarily planning one. The story is great, with some special highlights like the Night Lords fighting a Warhound Titan and the flashbacks to the legion after the Heresy and the death of their Primarch.

The second part of the trilogy has Tenth Company join Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs for an attack on a loyalist fortress-monastery, and it's good stuff, with Talos and the gang going fully Night Lords on the Imperials, and trying to steal back a Night Lords cruiser from the Corsairs and still scheming and struggling for power among themselves.

While both of the first two novels are threaded through with flashbacks to the Night Lords' past after the Heresy, in the third they return to Tsagualsa, where Curze died, and fight some elves. It's high drama, and an appropriately epic ending to the trilogy.

Dembski-Bowden deserves particular respect for making Talos and his gang genuinely sympathetic characters whose adventures you want to follow, while never letting you forget that they're Night Lords Chaos Marines, and therefore utterly horrible monsters. It all adds up to a surprisingly wide range of emotions to feel for a Warhammer 40,000 story. So, y'know, highly recommended.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 31: Praetorian of Dorn

The ghost image collapsed into smoke.

 - The Horus Heresy: Praetorian of Dorn, John French

This one's available in print, for some reason. Even though this project has taught me to appreciate ebooks, it's still nice to read an actual, physical book and not stare at a screen all the time.

We're back with the Alpha Legion, which is excellent, and with the Imperial Fists, which is not. The plot of Praetorian of Dorn is a ludicrously overcomplicated scheme by the Alpha Legion to attack Terra, but where Legion was 'Allo, 'Allo 40,000, this is a technothriller.

The book is not without its weaknesses. Clearly, in a story like this, the loyalists kinda do have to be Imperial Fists, but they and Dorn are just so, well, boring. Rogal Dorn doesn't come across as quite such a repulsive, violent bully as he's been in some of the previous installments, but he's just dull, as are all of his legionnaires. There's also a largely pointless interlude around the middle of the book that's more or less the battle of Helm's Deep, but with Imperial Fists.

For the most part, this is absolutely silly and quite enjoyable, and in that a worthy successor to Legion. It's actually better than Legion in that there's no sexism or other macho bullshit, apart from Dorn's buffoonery. But it's very badly let down by the ending, which feels rushed and unsatisfactory. I think I'm going to choose to believe that the events of the last three chapters are after-the-fact Imperial propaganda with only a tenuous relationship to reality.

Honestly, before the ending, I was going to recommend this, but it's actually so bad this doesn't make my "do read" list. So be advised.

Epic: Ruin of the Salamanders

The Ruin of the Salamanders supplement for Legions Imperialis is here, and I'm delighted to report that my wish has been granted, and we now have an Astartes super-heavy formation and some new very large tiny tanks.

**

First off, though, let me note a disappointment: the Falchion. In its 28mm incarnation, it had a twin volcano cannon, which is spectacularly silly. However, Legions has now downgraded it to a neutron laser that's almost exactly the same as the one on the Cerberus. I just think that's really boring. I was hoping for a Space Marine version of the Shadowsword, with at least some kind of Engine Killer weapon. I already have a pair of Cerberuses so I don't see the point.

Right now, the only Engine Killer weapon in the entire Marine list is the siege melta array on the Mastodon, and that's just bizarre. I thought for sure that would have been the Falchion's niche.

I did, however, get a box of Fellblades, and with the Demolisher cannon and everything, it's definitely a Space Marine Baneblade.

These were fun to build. I did a little converting and made pintle-mounted bolters with closed hatches for both of them.

The Fellblades can form a Super-Heavy Spearhead with my Cerberuses and Kratices, which I definitely have to try in my next game.

**

As if all these super-heavies weren't silly enough, Shaun was kind enough to give me the gift of true stupidity this holiday season: two Mastodons. They remind me of the GI Joe mobile command center, one of which I remember we found at a flea market when I was a kid, and I got my parents to buy.

They were quite straightforward to build, if heavy flamer sponsons in three parts each do make me wonder: why?

They're ludicrously massive though, I love them.

I painted one for my Word Bearers. No idea what to use it for, but it is gloriously silly.

I took a picture with some other models for scale, just so you can fully appreciate the stupidity.

**

Speaking of models that look like they're straight out of GI Joe, when I saw the profile of the Storm Hammer Auxilia super-heavy, I knew I needed to get some.

I loved the original Storm Hammer, a slab-sided, twin-turreted beast of a super-heavy. What they seem to have done with it is relegated one of the turrets to one of those casemate-like structures that the Horus Heresy era designers are so inexplicably fond of, and then given the design to a child and told them to draw more guns on it. If the Mastodon looks like something out of GI Joe, the Storm Hammer is even more so. And I love it.

**

All this 8mm stuff has been fun, but I've also been thinking about what to do with my small collection of 6mm scale miniatures, mostly from Epic 40,000 and Epic: Armageddon. A while ago, I picked up some Battletech miniatures, and painted them in the colors of the Magistracy of Canopus. So it did occur to me to paint my 6mm stuff for Battletech as well.

At the end of last year, however, I was persuaded to look into NetEpic, which is basically a fan-made version of good old second edition Space Marine. I was delighted by it, and unless I'm entirely mistaken, my 6mm collection should build a Chaos Marine army with Imperial Guard allies.

I mention this now because it goes with the superheavy theme: I have what I believe is an Epic Armageddon-era Baneblade. I'd started painting it, but some Finnish generic brand over cleaner helped me strip the paint off.

This is the first time I've properly repainted an old miniature like this. And here's how it ended up:

We'll see if this is the beginning of something.

**

It's been a lot of fun building and painting big little tanks. The Legions Imperialis models continue to be superb quality and a lot of fun to put together. I hope we get more super-heavies; there's a Capitol Imperialis in one of the Horus Heresy novel anthologies, so I certainly expect a model of one!