Epic: The Battle of Sanitary Nexus 1600-Theta

The battle for the desert world of Lautan Lama rages on. The traitors have taken heavy casualties, and the loyalist side has been secretly massing reinforcements, ready to turn the tide by striking in an unexpected part of the front. The Titans assembled as covertly as Titans can, and in orbit, Salamanders Space Marines prepared to teleport down to the planet.

Their target: a sewage processing center, Sanitary Nexus 1600-Theta, being attacked by the 337th Yat-Kha Shock Cohort and elements of Legio Venefica. After their defeat at Administratum Basilica 953371, the traitors were looking to retake the initiative; whoever controlled the sewage works could make life very unpleasant for the enemy. The traitor Solar Auxilia had no idea what they would be facing, until a gigantic shape began to loom in the clearing morning mists...

I'm delighted to get to follow up my first game of Warhammer Renaissance with some more Legions Imperialis. Last time, I faced a loyalist Titan Legion, and it was very silly and a lot of fun. This game would turn out to be very much the same! Shaun already wrote up a battle report on his blog, so this will be my perspective.

**

My opponent wanted to keep his list a secret, so I decided I'd surprise him as well: for the first time in my Legions life, I intend to field an Auxilia army. I'm fielding my Sub-Cohort, the Glorifiers of the White Snow, and all four of my super-heavy tanks.

I've opined in the past that Legions is a game of firepower, and based on some calculations I did, Auxilia Rapiers are one of the cheapest ways to get it. So I was lucky to be able to pick up not one, but two boxes of Auxilia support on discount at a friendly local gaming store. I built a battery of four laser destroyers and another of eight quad launchers, or more familiarly, Thudd guns. Together with my Veletaris Storm Section, they'll form a Pioneer Company, the Fishers of the Tengri Nor.

This will also be the combat debut of my Ikteros pattern Basilisks. To help all that artillery hit its targets, I'm calling on the Imperial Navy and fielding a Marauder Pathfinder, the Queen of the Blue World: its Auspex Array lets my artillery ignore the -1 to hit modifier for firing indirectly.

Finally, as allies, I'm bringing my newly finished demi-company of World Eaters, one detachment in Termites and the rest in Rhinos, and a Reaver Titan, the Abominatio Desolationis. So here's my list:

Solar Auxilia Sub-Cohort The Glorifiers of the White Snow - 535 points

 HQ: Tactical Command

 Core: Lasrifle Tercio

 Core: Lasrifle Tercio

 Support: Ogryn Charonite Section

 Battle Tank: Leman Russ Vanquisher Squadron

 Vanguard: Aethon Heavy Sentinel Patrol (4)

 Air Support: Thunderbolt Squadron The Exalters of the Moon (2)

Solar Auxilia Pioneer Company Fishers of the Tengri Nor - 441 points

 HQ: Legate Commander Detachment

 Core: Veletaris Storm Section

 Bastion: Rapier Battery (laser destroyers)

 Bastion: Rapier Battery (quad-launchers) (8)

 Artillery: Basilisk Battery

 Air Support: Marauder Pathfinder The Queen of the Blue World

Solar Auxilia Super-Heavy Company Declare the Law of the Truth - 440 points

 Heavy Armor: Storm Hammer Squadron

 Heavy Armor: Storm Hammer Squadron

 Heavy Armor: Shadowsword Squadron

 Heavy Armor: Stormblade Squadron

1st Demi-Company, 117th Company, World Eaters Legion - 183 points

 HQ: Legion Command

 Core: Tactical Detachment

 Core: Tactical Detachment

 Support: Assault Detachment

 Transport: Rhino Detachment (3)

 Transport: Termite Detachment (2)

Legion Support: Reaver Titan Cum ergo videritis abominationem desolationis, quæ dicta est a Lorgar propheta, stantem in loco sancto, qui legit, intelligat, Legio Venefica - 400 points

 Gatling blaster, chain fist, Apoptygma missile launcher

**

So what was the big secret my opponent was keeping from me?

A Warmaster Titan.

Shaun had built and painted a Warmaster in secret, and I was facing a Titan Legion army of a Warmaster and a pair of Warhounds, with an allied Salamanders Saturnine heavy assault cadre. I had a notion that the Saturnines were coming, but the Warmaster was a complete and delightful surprise.

The Saturnine cadre consisted of the command stand, four detachments of three Saturnine stands each, and two units of two Saturnine Dreadnoughts. Those things are massive, by the way. The Warmaster was kitted out with an Apocalypse missile launcher and a Vulcan mega-bolter, as well as Anvilus defence turrets; one Warhound had a Volkite eradicator and shudder missiles, while the other had a melta lance and a shock lance.

Of course, I had some idea from his cryptic hints that he probably had a big Titan, but I had decided to not even try optimizing my army for one, and see how I'd do. I was hoping he'd have at least some infantry for my Thudd guns to shoot at. But now we would see!

**

We set up Shaun's lovely terrain, with a new feature as the centerpiece.

This, I'm told, is a sewage processing center, so clearly that would be what we're fighting over.

We rolled a Devastation mission: six objectives, and we both get points for holding ones in our deployment zones and the neutral zone, and if we captured one of our opponent's objectives, we could destroy it for 10 VP. I like to think that both sides were there to capture the sewage center and destroy sewer pipes running to their opponent's territory. For secondary objectives, we both picked Vital Intel, and placed the objective counters on opposite sides of the sewage complex.

My strategy was the same as for my previous game against a Titan army: play the objectives, but also see what it's like fighting a Titan. I expected the Warmaster to be ridiculously destructive, and that I would lose a home objective to the Saturnine cadre, but that beyond that, my opponent would struggle to score objectives.

The loyalist deployment was very straightforward, with a grand total of seven models on the tabletop, with the right flank refused.

I set up my Thudd guns in some difficult terrain, the Basilisks in line within command distance of my Legate, and everyone else more or less in line abreast. I was careful to place my Reaver on the other side of the sewage complex as the Warmaster!

I would like to point out that that thing is absolutely gigantic.

Since I had a Pioneer Company, my Veletaris Storm Section could infiltrate, so I placed them in the basilica on my left, where they could contest the neutral zone objective.

My laser destroyer Rapiers took their Forward Deployment move toward the building they would occupy, and the Sentinels advanced down the deserted left side of the battlefield.

**

Turn 1

The loyalists won the initiative, and would keep it until the last turn. On the loyalist left, the Warmaster began its inexorable march forward, and the Warhounds swept right behind the sewer complex, two of the Saturnine dreadnoughts marching with them.

I marched my forces forward on the left, securing the building overlooking my left-side home objective. My Shadowsword, sure to be a prime target for the enemy, hid behind a building. On my right, the World Eaters were completely undaunted by the massive Titan facing them, and gunned the engines of their Rhinos and drove onto the cathedral plaza.

The first fire phase was mostly me trying to see if I could hurt the Warmaster. My Leman Russes, Storm Hammers and Basilisks poured fire into the Titan, joined by the Reaver's missile launcher, and knocked down seven shields. My Thudd guns also managed to score a wound on one of the Saturnine Dreadnoughts. For the first time, my Marauder Pathfinder provided fire control with its auspex array, staying well out of the range of enemy fire.

The Titan replied. The Revelator missile launcher hit the basilica on my left: the Veletaris inside were unscathed, but two Sentinels were destroyed, and the survivors broke and fled. The plasma destructors blew up the command Stormhammer, and knocked two wounds off the Stormblade.

The Titan also destroyed two stands of Auxilia infantry, and opened up on the World Eaters with its Vulcan mega-bolter and Anvilus lascannons. The Rhinos sped through the hail of mega-bolter shells, but the lascannons found their targets, blowing up two of the vehicles. Only a single stand survived.

Meanwhile, my Thunderbolts made an attack run on one of the loyalist Warhounds, knocking down its shields and inflicting a wound.

In the end phase, my Sentinels rallied, and the loyalist Titans were unable to relight so much as a single void shield!

The butcher's bill was already steep, but at the end of the turn, I controlled both of my home objectives and one neutral one, while my opponent held one of his home objectives.

Victory points:

Loyalists: 5 VP

Traitors: 13 VP

**

Turn 2

Seeing the Warmaster's shields stay down, Legate Üüriintuya gave the order: keep firing! Bringing down the loyalist behemoth would be an incredible honor for her regiment. As her tank gunners reloaded, the air before them started to shimmer, and with an explosion of warp energy, the Saturnine Terminator cadre teleported onto the battlefield.

At the same time, my tunnelers surfaced in the enemy rear.

As the World Eaters took cover in the adjacent building, the survivors of the Rhino rush sheltered in the cathedral and the sole remaining Rhino barreled toward the enemy rear. Meanwhile, more Saturnine squads arrived, surrounding my tanks.

The loyalist Warhounds split up, one moving to support the Saturnine Terminators and the other engaging my Reaver. My Thunderbolts lined up for an attack run on the Warhound on my left, and the Queen of the Blue World was there to direct the artillery. My assault marines took cover in some trenches near the loyalist objective, while the Ogryns marched out across the open toward the Warhound.

The firing started with the laser destroyers on my left knocking down the enemy Warhound's shields. The Basilisks had the range on the Warmaster, and with a crackle like lightning and a shower of sparks, the giant Titan's last void shields collapsed.

Heroically, the survivors of the Auxilia infantry on the right opened fire on the Salamanders Terminators and managed to take several of them down!

Wounded but undaunted, the Warmaster returned fire. It took out several Thudd guns, wiped out the Auxilia infantry on my right, and the plasma destructors finished off the Stormblade and destroyed the Shadowsword. The Warhound also sent some shudder missiles into my Thudd guns.

An improbable series of bolter shots from my World Eaters brought down a Saturnine Dreadnought.

The Warhound on the loyalist right fired its shock lance at my Reaver, bypassing its shields, and while it failed to score a wound, the shock halved my Titan's movement and only allowed it to fire one weapon. However, my Thunderbolts opened fire on the unshielded Warhound and destroyed it.

The servitor clades on the Warmaster managed to relight seven of its void shields, while the surviving Warhound was unable to restore any.

Victory points:

Loyalists: 15 VP

Traitors: 21 VP

**

Turn 3

The battlefield was starting to look a lot emptier! I needed to secure some objectives before that Warmaster wiped out my entire army.

In the movement phase, the Warmaster kept coming, and turned somewhat to the right for some better firing arcs down the table, and the Warhound turned back to secure the objective threatened by my tunnelers. I gave out my charge orders: the assault marines charged the Saturnine Dreadnoughts holding the loyalist right objective, while my Termites and Rhino charged the lone dreadnought on the left, and the tactical marines assaulted the Warhound!

A volley from the Saturnine Terminators wiped out my Leman Russes.

They shouldn't actually have been allowed to have those first fire orders, but they never got to shoot so no harm done!

In the close combats, my assault marines destroyed one Saturnine Dreadnought and damaged another, while the other Dreadnought killed a Termite and took a wound for a tie. The Warhound killed half the tactical marines but suffered damage.

The Warmaster opened fire again, destroying two Basilisks, nearly wiping out the Thudd Guns, swatting my Thunderbolts out of the sky and severely damaging the building my remaining Auxilia tercio was holding.

The Saturnine Terminators finished off my last super-heavy tank.

Finding my right flank objective deserted, the Saturnines destroyed it for 10 VP.

The servitors on the Warmaster brought even more void shields online, making it painfully obvious that there was no way I could destroy that monstrosity. With the destruction of one of my objectives, the victory points were tantalizingly close!

Victory points:

Loyalists: 28 VP

Traitors: 29 VP

**

Turn 4

For the first time in the game, I won the initiative. With the battlefield starting to look largely deserted, I pulled back my surviving artillery and laser destroyers. My hope now was to destroy at least one objective and keep the others out of loyalist hands to win the game.

The Warmaster pivoted to face my few remaining forces, and the Warhound strode out of the mêlée with the World Eaters, ready to dispatch any survivors of the fight for the loyalists' left-flank objective. The Saturnine Terminators started their ponderous march across the battlefield, taking casualties from my last tercio's lasrifle fire.

The World Eaters survivors all charged into the battle for the objective, and the Saturnine Dreadnought wrecked the last Rhino before falling to the traitor marines.

At the other side of the battlefield, the Ogryns charged the last Saturnine dread and destroyed it.

My Reaver, the Abominatio Desolationis, staggered forward, still partially debilitated by the shock lance, and opened up on the loyalist Warhound with its gatling blaster. Smashing aside the last void shield, the huge shells exploded across the Titan, bringing it crashing to the ground. The resulting explosion killed half of the surviving tactical marines.

In a final display of overwhelming firepower, the Warmaster destroyed one of the last Thudd guns and completely wiped out my Ogryns and assault marines with its Revelator missile launcher.

The sole remnants of the demi-company destroyed their objective, wrecking crucial sewer lines for ten victory points.

With a victory point margin of 16 in favor of the traitors, we judged that it would be impossible for the loyalists to win in the fifth turn, and called it a game.

Final score:

Loyalists: 31 VP

Traitors: 47 VP

**

So, that was an amazingly fun game. We always take ages to get set up and play the first few turns, but because Legions is so hilariously lethal, it speeds up considerably by around turn 3. Once again, my thanks to Shaun for being an excellent opponent and posting a battle report and everything!

So far, both of my games against Collegia Titanica armies have been similar: the bigger Titans wreak unbelievable carnage and just about wipe out my army, while I do my best to secure enough objectives and not get tabled. They've also been great fun. Titans are hilariously destructive, especially the Warmaster. Playing against one is an experience everyone should have. It's terrifying to see it marching down the table spitting death. There was a moment when the shields came down when I thought maybe, maybe we could actually destroy that thing, but we never had a chance.

I also have to say that the Warmaster looks much better live on the tabletop than it does in pictures, let alone the official art. I remember looking at it in the online store and not being very impressed, but the sheer size of it on the tabletop is awesome. Similarly, I had somehow not realized how big the Saturnine Dreads were. They and the Terminators also look much better on the tabletop than I expected.

The sheer amount of firepower on the big Titans, as well as their ability to take damage, is quite scary, and I still think that Titan armies can actually be viable in Legions. Especially with the bonded Mechanicum formation that lets you take robots and cheap infantry. I was also quite pleased with my Reaver this time.

I fully understand why Shaun is unhappy with the Warhounds. To me, they're a class of Titan that really need to make full use of their mobility to be worth their points. Also, while I love that they got a whole new suite of weapons with the Legions core box, I can't help thinking that they're all a bit specialized for Legions purposes; I think that in games of Legions, the classic Titanicus combo of Vulcan mega-bolter and plasma blastgun could work very well, and I'd definitely give the Inferno Gun a try, too; it was an unpleasant thing to encounter for my Knights in Titanicus!

I thought the Saturnine Cadre was as excellent deep strike threat. Having those guys sitting on their teleport pads meant I had to more or less plan for losing one of my home objectives, because that combo of precision deep strike and short-range firepower is pretty darn good. A minimum-size cadre is only 220 points! I'd say it's definitely worth considering, as the threat of them appearing somewhere on your backline will make any opponent at least slightly worried.

On my side, I loved how punchy the Basilisks were, and the sheer amount of dice I got to roll with the Storm Hammers was delightful. The Leman Russ Vanquishers continue to perform, and I may need to look at getting more Russes. The Termites absolutely continue to spark joy and I may bring some to every single game. I'd need to do the numbers to figure out if the artillery bonus from the Pathfinder is worth it; in a game with more targets for the Thudd guns, I think it may well be. It can even do a little incidental air defense with the Skystrike missiles.

Overall I quite liked playing an Auxilia army. My sleeper MVPs were the Veletaris section, who infiltrated onto the battlefield and just kept scoring that neutral zone objective every turn. I think I want more of them.

**

After the battle, we need some kill markings. The Abominatio Desolationis previously accounted for a Legio Crucius Warbringer, and now we can add a Warhound to its tally.

The Gatling Blaster has these big panels on the sides, so I decided that instead of trying to paint rings on all six barrels, maybe I could just add a silhouette there.

And the same for the Exalters of the Moon:

One must imagine Shaun busy painting super-heavy silhouettes onto his Warmaster.

**

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed that all the Summer Preview gave us was some of the Titan weapons in plastic that had already been available in resin. But I'm still glad we got something, and that GW hasn't altogether forgotten about Legions, and even remembers Adeptus Titanicus.

Speaking of Titans, I'm now the only person in our three-man Legions group who hasn't fielded a Titan Legion army, so I know what to start working on!

Legions continues to be a lot of fun, and I do think it's a very good game.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 40: Sanguinius

Now he was running, properly sprinting down the corridors.

 - The Horus Heresy: Primarchs: Sanguinius: The Great Angel, Chris Wraight

I liked Chris Wraight's White Scars novels, and I've already started painting some traitor Blood Angels for Legions Imperialis because of Fear to Tread. So I chose Wraight's Sanguinius to be the last Horus Heresy novel I read before moving on to the Siege of Terra series.

It's funny that I just mentioned remembrancers when talking about Alpharius, and here we are starting Sanguinius with one. Disgraced remembrancer Avajis Kautenya is sent to meet Sanguinius and chronicle the deeds of his legion. He's gotten in trouble before for being too critical, and he's told to be as critical as he can be here. So he travels with the Blood Angels, watches them go to war, and just does the whole remembrancer thing as if this was Horus Rising all over again.

Other than starring the Blood Angels, Sanguinius is also like Fear to Tread in that you know what's coming, even though the protagonist doesn't, and it still works. I mean everyone at least a little bit familiar with the fluff knows what the terrible dark secret of the Blood Angels is, but it doesn't matter because the story's written so well. It's also a perfect volume to end this stage of my project on, as it starts with the Horus Rising vibes and ends on an epilogue set after the Heresy, when the Imperial cult is being set up. Very entertaining, highly recommended.

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.

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.

**

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 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 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.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 30: The Path of Heaven

A thousand years might pass and it would never lose its fascination.

 - The Horus Heresy: The Path of Heaven, Chris Wraight

It's the White Scars again! Cue up the Hu.

The Path of Heaven picks up where Scars left off, with the White Scars trying to evade Horus's legions and make it back to Terra. As they're surrounded and pursued by the Death Guard and the Emperor's Children, they go looking for an alternate path back to Terra, and things get interesting.

I think this is actually better than Scars, and goes firmly on my "do read" list. I still like the characters; despite the whole space Mongolian stereotype, Wraight makes the White Scars interesting and at least a little three-dimensional. They're the best loyalists out there by far. Jagathai Khan seems to have the unique distinction of being a loyalist Primarch who isn't a violent, stupid bully. When we've been brutalized with so many tedious and banal Primarch inner monologues, at least the Khagan stays a little aloof and superhuman.

I also like that the plot is proper space opera, with the Navigator houses thrown in for some proper Imperial plotting. I think this got to me because I read the novel while recovering from a slightly arduous trip abroad, but I really appreciate how Wraight conveys that the Horus Heresy is a massive, endless slog through a huge galaxy, and how incredibly tired everyone from Horus himself down is.

So here we are: the White Scars have been one of the great pleasant surprises of this reading project.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 28: War Without End

Slender tendrils of fragrant smoke drifted from fang-mouthed oil burners, filling the bed-chamber with a delicious mix of cinnamon and honeysuckle.

 - The Devine Adoratrice, Graham McNeill, in The Horus Heresy: War Without End

It's another anthology!

**

Graham McNeill kicks things off with The Devine Adoratrice, a prequel to Vengeful Spirit, about Knight House Devine. I didn't like it any more than I did the Devine plotline in that novel.

There are two Dembski-Bowden stories here, Howl of the Hearthworld and Lord of the Red Sands, and the latter is why I got this collection. Howl of the Hearthworld, though, is about Space Wolves, and while it's well written, it still confirms what every other Space Wolf portrayal I've read also tells me: that they're deeply unpleasant, arrogant bullies. Most of the story is about a squad of Space Wolves being assholes to someone who did nothing to deserve it. By contrast, Lord of the Red Sands stokes my growing love for Angron and the World Eaters.

Other standout stories include James Swallow's Gunsight, a sequel to the excellent Nemesis, and Guy Haley's Twisted, also set on Horus's flagship. The rest of them are mostly all right, I guess?

To be honest, I don't really know how I feel about these anthologies. The good stories are good and I enjoy them. Even the mediocre ones are fine to read while commuting or such. But I don't really remember anything about them. Would I buy these if I wasn't doing this reading project? Probably not.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 27: Vengeful Spirit

The dead of Dwell were screaming.

 - The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit, Graham McNeill

After the White Scars, I'm taking a gamble on Graham McNeill and Horus. This one's set on Molech and I've got the Adeptus Titanicus expansion named after it, so I expect Knights. We haven't actually seen that much of Horus and his legion, so I kinda miss them.

**

The plot of Vengeful Spirit is basically that Horus thinks there's something very important to the Emperor on Molech, so he's scheming with Fulgrim and Morty to get it. Meanwhile, Malcador and Leman Russ are scheming to kill Horus, so they order ex-Luna Wolf Gavriel Loken to gather a special team to assault Horus's flagship.

If the latter plot sounds pretty much exactly like Nemesis, that's because it is, only Nemesis was better. Loken's team is made up of loyalist marines who are all completely forgettable, except that the contrarian Iron Warrior is called Tubal Cayne. The whole Loken plot is frankly quite boring and meaningless, and the book would have been better without it.

The part where we follow Horus and his new Mournival is much more interesting. It feels a lot like Horus Rising, but with the tragic absence of all the best Luna Wolves. In fact, a lot of the whole thing is practically a direct sequel to Flight of the Eisenstein, which isn't a bad thing at all. McNeill's Horus is light-years better than in False Gods.

The aerial assassination attempt on Horus made me want to get some Fire Raptors for Legions. But while the idea of various loyalist marines randomly attacking Horus like Cato assaulting Inspector Clouseau is very funny, wouldn't you think that if Horus is going to spend quite a bit of time ensconced at a strategically important facility, it would occur to someone to have at least some kind of anti-air defenses, or even surveillance radar, around? Especially since soon after, we're given detailed descriptions of the air defences on Molech.

Luckily most of the middle part of the book is dedicated to the Sons of Horus and the fighting on Molech. For some reason, the initial battle Horus leads is a practically suicidal frontal assault on a strongly fortified loyalist position, and most of the other fighting doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. I will say that the boarding shields definitely make me want to build some breacher squads. It says a lot about GW's priorities that we got a new edition of Horus Heresy before we got all of the troop choices in plastic.

The fighting is good, though, and Horus's schemes make for good epic space opera. It feels like ages since the plot's properly advanced, and now it has. There's good stuff with Knights and Titans and so on, even if the goings-on in Knight House Devine are quite sordid. That and the sheer length of the book are more than a bit Fulgrim, but this is much, much better. I think Vengeful Spirit could have done without about half of its sideplots and characters, but as a Horus Heresy novel, it's actually quite good.

**

So here we are: Horus is on his way to Terra and I'm recommending Graham McNeill and avoiding Dan Abnett. It's a strange old galaxy.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 26: Scars

He rolled onto his front, coughing blood between broken teeth.

 - The Horus Heresy: Scars, Chris Wraight

We're here with Chris Wraight, who I've read a couple of short stories from that I liked, and the White Scars, the space Mongolian horde of Warhammer. I have to admit that I know practically nothing about the White Scars other than what I just said, but I do have an abiding interest in all things Mongolian, so why not play some Hu and give this a shot.

**

Scars follows several characters, starting with two neophyte Marines and going on to include the primarch, a female Departmento Munitorum officer, and a Librarian, or whatever it was they call them in the White Scars.

The Librarian, separated from the rest of the legion, ends up traveling with a motley crew of Salamanders and Iron Hands. There's a fun detail when they capture a Word Bearer ship:

The Word Bearers had done something very strange to their machines.

They no longer output binaric derivatives, but seemed to operate on a base-four internal mechanic, the reason for which eluded him completely.

I assume it's base-four because of the four Chaos gods, and I love it.

There's a couple of slightly silly scenes in the book, but overall I think it's well-written and I like how the story slots in to the general Horus Heresy narrative. The White Scars have been off on their own, so when the Heresy starts breaking out, they don't know what's going on or who to trust. They face off against the Alpha Legion, go to Prospero to see what happened to the Thousand Sons, and as all this is going on, the warrior lodges in the legion are mounting a coup. It's good stuff.

What I didn't expect is that Scars goes into what happened at Nikaea quite a bit. Apparently one of the few pre-existing details about the White Scars in the Heresy was that Jagathai supported the Librarius, and here they end up being one of the legions - along with the woofs, of all people! - who refused to disband their psykers. I said before that Nikaea seems to have been a terrible mistake, and there's a suggestion here that Horus actually engineered the whole thing, or at least set it up to fail, to some extent. It makes sense, but still leaves us with the question of what on earth were Emps and Malcador thinking.

**

Anyway, Scars is just a really good Horus Heresy novel, and an excellent deep dive into a legion that I really knew nothing about.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 25: Unremembered Empire

That phantoms should haunt Macragge, after all the horrors that had been recently visited upon the planet and the five hundred worlds it held in fealty, came as no surprise to anyone.

 - The Horus Heresy: Unremembered Empire, Dan Abnett

It's Abnett and the smurfs again. For some reason, Unremembered Empire was re-released in the middle of my reading project, which meant I had to wait for it and pay double the price of a regular Horus Heresy novel. This did make me wonder if it would be worth it.

**

I like that not only does the book start with a Shakespeare quotation in the 31st millenium, but that he's also present in the text as Shakespire. I also absolutely love that the title of a ruler of Ultramar is Battle King. It sounds so childish, which means it's perfect for the Ultramarines.

However, there's a lot of other stuff here that I don't love. As with Know No Fear, the Ultramarines are incredibly boring. They're all like utterly average video game NPCs, and the worst part is that Abnett's caught a case of Gav Thorpe and gives us Guilliman's endlessly boring internal monologues. Things spice up a bit when the Lion and his legion show up, but on the whole, the home side is playing yet another snoozer.

In addition to the space marines, John Grammaticus from Legion is here, but sadly his side plot here isn't at all interesting either. He's also teamed up with a sidekick who I swear is the silliest character in the entire Horus Heresy series. He's like a terribly written Marvel UK character, and just takes so much out of the Grammaticus scenes.

I'd say the best part of the book is definitely Konrad Curze, who is honestly shaping up to be one of my favorite primarchs. I am all the way here for Curze butchering smurfs like the Crow. But even his scenes are let down by the frankly silly Cabal stuff, and the even sillier constantly regenerating Vulkan. I'm just going to decide that for canon purposes, none of that happened.

**

But here we are: this is the second Dan Abnett book in a row that I do not at all recommend reading. It was definitely not worth the price.