Epic: Men of Iron

Advances in Computer technology have made possible the new science of Robotics, which was previously the realm of science fiction. Robotics concerns the design and building of machines capable of mimicking some modicum of human action. These machines can sense changes in their environment and take limited action based on this information. Robots are essentially computer-controlled machine tools that can be programmed to perform tasks such as welding car parts. They are especially useful for tasks that are monotonous, dangerous, or tiring, where they are often more productive than their human counterparts.

Last year, I fielded some Thallax Cohorts against the Imperial Fists, and they were spectacularly successful. As I've already painted some 28mm robots as well, I thought it was high time I got to their epic-scale versions.

**

I was playing around with Legion Builder one day, and realized that I have something like 1 500 points of Knights that I've built for Titanicus, and I was seriously thinking about getting some more Cerastus Lancers after their excellent performance in our last game. So I could definitely field a Knight army in Legions.

This led me to look at the Bonded Cybernetica support formations for Knights, and I found that if I made a Retainer Cohort with the Vultarax Stratos-Automata, I could give my Lancers Outflank. What's more, the Vultaraxes looked pretty easy to build. So I started with them, and painted them in Auxilia Daedra colors.

**

The other Vanguard choice in the box is the Vorax Battle-Automata. I thought I might add them to my Brethren of Iron, as they're a unit that could actually use a Cortex Controller to give them orders; on their own, they can only March or Charge, meaning they'll never get to fire their weapons.

There's two 32mm bases of Voraxes in the box, and they're impossibly fiddly to build. Here's my first complete one, and the bits of the next one laid out.

You can mix and match pairs of legs and arm weapons with the torsos, to create differences that are pretty much imperceptible on the tabletop.

Three Voraxes crowd a 32mm base, and the box makes two bases. I painted them in Word Bearers colors.

I mean I'm not gonna say this was the most annoying model I've ever built; I've had far worse experiences. But they've tended to involve resin or metal. This may be the fiddliest thing I've ever done in hard plastic, and again, because most of the details are indistinguishable on the tabletop, it isn't even worth it.

**

So that was annoying. Luckily the two Domitar robots were much more fun to build.

I made them Word Bearers as well, because I thought the Domitars Perturabo has hanging around in Angel Exterminatus were cool.

The two Arlatax Battle-Automata are going to join my Titan Legion, so they're in Legio Venefica livery.

They're actually a conversion. For some reason, I can't stand the leaping-off-a-tactical-rock pose that James Workshop fell in love with in the 2010s or thereabouts, so I made the Arlataxes stand properly. It wasn't too hard to do.

**

So, that's a bunch of 8mm robots! After the Voraxes, I have to admit I didn't have the stomach for the Castellax stands. I'll get to them later. All in all, though, I liked the robots, and I'm looking forward to trying them in the game.

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.

Epic: The Ikteros Pattern Basilisk

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Legions Imperialis army must be in want of artillery. So obviously my Solar Auxilia need some Basilisks. But there's a problem: I can't tolerate the miniature in Legions at all.

**

The so-called Mars-Auxilia pattern Basilisk is an Earthshaker gun on a Leman Russ chassis. Or more accurately, it's an Earthshaker gun sticking out of a turretless, slightly extended Leman Russ hull, and I think it's ludicrous even for a Warhammer vehicle.

If you look at the layout of a Leman Russ, the engine simply has to be at the back of the hull. With the turret, sponsons, driver's position and hull gun, there's really nowhere else it can be. So on the Mars-Auxilia Basilisk, the breech where the gun is loaded, the fighting compartment around it, and the ammunition, would all need to be exactly where the engine is. This seems to be confirmed by the large door on the back of the vehicle.

I can't make this make any amount of sense, and even if it somehow did, that fighting compartment is just way too damn tiny. More to the point, that thing doesn't look anything like a proper self-propelled gun. Compare, for instance, the Armageddon pattern Basilisk, which does. I think I need to try to do something about this.

**

The Basilisk hull is made up of a top and bottom bit.

I cut the top of the fighting compartment off with a hobby knife, which was fairly easy.

And drilled a little hole in the bottom hull.

I then glued together the two hull halves.

And glued a cocktail stick in the hole to hold the roof up at the proper height.

This makes for what looks like an appropriately sized fighting compartment to me.

It leaves a bit more to be filled in on the left side.

Then it was just a matter of a little green stuff work, finished off with some putty.

This, then, is the Ikteros pattern Basilisk. It's not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but I think it's perfectly adequate on the tabletop.

Produced on forge world Ikteros, home of Legio Venefica, the Ikteros pattern mounts a substantial fighting compartment on the Leman Russ hull, keeping the crew and their ammunition supply safe while allowing room to work the gun.

Ikteros pattern Basilisks are fielded by the Yat-Kha Shock Cohorts of the Solar Auxilia, who appreciate the vehicle's capacity for sustained operations in hostile environments.

**

This was a fun little conversion to do! It may not be the prettiest thing ever, but I'm happy with it and it was a good learning experience with green stuff. I've already found a Solar Auxilia sub-cohort to be an excellent allied formation to include, and I'm definitely bringing the Basilisks in my next game as well.

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.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 24: Legacies of Betrayal

I remember much of what he said even now, but we all learned quicker from example than words.

 - Brotherhood of the Storm, Chris Wraight, in The Horus Heresy: Legacies of Betrayal

Apparently Black Library were reworking Unremembered Empire when I was going to buy it and it wasn't available, so I skipped ahead to the Legacies of Betrayal anthology.

**

The book kicks off with Chris Wraight's White Scars novella Brotherhood of the Storm. I've actually been reading about Mongolia and seen several movies set there recently, so I had mixed feelings about White Scars fiction. But I liked this, and I'll have to consider reading the full-length novel.

After the novella, there's a whole swathe of short stories, some significantly shorter than usual. I won't go through all of them, but I'll give some examples of what's in this anthology.

 - several decent Iron Hands stories; I can't help but feel that all these badass Iron Hands stories are trying to make up for how stupid McNeill made them look in Fulgrim.

 - a nautical story by Guy Haley, featuring a sailboat and the Alpha Legion.

 - two genuinely good Gav Thorpe war stories where he's in a proper old-time Epic mood: Honour to the Dead is just excellent, and the other one has a Capitol Imperialis.

 - Aaron Dembski-Bowden with Butcher's Nails, another superb story of Angron, Lorgar, Khârn, Lotara Sarrin and the Ursus Claws.

 - a Shakespearean monologue from Horus, by John French

And lots more, none of it bad.

**

Shockingly, I think I'd recommend reading this anthology. There were lots of good stories in there.