Epic: Let's Paint Solar Auxilia Tanks

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

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

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

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

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

And moved on to the Leman Russes.

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

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

And so here's my armored company!

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

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

And here's the end result.

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

Epic: Let's Paint a Word Bearers Host

"I would sacrifice the entire Host in order to fulfil the will of the Dark Council, if such was needed."

"And the warrior-brothers of the Legion will lay their lives down if that is what is required of them."

 - Anthony Reynolds, Word Bearers: The Omnibus

I'm hoping to get a chance to play Legions Imperialis soon! So all I need now is to expand the Word Bearers from the starter set into a proper army.

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To do this, I have an Astartes Battle Group boxed set. It includes models like these Tarantula sentry guns.

And these Rapier platforms, both laser destroyers and quad launchers. The latter are still the only kind of space marine artillery we get. I've painted everything with more or less my Word Bearers standard scheme: Burnt Red basecoat, Dark Red drybrush, details as required.

The Battle Group also includes the fast attack box, which means Land Speeders:

And Scimitar jetbikes.

Two detachments, in fact.

And some Javelins:

And all this means I can now assemble my third formation: a Sky-hunter Phalanx.

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There are also Leviathan dreadnoughts.

I already painted all my little space marine tanks, so I also went and bought some Land Raiders.

A friend gave me a box of Spartans for my birthday, so I painted two of them for my Word Bearers.

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Finally, the infantry box in the Battle Group means I can now build full detachments of the support troops, starting with the Terminators:

Followed by plasma gunners:

Missile launcher support marines:

And assault marines:

Not to mention my second demi-company, the 1st (Air Assault) Demi-Company of the 4th Company, II Battalion, Morbid Fane Chapter.

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So that's a whole pile of Word Bearers!

I'm very happy I've got all this painted up, and delighted that the summer preview told us we're getting heavy armor and artillery. Having painted two companies of tactical marines, though, I have to say I really hope we could get more infantry!

Painting 8mm has been a lot of fun. I won't pretend I'm achieving anything beyond tabletop quality, if even that, but I like the end result and enjoy the process, especially with the vehicles. I hope I get a chance to play soon!

Let's Paint Dystopian Wars: The Hunt for the Prometheus: the Enlightened

Back in 2021, there was a thing on Bell of Lost Souls about Dystopian Wars, a naval miniature wargame set in like an alternative-history 19th century. Apparently the game has been around for a while, but I've never heard of it, so I went to their website to have a look. Frankly, it's all a bit Scythe, and as with Scythe, I don't entirely get the point of doing a sort-of-alternative-history thing where you give European countries or areas slightly different names, but it still looks like it might be interesting. So I wanted to take a look at the starter set.

Now, it may be that this was because I'd just finished two months of somewhat stressful work on top of a pandemic year, but Helsinki Markov is the most hysterical thing I've seen in ages. This is straight up Masters of Teräs Käsi level shit, not least in that it's just terribly wrong linguistically: the official Russian name of Helsinki in czarist times was Gelsingfors, so for to make any sense whatsoever he'd have to be Gelsingfors Markov - an utterly absurd name. It also sounds like something straight out of Diego Marani's delightful Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot, which is a bonus in my books.

It's still absolutely hilariously stupid, and given that Games Workshop were being assholes and alienating their fans again (I've been in this hobby since the 90s, this is a core part of the GW business model but no-one knows why), I decided to buy the Hunt for the Prometheus starter set instead of their stuff. Helsinki Markov, here we come.

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As it's a two-player starter set, there are two factions represented in the box. One is the Covenant of the Enlightened: they're a bunch of deranged super-scientists with a cog-themed logo, which all sounds very familiar. So I think I might be painting them red. And we're going to start with the Prometheus.

The bigger ships are in resin, and it's very crisply cut with almost no flash. The smaller bits also needed very little work, so so far, this is a very high-quality purchase!

The round holes are for generators and gun batteries. Slightly confusingly, the assembly guide gives you no hints whatsoever as to which generator is which; for that, you need the entirely separate Generator Guide, which doesn't come with the box but can be found on the website as a PDF. Looking at the rules booklets, I think there aren't meant to be any generators on board for the opening scenarios? So maybe we'll leave them off for the moment. I did, however, decide to magnetize the guns, starting with the tiniest possible magnets for the turrets.

I then drilled holes in the hull for their opposite numbers.

I have to say that this was one of the fiddliest things I've ever done, and to be honest I'm not that keen on repeating the experience! But it works though.

I then spray-painted all the bits, and got started painting the Prometheus in machine cult colours: Burnt Cadmium Red, Gunmetal Grey and Old Gold. I got started with whatever that thing at the back is, that gets covered up so it needs to be painted before assembly.

I've decided that the Prometheus's pennant number is 05.

I think those are meant to be windows but I'm not sure; I painted them Light Green with a dab of Fluorescent Green anyway to be appropriately scifi. Anyway here she is:

I'm really happy with how the Machine Cult color scheme worked out!

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To play the first scenario in the Hunt for the Prometheus campaign, we need the Prometheus, and an Enlightened fleet that's trying to stop Helsinki Markov from stealing it. This consists of two cruisers and four frigates, and I think I'll start with two Lovelace class cruisers: La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames, pennant number 26, and the Shùsuàn Jiǎncún (27). Those are SRS (short-range squadron) tokens next to them. The cruisers themselves were hard plastic, and a breeze to put together. So far, I'm very impressed with these models.

At this point I realized that my starter set had only come with two Enlightened ship sprues, instead of three like it was supposed to.  We got in touch with Wayland Games, and they have an entirely unnecessarily byzantine process where you have to create an account to communicate with them at all, even on a simple matter like this. However, after we negotiated that hurdle, they very kindly sent us the missing sprue!

Here are the cruisers:

And the SRS tokens:

Then it's time for our first frigate unit, the Merian class frigate squadron Prodromus astronomiae (P42-45).

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Meanwhile, I was surprised to find a Finnish retailer stocking Dystopian Wars, and to encourage them, I bought a copy of the Islands and Archipelagos terrain set. Again, the resin is excellent quality, very clean and crisp; I love it. Also the little islands are really cute!

I got started by painting up the smaller sandbars with a base coat of Tan Earth and some Iraqi Sand and Tan Yellow drybrushed on.

This was so much fun, I made two more.

And then some.

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So yeah, I had a really good time building and painting these! Actually trying the game is on my very long to-do list; the next time I pick this up, I'll try painting the whatever it was they called the Russians.

Epic: Let's Paint Legions Imperialis

"You already have a uniform, Colonel, issued to you by the Emperor. That's who you're fighting for. Let the traitors alter their uniforms."

 - Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

I waxed poetic earlier about how Epic, specifically Space Marine, was my first love in wargaming. That meant that when Adeptus Titanicus came out, I got the starter box and a bunch of stuff, and then went on to buy some Aeronautica Imperialis as well. Hell, I even tried Battletech.

And then, in July, Games Workshop announced that Epic was coming back. And then announced that it was delayed. The delay went on and on, and we were told nothing about what was going on and why. Frankly, I started to feel a little silly that I'd been excited about the whole thing in the first place. We never were told what caused the delay, and I'll admit it played a part in my decision to buy no new minis in 2024.

However, it is now 2025, and I have the Legions starter set.

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The box comes with a lovely hardback rulebook that's the same quality as the Titanicus books, but easier to read, for which my aging eyes are grateful.

There's an infantry box of space marines and Solar Auxilia each, some vehicles for both, and two Warhound Titans, as well as two whippy sticks, templates and dice. I also bought a Legions Astartes Battleforce, which gave me another pair of infantry sprues and a bunch of other marine things.

If I have a criticism of the starter box, it's that it actually doesn't come with that much stuff. You have enough infantry for two companies, with some attached units, and a smattering of tanks that don't make a formation for either faction. Also there's no terrain at all. This is actually a bit of a problem for us Titanicus players, as most of us won't have bothered with terrain small enough to be useful to infantry!

Another problem, which has been widely noted, is that there aren't a lot of order tokens, and they're printed on ridiculously flimsy card that's very prone to tearing. The comical quality of the printing is such that even the envelope the token sheet was in was terrible, the flap came off in bits instead of opening. How I yearn for anything even remotely like the 2nd ed Space Marine order counters.

As for the rules, my first impression is very positive. They strongly remind me of old Space Marine, which is a good thing, and the basic rules seem fairly streamlined. There's some odd things, but I'll get into those when and if I actually get a chance to play this.

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What delights me as a Titanicus player is that the two Warhounds come with a whole new suite of weapons. To be honest, Titanicus feels pretty much dead right now, so it was a pleasant surprise to find not just lots of new weapons, but Titanicus weapon cards for them online as well.

Obviously I had to build some of them. I was thinking about ordering a volkite eradicator anyway, and the Incisor melta lances suit my Ferrox Maniple.

The new weapons are the same excellent quality that we're used to with Titanicus.

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Because the Legions supplement Rise of the Dark Mechanicum includes rules for fielding a Titan army, it turns out I actually have a tournament-size army and then some in my Legio Venefica Titans and Auxilia Daedra Knights: they add up to 3490 points in Legions. However, they wouldn't be a very practical army, as only the Knights would be able to capture objectives. So I'm going to build some Space Marines who can do that.

The first Legions thing I actually did was order the appropriate flying bases for my Aeronautica Marine flyers. So perhaps counterintuitively, I have Titans and aircraft, but no ground troops.

I'm not sure how I feel about the textured bases, but I do know that they don't match the desert aesthetic I had decided on for my Titans. So I tried gluing on different amounts of ballast, and painting the exposed areas Light Grey, and I think it turned out all right.

As you can see, my Marines will be Word Bearers. When I got back into Warhammer ages ago, I decided that my legion of choice would be the XVII, because I had recently finished my theology degree and it was obvious that the Word Bearers were the theologians of the Chaos Space Marines. I carried that over into Aeronautica, and now I'm very surprised to find that the Word Bearers actually have a useful Legion trait! Unlike the other, lesser Legions, I can give orders to Broken detachments. So we're definitely sticking with Word Bearers.

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The first formation I'm going to build is the most basic building block of Marine armies: the Legion Demi-Company. Entertainingly, the rulebook tells us that Legion companies were made up of three demi-companies. A demi-company has four compulsory detachments: an HQ, a Support and two Core detachments, both of which have to be tactical marines. It can get a whole bunch of different optional detachments, and all non-infantry models in the formation get a bonus when contesting objectives. I like that, as it encourages combined arms.

I got started with the Contemptor Dreadnoughts. Frankly, I've never been a fan of the design, but they're right there on the infantry sprues.

Some of those bits are tiny. But I maybe have to take back what I said, because at this scale, Contemptors are cute.

Each infantry sprue comes with two Contemptors, and building all of them from the starter set and the battleforce box gave me eight: four with twin lascannon and four with assault cannon. They were pretty easy to build, even though the smallest parts were a bit fiddly.

I painted them very simply: Burnt Cadmium Red base coat, Dark Red drybrush, Gunmetal Grey details with a Black Glaze wash. This is the paint scheme I used for my Aeronautica models, and it seems to work quite well at this scale.

They form the Dreadnought Talon As living dwellings in whom the strength of man rejoiceth.

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What I really need, though, is infantry. Each sprue has a command stand, four stands of tactical marines, and one each of assault, plasma gun support and missile launcher support marines, as well as two stands of Terminators. There are some sergeant models for all of them.

The infantry are, of course, very tiny. Handily, the only assembly that's required is gluing the missile launchers on the support marines, and even though it's a bit fiddly, it can be done on the sprue. The majority of the models are attached to the sprue by their base, so with a very small amount of work, you can paint all the models on the sprue and then clip them off to glue onto the bases.

Painting the models was quite simple, and I went with the same formula as the Dreadnoughts.

As painting all that infantry is very fiddly work, I also built the three Predators from the starter box, and two Rhinos from the battleforce.

Both the Rhinos and Predators have several weapon options, which if I'm honest I'm not sure I'm a fan of. I can understand different turrets for the Predators, but choosing between sponson weapons just seems overly fiddly and unnecessary at this scale. They've also been made quite difficult to magnetize, although at this scale that wouldn't be my first choice anyway.

I also painted the two Sicarans.

Again, it's a bit weird that you get two squadrons of battle tanks, because the only Astartes formation you can make out of the box is a demi-company, and you can only attach one battle tank detachment to it. To make an armored company, you need a heavy armor detachment, like these Kratoses from the battleforce box: the squadron Behold! his mercies flourish.

I also built one of them into a commander. If you make a Solar Auxilia tank company, you have to upgrade one of the tanks to a tank commander, but the space marines only got tank commanders in the Great Slaughter supplement, and they're a separate detachment.

However, this lets me build my first formation: a Legion Armored Company.

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I'm sorry, did I say infantry? I seem to have ended up painting tanks. Here's a tactical detachment.

I've painted these guys to match my 28mm signals squad, so their right shoulder pads are white and bear the signals insignia. Here's the whole demi-company, i.e. the infantry contents of one infantry box: one HQ stand, two tactical detachments, and two stands each of Terminators, Assault Marines, and plasma gun and missile gun support troops. They are the 2nd (Signals) Demi-Company Mightier are your voices than the manifold winds, 5th (Combat Support) Company, 2nd Battalion, Morbid Fane Chapter, Word Bearers Legion.

And here's all the marine miniatures from the core box.

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So, I quite liked painting little tanks, and painting the infantry wasn't nearly as much of a chore as I'd feared. I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, but frankly, I'm having enough fun building and painting the minis that I want to collect more of them.

I hope GW keeps supporting the game, even though I'm not that keen on the system of releasing themed campaign books that also include rules. There's already some really good models, and I'd love to see some Rough Riders for the Solar Auxilia, more marine infantry and super-heavies, and Rough Riders. There's also still some gaps in the order of battle, most prominently that there's nothing in the marine artillery slot yet.

To conclude, I'm absolutely delighted that Epic is back, and I've enjoyed building and painting these minis more than any hobby project in a long, long time.