Horus Heresy Blood Angels Army Showcase - 1150 points

After a week or so of posting photos of everything individually, it's finally time to unveil the army photos. In the week since these were shot, the force has actually grown with a unit of 10 assault Marines completed.

I first put paint to model for this force on 22/06/22 following the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy game. It's now 10/08, so that puts this at about 6 weeks ish of progress. As I've said there are another 10 finished models now that aren't pictured, so the total miniatures painted is 47, which is pretty good. The pictured force is about 1150 points, and now the completed total is 1350. A good start and there are plenty of troops for a nice solid core. 

I've said it before, but returning to old fantasy changed the way I paint hugely and upped my output of quality models massively. Fantasy uses 20 man units most of thr time, so I had to master batch painting to get an army together at all, which was what made all the difference. 

I'm happy with the old school look of these guys that was heavily inspired by rogue trader and second edition. I even managed to sneak the old metal scouts and ancient rhino in there. Taking inspiration from older versions of warhammer really makes quite a lot of sense stylistically as well as there are a large number of heresy units that draw inspiration from older models for the look of things like guns, helmets, armour marks and even tanks. 

That about rounds it out - the photos probably get a bit repetitive as I dumped the lot on here. More future posts at some point when I can be bothered to get the camera, lights, scenery and models out... so could be a long time.

 

Horus Heresy Blood Angels Legion Outriders

I've always liked space marine bikes - the only problem with heresy bikes is that at the moment the only option is to buy them at the extortionate prices that forgeworld are charging (currently a little over £20 a piece). I was never going to pay that when I had a set of old ravenwing bikes just waiting for a new marine project.

The problem I had was that they weren't really heresy, so I did a bit of conversion work for both the bikes and the riders to rebuild both the front and back of the bikes and then move the bolter to the side like the official outriders. I'm sticking with Mk6 armour for the Marines, so went with with corvus helms again. 

Unfortunately, their rules are pretty bad right now- this unit comes out at around 100 points, but in the current edition of heresy bikes have no more protection than ordinary men (no additional wounds or toughness). If you run you get shrouded, but it's not a whole lot of protection. Worse of all, they seem to be unable to take melta bombs now which ends the time honoured tradition of dunking tank rear armour. Talk about tactically limiting!

That said, I do intend to build a few more to see if I can make something of them yet! 

That about rounds out the look at these guys. I think it may be time for some army photos now. I have some individual shots of thee Rhinos, but will probably post them later on. 

 

Horus Heresy Blood Angels Indomitus Terminators

Another unit for the heresy/2nd edition inspired Blood Angels today - Indomitus Terminators. I'd actually had the Terminators sitting around in bits for years - part of a starter set I never got around to doing anything with. Handily, they're usable in heresy, and look very nostalgic painted up in their 90s colours. 

One thing I learned from painting these is that painting hazard stripes on rounded power fists is hard to get right. Other than that, I continued the same scheme as the Marines, but I did adjust a few things - like moving the blue to the crux terminatus on their shoulders and going full yellow on the helms. 

They were actually quite a quick unit to paint in the end. There are a lot of flat panels on them which took to the freehand well. 

They give me a lot of old Space Hulk vibes too which is nice. For my army's aesthetic, they actually match better than some of the heresy patterns, but maybe I'll add some at some point. 

A preview of o e of the army photos now that I've shown a couple of units:

A shot of them in combat facing down a Night Lords assault squad.

 

Horus Heresy - Blood Angels Scouts

Everybody loves scouts, they're classc. I'm happy they recently jumped ship into heresy. I think that the new primaris ranges basically ate their lunch in 40k and they had no other option, but that doesn't matter as here they are!

Part of the reason I sound so ecstatic is that my Heresy Blood Angels force are second edition themed, and this was a chance to get some real bona-fide 90s metal right up in the troops department. It's possible the other reason I'm so ecstatic is lead poisoning from handling their heavy asses, but we won't worry about that.

As long as I'm delirious I might as well also take the opportunity to point out this scenery they're on that I also painted up recently- in part to match the army and to inject a bit of colour into the field 

Plenty of photos here. I have little else to say about the work on them as they're pretty much painted up to match the army. I do rate the metal sculpts a lot higher than the plastic ones for quality and character. They're cheap as hell on eBay right now too, so if you're playing heresy I'd pick some up. 

The final picture below is from a game. I'm running them with swords and pistols like the models, but taking melta bombs and using them to try to dunk some tanks! So far I've only used them once, but they managed 3 wounds on a Deredeo, so not a bad attempt. 

 More Blood Angels to come....

Horus Heresy Blood Angels Praetor 30k - complete!

Today's update is my completed Blood Angels Praetor. This guy took a while to paint - he's pretty large for an infantry model and there was a lot of detail to get to grips with - actually the biggest factor slowing me down was deciding which colour to put where. 

If you missed my three previous posts about the army, I suggest going back to the front page and reading them! (Go ahead, I'll wait... no really...)

My heresy blood angels are taking strong inspiration from 2nd edition and rogue trader art, and this guy continues the theme proudly with some hazard stripes and black flames. 

He does have a name too - Del'Ragius! Named after the legendary hero Eugene Del'Ragio (an imperial guard sergeant from my youth, there is an article on here about him somewhere). Suffice to say, the hairstyle, eyebrows and blue colour ended up making my Praetor look a bit like him, so I decided it was high time to revive the legend! 

Actually, the cloak was a lot of fun - an excuse to have a go at the equally old school yellow on black flames! 

Layering the yellow to a smooth finish was a bit of a pain in the ass, but  it certainly makes for a nice bold feature. 

That about rounds up that post, I still have to post the Rhinos, terminators, bikes and scouts, so chances are one of those units will be up on the Blog soon! 

 

Horus Heresy, 30k Blood Angels Contemptor Dreadnought

More Blood Angels today - this time the Contemptor. This model was actually the test piece for the whole army scheme, so was a bit experimental. It seemed like a good model to practice my freehand on before scaling down to the smaller troops. 

The model is the older plastic contemptor that came with one of the box sets (Calth maybe?) - I had it sitting around down the back of a drawer for years and dug it out to add to the Blood Angels. I've actually managed to add a few things to the army from my collection, and it's been fun finally clearing some space in the cupboard of shame! 

The Havoc launcher is actually an old Anvil Industry bit. I think they might be out of print now as a lot of the old Anvil range has gone. 

Much like the Marines, I've tried to capture that old school vibe, so thrown in blue and yellow along with plenty of black flames! 

That about rounds it out for the dreadnought. The scenery pictured behind it is another project I've been working on and may share more photos of at some point  

 

Heresy Blood Angels - Tactical Squad

Once again, I'm back after a seemingly long hiatus. What you won't know is that I've been busy behind the scenes working on a batch of heresy era Blood Angels!

When the new box set dropped a month or two ago, it really peeked my interest- I've always liked Heresy, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go all in on the "big box" - handily it was easy enough to get a hold of 2 Tactical squads and a Praetor new on sprue on eBay for just under £50 - a sort of Start Collecting set of my own devising. Needless to say, once I'd started, the collection grew and I've now painted 1150 points of stuff! (Army photos later...)

With it all building up around me, I figured I should take some photos, so here is the first Tactical squad with their Deimos Rhino in the background. I will take separate photos of the Rhinos later. 

You'll notice the colour scheme is a bit unique. When they said "Horus Heresy 2nd Edition", I just heard 2nd Edition - and hit the old 90s books for inspiration. I've never been a fan of Blood Angels and their famous gold nipple armour - the ones I loved were the bright orange, blue and yellow space vampires of my childhood, and I've tried to capture that sort of feel. The helmets are Rogue Trader inspired with their stripes. 

I did go berserk with the freehand. Each man has a striped helmet and 2 panels of either cheques or black flames that I painstakingly added by hand. They all also have numerals on their helmets on the centre stripe with the legion number as well as hazard striped saw blades. Luckily old fantasy equipped me with the powers of batch painting to see me through!

I converted the sergeant with a few choicw spare parts

My background for the colour variant is that they are a post Heresy force that has adapted a different scheme of helmets to make it less obvious for their marine opponents what their battlefield roles are, and to stop them from being able to assassinate their leaders - something like that.

 That's it for this squad - more coming soon!