Warhammer: The Horus Heresy - Reflecting Upon The Open Day

As I mentioned in my last post, I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to the Horus Heresy Open Day at Warhammer World and after a fantastic weekend of nerding, I'm now back home in the rainy Highlands of Scotland.

Rather than talk about the rules, model previews, or even scale creep, which have all had pretty widespread coverage through multiple channels by this point, I thought I'd share my reflections on a couple of aspects of the day through a more personal lens.

Legends of Paint

One of the aspects of the weekend I was particularly looking forward to was the Painting Competition, particularly as in a departure to the format used at the Weekenders I attended in 2018 and 2019, the event organisers had indicated that this would be an "open format" competition where every entry would be assessed on its' merits.

There were three categories in the competition: single miniature, unit and monster/vehicle and you could enter up to two of them. After a lot of thought I decided that I'd enter a single miniature and a vehicle, opting to take my mkIIa Phobos Rhino for the latter category. For the former it was a more difficult choice though and I ended up taking three miniatures down the road with me as I was struggling to choose which one to enter.

The miniatures I considered entering in the Single Miniature category on Saturday.
From L-R: First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon, an Ultramarines Centurion with Early Crusade Honours and a World Eaters Red Butchers 'Devoured'.

After seeking some feedback from a few folks, I ultimately decided to enter the Ultramarines Centurion with Early Crusade Honours and I'm thrilled to say that he won me a bronze pin! I'm even more chuffed as the miniature was originally painted shortly after it was released in 2014, though I did give it a wee spruce up last week modifying the weathering on his boots slightly so it was a bit more realistic, adding some highlights and scratches to the blue armour and bolt pistol casing and popping the tufts onto the base .

While ultimately the Rhino didn't net me a pin, I was able to get some feedback from one of the judges and while it was "beautifully weathered" they felt that it didn't really fit into the setting as it lacked any clear identifying features of being Heresy themed, which is valuable to know and I might think about adding a Legion marking or two to it in future. 

While winning a pin was incredibly cool, what was even better was having the pleasure of seeing a pair of my miniatures on display with so many other fantastic entries in a cabinet at Warhammer World. I really like the idea behind the Legends of Paint style of painting competition where there's a chance for every entrant's painting skills to be recognised as well as a chance to compete for 'Best in Show' and I hope that this is a format that continues to be used at events going forward. For my part, I'd think I'd like to have a go at aiming for a silver pin at the next opportunity I have to enter one.

Mark VI 'Corvus' pattern Power Armour - Battle Ready

"...re-designated as 'Mark VI' by the Mechanicum to account for the inclusion of the many stop-gap field modifications and repairs made to battleplate by the Techmarines and Artificers of the Astartes, full-scale production of this armour which, it should be noted was originally intended to supersede the previously issued mark IV 'Maximus' suits and provide the Legiones Astartes with the most advanced form of  power armour that could be readily mass produced, began just a few solar months before the outbreak of Horus' rebellion against the Emperor. As the war between Loyalist and Traitor engulfed more and more of  mankind's holdings throughout the galaxy, whether by accident or design almost every one of the Legions would come  to posses suits of mark VI plate in sufficient numbers that by the time of the Solar War and Siege of Terra, it was perhaps the most common of patterns of armour being issued by forces of both sides of the conflict."

In Ceramite Clad - A Historie of the Panoply of the Legiones Astartes. De Agostine, M.33

Another of the aspects of the Open Day I was really looking forward to was having the opportunity to paint one of the new mkVI Space Marines early and to be honest, once I'd got my painting competition entries registered, I made a beeline for the painting tables and was lucky enough to be able to secure a marine in one of my favourite poses to paint up.

The painting tables were set up with collections of paint and painting guides for each of the eighteen Legions and I opted to go for the XIth for mine. After a couple of hours or so, this was where I'd got to:

The red armour was basecoated with Mephiston Red. I then shaded the recesses with Flesh Tearers Red before highliting the edges of the plates with Evil Sunz Scarlet and adding some dots of Fire Dragon Bright to the corners of the plates and the rivets on the backpack.

The pauldrons were painted Abaddon Black and then highlighted with Skavenblight Dinge. 

All of the metallic areas were basecoated with Iron Warriors, shaded with Basilicanum Grey Contrast and then had some rough highlights applied with Iron Hands Steel while the soft armor and the cables on the backpack were painted Incubi Darkness and also shaded with Basilicanum Grey. I added some highlights of Incubi Darkness back to some of the raises ribs on both.

Finally the sling of the bolter was painted Mournfang Brown, shaded with Wyldwood Contrast and then highlighted with Mournfang Brown. 

Closer to Parade Ready

The models available on Saturday were preassembled and primed and in most cases still had mould lines in some places. While I could of course have stripped the paint I'd already applied and tried to clean things up a bit, I decided that instead I'd rather enjoy finishing what I'd already started than 'ruin' a paint job I was fairly happy with as a starting point. 

The first couple of elements I focused on were relatively quick and easy to do - I added a couple of skulls from the Citadel Skulls kit for some visual interest and then some Vallejo Earth Texture to the base.

I also selected a pair of decals from the Forge World Blood Angels sheet - a crimson winged blood drop seemed ideal for the right pauldron along with a tactical marking for the right greave. The decals were applied over a layer of gloss varnish and bedded down with some Microsol. Once they had cured, I sealed them with another layer of gloss varnish before applying a few thinned layers of matt varnish to them. Once this was dry I used a sponge to carefully add some chips and scratches to them using Abaddon Black on the pauldron and Mephiston Red on the greave respectively.

The base was painted Dryad Bark, then drybrushed with Gorthor Brown, followed by Baneblade Brown and then a really light dusting of Karak Stone. Once this was done, the skulls were painted Dryad Bark as well, but I then carefully applied Morghast Bone as a base layer before stippling on some Ushabti Bone followed by Screaming Skull. I finished them off by applying a glaze of Morghast Bone to tie everything together. This is slightly different to how I'd normally paint bone, but as the skulls are half buried in a muddy battlefield they wouldn't be in 'pristine' condition!

The base was then shaded with Vallejo Oiled Earth weathering wash and once that was dry I added a few Tiny Tufts which were bedded in to the mud of the base using a dab of Oiled Earth wash.  

Most of the rest of the work was refining the initial highlights I'd added to the model on Saturday. For the red armour I used Wild Rider Red, while the metallic areas were hit with a little Ironbreaker and the black areas were treated with Stormvermin Fur. For each area I focused on both refining the highlights while also taking the opportunity to add some chips and scratches, particularly where the area might naturally be bashed or in the case of the boltgun, regularly handled. 

To add some final touches, I decided to pick out a couple of details with Ironbreaker - the covers on the audio sensors/baffles and two wee ports on the backpack - these were then shaded with Nuln Oil. I also refined the soft armour with some more controlled highlights of Incubi Darkness and finally used some Vallejo European Dust wash to create the effect of accumulated dirt on the boots and lower greaves of the Marine to give the impression he's been in the field for some time. 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the finished miniature, and I think a squad or two painted to this standard would both look good on the tabletop and not take too long to do. 

Conclusions, Or Something Like Them

While we didn't get a chance to see the actual sprues of the Mark VI kit on the day, between having the chance to paint up this one and look at both the assembled miniatures in the cabinets and the ones that had been assembled for the 'try out the new rules' tables I feel confident saying that the kit will be a joy for both gamers and painters alike. 

From an aesthetics perspective, the design of the armour is a combination of the familiar and the new - as an evolution of the previous kits this is to be expected, but some of the smaller touches like the refinement of the Umbra pattern bolter and the armour's back pack are really nice to see. On a hyper-nerdy point, I particularly like that the couters are similar in appearance to those of the mark IV suits, which fits really nicely with the fluff that the design of the mark VI suit was intended to combine the technology and components of the existing mark IVs with newer and more refined materials and components to create what was intended at the time to be the pinnacle of power armour design.   

From a gaming perspective, the kit will include all of the optional upgrades that you might want to include when building a Legion Tactical Squad, so you've a Nuncio-Vox and a Vexilla as well melee weapon options for the sergeant, bayonets and chain bayonets (which actually have a bearing on the game now!) and the usual pouches and grenades so you'll be able to represent everything accurately from a 'what you see is what you get' perspective.

The combination of the relatively clean and simple design of the mark VI suit as well as the presence of all the weapon options and accoutrements in the kit means that from a painting perspective whether you want to get them built and painted as quickly as possible, spend time lavishing attention on each individual miniature or even do something in between - each option will be equally valid and give great results. Taking into account the weapon upgrade kits that were unveiled over the weekend, I think fans of the Legiones Astartes are going to love this kit and it's going to be fantastic seeing what everyone does with it.

So was the Open Day worth it? From my perspective, absolutely. I can understand why some folks might have found it a bit disappointing, but I think that comes down to what you hoped to get from the experience of attending it. For me, it provided the opportunity to visit Warhammer World for the first time since 2019 as well as a chance to meet and talk to some wonderful people, to 'test' my painting skills, to try out the new rules early (and I'd deliberately avoided the 'leaks' as much as I could so I could enjoy this), to paint one of the new models early and re-engage with the Horus Heresy all of which I suppose ultimately combines into my overall reason for attending was to be able to say "I was there the day the new edition was launched" - that might not be the best perspective to have on it, nor may it be a 100% accurate statement to make given the release is still a little way off, but rightly or wrongly that's how I feel about it -  and of course others' experiences will inevitably vary.

The buzz of being around so many enthusiastic Horus Heresy fans, some veterans, some who were just taking their first steps into the Age of Darkness has certainly got me looking forward to the new edition with even more excitement than previously and as the plastic kits we've seen shown off start being released, you can almost certainly expect to see a few of them being included as projects here, so until next time, thanks for reading!