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So I have been excited for quite some time to get my hands on The Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness. I love The Horus Heresy lore, and the models–especially beakies–are some of my favorites. I love all of the armor and tanks of Warhammer 30k. With the exception of Titans, which I find to look a little dumb (I know I’m in the minority), everything about The Horus Heresy aesthetic is my thing.

And, I have been painting like a madman since I got my hands on the box, which came out this morning. I have previously mentioned that I was going to paint the World Eaters, and so I had to stock up on Blood for the Blood God. I have never played a traitor legion before. (I had a Chaos Space Marine army for a very brief time during 3rd edition, but I’m not counting that.) I have previously been very much in the Space Wolves, Salamanders, and Blood Angels camp. So this is new.

And I am loving painting these guys. I started with five of the beakies, just to get my feet wet and to figure out the paint scheme. There’s nothing fancy here, admittedly. I loosely followed Sonic Sledgehammer’s painting video for the World Eaters, including using his recipe for Marine Juice (one part Nuln Oil, one part Reikland Fleshshade, one part Lahmiam Medium).

When I bought The Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness box there was a lot of periphery stuff that I wanted to get that I couldn’t through my FLGS, which is disappointing. The store is small and they aren’t a priority for getting inventory, apparently. I was told (secondhand) that the store was only able to get one periphery item for every four Age of Darkness box. So, I got the core box, the missile launcher and heavy bolter upgrade kit, and the Liber Hereticus. The Liber Hereticus hasn’t arrived yet–they expect it in sometime next week. I also ordered the World Eaters transfer sheet directly from Games Workshop.

It wasn’t long after doing some basic troops that I decided to jump into the fun stuff and paint the Praetors. I love these guys so much, and wish there were more of them. I’m very tempted to pick up some extras on eBay.

And what do I think of the game? Not sure yet. I certainly haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but in the last couple of weeks I have watched quite a few battle reports on YouTube. It looks fun. It definitely looks like more fun to me than Warhammer 40k 9th Edition, which I think suffers from rules bloat. (The Horus Heresy is definitely on the crunchy side, so there’s a ton of rules here, too, but the big difference is that everyone has access to mostly the same units and rules, with only a few variations for each legion. So it doesn’t feel like the rules are overblown. But that’s coming from someone who hasn’t played it yet.)

As evidenced by the fact that I have now painted both of my Praetors to be World Eaters, you can tell that I’m keeping this entire box as one legion and not splitting it in half. I’m going to have to find some games at my FLGS. That shouldn’t be too hard, as they sold a lot of these boxes.

Anyway, I have now assembled a small squad of heavy bolter beakies which I will be painting next. And this is set to be a big painting weekend. With today being Saturday, tomorrow being Father’s Day, Monday being Juneteenth (which is a paid holiday at work), I decided to take a vaction day on Tuesday to turn this into a massive four-day painting weekend.

More models to display soon!