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I have been painting my Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness boxed set for the last several weeks and completed it a few days ago. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have never thought of myself a World Eaters kind of guy, but they had all the characteristics that I wanted in a Warhammer 30k army: they had a great color scheme, the gameplay I wanted, and the lore was admittedly very fun.
This is all very weird to me, because I don’t like Chaos Space Marines. While 80% of that is because I really hate painting all that trim, I just don’t get into anything demonic in Warhammer 40k. By far, hands down, completely, my least favorite army in 40k is Chaos Demons. I think they look dumb, I think they play dumb, and I think they’re boring.
But that’s neither here nor there. The point is: I have finished painting my traitor marines, and I loved the experience. And I…. I want to do it all over again.
So what have I painted. Well let’s start with the picture where I made a mistake but was didn’t realize it until I’d put everything back in the cabinet. These are 35 Tactical Marines. The mistake is that five of them are a Heavy Weapons team with Heavy Bolters, and I should have given them their own picture. One thing that you’ll notice in this picture is that the marine in the top left is… missing. My darn cat stole that one and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. I’m sure it will turn up, but for now the cat isn’t allowed back in the office.
Some of the Tactical Marines have bayonets and some have chain bayonets. What are World Eaters without the cause for a little blood splatter? Or a LOT of blood splatter?
Next up is my Missile Launcher Heavy Weapons Squad. I find the design of the Horus Heresy missile launchers to be a little weird, but overall I really like how the squad turned out. I like that there’s room for a little bit (not much but a little bit) of versatility to the poses.
Then there are the Cataphracti Terminators, which I really, really loved. I made the first squad just playing around with the weapons, giving them a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but the second squad is all Lightning Claws. And, of course, lots and lots of blood.
Then comes the Contemptor Dreadnought, which was a lot of fun to paint but which I made the biggest mistake on. There are MASSIVE gaps on his shoulders, and I’m embarrassed by them.
The Spartan Assault Tank comes next. I loved this tank from start to finish. It was fun to paint, fun to weather, fun to build. I should add that having bought the (extremely overpriced) World Eater decals for this whole project was really a good idea. Should it have been $35? No. But did it make all the models much better? Yes.
Finally, I have my two Praetors. These were the models which I loved so much that I actually went out and bought two more of them on eBay, one of which has been painted up as a Night Lord and the other of which is being currently worked on as a Word Bearer.
The thing is, you see, I loved painting the Age of Darkness so much that I decided that I’m going to buy a second one, ostensibly for my son to play with, so we can play at home. I want another traitor legion, and the two that I’m most drawn to are the Night Lords (because of their color scheme) and the Word Bearers (because of their lore). It’s going to be a good month before I dive into another box, because I’ve only got so much money, but this was a delight to paint, start to finish.
So the question is this: Angron was released this week, and it’s a really incredible model, and I just painted the World Eaters. So, am I going to buy Angron?
Honestly, no. As much as I love the idea of Primarchs, the only one that I’ve ever painted was Mortarion (because I was on a Plague Marines kick for a while) and I’ve never had the desire to paint Magnus or Guilliman. And as incredible as Angron looks–he really looks incredible–he is essentially a beefed up, newly-minted Bloodthirster, and I’ve painted a Bloodthirster before. This doesn’t seem like something I’d want to add to my army.
And besides, this is 40k World Eaters Angron, not 30k World Eaters Angron. I have indeed thought about getting the Forge World Angron and painting him (though I think his gold armor is boring and would probably change it to match the blue and white). But that’s where my interest in Angron ends.
But he is cool.