Hey guys!

After having a great weekend with my world eaters at AoTE, my thoughts have started moving on to my army for the next event (realistically, probably the 'scouring' event rather than the seige of Terra!)

I quite fancy having a go at the Sons of Horus. In particular, the 'scouring' era force, where the legion is broken and battered and retreating towards the eye of terror. This will let me do do a load of different things as far as modelling goes - lots of different armour marks, combinations of units who have been shunted together because of casualties, individual details on units and battle damage etc. Overall this will make them quite a different force to the one I've made of World Eaters, who are largely faceless. Dave (Wolf Lord Mjol) had a great idea for instance with one marine pulling a wounded brother along the ground, so I'll be going for things like that.

Anyways I had a few questions for people, just to see what they think!

A big one is armour colour - collected visions is really, really confusing as far as the SoH are confused, and from the armies I saw at AoTE there didn't seem to be 2 the same! I was thinking maybe some kind of tin bitz/boltgun metalic base with an application Vallejo 'light sea grey' (which is actually more of a pale green as used by BigWill in his SoH blog), I don't want these guys to look parade-ground clean! To me, it looks like so many of the SoH are metallic in collected visions, that maybe the green is some kind of sheen?

Also how 'chaosy' should I go with these guys? I don't want to go as far as horns (and sure as hell no top-knots ^^), but maybe some spikes and severed heads amongst otherwise standard marines will do?

I'm planning to knock a model soon and see how it goes, but I'm interested to know what peoples interpretation of the above bits and pieces would be!

Cheers

Pacific

My interpretation of the green, from before I saw models painted, was a metallic one:











The focus of the photos isn't great but hopefully you get the idea.

However after seeing BigWill's, I like his colour a lot too!

Again I like the worn and weathered look. I think that, as you suggest, some spikes and so on would work well without a mass of mutations and horns. But I do think the odd topknot would be good!

Did you see my colour?

The first batch was a 1:1:1 mix of adeptus battlegrey, knarloc green and dheneb stone.
http://fulgrim.com/minis/SonsOfHorus/tactical02.gif

But then I discovered a nice paint in the MP range, called deep bronze green. It's a bit darker than my mix above, but that makes it great to work up the highlights.

Collected visions has such a varied range though. I tried mixing knarloc with elf grey to make the light version, but I'm not a big fan of bright colours:

Thanks for those guys, think I will have a bit of an experiment based on what you've said and see how I get on!

Yeah I did see your SoH Whitehorn, they looked great! I guess they were effective as well considering your team won overall victory and tore the dark angels a new one!

Regarding colours, its funny that little picture of the SoH seems to contradict nearly every picture in Collected Visions. The majority of them seem to have a metallic tint to them or be metallic altogether, so maybe washes are the way to go?

I'll be going for lots of spikes and studs, but I think the only top-knot in my army will be Abaddon and thats only because I have no choice :)

Were I to attempt SOH, I'd probably do their armour darkish grey and then wash with green... no idea how well that would work though!

When did they go black?
(I gather they didn't thereafter go back... ;) )

The scouring was 7 years of 'GTFO', pushing the traitors into the Eye of Terror. It was only after the Sons of Horus ended up in the EOT that they renounced their old heraldry (aka colours) and went black. Horus was dead, Abaddon was claimed Warmaster and they were sick of being the traitorous scapegoats of the ether, so they all adopted (his) 1st company colours and the very apt name, 'Black Legion'.

Something like that :D

Yeah it was some time though I think until that happened, they had a couple of centuries of being picked on by the other traitor legions, and then the EC managed to steal Horus's body and attempted to try and clone it. Abaddon was then renamed Warmaster and changed the legion name to Black Legion (as a mark of their shame), and set off to destroy Horus's body and the clones created from it.

So I guess I will have a fair bit of scope with the force if I do it right, from the seige of Terra up until a while after the GTFO :D

Yeah, I agree that Collected Visions seems to find it hard to settle on what the colour for the Sons of Horus should be. I think the best way to go is to try and get a slight metallic 'sheen' to a colour rather than go for an all out metallic effect, and the Vallejo colour used by BigWill seems to be the closest to the SoH scheme as pictured in the Index Astartes and on the cover of Horus Rising (which in turn seems closest to the pale sea green described in the novels as opposed to the darkish metallic grey that seems to be the favoured colour in Collected Visions). My recommendation would be to mix a small amount of a mid metallic colour (say chainmail if you are using Citadel colours) with the Vallejo colour as a base coat, and see if that is enough to get a suitable sheen to the colour. If that works, you could mix up a big pot of the mix and use it as a base for highlights/shading. Another idea might be to use Vallejo 'Metal Medium' (see here). Its not something I've used myself, but the product description certainly seems to suggest it would achieve the effect you are after:
"Metallic Medium (Refractor or Interference Medium) produces an iridescent lustre caused by mica platelets coated with titanium dioxide which interfere with the reflection of light. When mixed with Model Color, at 50% of volume, it lightens the color and gives them an iridescent shimmer. When used as final varnish it produces a silky effect." Certainly seems like it could be worth trying out...

As far as how 'Chaos' you want to go with these guys, I'd certaily include a bit of spiky-ness, some bloodthirsty trophies and the like. A fair sprinkling of mutations would certainly be appropriate (IA confirms that they began to exhibit mutations shortly after dedicating themselves to Chaos, so they would certainly be evident by the time of the Scouring). Given that they have just lost their Primarch and much of their self-belief, it would make sense that they would dedicate themselves all the more fervently to their new gods, so plenty of Chaos markings would also work well. Perhaps even include some possesed marines (the Legion is noted as having significant numbers submitting to daemonic possession in their early history, to the extent they had problems with loss of numbers until a solution was found that enabled the daemonic influence to be removed without destroying the marine's body).

Just to say thanks very much for these replies guys! Given me a lot to think about!
I've painted up a single mini so far who's made up of a mix of standard and chaos components - I've tried a combination of metallics, and washes of green with a catachan green/rotten flesh mix and it seems to look ok!



I've tried to include some Collected Visions elements, such as the red gloves (which I think make him look less like a post-heresy nurgle marine) and the mark of helmet which is similar to many in the book. Theres also a hint of metallic throughout the model which unfortunately isn't visible in the photo.

Great job Pacific. These are going to look good :D

That looks quite promising, nice compromise between the IA and Collected Visions look. Shame the picture doesn't really capture the metallic 'sheen' although you can just about see it on some parts, notably the backpack vents in the larger picture. I reckon an army done like that would look rather good!

Looks good to me. :) I agree the red gloves like the artbooks are a good touch.

That's very nice! Now get painting - I want to see Horus ready for May as well! ;)

Great Work man.... think thats going to look really effective when the whole force starts to get going.

3000 points in 8 months is a piece of cake!!! Get working mate and they will definately be there for the Seige of the Palace!

Very nice - looking forward to see a finished army at SoT!

I wasn't too keen on the red gloves (for my wons), so I kept it to a minimum, luckily I didn't use too many arms with gloves in my tac squads. It adds a characterful touch, but I wouldn't make it consistant across all marines. I only found 2 pics that actually had that.