From StuartL - I'm So Hungry, I Could Eat a World - 75 Points

Hello again. I'm just waiting for some paint to dry on my Altar entry, but in the meantime, I did manage to get some other figures off the workbench. The more eagle-eyed among you may note that they share some colours with my previous entry, though this is purely by chance. This group of minis have been taking up space at the corner of my workbench for a few weeks now, whereas the mechs I posted up were done in just a couple of days. The colours are just a coincidence.

Anyway, here is today's submission, a group of World Eater Legionnaires for the Horus Heresy setting by Games Workshop. (Or Warhammer 30K).

I started wargaming with Hero Quest and Space Crusade, but my first real taste of the Warhammer hobby was through Space Marine, the 6mm game. I remember playing massive games of that with my friends back in school. The backdrop for the original game was the Horus Heresy and I loved the background in the original rulebook. I must have read all of the short pieces of fiction a few dozen times over.

Fast forward quite a few years and the Heresy became a bit of a niche part of the hobby. Bell of Lost Souls and other online gamers started to put together rules, conversion ideas and the like for gaming in the era and I read all that I could and even tried to cobble together some bits and pieces. It never really amounted to much as I just don't have the green-stuff skills needed to make it work.

Eventually Games Workshop, Forge World and Black Library began to make official Heresy products including a range of novels, resin and plastic minis and some proper rules. I snapped up multiple copies of the Betrayal at Calth and Burning of Prospero boxed sets and then... proceeded to completely fall out of love with GW and 40K, largely due to GW's constant attempts to screw their fanbase over (blocking online stores from trading internationally really hit hard in Japan, where the exchange rate GW charged was ludicrously unrealistic) and the almost weekly new editions of the core rules. It has only been recently that I have made an effort to get back into the GW hobby, mainly with the aim of playing using modified 5th Ed. rules, not caring too much about army lists, and generally focusing on narrative based gaming with friends.

Which is what led to what you see here. 15 Assault Marines from the World Eaters Legion in their old colour scheme of white and blue. Sadly the transfers I had for the shoulder pads are from their 40K incarnation, but I have a pile of transfer sheets and I am NOT paying the 20 GBP price tag that Forge World wants for the 'official' transfers. Likewise, there are a few 3rd party bits (notably the jump packs) mixed in to give the unit a more varied appearance as the figures are all built from the same kit. I can't remember where the parts came from as I ordered bits and pieces from half a dozen different makers and didn't make any effort to keep them separated. I still despise resin, but sadly it's almost impossible to do an all plastic 30K army.

As the World Eaters are known to be a bunch of psychotic berzerkers, I have applied quite a lot of battle damage to their armour as well as a lot of blood stains. After spending hours getting the white to look nice and crisp, it seemed almost heretical to do it, but these are the baddies after all. No clean white armour for them.

So, 15x 28mm minis adds 75 points to my challenge total, as well as to my GW minis side duel. There are 19 skullz on the minis, which is quite low for GW. The 30K aesthetic is rather less morbid than the later 40K one. Just to bump the numbers up a bit, I added a couple of skullz to a base or two. Having seen Barks' Skull Bomb earlier, I feel that I should have added a LOT more. Oh well. This is also my first post containing minis for the 30K setting, so that should also be a Squirrel. A hat trick it seems, Woo.

My running Duels totals:

GW Points - 666 (fitting for a post about heretics, no?)

Skullz - 371

Squirrels - 11

Eat a whole world? Clearly you've never been on rations at sea man! You cant just scoff down other men's food you know - it makes them quite cranky you know! That said, I do like me some psychotic axe wielding space baddies and may even have some of my own...

Cap'n Wednesday