From StuartL - Writing the Book on Treachery - Literature and Sarah's Library Cart - 145 Points

Hello all,

    As I mentioned in my last post, work has been keeping me very busy recently, so I have had to take a step back from painting and the challenge in general to focus on it. It also hasn't helped that both my monthly RPG game and my wargaming club meetings have fallen on the last two weekends, cutting my hobby time even more. So, I wasn't able to post anything last week as I was too busy marking essays and proof-reading them for my students. Luckily I have a bit of a gap in my schedule this week, so I have been able to push a few things over the line and get them ready for posting.

    My last post saw me taking Sarah's Library Cart over to the Literature section of the library. For this area, I wanted to post about the books I have spent the eighteen years or so reading, the Horus Heresy mega-series of novels by the Black Library (Games Workshop's publishing wing). The series is finally winding down with the release of the final book in the sub-series that wraps up the main storyline. I think in total there are about 90 books, plus loads of novellas and short stories. As you can guess from the title of the series, the main antagonist is Horus. In the books, Horus is the Emperor of Mankind's favourite son, Primarch of the greatest Space Marine Legion and is generally an all round swell guy. By book 2 he decides that he'd rather be evil and destroy everything (the writing at this stage is pretty poor if I'm being honest). The core reason is that he is convinced by a guy named Erebus that if he continues to be the dutiful son, he will eventually be overlooked and forgotten, and wouldn't things be much better if Horus were running the show? (GregB certainly thinks so). Erebus belongs to another Space Marine Legion, the Word Bearers. Originally, the Word Bearers were intended to go out into the galaxy and convince everyone (at gunpoint usually), that there were no gods and that everyone should believe in science, logic and human ingenuity. What they actually did was decide that the Emperor was the ONLY god and proceeded to build temples, shrines and holy buildings everywhere they went, while writing loads of books about how awesome the Emperor was. When the Emperor found out about this, he flattened their biggest temple and told them to cut it out. The Word Bearers then decided that maybe there were better gods to worship and became born-again daemon-worshippers. It was their plan to burn the galaxy to ashes and ruin everything for everyone for all time, they are just that sort of people.

    Anyway, with all that said, here are my entries for the challenge, 20 Despoilers for the Word Bearers Legion. If you're going to play the bad guys, you should play the absolute worst bad guys in the setting in my opinion, and the Word Bearers fit the bill. I can always be happy losing a game, because I know my army probably deserves whatever beating the receive. 

    Despoilers are assault troops, meant to close with the enemy and chop them into little chunks with a variety of very sharp and very nasty swords, axes and spiked clubs. On the whole, the Word Bearers are not the best melee force in Warhammer 30,000, but they are fanatical and favour massed infantry formations. 

    Being devout chaos worshippers, I have made sure to add lots of parts from 40K Chaos Marine kits, to break up the nice neat lines of 30K style armour. Shoulder pads, weapons and this fellow's lovely looking icon all help to give the army a less wholesome aesthetic. They also add a load of skulls to the minis as well. 

    And with that lot out of the way, it is time to head over to the next section, DIY. As has become the norm for me, I will be taking the Library Cart, and so here is my payment.

    This green-haired cyberpunk girl is a 3D print from Unit9 on MyMiniFactory. I have a few more models from this range coming up later today where I will go over how I painted it, so I will skip that detail for now. 

    I have found myself spending more and more time looking at 3D printing. My better half refuses to allow it in the house due to all of the materials involved that can be bad for your health and also because we would quickly need a second house after the current one was filled with 3D printed miniatures in no time at all. Luckily I have a couple of friends I can ask to print stuff out for me as there are a ton of cool models available these days.

On to the scores then.

21 x 28mm minis = 105 points

Literature section = 20 points

Sarah's Library Cart = 20 points

TOTAL = 145 Points.

For my duels.

Skulls (315) + 79 = 394

Legions (620) + 100 = 720

From Millsy: Good to see I'm not the only one painting traitor legions for 40K. If the Emperor wasn't such a complete buzzkill maybe he'd have more loyal servants! I love the deep red you have gone with here Stuart, there's a real richness to it that suits the chapter so well. The green hair on your cyberpunk girl has shades of Tank Girl for me so what's not to like?