Horus Heresy Review: Magos Prime

Background
The Magos Prime is exactly what the name suggests he should be. The primary mechanicum person to go to. They are a high adept of the Cult Mechanicus and have more than likely travelled significantly down the road of replacing most parts of their flesh with cybernetic and robotic replacements. In the extreme cases, their organic remains are contained in cages that are very reminiscent of Dreadnought chassis.

Strengths
The strength of the Magos Prime is dependant upon how one goes about building them - and indeed the army around them - to a great extent. Will you be going for a close combat Magos that is armed to the teeth and has a jump pack? Or a more ranged Magos who is likely to stay in place and shoot off a conversion beamer? Or more of a support role? It all really depends.

Weaknesses
Their stat line is not great - particularly in comparison to Space Marine Legion commanders and the like. They really need to think clearly about their battle field role and play to their strengths. They also need to think about how to NOT give away "slay the warlord" and similar victory points to their opponents. A 3+ armour save is an issue though (unless upgraded to an archmagos -- which you should be doing for all options listed below… I've not done this on everything just to be illustrative though).

Builds
I want to give one suggested build per Orders of High Techno-Arcana. Each Magos must choose one of these orders, so I figured an example of each would be productive.

Archmagos Prime, Archimandrite Order, djinn skein, 4 cyber occularis, servo arm, Graviton Imploder, Chain Fist (295 points)
This build is over the top, and is an all-comer build. It is meant for tank heavy armies wherein the commander will be riding with his troops. His weapons are designed to be able to take on most things in the game short of primarchs so as to stand a threat to almost anything. Team up with lots of tanks and a quality squad to do some real damage.

Magos Prime, Malagara Order, rad grenades, power fist, jet pack (160 points)
The monster hunter!

Magos Prime, Myrmidax Order, 1 conversion beamer, 2 phased plasma fusils (185 points)
With hatred of everything coupled with precision shots, this guy really can really ruin someone else's day unless he is taken care of.

Magos Prime, Ordinator Order, jet pack, melta gun, melta bombs, chain fist (150 points)
This is the guy that goes to hunt tanks. Use the orbital bombardment early for goodness sake though.

Magos Prime, Lachrimallus Order (120 points)
A cheap HQ selection that would befit a totally cheap army that is based around adsecularis units. Many many bodies on the board here, and we're saving on points with the HQ to ensure even more bodies.

Magos Prime, Macrotek Order, corposant stave, machinator array (145 points)
This is a support choice that also opens up the possibility of having more than one fortifications available. Add in some nastier weapons and melee selections to taste.

Deathstorm Assembly

The Deathstorm drop pod is one of those unusual choices for a 30k - or, indeed, a 40k - army list. The principle opposition to it is that it takes up a valuable heavy support slot that could be used for something else entirely. 

To me though, I see a few more aspects to it. Not only does it block lines of sight, but it can also hem in and block enemy heavy vehicles from advancing -- or more appreciably: escaping. Its a cheap threat, but one that can not only lock down critical passage ways on a battlefield, but one that can in the right circumstances inflict some significant casualties early on in a game. If ignored, it can certainly take its toll all by itself. As can probably be told by the tone of my writing, I intend to have one in my Alpha Legion army. Although I'll post a full intended army list another time, I actually like this unit and like the model for it. I realise that I might be in a minority here though.

The image above shows the Deathstorm in the process of being assembled.

The missiles come from Forge World and are a sheer block of resin that weighs significantly more than a standard drop pod contents. Indeed, one can tell by simply picking up the Deathstorm it is not a regular drop pod just because of its weight. 

Initially, I wanted to try to set up the drop pod so that it could be converted between a regular one and a Deathstorm on the fly, as required. After a number of investigative processes (including looking at Ron's old guides on FtW), I eventually decided that it was simply not prudent to magnetise the entire thing and make it de-constructable. It represented just too severe a conversion for me. Perhaps one day I'll revisit this problem, but for this - my first Deathstorm drop pod ever assembles - I just went along with the normal way of assembling it.

The assembly is actually really easy and straight forward: mainly consisting of five flat planes of missile launchers to glue on to the central hexagonal column. There are a few other servo-style skulls to go in the slots around the edges of the base, and a machine spirit to replace the storm bolter, but that's about it. None of the fiddling trying to identify the squad sergeant's harness or anything like that. Very easy and simple - despite the lack of instructions on how to construct the main body of the drop pod which is my only real complaint about the kit.

Necron Lord

A little bit of a diversion today. This is a Necron Lord that comes as part of the command barge play set. I assembled it as part of the barge, but thought it merited its own small corner of the blogosphere.

As mentioned in the original post, the orb was a bit of a pain to get together. The elbow joint is really odd and seems a little bit weak to my mind.

The pose of the miniature is one that I am not 100% sold on. I think I've make the stave a little bit low pointing -- it looks fine on the command barge, but I think for the battlefield, it is pointing a bit too downward. Perhaps something that was a bit more on the horizontal level would have been superior in this regard.

I am going to use this miniature for a test painting scheme for my Alpha Legion. Don't laugh. I'm serious. Well, at least in the regard of testing out some painting using compressed air spraying. Then again, I might just paint him up in Verdus Prime colours and be done with it.

More Gal Vorbak Assembled

Finally, the full Gal Vorbak squad has been assembled. Their full glory will be realised once painted, but I thought it worth showing the detail in the sculpts prior to undercoating them. I'm really liking what I'm seeing in terms of the level of detail encapsulated in the miniatures, coupled with the attention lavished on the iconography.

In terms of painting, I think I will approach with a traditional painting scheme in mind. This includes a red hued armour which the Gal Vorbak are known for - and indeed will ultimately become the shade that the Word Bearers themselves adopt. The daemon flesh, I think, will be blue though. Not least because of the contrast to the red armour!

Gal Vorbak

For my recent birthday, my most wonderful wife surprised me with the gift of miniatures! (Yep - I have a most wonderful wife, and although I suspect that she may not read these words, you never know, she might one day, hence why I'm writing them.). 

One of the miniature sets that I received were the Gal Vorbak from Forge World. These guys are simply awesome! Firstly: the level of detail. These miniatures are certainly on par with the Horus Heresy Character Series miniatures such as Armillus Dynat, as well as older miniatures that were very high quality like the Plague Ogryn play sets. I have a strong feeling that these miniatures will paint themselves with the level of detail present on them.

The miniatures come in several parts. The main torso comes as a single large piece with the legs attached and the arms down to the elbows. The terminus of the arms, including the hands, are distinct and separate pieces. Additionally, the head, and part of the power pack on his back are further parts that come with the kit. There is a small degree of freedom in which direction to point the head, but otherwise the post is pretty much pre-sculpted. Given these constraints, I did not really want to do any conversion work on them and thought I'd build them "as is" for once.

In terms of cleaning up, the miniatures came with a minimal amount of flash to clean away. The various parts came cleanly away from the sprues and the resin was easy to work with overall. I might pair them up with Scibor resin bases that have been knocking around in my bits box for quite a while. But I'm a little way off doing that yet.

One thing that probably doesn't come across in my image above, is the sheer scale of these guys. They're easily as tall as terminators, and frankly, a bit more bulky. They tower over regular space marines and certainly look the part of possessed beings who strayed in the Eye of Terror for a little too long. 

The iconography and other details on the miniature are great. Notice, for instance, the Colchisian script work around the upper part of the greaves, the flames, the Serrated Suns chapter symbology, the daemonic hand that is reaching out from the right kidney area and keeping the script papyrus in place.

Assembling the miniature was simple: the parts slotted together very nicely with a snug dry fit. That said, I did pin the bolt gun arm to the miniature to provide a bit of extra security as that arm was more of a ball and socket joint that seems to require a bit more than just glue to keep it in place. 

In games terms, I'm sorely tempted to have these Gal Vorbak models as the Rewards for Treason in my Alpha Legion army. The background fluff is perhaps a little dodgy for this, but I can't see any reason that the Alphas would not decide to use all tools available to them!

POLL: Where Do Your Battles Take Place (2015 Edition)

Remarkably, it has been about five years since Warpstone Flux last asked its readers about where their battles were taking place. Even more remarkably, it has been a very, very long time since we had a poll on this site (and several iterations of the site design as well!). Indeed, we used to hold monthly contests for army building that readers would then vote on for which was the best. Yet these have long since been discontinued. Therefore its high time we had a poll again and tested the proverbial waters to see what the readers out there think.

Today, we're having our fist poll in a very long time (BOXES in the RIGHT COLUMN). It is a repeat question: where are your battles taking place? This was last asked in 2010, almost five years ago. In that poll, both urban and rural battlefields seemed to be equally common. Following this, ruins were very common as well, with over one third of all battles taking place in their midst. This was closely followed up with deserts of one type or another.

We've jiggled about the answers for this poll a little. We have a distinct category for deserts now - one for sandy types and one for an ice planet or ice themed battlefield.

The "rural" answer has been done away with as it was largely redundant and duplicated many others. Instead, there are now options such as "fantasy / grass and woods" as well as "jungles" and so forth.

In addition, there are a vast array of thematic selections available, like Orky themed worlds, Tau and Necron as well.

I'd therefore like to invite readers to select which worlds their battles are taking place on. You're welcome to vote more than once (I suspect you'll have to use different computers though) and you're very welcome to select multiple categories to cover your battlefield. For instance, a jungle with ruins would certainly have at least two of the boxes ticked, possibly more if it were an Eldar maiden world.

I'm particularly interested in the intersection of the choices. If you have any comments, or you think we're missing a category or two or three, then please leave a comment and I'll include your thoughts in the final results.

Speaking of which, the poll will last for two weeks. After that, I'll add in the extra comments and try to draw some generalities. Hopefully if nothing else, it might inspire readers as to what to create for their next gaming boards.