Welcome back to this side trip into the Horus Heresy. In this post we’ll see the burgeoning Death Guard army grow into a proper fighting force.
A few caveats
First, last post saw the army in its infancy - not really playable. The next few posts will see the army quickly grow to ~3000pts - a mere trick of the internet. It really represents a couple of years of work.
Second, while this army has a fair bit of resin, it is entirely possible to play Horus Heresy without purchasing anything from Forgeworld. GW makes the basic units in plastic: HQs, MKIII and MK IV Troops, Cataphractii and Tartaros pattern Terminators and a Contemptor Dreadnought. If you are willing dip into the 40K range for vehicles and to do some simple conversions you can field most units.
That said, if you want to lean into the theme of your legion (e.g. Death Guard Power Scythes), use the actual 30K models for characters, speciality units or vehicles or get access to some of the harder to ‘counts-as’ models (e.g. Deredeo or Leviathan Dreadnoughts) you will need to pay up.
Last post the army had the beginnings of a Tactical and a Breacher squad, a 5 man Grave Warden Terminator squad, a converted Legion Champion, an Apothecary and 3 Quad Launchers.
I then added more Tactical marines in the form of a 5 man Tactical Support Squad with meltaguns.
In Heresy, Tactical marines have no special or heavy weapons options. Instead you can have dedicated special weapon or heavy weapon squads.
When determining what weapons to use, I followed Mortarian’s teachings -
“there is nothing that cannot be accomplished with a Bolter, Flamer and Meltagun.”
I also completed the Breacher squad, bringing them up to the 10 man minimum and added Sergeants to each squad.
I used the (now discontinued) Forgeworld Death Guard torsos and heads, the Andilus Backpacks and Power Scythes. The Death Guard can purchase Power Scythes (+1 St, -1 In, AP2 and +1 attack for each model in base contact) at the cost of a Power Fist.
I debated on how to best use the torsos, heads and backpacks - e.g. use them for every Death Guard, or interspersed them through-out the army, but eventually decided they would be mark of seniority among the legion and would only used them for Sergeants and other notable models.
I also completed the second Apothecary. My first Apothecary model was more or less the stock FW one.
But the other FW model is in MKIV armor (and as previously mentioned I only wanted MKII or III armor) so needed to convert/create a new Apothecary in MKIII armor.
So I hacked off as many tubes, vials and containers as I could from the original model and, along with the arms, combined them with parts from an Iron Hands Legion squad (which I picked up to use as bits). I think he looks, aside from fairly menacing, quite like a veteran Apothecary (minus the tabard).
Next up a look at some of the special characters.