Horus Heresy – Land Raider Spartan Assault Tank
Last of our Horus Heresy Age of Darkness detail reviews, covers after the regular Infantry and the Contemptor Dreadnought, the mighty Land Raider Spartan. The kit is not yet available on its own and currently only available as part of the Age of Darkness starter set.
This is not the first time a Land Raider Spartan is available in (or at least made from) plastic. Actually the first one, was a conversion based upon the Rogue Trader era Land Raider kit, combined with plastic card and parts from the old Space Marine Rhino. It was introduced as part of the Modelling Workshop section of White Dwarf 119, by no other than Tony Cottrell (former head of Forge World and designer of an incredible amount of kits) back in 1989!
Internal CONflict Rheinland 2022
Finally - an update in the event category! Conflict Rheinland returns after a 3 years break with a private event, and 2019 was our last visit to the event in Langenfeld. Yet, the return is a bit special, as this is not a public event, as they had to cancel that format about a month ago and went for an invite only meet up of some of the hosts and clubs, that would just do a private get-together.
Torsten kindly invited me to join that round of wargamers and I happily accepted the invitation as it would be my first wargaming event in over a two years (my last wargaming road trip was January 2020 to Nottingham, visiting Warhammer World).
Horus Heresy – Contemptor Dreadnought
We move the size class a bit, covered the infantry already, now it is time for the walking tombs, the Contemptor Dreadnought from the Horus Heresy Age of Darkness boxed set.
The classic dreadnought we know from the 90s is classified as Castraferrum Pattern Mark V Dreadnought, with the variants that were released by Forge World as Mark IV with slightly slender / less bulky proportions. But the Contemptor Dreadnought is actually something picked up from the era of Rogue Trader and reconnected with the lore for the Horus Heresy.
Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness Infantry
After covering the content of the Horus Heresy - Age of Darkness boxed set in our unboxing, I'll cover the plastic kits in three reviews - the Infantry, the Contemptor Dreadnought and the Land Raider Spartan. Beginning today with the Space Marines on foot.
You can find all the pictures of the content in the unboxing, but we're going to build some miniatures from the different sprues of the Legion Space Marines in Mark VI armour, the Praetors and Terminators in Cataphractii armour.
Bolt Action – SdKfz 250/11 Ausf. A
We've covered multiple variants of the Sd.Kfz 251 on here already, with the regular 251/1 Ausf. D, 251/16 Flammpanzerwagen and 251/7 Pionierwagen. And thanks to Jürgen from Warlord Games, he sent me a pre-production copy of some of the new Sd.Kfz. 250 Ausf. A (Alte) kit, from their trade meetup in Nottingham.
So far, the Sd.Kfz. 250 was available as a resin kit and now got an update and turned into a multi-variant plastic kit that is now available from Warlord Games directly and their trade network. The final kit obviously comes with a proper packaging, decals and all the additional content you're used to. In my case, I got the base sprue and the one to build the /11 variant leichter Schützenpanzerwagen mit einer 2,8-cm-schweren Panzerbüchse 41.
Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness Unboxing
I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor. This is how the first book of the Horus Heresy novels starts. And it sets the tone for the entire narrative. With me already being in Horus Heresy mood through the audiobooks, I was really excited about the way they introduced 2.0 on Warhammer Fest, and they kept firing on all cylinders pumping content on all legions, integrating content creators and painters and really keeping it visible.
And with today, I can finally join in talking about the new Age of Darkness kit (RRP 225 EUR / 180 GBP), that is on pre-order since today and I received a bit earlier to have time to prepare my coverage. Thanks to Games Workshop for providing me with a copy.
The content of the new starter set for Horus Heresy is a lot, so I'm going to split it across a few articles to not overload one article with too much information and pictures. This one is mostly about the unboxing and I'll go into detail in the upcoming posts on the kits themself.
Horus Heresy – An Introduction
Games Workshop has introduced as massive new release and addition to their core range with the Horus Heresy 2.0. As this makes the war among brothers in the Imperium broader accessible (being carried by Games Workshop and their trade network, plastic instead of resin and translated content), it will be the first contact with the prequel to the Grim Dark of 40,000 for many wargamers. A good reason to give you an introduction on the Horus Heresy.
What is it about?
The universe that provides the background for one of the most popular wargaming systems on the globe, has a dark and incredibly rich history. How became the Space Marine chapters of 40k the many different forces, with successors chapters in all their colourful variety? Where did the Chaos Space Marines come from? All this lies in the civil war within the Empire, when Horus, one of the 18 sons of the Emperor himself, turned against him and half of his brothers followed the Warmaster in his betrayal to bring death to the usurper.
May 2022 review
Where April was a themed month of Stargrave (and we're not finished there, as I still have some posts in preparation), the month of may was focused on Bolt Action.
I covered three reviews, two of them D-Day campaign supplements British & Canadian Sectors and US American Sectors, as well as another plastic kit with the long awaited Inter-Allied Commandos review and some support my 8th Army and Afrikakorps.
Dino’s May 2022
Last month I asked you how the ease of the Covid measures had affected your hobby life and I received some interesting feedback. Overall, I could see from your feedback that the different views on the measures have partly led to a small split in the hobby community, between the more cautious and the less cautious hobbyists. In general, however, the changes have led to more contacts among those who already checked their health status before each visit anyway, and the number of tabletop games in private has increased again.
In my opinion, it is encouraging that we as hobbyists still show enough common sense, where we also pay attention to our fellow man and not only to ourselves. It shows that integrity and consideration are still present and lived in our hobby. Altogether the contacts have strengthened again somewhat - above all however online. During the period of increased precautions, the online community in particular proved to be a strong anchor for us hobbyists, so that most social contacts could be maintained.
In this regard, I also have to say a few words of thanks to the people who are always encouraging me to push my projects further in the Tabletopwelt forum in my thread and my known group of Tabletop Daddies. So I managed to paint the last hoplite for the Corinthians group that was left for Mortal Gods.
Heavy Field Car – Steyr 1500A for the DAK
With the first supply drop this year back in february of the Rubicon novelties, I did not only get my hands on some reinforcement for the British with the Morris C8 and a QF-25, but a nice heavy field car (at least that's the matching entry on EasyArmy) for my Afrikakorps as well with a Steyr 1500A/01.