Horus Heresy – Building the Solar Auxilia Battle Group
Here we are, I did the reviews on the contents of the Solar Auxilia Battle Group as you have seen, and now used some of the spare hobby time to assemble the remaining miniatures.
It is a bit bland, as there are some issues with the assembly instructions and limitation of options. You simply build them as they come, so I finished up the remaining regular rank & file troops, along with a second trio for the command, so I can use them as two sections (and will probably need some spares in case I want to play them as larger units).
February 2024 review
Welcome to march, and a march it was.
I was able to finish book 20 of the Horus Heresy Audiobooks, which covers multiple stories on the Primarch ... and I was a bit surprised how much of a prick Johnson can be, but moved on to the next book, Fear to Tread, covering Sanguinus and the Blood Angels. Already about 25% through and with some hobby time on the weekend, will progress further.
The next shipment from Stormbringer arrived and we updated the overview, and will provide an unboxing like we did with issues 01 to 03. Of course the content will be part of the Warcry coverage.
Horus Heresy – Solar Auxilia Battle Group
Games Workshop is moving the Horus Heresy past the strong focus on only the Astartes. We already have plastic Solar Auxilia in Legions Imperialis, but now they are available in the full scale of the Age of Darkness as well. And similar with the updated Astartes range, we start with a Solar Auxilia Battlegroup covering various elements from the army list, including infantry and multiple (!) vehicles.
For 130 GBP / 170 EUR RRP the Solar Auxilia Battle Group covers all new plastic kits for:
- 25x Solar Auxilia Infantry (1x Line Command Section and up to 2 Rifle Sections)
- 1x Aethon Pattern Heavy Sentinel
- 1x Leman Russ Battle Tank
- 1x Dracosan Armoured Transport
Quite the load-out and a proper competitor for the Legion Astartes Battlegroup, with the Mk 3 Power Armour Marines, Dreadnought and Land Raider.
Horus Heresy – Solar Auxilia Aethon Heavy Sentinel
With the Aethon Heavy Sentinel an entire new unit comes to the army list of the Solar Auxilia with the release of the new Solar Auxilia Battlegroup. We've seen this unit already with Legions Imperialis, where it is part of both, the starter set as well as the Solar Auxilia Infantry boxed set.
The Aethon is a heavy variant of the regular sentinel class bi-pod walkers and will later be accompanied by further lighters variants, like the Hermes Light Sentinel, including the up-armoured Veletarii variant.
Horus Heresy – Solar Auxilia Dracosan Armoured Transporter
While we had Leman Russ chassis for quite some time and even in the prior edition of Horus Heresy hybrid kits using the plastics with resin parts, the full resin kits based upon the Malcador chassis are getting replaced by complete plastic kit and various variants right from the start. One of these Malcador based vehicles is the Dracosan Armoured Transporter, which we will covered in today's review as part of the Solar Auxilia Battle Group.
The bulky transport can carry up to 22 models, depending on the weapon configuration, and drops down to 10 when you choose the demolisher cannon. There is a smaller alternative for the Solar Auxilia for transport, roughly Rhino sized, the Aurox, but that one has lighter armour and wasn't announced so far to be moved from resin to plastic.
Horus Heresy – Solar Auxilia Lasrifle Section Infantry
A completely new release and new design is the Solar Auxilia Infantry from plastic. They are part of the Solar Auxilia Battle Group with a Lasrifle Section (either a single big one of 20, or two of 10 each) and Tactical Command Section covering 5 soldiers.
We covered a bit of introduction on the Solar Auxilia in our article about them in Legions Imperialis. Among the endless regiments and battalions of the Imperial Forces, mostly known as the Imperial Army (that's how the Guard was called during the Horus Heresy), the Solar Auxilia were among the most elite and well-equipped fighting forces of mankind, second only to the Legiones Astartes.
The lore on these is a bit light yet, as even in the first edition of the Horus Heresy, they are covered in only two books and in the new edition they share a complete book with the Sisters of Silence and Adeptus Custodes, without going deeper or providing information on the lore beyond Manachean Commonwealth, with minor side notes on the Cthonian Headhunters and Agathon Cohort.
Horus Heresy – Solar Auxilia Leman Russ Strike Tank
One of the work horses of the Imperial forces receives an upgrade and proper variant, to distinguish themself from the other departments of the army - the Solar Auxilia Leman Russ Strike Tank!
This is not update or partial sprue swap of the regular Leman Russ Battle Tank but a complete overhaul with the known trim of the Solar Auxilia vehicles and a proper Mars Alpha pattern hull and new vehicle accessories.
Similar to the Malcador chassis, the Leman Russ chassis is used within the Imperium for a lot of different vehicles. You have the Leman Russ himself, as a battle tank, with different weapon systems in turret and hull to provide effective service in certain scenarios, split into the Strike Tank and Assault Tank, but further alterations for example as an Artillery vehicle with the Medusa or Basilisk, prior that these were built upon the chimera chassis. Post heresy further variants were added and many sub-classes of the Leman Russ saw service all across the regiments.
Horus Heresy – Cerastus Knight Acheron and Castigator
For this review, we do a double feature! I did something similar a long, long time ago when the Baneblade kits were released, and I build a Baneblade and a Shadowsword simultaneously. Today we once again have that chance, to such a twin-build with the Cerastus Knight Castigator and Cerastus Knights Acheron.
The Cerastus Knights can be used in Warhammer 40,000 and The Horus Heresy alike. For 30k they can be used by traitors and loyal forces, via the Lord of War slot and you can find their rules in the Liber Mechanicum (pg. 80 to 82). In 40k, they can be used again either as Imperial or Chaos forces, and the rules can be downloaded for free from Warhammer Community (Chaos Knights and Imperial Knights).
If you are not familiar with this kind of unit. Knights are smaller and less powerful versions of Imperial Titans, piloted by a single Knight commander, called Scion, and not by a crew of Princeps and Moderati. With the knights being much smaller than Warhound Scout Titans, they can only to a limited amount carry titan weapon systems into battle. The Knights were introduced to Epic / Space Marine in UK White Dwarf #126 in June 1990, and a few years later in December of 1994 updated as part of the new editions of this game, Epic Titan Legions. Some of the new classes even derivate from the old names and types. There were Paladins, Lancers and Wardens, and those came back in the current variant as well. In addition, knights had tiers, Squire, Knight and Lord, along with Senechal. Something that was picked up in the latest rules for Warhammer 40,000 to a degree.
Horus Heresy – Preview on the Solar Auxilia
During the Las Vegas Open Air Games Workshop previewed the release of the Solar Auxilia in plastic - in full scale! We had the chance to toy around with them in the Legions Imperialis scale, and I wrote an introduction on mustering the Solar Auxilia.
The new plastics are up against some pretty well done older models, as the resin models are dynamic and you have a lot of different poses (with no doubles, from my understanding), so it is going to be interesting to see, which options the new plastics will cover. But certainly, they will make it more accessible, as the price for an army that uses (or at least can use) such a huge number of infantry will come down. Regarding the Veletari, I am not sure how big the impact will be there, as the previewed set, does not show the axes and they might be a Forge World upgrade, as we saw with the Astartes in some cases and that stacked up the price quite a bit.
Horus Heresy – Novels and Audiobook Order
The Horus Heresy range is supported by an incredibly rich narrative, which grew since the release of the first book in April 2006 by Dan Abnett to an amazing depth. I read the first few books as paperbacks and switched at some point towards the audiobooks, as they are easier for me to consume, for example while I commute or on (business) travel.
The audio books were released in 2011 ongoing, and are available through a lot of different services. You can buy them directly from Black Library, but other sources like audible or spotify have them as well. As of February 2024 I am currently on book 20, The Primarchs, listening to it in German (quite well read by Tom Jacobs) on Spotify, I have multiple problems, for example the audiobooks are not divided into proper tracks but just 3 minute segments, regardless of chapter etc., and if you switch between your car, the web and mobile app, they often "forget" (or better said don't save) where you left off with the addition of not guiding properly to the next book. For that reason I ended up looking up the order of the Horus Heresy novels / audiobooks multiple times and to save me (and others) time the next few times that happens, this is article is meant as a list to provide a time saving overview. While it may look a bit redundant in English, the added value is the German translation as due to changing publishers some book titles have been changed (and swapped) causing a bit of trouble keeping track.
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