The Dark Pact

So it's been 2 years since my last post. Instead of dwelling on that fact I'm going to move directly on to talking about my latest project.

Back in April I went up to Cardiff to visit some old uni friends for a weekend around my birthday. On the Sunday Me, Matt and Rob are sat in a weatherspoons recovering from the previous two nights. We're there to meet a third friend of mine, Craig, whom I've not seen in sometime but who only vaguely knows the other two (I don't think Rob and Craig had ever actually met before).

Now I don't know about you, but I always get worried when different friends of mine meet, I mean they all like me but will they like each other? Now knowing they have all played 40k to a greater or lesser extent in the past, and still have an interest in the background and setting of it all, once they all sat down, as an ice breaker I jokingly said 'We need to find 14 other people and each collect a different Legion from the Horus Heresy'

I never thought they'd actually do it.

10 weeks on and we have our first miniatures to show. We've picked up some extra bodies along the way and there's now 7 of us although not everyone has made the first deadline.

We're running this as a Tale of 4 gamers type of affair. For those unaware, what this basically means is we have a target date and a target number of miniatures to paint by that date. Specifically for this challenge the target is a minimum of 5 models or a unit entry every 6 weeks. Not particularly lofty goals but we had to consider that several members of the group have not painted anything in almost 10 years, plus finances is an issue. We'll be using for the most part, Forge World miniatures and as great as they are, they're not cheep.

We've had 10 weeks for the first deadline however. The first period was always going to be toughest. Picking a legion and setting down a specific colour scheme and style to last the entire project is no easy decision and many of us were painting to the last day.

But enough of the preamble, here are our offerings for the first period posted in order of completion from 1^st to last.

XII World Eaters – Matt

 Matt has totally bucked the trend of the group and made us all look bad by finishing his models over a week early. He's also totally found a kindred spirit in Angron and now has an unhealthy obsession with gore.

XIII Ultramarines - Dave

Dave was the first new recruit, I invited him to our facebook group just so he could see what was going on. Within a day he was like 'I'm doing Ultramarines' and that was that.

Dave runs his own blog and has made a few posts already on this project. Check it out here http://zenartminipainting.blogspot.co.uk/ and be sure to look back at his earlier posts, he's got some pretty cool back story written up.

XVIII Salamanders - John

John was incredibly late to the party, having no more than half the amount of time the rest of us had. He also jumped straight in with no test models, even though he's not painted anything in about 10 years. I think he's done a fantastic job especially considering all of this, so I think we can forgive his lack of bases at this point.


VIII Night Lords – Jim (me)

Despite only sporadically painting and gaming these days, I've been dubbed the lore-master or Chief Librarian of the group, being the only one to have read all of the Horus Heresy Black Library novels, as well as reading more about the 30k and 40k universe than anyone else here.

I'll write another post later in the week with more pics of my Night Lords and to talk a little more about them.

XVI Sons of Horus - Craig

Craig is another one whose not painted for years. He was also late, by about 6 hours taking the view that if he's not gone to sleep yet it's still Sunday. Craig was originally doing Death Guard, but decided he wanted tanks, lots of tanks (actually I get the impression that like me he wants everything) so switched to the Sons of Horus a few weeks into the project.

DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS
We decided early on that the best way for our group to deal with failure to meet targets would be with mockery and peer pressure rather than any other tangible penalties.

VI Space Wolves - Rob

So Rob was originally doing Word Bearers, then Space Wolves, then Iron Hands, then Space Wolves, then Death Corps of Krieg (we told him no), then Space Wolves, then Raven Guard, then finally Space Wolves. I may have got the order slightly mixed up, it's difficult to keep track.

As you can see despite having his first miniature completed weeks ago, and being one of the original members of the group, Rob has failed to get the rest of his squad completed. He's waiting for shoulder pads or some other such nonsense, unsurprisingly he changed his mind about how they looked.

But I guess it's typical of the Space Puppies to be late, they never got to Terra on time either. Hopefully we'll see a completed squad from him by the end of the week.

XV Thousand Sons - Mog

Morgan is the only one of us to have a wife and kids. So when I invited him to the group I didn't expect he'd have the time or spare cash to get involved, but I invited him as I thought he'd be interested to view our progress if nothing else. Within days he was posting pictures of test models and assembled heresy miniatures. Apparently, it seemed, Mog had been planning this kind of project for sometime.

But alas he's been quiet for the past few weeks, work and family commitments seem to be getting the best of him (although part of me thinks he's using them as convenient excuses that we can't easily argue with)

All in all I'm really proud of all of our efforts, despite each of us for the most part living in different cities we've done a great job at keeping in contact with each other and spurring each other on. Hopefully we'll keep this up and I can't wait until we can get together with our full armies and play a big game of apocalypse together.