Last Week's Games: Painting a Dark Apostle and Uncharted

I’ll start this week by talking about something I should have mentioned in the previous one: I’ve finished painting my Dark Apostle for my Chaos Space Marine Word Bearers army.

This one was a massive faff to keep it held together. This being a Finecast model, it wasn’t terribly well cut and there are some rather wobbly joins holding it together. The result is a model that would very likely fall apart if somebody breathes on it too hard, (even as I write this the star on the top of his weapon has broken off again,) and a lot of the time I wanted to spend painting it was spent repairing the thing.

Not the best picture but
the best I could do at the time.

I was a little puzzled at first as to what colour I should be painting him. Dark Apostles are, of course, the Chaos Space Marine equivalent of the Space Marine Chaplain, and they always wear black armour no matter what chapter they are attached to. I wondered if the same applied to Chaos Space Marines and whether I would necessarily have to paint it in that dull rusty colour that appears on his box art. After a little research I couldn’t find a definitive answer, so I opted to paint him the usual Word Bearers colours of red and silver, making a neat job of the trimmings but not with the level of detail one might expect from a character model such as this. I’m pleased with the result nonetheless, and I look forward to putting him on the gaming table at some point.

This concludes the 500 points block of Chaos Space Marines I was painting in the Word Bearers colours, including a Chaos Space Marine squad, two squads of Cultists, a Chaos Lord and the Dark Apostle. Nothing particularly hard-hitting there, but those of you familiar with the most recent edition of Warhammer 400000 will recognise that this brings them into the Battalion force organisation chart, which means I have 6 strategy points to work with for a 500 point army. I don’t know how well it’s going to work but I’m hoping to find out soon.

I own more models for the army than this – I’ve got another squad of Chaos Space Marines and a Helbrute – but as I’ve not used any of them yet, I’m hesitant to get into a battle that’s too big, as I invariably end up slowing the game to a crawl by having to check the rules for the different units every few minutes. Far better, I think, to play a few games with what I’ve got, find out what works and what doesn’t, and add to it after I’ve got used to the rules for the models I’m currently using.

The next project is a Raptor squad that I intend to paint in Black Legion colours, inspired by the Horus Heresy: Legions game I’ve been playing on my phone. I’ll write more about that once I start to progress!

Pretty good, but not much motivation to play it again...

In other news, I reached the end of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and wrote a review for it which is scheduled to come out on Friday. From the tone of the review it seems quite negative, so I just want to clarify that it really is a good game. It was more a case of… you know when you’ve really enjoyed a game and you get to the end of it wishing there were more of it so you can keep playing? With Uncharted, I was quite ready for it to be over when the end credits rolled. The fact that it was 3am probably contributed to that.

Also, there are some new cards out for Horus Heresy: Legions; the Word Bearers are now a faction and a tough one at that. They seem to work around summoning Daemons, which fits the lore, and while they take a while to get going, once those Daemons start to arrive, they can take you down very quickly. I’ve not had a go with them yet, (I tend to keep to the loyalists in the events,) but I’ve got one of their Warlords so I might have a go with them in the future. It would be fitting, since that’s my 40K army!