Horus Heresy Event Report: Cataclysm Beneath Cthonia
Over a year ago, I bought into Heresy by picking up the core set and a handful of other models. Though I love 40k and would argue it’s a better game, there are regularly narrative events for Heresy. So I settled on a colour scheme for Salamanders, painted my first unit, built everything, and primed them green. Then it all sat there for over a year.
Until now.
Prime the Boarding Torpedoes
Jeff pointed out an upcoming Zone Mortalis event, the “Cataclysm Beneath Cthonia”: 1,250 points with no dreadnoughts (aka all infantry). Guess who has about 1,500 points of infantry?
Of course, very little of it was fully painted, and the event had a painting requirement. My painting scheme is designed to be speed painted. Heresy is, to me, a game of horde armies: most infantry squads are 10-20 models and the starter set alone comes with 52 infantry models. I wasn’t about to be caught out doing 16 edge highlights per model.
I also had a backup plan: my Black Legion was started before the 8th edition range refresh, so most of my painted Legionaries are a mix of Heresy armour marks and chaos bits, plus all ten of my painted Terminators are Sons of Horus Justeraen models. Taken together, this is an elite, late-Heresy Pride of the Legion force with two Veteran Squads and two Justeraen units, with a fancy Praetor leading them. Maybe not a great list, but it fit the bill and was fully painted.
T-Minus Two Weeks
I checked my schedule, cleared it with my spouse, and was off to the races: I signed up for my first Heresy event! With just over two weeks to paint my army, I had to get cracking. This was my starting point:
5 Terminators, fully painted and based
1 additional Terminator, primed green
10 Tactical Marines, painted but for an oil wash, and not based
10 Tactical Marines, primed green
10 Support Marines, primed green
10 Veterans, primed green
1 Artificer Armour Praetor, primed black
So basically 32 Marines to paint from start to finish, with an extra squad jumping in for the oil bath and sand.
The painting scheme for this army was pretty straightforward:
- Start with Vallejo Dark Green from a spray can
- Zenithal highlight Vallejo Sick Green, also spray can
- Paint the gun casing, shoulder pads and any other metal or black areas GW Corvus Black
- Paint the metal with GW Leadbelcher
- Paint the Mk 6 shoulder studs and anything else gold/brass with GW Balthazar Gold
- Paint helmet plumes, tassels, rope, and similar fancy details with GW Khorne Red
- Do an all over oil/enamel wash, and go back with thinner/mineral spirits and remove the excess.
I say this was my colour scheme as I’m planning on changing it. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll know my experience with oil washes is very not great.
To be clear, this army was sprayed greens before the Great Washening Disaster of 2024.
Painting plans gone awry
It was late March/early April when I was prepping for this event and the weather at that time of year varies wildly between “sunny shorts weather” and “don’t you dare pack that winter jacket away”. As any veteran hobbyist knows, weather can really mess with spray cans.
The plan was to varnish everything before the oil wash to mitigate previous problems, but the weather had turned to “your rain boots better have metal spikes ‘cause it’s gonna freeze”, so I wasn’t feeling comfortable rolling the dice with a spray varnish.
I stocked up on various GW brush-on varnishes and tried these. Note: Lahmian medium is not a varnish, I’m not sure why I thought it was. So, I turned to Stormshield.
Note: Stormshield is not a very good varnish.
The guides I watched and read said to apply Stormshield in two thin coats, but this speed painting method was already becoming time consuming, so I did one and tried to be careful not to let it pool. Even then I got some glassy splotches on some models’ boots and shoulder pads.
Then the oil wash. Even after the hastily applied varnish, I still had some green lift away in a few spots. After going back and fixing up those areas, I’ve come to the conclusion I could use an all over brown wash and just highlight any areas that need it in the same time it takes me to do all the extra oil wash steps. As before, I’ve found Vallejo paint just does not interact well with neither oils nor enamels. Maybe when I get an airbrush and can spray on other brands I’ll turn back to the oils, but for now I’m stuck with what’s widely available and Vallejo spray cans are fairly easy to come by.
Lastly, the basing. The army is themed around the black sands of Istvaan V, the great betrayal where the Salamander Legion was almost wiped out. The army represents survivors of that atrocity, and the new wave brought on afterwards. A bit of PVA glue, only slightly watered down, dipped in a black sand mixture (some scenic basing materials filled out with some decorative filler from Michaels). I also lightly drybrush the black with GW Dawnstone to make it pop, but this was done after the event.
And that’s it. A relatively quick scheme, and I was able to batch paint 40+ models without going absolutely crazy.
Worrying about Heresy
Though I’m very new to Heresy, I had played before, plus had some preconceived ideas about it. It’d been a while since playing in an event-specifically, the Hogtowner in 2023, which you can read about here-and though that had been fun, it had left me feeling sour on 40k matched play.
Heresy, however, is primarily played in a narrative format, and this event was billed as narrative with players encouraged to bring friendlier, thematic lists. Even so, most previous Heresy games I had played had had at least one feels-bad moment where I got rulesed hard: for example, not being able to charge after shooting Rapid Fire weapons, losing to end game objectives after dominating most Battle Rounds, a unit reaction moving out of charge range and leaving my assault units exposed, etc. And on top of that, there are a lot of known issues with Heresy, where things are just wildly too good (i.e. dreadnoughts) or some wargear is essentially mandatory (i.e. artificer armour). Again, this event was limiting a lot of these issues by house ruling some things and specifically banning dreadnoughts, but I was still worried about running into those sort of feels bad mechanics or units.
Despite these (relatively minor) trepidations, I was pretty pumped. I finished painting and basing my force with a day to spare, despite some power outages. Retribution Taskforce “Istvaan’s Reward” was ready to hunt.
The Siege of Cthonia
The narrative for the event was based around the Siege of Cthonia, with a loyalist taskforce spearheaded by Dark Angels Dreadwing elements was travelling deep underground to set charges and collapse the planet. The Traitors were trying to stop them, but also wanted to chat with some daemons. The event was at the Guild House in Toronto and organized by Great Lakes Wargaming: it was a great venue with good food and coffee.
Game 1: Old Enemies
It’s a running trope that I will always play someone I know at a public event. Previously, I used to laugh about it and complain–I was going to an event to play new people, damnit–but now I’m glad it happens. If I’m playing a friend, I know it’ll be a good game.
My first game was against Jeff’s Night Lords. He had a Praetor with Terminator bodyguard, a Tartaros Terminator squad, some Tactical Marines, a Seeker Squad, and a Night Raptor Squad with Consul Champion and Apothecary. He was also running Pride of the Legion like me to maximise the number of Line units (i.e. scoring units). The mission was progressive scoring off of four objectives, and we placed these all in no-man’s land.
ZM plays fast. The first turn or two, there’s very little interaction, and games can be quite cagey waiting for your opponent. Or you can charge your Veterans straight at the enemy.
So fun highlights: my Veterans failed a charge through difficult terrain and my Flamer Support Squad was charged and eventually run down without firing a shot. Though I made a valiant effort and took a Terminator Squad with me (plus plenty of others), Jeff tabled me and won the game. He will tell you that it was a close game, but he definitely outplayed me. I over-extended with my Veterans, was too cautious with my Terminators, and probably pushed too far forward with the Flamer Squad. Nevertheless, Jeff was a great opponent as always and we had a fantastic game.
Game 2: What lurks in the deep
My second opponent, Harrison, was one of the event organizers and he brought Ruinstorm Daemons. Time for those AP 4 flamers to shine!
This was my first time playing a non-Astartes army in 30k so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. To use 40k Daemons as a reference point, Harrison ran two big squads of Brutes, which were medium, Spawn-sized Daemons with big weapons, plus a pair of Brutes guarding a Herald-ish duder. There were Lesser Daemons with shooting attacks, which were appropriately represented with Pink Horrors, and a squad of Daemon doggos (I believe these were modeled off of Fantasy Chaos Warhounds but may have been AOS Dire Wolves). All of these were led by a Daemon Prince-y fella.
Ladies and gentlemen, this game swung back and forth hard. Daemons receive a bonus to Strength and Toughness early in the game, which meant I was wounding on 5s or 6s, but with weight of fire I was able to take out a good number of Brutes early on. My warlord trait gave the Veterans +1 to Strength when fighting a Fear-causing unit (aka Harrison’s whole army), and the flat +1 to Wound for Flamers in ZM kept me in the game. His Daemon Prince also whiffed hard for several rounds of combat against a Tactical Squad which heroically held on far longer than they should have.
All that being said, I had only three Tactical Marines and my Veterans (who were not at full strength) with the Praetor by the end of turn two. A charge through terrain had seen five of eleven Veterans fail difficult terrain checks (for those not in the know, that’s five 1s on eleven dice, a roll I preempted by announcing “here goes half the squad”), and my Terminators failed a morale check and were run down after losing a single model in combat. My other Tactical Squad was finally wiped out by the Prince and support from the dogs, and the Flamer Squad went down early to Brutes.
But this is not about winning. This is a Retribution Taskforce of Salamanders: their only goal is to reward traitors for Istvaan, with fire and hammers. And if those traitors serve foul, extra-dimensional xenos, they can have some too.
That is to say, we kept playing and the surviving Vets did work, wiping out everything they came across (the three Tact Marines died very quickly). Eventually the Prince made its way over and my Praetor went toe-to-hoof with the hellspawn, knocking it back below with his thunder hammer. At the end of the game, only my Praetor and Veteran Sergeant remained on the table, securing the victory after closing an objective hatch and securing the centre.
Harrison was a fantastic opponent and this game was an absolute blast. Daemons were a truly wild army to play against: they are full of invulnerable saves, rending weapons, and brutal attacks. When those trigger, it hurts, but you are truly at the whim of Chaos.
Game 3: But I was told I wouldn’t have to fight Dark Angels…
Game 3 was against Jin, an Alpha Legion player who, like me, was new to 30k. He was running a Terminator Praetor, Tactical Marines with an Apothecary, a Despoiler Squad, Alpha Legion Headhunters, and a Saboteur Consul tricked out with guns and melee weapons. And something else…
Oh yes: Dark Angels Inner Circle Knights Cenobium. The big, Terminator brutes with greatswords and plasma flamers.
Dragon’s Breath had met its match.
In this mission, Jin had to assault the strategium, which was within my deployment zone. I covered the various access points with Flamers so he wouldn’t hop out of reserve into me. The campaign had awarded us both with bonuses: he had two Fear-aura tokens, which he placed centrally, and I had two difficult terrain-aura tokens, which I placed on the flanks, hoping to funnel Jin towards the centre.
This was the cagiest game I had played in a long time. Jin was very cognisant of my Flamers (which can do a horrific amount of attacks, including on reactions) and I held my zone, even pulling back from time to time with reactions. But when a Tactical Squad was inching up my right flank, I figured it’s better to have the charge bonus than eat a charge.
Fun story, friends: the difficult terrain auras affected me too and frag grenades didn’t work, meaning my whole squad was attacking at Initiative 1. By the time I learned about the grenades, I had already opened a locked door and pushed into the difficult terrain, exposing myself to a counter charge: too late to go back. His Apothecary shivved my Sergeant with a power dagger, and my Tactical Squad slowly got ground down for several rounds thereafter. Not my best moment.
Look: you can take the red power armour away from the Blood Angels player, but sometimes he’s still gonna Blood Angel.
That was my worst mistake of the game, but it continued downhill from there. My Terminators were pinned from a reaction as they were getting ready to charge the Knights, who then used the Alpha Legion advanced reaction to shunt 12” into my deployment zone. They were surrounded by Flamers, but their Cataphractii armour meant they had a rerollable 2+ save against fire.
What followed was me throwing everything I had at the Knights and holding off the rest of Jin’s army. By the end of the game, one solitary Knight remained, surrounded by Salamander Terminators who had failed their charge. Per the mission, if we both had models in the strategium, then secondary objectives were a tiebreaker, which Jin was ahead on. What an absolute nailbiter of a finish with an awesome opponent!
Thoughts on Heresy
Before this event, I was very much of the opinion that 40k 10th Edition is a better game, but Heresy has more narrative events, which makes it worth playing in my books. It’s built on old 7th Edition 40k, which, though far from perfect, I had many a great game and have lots of great memories of. So, I reasoned, I’d be willing to use dated (but still enjoyable) mechanics if it meant I could go to more narrative events.
But now, after playing in this event, I’m not so sure where I stand. I still really like 40k as a narrative setting and I’m hardly going to sell those armies to play Heresy as my main game, but I really enjoyed this event, way more than I thought I would. Sure, I got some awful rolls and there’s no reroll stratagem like in 40k, but, honestly, it’s a dice game! There’s supposed to be randomness! Those epic moments and punishing failures that you remember are way more likely when you can’t reroll every die, and that’s what I remember after the game, not when three different reroll abilities smoothed out the percentages.
I think Heresy has a much larger learning curve than 40k: I’d say Heresy is in the “hard to learn, easy to master” camp, whereas 40k is the opposite. There’s a lot of obvious on-ramps and tweaks you can make for a learning game of 40k (combat patrol, play without stratagems or unique unit abilities), whereas those don’t really exist in Heresy (there are a few lower point formats like Zone Mortalis, but these don’t make the core rules more digestible in the same way). But trying to learn all of 40k’s unique stratagems, unit abilities, and game mechanics is a lot of layers, which aren’t really present in Heresy: it’s much more of a plateau, albeit a tall one, built on a lot of complex rules.
But in these games where I remembered that I can’t charge after Rapid Firing, where there were no unkillable dreadnoughts I was stuck in inescapable combat with, and where reaction fire didn’t wipe out my units on my turns, the rules felt good. Maybe there was some nostalgia for previous editions mixed in there, but it felt much more like a wargame with all the fun quirks rather than 10th edition 40k which has had so much character stripped away.
Unto the anvil
The known issues I mentioned above still exist in Heresy, and there are still a ton of rules to remember (I forgot my Legion special rules in every single game), but I’ve got the bug for this game. And now that the core infantry of my Salamanders collection are all painted (and, let’s be honest, those were a real mental stumbling block for me to tackle this army), it’s only fun stuff on the painting list.
I’m not in danger of pivoting to Heresy as my main game. The Horus Heresy is certainly a big narrative space to tell a story, but it’s always going to be about that one war, whereas I want to tell the story about my war. I also just like a lot of the themes in 40k and not going to leave those behind. But exploring what happened in the Pilgrim Sector during the Horus Heresy is a really interesting idea. And the dream of integrating Titanicus into an evet is very much alive and well.
Thanks for reading! Have thoughts on why Heresy is great or how I got it wrong? Drop us a line at ContactUs@wrongsideofthemaelstrom.com.
You can check out the event organizers, Great Lakes Wargaming, on Instagram (which has a link to their Discord):
https://www.instagram.com/greatlakeswargaming/
