Horus Ascended - Part I

 

Horus Asc...assembly required.

This model sucks.

Kind of a click-baity start to this post, but I do have strong (perhaps even valid) reasons for this opinion. I'll get to them in just a moment, but to start with I'll go over some of the niceties, some of the middle ground, and then finally some of the issues it has.

Assembly

The model itself is very detailed, as everyone has come to expect from the Forgeworld Heresy Character range. There is no doubting that the quality of production is very high, and has improved in leaps and bounds in recent years. I can point out the polygons on rounded surfaces in some cases, if I look _very_ closely. This is an important point for later: the actual manufacture of the model is superb, which means any flaws come from elsewhere in the process.

The dynamic pose of the model is nice to see, and for those who want to play with it then the detachable smaller base is great. The full base itself is so over the top that only a truly insane designer could have dreamed it up, and it is glorious. I keep finding new and interesting details every time that I look at it. It's truly a base of horror that befits Horus having gone evil.

For all of this, everything is pretty much intended for this model to be a showpiece and not for gaming. In particular, some of the details are very flimsy and will certainly break with any moderate usage. I've already broken the ammo belts feeding in the Talon of Horus, in four separate locations no less, and the model wasn't even assembled enough for painting, let alone playing with.

The numbering on each piece is missing, meaning that following the assembly instructions is a case of visual matching alone. Normally that's ok, but when some pieces look very similar (say, the fingers on the Talon) then it's basically a guessing game as to which piece fits where. I'm pretty sure I got that wrong on the fingers. I almost had it wrong on some of the wolf pelt.

Then there's the bad: the model does not fit together properly at all. I mentioned build quality earlier because this cannot be a manufacturing error - it's simply that nobody checked before it was shipped. The wolf pelt in particular is just plain terrible. Even after hacking away at the underneath to get it sitting properly aligned on the armour cowling, the leg hanging over the right pauldron simply doesn't line up with the appropriate connection point. There's a 3mm gap or so - which is unforgivably large for such an expensive kit, and is where the blu-tac is located in the photo above. I'm going to have to break out the putty to fill that gap, which quite frankly won't look as nice, and worse: for nice sub-assemblies it will have to be done after much of the painting has been completed. That leg is actually the last piece to glue on, and so now I get to look forward to finishing the model, only to then putty up and repaint an entire area or two. The base has some places that don't quite line up as well, but thankfully they're mostly hidden and really don't need to be touched.

The only model I've dealt with that has a similar problem is actually the Primaris Mephiston, where cables just didn't align. They could be bent and glued during assembly at least, and the massive mold line running down his cape was easily filled in and smoothed over. Horus Ascended is far more expensive, with a far greater gap, and can't be fixed until the model is just about completed. When the motivation is assembly and painting nice looking models rather than playing the game, then this just makes me question why I bothered with this model at all - and I haven't even primed it yet!

So with some clever planning, painting, and more than a dash of stubborn perseverance, I will continue with this model. Hopefully it won't take four and a half years to complete, but it will certainly take more than a couple of weeks, and I'm not convinced about putting in the effort to get to such a high standard as the previous Horus model.

Planning

Part of the assembly process is planning how to paint it all up. On the photo it can be seen that I've drilled some holes in the feet and pinned paperclips in, and then taped the whole thing to a painting handle. This is because painting handles are great and I won't need to touch the model itself, and because I wanted easier access underneath; gluing to the base would have caused complications in painting some areas. This took longer than it should have for me to come up with, but everything appears sturdy enough and will make painting easier.

The left arm is missing because it needs to be put on after the cape. The cape I intend to airbrush separately, and leaving it off allows me to reach the back of the legs much more easily. Owing to the placement of the mace over the cape, the cape must be put on and then the arm. If the wolf pelt were already glued on then it would get in the way of the mace, and so the wolf pelt must go on only after the mace. This in turn means that the leg draped over the right pauldron can only be attached after the pelt is properly in place, which leads to only being able to fix that gap after everything is just about painted up.

The colours will be heavily influenced by the work on the previous Horus model. I don't feel any particular need to modify them. I will not even think about trying NMM; I had considered it, but the assembly problems have convinced me that this model isn't worth that amount of effort.

To contrast against the burgundy of the cape, then earthen greens on the base will very likely be used. This will likely mean Salamanders armour, although if I keep symbols off they can be interpreted any way the viewer wishes. Most of the lore doesn't have Horus actually fighting on Terra itself (he just sat in his flagship), so who knows what location it's intended to be.

I have a rough idea that a subtle red glow about the feet could help give the impression of Horus giving off an evil aura. Easy enough to do with an airbrush - just glaze one of the clear reds over the areas surrounding his feet - but I'm undecided if I should do the same from within the armour itself. Obviously the glow surrounding his head needs to be done, but I'm wondering how to make the armour itself seem alive. Maybe it will just be some red on the metallics; I'll keep thinking on this topic.

I'll need to prime the model soon and then just begin. Priming with black and then covering with a very thin white through the airbrush will allow me to visually pick out details with ease, so I'll get to that in the next days. I do want to switch focus back to a certain dreadnought, but I've spent the last week airbrushing other models (certain arrangements mean that if I don't do the airbrushing now, it'll be a couple of months before I next have the chance) and then assembling Horus.

-- silly painter.