Here at HeresyHammer we want to use our platform to help promote and showcase some of the amazing armies out there in our community. These blog posts will look to look at beautiful models and talk a little bit to the person responsible.

What is your name and whereabouts are you based?

Aaron Osborn – North Bristol

What is your Instagram? 

Thenightflaunter

When did you first start gaming and what attracted you to the Horus Heresy?

Like most of us, I played when I was in my teens and dropped out around pub age. I picked up fantasy a bit later before dropping out after the Old World (the world, not the game) exploded that time! Fast forward to 2015 and I picked up Heresy and haven’t stopped. I was always into the Index Astartes articles and a big fan of the Traitors before they went Chaosy (which isn’t a thing I’m too excited about), so the tragedy of 30k appealed. I’ve been running events as half of Danger Close for 4 years now, so I can’t see either changing any time soon!

What aspect of the hobby do you enjoy most? e.g. Gaming, painting, converting or just reading the BL books? 

I’m a painter and select armies strongly based on theme, usually avoiding the obvious go to. The legions had 100,000 marines, not everyone gets to be special, someone has to represent the mooks. I’ve got forces of 120 Militia cavalry, Prospero Solar Auxilia with 9 fliers, Armoured Breakthrough SWs and a Black shields force themed around the II Lost Legion and I’ve collected almost half the legions at one point or another!

What is the theme and lore behind your force? Has it developed over time and is there anything that particularly inspired that? 

The Thousand Sons force is themed around post Prospero and dealing with the lack of forces. I’ve got both Brethren of Iron and Prospero Spireguard elements that I often lean heavily on, pushing to make up the numbers as there’s so few Sons. It has started as an attempt to make a combat Sons force around Khentai Blades, but heavily themed TSons robots and Solar combined makes for an interesting and unusual army that synergies really nicely.

Can you give us an overview of how you painted your army?

They are metallic red, painted using zenethal metallic paints from Vallejo and Pro Acryl and 3 thin layers of transparent GW Angron Clear and a satin varnish.

What is your favourite model in your force, either from a modelling or a gaming perspective? 

From a painting perspective, it’s my Moritat. He’s a simple conversion of the Librarian and a 40k head, but he really spurred the project. The light sourcing from his outstretched hand was also my first attempt and he’s a firm favourite of mine. From a gaming perspective, it’s the Memeistos. That’s the Armistos carrying a Volkite Culverin hanging out in the sneaky Ammatara who are trying to be quiet whilst he fires magic rending Volkite loudly. It’s a TSons specific combo that just works and can deal with units that my approach generally struggles with.

How does the army perform on the tabletop? Can talk about your win/loss performance, but also how it plays, what sort of tactics you use and any particular memorable moments. 

Generally really well. People write off TSons as a bit rubbish.. they’re not entirely wrong but only if you try to brute force it. You can spend a lot of points very quickly on unreliable Wizards, but you don’t have to. The combination of TSons movement speed, strong characters, great units like the Ammatara (with an Armistos), Brethren of Iron for Domitar/Thanatar and Solar for very cheap, very stubborn line units (that you can explode to save your expensive marines) gives you a wide range of units to pick from! It catches people off guard constantly and the synergy works really well.

What are your future plans, either for this army or for another force? 

At the moment, I’ve moved on to preparing for our Badab event (Lamenters) and Traitor Salamanders, corrupted by Word Bearers. I’m using what I’ve learnt painting the Tsons to apply a metallic green approach to Salamanders and having a blast (both figuratively and flamer template literally) in doing something completely different and something that I’ve personally never seen before.