1ncarnadine

The Sagittarum Guard set was explicitly made to represent the Custodians in that picture. It's been a while, but I do distinctly remember Tony Cottrell bringing it up when they were first shown at the 2017 HH Weekender.

I absolutely love this sculpt. Just about everything about it is perfect, and it's seriously tempting me to consider some kind of Sagyar Mazan zone mortalis force. I think those lose access to all non-Infantry Heavy Support, but as part of a boarding action force that might not be so bad. If I have any issue with the sculpt, it's that of the two leather drapings over his tabard, one seems to continue through his belt, and the other (on his right) looks like it's weirdly floating? IIRC, the Khan is noteworthy for forcing the adoption of a ton of Chogorian influences in the Legion to help unify what was, before his discovery, a Legion composed of a bunch of individualistic path-finding forces. He also made them adopt Chogorian names. I'm not actually sure, but I'd guess that Hibou's face paint is a throwback to before the Khan?

Considering that Cthonia was besieged for most of the Heresy, the Headhunters likely started mass recruiting outside their homeworld throughout the Heresy, drawing from whatever other brutal gang cultures they could throughout worlds under dark compliance. And then they probably just indoctrinated inductees in Cthonian traditions, maybe in the same way as the Sons of Horus themselves for their Inductii. But that means there's likely to be a ton of color & scheme variations, where small cultural differences filter through. Not to mention changing heraldry among existing formations as the Heresy goes on, where formations who spend more time with more chaos-driven elements of the traitors might look even darker, have spikes on vehicles, trophies from foes, etc It's pretty great of them to release all these color plates already! And they teased Medusan Chain Guard, so that's neat. Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, and Salamanders will definitely have some close associations, though maybe not from their home worlds. I guess I could see a Nocturnian or Colchisian something-or-other, though. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Space Wolves, Night Lords and World Eaters are all Distrusted Allies with the Imperial Army on the matrix (as are Iron Hands, actually) and their home worlds don't seem likely to bring up Legiones Auxilia, so I'm curious about those. Same with White Scars and Blood Angels, honestly. There's zero chance there's any military formations being drawn from Baal Secundus, and the Khan has seemed inclined to keep Chogoris free from mass recruitment. But who knows what the SG studio will do.

We have a few examples of the Calth High Guard, who are probably indicative of the overall Ultramar High Guard scheme:

Ohhh, most definitely. There's the same fist icon on his left shoulder. I really like the faded sulfurous yellow on the fatigues vs a more vibrant or golden yellow, too. I'm also most keen on the Barbarans. It's always made sense to me that the Solar Auxilia pattern would make good Death Guard allies, because the sealed suits are basically the only way that normal humans could fight in the same environments. But I've also thought it would make a ton of sense for there to be Barbaran auxilia, because there should be some people who don't make Astartes grade. The only purpose of that planet the way Mortarion runs it is to churn out tough soldiers, after all.

I think there's still nearly twice as many loyalist cohorts as traitors, but one thing this new Solar Aux vehicle transfer sheet does address is adding a ton of new Legion allies and especially adding in traitors. We now have: Loyalist: Manachean Bulls Lord Marshal's Own Ash Scorpions The Deathless of Theta-Garmon Saturnyne Rams Boremanite Devils Ultramar High Guard - [Ultramarines] Inwit Phalangites - [Imperial Fists] Traitor: Prosperine Spireguard - [Thousand Sons] Selucid Thorakites - [Iron Warriors] Barbaran ...Amrantoi?? - [Death Guard] Cthonian Headhunters - [Sons of Horus] Arkadian Janissaries - [Emperor's Children] Hopefully the Beta-Garmon book has some color plates for most of the new ones. The Thorakites and Janissaries were in a WarCom staff painting article so we have an idea of how they'll appear, but I'm pretty sure the Inwit Phalangites and Barbarans are all-new.

For the SA, there's at least the Carnodons, Auroxes, and the Hermes Light Sentinel. I could see the Light Sentinels coming on a sprue with the light tanks, or maybe there's more Fast Attack options they'll add to the main AoD and LI ranges, like a Solar Auxilia pattern Tauros assault vehicle or something. I think we'll also see another Leman Russ sprue at some point that has Russes with sponsons, Demolisher Cannons, and either the Volkite Macro-sakers or Executioner Plasma Cannons. I'm not sure what else they'd add for them at that point, but they could always go back to Imperial Armour options and do Solar Auxilia versions. Explorator-pattern Destroyer Tank Hunters could be neat.

Great mini. I love this guy's audio stories, and I'm hopeful his arc gets some decent resolution on Beta-Garmon, since that's what he was being built up for. I know he also shows up at the Siege but he's basically just a name drop there for all his character matters in that story. Even if Haar missed the Angron re-union and the Nails, he's still in the World Eaters supply chain and presumably also changed his iconography with his Legion as a general order. It's entirely within reason that he has World Eaters heraldry while also missing those events. It's a little like the Sons of Horus who are still partly in Luna Wolves colors at Prospero. I think his proportions being off is also fine, because part of his deal is that he's possibly a Thunder Warrior/proto-Astartes hybrid? The angular studs are a nice touch, too. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that style of bonding stud.

*weeps for Endryd Haar* I'm still not over some of the bad choices in Saturnine, let alone the un-edited mess this "book" has turned out to be

HH2: Massacre notes that even some members of their earliest Terran intake had "ember-like bioluminescence" in their eyes. The Terran intake also displayed a tendency towards developing a "granite-like or obsidian quality" to their skin "in response to prolonged exposure to high levels of potentially harmful radiation." P.117 under "The Devils in the Dark." So to develop the skin tone they just need to have fought some rogue Mechanicum using irad engines or assaulted a ship's reactor or something. They can have glowing eyes regardless.

Nice Banelash!

Well, I'd also like to point out that so far, we've seen three Daemon Princes of the Ruinstorm, and three overt phases of the Siege where the power of one god is ascendant (with some overlap). Samus (Khorne), Cor'bax (Nurgle), and the six-fold angel in the Hollow Mountain (I guess it's named Vassukella, of Slaanesh). It stands to reason there's a fourth, and I can't think of a moment of the Siege that's more Tzeentch-ascendant than the ultimate betrayal by Chaos of Horus. It would be a moment that involves pride, deceit, change, power, hope... all qualities generally linked to Tzeentch. So for Valdor to have a Tzeentch-throne moment and be involved in a general flux in the warp in the last act towards the Great Deceiver would make a ton of sense. Or Abnett just drops that Ruinstorm Prince thing that the other books set up and does his own thing. At this point, who knows.

It's Manel Parellada (mp_miniatures on insta). He does sell some of his designs on cults, but he does a lot for just himself too. He's got some stunning mechanicum on top of his DG.

Looks to be custom. I thought it was Hermetika at first but it's definitely different.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/07/28/cerastus-knight-lancer-the-warhammer-studio-show-off-their-gorgeously-painted-lancers/ Well, this article dropped today, showing off some of the poseability they talked up. Looks great! The real item of interest to me though, is that there appear to be House Caesarean and House Orhlacc transfers applied to these. I wonder if they're just in-house printing or freehand, but because the box art mini has Devine, I'm hoping the Cerastus transfer sheet has a bunch of houses featured that the Questoris/Armiger sheets don't cover? Very cool if true.