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I just managed to get my hands on this book from a friend who had a copy. It was a little worn but most of the pages were in pretty good shape. I just wanted to talk about some of the things I saw in it that were interesting and wonder what everyone else that has read/seen it thought about it. Also had a couple questions about things I've never seen or heard of before.

1. "The Red Angel" - In one of the images near the end of the book it has all the major chapter masters of chaos standing around(abaddon/ahriman/etc) in a half circle. In the "keystone" position of the semi-circle is a space marine body chained, glowing with fire shooting out of his body/eyes, and the caption reads "the red angel". The caption also lists him as a daemon. I'm assuming he's someone that was possessed by a powerful daemon and locked in the body by Ahriman. I searched lexicanum for any information and couldn't find anything. Someone know who this is or what is going on here?

2. Another great thing about this book was all of the interesting helmets/faceplates of so many different chapters. I'm not talking about the standard armors throughout the history of the game, but the specialized/ornamental helmets that a lot of the pictures showed. Most notably were a lot of the thousand sons' images had some really incredible examples of helmets that were very tzeentch/1ksons but did not have that ridiculous egyptian blue and yellow/gold look to it. If you can find a copy of this book some of my favorites were "The guardians of the great library" and "Uthizarr sect".

3. Jet bikes - The book has a lot of pics of jetbikes from various chapters (emperor's children, world eaters, etc), but I know now that only a very few still exist (like sammael's from the ravenwing). This is said to be because of the distrust mankind has for the tech (because of aliens using it , ie eldar and tau). My question is why would the chaos marines stop using them as well? What do they care if it goes against the emperor's/imperium's wishes? I'm surprised the Doomrider doesnt use one. Certainly the night lords or slaanesh forces would've held on to some of these and possibly had them possessed to keep them together if repair parts weren't available. Just seems like a great piece of tech that has been lost for no reason.

4. Cult Mechanicus - This book gives some amazing images of this group that doesnt get a lot of "press" in most of the 40k supplements. I'm surprised with all of their interesting units/vehicles that they haven't become a tabletop-usable army yet. The few small models of this group that I've seen painted up are nothing compared to the nightmarish drawings in "visions". Many of them are very insect-like (multiple eyes, extra legs, snaking arms/legs/bodies) to the point where you can't really tell where the human parts have gone. If you aren't interested in space marines the mechanicus section of this book is well worth it.

I highly recommend picking this book up if you can find one. I don't really like the colors used to illustrate the primarchs (they're all mostly done in a red/white/yellow scale for some reason), but it has a huge amount of old and new armor/vehicles/weapons that are drawn beautifully and in full color. It is a great tool if you're planning on doing a pre-heresy army , modeling any of the primarchs, or just want some out-of-the-box ideas for modeling your army.

It's a very worthwhile book. I think John Blanche's Primarch illustrations are one of my favorite parts, though. :(

The visions series are very inspirational for anyone planning to collect or model things from the pre heresy era.

The sheer volume of illustrations and the like are brilliant the new Horus Vs The Emperor one being one that really stands out (Not a Blanche illustration)

I agree also with Manchu the Primarch Illustrations are very good to

To

#1: "red angel"

IIRC a demon lord/princes name. Read it somewhere...
Could be a khornate one. ( red = blood ).

#2: "variants of armor"

Some nice designs there. But some really wrong too, would take it as a source for inspiration but not as a exact image of the
pre-heresy/heresy era armor types. Quality of the illustrations is not constant enough. Partially good stuff with a portion of
rather underwhelming pieces.
May provide the general style of some suits of armor.

#3: "jetbikes"

Oh, everyone would love jetbikes..
But the small inconvenience of a galaxy wide war could be a acceptable reason to imagine the tech of the jetbike lost
and the existing jetbikes as destroyed , except some rare relics , so anyone with access to them should also have them
as single pieces and not field squadrons of them.
( assumed that GW has the jetbike handed to the space elfs because those whined about the space marines winning the last
world championship of jetbikes with more than just making first but also second and third place, so this tech had to go ).

#4: "mechanicum"

Would second the notion of ad mech as most welcome add to the 40k models universe.


Visions of.. is a not unpleasant series/compilation, some useful pics and also partially useful information.
Still this is a support publication for a card game ( which all those images show ) and maybe some of the images should have been
worked on instead of a 1:1 of them on a A3 site.

I own this book myself, and often find myself leafing through when i need some inspiration or am just bored.

1. No clue

2.My favourite was probably the old Wolf Guard terminators.

3.Because regular bikes are just more badass, and the aforementioned connections to Xenos.

4. I have always been utterly in love with the Mechanicum, and the second they release a proper army for them, my orks will hit the closet.


Also, i was very dissapointed in the Primarch's drawings... they are downright awefull and just clusterfucks.... nothing in them adds together and its hard to even really understand what your looking at, i'd have preferred some proper art for each of them. But that might just be me.

These books are alright, but far from amazing.

The vast, vast majority of the art is despicable. Like, properly terrible. Unsurprisingly, the only good stuff comes from existing GW artists - Alex Boyd, Adrian Smith, Wayne England and John Blanche (among a smattering of others).

I can kind of understand why people dislike Blanche's work (he's the guy who did the primarch pin-ups), but they're wrong. Blanche is by far and away GW's finest illustrator. I mean, he and Jes Goodwin were almost single-handedly responsible for the 'look' of 40k back in the 80s or whenever.

I'd kill for a 'Horus Heresy Sketchbook' by John Blanche. His 'Inquisitor Sketchbook' is by far my favourite GW artbook.

As I said though, the rest of the art is typically hacky ccg fare.

I really dont care much for the art style he seems to employ... It's just messy.

It's a alright book,but who ever made that World Eater art should be ashamed.

Glad to see most everyone else that has seen it enjoyed it. The card game insertions really don't bother me and I actually enjoyed them for adding new names and faces to some of my favorite chapters (Death guard, 1ksons, etc). I'm all about anything that adds more fluff for them. I downloaded a .zip that had every single 40k CCG card in existence simply to look at the images and get some ideas and this book was just a huge expansion on that.

By the way, I don't dislike the primarch drawings as a whole, but I really dislike that they are all done in the same color palette. Just to be clear I'm not talking about every single primarch drawing/picture in the book. I'm only talking about the ones drawn in red/white/tan/yellow on a parchment-like background. They give great examples of what the primarchs could have looked like in full detail, but I wish they were full color like some of the others.

I also don't think anyone really got my point about the jetbikes. All the reasons for dropping them come from a loyalist space marine point of view. No one has given a reason for csms to have dropped the tech(or at least not to have picked it up after they turned traitor). I think for the most part they could care less about using xenos tech if it means getting an edge up on their opponents. I understand from a business perspective GW probably did it to give the eldar something unique and to show they were more technologically advanced (although they undermined this somewhat by giving the same tech to a young race like the tau, although there are whispers that the tau were seeded/helped along in their evolution by the eldar...hmm). I just think they are some really neat models that deserve a place in the csm codex. I can just see some world eater's on highly possessed/bloodied jetbikes bearing down on some terrified guardsman...mmmmm. Regular cycles are fine and all, but they're a bit chunky. Maybe when they get a new model I'll accept them a bit more.

It's possible that jetbike technology is not as reliable as rhino or predator technology and they just dont have the survivability to make it through ten thousand years of combat. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised there are still any CSM around at all in M41/42.

They don't have STC's of the jetbike tech is my bet.

As to the Mechanicus army. I don't think they are an offensive force. More or less the Skitari and Praetorians are just guarding forge worlds / outposts so I can't see them getting their own book.

Also GW seems to be behind on codex updates (Necrons, Tau, Dark Eldar, Daemon Hunters) so until GW can speed up the updates I don't want to see anything new that would stop every army (Besides those fething spess mahreens) getting a new codex every eddition.

the "Red Angel" was a verry powerfull, undevided deamon who was summoned and killed Sanguinus' Equrry, then possesed the body to be some kind of super deamonhost.

It might be true that they don't have the means to produce/repair jetbikes, but it is also true that in many cases daemonic possession is used in lieu of repair. There is a part of the death guard chapter approved article that says they have many rhinos from the heresy still in use that are held together only by the daemons possessing them. So even if they were rare I think they could/should still be an option in some future codex.

sniperjolly wrote:the "Red Angel" was a verry powerfull, undevided deamon who was summoned and killed Sanguinus' Equrry, then possesed the body to be some kind of super deamonhost.

Thanks, I was hoping someone would know. Any idea where this info is from?

Shas'O Dorian wrote:As to the Mechanicus army. I don't think they are an offensive force. More or less the Skitari and Praetorians are just guarding forge worlds / outposts so I can't see them getting their own book.

Also GW seems to be behind on codex updates (Necrons, Dark Eldar, Inquisition, Dark Angels, Black Templars, Tau, Orkz, Eldar)
so until GW can speed up the updates I don't want to see anything new that would stop every army getting a new codex every edition.

So titan legions are defensive
Really, great plastic kits need great ideas, so one Day we will see them.

Fixed your mistake about the angels of death.


BoT: is there any fluff for pre-heresy jetbikes?

I'm pretty sure that Angron, the primarch of the World Eaters, was referred to as 'the Red Angel' in the Horus Heresy novels. Perhaps it's supposed to be him.

Halsfield wrote:
Thanks, I was hoping someone would know. Any idea where this info is from?

Eh, just saw it on the HH ruleset by tempus fugitives. He had a little blurb. I personally don't know.

J'santai Khan wrote:I'm pretty sure that Angron, the primarch of the World Eaters, was referred to as 'the Red Angel' in the Horus Heresy novels. Perhaps it's supposed to be him.

The only thing about this is the space marine in the picture is chained, doesn't look like the images of angron I've seen (whereas ahriman and abaddon look spot-on), and is glowing with fire coming out of his body. Definitely could be him as it is a meeting of the powerful chaos leaders(supposedly), but nothing besides the color red points to him.

It's definitely a possessed Blood Angel - you can see the chapter symbol on his knee.

Never laid my hands on the book in discussion, so I can't make a call on the illustration. In the HH books, and in the OLLLLDDDDDD fluff, Angron was made into a pit fighting slave, complete with cerebral implants, before the Emporer found/freed him and gave him command of the World Eaters. Thus, chains wouldn't be out of place. He was also, eventually, elevated to Deamon Prince status by Khorne. Also, Ahriman and Abbadon were only Astartes, not Primarchs.