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Our gaming club is discussing the possibility of a slow grow ToWG of the HH.

I've suggested that we must stick to the appropriate livery, don't use armour/weapons that didn't exist at the time.

Given that we are a fairly relaxed bunch i don't think anybody will be examining each model for a minimum percentage of 'correct' parts.

I was wondering how strict other folks are when either building HH armies or even running campaigns of that era?

Hello and welcome to HH gaming , to answer your question with any HH army you will need to be lenient, I know recently that 40k Radio has said the opposite but they are being very snobby and eliteist, when building a HH army you need to take in 2 factors with your friends or local group

Cost: The biggest issue with HH armies is the cost and not everyone can afford the same spending power as each other, families, kids etc or just a lesser paid job, so why exclude these people from playing just because they have less money than you? simple answer is you dont, you build and buy what ever you like and they do the same, use proxies or spares if you have them or need to untill you all have an awsome HH army to play with.

Availability: this touches on part of the above, if you can afford to buy and pay for the shipping (USA etc) but others cannot then the availability of what your trying to collect will be an issue, so i suggest that you all band together (if not already) and purchase what your after each month thus mitigating the shipping costs to places like US or Aus.

So in short yes use whatever you like untill you can buy the correct model and replace the proxy and feel free to use some 40k items, for example there were mk7 helmuts kicking around in the HH and Boltguns, plasma weapons etc, just not in great numbers and on the experimental side of things. Check out the last page of the Black legion book for the sons of horus army there, its mixed alot of 40k/30k together and it looks amazing.

My army is almost completely FW pre-Heresy and it's still not HH accurate due to aquilas.

I'd say you can break it down into tiers depending on how strict you want to be:

- Forge World Horus Heresy models only.
- WYSIWYG: No Mk VII or newer, no aquilas.
- Relaxed accurate: No Mk VII or newer, aquilas, sculpted M41 chapter symbols that come on the model and you don't want to shave off etc are okay.
- Casual: Just make sure they're actually power armor/space marine models. I guess. Maybe.
- What-Are-You-Doing Tier: This hamster counts as 3 recon marines.

Like WW2, the Horus Heresy can be broken up into "Early War" (Great Crusade), "Mid War" (Horus Heresy) and "Late War" (Siege of Terra).

The Plastic Marine kits would accurately represent marines at the Siege of Terra since they did have Aquila armor crap. However, beyond that... Mk. 3/4 is your best bet. 3rd Party sources and bits from the plastic kits can mitigate the costs but you will still be being a ton per squad.

I don't have a heresy army. Yet. Anyways I could see why some people who fork out $1500-2000 for a army would be picky about their opponent using similar minis. I'm personally not that strict as long as they were Marines its all good to me.
As a side note I cannot wait for HH III. Then I'll be able to decide finally. Night Lords, Alpha Legion, Death Guard or Iron Warriors.

I have three Forge World Thallaxii.

I have six home-made Thallaxii from before the models were released.

If someone told me I wasn't allowed to use my scratchbuilt Thalaxii, or my personally crafted from bits and greenstuff adept (don't worry, she does look good) because they had paid moneys for official models, I would look at my other horus heresy playing friends, then back at that person, and laugh in their face. Slowly. Probably while pointing.

Then I would tell them that I put a lot of effort into my models looking good, and that since time equals money, I spent just as much on mine as he did on his and offer him the chance to walk away or play the game.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
I have three Forge World Thallaxii.

I have six home-made Thallaxii from before the models were released.

If someone told me I wasn't allowed to use my scratchbuilt Thalaxii, or my personally crafted from bits and greenstuff adept (don't worry, she does look good) because they had paid moneys for official models, I would look at my other horus heresy playing friends, then back at that person, and laugh in their face. Slowly. Probably while pointing.

Then I would tell them that I put a lot of effort into my models looking good, and that since time equals money, I spent just as much on mine as he did on his and offer him the chance to walk away or play the game.

I can't imagine anyone having a problem with that, similarly like no one would have an issue with plastic marines being converted into pre-heresy versions. Some people might have a problem with completely unaltered 40K-era models in HH though.

BTW, is the angular exhaust system armour for the Rhino-chassis vehicles completely a post-heresy thing? Should all authentic heresy-era Rhinos have those round exhaust pipes?

As mentioned above, if you go for an army from the last years of the war, rather than a Crusade/Istvaan-Calth kind of era army, then you cen get away with mixing in some Mk VII armour. My Seige of Terra themed Imperial Fists use Anvil Industries Preatorian, Renaissance and Medieval armour pieces on the majority of the troops, and I've thrown in some GW plastic parts on the higher-ranking models like Praetors and Champions.

Thanks for the replies.

It's part of the beauty of the Horus Heresy era. There is no uniformity between Legions or even within Legions. Forgeworlds were either experimenting with newly recaptured technology from the Great Crusade or during the Heresy itself were scrambling to supply both sides with gear.
On top of that the Dark Mechanicum was in it's early days and was throwing out thousands of years of dogma to create new previously prescribed creations.
So really if anyone says you must be "strictly modeled" then you tell them this chapter/company/squad was re armed with a short lived run Mark VI armour which the Loyal/Traitor Forgeworld produced by cannibalizing parts from a prototype of Mark VII.
With some greenstuff studs and some converted Chaos backpacks you can get Mark VI (Which is really just a wide classification for the weird and wonderful mix of designs produced during this era) out of standard marines pretty handily.

Mark 6 is corvus or beaky armour, mk5 is the heresy era and all over the place, but your point.is valid.

Also note that the ultramarines actually had marks all of there own design and designation