State of the Union (Heresy)

[Indefragable]

I can’t help but feel that there is some Canary Trap elements going on with these playtest leaks, and thus whether intentionally or not the final rules will be slightly different.

 

The # of Reactions allowed in particular seems like it could be too much…as soon as I understood what they are and they you could do something almost every phase of every turn, it sounded like a bit much. That’s precisely the sort of thing I would do, though; give one playtest group too many and another too few to see what the (predictable) feedback would be and what version gets leaked.

[Brofist]

Our group has been playing the leaked rules for a few weeks now and we've been enjoying the reactions. Like I wrote a week ago, if you want to stand around and drink beer during your turn then reactions are not for you, but if you like the idea of thinking and doing things during your opponent's turn its cool and good. Everyone enjoys something different so YMMV

[Lord Marshal]

I think the concept of Reactions is a good one. They definitely require you to pay more attention and do more than wander off for a drink/toilet/phone swipe whilst your opponent is doing their thing. That said, it does feel like another example of developers having wanted to swap to an Alternating Activation system but being denied, so attempted to work around it. 

 

From what little I've played and seen, there's definitely a few of the feared "GOTCHA" Reactions going around, particularly the Legion-specific ones and shooting-dominant armies and three opportunities to shoot during your opponents turn can make a real difference. Movement Reaction shenanigans make shorter-ranged weaponry like Volkite Chargers suffer a bit, but playing a gunline is also a bit more difficult when you can shuffle people a few inches back out of range etc.

 

I guess it's going to be a question of how well people adapting to these changes, rather than dismissing the whole thing as trash because you can't think of this as a straight up I Go, You Go system anymore; 30k really is a hybrid of IGUG and Alternating Activations now. I think that will make the game stronger in the long term, but it's going to depend on how open to change the community is and if FW/GW can stop themselves from bloating the system out with power creep.

 

Dreadnoughts beings ludicrously broken due to being Monstrous Creatures being overlooked doesn't instill me with confidence on that last part though. It's not as if anyone who'd played against Mechanicum in the last eight years couldn't have told you that was going to happen or anything. Expect a lot of the WAAC bandwagon/influencers to bring Fury of the Ancients unless something changed between the leaks.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Lord Marshal

[suxdavide]

Our group has been playing the leaked rules for a few weeks now and we've been enjoying the reactions. Like I wrote a week ago, if you want to stand around and drink beer during your turn then reactions are not for you, but if you like the idea of thinking and doing things during your opponent's turn its cool and good. Everyone enjoys something different so YMMV

Yet that is something I look for in a tournament-oriented game and not HH :)

[Petitioner's City]

 

 

Our group has been playing the leaked rules for a few weeks now and we've been enjoying the reactions. Like I wrote a week ago, if you want to stand around and drink beer during your turn then reactions are not for you, but if you like the idea of thinking and doing things during your opponent's turn its cool and good. Everyone enjoys something different so YMMV

Yet that is something I look for in a tournament-oriented game and not HH :)

But it's also good behaviour to pay attention to your opponent, not walk away, engage and talk. This actually encourages better behaviour for a casual play, where you are otherwise more likely to not engage during your opponent's turn? Edited April 10, 2022 by Petitioner's City

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

Our group has been playing the leaked rules for a few weeks now and we've been enjoying the reactions. Like I wrote a week ago, if you want to stand around and drink beer during your turn then reactions are not for you, but if you like the idea of thinking and doing things during your opponent's turn its cool and good. Everyone enjoys something different so YMMV

Yet that is something I look for in a tournament-oriented game and not HH :)

Both of these are incredibly odd.

 

Heresy certainly can be a tournament game. I've been to some fantastic 30k tournaments in the past (better than the 30k narrative events I've been to), and even with the unbalance non marine factions can bring, I doubt it eclipses what's happening in 40k.

 

Simultaneously, you can be a responsibly attentive player and dislike reactions. If you use your opponents turn and actions to formulate your own strategy, the need to throw up yugioh trap cards as much as possible might seem like an obstacle in that process. Your opponent doing it to you might also cause you to lose your train of thought and screw up your plan. You can of course get used to these aspects over time, but it'll be harder for some people, and they'll constantly be wondering...why? Reactions have to be an improvement, not just sidegrade.

 

On an unrelated note, if phase 3 has been floating around for a year and a half then I have two thoughts. The first is that I'm hopeful for the obvious wonky stuff to be fixed, and them to have plenty of time to iterate for a solid balance. The second is that they obviously cut support for 1st a while back, and I'd go so far to say that the problems in malevolence are due to it. Really frustrating.

[WrathOfTheLion]

If it's a year and a half old, they've probably been writing this since 2018 or 2019. I'd even go so far as to postulate soon after that Pendraig report we had, they'd made the call to do the new edition.

[Astartes Consul]

 

On an unrelated note, if phase 3 has been floating around for a year and a half then I have two thoughts. The first is that I'm hopeful for the obvious wonky stuff to be fixed, and them to have plenty of time to iterate for a solid balance. The second is that they obviously cut support for 1st a while back, and I'd go so far to say that the problems in malevolence are due to it. Really frustrating.

 

 

This would also explain is strange nature of the rules in Crusade and the lack of FAQ, both for it and a general FAQ for the whole system, then.

 

Out of interest, what makes you think it has been floating around for that long? Did someone work out a date from the PDF?

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

 

On an unrelated note, if phase 3 has been floating around for a year and a half then I have two thoughts. The first is that I'm hopeful for the obvious wonky stuff to be fixed, and them to have plenty of time to iterate for a solid balance. The second is that they obviously cut support for 1st a while back, and I'd go so far to say that the problems in malevolence are due to it. Really frustrating.

 

This would also explain is strange nature of the rules in Crusade and the lack of FAQ, both for it and a general FAQ for the whole system, then.

 

Out of interest, what makes you think it has been floating around for that long? Did someone work out a date from the PDF?

Someone on 4chan just claimed they've been around for that long. Afaik there's nothing more than that.

[WrathOfTheLion]

It doesn't sound unreasonable, especially given our current frame of mind on this has been that it was delayed a time or two.

[Gorgoff]

I thought so as well. DA rules could already been converted from second edition down to first to bringt out book 9. It would explain why those rules where so weird.

[WrathOfTheLion]

I thought so as well. DA rules could already been converted from second edition down to first to bringt out book 9. It would explain why those rules where so weird.

When the Inner Circle Knights Cenobium were first revealed, they failed to account for Cataphractii armor's inability to overwatch, on top of that they designed a Cataphractii squad with the ability to overwatch in the first place. Now, it was correct by the printing of Book 9 with an addendum added, as well as that they published an updated pdf with that included, but it came off as odd.

 

Can Cataphractii overwatch now? I haven't read that part of the rules, but I'd certainly raise an eyebrow if so.

 

Another telling thing would be if the Spicula missiles on the Arquitor Bombard work correctly with the updated firing arcs. I haven't bothered to go check yet.

Edited April 10, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Astartes Consul]

The DA Crusade rules being just tweaked from Heresy 2.0 DA falls down a bit as an argument when you consider they also created several units in that book, both for the Dark Angels and for generic Legion lists, that appear to have been cut already.

 

Think it is more likely that the rules were simply rushed and written with one eye on the fact they would be replaced / have an opportunity to rewrite them very soon after release.

[WrathOfTheLion]

The DA Crusade rules being just tweaked from Heresy 2.0 DA falls down a bit as an argument when you consider they also created several units in that book, both for the Dark Angels and for generic Legion lists, that appear to have been cut already.

 

Think it is more likely that the rules were simply rushed and written with one eye on the fact they would be replaced / have an opportunity to rewrite them very soon after release.

I don't think it falls down as an argument. Those units may very well be 'non-core'/'expanded' units as mentioned in the playtest document, until a kit comes for it and it gets model support. I think we'll need to see the full picture there first.

 

Noticeably, as I mentioned above, inconsistencies like the Spicula and Cataphractii overwatch ability would actually be noticeable points to check for. 

 

* The point of figuring this out, which I'll do later, is that we then would know that 2E was already influencing model design as far back as something like ~ mid-2019.

Edited April 10, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Petitioner's City]

 

 

 

 

On an unrelated note, if phase 3 has been floating around for a year and a half then I have two thoughts. The first is that I'm hopeful for the obvious wonky stuff to be fixed, and them to have plenty of time to iterate for a solid balance. The second is that they obviously cut support for 1st a while back, and I'd go so far to say that the problems in malevolence are due to it. Really frustrating.

 

This would also explain is strange nature of the rules in Crusade and the lack of FAQ, both for it and a general FAQ for the whole system, then.

 

Out of interest, what makes you think it has been floating around for that long? Did someone work out a date from the PDF?

Someone on 4chan just claimed they've been around for that long. Afaik there's nothing more than that.

Although that person is sharing the likely fake Liber Mechanicum pages (the watermark is too low compared to either Liber Astartes or the Core Rules), so I'm not sure I'd take them as a reliable witness.

[SkimaskMohawk]

@wrathofthelion the arquitor. It can't shoot using the 1st Ed rules, and the spicula is a hot mess of bad rules writing that shows that. But vehicle weapon los and arc works differently now, and it can easily shoot.

 

@petitioners city I don't play around with PDFs too much other than turning word docs into them and maybe some minor tweaking so take this with a grain of salt; does the position of the watermark matter? If it's copy pasted does it auto-align to the same position? Or is it like word where it can go where it wants?.

[WrathOfTheLion]

@wrathofthelion the arquitor. It can't shoot using the 1st Ed rules, and the spicula is a hot mess of bad rules writing that shows that. But vehicle weapon los and arc works differently now, and it can easily shoot.

 

@petitioners city I don't play around with PDFs too much other than turning word docs into them and maybe some minor tweaking so take this with a grain of salt; does the position of the watermark matter? If it's copy pasted does it auto-align to the same position? Or is it like word where it can go where it wants?.

So it should then be a reasonable conclusion that it may have just straight been designed for 2E shooting and poorly backported to 1E.

 

I'd say it's circumstantial, but supporting evidence that they designed these kits with 2E in mind. Playtest 1 could then conceivably go as far back as 2019, if the sculptors were possibly already making model design choices informed by that during that year.

Edited April 10, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Brofist]

I have it on good authority that the first cut of the rules, the traitor ones we've seen, were written and tested around the same time as Book 9. I don't have an actual timeline for the phase 3 rules, but if they went to print with phase 5 late last year it could be as old as 2020.

[bushman101]

Is that to say there were (at least) 5 phases of play testing?

I don't think I have seen anything later than phase 3.

Edited April 10, 2022 by bushman101

[Brofist]

We've seen phase 1 (traitors) and phase 3 (loyalists) rules, nothing later than that. Supposedly there were 5 phases before they went to print.

[WrathOfTheLion]

That would certainly be interesting. I rather like what I see with phase 3. A few further iterations on top of that would be promising.

 

Next month, we should see some of what the final rules are.

[bushman101]

We've seen phase 1 (traitors) and phase 3 (loyalists) rules, nothing later than that. Supposedly there were 5 phases before they went to print.

hmm....so everything got separate phases.

I guess I missed that 

[Slips]

I can say, at the very least, that I heard about HH2.0 as far back as Oct last year and that was for P3 stuff; and, if they had box art and army shoots ready to go for the boxed set last year too, when we got the leaked images and we know that the lead time to get books printed is at least ~6ish months, then timelinewise, it makes sense that development started either concurrently with Book 9 or not long after.

[WrathOfTheLion]

I think it may observably go back to at least 2019. As we look - we can see kit releases reached their glut in 2019 with a fairly massive drop that year. They likely dumped everything they could that year, then started any new sculpts (Sabre, Arquitor, DA Legion units) with 2E in mind. After they exhausted those, only the DA/NL sculpts, specific upgrade kits (umbra bolters) and Praetors/Characters were released. These kits were sculpted in 2019, even if released in 2020, going as far back as even sculpted in probably summer 2019.

 

I know I had concluded the anomalies to be for a large release (i.e., new edition) by like February 2021, but I was tracking it since even into 2020 where I made some noticeable observations in the thread where we talked about upgrade kits going away.

 

You could probably have concluded by lack of FAQs, but it was noticeable to anyone that even just plotted release rate between 2019 and 2020. Which it means it goes back at least that far. Can actually check like P1/P2 of this thread, I mention release rates imploding without actually any conclusions on why, just making the data comparison, and Cadmus Tyro makes mention that rumors at the time (March 2021) were of basically this. 

 

 

That was the case until last year and this year. 30k releases have damn near imploded and collapsed in entirety to zero over the past year, something like an 80% decrease in output. At the same time, Specialist Games likely saw an increased release rate post reopening of FW in order to catch up, as FW continued to do weekly releases.

 

For reference, in 2019 around 36 kits were released for 30k. Over the past year, Qin Xa, Lion El'Jonson, Deathwing Companions, Contekar, Saul Tarvitz and two weapon packs, for 7 / 36 -> 19% of the release rate of 2019. This will increase to 9 / 36 -> 25% with the inclusion of the Word Bearers Praetors.

 

So even public kit release data exposes that they were preparing heavily for this as far back as 2020 definitively by the drop, but arguably even 2019, which had a large release rate as compared to 2018.

Edited April 11, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Cris R]

I thought it prudent to discuss the current situation regarding FW's Horus Heresy scene. This isn't intended as a place of griping although we do all feel a little shunned by FW/GW which especially as it was called "one of the core systems" stings. I'm hoping this can be productive and inspiring.

 

Sadly it looks like "Age of Darkness" has been left by the wayside.

 

Yes we unfortunately lost Alan Bligh, pretty much the visionary of the Heresy but that was years ago now and there's no doubt that there are people just as passionate as he was about the setting (check out people like Mournival Events for example, outstanding work). Anuj recently departed FW as well, leaving a single person to deal with the meat of the lore and the rules. FW were attempting to recruit someone else to the Heresy but I'm currently unsure if they have or not (I don't recall seeing any announcements). We desperately need some new blood in the FW Heresy team to help gain some momentum. Yes, Covid has certainly caused some issues but Necromunda, Blood Bowl, Adeptus Titanicus and Lord of the Rings are receiving regular miniature and written support.

 

Regarding the books:

 

Crusade, the most recent was significantly shorter than the other projects (incidentally Anuj has declared that significant work had been done on book 10 before his resignation), yet apparently the Dark Mechanicum were cut from it as there wasn't enough room. This could be beneficial meaning that the Dark Mechanicum may be a significant army list.

 

FAQs have been sadly lacking. The last general FAQ was over two years ago, leaving us still with unanswered questions and rather funnily, playtest rules for a significant period of time. Recently there was an unannounced FAQ for Crusade, which feels horrifically unfinished and the fact that no Community post or email has yet been received is confusing. What is more concerning though is the fact that Malevolence, the book before Crusade is in fact still in need of a FAQ.

 

Miniatures:

 

We're currently still awaiting the release of the Word Bearer Praetors, miniatures that were shown in April last year. This has got to be one of the longest previews that we've seen from FW/GW in history.

 

There are still plenty of units currently not represented with miniatures support, which means even if books are currently on the back burner due to lack of resources that these could at least be filled out. FW claimed to want a Legion Leviathan as well as TDA and AA Praetors for each Legion. The fact that very few models have come out for AoD in the past year makes me think that they've frustratingly reallocated most of the sculptors to other games systems which are receiving regular support.

 

Getting into The Heresy is difficult as GW is moving away from Firstborn Marines with their Primaris. Stores are less and less likely to have MkIII, MkIV, Cataphractii and Tartaros boxes in stock. The removal of the (by comparison) fantastic value Betrayal at Calth and Burning of Prospero boxes (the only place to get two of the Heresy's Special Characters) hit hard and made entry into the Heresy even more prohibitively expensive.

 

I think the worst thing is just not knowing FW's plans. Heresy weekenders have become "Specialist Games" weekenders or just cut (even if they couldn't hold a physical one this year surely they could have done a virtual event, a bit of a roadmap etc). The Heresy sells, they know that. Is that why we've been waylaid?

 

What I feel we need:

 

•Communication from FW about the intended future of The Heresy

•New blood in the writing department and sculpting, even if it's reassigning current assets

•FAQs to be updated

•A way of starting a force with some savings as opposed to having to buy all the boxes independently

 

Obviously I'd like to see GW releasing some more kits in plastic, such as Deimos Rhinos (FW could sell Predator, Whirlwind kits etc), Assault Marines with Heresy Era armour (again, maybe sell as a Despoiler Squad and FW provide Jump Packs). Could we see this sort of thing happening with GW looking to produce less MkVII miniatures due to the rise of Primaris? Maybe.

 

I DO still have hope for Heresy, and I sincerely hope it comes back in a big way after a couple of disappointing years.

 

I would value your input.

 

It might be worth revisiting the very first post in this thread from last March given what we're talking about right now. Very interesting that everything here now is starting to make more sense in the context of a new edition emerging over the last few years.