Horus Heresy New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[Nephaston]

57 minutes ago, Pacific81 said:

 

That's an interesting observation about the Saturnine armour, mk2 etc.

It might have been more interesting to leave HH2.0 well alone and release this as a 'Great Crusade' standalone game, as the old HH boxes used to be?

 

All of the units are better suited to that era than dropzone massacre. Could have had some alien faction included as antagonists perhaps re. the Great Crusade battles? 

And have valuable time and resources taken up on expanding non-imperials and even *HURK* XENOS??!?! when you can shovel so much more money making more marines!?

 

Jokes aside, I don't see anything great crusade-ish happen when GW is so opposed to do anything that might be useable across games. How would they be able to tell if the 40k crowd doesn't buy their Ullanor-era orks to use in 40k and vice versa? Or any non-imperial human facttion as guard/cultists/AoS-mortals. 

 

Maybe someday

 

[Craig]

I feel bad for the retailers that are taking a hit on these but I'm kind of happy to see that the almost £200 price point for starter boxes is being rejected by the consumer and I really hope GW learns from it.

[Stitch5000]

20 minutes ago, Craig said:

I feel bad for the retailers that are taking a hit on these but I'm kind of happy to see that the almost £200 price point for starter boxes is being rejected by the consumer and I really hope GW learns from it.

Why feel bad for retailers that instigated a race to the bottom of the price structure?

[brother_b]

I think the lack of sales may be more than just the price of the box. I don’t think the HH community wanted to get onto the “3 year edition” grind. I think it’s a combination of things with those two at the forefront and loss of options and units factoring in as well.

[Craig]

14 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

Why feel bad for retailers that instigated a race to the bottom of the price structure?

Because they are human beings trying to earn a living by supplying our community with products we want at below RRP. Why would I want them to have a hard time?

[Mandragola]

In retrospect I don't think Saturnine was ever going to have the same impact as AoD. That was really like a game launch for a large proportion of its players. It was great for making a new army.

 

Saturnine is also great for making a new army. It's got 40 marines in it, plus some other stuff. The problem is we've all got armies now. Many of them are wearing Mk6 armour so Mk2 doesn't really fit with our existing stuff.

 

If you want a new army (and don't hate the terminators) then Saturnine is very good. But there are a lot of people for whom that isn't the case.

 

I think the Mk2s are definitely the best of the three sets of armour we have so far by the way. For me they give a much stronger heresy vibe than Mk6, which still feels like 40k armour. Mk3 is similar but I think they made a bit of a mess of the hats for those.

 

I'm not so fussed about Saturnines as some people, one way or the other. I'm fine with them inventing new stuff, at least in theory, as it keeps the setting alive. There's tons of stuff in the existing range they haven't mentioned in the books anyway. I can absolutely believe something like a gun turret could go unremarked.

[Wibbling]

But we're all looking for the breacher unit, and the MK II assault marines. When more plastics are released for the mechanicum I'll get those. I'd like some MK II auto cannon/las cannon chaps for my Iron Warriors so we (the customer) will always buy more models. 

 

The retailers are given a discount by Workshop. It's not a race to the bottom, these are offered discounts to sell product. Workshop just make a bigger profit.

 

I have no idea what the cost to make is - factoring in the employee cost, marketing cost, product cost, energy costs (and those are appallingly high for obvious reasons) as to be more relevant than the plastic material but if they're selling a box for £195 the cost to make might be £70-90 for a given expected volume. 

 

That those sales are not being made is why there's a further discount.

 

(I say 'we're all' rather glibly. I certainly am, but I obviously do not know if others are, or are not so I apol for over stepping).

Edited Thursday at 04:21 PM by Wibbling

[jaxom]

I’m still not a fan of the arm-cannons, but today’s Saturnine showcase has left me more okay with close combat armed Saturnine bodies.

[derLumpi]

Well, if we would get that discount here in the EU I would buy a box just for the plastic. 

[Tawnis]

As someone who plays HH very casually, (I think I've gotten all of 3 whole games in, though I have a reasonably large army since I use most of it in 40k as well) I haven't been all that fussed on much of the new edition. I was just starting to get a feel for it and while I would have been plenty happy with staying in 2nd for a long time, a well executed 3rd could have really convinced me to play more. This was not it though, for a number of reasons. 

 

- Box Cost: As someone on the fence about it, the huge cost a the box that's mostly just more marines (of which I have lost already) is a big turn off. This could have been salvaged but with a few less Tacticals and more specialist units, and a verification that the new units would at the very least get Legends rules in 40k for cross game portability, but no dice on either. The turret and the big Dread are neat, not that fussed on anything else in there. 

- Rules?: Maybe I've just missed it, but I haven't been able to find confirmation on how the rules are being released. If I have to buy another big rulebook, plus another big Liber, plus a campaign book, it's just not going to happen, it's too much investment for something I'm just dipping my toes into. 

- Additional Model Availability: I went looking on GW's store for some more niche 30k models to fill out some missing slots in a couple of my armies. Namely some more Word Bearers Ashen Circle and some Alpha Legion Learnean Terminators, as well as a White Scars Stormseer for a friend. All sold out. In fact about 95% of the Legion specific HH stuff is sold out. At the launch of a new edition is when people are going to want to try new things, why are non of these in stock? It's certainly not incentivizing me to expand an existing army for the new edition, so it's down to if you like the big new box, great, otherwise your SOL. 
- Organization: Maybe it's just how it was laid out, but the new Force Organization stuff made me go cross eyed trying to figure out how it was supposed to work, and I was just getting used to all the old keywords, for them to basically all get a full overhaul. Not saying either of those tings will be bad, but it's certainly a big change, and a little intimidating only looking at it piecemeal from warcom articles. 

All that being said, the new Mk II Jump Marines with Chainaxes look great and I will be getting some of those for sure. (If some of those had been in the new box, it certainly would have made me more interested.)

Probably just going to see if anyone in the local HH group is planning to stick with second edition, and maybe try getting into 3rd at a later date, or once Waha gets the rules online. 

Edited Thursday at 07:42 PM by Tawnis

[Wibbling]

Tawnis, I rather agree with the majority of your points. On the army building, yes, it is confusing for those used to the older system but it frees up a lot. 

 

The muddle is over the 'prime slots' and adding units in there/getting a bonus and ... yeah, a muddle. 

 

But! If you think of it as 'what do I want to take'  all terminators, lots of tanks, shooting army, assault army, and start with the units you want to take and fit them to the force org rather than fit the force org to your units it is more flexible.

 

For example, a Solar Aux player can now quite easily take a whole swathe of tanks without really compromising but at the expense (a bit) of other units such as Ogryn. It took me a long while playing with it - the layout doesn't help and the icons need to be learned all over again. 

[Tawnis]

17 minutes ago, Wibbling said:

But! If you think of it as 'what do I want to take'  all terminators, lots of tanks, shooting army, assault army, and start with the units you want to take and fit them to the force org rather than fit the force org to your units it is more flexible.

That is one of the things that did intrigue me about this edition, I just couldn't see the practical terms of how it would build from the Warcom article. I've got A LOT of scouts from back in the day, so I like running sneaky recon style Alpha Legion. (A bunch of concussive shotguns caught everyone I played by surprise last edition.) So, in theory, it should be easier to do that. It's just hard to parse ATM. Hopefully it will become clear once the rules are fully out (assuming I have a way to access them since I won't be buying the Saturnine box.)

Edited Thursday at 08:41 PM by Tawnis

[MARK0SIAN]

22 minutes ago, Wibbling said:

Tawnis, I rather agree with the majority of your points. On the army building, yes, it is confusing for those used to the older system but it frees up a lot. 

 

The muddle is over the 'prime slots' and adding units in there/getting a bonus and ... yeah, a muddle. 

 

But! If you think of it as 'what do I want to take'  all terminators, lots of tanks, shooting army, assault army, and start with the units you want to take and fit them to the force org rather than fit the force org to your units it is more flexible.

 

For example, a Solar Aux player can now quite easily take a whole swathe of tanks without really compromising but at the expense (a bit) of other units such as Ogryn. It took me a long while playing with it - the layout doesn't help and the icons need to be learned all over again. 

But none of that is new. You could do all that with the previous system and the rites of war. Plus the rites had additional rules to make things like all jetbike or all tank armies viable by allowing them to score, something that’s missing from the current system.

Solar Auxilia could already take more tanks than people had points for, thanks to the way armoured tercios worked you could take 9 tanks in a single heavy support slot. That’s 27 tanks before you ran out of slots (you run out of points well before you hit 27 tanks) and for those 27 tanks they’d need a single HQ slot filled and you didn’t have to juggle detachments. 
 

Other than the ability to spam HQ models the new system doesn’t seem to offer anything that couldn’t be replicated under the old system and in a simpler way. 

Edited Thursday at 08:46 PM by MARK0SIAN

[Khulu]

Personally, I was planning to skip 3rd (at least for now) but my wife ordered the box as a gift for me. Since then I've looked into the edition more and I am actually getting excited about it now. I think GW have really done a terrible job selling this edition but watching it play out in batreps and hearing from people who have played, it seems fun. I look forward to trying it out.

[Irate Khornate]

I think multiple points went into why this box is selling so bad. 

 

First point by far is just how divisive Saturnine units are. You either love them or you hate them. Or in my case, I can't even use them. By the time of the drop site massacre World Eaters had lost all of those with psychic potential to sudden head explosion syndrome. Not counting their librarians who would follow soon with the shadow crusade. Which my army happens to be post Shadow crusade.

 

Second point, is how much different this game is. You had a lot of people that came to 30k from games workshops other game systems because it was viewed as a much more stable environment. That has now changed and a lot of people aren't happy about that. Sure there are absolutely folks out there that are excited for the new edition, but there's also a lot of us that aren't happy to get on that 3-year meat grinder. 

 

Third point, what do you mean to tell me I cannot put a fist on that gargantuan sized dreadnought and have it do honorable melee combat? You mean to tell me that big S.O.B. is only meant to be carrying around guns and has shoulders like that? Pure sadness. That dreadnought is insisting on being able to give a fisting. 

 

Fourth point,  that gun platform should have absolutely been a vehicle or a different specialist unit. Would have been amazing had it been a landspeeder of sort.

 

Last point, we have confirmation it's an edition wide box. With that being the case there's no real rush to get the box if you were on the fence about it. There's no fomo to boost sales to astronomical numbers.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 09:01 PM by Irate Khornate

[WARMASTER_]

10 hours ago, Robbienw said:

The castaferrum redesign is the key to unlocking massive profits!

MKIV please I miss those FW dreads! They were all beautiful 

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

On 7/23/2025 at 4:12 PM, Rusted Boltgun said:

Wayland have also discounted the

Mark ii Tactical squad and the Libers by 35%.

The 3.0 rulebook on its own is only discounted by 15%.

 

Shame...they don't send to Iceland.

9 minutes ago, WARMASTER_ said:

MKIV please I miss those FW dreads! They were all beautiful 

Me too

[Brofist]

27 minutes ago, Irate Khornate said:

Second point, is how much different this game is. You had a lot of people that came to 30k from games workshops other game systems because it was viewed as a much more stable environment. That has now changed and a lot of people aren't happy about that. Sure there are absolutely folks out there that are excited for the new edition, but there's also a lot of us that aren't happy to get on that 3-year meat grinder. 

 

I like to compare it to a digital game release to emphasize the absurdity:

 

EA is going to release another battlefield, but in the new game the multiplayer has half the maps, the single player campaign is shorter and worse written, and its now a cover based shooter. It costs more money, and to get the same gear you have in the current game, you gotta buy the season pass and DLC. EA swears there will be a substantial patch a month after release that fixes all the problems. Somewhere in a dungeon, an EA executive scratches their head trying to understand why preorders are low.

[Shovellovin]

9 hours ago, de Selby said:

Well I bought in after all. 35% pre-order discount is crazy, Dark Sphere

Isn’t there a discount maximum enforced by GW on retailers? It is my understanding that US retailers can only offer a 15% discount online. Am I mistaken or does GW not have a similar restriction for UK retailers?

 

Either way, that’s a good deal for UK fraters. I’m jealous. 

[Rusted Boltgun]

17 minutes ago, Shovellovin said:

Isn’t there a discount maximum enforced by GW on retailers? It is my understanding that US retailers can only offer a 15% discount online. Am I mistaken or does GW not have a similar restriction for UK retailers?

 

Either way, that’s a good deal for UK fraters. I’m jealous. 

 

I believe the USA works on MAP? Minimum Advertised Price - a retailer is allowed to set an advertised price but not below a minimum value.  Edit: They can sell for cheaper in store according to the internet.

 

The UK had RRP - Recommended Retail Price. Retailer buys from a manufacturer at below RRP but can sell at whatever loss / gain to clear stock.

 

That's dredging my memory so I may be wrong / out of date.

Edited Thursday at 09:53 PM by Rusted Boltgun
Moar info / corrections

[Irate Khornate]

6 minutes ago, Rusted Boltgun said:

 

I believe the USA works on MAP? Minimum Advertised Price - a retailer is allowed to set an advertised price but not below a minimum value.  Edit: They can sell for cheaper in store according to the internet.

 

The UK had RRP - Recommended Retail Price. Retailer buys from a manufacturer at below RRP but can sell at whatever loss / gain to clear stock.

 

That's dredging my memory so I may be wrong / out of date.

That sounds about right. Even if the acronyms are wrong I would say you are absolutely correct. 

[twopounder]

2 hours ago, Rusted Boltgun said:

 

I believe the USA works on MAP? Minimum Advertised Price - a retailer is allowed to set an advertised price but not below a minimum value.  Edit: They can sell for cheaper in store according to the internet.

 

The UK had RRP - Recommended Retail Price. Retailer buys from a manufacturer at below RRP but can sell at whatever loss / gain to clear stock.

 

That's dredging my memory so I may be wrong / out of date.

 

MSRP (Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price). How and where there are enforcements is a bit convoluted though. Some places seem to have perpetual sales  (like Costco) while others are held to rigid price models. I think, generally, larger retailers have more leverage to discount than smaller stores that don't want to risk getting blacklisted.

 

Last sales data I have for GW is that they sell 2:1. So you would pay $60 and get 2 kits that you could then sell for $60 each. That was a while ago though. Not sure how its done now, especially with larger chains that couldn't care less about the handful of GW products they carry. I've been able to get a lot of stuff on 50% clearance from Barnes and Noble, Target, etc. 

[Stitch5000]

The laws that apply to pricing prevent the enforcement of any kind of RRP by a distributor or manufacturer, although it is difficult to prove if a manufacturer or distributor has actually penalised or disadvantaged a buyer/account in practice. Usually the ill-will between a customer and a supplier prevents it from getting "legal". 

[Matcap86]

The smaller FLGS I frequent around here say they get stuff at 35% off from GW, but I can imagine large resellers in the UK like Wayland manage a better deal.

Edited Friday at 09:10 AM by Matcap86

[Lord Marshal]

Talons of the Emperor (and Agents) PDF is up, as well as an FAQ.

 

The Talons PDF also includes the non-Daemon Assassins.

 

Interestingly it looks like they're doing points rebalancing already - the Malcador chassis' got a drop.

 

Edited Friday at 12:02 PM by Lord Marshal