Horus Heresy New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[Gorgoff]

It got worse.

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

On 8/12/2025 at 4:31 PM, Loishy said:

If we refer to the previous organization of the astartes legions, the centurion is the equivalent of a Captain with a hundred astartes under is commad :  



So personally I would go with 

- Chapter Master (10 companies under is command) - Praetor 
- Commander (5 companies under is command forming a Battalion) - Centurion with Paragon of War
- Captain (1 company under is command with 3 lieutenants) - Centurion
- Lieutenant  (3 squads under is command) - Optae

And a Praetor with Paragon of War would then be the Chapter Master designed to lead several other chapter master in a fleet in which the Primach is not present.

But I suppose that a centurion from a line company (companies II, III, and IV) cannot easily demand a large number of terminators from company I. That's why I'm not surprised that a centurion only gives access to a maximum of 4 terminator squads in 3.0.

Commander can be a Tribune.

[Marshal Rohr]

In game designs terms there are three specific options, Praetors, Centurions, and Optaes which line up specifically with Chapter, Company, and Demi-Company. It’s a 1-1 translation. Instead of building something like a Centurion unlocks something like the old FOC and an Optae unlocks something closer to an old allied detachment, they’ve built some kind of hybrid between Legiones Imperialis and old Formations without sticking to the Legiones Imperialis selection numbers or Formations themes. Like it’s Bananas your centurion requires an apex detachment from a praetor to take a command squad unless you use a logistical benefit and then your other centurion has to go naked. It’s just half-assed. 

Edited August 13 by Marshal Rohr

[TheTrans]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

In game designs terms there are three specific options, Praetors, Centurions, and Optaes which line up specifically with Chapter, Company, and Demi-Company. It’s a 1-1 translation. Instead of building something like a Centurion unlocks something like the old FOC and an Optae unlocks something closer to an old allied detachment, they’ve built some kind of hybrid between Legiones Imperialis and old Formations without sticking to the Legiones Imperialis selection numbers or Formations themes. Like it’s Bananas your centurion requires an apex detachment from a praetor to take a command squad unless you use a logistical benefit and then your other centurion has to go naked. It’s just half-assed. 

Hey now mate. Its a well thought out design choice by the extremely adequate design studio and its what everyone asked for.... like what the 40k and AoS players asked for..right? Like someone asked for this didn't they? People must have had a hard time with the Force Org, right? Like this wasn't just a knee jerk decision to try and have a weird homogonisation of all the systems list buidling and then somehow make it more confusing by using weird silouhettes that are confusing even for marine players, let alone any of the other factions.. right. 

[BitsHammer]

I thought about using index cards to visualize and organize my detachments but I hadn't considered the red string cand cork for it.

[BitsHammer]

35 minutes ago, TheTrans said:

Hey now mate. Its a well thought out design choice by the extremely adequate design studio and its what everyone asked for.... like what the 40k and AoS players asked for..right? Like someone asked for this didn't they? People must have had a hard time with the Force Org, right? Like this wasn't just a knee jerk decision to try and have a weird homogonisation of all the systems list buidling and then somehow make it more confusing by using weird silouhettes that are confusing even for marine players, let alone any of the other factions.. right. 

Based on designer commentary they did it because they felt the FOC was too restrictive on players forcing them to leave stuff they wanted on the shelf to take specific options they needed in a list. It also meant the designers had to keep layering exceptions into the rules to let people play specific lists.

 

Now do I think they nailed it out of the gate? Not exactly. I have complained about the lack of icons and legion flavored prime slot bonuses but I would like to add another to my complaints: apex detachments shouldn't be limited by filled high command slots. If all veterans seems too strong then either adopt a 0-1 limit per apex detachment, limit how many we can take perk thousand points or limit them relative to the number of aux detachments we have.

 

Any or all of these would go a long way to restricting the number of apex slots in a given list without locking us to such a miserly position of two apex detachments max.

 

The only good news is if you like running named characters like Argel Tal or Sigismund is that most named characters are High Command which gives us non-Praetor options for the slot, even if it's not much of an option.

 

Frankly I mostly get what they are trying to do but at the same time I don't think every army should be required a Praetor or named character at every points level just to access a retinue or veteran squads, much less any legion specific Apex detachments.

[Marshal Rohr]

Custodes with their 800 point shield captain tax demonstrate why they will have to revise the system but we have at least a year of journals before they release anything they’ve developed after the main release. 

[Gorgoff]

2 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Custodes with their 800 point shield captain tax demonstrate why they will have to revise the system but we have at least a year of journals before they release anything they’ve developed after the main release. 

And they are slready making the new edition. Never forget that.

2028 the next one will likely drop. 

[BitsHammer]

More than likely they are in the pre-planning stages of the next edition at this point. They'll want to see how mechanics are received and what the sticking points in the game are before going all in on a new edition.

 

That said expect one new large change minimum if we see another edition in a few years since it seems someone in management thinks that new means it has to have a big change somewhere to separate it from past editions instead if refining things.

[Brofist]

Body isn't even cool yet and we already talkin about 4th edition 

[Irate Khornate]

Welcome to the churn. My hope is HQs get weapon options back, but I figure they won't. 

 

Truly we have a year if not less to find out all the flaws of this edition while they're working on the bones of the new edition. Anything discovered past that likely won't be included, and that's if they're not revamping the whole game entirely again. 

 

[Pacific81]

It's really sad that everyone expects HH to get pulled into this three year cycle. It will probably take me that long to understand just how the force org chart works..

[derLumpi]

Nobody has to be part of that cycle. ;-)

[Pacific81]

Just reading through the new rules, crikey its like the Zack Snyder directors cut of rulebooks. I dont know if the authors were getting paid per page, but just so much un-necessary text and exposition.

Considering they presumably know their target audience is veteran hobbyists, who know how to hold a tape measure, it feels like something you would use to explain the concept of a 'wargame' to an alien. And therefore makes many of the rules much harder to understand than if they had just used simpler language.

[Valkyrion]

4 minutes ago, Pacific81 said:

Just reading through the new rules, crikey its like the Zack Snyder directors cut of rulebooks. I dont know if the authors were getting paid per page, but just so much un-necessary text and exposition.

Considering they presumably know their target audience is veteran hobbyists, who know how to hold a tape measure, it feels like something you would use to explain the concept of a 'wargame' to an alien. And therefore makes many of the rules much harder to understand than if they had just used simpler language.

 

Its so hard to read and I genuinely think it's made me a bit dumber, because now I'm second guessing things that have always been clear before and should be clear now.

The emboldened text doesn't help either because sometimes its like a bullet point and sometimes its like a description. e.g Boarding Shields - the bold bit says 'Boarding Shields grant a 5+ Invulnerable Save, the Shield Trait and the Heavy Sub-type.'

Guess what the text below it says;

A model with a Boarding Shield gains a 5+ Invulnerable Save. In addition it gains the Shield Trait and the Heavy Sub-type. 

 

It's the same sentence just with 8 more words? Why make me read something again that takes 50% longer to read the second time just to say the same thing?!

 

Then you have Company Standard. The bold bit says 'A company standard adds a bonus to combat resolution.'

Okay, but what's the bonus? Why not include the bonus in the emboldened bit like you did with boarding shields?

Why make me read 6 more lines of text when the bold bit could simply have said

'A unit that includes a company standard adds +1 to combat resolution and counts as 5 additional models for the purposes of outside support'?

 

 

 

[Gorgoff]

And the moment it would become in handy if they explain something a little bit more in detail, they just don't. 

How line of sight works is one short sentence without any explanation and a very vague example picture.

[Pacific81]

I've just been reading the force org charts. Again, once understood, they are actually straightforward (and very flexible). Yet upon first reading it felt like I was one of the first to break into the Pyramids, attempting to decipher the hieroglyphics to obtain the secrets held within.

 

I am only half joking here when I say that it's quite unfair that GW have taken a game that was unashamedly aimed at veteran players; a drudging but dependable ruleset, for people who had little time on their hands in between family and other commitments (giving them 7 years in-between rule cycles to lovingly create an army) then utterly rofl-stomped that with a new 3 year turbo cycle and a ruleset of over 700 pages (including the liber) that needs to be read 4 times underneath a spot lamp while wearing noise-cancelling headphones. Seriously, GW?!

[SkimaskMohawk]

It's pretty obvious they're doing the strategy of not making the game for pre-existing players. They want those big 8th-10th edition sales and the cross over from 40k players, and are starting to apply a lot of the same concepts to their book writing. 

 

It's really not meant for old players, even less than 2nd.

Edited August 16 by SkimaskMohawk

[Brother Kraskor]

After even one game, and having read through the rules maybe twice completely and a couple bits refreshed nearer the time, and having a few batreps on in the background while painting,, it's really not that complicated. It'd be a lot harder coming in completely blind for new players. Think we can afford to pull up our adult pants a bit if I'm being frank!

[MARK0SIAN]

I’ve managed to play a couple of games of the new system. 
 

I think the core rules are actually pretty solid. I’m not entirely thrilled with some stuff but overall it plays well. However it definitely has confusing elements that affect veterans far more than new players. Chief among them is the revamp of the old names for special rules to mean something completely different. I do like that vehicles feel much more sturdy, but the heavy bonus really discourages moving on tanks that absolutely should be moving. 
 

The libers are still a travesty but the legacies document has salvaged them somewhat. 
 

I absolutely maintain my opinion on the army building system though. It’s so much more complicated than the old FOC. It takes much longer to make a list than it used to and most of that time is spent working out how to actually get the units into the list rather than thinking about the list itself. The worst part of this is that there doesn’t seem to be any pay off for this extra complexity. I still haven’t found a list that you can make with the new system that you couldn’t with the old one other than HQ spam. Overall it feels complex and like it’s punishing varied lists. 
 

I think a lot of issues could be fixed if they simply expanded the primary crusade detachment to include some units from other categories, like the old FOC.

[Pacific81]

3 hours ago, Brother Kraskor said:

After even one game, and having read through the rules maybe twice completely and a couple bits refreshed nearer the time, and having a few batreps on in the background while painting,, it's really not that complicated. It'd be a lot harder coming in completely blind for new players. Think we can afford to pull up our adult pants a bit if I'm being frank!

Im not quite ready for the incontinence pants, but I have to say the rulebook is pushing me in that direction! 

[Brofist]

The sections of the rules telling you what a dice is. How to roll. Who a player is:

 

Its the myth of the New Heresy Player in full swing

[Irate Khornate]

I'm still dissatisfied with the terrain and line of sight changes. Plus I really didn't want damage making it's way into Heresy. Now we get to experience lethality creep in all the systems.

[Brofist]

Agreed. I don't think I'll ever play with those terrain and LOS rules.

[Marshal Loss]

15 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

I’ve managed to play a couple of games of the new system. 
 

I think the core rules are actually pretty solid. I’m not entirely thrilled with some stuff but overall it plays well. However it definitely has confusing elements that affect veterans far more than new players. Chief among them is the revamp of the old names for special rules to mean something completely different. I do like that vehicles feel much more sturdy, but the heavy bonus really discourages moving on tanks that absolutely should be moving. 
 

The libers are still a travesty but the legacies document has salvaged them somewhat. 
 

I absolutely maintain my opinion on the army building system though. It’s so much more complicated than the old FOC. It takes much longer to make a list than it used to and most of that time is spent working out how to actually get the units into the list rather than thinking about the list itself. The worst part of this is that there doesn’t seem to be any pay off for this extra complexity. I still haven’t found a list that you can make with the new system that you couldn’t with the old one other than HQ spam. Overall it feels complex and like it’s punishing varied lists. 
 

I think a lot of issues could be fixed if they simply expanded the primary crusade detachment to include some units from other categories, like the old FOC.

 

I came here to write some thoughts about my own first game of 3.0 (and after being able to watch a few at the same event), but this sums it all up really nicely. Thoroughly agree. 

• Overall I really enjoy the core rules, 3.0 is great fun.
• I still think the legion rules are far less flavourful than what we used to have, but we'll see how the journal system plays out over the coming years. 
• I don't like the army building system. It's bad. In principle, it sounds cool. You take some commanders and they bring some units along like a real force. Lots of dramatic detachment names with strong warhammery vibes, and I really like the incentives to take line officers. But all of the decisions you're forced to make feel more arbitrary than ever and it's just a pain in the ass to work with. List building used to be something that I'd do for fun and now it's something I dread. It's a real pity.