Horus Heresy New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[Marshal Rohr]

Just now, Irate Khornate said:

Think we'll get another article today?

Thursday is my guess

[jaxom]

29 minutes ago, redmapa said:

Well apparently the new army construction rules are even more open than the RoW system

?

[Pacific81]

4 hours ago, Stitch5000 said:

They said that Horus Ascended has a LD of 14!

 

Horus explaining to the Emp why his LD is so high

 

 

Edited June 3 by Pacific81

[redmapa]

24 minutes ago, jaxom said:

?

 

Quote

Gathering your Legion

 

Army construction has been overhauled this edition. There are fewer limitations on your army composition, allowing you to build whatever thematic force is in your mind. 

 

This means you can build an army of jetbikes, or Dreadnoughts, or whatever else takes your fancy.

 

From one of the WarCom articles, who knows what that actually means but I'm hopeful that it's going to be a good system even though RoW was pretty perfect imo.

[PerfectChocolateMadeleine]

1 hour ago, Cyrox said:

So, getting back to the actual 3.0 release, anyone planning on doing Luna Wolves, seeing as we are getting lots of Mk2 Armour?

 

(Before I get screamed at - I know, its set during the dropsite massacre and the XVI were the Sons of Horus at this time)

 

I'm feeling inspired by this that I saw on instagram:  (credit: @milliepaints) 

 

 

honestly, the mk2 drop makes it that much easier to model for the Great Crusade era now, which is awesome!! My very long-term goal is to have an entire company modeled both during the beginning of the Horus Heresy and the mid to late Great Crusade (with many models being interchangeable in both eras, like the Mk2 marines). I know many are discussing the rules and everything, but as more of a modelling person, i am just so happy about the mk2s!!

 

I may eventually (again, very long-term) model some Luna Wolves, since the Emperor's Children spent a big portion of the Great Crusade fighting alongside them!!

Edited June 3 by PerfectChocolateMadeleine
clarification

[Stitch5000]

On 6/3/2025 at 7:54 AM, Gorgoff said:

The SA flame tank can only wound models in his fire arc which is the width of his tracks due to how the weapon arc is defined for it. 

It can only wound models that are within its fire arc. Why wouldn't that be a thing? Again, you are conflating things that YOU think should happen with things that happen within the rules. 

That doesn't equate to incompetence, that equates to somebody making a choice you don't agree with.

There's also no need to be sarcastic about it either.

Edited June 5 by Brother Tyler
Provocative insult removed

[BitsHammer]

1 hour ago, Irate Khornate said:

Think we'll get another article today?

Just the lore one. They only talked about one more article "later this week" so probably a return of Heresy Thursday.

[Hfran Morkai]

9 hours ago, Unknown Legionnaire said:

 

And on a sidenote, then you get those people who are of the opinion HH didn't exists before plastic kits. Uh-huh. Bite my shiny metal behindness.

 

 

 

We were Heresy'ing before Heresy was a game system.

 

I was buying up those Red Scorpion torsos (and repeatedly cutting myself trying to get them off the casting gate haha) and shaving off the scorpions back in 5th.

[OttoVonAwesome]

3 hours ago, Cyrox said:

So, getting back to the actual 3.0 release, anyone planning on doing Luna Wolves, seeing as we are getting lots of Mk2 Armour?

 

(Before I get screamed at - I know, its set during the dropsite massacre and the XVI were the Sons of Horus at this time)

 

I'm feeling inspired by this that I saw on instagram:  (credit: @milliepaints) 

 

 

Some of the remaining Sons of Horus loyalists went back to being Luna Wolves so it's all good.

6 minutes ago, Hfran Morkai said:

 

We were Heresy'ing before Heresy was a game system.

 

I was buying up those Red Scorpion torsos (and repeatedly cutting myself trying to get them off the casting gate haha) and shaving off the scorpions back in 5th.

I remember hand sculpting plastic marines into heresy marks back in the day. Thank god Blender and 3d printing exists now lol.

[DuskRaider]

4 hours ago, Cyrox said:

So, getting back to the actual 3.0 release, anyone planning on doing Luna Wolves, seeing as we are getting lots of Mk2 Armour?

 

(Before I get screamed at - I know, its set during the dropsite massacre and the XVI were the Sons of Horus at this time)

 

I'm feeling inspired by this that I saw on instagram:  (credit: @milliepaints) 

 

 

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing a Luna Wolves army and setting it during the Heresy or whatever… we already know there were Loyalist SoH that reverted to their Luna Wolves livery after Isstvan III. They were many on Isstvan itself who did the same, and the nice part is that you could run them as Sons of Horus or Black Shields if you’re so inclined. 
 

I did a Dusk Raiders ZM force back during 1.0 just for the hell of it.

[Matcap86]

37 minutes ago, Hfran Morkai said:

 

We were Heresy'ing before Heresy was a game system.

 

I was buying up those Red Scorpion torsos (and repeatedly cutting myself trying to get them off the casting gate haha) and shaving off the scorpions back in 5th.

 

I member buying up parts of the old tactical squads to get plastic mk4s avant la lettre.

Edited June 3 by Matcap86

[Brother Kraskor]

6 hours ago, HeinzD said:

Love the talk about Kaesoron in this thread, him or Fabius Bile would be an absolute dream, but i think we cant ask for too much, considering that we Emperors Children Players already have a handfull of named characters 

 

We shouldn't ask for too much frater. But the EC way is to seek more, regardless!  I say we demand Vairosean and Vespasian too! 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

10 hours ago, Unknown Legionnaire said:

 

And that's precisely the thing - Armies like Militia or Daemons have a bazillion 'dedicated' model kits in the eyes of the gamer / modeller / hobbyist and have been a wellspring of creativity over the years.

But not in GW's eyes.

 

And on a sidenote, then you get those people who are of the opinion HH didn't exists before plastic kits. Uh-huh. Bite my shiny metal behindness.

 

EDIT: midnight typos.

Militia and Demons are handled by GW if they expected the community to buy from 3rd party companies to field their armies. Back in the day GW employees might have been encouraged to show off their great converted models in White Dwarf.  

[W.A.Rorie]

=][= KEEP THE CONVERSATION CIVIL OR THREAD WILL BE CLOSED =][=

 

[Aarik]

3 hours ago, redmapa said:

Gathering your Legion

 

Army construction has been overhauled this edition. There are fewer limitations on your army composition, allowing you to build whatever thematic force is in your mind. 

 

This means you can build an army of jetbikes, or Dreadnoughts, or whatever else takes your fancy.

 

Does anyone actually want this though?  For all the various complaints about Heresy, I don't think I've ever heard someone complain that the army building was not flexible enough.  We already can build an army of dreadnoughts, for example, but the community has to forgo that since GW didn't get the balance right.  Making skew lists even easier to build will only exacerbate the inevitable balance problems.  It feels like GW has a trend with recent editions of its games of trying to solve "problems" like this that aren't actually problems, which creates actual problems down the line.  Like 40k going to fixed unit sizes and essentially power level -- I never heard anyone complain that adding up two- and three-digit numbers, or multiplying two-digit numbers, was a barrier to entry in the hobby.  But in solving that "problem," GW removed most of the granularity in points, so you're much more likely to have to swap out whole units if you're a few points over, or have a chunk of unusable points, rather than being able to play around the margins and add/subtract a model or special weapon.  I have heard new players express frustration at that.

 

I'd posit that new players are like young children -- they may crave freedom and chafe against restrictions initially, but they ultimately benefit from structure.  When someone asks how to start an army, it's easier for everyone involved to be able to answer: "start with an hq and two troops choices," rather than "do whatever you want!", because they likely don't know what they want and/or what they want at the start won't result in an army that is fun to play and to play against.  And I'd imagine that most more experienced heresy players want to play against armies that look like what we traditionally think armies look like, rather than an un-themed mish-mash of units.

 

Under the current system, the person who wants a jetbike or dreadnought army can still fill their elites/fast attack/heavy support slots with them, but at least they'll have a couple of line units and won't be wondering "why do I keep losing because I can't seem to hold objectives?"  I'm sure people can come up with more and better examples, but these kinds of choices really feel to me to be made in meeting rooms by executives looking for advertising points of emphasis ("MORE FREEDOM! TAKE WHAT YOU WANT! FREEST EDITION EVER!") rather than by people immersed in the game itself.  But who knows, GW could very well have a bunch of market research that proves me wrong  And all of this is just tilting at windmills until we get the full rules release.

[redmapa]

I could see the reason for the change is to try and standarize army construction rules so instead of RoWs vs Cohort Doctrines vs Militia rules etc it's just all use one set of rules to change the army around. I agree, it's unnecessary but who knows how it will change so maybe it won't be all bad.

[BitsHammer]

1 hour ago, Aarik said:

 

Does anyone actually want this though? 

I want to see what they mean by "fewer limitations" more than anything. Like do they mean we won't need a Rite of War to make certain units line, or are we getting expanded FOC charts, or are we going to a WFB percentage system?

 

I can't really form an opinion without some quantifier for "fewer".

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, redmapa said:

I could see the reason for the change is to try and standarize army construction rules so instead of RoWs vs Cohort Doctrines vs Militia rules etc it's just all use one set of rules to change the army around. I agree, it's unnecessary but who knows how it will change so maybe it won't be all bad.

This is the real the reason. The “problem” they were “solving” is how to balance so many Rites of War so one legion doesn’t get stone gauntlet and another get nothing. The answer is actually to just get rid of Rites of War entirely. 

[Son of Rawl]

19 minutes ago, BitsHammer said:

I want to see what they mean by "fewer limitations" more than anything. Like do they mean we won't need a Rite of War to make certain units line, or are we getting expanded FOC charts, or are we going to a WFB percentage system?

 

I can't really form an opinion without some quantifier for "fewer".

They really need to reveal more rules than just the "Advanced Characteristics" they already covered. 

[Brother Sutek]

I'll admit if they gave line to different units with a Rite and made it fair for all and not favorites I'd be happy. If they did this for Destroyer units I'd be ecstatic!

[Lord Marshal]

42 minutes ago, BitsHammer said:

I want to see what they mean by "fewer limitations" more than anything. Like do they mean we won't need a Rite of War to make certain units line, or are we getting expanded FOC charts, or are we going to a WFB percentage system?

 

I can't really form an opinion without some quantifier for "fewer".

 

At the very least, I suspect the Allies Matrix is going away with how much they've talked up taking allies.

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, Son of Rawl said:

They really need to reveal more rules than just the "Advanced Characteristics" they already covered. 

 

Don't worry, they will. 

[The boater]

I’m just very curious how black shields are going to be handled? 
 

It would be cool if they did them in both libers with different traits for loyalist and traitors in their respective books… surely they have to release something early in 3.0 though given they have a named character model that came out less than a year ago

[Slips]

On 5/25/2025 at 11:34 PM, BitsHammer said:

I'm going to give this my best attempt at transcribing:

Armour Saves
Armour saves allow a player to ignore damage.

For each wound caused, the player that controls the target unit must roll a dice and check the Armour Save characteristic of the models in the target unit. If the value of the dice roll is equal to or higher than the value shown there the wound is discarded. If the result is lower the then a model in the target unit loses a number of wounds equal to the Damage characteristic of the weapon used.

If a model in the target unit has already already had one or more wounds and not been removed as a casualty then that model must be the one that [bears additional wounds?]. Otherwise, the player that controls the unit may choose any model in that unit [blurry text] wound. If a model loses a number of wounds equal to or greater than its Wounds characteristic then that model must be removed from play as a casualty.

Some weapons may be power enough to ignore armour. When this is the case it is described by the weapon damage characteristic of a weapon. If the AP characteristic of the weapon used to make an attack is equal to or lower than the Armour Save characteristic of the models in the target unit than no roll may be made to discard a wound. However if the models in the target unit have an Invulnerable Save characteristic greater than [blank space] then a roll may still be made [text cuts off] the Invulnerable Save characteristic [text cuts off] Save characteristic.

Interesting bits of wording, if what you've transcribed is correct:

Quote

"Some weapons may be power enough to ignore armour. When this is the case it is described by the weapon damage characteristic of a weapon."

and

Quote

"However if the models in the target unit have an Invulnerable Save characteristic greater than [blank space] then a roll may still be made"

Both found in the last paragraph. If correct, theres a few things that could result from this:

1. Some weapons will have a Damage/Strength/Etc characteristic high enough to ignore invuln saves; kinda like old D-Weapons and rolling a 6
2. Weapons with a low AP but high Damage can still bypass armor; think S8 AP4 D3
3. Some weapons' Damage AND AP could combine together to bypass armor AND invulns

Edited June 3 by Slips

[BitsHammer]

1 hour ago, Slips said:

Interesting bits of wording, if what you've transcribed is correct:

and

Both found in the last paragraph. If correct, theres a few things that could result from this:

1. Some weapons will have a Damage/Strength/Etc characteristic high enough to ignore invuln saves; kinda like old D-Weapons and rolling a 6
2. Weapons with a low AP but high Damage can still bypass armor; think S8 AP4 D3
3. Some weapons' Damage AND AP could combine together to bypass armor AND invulns

I *think* it should be AP not damage there but honestly by the time I got to the end I felt like I was trying to do one of those magic eye pictures to try and read it.