Horus Heresy - Scouring Expansion

[Interrogator Stobz]

Running Second Founding Armies sounds Fantastic.  It's a chance to use all those OOP and Legend units in an official ruleset.

 

My green, white, black Firstborn Dark Angels and all their Legend support units will look great using HH core rules. I have 15k points worth waiting to be used again.

Literally only the handful of named 40k era characters couldn't be used.

 

Might need to paint up Cypher 

And buy some more smexy Sicaran and super heavy tanks...it could be like the successful The Old World revival, but for sci-fi.

 

Edit: Now, would I love to see Xenos and corrupted chaos? Hell yeah.

Do I expect them? Nope.

 

Edited April 2 by Interrogator Stobz

[Jings]

After digesting for a day or two, with the current rule set, can't say I'm overly excited. 

 

As always I can't imagine I'll be disappointed by the models. An excuse to bring back the classic Landspeeders and Dreadnought and of course the dearly missed Mark VII. 

 

The prospect of rules for the 2nd Founding, alongside rules for inserting our own interpretations of the now-extinct remnants that could constitute the lost Chapters founded in the years following the Heresy, is intriguing too. 

 

But the shallow offerings of the current Legion rules cast a significant shadow over what could be an interesting opportunity to explore the Scouring.

 

I think this is compounded further with the well-intentioned but ultimately clunky list building offered in the present ruleset. It will be difficult, I think, to reconcile the current "bring what you want but..." honour system philosophy with the Scouring. It's effectively the 40K system without the "streamlining" and "accessibility" which has made that particular system both popular and divisive. 

 

Ironically, I think the potential benefits of a Scouring setting, particularly in the event it includes Xenos races, could have been better served through a Great Crusade expansion. And I think that it will be used to do so. Sadly, the clumsy handling of the introduction of new Heresy units will make that somewhat awkward for the same reasons that could be applied to the Scouring and 40K proper. 

 

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised and to have more than 5 poses for the inevitable Mark VII Marines I'm certainly going to buy. 

Edited April 1 by Jings

[Doghouse]

I would love to see mk vii and casterferrum Dreadnoughts but I think second founding would be better. Scouring is just more heresy era but to be fair would work better with the rulesets 

[Mr Farson]

Can't say I'm enthused by the prospect of the scouring with the current rules. Scouring with xenos factions with 3.0s rule would just be a worse 40k at that point 

[Razorblade]

I think the best case for a scouring era expansion would be the introduction of a Squad-level, 1000-1500ish points mode of play. That would significantly reduce the hurdle for new players whilst freeing up the main system to really focus on mass battles.

I think the best case for a scouring era expansion would be the introduction of a Squad-level, 1000-1500ish points mode of play. That would significantly reduce the hurdle for new players whilst freeing up the main system to really focus on mass battles.

[Valkyrion]

They could do a system unique xenos faction - Sslyth, Slaugth, Dracolith, Jokaero, space skaven, chaos squats.

All they would need to do then is 'legends' the 40k xeno factions for casual play and you've got the start of new community. 

[Jings]

1 hour ago, Razorblade said:

I think the best case for a scouring era expansion would be the introduction of a Squad-level, 1000-1500ish points mode of play. That would significantly reduce the hurdle for new players whilst freeing up the main system to really focus on mass battles.

I think the best case for a scouring era expansion would be the introduction of a Squad-level, 1000-1500ish points mode of play. That would significantly reduce the hurdle for new players whilst freeing up the main system to really focus on mass battles.

 

The game in fairness does work alright at that level already provided everyone's on the same page. 

[grailkeeper]

When the legions were being broken up into chapters, I wonder if there was much squabbling between the chapters as to who got what colour scheme?

[Razorblade]

2 hours ago, Jings said:

 

The game in fairness does work alright at that level already provided everyone's on the same page. 

That and it excludes a lot of the most iconic units (super heavys, but really anything AV14, big Dreads etc. do not belong there) and I think the game's hard "locks" on what a unit can meaningfully interact with coupled with the tendency towards large, mono-loadout, units makes it less than ideal on that front

[Jings]

1 hour ago, Razorblade said:

That and it excludes a lot of the most iconic units (super heavys, but really anything AV14, big Dreads etc. do not belong there) and I think the game's hard "locks" on what a unit can meaningfully interact with coupled with the tendency towards large, mono-loadout, units makes it less than ideal on that front

 

Hence the caveat of "on the same page". But at around the 1000 points level, if Dave wants to bring a Spartan packed full of special Termies with a big boss he's not gonna have much in the way of scoring now is he. 

 

Game has its issues but they're mostly down to flavour (and army construction to a lesser degree). But with a gentleman's agreement (no AV14, limit dreads, don't spam etc.) the game plays perfectly fine at the 1000-1500 point ranges.

[MARK0SIAN]

6 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

When the legions were being broken up into chapters, I wonder if there was much squabbling between the chapters as to who got what colour scheme?

I also imagine sorting the individual marines into their new chapters to be like picking teams in school. Sigismund, Rann, Pollux, Dorn etc all lined up and they get to pick one at a time until someone had to have brother Jerry :)

[calgar101]

Some lore books ala the old Black books would be neat; have some missions and special Characters for us to enjoy. However isn't this just a natural extension of the Heresy game? 

I don't think GW would put Xenos in it, especially existing ranges and I highly doubt they will tie up already stretched creative and manufacturing spaces for a new range.

[WrathOfTheLion]

8 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

When the legions were being broken up into chapters, I wonder if there was much squabbling between the chapters as to who got what colour scheme?

The way I like to think of it is that those colors were already being used in some of the divisions prior to the split. For the 1st Legion, I like taking some of the successor chapter schemes and tying them into Inductii squads. My MK VI inductii are silver/black like the Guardians of the Covenant, as an example.

Edited April 2 by WrathOfTheLion

[Mmmmm Napalm]

honestly id be super excited for scouring if it werent for the fact that HH marines being a different scale both from oldmarines and primaris means that most of the body parts will have very limited applicability for 40k stuff.  yeah they might be a nice source of godwyn bolt weapons, or sunfury plasma pistols, but little else. also i really do not like the neck joint on HH heads. the old style neck joints look good regardless of angle, the new HH neck join looks awkward when the head is tilted cause the bottom bowl like thing is always visible. i get that its partly to show that the helmet is attached to a frame of some sort, and that the neck of the armor is nots just a body glove, but it looks worse.

On 4/1/2026 at 3:02 PM, Jings said:

 

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised and to have more than 5 poses for the inevitable Mark VII Marines I'm certainly going to buy. 

Its funny that contemporary horus heresy has somewhat of an opposite problem compared to 40k primaris.

 

at this point, for classic style "tacticus" armor you have a very large range of body poses at your disposal. Various multipart and monopose kist for various units ensure that there's a large variety of poses. The issue is that all of those bodies are mk. X, and only since 2021 have we started to see variation present within troop kits. 

HH has several armor marks, with variation present within each. the trade off is that the kit for each of them has only five poses, and that kit is used to make like half the infantry units in the game.

[Marshal Rohr]

They won’t change the formula for mark 7, but once each mark is out mixing them all together will become much easier. Mixing Mark 2 and 6 doesn’t look great but mixing mark 2 and 3 looks ok. Mixing Mark 4, 5, 6, and 7 will look like the old days. 

Edited April 3 by Marshal Rohr

[calgar101]

On 4/1/2026 at 4:28 PM, Mogger351 said:

It's an expansion, it'll be an age of darkness release and compatible with age of darkness minis.

Isn't the Age of Darkness the interim years between Istvaan and the Siege of Terra? So models/rules are already compatible?

[Jings]

7 hours ago, Mmmmm Napalm said:

 

Its funny that contemporary horus heresy has somewhat of an opposite problem compared to 40k primaris.

 

at this point, for classic style "tacticus" armor you have a very large range of body poses at your disposal. Various multipart and monopose kist for various units ensure that there's a large variety of poses. The issue is that all of those bodies are mk. X, and only since 2021 have we started to see variation present within troop kits. 

HH has several armor marks, with variation present within each. the trade off is that the kit for each of them has only five poses, and that kit is used to make like half the infantry units in the game.

 

In fairness (and my irresistible urge to play devil's advocate - and in defending Primaris it is advocating for the devil indeed) the Primaris range did launch with three somewhat distinct variations, and ironically beyond Tacticus several subvariants on top of them. 

 

You are right though. While I really enjoy the cross compatibility for upgrades (and particularly the extra armour plates for Mark III), I do think GW cheaped out in its approach of making only 5 poses per Mark. I suppose though, considering the cost of producing moulds, that was the price to pay for the rate at which they're releasing armour marks. I think though they could have mixed up the poses better for each Mark and still maintained cross compatibility for upgrades. 

 

Ideally they'd have given 10 poses for each, but we can't always get what we want and at least on the table they do successfully avoid looking "samey" with a bit of extra effort and a decent bits box.

[Blissful Brushes]

I’d massively welcome this. I’m not so bothered about the rules as I’m more of a converter/painter but anything that keeps pulling away from the monopose plague that is 40k is good in my book.

 

In terms of the design aspect they should have the vast majority of the groundwork laid in their archives from the older editions. I’d liken this to a little bit of RuneScape3 and OldSchool reboot (to the nerds amongst us).

[calgar101]

59 minutes ago, Blissful Brushes said:

I’d massively welcome this. I’m not so bothered about the rules as I’m more of a converter/painter but anything that keeps pulling away from the monopose plague that is 40k is good in my book.

 

In terms of the design aspect they should have the vast majority of the groundwork laid in their archives from the older editions. I’d liken this to a little bit of RuneScape3 and OldSchool reboot (to the nerds amongst us).

 Never heard of Rs3/OSRS mentioned in a 40k topic before.

[Mmmmm Napalm]

3 hours ago, Jings said:

 

In fairness (and my irresistible urge to play devil's advocate - and in defending Primaris it is advocating for the devil indeed) the Primaris range did launch with three somewhat distinct variations, and ironically beyond Tacticus several subvariants on top of them. 

 

 

I'm well aware, I just don't like phobos or gravis lol, and only taking into consideration the armor thats most akin to classic space marines

[MoriyaSchism]

2 hours ago, Blissful Brushes said:

I’d massively welcome this. I’m not so bothered about the rules as I’m more of a converter/painter but anything that keeps pulling away from the monopose plague that is 40k is good in my book.

I wouldn't count on it if the new Mk VII are done in the same way as the Heresy 2.0 miniatures. You'll probably get 5 or 10 infantry poses (Mk VI tactical and assault squads combined) at best per mark of armour. Currently just by looking at the infantry kits for Marines in Tacticus armour you have 80 different poses (excluding all the Tacticus characters, Space Marine Heroes and the kill team starter miniatures). If you're willing to go the mile converting them to have different armour you can have an army without too many repeated poses. 

[GryphonnePromethean]

I'm excited by the idea, but I really don't want to just start a new shelf of silver rulebooks. 

My ideal version of a Scouring expansion/game would be a rework of Imperialis with some skirmish elements.

A punchy two-phase thing that starts as a mass-battle tanks game that winds up to set the game state for a climactic skirmish encounter. 

 

More than a totally new game system or model range, I think I really want to see GW knit some of their projects together in a way that addresses how much buy-in and painting time keeps people away from playing games that feels like the books they love. 

 

Barring that, Underworlds but Heresy would be a great compliment to the main Heresy game.

 

 

Edited April 7 by GryphonnePromethean

[Orion]

Love the idea of MKVII coming back. I hope we're not waiting a year to see anymore info on this.

 

Bit blasphemous but I'd probably buy bloodclaws or something just for the legs and torso (or just legs and lower torso), to convert them with.
I'd love to have a mini project with scouts and indomitus terminators and I feel the HH scale might be slightly too short. Particularly with scouts.

[Gorgoff]

I couldn't care less about the Scouring but if they'd make a box set of MK7 olus Castra Ferrums I'd be happy as a rag in a hat.