The new edition of the Horus Heresy is here, and there’s no better time to dive into playing the terrible battles of this dark age. With a full rules revamp, a new starter set and a plethora of army books all dropping at launch, we’re diving in to give you our first impressions of the new edition, hitting the highlights of what’s new, what’s interesting and what’s worth playing in third edition Heresy.
Before we get started, thanks to Games Workshop for sending these over for review.
Move over, Marines, the god-engines are here to bestride the battlefields of the heresy like vengeful furies! For the first time, we have rules for Knights and Titans launching alongside a new Heresy edition, and while lots has changed, the core traits of being very big and stomping on marines like ants remain.
How Do Knight Armies Work?
The Liber Questoris covers the Knight and Titan armies of the Heresy, so in its sturdy covers you’re getting the army list, detachments, reactions and faction traits that will let you take the three major Knight groups – Questoris Imperialis (Knight Houses), Questoris Mechanicum (Mechanicum Knights) and Questoris Mendicant (Freeblades). These are unquestionably knights designed as a full army and at no point feel like an afterthought or addition to the Marine/Solar Aux books. They’re full of the feel and power of Knights when operating on their own, and do a lot to make up for the key weakness of small model count armies in the new, objective-play-heavy edition. Much has changed, but the vast, vast majority is for the better!
Knights can be taken in any army as a Lord of War detachment, as long as the detachment (and any Warlord detachments) is no more than 25% of the points limit for the battle. There’s a lot of units that are worth taking in a Lord of War detachment, but only the big knights fit into these slots, and there are no prime unlocks available. Go for it if you want – some of these units look pretty tasty – but let’s be honest, it’s the most boring option.
Much more excitingly, the Knight Households Primary detachment lets you take four Knights base, and each of them gets a Prime advantage that can unlock further auxiliary detachments. The Armiger tax of second edition is entirely gone in favour of these auxiliary detachments, which is good news for those of you who only love your big knights! You can, finally, run all Big Knights if you want using the Support Banner auxiliary detachment to bring another two. This will be a ton of fun, though you’ll have to play very well with vanguard to win games, or you can sprinkle in Armigers, Mechanicum and Solar Aux units to help with objective play.
The Knight Primary detachment can take auxiliary detachments of Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum, and, with no allies allowed if you take the Questoris Primary detachment, that’s all you’re getting in terms of Knight soup. They’re both an interesting option, focusing in on units that can directly address the weaknesses of all-big-armies without having to pay commander taxes to unlock options. The Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum auxiliary detachments are quite good! The Mechanicum option gives you a set list of units to choose from, most of which are the choices you really want to take in the form of Castellax, Vorax, Domitar and Vulturax. The Solar Auxilia (or Militia!) version is all about accompanying your Knights with mounted infantry for holding your home objectives with Line units – you probably want to go big here, as a couple of squads of lasgunners unfortunately will only serve to give your opponent something to direct low strength shooting at!
Having said all that, it does suck that you can’t take the standard allied detachment – while it wisely rules out my fantasy of having a horde of tech priests waddling around the skirts of my Porphyrion, it also rules out a lot of interesting, fluffy and weird stuff as well, which is rather sad. You’ll be able to get one Knight into any other army, but the lack of cool ways to mix Big Knights, Armigers and Space Marines (at the moment, anyway) is a weird and unnecessary limit.
What’s New?
No new units this time round – the Dominus Chassis is still mysteriously absent from the 31st millennium. Instead, the new stuff comes in rules, not models. Overall the core rules changes make Knights tougher, quicker and faster to combat – set up moves (avoid that overwatch!), rushes and no more “exploding when a lascannon looks at you” are all going to change how you play. The Knight specific rules do a lot of work to build on those core changes.
Big Knights can all get a Prime Advantage, and there’s a fantastic range of powerful and useful advantages that can tailor your Knights in specific ways. They’re much like the Household titles in second edition, but also interact with Auxiliary detachments and Household types so there’s good reasons to spread the titles around. There’s a lot of potential here for playing with what works – I think a Lancer with Aucteller (precision 5+ in combat) is going to be good and you’ll almost certainly be giving Seneschal to a hard-to-remove Knight, lowering the damage of incoming weaponry at the cost of giving up Slay the Warlord points. Uhlan brings incredible speed (put it on an Acheron and get that flamer template hitting most of the enemy army on turn one! Preceptor can give you a Battlesmith knight, which is both very useful and a cool conversion project to boot.
You have new ways to win games, too – Vows, Vanguard, Household vows and Prime Advantages can all stack up to give you precise and extremely effective ways to rack up stacks of victory points. You’re not going to be an army that can sit back and shoot opponents off the board passively, and you’ll need to think intelligently about what you’re doing with each Knight on each turn to reliably win games.
All Knight army variants share a suite of brand new and often hilarious advanced reactions that can let you move up in countercharge (Joust!), grind infantry to paste when they dare to come near you (Stomp – potentially lethal with the right feet) and most significantly, increase your invulnerable save against particularly threatening attacks (rotate Ion shields). You can now react to anything – no more letting a melta bomb-equipped squad just walk up to you without doing something about it!
What’s Missing?
Side Armour facings! This isn’t so much something that’s missing, but the vastly overcomplicated vehicle/walker hybrid rules for Knights from last edition have been trimmed and slimmed down to more satisfying, easier to use Knight and Armiger types. Knight rules now fit entirely into a column of rules text – Knights have bases, can charge and fight, can never have a transport capacity (which sadly rules out a future knight who carries armigers in a papoose), do not block line of sight (boo!) and ignore dangerous and difficult terrain. Significantly, they have an initiative characteristic and may rush, adding a fair bit of additional speed to certain chassis. They can be shot at while in combat, but can also move out of it, and – most significantly – have only two clearly defined faces and firing arcs: front and back, defined simply as the line along the longest axis of the base.
You are going to miss efficiently splitting fire – unless you’re rolling with defensive weapons (which with knights all have the assault trait, which is nice), shooting multiple units means snap shooting – and with a relatively low BS you’re going to struggle here. Load up your knights to obliterate a single unit!
Another missing thing that’s not really missing is any restrictions on the Mechanicum-only knights. You can now happily take these in any Knight army, which makes a nice change from having to explain how my knights look weird but are actually Mechanicum, honest guv.
Units of the Questoris Households
There’s a lot of really interesting stuff in here, and at least most of the Big-Bigger-Biggest Knights are at least pretty good and worth taking, but this is a first look so it’s time to pick up some highlights!
The Castigator Cerastus Knight is going to be a fun play this time round: High volume and very effective status-inflicting shooting is absolutely key to success in third edition. The sword-and-bolter Knight brings that in tons, in addition to one of the few Knight weapons that can clear out fodder (and is defensive, so have fun volley firing!) before they slap the melta bombs on your legs. With a sword that big “fodder” means anything short of a Primarch!
The Asterius and Porphyrion might not be the terrors of editions gone by, but they’re still hilarious good fun that you can fit as a Lord of War ally in 2,500-3,000 point battles. Both have absolutely ludicrous gun profiles at long range, and you’ll enjoy hitting enemies with up to 8 damage per shot.
The Questoris remains a flexible choice you can tool up for long, medium, short or choppy range, most guns really benefiting from the new statlines. The Rapid-Fire battlecannon is now very good on a stationary platform, potentially going up to an AP3 Pinning Blast, while the Avenger can throw out a silly amount of shots with Suppressive (2), and short range options like the Melta and Las-Impulsor do good work cracking tanks. Questoris melee weapons aren’t quite as good, but there’s still definitely a niche for crushing fists and big chainsaws.
Don’t sleep on your littlest knights either. With Outflank and Move Through Cover, they’re surprisingly quick and can get their weapons into the thinner side and rear armour of any tanks and vehicles unwise enough to move into an exploitable position. You’re probably still wanting at least a few armigers, with solid reasons for taking the Warglaive, Helverin and mini-Porphyrion Moriax with double conversion beamers.
Are Knights Fun to Play Against?
Knights in second edition were a skew army that could be absolutely brutal to face if you hadn’t loaded up on lascannons. If you had, you’d scythe through them, but without armour-cracking weapons you’d have a truly miserable game. That has changed. With the move to multiple damage weapons, hull points and the very large rear arcs of most knights, killing big knights is now well within the realm of possibility for balanced army lists. It could be chip damage through S6 shooting in the rear arc, stacking statuses for one damage for every duplicate, or punching through a big melta shot, but most armies will now have lots of ways to take out Knights, even if it takes a while. If you’re prepared to pop transports, you’re prepared to take down knights – if you’re clever about it, anyway.
Final Thoughts
There you have it! The Knights look like an interesting army to play in third edition. They’ll certainly struggle into high damage high strength shooting – and there’s lots of it about – but new rules around victory points, short game lengths and raw speed will do a lot of good. They’re not going to be a sit back and shoot or a rush into combat army, requiring intelligent and surprisingly cautious play to survive the new high-damage world. However, they will be very straightforward to use – even if they’ll need a good amount of mastery to win games. While it looks like it’s going to be all about the guns and fists, winning games is going to be about using vows and prime advantages well, so take your time, pick your targets and unleash hell!
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