The new edition of the Horus Heresy is here, and there’s no better time to dive in to 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 Horus Heresy third edition.
Before we get started, thanks to Games Workshop for sending these over for review.
Hear that ear-splittingly loud horn on the horizon? Feel the heat blasting off reactors pushed into the red-line? Nervously wondering if you’re going to face a titan at an upcoming event and need to prepare because your current plan is “I dunno, probably hit it with powerfists”? It’s Titan time for Heresy third edition!
The Liber Questoris doesn’t just bring with it the Knight Households of the Heresy (but you can check out our first look at those smaller god-engines here), because most excitingly it’s also about bringing the biggest, tallest, most expensive models in the Heresy – Titans! We have revamped, rethought and completely new ways of fielding and interacting with Titans, bringing some of the magic of Adeptus Titanicus into the Heresy. Titan rules are very interesting, pointing you towards specific titan-killer battles rather than integrating the God-Machines into your normal battles. I strongly suspect everyone will ignore this, and play with the full Titan rules all the time. Warhounds, Reavers, Warlords, Warbringers and their Secutarii followers make it into the book. This isn’t a little additional thing for the Titan-owning weirdos, but a full on expansion to the Heresy. It’s hilarious. Let’s dive in.
How Titan Armies Work
Most of the time you’re probably going to see Titans as a Lord of War choice – most likely a Warhound with just enough upgrades to squeeze it into 3,500 points (the base cost of 750 does not get you a particularly good Warhound…..). I think that’s probably enough to say about the general Army list choice, as any larger titans and you’re in the realm of “take whatever you fancy” mega-games. If you’re mad enough to already have a Warlord, does it matter what the army list construction rules say? No, and you know it, you mad thing.
If you’re playing specific Engine-Kill games (see below), then you have a few more options in your army list with the Titan Ordinal detachment. Here, the points limits on a single Lord of War choice are completely removed. You can take some Secutarii units – fairly good Command, Troops and Transport options – but the exciting thing here is taking a 3,500 point Warlord titan as your entire army.
Excitingly, the Titan Ordinal detachment does allow allied detachments, so if your opponents or event organisers are into the idea of Engine-Kill missions, you can splash a few Marines/Auxilia/Mechanicum into your Titan army. Imagine a load of Allied Techmarines doing minor repairs to your ridiculous One-Warlord-Army. No, wait, don’t. That’s cruel.
What’s New?
It’s probably a better question to ask what isn’t new. This is a completely different way of playing with and against Titans. You’re essentially playing a slightly different game of Heresy, with new Titan rules covering:
Movement – stomping through enemy (and friendly!) units with abandon
Shooting – distinguishing between strategic weapons (your big ones), defensive weapons and strike weapons – melee and similar for taking on big targets
Assault – not just swinging your big giant fists, but letting puny enemies scurry up your legs, fire jetpacks to slap melta bombs on your cockpit and bring you down despite your size
Damage – Titans now have ablative armour, allowing for covered and exposed systems, forcing your enemy to concentrate and target their fire with much more granular damage tables
Falling over – enough said
Crew – several crew choices allow you to upgrade your ballistic skill and improve your chances at restoring void shields.
The biggest new addition is probably in armour and location shooting. Instead of a Titan being one big pinata of hit points that eventually explodes, there are now Head, Carapace, Arm and Leg hit locations, each with their own hit point store, armour value, exposed armour value and damage effects. You can damage these in combat and shooting, and it’s a viable (and highly effective) tactic to use high strength weaponry to crack the armour of a location before following up with (slightly) softer weapons to get rolls on the Critical Damage tables.
Once you’ve whittled down the hit points, you can start to hit exposed armour, potentially permanently damaging the Titan systems, inflicting the equivalent of Titan statuses, or even causing a massive explosion.
These rules are absolutely bonkers and should be really good fun if everyone is prepped and ready to use them. They do a good job in representing how different a giant walking god machine should be from other vehicles – being around a moving Titan should be dangerous, being too close to their blaring horns does block out all thought, assaulting them is potentially highly effective but comes at an incredible cost – an act of desperation indeed!
Engine Kill
Including an entire new game mode for Titans is a great move and it’s worth diving into these in a little more detail. With only two scenarios at present, it might feel like these are a little thin, but there’s some solid ideas here that can only benefit from further expansion.
Engine Kill missions will allow you to do the Army of Normal Models vs One Big Titan in a satisfying manner, giving you enough additional levers for win conditions, deployment and turn order to make it a worthwhile game that isn’t just “titan stands shooting units until it eventually dies”. Most interestingly this includes Strategic Objectives – off-board objectives for your titans to shoot at for Victory points, representing an army trying desperately to fend off a God-Engine before it can do irreparable damage to the wider war! I wish GW in general and 30k in particular did more of this stuff – similar rules for artillery would be great, and stop the ludicrousness of bringing Earthshaker cannons to a knife fight.
There’s a lot of fun and fluffy stuff crammed in to a small package here – your opponent gets more points for powering down your Titan for capture than blowing it up outright. I’d hope that further expansion Libers add more stuff into this Engine Kill space – the two missions look ok, but there’s a lot more that could be done here!
Units of the Titan Households
Look, we know that the biggest reason to take a Titan is “they’re cool to look at” and that you want to show off you can afford a Warbringer, but we’re still going to highlight a few units that are particularly interesting within the very small range. I don’t think there are necessarily “bad” weapon choices here, because they’re bloody expensive (in real world terms) per arm, so make yourself feel good by buying what you like the look of.
The Warhound is almost certainly the only Titan you’re likely to face or field in most settings. It’s appropriately tough, though very high damage weaponry can blast straight through and permanently damage the arms and legs in a single shot. With mostly AV14, two void shields and repair crew it will be able to shrug off a lot of fire while remaining vulnerable enough to have a good game. At base cost of 750 (all weapons options are free choices), you can fit one into 3,000 point battles, but, and it’s a big but, only at BS3. You absolutely want to upgrade the crew to BS4 (50 points), or BS5 (100 points – taking you into 3.5k battle territory). The Warhound has the capability to take weapons that can’t hurt strategic objectives in Engine-Kill games, so you probably want to pair a mega-bolter or inferno cannon with a laser destructor.
At BS3 your Warhound is going to miss half the time, which is going to make for some very sad warhorn noises. Playing one at 3,000 points is going to be a challenge for you (and your opponent), but not game-destroyingly unfair if your opponent is prepared to fight a titan. High strength, high damage weaponry is not uncommon on the battlefields of the heresy, and a BS3 Warhound isn’t guaranteed to remove several threats a turn. It might actually be fun to play against a Warhound this time round, honestly!
The Reaver is a good possibility for Engine-Kill games, coming in at 1700 points with the best possible BS. It will pack a good mix of Apocalypse Missile Launcher (Very large blast, AP3 and S9) and a range of strategic weapons for taking down Objectives, making it very much an all-rounder that can interact meaningfully against entire enemy armies. It’s probably the largest Titan where you can have a relatively tight game, with a stat line just tough enough to be a significant challenge but not quite enough to require your opponent to tailor their list specifically for a titan kill. If you’ve got a Reaver, the new edition gives you a real route to playing with it outside of preposterous two-turn megagames, and I think at organised events we’ll see at least a few Reaver vs Entire Army showdowns.
Instead of talking about the Warlord (Big, Powerful, what do you expect?) or Warbringer (suspiciously erect gun) for the third unit in this first look, let’s talk about Secutarii. Taking a unit or two of these almost-Marine-equivalents is essentially giving you an opportunity to claim objectives with a “normal” unit in Engine-Kill games, and they’re fairly good at it, with mag-inverter shields that grant access to the Shieldwall reaction and slow charges, while their Arc lances allow for some phalanx-style defensive combats. They’re better than you’d think even with limited options.
Final Thoughts
It’s a legitimately exciting time for Titan-owners and Titan-facers in 3.0. The new rules make Titans a lot more fiddly, but also a lot more interesting, letting us play a kind of Adeptus Titanicus in 28mm – if you were already doing that (we see you, Titan Owners Club) then this is a core-rules compatible way of playing with your large resin children. While the biggest titans remain game-warpingly daft and the rules exist solely to allow those who own them to flex on the battlefield, the Titan Ordinal detachment and Engine-Kill rules will see some use. We all secretly want to fight with, or against, a titan once in a while, and for the first time in the Heresy we have a ruleset that makes it worth doing. Let the war horns sound! It’s time for Titans.
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