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 Heresy third edition.
Before we get started, thanks to Games Workshop for sending these over for review.
Grab your lasrifle and void armor, let’s take a look at Liber: Solar Auxilia!
Big changes are inbound for the Solar Auxilia army. Like many other elements of the third edition of Heresy, Solar Auxilia have undergone some notable changes in the new edition. Second edition had a very Napoleonic feel with large units, close order and reactions, which third edition has streamlined into WW1-reminiscent command and control approach, bringing them closer to earlier iterations of 40k’s Astra Militarum/Imperial Guard. In addition, the removal of some second edition rules (and units) means that veteran players will likely need to revisit how their armies play, while you master new tricks for out-scoring Marine armies. However, the army has also found itself with a ton of fun and flavorful rules, including a revised cohort doctrine list, a long list of advanced reactions, and special rules for Legiones Auxilia cohorts for each of the Astartes Legions. Overall, the army has a lot of potential to play as a primary army, or a versatile allied detachment to your Astartes force.
Army List and Faction Benefits
Third edition Heresy has brought a ton of interesting play to the Solar Auxilia with a flexible, potentially fantastic set of rules and units. They’re largely a shooting army with some powerful melee punches backed up by a potentially horrendous amount of armour and artillery.
Listbuilding is unique and feels very appropriate. In the prior iteration of the army, Tercios were organizational units represented by a single FOC slot – each slot could consist of all the units for that Tercio type. This is now represented by the various Tercio auxiliary detachments – each detachment chart, when unlocked, allows the player to take all the constituent units of that Tercio type. These detachments are in turn unlocked by taking the Command Section corresponding to them – at launch, you can take Line, Veletaris, Hermes, Artillery, and Armoured Command Sections, each of which unlocks a detachment of the corresponding type.
Cohort Doctrines and Legion-themed rules allow for a flexible and interesting amount of customisation in your Auxilia armies, giving you some additional tricks in the form of advanced reactions and changing up how you want to play your armies. You can focus in on lasrifles, storm axes, artillery, armour or Sentinels, making this by far the most customisable Solar Auxilia list we’ve seen yet.
Then there is the sheer brilliance and hilarity that is the Challenge Gambit exclusive to the Auxilia: Contemptuous Volley. This gambit allows your character to make a shooting attack with a pistol weapon at the beginning of a challenge, which can really help to even the odds in a challenge against much scarier Astartes and Mechanicum characters. Bonus points if your character can channel the duel scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark and shoot your opponent dead before they can take a swing at them!
What’s New?
There are some solid changes to the Solar Auxilia list in the new edition. The biggest is in the Tercios – the entire system has been completely revamped into command buffs, with most units of Auxilia having a corresponding command squad that can give them powerful benefits. These are all useful and appropriate – Line Command Sections buff the Line stat of Infantry Tercio units, and Artillery Command Sections reduce the scatter of nearby Artillery Tercio units. Veteran players, be aware that Tercio reactions are no longer a thing – gone are the days of reactions with over 100 lasrifles!
Solar Auxilia also get a series of unique Advanced Reactions. There are four of them that are generic to the army as a whole, and the Legiones Auxilia section also lists an Advanced Reaction for each of the Auxilia Cohorts bonded to an Astartes Legion (and, much like a legion reaction these are once per game). The four generic reactions are extremely flavorful, each representing a different aspect of the well-disciplined and well-drilled reputation the Solar Auxilia has. The Fire Support reaction, where a unit targeted by shooting can move away from enemy fire, while a nearby artillery unit can fire on their attackers, is a fantastic example of this. Liber-specific reactions is an interesting and fun design space to play around in, so there’s every possibility this won’t end here!
The eighteen Legiones Auxilia types, on the other hand, really add to the narrative flavor to an army. Each Legiones Auxilia entry gives a player wishing to portray their cohort as bonded to an Astartes legion an Advanced Reaction that reflects the nature of their legionary masters. While only usable sparingly, these Advanced Reactions give an additional layer of uniqueness to how each Solar Auxilia army can play, on top of the Cohort Doctrines and preferred detachments.
What’s Missing?
There are quite a few formerly core units that are no longer included in the Liber:
- Independent Legate Marshals and Command Tercios
- Companion/Lifeward sections, especially the all-power-pike option
- Veletaris Vanguard Sections with Rotor Cannons
- Medicae Sections*
- Surgeon-Primus Aevos Jovan*
- Aurox Transports*
- Tarantula Batteries*
- Cyclops Demolition Sections*
Now, before the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth, there are two things that come to mind. First, these units will likely be included in the Legacies documents that GW has already said will be coming out soon after launch. Second, being moved to Legacies at the launch of the edition does not mean we will not see these units, or others new to the army, moved into the Core army list as the edition progresses using Journal Tacticas. So there isn’t a need to panic!
Edit 16/7/25: As of the Warhammer Community article released today, the Solar Auxilia have a huge degree of representation in legacies, including all of the units marked with as asterisk above, the Davinite Lodge Priest, Navigator, virtually all the old Imperial Armour models (Praetor, Crassus, Thunderer, Marauder, Macharius etc), the various varieties of Baneblade and – yes, you guessed it – the Carnodon.
We also lost three of the cohort doctrines present in the second edition Liber. Reborn, Feral, and Penal Pattern Cohorts do not have rules in this book. These were always arguably better represented with the Militia rules anyway, so no sad loss!
Units of the Solar Auxilia
While your lasguns have gotten a bit weaker unless you shell out for the upgrade, there’s undoubtedly some potentially very powerful stuff in the Solar Aux list.
This might be the edition of the APC, and the Dracosan is a brick shithouse, able to carry a full complement of Auxilia while also toting a demolisher cannon which has returned (more or less) to the feared profile from first edition. With the Solar Pattern Cohort Doctrine, your Dracosans effectively become assault transports, so have fun filling them with Veletaris.
Far from being an addition in a campaign book, Sentinels are now firmly anchored into the Solar Auxilia list, and there’s a lot of movement and shooting shenanigans you can do with them when they’re properly commanded. A list built around Sentinels could be a lot of fun, and there are many options here to give them a boost in the right list.
Veletaris getting Vanguard (3) is a big boost, turning them from a fairly good but also pretty high risk unit into an absolute must take. Clearing off objectives either with high volume ranged firepower or big axes is going to win games for you!
The big improvement comes in your blast weapons. Battlecannons get a 3 inch AP3 blast when making use of the Heavy trait, and Vanquishers should be able to push very high damage shots through most enemy armour. Earthshakers remain AP4, but the new Ordnance rules make them a stonking strength 10 on a large blast if stationary, and Barrage (2) can be mitigated with the Artillery Command Section, so enjoy parking yourself out of LOS and hammering down S10 D2 shots.
Auxilliaries, Not Subsidiaries
We think, and this is early days, that Auxilia will still struggle into Marines, but that there is good play in this book and if you’re one of the three or four people out there with only Auxilia, you’ll be able to put up a good show on the tables. You’re always going to struggle with your baseline stats – 3s across the board with 6s for advanced stats and a 4+ save, but you can put out very shooty and surprisingly choppy armies, or flood the board with tanks and artillery.
It’s a much more flavourful book than the previous edition too, adding a lot of ways to customise your army that all have meaningful effects on the tabletop. It’s going to be fun seeing the combinations of Doctrine, Legion and lists that people come up with – however you want to play Solar Auxilia, the options are going to be here for you. There are most likely a few routes to a “good” Solar Aux list in third edition, but I think it will take more thinking to get there than with the Marines, and that’s as it should be – you’re the finest unaugmented soldiers of humanity, use your brains, not brawn, and if all else fails call in the big guns!
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