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.
With the new edition starter set sure to snap up a lot of new Heresy players – and veterans keen to learn how to build their legion in the new edition – we’ve put together some starter points for building your box by your beloved legions. As we move into Heresy third edition though, nigh on the entire range is in plastic, readily accessible and buildable without a PhD in resin engineering, so this will focus on how to get the best out of your Saturnine set. For expansion beyond the Saturnine box, go absolutely wild with whatever you like the look of – shine on, you Astartes diamond – or hang on for our in-depth unit type guides.
Dark Angels
This box has Dark Angels written all over it; MKII is an iconic pattern for Dark Angels that you can easily use to represent their weathered crusade forces returning from the far fringes of the galaxy, ready to bring the fight to the traitors. Saturnine Dreads, Terminators, and the wealth of disintegrators you get in this box also gel really nicely with the legions’ propensity for having vast troves of proscribed technology ‘liberated’ during the unification wars and centuries of campaigning against the most dire threats to the Imperium. This box can easily fit the thematic backbone of any list you wanted to build.
As Tacticas go, the Dark Angels one is quite niche and very reactive (you’re slightly less likely to run away from fights you lose) and not something you can really use to build a list around, but their unique reaction (forcing a whole second fight phase in one particular combat) is really asking you to bring a decent tooled up combat squad and fight the biggest thing in your opponents list. Whilst you can do this with the Saturnine Praetor and his entourage I think you’re better off using them more tactically and instead, taking a big brick of melee bastards in a Land Raider or Spartan and zipping them around the board causing havoc.
Expanding beyond this, the sky’s the limit. With situational Legion rules and a very permissive Lore you’ve got carte blanche to really add anything you like to your list. In addition to all the standard Detachments, you’ve got 6 additional Auxiliary detachments to play with during list creation, so your next steps could just be picking your favourite, adding in a full suite of units and seeing how they play. I really don’t think you can go wrong with some Interemptors and Rapiers in the Dreadwing Cadre, or you could simply embrace the way of the sword and bring a load of hard hitting elites in the Deathwing Conclave. And remember, Loyalty is its own reward.
White Scars
Another edition, another box of footslogging infantry and a big slow dead guy – not, at first glance, all that great for the sons of Chogoris. Your legion traits make you faster: A +2 increase, which is nothing to sniff at at all, and your advanced reaction gives you a full additional move. With all that, what you’re looking for here is some super quick melee units to pull off long charges and…. Wait. No, you don’t get that in the box. At best, embed a Command model in big tactical squads and give them a cyber hawk to grant everyone move through cover – at least then you’ll always be sprinting full pelt through the battlefields of the heresy.
What you can do that no one else can do is create 7” movement Saturnines. While they’re still pretty slow due to Heavy, you’re one of the few legions that could realistically pull off a footslogging Saturnine charge – and even if you don’t quite make the charge, after a 2″ setup move you’re going to be well within range for a full strength volley attack given Implacable Advance. While everywhere else I’d recommend two guns for the Saturnines, you can pull off the fist/particle shredder and twin heavy disintegrator combo, cracking off an extra set of full-BS shots when you get up close and personal. While you’re at it, use your Prime Advantage to designate those Saturnines Sagyar Mazan – if your enemy kills them, who cares? The terror that is a faster Saturnine Dreadnought almost demands the Particle Shredders – while everyone else will struggle to get a template in range, you really, really won’t.
Expanding is relatively easy – your unique Auxiliary detachment is all about those Jetbikes and with your legion trait their movement is effectively a preposterous 18″. Scimitars might still not be absolutely fantastic, but Golden Keshig look very effective for their points, particularly with solid unique weaponry for chopping through armour and pinning squads. If you use your Jetbikes to distract as your absolute horde of fast moving tacticals take objectives, this is absolutely your time to ride the lightning.
Space Wolves
The Space Wolves are absolutely going to benefit from the Saturnine box and the horde of MKII marines it contains – Grey Slayers yet again returning as a solid choice for your basic troops. The Legion’s unique detachment makes army selection very easy: Two Grey Slayer packs as troops and Two Saturnine Squads as heavy assault granting you a Prime trait and a very simple way to fit in the otherwise slightly tricky Saturnines into the army.
Your legion trait lets you close the gap before assault easily, and, if you move up aggressively, will let you skip potential overwatch and guarantee charges – pair this with the legion reaction giving you a damage mitigation roll and additional movement when shot and you’ve got a legion that wants to be right up in the faces of opponents. That’s not necessarily for a charge though, more for the *option* of charging when circumstances are favourable.
As a result, you absolutely want to build the Saturnine box focused on the Tacticals. Pick up Space Wolf upgrades (30 and/or 40k varieties) to kit out as many Grey Slayers as you can. This is an incredibly versatile troop choice, with an option for bolters or combat shields – every one of them packing a Fenrisian axe (a fairly useful upgrade) or power weapon. Don’t worry about the rest of the box all that much – 40 Grey Slayers is going to do a hell of a lot of work. If you’re loading up for bear (or wolf, in this case), keep the fists on the Saturnines. Once the lines close you’re surprisingly mobile at the charge and can catch opponents who aren’t prepared for nigh-unkillable waddling murder machines going for their throat.
Imperial Fists
If there’s one legion you’d expect 40 Tactical marines and a load of walking bastion terminators to work well for, it’s the Fists and, despite their demotion from poster-boy faction to “another legion,” Saturnine doesn’t disappoint.
Your Legion trait gives you a bonus to hit for Bolt and Auto weapons, so absolutely look to build 30 of the Saturnine Tacticals with their bolters, either as Veterans or Tactical marines. +1 to hit is a solid, powerful buff and spreading tactical marines around will let you take good advantage of your movement-phase shooting reaction to boot.
The expansion pick here though is undoubtedly autocannons. Pick up the Heavy Weapons box and stick all ten of the autocannons on your tacticals as a Heavy Support Squad. With Heavy (FP) and the Imperial Fists bonus, these will do absolutely incredible work into infantry, terminators and light vehicles. They won’t scratch a Land Raider, but that’s what the rest of the box is for. The legion unique weapon – the Solarite Fist – is undoubtedly pretty good, but picking up a lot of fists is probably secondary to the all-powerful Autocannon.
I haven’t talked much about the Quad Accelerator Platform yet in this article and that’s because none of the other legions really give it any buffs. Imperial Fists do – your ten shots are going to be that bit more accurate, giving you very effective interception fire and tearing aircraft out of the sky. Don’t leave home without one.
Blood Angels
Blood Angels are another legion where a lot of footslogging models aren’t going to play exceptionally well into the legion traits and legion toolkit. You’re much choppier on the charge, but very little in the box is going to get a lot of mileage out of that trait, mostly just the Saturnine Terminators assuming you build them with the disruptor fists (as you should; who ever heard of Blood Angels with no punchy?!)
Picking up the melee weapons kit is an immediate first buy, letting you equip some of your 40 Tactical Marines as either Despoilers or Veterans, and getting hold of an Assault Marines box should be your next priority. You may want to put the Disintegrator weapons to good use with a unit of Veterans, mixing them in with your couple of allowed Assault Cannons, which are a lot of fun in this edition – I’d advise picking up the rotor cannon kit for stand-ins.
If you’re determined to stick with the tacticals, at least get them some transport. Third edition might be the edition of the APC even if it isn’t necessarily the edition of what’s inside them, but even Blood Angels Tactical Marines with bayonets or chain bayonets will be able to pile on the wounds on a successful charge. A Land Raider or Spartan wouldn’t be the worst pick-up either to give your choppy boys an assault transport to ride in. Sticking the power armoured Consul in the unit with your Prime Trait will lower enemy characteristics in a handy 12” bubble, so consider picking up some Pinning and Panic weapons to make good use of this (phosphex, just saying…) Load up the Consul with a Perdition weapon or a weapon with a high volume of attacks like lightning claws and let that +1 strength on the charge carry you home.
Iron Hands
Iron Hands can flood the board with difficult-to kill-infantry and significantly tougher dreadnoughts, so they’re well-served by Saturnine. Being harder to kill doesn’t suggest specific load outs for your Saturnine set, though you might be able to lug some shorter ranged weapons or even risk the occasional self disintegration given that you’ll lose fewer models on the way into range!
What is interesting with the Iron Hands legion is one of your unique detachments very much seems based around what you get in the box – Medusan Vanguard – is all about kitting out a Praevian with multiple terminator squads, a dreadnought and a support choice, exactly what you’re building out of that big box in front of you. It requires an Iron Father somewhere in your list, so think about using your Saturnine Praetor as one until you pick up a specific model. Unfortunately given how detachments work this doesn’t gain you much (you still want a centurion in your Primary Detachment), but it’s efficient at least! If you’re taking the Iron Father, you absolutely want to pick up a Castellax Battle Automata maniple, adding even more tough ranged/melee threats to create a hugely intimidating wall of metal.
One of your unique units – the Medusan Immortals – make for a solid wall of shields and feel-no-pain flesh and can easily be made from the Tactical sprue if you can find a bunch of boarding shields (Breacher box incoming). They’re very tough, hard to remove and completely expendable, so get them up onto a contested objective and force your enemy to waste valuable Vanguard time taking them off.
Ultramarines
Ultramarines haven’t changed a huge amount going into third edition, still the undisputed masters of flexible warfare and jacks of all trades. Instead of the combined arms approach of second edition, your legion trait will lower the cost of one reaction a turn, effectively giving you one free reaction every turn that you’re probably going to use to get some extra shooting in. As a result, you could go MSU with everything in the box – four squads of Tacticals and two squads of three Saturnines – without worrying about neutering your ability to overwatch or reaction fire.
Your legion reaction demands a long-ranged squad that can pile on the reaction fire when someone else gets shot – a heavy weapon squad (very expensive) or disintegrator equipped veteran squad (with a nuncio-vox and potentially apothecary to avoid/remove tactical statuses), or even double disintegrator or plasma bombard Saturnines (playing with fire there) will be able to absolutely mess up anyone who shoots at one of your poor tactical squads. Long ranged, multi-damage weapons that present a broad threat to everything – it might even be time for the return of the 10 man missile launcher squad – will make best use of your reaction.
Your legion detachment is flexible, cheap and gives you a Prime trait unlock for the low low price of an Optae. Combined with the Legion Gambit giving you additional bonuses for each command model on the table, I’d recommend using the Veteran Sprue and Sergeant components to model at least one – possibly more – Optae out of your tactical marines so you can take the Ultramarine detachment and boost your unique challenge gambit. You’re mostly then using the Prime unlock to fit in whatever unit you want to add to the detachment – Heavy Weapon Squads remain the Ultramarine’s best friend – but there’s the possibility of a super-Optae in there that I think might be worth trying out.
Salamanders
Salamanders finally get their day in the Molten Core (Sun). Being the poster boys for this edition this box is a natural fit for the hardy sons of Nocturne, utilising Vulkan’s finest creations to their fullest. Your Legion Tactica and Unique Prime Advantage also mean that everything in this box is going to be just that bit more frustrating for your opponent to remove with even your Tacticals simply shrugging off wounds from any source a third of the time. It’s very easy to see two 15 man Tactical Squads with nuncios being an absolute chore for your opponent to remove whilst they rake in the VP with Line scoring, whilst the rest of your list mops their force. Even if your opponent opts to charge you with a Vanguard unit your reaction (becoming melee monsters with the small risk of taking some wounds) is going to make much more of a tough prospect, so don’t skimp on your sergeant’s weapons.
Whilst you could build all the marine bodies in this box as Tacticals, you’d be absolutely missing a trick by getting yourself a frame of heavy weapons so you can bring the fires of the forge to your enemy with a Heavy Flamers Heavy Support Squad – whilst the special D2 flamers are only for Sergeants it’s deeply thematic, and forcing Panic checks is nothing to be sniffed at. And with a fantastic Auxiliary detachment in the Immolation Covenant, you can easily do this whilst accessing some of the best unit types in this edition. A natural expansion for you here is probably some armour in the form of Predators, Vindicators or some Rapier crews for decent ranged threat. You also really can’t go wrong with a squad of Pyroclasts, and a Landraider to get them into melta range of anything large your opponent’s putting on the table.
Raven Guard
The Raven Guard return just as sneaky as ever, with a Legion trait that makes them infuriatingly hard to hit from long range. Even so, the Saturnine box probably doesn’t play into their greatest strengths – the idea of lining up 40 tactical marines and making your opponent snapshoot at them all day is just inherently funny to me, but it’s probably not the best use of all your Marines.
You can improve your Mk2 marines significantly by upgrading their bolters to guns that do a bit more damage, while staying mobile and far away. The very best pick is probably the Seekers’ Kraken Boltgun, which awkwardly doesn’t have a model right now, but can probably be represented with a gun sight and a slightly different colour scheme. A set of special weapons is also a good option, as things like plasma guns, rotor cannons and perhaps volkites could all be useful. Raven Guard can get a couple of Recon Squads in their special detachment so look for shotguns and sniper rifles, or wait to see if GW releases a set of them.
To make best use of the trait across the non-tactical side of the box, you want your Saturnine Terminators and Dreadnought with their longest ranged weapons – it’s going to be bloody hard to kill them when everything is snapshooting and you’re shuffling away from threatening heavy weapons!
Final Thoughts
There you have it – you’ve got the box in hand, so get building! Let us know in the comments if there’s any absolute must-takes you’d recommend picking up. If you’re starting a new army, or want to catch up on how the third edition of the Horus Heresy changes your current one, check out the rest of our Heresy coverage.
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