Horus Heresy First Look: The Imperialis Militia in Third Edition

It has reached the end of August and the next part of Special Games Studio’s ambitious digital release schedule for the Horus Heresy is upon us: The Imperialis Militia. This free Expanded document is intended to cover the blistering, myriad variety of human military forces across the 31st millennium, featuring a meaty mass of mortals, tons of thundering tanks, a horde of hostile horses and atrocious but amassed artillery, and much more esoteric things beyond that.

The Militia represents the dregs of humanity’s armed forces. You won’t find technical masterminds, cutting edge equipment or gene-modded super soldiers here, just basic soldiers with basic or improvised equipment.

This army is a kitbasher’s dream, suggesting a horde of modelling opportunities with which you impress your opponent with hobby, amaze them with your list building, and either dunk on them to a round of applause from your fellow gamers, or (more likely) get massacred to the man by many mass-reactive rounds, multiple mechadendrites or merely murdered in melee.

Whereas Auxilia are about standing on objectives and attempting to stat check their opponents with big guns, the Militia is more of a puzzle. You have to assemble a weird buffing piece to turn something that seems sensible at first glance into something that thoroughly isn’t. This is a high level challenge as a gamer, and as a hobbyist too. This is not a “good” army list. You will not “win events.” But you will win the hearts of your foes, along with their respect for building something unique and beautiful. Unlike Marine armies, where every Salamander is roughly the same as every other Salamander, through the combination of Provenances of War and a blistering array of units and wargear your Militia army will be your own, and that is something to be adored.

If you can’t tell, I love the Militia. My own list, the Huscarls of the 17th Oeste Albion “Smogborn”, who are brummie Feral Warriors from Old Albia, are a labour of perverse love that have lost me many games. This new list for third edition promises even greater variety, with (almost) everything from the old lists and more, with new units, options and foolish decisions.

How to Run Militia

Solar Auxilia are an Allies army, but Militia crave the Prime Detachment. While you always get a single Provenance of War, even as Allies, Militia need their High Command slot Force Commander to unlock a second one.

Primary Detachments Militia also unlocks one of their unique Apex Detachments, each offering a mighty 8 slots and a Prime Benefit, in either Elites (Grenadier Muster), Ogryns (Ogryn Auxilia), Troops (Infantry Cohort), Artillery-focused Supports (Artillery Division), Cavalry (Cavalry Wing) or their Armoured Phalax, which comes with 7 Armour and a second Lord of War, but that still doesn’t let you circumvent the 25% cap.

Sadly, in an Allied Detachment you can’t get access to these Apex Detachments, and the second Provenance from the Force Commander is awkward. In an Allied Detachment, it’s often worth investing a Special Assignment to take him in a Prime Command slot and unlock that second Provenance.

There’s another sneaky trick you can do: the Oversight Cadre Auxiliary Detachment, which has a Command Slot in it, which can itself unlock a further three Detachments with the Command Troop’s impressive Officer of the Line (3), which you can use to cascade further Oversight Cadres. As long as you’re willing to spend 70pts on overpriced Lieutenants, you can take as many Auxiliaries as you want.

A new Auxiliary Detachment also lets you take two Elite units, allowing you to take Grenadiers outside of an Apex.

There are also two more key rules:

• Third Line causes glances to also deal a Hull Point, alongside the existing status.
• Irregulars means Statused units can still score 1 VP (hard-capped, no bonuses for line), and also causes Falling Back units to automatically leave the board and not rally.

Technically, the way this is written, units only ever score 1 VP on an objective, regardless of if they’re Statused or not, but I would highly recommend ignoring this interpretation and letting Irregulars score the full value of Objectives while not Statused. Once again, BUT is doing a lot of work here.

Provenances

We’ll rattle through these fast. Most of them unlock wargear or special rules for units and come with a specific theme. By choosing two, you can unlock some great combinations, but some come with downsides and many cause your units to get expensive fast.

Remember: You get one as standard and two if you run a Force Commander.

• Abhuman Muster: Mutants and beastmen. +1 S, -1 BS, Impact (LD). Impact Leadership is hilarious. Adds cool shields (6+ Invuln, 5+ in Volleys and Reactions) to Militia Armaments list.
• Alchem-jackers: They’re all on drugs. Ignores modifiers to Leadership and Cool from the various Status (X) rules. Lets you purchase Hatred (Infantry, Cavalry, Automata) and Heedless (no points on objectives)  for 1ppm.
• Armoury of Old Night: Volkite and power armour everywhere! Adds volkite weapons to various weapons lists, and improves the base armour of Infantry by 1 and adds Slow And Purposeful.
• Arms of the Omnissiah: Forge world equipment! Adds Arc Rifles to Special Weapons and Las-locks to basic armaments (tasty for 1ppm), and unlocked Trioaris and Krios from the Mechanicum list with Third Line and -1 BS.
• Augmented Levy: Cybernetically enhanced zombie troops. Grants the Rite of Pure Thought, which removes Reactions but grants Morale Benefits in combat. Also allows you to buy Repair Automata for 2ppm, granting a 10 man unit Battlesmith (3) for 20 points, which is hilarious.
• Cyber-augmetics: A less zombies and more martial themed Skitaari augmentations. Eternal Warrior (1) on Irregular Infantry. (which are mostly 1 wound anyway…). +1 Cool and Intelligence. You can buy rad grenades on Sergeants or Command for 5pts. Hilariously cheap access to Phage (T) allowing a potential -1 Toughness on a melee unit if you wound something.
• Debased Rabble (Traitors only): Warp obsessed weirdos. Unlocks a Tainted Implements 1ppm melee weapon with Rending (6+) for autowounds. Also +1 Cool -1 Int, which is a great trade.
• Feral Warriors: Savage melee focused warriors. My beloved. Impact (WS). Must charge if they are within 8” and fail an int check (likely). Paired Closed Combat Weapons grant an extra attack for 3ppm.
• Gene-crafted: Genetically modified, Eldar-coded troops. Needlers on your grenadiers and friends. Gives Light across the board, or replaces Heavy for nothing.
• Imperialis Provosts: Stealing the toys of the Enforcers and Arbites. Non-Expendable units gain +1 Cool. Grants Melee Weapon Shock Maul with Aflame (1) and Special Weapon Webbers.
• Industrial Levy: Hive and mining recruits who are wannabe genestealer cultists. Grants Move Through Cover, and gives Mining Lasers and Seismic Cannons to the Special Weapons list, and their Heavy variants to the Heavy Weapon lists. Tasty on some of the faster units, like Ridgerunners and Bikers. Also gives insanely expensive 8pmm (but actually useful) Heavy Industrial Weapons as a powerful but expensive melee option, that you wish could go on Ogryns, but they don’t have the specific melee traits.
• Kinfolk Helots: If Industrial Levy does GSC, this does Squats. +1 Toughness, -1 Movement, -1 Initiative. Unlocks a really weird Exo-Riggers Grenadier unit with tons of special rules and absolutely cracked equipment.
• Legacy of the Great Crusade: Elite soldiers from fancy regiments.  +1 BS on non-Expendable units. 1ppm Lasrifles (remember no Blast Charges), and Rotor Cannons on Special Weapons.
• Ogryn Conscripts: All big boys all the time. Lose Heedless if you have a discipline Master. Unlocks Boarding Shields for 2ppm on your Ogryns, granting a way better invuln.
• Survivors of the Dark Age: Fancy transports and equipment. Allows Rhinos, Termites and Land Raiders at -1 BS and Third Line. There is NOTHING in this army which justifies going in a Land Raider (even a shit one), but I dare you to try.
• Tainted Flesh (Traitors only): Horrid mutants and buffed psykers. Aflame (1) and Impact (I). You can buy 2 Psychic Disciplines on your Rogue Psykers.
• Voidbourne: Jump-troops from spaceeeeee. Everything with no Bulky or Expendable gains Infiltratee (18). Unlocks a Voidjumper Squad with Anti-Grav, Deepstrike and Firestorm, along with double pistols for everyone.
• Unending Horde: An unwashed endless horde or schmucks, who don’t give away too many VP. Gives Endless Horde (4+) to your Infantry Troops and Levy Troops, allowing them to roll a 4+ when the unit dies and put it in reserves. You can also buy Expendable (1) for 1ppm to make sure you don’t give away 6 million victory points for Vanguard.
• Warrior Elite: Disciplined troops (terrifying this has to be an option). +1 Leadership  Allows you to swap your Militia Vexilla for the trusty and much better Auxilia alternative, which means you only take Rout Checks if you lose 50% of a unit in a round not 25%. Keeps your boys on the battlefield.

Yeah. Woah. 19 options, all with interesting flavour, rules and equipment. None of these mess with Force Org charts (which are so much more permissive now), and are all based on improving models. I’m going to hit you with a few of my favourite combos:

1. Tainted Flesh and Debased Rabble: A couple hundred mutants with tainted weapons, backed up by buffed psykers and never running away.
2. Alchem-Jackers and Feral Warriors: My trusty beloved. Chemmed up sickos with chainaxes or paired weapons ready to cut the world apart.
3. Legacy of the Great Crusade and Armoury of Old Night: Build-a-bear Astartes! Competent BS4 power armour elites with bolters or volkites for only slightly more than a Tactical Marine.
4. Gene-crafted and Industrial Levy: Move Through Cover and Light allows you to put Needlers and Seismic Cannons on your Quads and Cavalry, allowing them to run 1 million inches, snap shoot some weapons, stack up statuses, before Firestorming and run away a further 1 million inches with Evade on your opponent’s turn.

NotThatHenryC: Armoury of Old Night seems like an enormous benefit. You can expect the enemy’s basic infantry to fire three AP5 shots back at you as a reaction any time you interact with them in your turn, so having a 5+ save is a terrible idea. This gives most of you army a 4+, which is a vast improvement. That said, there’s lots of fun stuff here and it’s nicely done.

Units

Oh god there’s so many and I have so few words left. Let’s gooo!

• Force Command (High Command): 70pts for standardised 3+ / 5+, with no artificer armour or cyber familiar nonsense from last edition. Can be given Officer Weapons or put on a horse, but I wouldn’t bother with either. This guy loses to an Optae in combat even when tooled up and that’s how things should be in the military.
• Discipline Masters (Command Slot): Up to five independents (30ppm) who run around shooting deserters, allowing them to Instill Order in the Start Phase: Doing D3 wounds at AP2 to remove on Tactical Status if they pass a related Cool or Leadership Check. They can’t take Carapace (sad face), but you can give one of them Officer of the Line (3) for 20pts, which is a great upgrade. I’ll be giving mine Hand Flamers for Volley Firing and popping them in big or important units. Mounted versions are also available.
• Command Troops (Command Slot): 70pts for a five man squad with a Lieutenant and Officer of the Line (3). That’s so many Auxiliary Detachments. You can buy more guys, grenadier upgrades, banners, equipment and all manner of guns, but bare bones is likely best, as I mentioned the important bit two sentences lines ago, and it was Officer of the Line (3).
• Mounted Command Troops (Command Slot): 85pts for five lads on horses and an Officer of the Line (3) Lancemaster. He’s a tad worse than the Lieutenant, but this is fun if you want an all cavalry army.
• Rogue Psyker (Command): A 2 wound WP9 Traitor-only schmuck psyker who can grab Anathemata or any of the generic psychic disciplines. The only Command slot without Officer of the Line (3), but 60-80pts is bloody cheap for a psyker, even if he is from Temu. Fun for summoning demons (but only once they have rules), putting Biomantic Rage on a big unit of Ogryns or infantry, or using Telepathy to Rout or Stun units.
• Grenadiers (Elites): 8ppm base for a WS/BS/S/T 3 fellow in 4+ Carapace Armour in a 10-20 squad size.. They have every imaginable weapon option, Implacable Advance and Vanguard (3). Solid with 3 point bolters, and an all-around good recipient of nonsense from your Provenances.
• Ogryn Brutes (Heavy Assault): S/T 5 idiots with 4 W, 3A and Impact (A). They have a selection of weapon options (5ppm Power Mauls and Assault Shields, anyone?), and have kept the stupid options on the Boss (fancy giving him a heavy flamer or thunder hammer? I do). They’re sadly held back by Heedless (no points on objectives) and the lack of the Irregular keyword meaning they can’t receive buffs from Provenances. This does mean, however, they are good in every single army, even if you focused on shooting or something.
• Beastmaster Troop (Heavy Assault): Cats, dogs, crocodiles and birds, led by some sergeants. Like last edition, horrifically overpriced, but marginally less than last edition. Expect the whole unit to vanish if someone Volley Fires a bolt pistol at it.
• Infantry Troop (Troops): Meat and potatoes. 90pts for a fixed size of 20 droogs with lots of weapon options. Special weapons are now less overpriced. Chainaxes and chainswords come as standard, along with lots of other fun guns. Line (1) means you’ll see a lot of these standing on points and failing to dodge bolter shells. Their main obstacle is that basic Solar Auxilia do their job better: complete with more Line, better guns, better armour and better mental stats.
• Levy Troop (Troops): 20 lads for the barely discounted price of 80pts, 5pts further per model up to 50. They have Expendable (3), which means they never give up Vanguard, but they’re WS/BS 2 which turns their damage from shoddy into truly hopeless. Chewing through 50 wounds will at least take some time!
• Militia Medicae (Support): 20pts for medic (5+) and a pistol. Leave at home, there’s better reactions elsewhere and he’s missing the status removing Narthecium.
• Fire Support Troops (Support): Three hilariously fragile 2 wound bases for 50pts, with all the household heavy weapons setting you back 10ish points on top. Don’t bother with lascannons or autocannons, but maybe the other stuff will do something.
• Rapier Troops (Support): Rapiers with all the normal Astartes weapons, but crewed by three hopeless BS3 Militiamen for the same 40pt price as BS4 Astartes. The heavy bolters are somehow 5pts more expensive, the Quad Launcher 15 less, and the Laser Destroyer the same. The good news is that Rapiers are undercosted in Astartes so still fine here.
• Field Gun Battery (Support): 55-70pts per model for the equivalent Astra Militarum’s Field Ordnance Battery. M4, so they can shuffle slightly. All the guns seem alright: large blast low S Kalliope Mortar, the small blast high strength Thunderblast Cannon, or the D4 Heavy Lascannon.

• Heavy Ordnance Battery (Support): 85-100pts per model for a single big gun with three gunners, or more if you shell out points. This is for Earthshakers, Medusas or any of the big guns from the Krieg’s Artillery Team. I won’t list the six available guns but they all seem pretty solid. My favourite is either the 7” blast Heavy Rocket Combat with Suppressive (2), or the direct firing Siege Cannon, S9, AP4, Heavy (AP), Blast (3), Stun (1). You could take a Leman Russ battlecannon instead, but then you wouldn’t let your opponent know they’re basically at the Somme. There’s also a weird indirect firing autocannon which is called Heavy Quad Launcher and Heavy Squad Mortar in different sections, so watch out for that.
• Sentinel Patrol (War Engine): Scout Sentinels are 40pts and Armoured 50. They come with all the weapons you’d expect, and Implacable Advance lets you Volley Fire the ones that aren’t Heavy. They’re obviously not as tough as a Dreadnought and the damage is negligible, but they cost a quarter of the points so maybe these chicken walkers have legs.
• Arvus Lighter (Transport) The copy pasted Auxilia one. A trusty way of delivery Grenadier units, but too small for anything else.
• Militia Utility Hauler (Transport): It’s a truck! Both the speedy Cargo Hauler and the slower Armour Hauler have transport capacity 20ish for 55pts and 85pts respectively. You can give them some cheap Pintle Weapons (love a Panic (1) heavy flamer for 10pts), but they get squads where they need to be. They both have Rear Armour 9 which is hilarious, even though it doesn’t have Third-Line.
• Militia Industrial Rig (Transport): Smaller, tougher, slower transports for representing Tauroxes or Rockgrinders. The tougher, slower explorator rig has a stubber and a heavy flamer, whereas the heavy flamer can swap it’s flamer for gravis autocannons, heavy mining lasers or heavy seismic cannons. Their transport capacity is only 12 though, so these are for Command Squads or Grenadiers. I’d honestly eat up either of these transports if they were in a Marine list, so we’re eating good here, especially since it doesn’t have Third-Line.
• Militia Gorgon Transport (Heavy Transport): 275pts for a Super Heavy transport with 45 capacity and 10HP. It’s an Assault Vehicle now, so I’m going to buy one of these dumb chunks of resin at the earliest opportunity.
• Reconnaissance Squad (Recon): 8ppm guys with Move Through Cover, Light, Smokescreen and Infiltrate (9), but paying for it with Support Squad (2) and a heavy points cost for flak armoured bodies. At least their Long Rifles cost a more sensible amount of points now.
• Cavalry Troop (Recon): Now we’re borrowing videos from the same Blockbuster Weekly! 2Ws and 2As, with Firestorm, Implacable Advance, Vanguard (3) and Impact (S). Bikes and flak armoured terminators shoved together. Grab your Militia Lance for some tasty damage (but only a single attack on the charge), and maybe a flamer so you can Panic (1) a unit on the way in. Plus, they’re only 10ppm.
• All Terrain Patrol (Fast Attack): A shooting-focused speedy unit with an option for Quadbikes with Special or Heavy Weapons (the Atalan Jackals Wolfquad) and Trikes with combi bolters or double melta (the Necromunda Svenotaur Scout Trikes). These work out expensive, but I dig these a lot more than the Fire Support Troops. My favourite load out is Flamers or Seismic Cannons, as you can Advance and still Snap Fire templates! Also, the Trikes also rock, and 20pts gets you two combi-bolters for eight shots, which is an insane bolter-per-point ratio and I think is just a mistake. These are just GOOD, especially if you drop +1 BS.
• Scout Rovers (Fast Attack): More Genestealer Cult vehicles. Both are fast moving, Outflanking, Move Through Cover, Rapid and made of paper (but not Third Line). The 35pt Venator gets a choice of twin weapons: multilasers, stubbers, seismic cannons or lascannons. Meanwhile, the 45pt Ridgerunner has a pintle-mounted heavy weapon. Again, a cool vehicle for template weapons or multi-meltas.

We then meet the Militia versions of the Leman Russ, Thunderbolt Fighter, Malcador and Baneblade, all of which are basically the same as their Auxilia equivalents but gain Third Line. A lot of them miss the Armoured Regiment benefit of being in Solar, but they still do solid damage for a fine number of points.

NotThatHenryC: The poor infantry are over-costed to a spectacular degree. Other stuff is fine but Levy are worth 2-3 points each I think. Definitely not 5.

Equipment

Let’s take a brief moment to mention some equipment. The Militia Vexilia adjusts the distance you fall back, rolling three dice and discarding one of their choice. Amusingly, you can use this to run away faster which is funny. This tends to not be worth the 5pt upgrade.

The Militia Vox is nothing like a nuncio-vox. If you are within Line of Sight of an un-statused Command Model, when removing statuses in the End Phase, you can roll an additional Dice and discard the highest one. This is helpful, but most Militia have absolutely awful Cool and Leadership (the standard Infantry Sergeant has 6/6), so it likely won’t help much, turning the result from difficult into possible. That said, if you have 10pts to spare it might be worth the upgrade on Key Units.

Finally, the Militia Standard removes the Routed Status from a Militia unit if they’re within 12” of it. This is a 15pt must-take on your Command Troops, as Routing is bad and your Leadership is so bad it’s almost essential.

Sample Army Lists

I’m going to do two lists. The first is the JellyMuppet Saxon Special, with 2500pts of stark raving mad infantry hoping to cut holes in their enemies, taking advantage of the incredibly powerful cavalry rules. The second is the Krieger’s Dream, with as much artillery as I could stomach. With both these armies I started by working out what Apex Detachment I wanted to use and then filling that with models, and then chose the Provenances to push that in the direction I wanted.

JellyMuppet Saxon Special

I’m running Alchem-Jackers and Feral Warriors to give all my melee units Impact (WS) and Hatred (Infantry). I took 4 units of Cavalry with Lancers and Frenzon, which hit into power armour units exceptionally hard with 3 S5 AP3 attacks each for a measly 16pts each. I then took 80 each of buffed Grenadiers with paired melee weapons and some basic rifle infantry to stand on objectives with Line (1). Two Cargo Haulers (with Flamers for a little Panic (1)) allow me to keep those Infantry slightly safer and drop them off on objectives, before going on a ramming mission.

Edit: I made a mistake on the Lances and misunderstood the attack modifier. They’re only 1 attack on the charge. I’d instead go with either chainaxes or paired melee weapons.

Krieger's Dream

This list would be unpleasant to buy, assemble, build and manage on the field, but a blast to play. We start off with a fully maxed artillery division. Two 3” big damage direct firing Siege Cannons can Stun(1) their foes, for a pair of 7” Suppressive (2) templates to drop down from the Heavy Rocket Bombards. The Kalliope’s drop slightly smaller 5” Suppressive (1) templates and the Thunderblast cannons finish off with some pinning. The pièce de résistance is the allied LoW Auxilia Marauder Bomber, which will delivered incredible hate with another big pie plate. Finally, a lowly six Rapier Laser Destroyers provide some trusty anti-tank, and 160 infantry meatshields stand in front of the guns. I’d run these with Imperial Provosts and Legacy of the Great Crusade to keep the men un-statused and the guns accurate.

Final Thoughts

While building both these lists, I found the skew you can attain with the Apex Detachment exhilarating. While mid-quality infantry spam and tank armies are both done considerably better by the Solar Auxilia, there’s a huge amount of weirdness and variety you can pry out of this 57 page PDF. In particular, the 70pt Command Troops asserts its quality with Officer of the Line (3), and one of these lads will allow you to build almost anything you want alongside a max-ed out apex.

While some units could be costed most aggressively, I have massive respect for whoever wrote this list, and enabled all of the fun that I’m going to have running Militia this edition. I hope you had fun reading, and ideas are running through your head about building and running your potential human armours in our Horus Heresy.

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