In this article we’ll look at how to build your army in the third edition of Horus Heresy. The old Force Organisation Chart and Rites of War are mere memories. Now you will build your own force org chart out of various different types of detachments. Some of these can be freely accessed but others need to be unlocked, usually by taking characters.
We’re going to have a look at how it all works and show how to make the contents of the Saturnine box into a legal army.
Thanks to Games Workshop for giving us a copy of these rules to review.
Table of Contents
Don’t Panic
This guide will tend to look mostly at the Legions Astartes. The Solar Auxilia, Mechanicum, Knights and Titans all use this system too, but they modify it quite a bit. We’ll cover that as we look at their army lists.
There are quite a lot more categories of units now. In second edition Heresy and since third edition 40K we’ve had HQ, Troops, Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support. Now there are 15 Battlefield Roles and lots of units have moved from one to another. For example, units that used to be in the Elites FOC slot can now be found mostly in Heavy Assault, War Engine and a few still in Elites – though it’s by no means as simple as that.
Currently, there isn’t anything that changes a unit’s role. In the past we’ve had ways of making various units count as Troops but that doesn’t happen any more. The different Legions still tend to favour certain units but this is expressed by the units they provide access to in their unique detachments.
Another change is that you’ll hardly ever find more than one unit in each slot on the chart. There aren’t Dreadnought talons any more with multiple models running around independently. Solar Auxilia Tercios are now a type of Detachment rather than a way of bringing loads of units in a single slot – though the end result is comparable. Retinues are now their own Battlefield Role rather than being linked to characters. There aren’t vehicle squadrons either, so each tank is chosen separately and acts independently.
A curiosity of this edition is that, in theory at least, you’re supposed to pick your mission before your army. So you can tailor your list to what you’re actually doing. This may work better in practice for casual games at home than at events or games clubs, where usually people tend to show up with an army and then decide what mission they’re doing. It’ll be interesting to see how event organisers handle this in future though as there are some options. I’ve been at events in the past that have had a “side board” of 500 points that you could swap in if you wanted, for example. Do check with your opponent and/or event organiser ahead of time so that everyone is clear what’s happening.
Allegiance and Faction
You have to decide whether you are playing Loyalist or Traitor. Ideally you’d have players of different Allegiances playing against each other. For now we don’t have rules for any other factions, such as Black Shields. You can of course play any Legion as any Allegiance.
Your Faction is the Legion you’re playing. This means you’d say you are playing “Blood Angels” or “Sons of Horus”, not just “Legions Astartes”. You can bring in other Legions as allies if you want. There are comparable, though not quite identical, faction rules for Solar Auxilia, Mechanicum and Knights.
The Primary Detachment
Most armies, with the exception of weird stuff like Knights, start with a Crusade Primary Detachment. It has a High Command slot, three for Command, four for Troops and four for Transports. Note that none of the units in the Crusade Primary Detachment are compulsory so you don’t need to take any troops or a High Command if you don’t want to. One of the Command slots and one of the Troops is Prime, which we’ll describe properly later – but it’s a good thing.
The Crusade Primary Detachment is a good starting point but if you want to take proper tanks, elite troops, dreadnoughts and so on you’ll need to unlock other Detachments. You do that by taking High Command and Command slots.
The old HQ section has been split into two. The High Command slot is for Praetors and equivalent, while Centurions and the various Consuls are in the Command slot. The choices you make for these units will determine what you can take in the rest of your force.
Apex Detachments
High Command choices unlock either an Apex or an Auxiliary detachment. You’ll usually go for Apex because your High Command choice is the only way to get one.
There are three Apex detachments available. The Combat Retinue contains three slots for Retinues, the Officer Cadre has two Commanders and the Army Vanguard has three Elites. One slot is Prime in each version. If you take the two Commanders they can unlock Auxiliary Detachments of their own.
Retinue, Elite and Commander slots are difficult to obtain outside of Apex Detachments, so you’ll usually want one of these. Personally I always seem to end up with the Army Vanguard for Elite units. I find the Primary Detachment has enough Commanders and I usually don’t want all that many Retinue units.
Auxiliary Detachments
Command slots usually unlock one Auxiliary detachment, or sometimes more than one. Keep an eye out for characters like the Centurion with Officer of the Line 2, which means they unlock two Auxiliary Detachments.
There is a very wide array of Auxiliary Detachments, with seven in the core rulebook and many more in the Libers. Legion armies get various other Auxiliary detachments in addition to the ones in the BRB. There are some generic ones available to everyone, like a detachment of Apothecaries, letting you take a bunch of them without requiring loads of detachments. Several of the Consuls unlock unique detachments themed to them, like the Champion’s Veteran Cadre with a Retinue, Elite and Heavy Support slot. The Legions also have their own unique detachments, which can be a good way to unlock slots for their specialist units.
In some of these Detachments some of the slots are locked to specific units. For example the Vigilator’s Recon Demi-Company has three Recon Slots, which can only be used for Reconnaissance Squads. It’s also got a Fast Attack Slot, which can be used for any Fast Attack unit you like.
Most of your units are unlocked through Auxiliary Detachments. They usually contain between one and four of a single type of unit, such as Support or Armour, though there are also mixed Detachments. So for example the Armoured Support Detachment has four Armour slots and the First Strike Detachment has two for Fast Attack. But the Tactical Support Detachment has two Troops and two Support. In effect this means you now have an HQ tax for your army, as you need one Command slot for every 2-4 units you’re fielding. That tax is highest for Walkers like Dreadnoughts, as their Heavy Support Detachment includes just a single slot. Dreadnought Talons aren’t a thing any more so that just gets you one Dreadnought.
An effect of this system is that I find myself trying to fill my Auxiliary Detachments or not take them at all. After all I can only have so many Auxiliary Detachments while keeping within my allocation of three Commander slots from the Primary Detachment. I find this deters me from picking a single cheap unit from one Detachment, which would require its own Commander to unlock. I might want a couple of Tarantulas, for example, but I don’t want to have to spend the Commander slot and the points on a Commander to unlock them if I’m not taking any other Recon units.
You’re free to pick Auxiliary Detachments in any combination, so it’s possible to have an all-terminator or all-jetbike army for example, by just taking the appropriate detachments multiple times. This partly replaces the Rites of War from previous editions, in that it lets you take pretty much any units you want so long as you pay the HQ tax. It’s not quite the same though, because Rites of War used to give you all sorts of special rules, which are now gone.
Warlord and Lord of War Detachments
Primarchs and Lords of War sit outside this structure, in their own detachments that don’t need a character to unlock. You can only spend 25% of your total points on Warlord and Lord of War units.
Having a big chunk of your army that is exempt from the character tax means you probably won’t need as many other characters if you bring either of these. Sadly Warlords don’t unlock any other Detachments themselves.
The Warlord Detachment has to be the same faction as your Primary Detachment and can only be taken in games of 3000 points and above, notably meaning that Primarchs cannot take part in games smaller than that. It contains one Warlord, Retinue and Heavy Transport slot. Your Primarch need never arrive at a battle without a Spartan to ride around with and some friends.
The Lord of War Detachment simply has two slots for Lords of War. It can be taken in games of any size. In reality the 25% limit means you’ll usually only be able to have one unit. It can be of any faction, not just that of your Primary Detachment, so you can have a Knight or Titan support your Astartes if you like. They do still need to have the same Allegiance though.
Allied Detachment
You can have any number of Allied Detachments, which must be of a different Faction to your Primary Detachment. You’re allowed to have representatives of a different Legion or something completely different, like Mechanicum.
There’s now no chart describing how well your various allied troops get on with each other. You can join your characters to allied units of any Faction, though doing so reduces the LD and CL of all models by 1. You are not allowed in other Factions’ transport vehicles under any circumstances, even if you’ve joined a unit of that Faction.
Prime Slots
Some Detachments contain Prime Slots, which give you an optional benefit if you fill them. There’s a Prime Commander and Troop slot in the Crusade Primary Detachment, for example. Prime Slots are pretty rare. There aren’t any in the seven normal Auxiliary Detachments, though some of the Consul or Legion-specific Detachments do include them. It’s great news if your Legion’s Detachment has a Prime slot, as the options are great.
Most relevant for army selection is Logistical Benefit. You can use this Prime Advantage once per detachment to unlock a single free slot for almost any unit. It’s a great way to add more of the harder-to-access slots, like Elites, Retinues and Dreadnoughts. This can’t get you more High Command, Command, Warlord or Lord of War slots, however. The other options all buff the unit you’ve filled that Prime Slot with, as follows:
Master Sergeant gives a Sergeant in the unit +1A, WS and LD and the Champion Sub-type, so they can fight challenges. This can be a good option for Sergeants with Power Fists and equivalent, as they’ll hit a lot more often – until they have to face a proper character in a challenge, which probably won’t go well. Gaining the Champion Sub-type grants access to some Legion-specific wargear, like the Dark Angels’ Terranic Greatswords and the Emperor’s Children’s Surgical Augments. Equipment requirements aren’t consistent for all the Legions though, so not everyone gets the fancy toys.
Combat Veterans gives all models in the unit +1 to LD, CL, IN, and WP, to a maximum of 10. I think this is quite interesting for a Command Slot, particularly on Psykers. It’ll help them successfully cast their powers as well as keeping their unit in the game.
Paragon of Battle is only for models with the Command Sub-type, so can be given to High Command models if you can find them a Prime Slot somehow. The model gets +1A, WS and BS. I like this on a Champion, who will then have WS7 and 5 attacks with a Paragon Blade, making them a real threat to a Praetor.
Special Assignment is only for a Command Slot. It lets you take a High Command unit in that slot, though they don’t unlock any detachments. This is a good way to take a Praetor-equivalent model as an ally, though note you’d need a second character to unlock any other allied units.
In Memoriam
Pour one out for Rites of War. While you can probably take many of the same unit combinations you could, all the associated special rules are gone and this effectively removes some army types from the game. In particular, drop pod assault is not going to work now, because you can only deep strike one unit per turn. It’s grim news for anyone who has a force like this. I hope that future supplements restore this.
Rites of War were one of the defining features of the first two editions of Heresy. They gave an army a bit of narrative as well as rules. There were restrictions as well as benefits, setting out what an army wasn’t, as well as what it was. The Legion-specific ones differentiated the Legions as much as their inherent special rules.
Taking my own army as an example, I’ve been running my Raven Guard with Auxilia allies using the Liberation Force Rite. There’s nothing stopping me taking an army with Solar Auxilia allies in future if I want but it would play completely differently, as just a bunch of units on the board with no interaction between them. It’s legal but just not the same, and I’m sure a lot of other people will be in the same position.
To be fair, Rites of War were far from perfect. They were not balanced in any way, resulting in major power imbalance between the Legions. They allowed skew lists to be built that could result in one-sided games – though you can still make skew lists with the new system. In reality players weren’t hugely bothered by this though and tended to self-police and event organisers often limited things to some extent. But just because Rites weren’t balanced before doesn’t mean they could not have been, if GW had just done a better job of writing their rules. They could have done better than this.
This also means that all-tank armies are gone, or almost gone. At this point we don’t have any kind of tank commanders, unless you count the Damocles Rhino. Decurions still exist but in effect they’re just upgrades for tanks selected as Armour, not Command slots. They don’t alter army selection at all.
Army List Example Using the Saturnine Box
The Saturnine box is a good starting point for an army and a good example of how army selection works, especially since many players will literally be starting with it.
You have a bit of flexibility in what you build from Saturnine. The 40 Mk2 Legionaries can be made into many different units using weapon upgrades, including the disintegrators in the box and all kinds of stuff available separately. For the purposes of this example we are building the following:
Saturnine Praetor – 200
Centurion with Power weapon, Combi-melta and Cyber-familiar – 110
Veterans – 285 (with disintegrators)
Saturnine Terminators – 2×200
Saturnine Dread – 340
Araknae – 125
Tacticals (3×10) – 300
Our list comes to 1760 points though, with the most expensive possible upgrades and squad choices, you can get a lot more than that. So now let’s fit it all into an army we can field using these rules.
Following the process laid out for army construction, you’ll pick an Allegiance, Faction and then fill your Primary Detachment first:
High Command – Praetor in Saturnine Armour. This unlocks one Auxiliary or Apex Detachment.
Command – Centurion. This unlocks two Auxiliary Detachments as it’s a Command Slot with Officer of the Line 2. You’ll also put this in a Prime Slot.
Troops – Tactical Squad in a Prime Slot.
Troops – Tactical Squad.
Troops – Tactical Squad.
That leaves us with Two Squads of Terminators, one of Veterans, one Dreadnought and one Araknae to fit in with our Auxiliary or Apex detachments:
As our Praetor’s Apex Detachment we can take an Army Vanguard.
Elites – Veteran Squad in a Prime Slot.
For the Centurion’s two Auxiliary Detachments: Shock Assault and Heavy Support. This gives us two Heavy Assault slots and one War Engine, which we fill as follows:
Heavy Assault – Saturnine Terminators.
Heavy Assault – Saturnine Terminators.
War Engine – Saturnine Dreadnought.
With that, we’ve run out of Auxiliary Detachments and can’t take our brand new Quad Accelerator platform. Don’t despair though! With taking this list we’ve unlocked three Prime Advantages. We’ll use the Primary Detachment’s Prime Tactical Squad on Logistical Benefit to add the Araknae Platform to that Detachment as a Support choice. The Centurion’s Prime Advantage can’t be used on a second Logistical Benefit so we’ll go for Paragon of Battle instead. We won’t decide what to do with the Veterans’ Prime Advantage for now, in case we need it later for a Logistical Benefit.
That’s not a bad start to our army. The Primary, Army Vanguard and Tactical Support all have space for more units – Troops, Elites and Troops and Support respectively. If you wanted to add tanks, more dreadnoughts or fast attack, you’ll need more detachments, which you can unlock by filling more of the Command slots in the Primary Detachment.
Final Thoughts
This seems very complex at first but it does get easier once you get used to it. A good place to start is probably by looking at your non-character units and seeing what slots they occupy now. That will tell you what Detachments you need and therefore what Command options you need to take.
Personally I like how your units are now linked to the character who has unlocked them. It feels a bit like you have a meaningful command structure. Maybe you’d want to attach a character to the units they’ve unlocked, though in some cases (most obviously Dreadnoughts and tanks) that won’t be possible.
I’ll be forced to bring more characters than I have tended to in the past but that’s fine. For starters, everyone else will be in the same boat so it’s no disadvantage. But they all do interesting stuff so they will be fun to play with. Characters also add character. You can invest as much or as little as you want into things like backstories, personal heraldry (perhaps reflected on the units in their detachment) and so on. Just the fact you can’t change their wargear so much doesn’t mean you can’t go to town on conversions if you want to.
I’m glad we’ve got the Logistical Benefit Prime Advantage. Without that, this system would feel very inflexible, especially if you wanted to bring just one unit of a particular role. You don’t want to have to bring a character just to unlock a 45 point Tarantula battery, and you don’t have to.
I’m not totally clear on the logic for getting more of some Battlefield Roles per Detachment compared to others. It’s odd how difficult it is to bring Dreadnoughts compared to Tanks, for example, though I suppose it probably reflects their rarity. I’m open to seeing how this works in practice as more people build lists and play games.
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