Welcome to all commanders of the 31st Millennium. The time draws near for brother to battle brother in a galaxy-shaking civil war, for the Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness boxed set is coming to pre-order this weekend – along with a Legion’s worth of rulebooks, plastic vehicles, and more.
The latest edition of this fan-favourite game refreshes the rules to keep games as tactical as ever, while injecting new decision-making and excitement into the mix. The boxed set has everything you will need to get gaming in the Age of Darkness, but what if you’re a veteran looking to catch up on what’s new? This video introduces the most important changes.
A few of these changes are worth unpacking in more detail – so let’s take a look at a handful of new concepts and spicy updates for the rules you know and love.
Reactions
The battlefields of the Horus Heresy are a fast-paced frenzy of back-and-forth fighting. This is represented by Reactions, which allow players to respond to – and hopefully, thwart – the enemy’s plans, even when it’s not their turn. You can make one Reaction during each Phase of your opponent's turn – though specific special rules can give you extra Reactions, up to a limit of three per Phase.
There are six Core Reactions, available to everyone and anyone, which are divided up by Phase. For example, you can declare a hasty Advance when your opponent moves a visible unit within 12” of one of your squads, allowing your lads to rush forward to meet the enemy. It’s perfect for setting a Tactical Support Squad armed with flamers up on Overwatch.*
The Warhammer: The Horus Heresy Rulebook also includes two Advanced Reactions for more specific situations, while the Liber Astartes and Liber Hereticus army books offer a unique Advanced Reaction for each of the 18 Space Marine Legions. You’ll have spotted a few of these in our Legion Day articles – how would you like to gun down enemies before they can squeeze a trigger?
Tougher Elites and Dreadnoughts
The Age of Darkness saw the 18 Legions deploy some of the most devastating weapons the Imperium had ever developed – so it’s no surprise they also donned the mightiest armour available. Legion Veterans, Terminators of all flavours, and certain Legion-specific Elites now sport two Wounds to represent their robustness in the face of withering fire.
Dreadnoughts like the Contemptor also see their profiles change to a Toughness and Wound system, as opposed to the traditional Vehicle hull system used in the previous edition.
Universal Special Rules Updates
Each unit in the Horus Heresy has access to a range of weapons, wargear, and innate abilities. To make it easy to understand these varied traits, the Age of Darkness Rulebook contains a full list of universal Special Rules you can reference in the heat of battle.**
Some have been overhauled and rebalanced, but a key change comes from the added granularity afforded by a suffix value. Older rules such as Bulky, Very Bulky, and Extremely Bulky are now simply to Bulky (2), Bulky (3), and Bulky (5). This simple tweak makes it much easier to work out how many Terminators you can squeeze into your Spartan Assault Tank.
And a Whole Lot More
That isn’t everything – Deep Strike is changing, Transport Capacity has been tweaked, and the Psychic Phase is gone entirely!*** Rules have been tweaked in every phase of the game, to streamline where helpful and add complexity where needed. This isn’t your dad’s Heresy! …it’s Horus’s Heresy. We assumed that was clear.
You’ll get your chance to try out all these rules – and more – when the new edition of The Horus Heresy arrives. Pre-orders go live this Saturday – sign up for the Warhammer Community newsletter to make sure all of the latest Warhammer: The Horus Heresy coverage is delivered right to your inbox.
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* Overwatch is a Reaction, now, too.
** The Liber Astartes and Liber Hereticus army books also contain their own index of rules specific to the Legiones Astartes.
*** The sons of Magnus needn’t despair – there’s still plenty of sorcerous fun to spread around.