Horus Heresy Rumors

Please take note these are just rumors and there's no confirmation that they are true or real. I just compiled a bunch of rumors from Reddit, Discord and various websites (Wargamer, etc.). As you know, Reddit isn't the most reliable source.

From what I can tell, and this is also from Wargamer, though the changes seem significant, it's mostly a rearrangement of existing mechanics, e.g. Brutal being moved to Damage, initiative modifiers folding in Reach, Unwieldy, Cumbersome, etc., attack modifiers for specialist weapons. I agree with Timothy, it's refactoring, not rewriting.

The Leadership, Cool, Intelligence and Willpower might seem complicated, but they aren't. You won't always have to use them, they'll usually come in very specific situations, for example, Cool for Morale and checking if they're Routed, Intelligence for Battlesmith rolls, and Willpower for psychic checks. This is to take into effect stuff like Fearless and Stubborn. So your Tech-thralls will have a Cool stat of 12, but 4 for everything, meaning they can't do psychic stuff or Battlesmith stuff well (obviously), but are effectively Fearless. Automata and Dreadnoughts will be similar in that their Cool stat will also be around 12 or so to indicate they are Fearless, but Contemptor-Osiron Dreadnoughts, for example, won't be auto-passing psychic tests because their Willpower is different from Cool. Same for Castellax-Achea battle-automata and their Force (or Achean Force) weapons.

Vehicles are keeping Armor Values and facings. No change in that, or they would have announced it in the livestream. In fact, that's where the cheeky "Dreadnoughts are going back to AV" jibe for the Horus Hearsay website is from, because they never intended to transform vehicles into monsters with high Toughness and wounds. However, damage will affect how you attack vehicles (which is still through Armor Penetration rolls), so hull points will be inflated to compensate. They're happy with how vehicles are handled, and like the "cinematic" moments created by the Vehicle Damage Table (explosions, etc.), and intend to keep it. Super-heavy are still immune to vehicle damage table effects, though. Walkers, aside from Super-heavy Knights, are being grouped under a single type, to streamline them, as opposed to "automata" and "dreadnought" and "armiger" and "sentinel" as they are now.

The three-year cycle that's going around? Apparently (according to an "insider," anyway), it's not true. It just so happens that playtesters thought there were far too many issues with 2.0 - the Contemptor Dreadnoughts and Heavy Support Squads (plus Reactions) being examples - and so they decided to push it out sooner than they'd otherwise like. There are no guarantees, but if there are no major issues with 3.0, there's no reason why the edition would be around for 5 years or longer. Of course, this is subject to change, because shareholders, new issues with the new rules, etc. But even if they release a new boxset in say, 3 years, it might still be compatible with the current rules if they're happy with them.

Legion Traits have been revisisted and adjusted. This is from Discord. Which server or group, I shall not say. Don't ask, I'll take it to the grave with me.

Dark Angels: Keep the Hexagrammation. Stormwing's +1 to hit bonus now includes heavy bolters in addition to boltguns, bolt pistols and combi-bolters. Deathwing is now +1 to hit in melee against opponents with the same WS (any weapons, not just swords), and vehicles keep their +1 Strength for Rams. Dreadwing, Ironwing and Firewing are the same. Ravenwing is now +1" for non-vehicles when they run, and Jump Packs and Cavalry now gain the Shrouded (5+) rule if moving over 12" until the start of your next turn.

Emperor's Children: No change. Something to do with you guys having a new codex in 40K...okay, just joking.

Iron Warriors: Their +1 Strength against Dreadnoughts, Automata and Vehicles are now only against Dreadnoughts and Automata with ranged attacks, good riddance (I'm biased because I play Knights). Now they reroll results of 1 on the damage table when attacking vehicles in both shooting and melee (hey, maybe that's worse for my Knights?), and gain Wrecker when attacking Buildings in both shooting and melee. This seems odd because it says nothing about Armigers and Sentinels, so I assume they mean Walkers in general.

White Scars: Infantry can now Run and Snap Fire and Charge. Infantry that can't Run because they're Heavy or something, vehicles, cavalry, automata (dreadnoughts?) or Primarchs get +1 WS on the turn they charge. Vehicles gain +1 Strength for Rams to a maximum of 10. Basically, White Scars are now Space Wolves.

Space Wolves: So what do they get now that White Scars took their Legion Trait? They get +1 WS for their hit rolls during the assault phase, while Dreadnoughts and Primarchs only gain this for the first round of combat.

Imperial Fists: Remember how everyone is complaining Imperial Fists are too strong? So now we no longer get +1 to hit for bolt and auto weapons. Instead, now all non-cavalry and non-Artillery units ignore movement modifiers as long as they don't Run, deploy via Deep Strike, disembark or activate jump packs. Models also count as stationary for the purposes of shooting as long as they didn't make those alternative movements (Run, jump packs, disembark, etc.). So basically they took over Death Guard's Legion Trait.

Night Lords: When attacking or shooting a unit composed of infantry, jump infantry or cavalry that is outnumbered, pinned or falling back, improve wound rolls by 1. No longer affects vehicles. Yay! Bulky models count as the number of models equal to their bulky value.

Blood Angels: no change. You guys were already perfect.

Iron Hands: They now simply get a 5+ Feel No Pain from their bionics instead of Strength reduction, which can stack with other Feel No Pains (Apothecary). If the unit has an Apothecary or Primus Medicae, it gains Battle Hardened. Apparently, vehicles lose their It Will Not Die (6+)? Not clear on that.

World Eaters: They keep their +1 Attack on the charge and universal chainaxes. Now any units composed of infantry, cavalry or jump infantry (excluding legion unique special units) can choose to become Berserkers, which gives them Stubborn, +1 attack at all times, 6+ Feel No Pain that can stack to a max of 4+, but they cannot hold objectives and count as destroyed at the end of the game if below half Strength.

Ultramarines: Mostly the same, except that you have to successfully hit the target with your friendly unit now, and not simply target them. But Ultramarines never miss, right? ...right?

Death Guard: What do they get now that the Imperial Fists stole their Legion Trait? Now Death Guard can never be wounded by Poison weapons on better than 6+ or Phosphex on better than 4+, and they even gain a 4+ damage mitigation role against such weapons. All of those Militia players cheesing with Armory of Dark Night Grenadiers wielding needlers, you just got hard countered. Good thing my dudes have volkite instead (and I'm not that bothered by Dreadwing's Strength Reduction). Oh, they're also immune to Rad Grenades too (the -1 Toughness aura) and can reroll failed pinning checks for infantry. Okay, Death Guard players, tell me honestly, is this...bad? Seems very situational. How many people actually use poison, phosphex and rad grenades?

Thousand Sons: My legion. We keep our minor arcana. Raptora got buffed to a 5+ invulnerable save to a max of 3+ now. Hell, yeah! Pyrae is now Furious Charge (2) instead of Hammer of Wrath (2), which is awesome. My Despoiler squads just got much better. Pavoni is the same, +3" movement and ignore Difficult Terrain penalties. Corvidae is much better now, allowing us to reroll all failed to-hit rolls. I'm assuming everyone's gonna choose this for their Heavy Support Squads now. Athanaen is the same.

Sons of Horus: Attacks targeting Sons of Horus non-vehicle units now get a -1 Strength penalty in the turn they charged or were charged, but only for units who were not already engaged in close combat (so you can't claim the penalty if your opponent charges your engaged Justinerean Terminators in the following turn). Vehicles inflict additional 3 hits on ramming attacks against non-vehicles.

Word Bearers: Units will never go below 6 for Leadership, and you count as winning combat resolution by 1 if you draw. Wait, you cry. That's the same, and Word Bearers still suck! Well, guess what, now you also are immune to the effects of Mhara Gal (that Dreadnought that gives you -1 Toughness if you're Corrupted or a Psyker or a Daemon), and do not suffer negative morale modifiers for fear against daemons or from wargear, like Night Lords' trophies. I guess they really want this Leadership and morale thing to work for Word Bearers, huh?

Salamanders: All units are now immune to Gets Hot! from plasma weapons. 7th Edition Adeptus Mechanicus War Convocation returns, but now for Legiones Astartes, baby! Units get Battle Hardened (1) against Flame, Melta, Plasma, Las or Volkite weapons, and vehicles and units with multiple wounds (think Terminators) gain a 5+ invulnerable save, or if they already have it, improve it to a maximum of 3+. That's...incredible, isn't it? If you're playing armored columns or tank-heavy, who wouldn't want to be Salamanders now?

Raven Guard: Non-jump pack and non-Terminator infantry gain Infiltrate and Shrouded (6+) as long as the enemy is more than 8" away. Dreadnoughts, jump-pack infantry and Terminators and Heavy infantry re-roll hit rolls of 1s after a successful Charge (I assume only that turn). Cavalry and Fast/Flyer vehicles get Shrouded (5+) if moving over 12" until the start of your next turn.

Alpha Legion: Lies and Obfuscation! Sorry, I mean, no change. That's not a lie, I swear to the Emperor. Really!

Please, please, please, take these rumors with massive amounts of salt. There's a huge possibility they're not true. I just grabbed them off Discord. Actually, not just the Legion Traits, but everything on here, aside from the Wargamer one written by Timothy. Do not assume that any of this is true and start whining on Reddit and bashing Games Workshop or the balance team for their "incompetence" - please wait until everything's been confirmed before you start bringing out pitchforks and torches. These are rumors, and not facts. As Valrak always says, rumors are lies until Games Workshop confirms them officially. So please, I'm putting my faith in you guys to not have overreactions and meltdowns on Reddit, social media or elsewhere. Okay? We're all adults here, let's behave accordingly.

Saturnine Box!

I caught the stream last night, but unfortunately, I am sick, so I couldn't get this article published. Wanted to write it earlier, but I was sleeping the day away because, y'know. Blame Nurgle. Still running a fever and I can't stop coughing, but nothing is going to stop me from fighting for the Emperor.

Jokes aside, if you caught the stream last night like I did (I basically slept until 2am, woke up around 2am and watched it until 3am+ before returning to sleep...ugh, I don't feel so good), you'll know that the new edition of the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness has been announced We even have a new cinematic trailer!

Constantin Valdor, Jenetia Krole (the Sister of Silence Knight Commander) and Malcador show up in the trailer. As do Salamanders and Iron Warriors.

The box itself has 40 MKII Crusade Armor Astarte Legionnaries, twenty or so disintegration rifles and heavy disintegrators, 6 Saturnine Terminators, a Saturnine Siege Dreadnought, an Araknae quad accelerator platform, a MKII armor Centurion, a Saturnine Preator, the rulebook, dice, tactical objectives and markers, blast templates, etc.

Saturnine armor has now been retconned to describe these massive pauldron guys, the first Terminator dude who showed up in Rogue Trader. Unlike most of the arms and armor, Saturnine wasn't created by the Mechanicum of Mars, but the tech-enclaves of Saturn. They first saw use during the Unification Wars on Terra and the initial conquest of the Great Crusade, but Vulkan perfected the technology decades ago and diseminated it among the Legions.

This included the Saturnine Siege Dreadnought.

Plastic Fellblade has been announced.

Plastic Tarantula sentry guns are coming, and they have new volkite and melta versions to accompany the currently existing heavy bolter and lascannon ones.

Please tell me Solar Auxilia has access to the volkite version too...

New Rapiers are coming too. You can choose between graviton gun, laser destroyers, quad launchers and quad heavy bolters.

They come with new crew too, all equipped with scanners and controls.

The new MKII Crusade armor also comes with assault versions!

And of course, the long-awaited and much asked for plastic Breachers! AT LAST!

More volkite. Uh, a Character? Veteran?

However, it's not just the Legiones Astartes. Other factions are getting new models too! For example, the Mechanicum!

I'm hoping this is the Pilgrym Skitarii that we saw in The Martian Civil War. Bionic legs and photonic rifles, maybe? That would be awesome! We finally have Skitarii in the Horus Heresy! At last! If they are a thing, I'm definitely getting a squad or two! WOOHOO!

Legio Custodes are also getting more stuff. Plastic stuff, I assume. Their Heresy range needs to move from resin to plastic soon.

What about rules?

Apparently, from what I can tell, though there are a lot of changes, it's mostly the same. So we're still keeping vehicle armor values and faces, blast templates, etc. What changed is the addition of a damage characteristic, so our meltas and lascannons don't do only a single wound to Dreadnoughts now. That should fix the excessive durability of Contemptor Dreadnoughts that make them such a pain to deal with in the previous edition. Hopefully, they remove Breaching and all that nonsense from plasma weapons, and scale the AP of ordnance weapons back to AP3 and AP2. They overcorrected in the previous edition to make Marines more resilient, but it just made tanks and Knights (such as the Paladin's rapid-fire battle cannon, or Warden/Castigator's gatling cannons) seem...well, underpowered.

The values and stuff might look different but it's actually more, uh, streamlined? So instead of Reach or Unwieldy or Cumbersome, you have Initiative Modifier, and AM tells you how many attacks you need to make. Strength Modifier too. So cool. I think they're streamlining the special rules. Simplified, but not simple. The only real addition, I feel, is the Damage characteristic. I don't think it has any effect on vehicles, though. I suspect we'll still be keeping the vehicle damage table.

We also have tactical statuses, but for the most part, these are just maded more obvious. So routed is basically broken, and we already have pinned. Now, we just put the tactical status markers next to the unit to make it more obvious. Cool, I guess. I think we also have suppressive fire, so suppressed might be from there, and stunned appears to be a new concussive.

We also have new stats to represent other stuff, so in addition to Leadership, we have Cool, Willpower and Intelligence. I assume Battlesmith rolls are now Intelligence, whereas we no longer have Adamantium Will, we use Willpower to resist psychic attacks. Interesting. Oh, and Cool would be Morale, instead of using Leadership, whereas Leadership will be for Orders.

Challenges between Characters have new rules, for more flavor, apparently. Not sure how I feel about this. My Solar Auxilia Lord Marshal and Mechanicum Archmagos Prime will not be challenging an Astartes Praetor, for example, and my Knight Warlord will be stomping them to death.

Speaking of which...

You've got to be kidding me. Now I have to buy all of these books again? They aren't cheap, and they're only valid for three years before the next edition comes out? That makes me hesitant on buying the Liber Astartes or Hereticus, for example. I might just get the Questoris, Auxilia and Mechanicum because these are my main armies, and I don't have incentive or the cash for the others...ugh.

Anyway, aside from this, everything else looks good. I need to go rest now, feeling pretty sick.

Krieg command squad and combat engineers

I finally assembled my Krieg command squad and Krieg combat engineers!

They look cool! I always like the Krieg, and I already have a single 20-men squad (or 2 10-men squads, depending). The Krieg Marshal is now...well, a Cadian Castellan, apparently (huh?), but I did have a Krieg army. I decided to add a few more units to expand my Krieg army.

I really like the Lord Commissar and his junior Commissar trainee. Among the best models I have seen from Games Workshop. Absolutely lovely.

Decided to go with a remote mine for the Engineers since it was fun to assemble. Not sure how it will go!

The Krieg guys are sort of a seconded infantry regiment attached to my Ryuusei Katana armored regiment. So the tanks belong to my Ryuusei Katana, and the Krieg are assigned to escort the tanks. I don't know if I'll be playing siege regiment or combined arms, but I do know I want to field them as they are.

I was considering kitbashing the Engineers into Grenadiers and have them led by my Krieg Marshal, while using the Cadian Castellan and Karskin rules, but I don't know. It'll be expensive, so I might not, or I might do that in the far future when my income is more stable. At the moment, I'll prioritize the Krieg heavy weapon squad, Death Riders and maybe Marshal Dreir to lead them for Devastating Wounds. I dunno. Also, I'll prioritize the Armageddon Crusade book and I'll write an article for that.

I also need to get the Sekhetar Robots once they're available separately. So yeah. We'll see! But I'll be happy to play Crusade (Armageddon) with my new Krieg models!

Thousand Sons Sekhetar Robots plus new Detachments

Warhammer Community has more details regarding the Thousand Sons. Yay!

The first article delves into the origins of the Thousand Sons's use of automata, explaining that we have a knack for empowering machines with sorcery and created the Castellax-Achea battle automata with the help of Zhao-Arkhad.

After the Heresy, without Zhao-Arkhad, it turned out that the Thousand Sons ended up creating their own robots as a result of producing servants immune to the mutation that haunted our legion. The Sekhetar, apparently, were crafted in the image of ancient Prosperine spirits (Egyptian, basically).

Apparently, they are supposed to be big and intricate, but designed for stealth, with complex magical shrouds woven into their bodies to conceal them from all but the most advanced augurs. They are then posted as sentinels over places of great fate and power.

They are activated by secret hexagrammic commands, complex logic routines allowing them to single priority targets and gun them down. We keep them as far away from Daemons as possible because you obviously don't want such malicous beings possessing our guardian automata.

They are equipped with the same Hellfyre missile racks that Scarab Occult Terminators sport, which fire long-range anti-armor projectiles. For close engagement, they carry a heavy warpflamer, which is paired with either a pyreflux meltagun or a power claw. They are Prophetic Sentinels laced with spells of auto-divination and oracular logic (basically, the logic of an oracle), so they can overwatch or Heroic Intervention for free.

They also get Infiltrate and Stealth, which means you can deploy them outside your deployment zone and opponents get a -1 to hit to ranged attacks when targeting these guys. They also have Toughness 6, armor save 3+, a 5++ invulnerable save and 4 wounds, exactly the same profile as a Castellax or Castellax-Achea battle-automata from Horus Heresy.

We also have a couple of new detachments previewed. First, though, our army rule has changed, so no more Cabal Points. Instead, we get Rituals.

To manifest a ritual, basically, you select a unit with a psyker (or Sorcerer) in it, roll 2D6 or 3D6 if you're willing to risk D3 mortal wounds on rolls of doubles and triples, and if you get a value equal or more than the warp charge value, the ritual succeeds. Also, if you roll 10+, you get bonus effects. Wow.

So basically a Thousand Sons version of the Chaos Space Marines' rules. Yay.

Rubricae Phalanx basically gives your Rubric Marines and Scarab Occult Terminators the old All is Dust ability from 8th edition, which means a +1 to their armor saves against Damage 1 weapons. Unfortunately, most people will be shooting your Rubric Marines and Scarab Occult Terminators with D2 or higher weapons. Like plasma and meltas. I guess it's better against boltguns and lasguns, but if your opponent is shooting lasguns at Rubric Marines and Scarab Occult Terminators, then...y'know, they're pretty much frakked. Like in lore.

Also, as long as my Scarab Occult Sorcerer is still alive, any enemy unit targeting my Terminators will get a -1 to their wound rolls. Whoa. That's just awesome.

Oh, Rubric Marines get extra AP on their inferno boltguns now. Hmm, cool. What about warpflamers? Another thing, Rhinos apparently give disembarking units +1 to their hit and wound rolls...for psychic attacks. So save that Infernal Fusillade Stratagem to make their inferno boltguns Strength 5 and psychic.

Warpforged Cabal seems more to my liking, making great use of vehicles! Nice! We get Warpfire Infusion, which gives each Vehicle unit one re-roll for hit, wound or damage rolls. But if they're within 6" of a psyker (your Sorcerers), they get one re-roll for hit, wound and damage rolls. So three re-rolls spread across a single phase. Damn.

On the other hand, if your vehicle is destroyed within 6" of your Sorcerers, they explode on a 5+ instead of 6. Yikes.

Warp Syphon drains a wound from a nearby vehicle, but allows you to re-roll a single D6 for the warp charges for your rituals. A really cool enhancement that stands out to me. Time to start stocking up on vehicles and Sekhetar Robots! Wish I didn't sell my Forgefiends, but obviously, I have no way of transporting them home. Oh, well. Helbrutes definitely benefit too, but that's what the Thousand Sons Contemptor Dreadnoughts are for!

I wonder what the other detachments are, and if Cult of Magic will make a return...