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.
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