Highway to Heresy - Part 1

I'm sure by now we all know that Horus Heresy is getting its own rule book, something that is greatly anticipated seeing as we are still using the 40k 7th edition rules. There are many question floating around. Is it just 7th ed re-written? Are psychic powers going to become a little calmer? Where exactly can we find the "Agile" special rule right now, and will this be clearer in the future?

All good questions, but first let's answer the most important one - when can Forge World take my money in exchange for one of these precious tomes? The quick answer - November (hopefully).

Yes, that's right. From what I've heard on the grapevine it may only be a mere 3 or 4 weeks until we can get our hands on this.

Now a date is all well and good, but what will actually change in The Horus Heresy compared to 7th edition 40,000, I hear you ask? Another very good question. While there is still a lot of speculation to be had we have seen a few sneak peaks from the book itself, if only a few. So let's start with something that's always bugged me in 7th ed. - grenades.

Grenades were great. They gave a vet. squad, when equipped with melta bombs, the chance to have a fair fight with a dreadnought. That is until you realise that, despite the whole squad has them, only one marine is actually capable of throwing their grenade. Apparently the rest didn't have the mental capacity to think "Oh wait, this wargear I have specifically for use against armour? I'm gonna use it."

Now let's look at some of the new rules surrounding grenades.

Please forgive the low quality - screen grabs were the best I could manage in this instance

This has been changed, which pleases me a lot. While you can't mix and match grenades being used by the squad, if everyone has a grenade of the same type then all the marines can use them. 

This means that if you have a whole unit that are equipped with assault grenades and the sergeant has a melta bomb then either every marine can use an assault grenade or the serg can throw his melta bomb. You can't have the serg use his melta bomb and the other marines use their assault grenades too (or at least that's how I read it).

Now, I wouldn't be a Thousand Sons player if I didn't mention the psychic phase. This is undergoing some maintenance I'm sure you will all be pleased to hear. Well, everyone except my brethren who may feel a little apprehensive, obviously. I'm not sure what changes will come into effect with regard to the phase itself, but I can tell you that the powers are changing. One example is that "Invisibility" is no longer anywhere to be seen. In its place we now have "Mind Howl".

See the above apology

As you can see, Mind Howl serves the same function as Invisibility but, instead of making it so it's ridiculously hard to hit a friendly unit in general, it makes it ridiculously hard for one enemy unit to hit anything at all.

I'm not sure what I think of this, personally. I know that Invisibility got a lot of hate from none psyker players (and possibly not unjustly, either). I think this power could eventually be seen as the same, especially in games where Lords of War and, more specifically, Primarchs are in play. The way I'd use it is to continually cast it on the enemy's big bad and make them useless. I suppose this is balanced by the shorter range, so you will need to close the gap first, but it will still get frustrating if and when the likes of Horus and Russ walk up to Magnus and can only hit on 6s.

I will try and keep on top of any and all updates for this, but that's all we've heard for now.
Please comment below or on our Facebook page with your hopes for 30k and what you think of the initial look of the rules.

My hope - that the nice black book style will be used for the rule book. Yes, I'm still going on about that.


- Tom (XVth)

See how Tom just casually dropped a post as if he never left? Slick, no? Stay tuned for any and all available updates Tom can get his hands on.