Where are we up to this week about 3rd Edition for Horus Heresy?

Where are we up to with the new Horus Heresy 3rd Edition this week?

Still no confirmed release date. However. Games Workshop has announced a competition online which involves winning your choice of Primarch, a bunch of upgrades like resin heads and shoulder pads for a legion of your choice, as well as the relevant transfer sheet and so forth. This comes with the new boxed set. Of significance here is the small print:

• 6.2 The approximate retail value of the prize pool is £1245/$1942.5 USD/$2975 AUS/€1565. This value excludes delivery and sales tax, where applicable. 
  
  

• 8.1 A redraw, if applicable, will take place at Games Workshop, Willow Road, Nottingham NG7 2WS at 10 a.m. (UK Time) on 6th August 2025. The redraw will be made by computerised random selection.

I am left wondering about the release date of the new boxed set. It seems from this it won't be until AUGUST! That seems a long way out here at the end of May. 

The prize pool is incredible as well. GBP1245 is very high. Let's break it down. There will be 5 winners, hence each winner gets a value of GBP249. This is incredible value just by looking at it. 

We will assume that a Primarch is worth GBP100 (it isn't on average, but Magnus the Red is clearly expensive compared to Angron). Down to GBP149. 

Shoulder pads are worth GPB16. Multiplied by 4 - because there's supposed to be enough for the box - that's GBP64. Heads are the same price. So another GBP64. Add on GBP23 for the transfer sheet and we get down to GBP negative 2. And that's before any of the paint brush bundle, and the paint pot bundle. Let alone the boxed set itself. My estimate for the boxed set is somewhere in the region of GBP150. Total guess. YMMV. 

And then the Horus Hearsay page itself has updated to confirm which things were real, versus hearsay. And to be honest, there are no surprises. There's no d18 in the boxed set. Hardly a surprise. I don't think the rest is exceptionally surprising either. 

Regardless, loving the forthcoming miniatures (breachers, assault squad, and everything else). Just a bit disappointed that the three year old books are already being eliminated. 

Wargames Gallery: Contemptor Clash

For reasons that I swear made total sense at the time, two contemptor dreadnoughts that lack any melee armaments engage in close combat. 

In imagination, the combat was won by the best dancer since all of the damage was presumably done through sheer application of weight, the odd blast going off, and mostly kicks. 

For the curious, the Salamanders dreadnought won the battle against the Alpha Legion dreadnought. But only just. And it took a while. 

The Dropsite Preview / Horus Heresy 3rd Edition: Thoughts, Opinions, and Impressions

Did you watch the Dropsite Preview live? I did. And I have thoughts. Let's dive in.

First up: there is NO CONFIRMED RELEASE DATE for the new rules and the Saturnine boxed set at the time of writing. This is incredibly disappointing to say the least. I wanted to know this factoid more than anything, and have walked away from the otherwise excellent preview disheartened. The best we got was "Summer". I remain optimistic that the mean Terran Northern Hemisphere Summer. With apologies to my Antipodean friends out there. My guess at this stage is late June pre-order perhaps. 

Cinematic. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars. Cool. But not quite on the same level as second edition cinematic for me. I didn't like the voices too much, I have to admit. I did like the "ambushes" that seemed to take place, but of course, these were focused on the new miniatures to showcase them. No problem really. I liked the disintegration effects. And the consul charging in was very good. Would have liked to have seen the plasma in action a bit more! The teleport in could have been better too. 

Mark II Armour and Disintegration weapons. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 stars. Nothing else I could give realistically! Love this. The disintegration weapons are so good, and it is great that they are interchangeable with the rest of the range. 

Saturnine Armour.  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 stars. I started out a little skeptical, but I actually really like their sheer goofiness. The terminators are massive, and the dreadnought simply epic. Amazing scale comparison to the leviathan as well. Truly amazing. 

Rules Changes. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3.5/5 stars. Rounded Down. Challenges are yet to be fully revealed, so I'll hold my tongue a little bit on them. I am optimistic. Army construction seems to be more liberal and this might be a good thing, or it might be a bad thing with too many lists drifting to become over-powerful in competitive play. Could go either way. Tactical status evolves to be more than just pinned and running away / routed, adding into the mix suppressed and stunned. Seems more tactical, but who knows. Maybe suppressed and stunned could have just remained as pinned for simplicity sake. In terms of the Stat Line Characteristics, Rogue Trader returns basically! Look, there was a reason we ditched Cool, Willpower, and Intelligence, and just rounded them down to Leadership originally. We seem to have collectively forgotten why. As an old timer let me tell you: better flowing games. I worry the extra stats will slow games down. I remain open to be convinced otherwise. But I do see the benefit of greater tactical depth for the game! The re-work of weapon profiles is actually good in my opinion. Looks like we drop (e.g.) Brutal(2) and gain D=2 instead. That's fine by me. The modifiers for Strength, Initiative, and Attacks is a nice slim lining move. I like it. 

We obviously have not seen the full extent of the rules updates. Nothing on reactions here. Are they still part of the game or not? 

Other new miniatures.  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5 stars. Fellblade is exciting to see in plastic. But what is a real highlight for me is the chain axe wielding jump pack marines. Oh my. The World Eaters will jump for joy. I want a box set of these already. Love the tarantulas as well (and their bigger brother in the boxed set - wow). Fantastic to see the rapiers back as well. Just tell us about drop pods for goodness sake. And those tech-marines that use them are nice as well. Possibly new cataphractii armaments. And. Finally. Plastic breacher marines. Finally. Oh my. How many years have we collectively waited for these. Since 2012 ish? Seems about right. 

Other thoughts. 
"The rules for the new edition of Warhammer: The Horus Heresy are not compatible with the rules in older books"

Boo. How long has the new Martian Civil War book been out? Not long enough. I hate the fact that we have a new edition within 3 years. All those lovely printed books outdated already. Despise this. Not good. 

I will probably just invest in the digital versions from herein to be honest. 

Very disappointing to hear that the Custodes and Sisters are not getting released along with the initial FIVE books. But spare a thought for the Daemons players out there as well, okay. And goodness knows which units will now become relegated to legacy units. I had plans dammit. And what about black shields too please? Too many unanswered issues right now. 

More Horus Hearsay

The rumour mill is seemingly running amok on the 3rd edition for Horus Heresy - and the Horus Hearsay website is keeping on turning that mill at increasing speed. Clearly there's a lot on there now and in the last few days we have seen things like cardboard dreadnoughts being prints out for battle. We all know that is going to be very low on the probability scale. So instead, I wanted to pick out something that I was personally interested in. This image, below. 

Did you know that in the metadata of this image, it is labelled as "post 25". I need to count the number of images on the page to see if they're doing it sequentially and check all the metadata, but perhaps someone else might like to do that or beat me to it.

What I like about this image is the sheer retro-feeling that it gives off. It is labelled as a multi-melta, but visually I am not 100 per cent sold on that interpretation (could be a multi-disintegrator?). Regardless, I really like the stripped-back feeling that it has to it. The detail is also really crisp and superior to yesteryear. Beautiful sculpt really. 

The other thing to notice here is the numbering. This component is number 5. Now. Usually when we are building miniatures, the core parts have the low numbers. Arms. Legs. Torsos. Shoulder pads. The weapons typically have a slightly higher number. So I think what we might be seeing here is an upgrade frame rather than a core Mark II frame? The assumed rectangles to the left and below the centre of shot are suggestive of the same as well. How many of these will we get, are they distinct to the core box itself perhaps? Not sure at this stage. But we are seeing and living in interesting times now. 

More updates and thoughts in future days, I'm sure!

Despoiler Test Model

I've still got a few Mark 6 marines left to build before the new boxed set goes on pre-order for the mark 2 marines. I've therefore decided to assemble them as Despoilers. This is the first test model, and also the squad leader.

The backpack and head are from the chaos space marines range, but is a nod to the forge world that supplies the World Eaters in general. The power fist and bolt pistol are left overs from the assault squad range, where as the base features another barrel that I chopped up to make the miniature have a more dynamic feel. I like this overall and am now intending to round out the rest of the squad soon. Small goals!

Horus Heresy 2e Review: Krios Squadron

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

3.5/5 stars, rounded down. The rules are reasonably good overall.

Background.

This is probably the final Second Edition review!!! Wow. I'm really surprised that second edition has only lived for three years. Let's see what Third Edition might bring. 

The Krios is a re-print of the Mechanicum entry, but with a new gun option which is the Irradiation Blaster. 

A battle tank that is swift and deceptively skeletal in appearance. Its armour is essentially provided by overlapping power fields and its true origin is unknown. What is known is that it falls outside of the STC constructs and therefore doesn't appear outside of mechanicum forces. 

Strengths.

The main strength of the tank comes from its primary weapon. There are THREE variants now. The first is the lightning cannon which I see as being well able to handle marines and other lighter tanks. The second is the pulsar fusil which is more of a terminator killer overall. The Irradiator Blaster if it gets a penetrating hit on a vehicle will also get a flame hit on the transported content. This is very interesting and unique. But the strength isn't great here. 

Other worthy notes here are the movement rate of 16 which makes it incredibly fast and easy to position.

Weaknesses.

Watch out for the rear armour of 10!

Builds. 

3x Krios, Lightning Cannons (375 points).

In all honesty, the "naked" version is great. I actually don't think the pulsar fusil is quite worth it. Add some hunter killer missiles to taste. The triple tank version is very nice and can take out many targets that you set your sights on short of those all round armour=14 tanks.