The End of the Road (To Thramas)

It is the end of the road -- to Thramas. 

The Games Workshop Community today declared that the new book for the Horus Heresy -- Book 9 -- will be released in September along with the new model for the Lion. I'm personally very much looking forward to this release and thought I'd jot some thoughts down before they elude me.

First up is the page count of the new black book. At just over two hundred pages, it looks like being a smaller volume. I was optimistic that it might include some dark mecanicum force details, but from the contents page, pictured above, this seems to not be the case. Perhaps that will be ported across to volume 10. Equally, we are going to have to see some movement towards Holy Terra shortly for the final battles. I hope that Forge World have started to plan ahead for that and are actively considering what to do for those battles soon. At least, that is my hope as I am starting to feel that with the Dark Angels detailed, and the repetition of the Night Lords here that the series is starting to feel like it is drawing to a close. And those closure has to be the battle for Terra. If by some miracle Forge World reads my articles, I want this to be the case! Pretty please? 

In terms of what I'm excited about, clearly the rules for the First Legion is right up there at the top of my list. There are also a bunch of new units that look and sounds very exciting including the Iron Wing battle automata -- will we be seeing some "illegal" robots here perchance? The Night Lords repetition reminds me of the Word Bearers when then faced the Ultramarines in one of the earlier volumes. Sort of welcome, but not really advancing the field too much. 

The Thramas campaign looks enticing too. I'm wondering how narrative it will be in nature, at least in comparison to what we already have seen in the series. I hope it adds something new rather than being too generic. I guess I'll return to this point eventually.

The only question for me realistically is what the price tag will be. I hope it will not creep up too much for a lower page count volume.