Horus Heresy 3rd Edition Reveals: Allies and Missions

This week in Heresy Land, we have been treated to 1980's adverts for JoyToys along with the Heresy in general. Whilst amazing, what I'm going to write about today are the reveals about allies and missions for the third edition. 

The Allied Detachment follows broad brush strokes that long term players will be familiar with. Choose another faction and add your favourite models from them. Two main differences stand out at this point. Firstly that no force organisation chart entry is deemed to be mandatory. And secondly that there remains a strong emphasis on HQs - or to be more accurate for the new edition - command slots. Only by filling command slots can you open up further auxiliary detachments. You want terminators in you allied detachment? Add a command slot. You want skyhunters? Add a command slot. And so forth.

Lords of war remain as a special choice with the restriction of only being one quarter of your total points cost - but you can have 2 of them in the new edition. There are all sorts of buried opportunities here I think. It would be very easy, for instance, to include a command slot amongst your skyhunters if that was the way you wanted to undertake allies for (e.g.) White Scars or Emperor's Children. The stand out oddity is dreadnoughts which still have to have a command slot. I wonder if any dreadnought could also be a commander? Traditionally not, but I am thinking of Cassian Dracos from the Salamanders explicitly here.

Missions on the other hand seems to be all about victory points (although I am assuming that a traditional clean wipe will also win you the entire game overall). Control of objectives is now done on sheer numbers, and the Line(X) rule adds to the victory points such objectives are worth per turn as well as adds to the worth of the models holding it for the purposes of determining control - labelled tactical strength.  

More rules overlay this with Last Man Standing at the end of the game (nice, somewhat traditional); Slay the Warlord (very traditional); Giant Killer (somewhat traditional as well - applies to primarchs and the like); First Strike (interesting and promises armies will focus fire in their first turn - nasty). 

Vanguard and Expendable round out these basics by providing a strong counter attack against units holding objectives (former) and denying points for first strike (latter). I hope expendable is expanded beyond this to be honest - no victory points for killing those Khorne Cultists helping the Word Bearers. No one cares about those lost souls. 

Its shaping up to be interesting and I remain cautiously optimistic for the main part.