Horus Heresy 3rd Edition: Weekend Thoughts on Saturnine and Disintegrator Reveals

It has been yet another week of reveals from the Warhammer Community about the new rules for third edition Horus Heresy. 

We have now seen the plastic frames for the Saturnine Dreadnought, the Terminators, and the Araknae weapons platform. All of these look "crisp" and highly modern as we have come to expect in recent times of new plastic releases. 

The Saturnine Terminators are - in their own way - beautiful. They are not quite what I was expecting for this model (cross reference a weapon mounted on the top). Regardless, the power that they are packing is staggering. They have the option of plasma bombards, twin heavy disintegrators, or the disruption fist. The only thing that they cannot have is a double fist configuration. Key here is to note that the weapons all have the same range of 24inches which makes most configurations viable. The plasma is very nice for large pie plates everywhere and there's certainly a nice tactic available to rain down support fire everywhere for this unit (and teleporting them in to place to be able to do so). The disintegrators are very nice with the AP=2 and double shots. What is surprising perhaps is that plasma is locked at AP=4. I feel this is a bit of a change. They have breaching to help, but even so, that is not so good any longer. The fists remain very good for close combat purposes and I can see any combination of configuration working here. Although the points cost is obviously high. Yet they are probably - just about - worth taking. 

The Dreadnought is simply immense. There are other weapon options coming out distinctly from the boxed set to make more options. Obviously from the stat line, dreadnoughts are retaining the wound characteristic and toughness, rather than returning to armour values. This is not great. However, there are now reasonable options to deal with things like this via disintegration. The weapons for the beast are all viable here as well. I like the plasma and inversion beamer myself. But again all of them are very viable. The points cost is eye watering, but worth it. 

On the disintegration weapons, these are obviously very new for this edition to be seen in such numbers. I like the mysterious hints in the lore that no one really knows why they fell out of favour, and that only Leetu is a notable marine carrying one these days. Clearly the drawbacks might be severe, but they do look like they are worth taking. The remaining question is what the points cost is likely to be for a full squad of these (and presumably a support squad and heavy support squad variation, plus perhaps squads like veterans I would imagine as well). 

We are also continuing to see a multitude of leaks from various sources. I never post them directly, but I am certainly aware of them. Plenty of folks appear to have advanced copies and are now painting up those miniatures prior to the release date. I suspect it cannot be far around the proverbial corner.