Horus Heresy 3e Review: Force Organisation Charts

The first review of Third Edition Horus Heresy is going to be about the revised Force Organisation Chart. 

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4.5/5 Stars. Rounded Up. Confusing at first glance, but actually really good when you dig beneath the surface!

To be clear from the outset: gone are the traditional boundaries for HQ, Elites, Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy Support, and Lords of War. 

Instead we have new tags (and these are ones that I will be using for the forth coming reviews on Warpstone Flux) of:
Warlords (Primarchs and similar) - note the nomenclature change and potential confusion here;

High Command (Praetors and similar)

Command (Consuls and similar)

Retinue (For your commanders company)

Elites (The deadliest members of your army?)

War-Engine (Dreadnoughts)

Troops (as you know and love)

Support (specialists)

Lord of War (Those non-primarch massive units)

Transports (as you know and love)

Heavy Assault (terminators and similar)

Heavy Transport (heavily armoured transports)

Armour (Predators and similar)

Recon (Light infantry and cavalry)

Fast Attack (Speedy units).

But what is much more fundamental is the change to the Force Organisation Chart and the corresponding lack of Rites of War which simply don't exist any longer and don't modify things like "Take Fast Attack as Troops choices" that players might have been used to in First and Second Edition. This is worth a good hard look. The key page is 284 in the core rule book which I display below under "Fair Use" and the corresponding Legio Astartes one in the Libers. 

How does this all work?

Players start with the Crusade Primary Detachment. This consists of:
1x High Command + 3x Command + 4x Troops + 4x Transport. 

In addition to this, players are ALWAYS allowed to take the Additional Detachments: the Warlord Detachment, the Lord of War Detachment, and the Allied Detachment. Note that the first two have points restrictions (no Primarchs below 3000 points games; and only 25% of points on your Lords of War). Note explicitly here that Allied Detachments can be taken MULTIPLE TIMES (core rules: page 281) with a hard limit of 50% of the points value of your army in allied detachments (and this is deep: the allied detachment can get auxiliary detachments of their own). 

Primes.

Now, there are two interesting facets to the Force Organisation Charts that must be looked into with a good hard stare. Firstly, some of the slots have a magic 6 points halo around them which denotes Prime Slots. Units selected for Prime Slots get bonuses. Hence my view (already) is to ALWAYS take Prime Slots if you are able since it will boost your army and its effectiveness. The choices are interesting:

Master Sergeant grants +1 A, WS, Ld, and Champion (or another +1 Ld if already a champion). Only once per detachment, but a very solid gain for a close combat monster. 

Combat Veterans grants +1 to all advanced characteristics which is solid if not outstanding, but critically affects the entire unit.

Paragon of Battle grants +1 A, BS, WS for a command sub type which is suitably flexible and almost the go-to choice. 

Special Assignment grants you a second high command at the price of no additional detachments. Good if you want a pure army of one faction. 

Logistical Benefit: Gain another 1 force organisation chart slot (once per detachment) for your command slot. Very handy. Very, very handy indeed and probably the go-to choice for discerning list builders like myself. Note that this is NOT a new detachment, but adds to the existing detachment. 

It is also worth mentioning here the Officer of the Line special rule which permits an extra selection of auxiliary detachments to be selected. You are going to want Officers of the Line filling those command slots in my opinion. 

Adding more detachments.

Here is where things get more interesting. For your high command slot, you can add 1 Apex or Auxiliary detachment, and for every command slot, you can add 1 Auxiliary detachment. 

Hence for maximum flexibility for your army's choices you will want to fill your primary detachment with:

1x High Command (to access 1 Apex or 1 Auxiliary detachment)

3x Command (Prime with Logistical Benefit) and all with Officer of the Line. 

The above combination will grant you a maximum of 6 Auxiliary detachments + 1 Apex (or 7 Auxiliary if you like), plus an extra slot within the primary detachment. To be very honest, this is overkill and more than you would want in a 2000 to 3000 points game, but things get more restrictive as you go over 3000 points and you may have to think harder. Hence you might not need all of these choice, and in lower points games (like the ones I like, say at 1500 points), even one or two auxiliary detachments will do the job nicely. 

Note explicitly though that Primes are NOT restricted to your primary detachment. They also exist in Allied Detachment (nice), and every Apex Detachment as well. 

Thinking about my armies right now.
I've got enough Alpha Legion bodies to work out almost any combination that I need.
Similarly for the Iron Warriors, I just need to paint up one or two more models and I'm basically entirely sorted. 

My World Eaters don't work yet though. I have an assault squad, a warmonger with terminator squad, and a leviathan. I need at least one more command or high command for this. Or. I could just Logistical Benefit to bring the Leviathan in the primary detachment and use the Warmonger slot for the terminators, so it might work that way, but I'm planning to expand this force regardless.

For the Emperor's Children, I have a praetor, apothecary, assault squad, and a specialist las cannon squad. I actually planned on adding some jet bikes too. So undoubtedly I will need another command slot here. 

For my Shattered Legions, they mostly work right now right out of the box, so I am free to add some things as I see fit. This opens the vista for expanding the Salamanders perhaps. I like the free transfers in the core box so I might actually head down this pathway. I don't like my Mor Dethan Raven Guard being obsolete (melta configuration) so I might have to use them as "counts as" or something else (support squad), but they're fine. Iron Hands are similarly fine with their breachers. 

Hence I'm actually all good to go ahead and expand things for these additional legions, which is now probably going to be more core hobby plan going forward for the Saturnine set. Just got to figure out which force is going to get the new terminators?! 

Overall.
This is a fundamental and massive overhaul of the old systems that we've used for decades. It opens up brand new ways of army building that I (and others) probably haven't thought of yet. I don't think it is broken - I haven't yet fathomed a way to break it, but it may yet exist. At the same time, it does hurt armies like drop pod assault armies - but the Deep Strike rule already curtailed them as you can only bring one unit per turn onto the board via deep strike now (WHAT?! Please FAQ/Errata this!). 

Simultaneously, armies that used to be composed entirely of dreadnoughts are now hammered by two factors: a single dreadnought is a single auxiliary detachment, AND you will need commanders in place to take them. I think this is sensible given that in second edition contemptors and similar were just over-powered, full stop. I do recall a First Edition game against a Salamanders dreadnought army which I only narrowly won by tactical use of terrain screening for my Alphas, I would have wanted to see that in Second Edition, but here in Third Edition it is going to be harder to field, and I would remain confident that an all-comers list could actually do well given the points scoring we have in Third Edition. 

I therefore like these changes, and it allows so much more flexibility than previously to build some very unique, or expansive forces.