30K, HORUSHERESY

Horus Heresy Review

So I picked up a copy of the Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness box last week in November, sat down at the weekend and opened it up to have a good old mooch through the contents. And these are my thoughts! :)

The Box

It’s a big ol’ box! Had to reorganise the pile to fit it on the shelf.

Most of the weight of the box is the beautiful hardback rule book which you’ll find buried at the bottom of a huge pile of plastic.

I have no idea how GW force all this stuff into the box, I took the book out and struggled to get all the plastic back in, it’s packed pretty tight.

I got a really good discount on this box by ordering from ElementGames, think it worked out at around 20% which makes it quite the deal (relative to normal GW pricing) - Use my referral code JAM0969 if you’re ordering from there and I get some kind of a kickback (double points or something like that I think)

If you’re either looking for what is essentially an entire SM force, or want to get into HH then I’d recommend this box. Try and get it on a discount if you can, the GW price is priced like you really want that Spartan Assualt Tank.

And comparing what I paid to what GW are charging for the Legiones Astartes Battleforce I’ve got a whole extra set of Cataphracti Terminators and a rule book for not much extra, it’s GW so it’s all overpriced, but you take your wins where you can.

The Book

I love the rulebook.

In terms of practicality, it’s useless, there is no way I’m going to be reading from a big thick hardback book when I need to quickly reference something.

In terms of just being a nice thing, I love it, the printing quality is excellent and there are so many awesome pieces of art, I literally sat on the stairs for about 30 minutes just flicking through it when I first opened the box.

Here’s a few pics I took of some of the content:

Looks great on my bookshelf.

In terms of the actual rules, HH differs from regular 40k. The main difference is a complete lack of any Xenos or Chaos units, it’s all Imperium stuff, so Space Marines and Astra Militarum. Your standard Space Marine can only carry a Bolter, your special weapons like Flamers, Plasma, etc. are given to Support Squads.

The art is amazing as I’ve mentioned, it’s the one thing that GW rarely mess up on, they hire some incredible artists and the pieces that end up in the rule books and Codex are typically excellent. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the different Legions, though I was dissapointed that they just skipped the II and XI Legions and didn’t but like a huge [REDACTED] across them or something. That would have been a fun little thing.

The Models

Ahh the plastic goodness.

And boy is this box jam packed with miniatures to the point that I took the book out and struggled to get it all back inside without taking the little cardboard divider out of the bottom.

The contents are:

  • Praetor with Power Axe
  • Praetor with Power Sword
  • 10 Cataphractii Terminators
  • 40 MKVI Legion Tactical Marines
  • Contemptor Dreadnought
  • Spartan Assault Tank

40 Tactical Marines. 40!! That’s a lot of Marines! And they are all wearing MkVI armor, which I enjoy. They’re also better scaled to fit in with the new Primaris marines so they’re a little bit taller than a “first born” marine.

The sprues are up to the usual GW standard, I particularly enjoy the “extras” sprue which comes with loads of little gribbly bits to customise your models, they’ll be getting used all over the place for a good while to come (think there are 4 or 5 of them in the box)

Some might see the “Beaky” helmets as a downside, personally I quite like them, and it means I won’t have to paint any face grills. I’ve also got a bunch of leftover heads from other sprues so I’ll be getting a little bit creative with some of the MKIV Marines to make them “Chaosy”.

From my perspective the two character models are going to be a pain in the backside as I’ll likely have to do a fair amount of trimming, scraping and greenstuff’ing to make them less “Imperium” and more heretical. But looking at the models on the sprue and head swaps are going to be trivial.

The Extras

They give you some dice, and some plastic markers for flamers and explosions which are made from a nice thick transparent orange plastic.

Protip for these blast markers, there is a little hole you can drill through near the top (it’s half done already just need to finish it off) then grab a bit of wire or string and hook it through the holes and you’ll be able to hang them nice and neatly off a shelf or something.

You also get two crappy plastic rulers.

They are the same red plastic rulers that GW have been providing for as long as I can remember, and they are kinda poop. If you don’t have any other means to measure, they would be fine I suppose, but they are made from really cheap bendy plastic and I’m not a big fan. It’s nice that they essentially give you everything you’ll need (minus terrain) but I’ll be leaving those in the bottom of a box.

The dice seem OK, gave em a few rolls and they felt decently weighted, and I didn’t notice the “GW Loaded Dice” thing. More dice are always nice to have anyway. But most importantly, they give you a scatter dice! Scatter dice are stupid, but I love them because they are quintessential 40k for me.

Conclusions

I’m super excited to get started on this box.

Overall it’s well presented, you get so many minis, the sprues are good, and I adore the rule book even if it is very impractical to use as an actual rule book during a game.

DEATH TO THE CORPSE EMPEROR!

(testing, 1, 2, 3)