Horus Heresy Rules

Two posts in one day - clearly I 'm on holiday!

Now, to be honest, I hadn't really intended to get this rulebook, for a couple of reasons. As well as the rulebook itself, GW had initially released two additional volumes - Liber Astartes and Liber Hereticus - containing all the info for the Loyalist and Traitor Legions respectively. At £42.50 for each book, I was looking at nearly £130 just for the rules. Then there were the rules themselves - in my experience GW rules have somehow combined quite basic mechanics with an ever-expanding set of special rules which make the game pretty complex. The IGO-UGO sequence, combined with usually having most/all of your army deployed from the start, means having the first turn is far more important than it should be, as you can potentially wipe out a significant chunk of your opponent's army before they get to do a thing (To be fair to GW, there are alternative deployment rules that can mitigate against this).

With the above in mind, I was looking for alternative rulesets, but then whilst idly browsing Ebay, I saw the books at considerably reduced prices (the rulebook was up for a tenner and the other two for not much more each), so thought what the heck, let's give it a shot. Even if the rules turned out to be as expected, I could use the info they contained to make my own rules or to modify another set. 

Now this isn't going to be a big review - there are plenty of other places that do that far better than me, not least because tbh I am still not a big fan of the rules as they stand. That is largely because they are so different in design philosophy - I don't want fixed movement rates, hordes of special rules, an unimpeded ability to move all my units exactly when I want to, an IGO-UGO turn sequence (admittedly GW have made a 'revolutionary' addition in the form of Reactions, which allow a limited ability - 3 Reactions per turn is the normal maximum - to interrupt your opponent's turn), and I do want fog of war and friction to be present in my games. So, it would be unfair of me to say "These aren't a good set of rules" simply because they were never designed to feature the kind of things I want from a game these days. 

However, whilst the rules themselves aren't my cup of tea, the other two books are more interesting. Yes, they introduce yet more special rules(!) but they also introduce rules and mechanics that give more of the flavour of the Horus Heresy, in particular in trying to distinguish between the different characters and ways of fighting of each of the 18 Space Marine Legions. For example, whereas each Legion tends to have a favoured way of fighting (The Rout like getting up close and personal, the Imperial Fists are stoic/stubborn in both attack and defence, the Iron Warriors are siege breakers), the Dark Angels are pretty good at any style of fighting, as befits the First Legion. As I am building a Death Guard and World Eaters force, I particularly liked the ideas for leaning into their respective characters. The Death Guard aren't quick, but boy are they thorough, grinding their enemies down as they remorselessly advance, letting off an array of particularly nasty weapons. In contrast the World Eaters are fast and brutally straightforward to play, as they are geared up to charging headlong into their enemies and hacking them into tiny little pieces.

So whilst I won't be using the rules as written, there is plenty here to get me thinking and to provide me with lots of ideas about how I can go about introducing this flavour into my games.