Horus Heresy Age of Darkness Rulebook review

Hi all,

I managed to get my hands on a hard copy of the Horus Heresy rulebook on Thursday and I've been pouring through it to see how much has changed between 40k 7th edition and Horus Heresy v1.0.

At first glance, I must admit I didn't notice much different in terms of content because it is based off 7th edition after all but I will get to that in a bit. The first thing I would like to cover is the quality, the layout and generally the presentation of the book. I must say, I am impressed, Forge World have done an outstanding job here, it fits in perfectly with my other HH red books, they've really gone to town on how they present the rules - if you are familiar with the images used to depict things like firing arcs on vehicles and such, they have done this here but have used 30k units rather than reused the old 40k images - a minor detail maybe it makes this look very polished like as though this is a rule set designed for playing battles in the 31st millennium.

Art work from the various black books have also been splashed about here too - to fill gaps maybe in some of the sections or space things out a little better so you aren't constantly facing a wall of text but as it's the Forge World art work you'll find yourself distracted (in a good way) by very pretty artwork of even prettier in person models that just makes you want to get your wallet out and... bad Hector, we'll buy more toys later!

At the front of the book, there is a nice In Memoriam to Alan Bligh which is a very nice touch and we will continue to remember him while playing games in the Age of Darkness for years to come.

Anyway, back to the content of the book itself, I did notice some things on the rules that had changed depending on how you play the game - not game changing, just you may need to rethink army compositions if you are affected. Also note that I have deliberately skipped the content that Tony Cottrell gave us a sneak peak at on Warhammer Live a few months back (but to be clear, yes, Invisibility is gone and you can mass melta-bomb tanks again):

Lords of War

The options under Panoply of War has changed somewhat but more to clarify what was meant about the Lords of War options that are available to *all* armies in Age of Darkness and that if there is a AoD datasheet for the unit in question then that will trump all other legacy versions of it (so Imperial Armour, 40k Apocalypse, etc). For example, if you wish to use a Baneblade in a Legiones Astartes army list, you must use either the Solar Auxillia or the Militia Cults datasheet for the Baneblade - in the case of Legiones Astartes, the same upgrades such as Space Marine Crew and such are still available to use in addition to the rules in the datasheet.

Another change which may affect some but not all is that in the War Machine Squadron option for Lords of War is that Questoris Knights are now not an explicit option unless your army list includes Knights as a valid Lord of War choice (e.g. Mechanicum Taghmata army list). If you wish to use Questoris Knights along with Legiones Astartes you will need to ally instead meaning that you will need to take at least 2 Knights so that some people may need to reconsider their lists if they were reliant on taking a single Knight for example as a Lord of War.

Fortifications

This looks for the most part like a copy-paste of the Stronghold Assault rules however there are some noticeable differences. First of all, possibly more of a rules clarification than anything else but in the case of Fortifications that provide cover by models standing behind it (in rules terms - so for example an Aegis Defence Line), the models must be at least 25% obscured to gain the cover save granted by the Fortification in question - no hiding big tanks behind tiny walls.

Another thing to note is that the list of available fortifications is a sub-set of all the ones that were previously available - I do not think this is a typo or misprint by any means as at first glance it appears that a lot of the fortifications that have been released in the past couple years have been missed out and just the older pre-Wall of Martyrs fortifications exist in AoD however it appears that on top of that, the Fortress of Redemption and the Skyshield Landing Pad are also conspicuous in their absence. Overall, there seems to have been a deliberate pruning of all the more possibly esoteric fortifications like the pipelines and plasma generators while keeping the more traditional style of fortifications (bunkers, defence lines and so on) in the game.

Daemons

Oh yes, there are some rules for Daemons here but only for the purposes of summoning (we're expecting more rules in Angelus which hopefully is a more in depth army list). If you have an older publication of Codex Daemons (kinda realistically talking 7th edition 40k) then if your opponent agrees you can summon Daemons from that book instead whereas if you don't have it or if your opponent is otherwise inclined, there is a set of generic rules for Daemons provided. There are stats for "Lesser", "Beasts", "Heralds" and "Greater" Daemons that corresponds with the relevant spells in Daemonology: Malefic. On top of this, you may choose 1 rule from a list of 4 for the Daemon(s) you are summoning that is applicable to them (e.g. to represent Lesser Daemons of Nurgle you'd choose Feel No Pain) along with the standard special rules that Daemons all have in common explained in the section.

This is the major stuff I have noticed however, I am aware that Radio Free Isstvan (Theforgottenlegion30k on SoundCloud) have done a podcast on the changes in the book where they have gone through the book thoroughly - I believe they mentioned that at least two of them sat down with a 7th edition rule book and an AoD rulebook open in front of them and went through everything line-by-line so if you want a more in-depth analysis of what has changed between 7th and HH v1.0, follow this link: https://soundcloud.com/theforgottenlegion30k/horus-heresy-ver-1-overview-and-changes

I'd like to hear what you guys think. Is there anything I missed that you'd like to mention as well? Drop us comment below!

Until next time!

Hector Cephas