I’ve been playing a fair amount of Warhammer 30,000: The Horus Heresy this past month. I rather enjoy the system, which leaves me with an odd question: why?

Why do I like this so much more than Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40,000?

I’ll put a pin in that for now. I suspect I’ll have a review out later this year exploring that very question. For now, I’ve been playing weekly and I signed up for several Horus Heresy events at the NOVA Open wargaming convention happening in September. I greatly look forward to putting my Aurora Chapter Ultramarines on the field and trying some silly list ideas.

This last weekend I had a four player 2v2 Horus Heresy game and had a blast, mostly. The game flowed well and had a fun narrative develop as it went on. For five turns, we really did have a lot happen. At times I disconnected a bit due to how long the processes of the game take (I shoot 3 weapons on this tank, now let’s dice all that out…) which caused me to check out. I find it hard to focus as we roll hits, saves, wounds and then repeat it three or four times across four players. Definitely something I dislike about myself as a player, but my partner was gracious enough to cue me back in when needed.

The board was setup for us by the event host and he setup a fairly good looking board (if not fully painted). More important, it was an interesting board tactically, with a large centerpiece that divided the line of sight in half.

Our opponents had priority, so we opted to hold back out of immediate firing range and wait. We positioned our forces so we could effectively force concentrate on one side of the divide or split up and take both sides more-or-less evenly.

Early game saw us picking our right flank and force concentrating, with what little we had on our left flank being thrown into the grinder to delay some heavy hitters. This worked to our advantage across the match, allowing us to out-shoot our opponents and make the entire battle about a segment of the board we had superior numbers in.

The trade off here is that the mission was to control three control points and we spent most of the game controlling only one or none. By the time we hit turn 4 of 5, we looked pretty solidly out of the match, trailing by 3 points and not having a clear means of grabbing two points in time.

We decided to push hard and try to take a second point. I charged a Veteran Squad with my Praetor warlord into the enemy’s warlord squad. We duked it out across multiple rounds of combat, with my force losing until my partner’s warlord arrived and… stabbed him through the eye with a prehensile data spike.

It was a very Warhammer moment.

It also won us the game! We successfully pulled enough points out the Warp to win by a single VP, making for a very hard fought victory that came right down to the final roll. Truly an epic battle.

I really enjoyed the game and was quite pleased with how my tank heavy force weathered combat, especially my Kratos tank. It took multiple hits, even in the rear, and just shrugged.

I must have a dozen historical projects waiting in the wings for me to get to them, and believe me I greatly look forward to them, but it seems August and September will be focused on Horus Heresy for now. I still have ten Invictus Suzerain, a Land Raider Carrier, and three more Predator tanks to paint. The final army will likely be one of my more visually impressive forces and I can’t wait to grab a Knight for it later this year.

A month ago I assumed this force would be sold this year, now I’m not too sure. As a predominantly historical player, I was considering selling all of my grimdark terrain and remnants earlier this year and focusing on the glory of Historicals.

Turns out 30k has given me more to chew on than I expected and may very well become a main game for me for a while. How heretical of me.

 

(What? I’m a dad—I can’t resist a lame joke once in a while!)