Horus Heresy – Legions Imperialis

With yesterdays non-40k preview we had an epic teaser and reveal on the return of small scale battles in the Grim Dark future, but not covering 40k but 30k's conflict of the Horus Heresy. The name Epic is dropped and returns as Warhammer The Horus Heresy - Legions Imperialis.

And this means, I am spot on with my Horus Heresy on an epic scale and really looking forward, what the rules and new range brings along.

Games Workshop revealed a rulebook and starter set, which can be either used as a conflict or large army box, covering Space Marines and Solar Auxilia. The poster boys for this release are the death guard.

There are a whopping 223 miniatures in the box, split between Space Marines, Solar Auxilia, and Titans. That’s 106 Space Marine infantry and walkers, five Space Marine tanks, 104 Solar Auxilia infantry and walkers, six Solar Auxilia tanks, and two Warhound Titans with brand-new plastic weapon options. 

Two Warhounds, a couple of tanks for both sides and a few infantry units. For the Space Marines, we see Mark VI armour covering command, regular tacticals and devastators along with Terminators in Cataphractii armour

As we see a certain formation twice along the Space Marines, I assume we will have a sprue with the following options included twice:

• 5x SM Kommando in Mk 6 armour
• 30x SM in Mk 6 with different weapons (regular, special and heavy)
• 5x Terminators in Cataphractii Armour
• 5x Assault SM in MK6

That is actually not that far off from the old plastic sprue of the Space Marine Battle Group sprue.

I am not sure if the Contemptor Dreadnoughts are on their own, or are part of the Space Marine sprue as well. The Predators are probably three to a sprue, and from the look on the pictures (ignore the bend gun on the Predator Destructor), I assume we have several options as it would make sense for everything on a Rhino chassis to be at least slightly combined. The major difference are the turrets and this would give you the option to cover whirlwinds etc. in a single sprue.

The Sicaran would probably be a sprue of two, or maybe just like the old sprue, combined with two Sicarans and three Predators on a sprue, with things like Rhinos and Land Raider (maybe Spartans) on a different sprue. Maybe similar to the design of the sprue above.

Regarding the Solar Auxilia. I would have fancied a generic Imperial Milita a bit more, but if this focuses on the Solar War, that is a reasonable choice. Similar to the Space Marines, I assume that the infantry content is spread across a sprue twice, with an additional sprue for Leman Russ and Malcador tanks.

As for the Warhounds, I've covered the kit as part of the Adeptus Titanicus range on here. From the paint job, it seems as a Warhound each is with the Death Guard and Solar Auxilia. And what is new about these? Well, those aren't Forge World upgrades, but a whole set of five (new) plastic weapon options. The Volkite Eradicator and Ursus Claw/Natrix Shock Lance are currently available in resin by Forge World, but the Incisor pattern Melta Lance and Missile pod are new.

Really looking forward to that sprue, I assume the boxed set will replace this one with the options, as the third sprue on the Warhound kit "just" covers the weapons and would easily replaced.

There are further information in the article, that are quite interesting. For example as Legions Imperialis is 1/4 scale, just like Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis, we can use all of the kits we already have access to and it seems that they are covered in the rulebook right from the start.

The inclusion of Warhounds heralds the next bit of good news: all of your Adeptus Titanicus and Heresy-relevant Aeronautica Imperialis miniatures can be used in Legions Imperialis thanks to rules and unit profiles found in the massive Legions Imperialis Rulebook.

As it seems, that we will see a re-release of the Civitias Imperialis range (maybe even the bigger boxed sets), but it surely means that I'll have some more GrimDarkTerrain printed.

All of the scenery that was released with Adeptus Titanicus is also returning for use in Legions Imperialis, with more to follow. Everything in this range is epic scale, around a quarter of the height of their larger Horus Heresy counterpart miniatures.

And we will see it sooner as we might expect - in August so only 4-6 weeks until we can get started.