Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Yet Another Look At The Horus Heresy: Book 1



Well, like most of the blogging 40K world I went out and as an early Christmas present to myself I bought the newest Forgeworld book: The Horus Heresy, Book 1…  

Now I could bather on about the high production value of this leather bound beauty or the Aquila metal corner protectors. I could talk about how nice it is to have a proper Crusade/ Early Heresy Era Marine list with lots of new rules, characters and toys…  I could even talk about how we finally get rules for Primarchs…  But I am not going to. People seem to be doing that enough on the internet.  The HH book 1 is amazing and is well worth the price.  I would have loved the new 40K campaign book to be this good (did I say that out loud?)…  Sadly it is not, but that is another topic of discussion.
The Hounds Of The Emperor

What I would like to discuss is some of the background that is included in the legion sections of the book.  Not only do we get a good pre-heresy look at each of the 4 major (original) chaos legions: Deathguard, World Eaters, Emperor’s Children and of course The Sons of Horus; We also finally get a really good look at the nature of each legion pre-Primarchs.  Sure these guys were created in one of the 20’s image and certain aspects of style and temperament of their “fathers” manifested itself into the character of the legion (Early World Eaters were still shock/awe assault troops used against the worst of foes) but it is interesting to see how things changed as the Primarchs were discovered.  I especially like the history of these early legions, battles fought and early colour schemes and original names.  I also enjoyed reading about how those legions changed with the introduction of gene-fathers and later with the onset of warrior lodges and the heresy... 

The Death Guard were originally The Dusk Raiders and The World Eaters were The Hounds of the Emperor.  As a huge fan of the old Index Astartes articles, I would have bought the HH book for this background information alone.

The Dusk Raiders
Another thing that I REALLY enjoy about the book is the detailed description of the Istavan 3 battle/war.  The play by play in a non-fiction setting is really enjoyable to read (IMHO).  There are maps, pictures, and character profiles from both sides of the conflict.  I especially like how there are playable characters for both the traitors and the loyalists with mini-histories detailing how these characters got to the battle.  I was excited to see “black shield” special characters as well (Garviel Loken anyone?).  I am really looking forward to seeing who they put in book two! 

Finally it included a Mechanicum allies list.  I am really hoping that we will see this expanded in the future.  I would love to a full/dedicated list with accompanying models and vehicles.  But that starts to get into the realm of wishful thinking…  Or does it?


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