Horus Heresy: New Edition Changes Up The ‘Mission Formula’ For Your Games
Missions in the upcoming Warhammer: The Horus Heresy are getting a few tweaks. Get ready for few Battle Rounds to score those VPs.
I’ve voiced some concern about the length of games in the upcoming edition of the Horus Heresy. There’s a lot of new rules and changes coming and all those little things add time to your games. That said, it does seem like Games Workshop thought about that to some degree as well. And the solution to the game length question comes in a changing a different variable: The number of Battle Rounds.
“Missions take place over four Battle Turns in the new edition – less than the previous standard of five to six. The mission that you’ll be fighting is also now chosen much earlier in the pre-battle sequence, right after the Points Limit for the game is set, which gives players the chance to tailor their force for the task at hand.”
Yep. The overall game length is now four Battle Rounds. Scrapping a turn or two is a great way to shorten the game length up for sure. This means there’s going to be less time to score points and take out enemies. The window for doing damage is smaller which means you’re going to want to get in to battle fast. Start scoring those Victory Points and destroying enemy units FAST. The good news is there’s more rules being added to help you do just that.
New Ways To Score In The Horus Heresy
To claim victory you’ve got to earn more Victory Points than your opponent plain and simple. Like previous editions there’s different avenues to do that. You can capture objectives, destroy enemy units, and also complete various mission objectives. There are still Primary Missions that require you to get a unit within 3″ of an objective to claim in. And if the enemy is nearby you’ll have to tally up your Tactical Strength to see who controls it. But those aren’t new concepts. So let’s talk about what else is changing.
The Line (X) special rule is going to be a great way to score VPs for objective markers. In one example GW had, a Tactical Squad with Line (2) would score 3 VPs on an objective marker worth 1. That’s a pretty big boost in your scoring potential!
There are also a bunch of new ways to score with Secondary Objectives.
Most of these Secondary Objectives aren’t new concepts. But what makes them new is how they are implemented. Each mission awards different amounts of VPs for each Secondary Objective. So be sure you check the mission to see how that will impact your scoring potential.
On top of those tweaks, there’s two new Special Rules that will also play into these Special Objectives:
Vanguard (X)* is found predominantly on Assault and Terminator Squads and grants its value in VP when your unit destroys or routs an enemy unit that’s controlling or contesting an objective, but also limits the amount they can score from controlling objectives to one – making them best suited for counterattacks.
Expendable (X)* meanwhile reduces how many VP a unit awards when it’s destroyed, to a minimum of 1 – which really hampers the First Strike Secondary Objective. A Tarantula Battery with Expendable (3), for instance, will only award a single VP when it’s destroyed in the first turn even if the mission has First Strike (4) in effect.
Honestly, I’m glad to see GW is experimenting with the secondary objectives and these new Special Rules do sound interesting. Overall, I think the changes to the game length (aka four Battle Rounds) will be balanced out with the all these extra rules. There’s a lot of foundational changes happening in the Horus Heresy and it’s going to take playing the game to really get used to everything.
Only four Battle Rounds, huh? That’s going to make things very interesting…
