Pete and Robin chat about their likes and dislikes about the new Horus Heresy box.
Is it one for the old guard, and not new players?
Did GW miss the chance to bring more casual gamers?
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I would presume they will follow the Forge World example of books so the two Astartes books a Mechanicus book and then probably a Xenos and armour book, There were 11 books I think in the Forge World range which they will probably reproduce. I can imagine the Horus Heresy will be more like Warcry etc in that it will be a side project and not match the releases of standard 40k.
40k 9th edition was supposed to be the simple game but they have to support so many models since they are a model company not a game company that you cannot really be simple. They have to stack so many special rules to make the models different in the game.
2 legions were stricken from the records. As far as I know GW have never in the history of 40K said why.
im confused your complain its complicated because they gave you three books rather then 19? you said there a bunch of upgrades and things, 40k has that to but after you learn one army then you now know 90percent of every army becueas there all space marines. like is seems you dont want to play a game because the books are big wild.
GW has a problem that’s come ‘round again, where they struggle to retain players because of their retail model (Underworlds for me) or poor rules. They make such amazing models, terrain, etc., but pair them with bad rules decisions or unfriendly retail models that makes it hard for players to stick with them for a very long run.
Have you checked out “One Page Rules”. Ideal for casual players looking for Warhammer lite.
I definitely understand that your viewpoint is that the system drives you away from wanting to play, but I generally disagree with this premise that complex/simple rulesets are correlated with good/bad rulesets. A complex game can be good or bad, a simple game can be good or bad. While Horus Heresy (and the prior 40k editions it's based off of) is much denser than a lot of modern wargames, it's quite enjoyable once you get used to it. It does come with more overhead than something like AoS (which is a game I quite enjoy), but I think it's better for both types of games to exist.
The wargaming space would lose something if every game was a simple, streamlined, <10 page ruleset with no customization, just as it would lose something if every game was a 1000 page tome that takes a PHD to comprehend.
Gentlemen, this is by far the best 4in of Horus heresy that I've ever heard… 😆. As always serves it is always a pleasure to listen to you two just being yourselves and having fun doing it, that's the best reason to watch your podcasts is you are who you are. That being said I think you hit the nail on the head the Horus heresy is a bridge too far, too much rules too many books too much money and yet another way to play their games. The models are beautiful, but it's all just too much. And I don't see myself getting into it as well as much as I love my beloved Mark six Marines my beaky Marines from back and Road trailer.
BIG wargames with BIG lists and BIG rulebooks and LONG playtimes are not my cup of tea. Now skirmish games, with 10 or so units per side, shorter playtimes (think, an evening game started at 9pm is totally do-able) is very much my cup of tea atm, and I'm finding you can use models across systems – Underworlds, Kill Team, Warcry and Stargrave/FiveParsecs/Reign in Hell type of systems are much easier to get to the table… AND you can use the GW models in most any of the indie systems… several of which have fun solo options now as well… Skirmish games/systems are having a moment, and the 'giant wargame' with thousands of points on each side is not the future of the hobby imo
Nope, it's the skirmish life for me
You have and love underworlds models and want a great skirmish game so you need to give warcry another go. It's so easy to learn, so streamlined, games take like 45 minutes and there's enough depth to keep it interesting plus loads of campaign/narrative content
I don't want to play Horus Heresy. I really want to buy the box! But I'm not going to, because I'll never play it. I don't care for the rules. I would love to read the lore and see the pretty pictures!
I mean… rules are really pretty easy. And there's only a third of one of those books with rules, the two others are basically 18 specialist codex compiled together. And in the rule book, you have a third of it filled with fluff, and a third filled with units available for everybody (so basically the equivalent of the vanilla space marines codex in 40K). The changed you want is just a new game, it's not horus heresy. Those rules have been updated also. I love your energy but im quite disagree with everything you say 😂 Its so easy to get into HH, its MUCH easier than 40K, there's no small rules on small rules on small rules etc… it's very straight forward.
Really glad they didn't dumb down (sorry, "streamline"), the rules, cut options and made it into something for children (like AoS). All you have to do is invest an extra hour or two of your time into reading rules and army list building, given how much time you will have to spend building and painting the miniatures the time difference is negligible. Not every game should be played in 10 minutes, "out of the box", it's a wargame, not monopoly.
I am very excited for the Horus Heresy rules – for me they represent a sweet spot (with a few tweaks) of 40k when it was at its finest. There's also a fair bit of nostalgia now with templates (as mentioned by Rob with his Trebuchet).
I don't think this game is intended for new players so much, it feels to me like it's designed for 5th-7th edition 40k games that have grown up and moved on to drag them back in. And it's going to drag me in!
I think the new players should start with 40k, they have some great starter boxes and the rules are easier to get into as well.
As others have said, you don't need to read and understand all of those books – the Liber books contain rules for 9 legions each, you only need to read the rules for your chosen legion. The rulebook itself I imagine is half fluff, half rules so really you need to read about 20% of all the books to be able to play 🙂
Fast, fasterer, fasterist! Such a Khorne chant ha ha
I was introduced to the Heresy through the first Epic Space Marine & as Pete mentioned they were fought in vast numbers as the Chapters were bigger. I’m still hoping that GW will release a new Epic game. Especially after releasing Titanicus & Aeronautics which would all be compatible.
Agree with you … GW do great with their boxed games like Underworlds, new Kill Team, WarCry, etc but their mainstream army games are just rules crap that haven’t evolved from their 1980s roots.
Thanks for your video. I preordered the Liber books believing that they would be more like typical codexes with plenty of lore and art. Looking into it more, I see that assumption was incorrect. I canceled my preorders. I am not interested in reading hundreds of pages of stats and rules. I did wonder why they went with an older and more complex ruleset.
There is a scirmish version of Horus Heresy called zone mortalis which is an official game
GW announced the Mechanicus book so they are following the Forge World line
Great video, I disagree with you completely being a veteran of 30k but it’s good to hear an honest option of the game. 30k is Games Workshop doing historical wargaming with all of the associated bearding. A simplified version based on 7th is still possible and I think the 30k community would combust in nerd rage if GW attempted to turn it to 9th edition rules. I can’t argue that 4” of rules is intimidating, a mini rulebook and basic army list would be better or even the 2nd edition style 3 slim books.
Always fascinating to hear opinions from people who come from different gaming backgrounds. Personally, one of the reasons I play AoS and 40K less these days is because I find those games overly complicated with too much minutia and individualism on a unit-by-unit basis, too many rules upon rules to interact with (warscrolls, warlord traits, relics, faction bonuses, faction terrain) and the scenario and secondary objectives are too much to keep track of (saying nothing of how fast rules change in the core games these days). Heresy might seem a bit more intimidating at first because everything is kept within a single massive book, but if you compare the width of one of those Liber tomes with the rules sections of 9 AoS battletomes, Heresy would be significantly slimmer.
Comparative volume or 'weight' of the rules aside, I think the thing you've got to take into account is that the rules are kind of made to suit the game and the setting. The Horus Heresy is a time of massed battles with the full strength of the Imperium from before its collapse, so it was never really going to be a skirmish game. Similarly, the majority of the armies have so much in common with each other that it makes sense to use a ruleset with codified universal rules – once you've played a couple of games and understand things, you pick up things much faster. If your opponent uses a Dreadnought against you, then you learn something valuable if you want to field a Dreadnought yourself. If your opponent has a unit with Counter Attack, you know how that works and every time Counter Attack comes up again, you're prepared and can use that knowledge to speed up the game in future. This, in my opinion, is much more elegant than reprinting "almost" the same rule on loads of different units but potentially sometimes with slightly different wordings that imply different things in different situations so you can't really rely on the rule being universal (as with warcrolls/datasheets). I often found in AoS and 40K that even after playing several games against different factions, every time I encountered a new faction, I wouldn't know what it did and couldn't really prepare or counterplay it because every faction does really specific, really powerful and really bespoke things on the tabletop. With Heresy, they can tell me this unit has It Will Not Die, this one has Digustingly Resillient, etc and I understand from the get go. Personal preference aside, it's an objectively much more suitable approach for a game where the main focus is on 18 factions that share a lot of things in common.
The setting of Horus Heresy is cool and the rules kind of suit the setting that they're built for – they're not bad, they're just different. It's way better for Games Workshop to put out a variety of different systems that play differently to appeal to different types of tabletop gamers rather than releasing several games that all pretty much feel the exact same barring a slant towards a particular phase. When I returned to the hobby, I started off playing AoS and 40K 8th, but when I discovered Horus Heresy I found that the games ruleset just really appealed to me and what I want from a tabletop wargame a lot more – it doesn't make AoS or 40K bad games or rulesets, they just don't quite appeal to me like Heresy does. And that's okay, because lots of people enjoy them way more and I'm glad those people have that option available! 🙂