With the new edition of Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness imminent, there’s more to come than just the packed Saturnine boxed set. Each main faction is getting a Liber book on release,* with free downloadable PDFs for the minor factions – but that’s not the only way we’ll be exploring the battles, forces and lore of the era. Here’s the Warhammer Design Studio’s in-house Sigillite Andy to explain more.
Andy: The third edition of Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness isn’t just a new set of core rules and army lists. It also brings a new way of exploring the setting via a series of ongoing gaming supplements – the Journal Tactica.
Age of Darkness Journals will be familiar to players of Warhammer: The Old World, who have been well served by their own Arcane Journals for some time now.
By releasing digestible supplements more frequently, we aim to provide Age of Darkness players with a constant stream of background, uniform guides, unit entries, scenarios and other gaming material. The first is entitled Journal Tactica – The Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre Part One and there are many more in the pipeline.
Each journal is a 48-page softback book, and they’ll be coming thick and fast over the coming years. This will allow players to dip into the series with individual issues as and when something catches their interest – perhaps covering a particular campaign or providing rules for a unit they want to try out.
Future journals will cover many different subjects, the most obvious being the many iconic campaigns fought throughout the Horus Heresy, providing background, missions, playmodes and even special or variant units inspired by the stories. The Dropsite Massacre is a great example of one such battle – and we’ve intentionally titled this issue “Part One” as a statement of intent that we will be returning to this most pivotal of battles many times in the future, examining it from the perspective of different protagonists. Given that there were 11 Legions present, not to mention Titans Legios, Knight Households, Solar Auxilia cohorts and Mechanicum Taghmata, there are countless stories to be told.
Battles aren’t the only subject we’ll be covering, even though these are extremely important to Age of Darkness players. Another is play styles, a great example being Zone Mortalis, a set of specialised tunnel-fighting rules and missions that Horus Heresy players have been enjoying since the first edition of the game. We have a bunch of other styles and mission packs up our sleeves which will be appearing in future journals, some familiar to veteran players, others entirely new.
The armouries of the various factions is another rich vein, as will be the case with one upcoming journal taking a deep dive into the history and employment of Saturnine technology by the Legiones Astartes. This will include two Legion-unique variations of Saturnine Terminator Squads and a set of heavy-assault themed missions. Another will look at the superheavy tanks of the Legiones Astartes, providing a play mode and other gaming options that make games based around one side fielding these armoured behemoths a real challenge, for both attacker and defender.
And lastly, we will be looking at the many different factions active during the Horus Heresy. Individual Legions and other factions will eventually receive their own journals, providing each with an expanded army list and gaming options.
The core Age of Darkness rulebook and one of the Liber army books will provide players with everything they need to play an army. The Journals Tactica are expansions in the truest sense of the word; we want players to be excited and inspired by the range of contents on offer without feeling compelled to purchase every single journal in order to keep playing. We hope both veteran players and those only recently joining the Horus Heresy will enjoy this new style of expansion whichever faction they play.
* Save the Talons of the Emperor, whose Liber is coming later. They do get a rules PDF at launch, however.
