Saturnine: What’s in the box?

The Dropsite Preview is finished and the new boxed set looks incredible. It’s time for a detailed look at everything in Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness: Saturnine.

Lifting the lid

Saturnine is absolutely massive, bursting at the seams with everything you need to jump right into collecting and battling in the Age of Darkness. It’s the complete package, and the perfect set-up for newcomers and veterans alike.

Inside the box you’ll find:

50 plastic Citadel miniatures
A 352-page Age of Darkness hardback rulebook
A construction guide/first game guide
Four reference sheets
Three weapon templates (large blast, small blast and everyone’s favourite – the flamer template)
21 dice (20 regular ordinary D6s and one scatter dice)
A range ruler
40 tactical status and objective tokens
A truly impressive transfer sheet comprising 1,172 decals

The miniatures

There are enough miniatures in the box to fight your first battles in the Age of Darkness – but you may well want to combine them all into one larger force. Here’s what you get:

Legionaries in MkII Power Armour

Let’s start with the most plentiful models in the box. Saturnine contains 40 Space Marine Legionaries in MkII Crusade armour. This is the first time we’ve seen this armour pattern in plastic, and it’s been well worth the wait. This pattern was made famous during the earlier years of the Great Crusade, and was famed for its dependability and durability. It has a few iconic features such as the single lens vision-slit – rather than the dual lenses typically seen on subsequent armour marks.

You get a host of weapons in the box, including all the bolters you need to assemble them as Tactical Legionaries, as well as options for command personnel such as the Sergeant, Nuncio-vox and Legion Vexilla. There are also 36 new disintegrator weapons – a mix of pistols, rifles, blasters and heavy disintegrators. These are deadly weapons from the Dark Age of Technology, originally intended to be turned against the worst horrors of the galaxy. You can build your Legionaries as Veteran Tactical Squads wielding these disintegrators in the name of Horus or the Emperor.*

Centurion in MkII Power Armour

Also in MkII armour is the star of the awesome animated Saturnine cinematic trailer: the Legion Centurion. In addition to his armour (which looks extra fancy, given his rank), he carries a power maul and combi-melta, and he’s accompanied by a cyber-familiar.*

Araknae Quad Accelerator Platform

The Araknae Quad Accelerator Platform is a formidable defensive emplacement. It’s armed with accelerator autocannons, the same deadly weapons we’re used to seeing on the much-vaunted Legion Sicaran tanks, and protected by an atomantic pavisse. This thing is big, beautiful and packs a serious punch.

Saturnine Terminators

Fans of old-school Warhammer will recognise these from the days of yore (the 1980s) – an iconic design brought to life in plastic for the very first time! This prototype Terminator armour is seriously heavy-duty – carrying weapons a standard suit of Terminator armour would struggle to power, and protected by thermal diffraction fields. This tech requires Marines who demonstrate particular – some might say preternatural – willpower to pilot it.

There are six Saturnine Terminators in the Saturnine box set, including variant heads and optional weapons (plasma bombards, heavy disintegrators, and disruption fists). These are unquestionably some of the deadliest warriors available to the Legiones Astartes.

Praetor in Saturnine Terminator Armour

This behemoth is a high-ranking Space Marine officer, clad in his own suit of experimental Saturnine Terminator armour. It’s one of the most formidable units available to the Space Marine Legions and really puts him on a level above almost anything he’s likely to encounter on the battlefield.

The kit has options: he can carry a choice of either a concussion hammer or Saturnine war axe. He also has a plasma blaster, and four head options, two belt options, two different flat-heads for the hammer, chest details and pauldrons.

Saturnine Dreadnought

An extension of the technology used to make suits of Saturnine Terminator armour, this hulking Dreadnought is taller and more powerful than even a Leviathan Siege Dreadnought. To pilot these preeminent war machines requires a Space Marine of singular discipline, even more so than other Dreadnought chassis, but the result is devastating: battle armour protected by thermal diffraction fields and boasting power-hungry weapons such as a disintegrator cannon, heavy plasma bombard or photonic incinerators.

Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Age of Darkness Rulebook

While this is a rulebook, at 352 pages it’s also a lot more than that. There are nearly 150 pages of lore providing an incredible primer for the Horus Heresy setting, and the forces fighting to determine the fate of humanity. There’s also, as you would expect, the rules to the game, how to organise a battle, mission packs, a miniatures showcase and much more.

Dice, Objective Markers, Measurers, and more

Saturnine is brimming over with useful gubbins to help you play, including 21 six-sided dice, a measuring stick, weapon templates, 40 plastic markers for Objectives and Tactical Status, reference sheets and an introductory booklet to get you started with your first games.

And that is a very brief introduction to everything you’ll find in Saturnine! Over the next few weeks we’ll be lifting the lid again to show you everything you need to know, with articles covering the revised rules for this new edition, the lore behind the new units, more detail on the models (and how to paint them) and much, much more.

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