We return with another slice of our wide-ranging round table interview with some of the guys behind the new edition of Warhammer: The Horus Heresy. Today we’re discussing disintegration weapons and MkII helmet fittings, as well as everything else you might find in the awesome new Saturnine boxed set.
Andy (Product manager): When we started this project, we knew we wanted to go right back to the source on our design work. Take the MkII Crusade armour, which now actually cleaves much more closely to the original designs from the 80s. That might surprise some people – the resin miniatures people have been familiar with in recent years were an evolution of the original, not the other way around. So here, we've gone back to how it was – and yes, they can turn their heads.
Dave (Content lead): The leg plates are a conscious decision. We tried a few different iterations of the design, and this one read the best. I feel that the old flared armour had given the impression that it articulated midway down the leg.
Returning to solid shapes with panel lines keeps it looking more rigid, with standard Space Marine design. It’s not one sophisticated piece of ceramite, it’s fabricated out of parts rather than the contiguous plates of later designs. That design language starts in the MkIII armour, and gets more sophisticated with the MkIV armour.
Mark (Concept artist): Ultimately we’re all longtime fans of this stuff ourselves, and some of us remember it from the very beginning, so it’s not surprising we’re looking back into Warhammer history for our new designs.
Dave: The Horus Heresy fanbase enjoys the history, and not just the history of the lore – they love the history of the miniatures as well. The origins of a lot of key designs are quite old, and we keep going back to them because people remember them fondly.
Andy: It's the same thing with the Rapier crew. We thought it would be a fruitless exercise to do MkII, MkIII, MkIV, MkV and MkVI crew packs, so we decided to make a unique pattern that a specialist artillery crew would use. To give it a pedigree in that setting, and within the company’s history, we drew off the original Imperial Space Marine, the LE02, which was remade in 2016 to celebrate 30 years of Space Marines.
This means we’re not springing something completely new on people, and when they don’t recognise something, older fans can explain how it’s really been there since the beginning. You just need to know where to look!
Neil (Lead writer): Disintegrator tech is again tied into what’s happening in the Sol system. The nearest equivalent we have at the moment is volkite, which is much older weaponry that’s in use primarily by the Martians prior to the Great Crusade. It was in use elsewhere before, but has fallen out of favour by the time of the Great Crusade, replaced by tech that’s easier to replicate and maintain.
Disintegrator weapons go back further still. These are old weapons from before the Wars of Unity, from the Golden Age of Humanity. They were phased out because they’re strange tech which is hard to make, because those who use them eventually meet a horrible end, and because they’re a terrifying piece of wargear – too much even for the Emperor and His Thunder Warriors, which says a lot. The knowledge to manufacture it does still exist in this time period, but it is something the Emperor intentionally steps away from… while certain Legions continue to make use of it.
Much like Saturnine armour, the Mechanicum doesn’t like any of this tech, but Mars is pointedly not paying attention to it, so they don’t have to raise official sanctions. They don’t build it or even recognise it as proper technology, and the Emperor is quite happy with that. He has a specific collection of weaponry that He keeps out of wider use, in case an element of the Imperium – perhaps like the Mechanicum – goes rogue. They don’t understand how it works, so they don’t have countermeasures in place.
Andy: Adrathic weapons are basically the same.
Neil: Exactly, the adrathic weapons of the Custodes are safer versions of the disintegration weapons. The technology is unknown anywhere outside of Terra, and the only people who know how it works are the Emperor, and a few very old people whom Malcador likely has locked up somewhere, who are probably building the guns. Perhaps it’s linked to when the Emperor took over the tech-enclave on Luna… we may never know.
Disintegrators are in heavy use throughout the Unification Wars, often by those factions fighting the Space Marines (who do also use them before they are sidelined). The Space Wolves likely retained some, while the Dark Angels almost certainly kept a big stockpile, and Horus probably put some aside in case he ever had to wage a war against an unexpected foe. Ultimately it’s only really used during the Great Crusade under extraordinary circumstances.
Andy: In terms of Warhammer history, LE02 came out in 1986, a year before Rogue Trader. It was the first Space Marine miniature, and he was carrying an unidentified gun. By the time the next Space Marines were released, their weapons were already bolters, and LE02’s weapon disappeared for three decades. We recreated him in plastic for the 30th anniversary of that first Space Marine, which I believe is the first time his weapon was named a disintegrator gun and had a profile.
Neil: You get quite a few in the Saturnine box, and they can be equipped by Veteran Squads. The research done on these weapons during the Age of Unity has allowed for a slightly less dangerous version to be put in use – we didn’t want to put something too overpowering into the game!
So the basic weapon becomes the disintegrator rifle, a weapon that’s not as all-consumingly destructive as the originals. There’s a limiter that prevents it being used to its full catastrophic potential.
James: We had included a profile for a disintegrator in previous editions of the game and it was an incredibly powerful weapon, but that’s now tempered by seven variants. These include the older ones, which are super rare and especially powerful, all the way through to more common issue. They’re still powerful – they’ll kill a Space Marine – but they’re not unchecked.
Neil: The older weapons still exist. Veteran Squads can take a few, while Praetors and Consuls can carry the original disintegrator pistols.
James: We wanted them to fit into their own niche, with a weapon family much like plasma or volkite. Each version has a distinct profile, with a utility that gives you a reason to take them.
Mark: There is a unique silhouette to the disintegrator. Every weapon family has one, which makes them feel recognisable on the tabletop, and that’s just as important as background and rules really. You don’t want to be trying to figure out what someone has their unit equipped with, and equally you want it to look cool.
Chris W (Concept artist): The pipes and the strange spinning wheel are the design language that makes them instantly recognisable here.
Andy: How we painted them was another consideration. For instance, plasma either glows blue or is a coppery colour when inactive. Volkite glows orange and grav weapons glow green, but here we decided not to attach a colour.
Chris D (miniatures designer): There’s a lot of fun and strange technology on the guns that marks them out very clearly as early weaponry, and that’s a lot of fun to work on.
Andy: The Araknae Quad Pattern Platform is the final large piece in the box. It shares the same pedigree as the Tarantula, which is the biggest kind of spider there is in our world, so for a name there aren’t many places to go when naming it beyond the god of spiders!
From a practical point of view, it's the Legion answer to the need for heavy-duty anti-aircraft coverage, and redeployable gun emplacements – and besides, multi-gun platforms are never not cool. To make sure it had an interesting niche in the army, and wasn't just a stationary tank, it has double the guns, and the atomantic pavise – a long-lost piece of wargear that we’ve resurrected here.
Neil: An important distinction between the Tarantula and the Araknae is that the former is automated, but the latter actually has a Space Marine in it.
Thanks again guys – we only wish we’d had twice the amount of time to talk about the Heresy! Tomorrow we’re moving onto a long, lavish discussion between James and Neil on the rules.
