One of the best things about Warhammer: The Horus Heresy’s ever expanding range of plastic kits is how cross-compatible they are, with all sorts of upgrade sets letting you convert and modify to your heart’s content. Each kit is designed to fit onto all of the available armour marks (aside from Mk IV) right out of the box, so you don’t even need to do any tweaking of arms or bending of joints to make it happen.
With so many options to choose from, you may be wondering, “Which of these basic troops and weapon kits combine into a unit that’s game-legal?” – so we’ve put together a little quick reference chart to show you what can work together.
What that boils down to is, “most of them.” The MkII, MkIII, and MkVI Tactical Squad kits are extremely versatile bases for a wide variety of other units, while also being fairly blank canvases for you to give them some extra flair when converting and painting. Here are a few of our favourite things to make with a simple mix of parts.
Tactical Support & Veteran Tactical Squads
The most direct use for a Special Weapons Upgrade Set is to put them on some bodies and call it a day, and with 60 individual weapons in the kit, just one box provides enough guns to upgrade several units of Space Marines.
Tactical Support Squads are cheap and cheerful, and a great way of delivering a handful of deadly meltaguns or plasma guns right next to your opponent’s favourite units, but Veteran Tactical Squads can also carve out a niche as efficient Tactical Status-inflicting machines. Since you can add a special weapon for every five models in the unit, you can bolster a unit of 10 with a flamer and rotor cannon to force Stun, Panic, and Suppressive tests on your target all at once.
Despoiler Squad
This close combat-oriented take on the humble Tactical Squad swaps their boltguns for bolt pistols and chainswords from the Melee Weapons Upgrade Set, giving them the tools to brawl over objectives. They retain the budget points cost and Line (2) rule of their Tactical cousins while handily beating them in the Assault Phase, so are great when flung out of a Rhino or when given the Interdiction Cadre Prime Advantage* from Journal Tactica: The Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre – Part One.
Emperor’s Children Sun Killer Squad**
The Legacies of the Age of Darkness document significantly expands your options by giving some Command choices more flexible wargear options and adding classic Horus Heresy units to your roster, like the Emperor’s Children’s notorious Sun Killers. These heavy weapons specialists can be fielded in units of up to 20 models packing volkite culverins, lascannons, and more, making the Heavy Weapons Upgrade Sets great bang for your buck while their elite nature can be shown off with alternate heads, shoulders, and decals.
Command Squads
Both Centurion and Praetorian Command Squads are the ultimate toolbox units, with each model having their pick of the armoury to better bodyguard your commanders. You can build your own by adding the Legion Command Upgrade Set to any box of basic troops – even the Assault Squad if you fancy a Praetorian Command Squad with jump packs – or pick up one of the Command Squad boxes to get it all in one.
Centurion Command Squads can even take a couple of special or heavy weapons should the feeling take them, so you’ve got plenty of use for any weapons left over from other upgrade sets. If you want to incorporate bits from your entire collection into one fancy unit, these are your boys.
Get creative! Warhammer: The Horus Heresy is all about making your army an awesome unique force with your fingerprints all over it, so you can fight tense narrative battles where there’s far more at stake than a one or a zero on your record. Mixing and matching kits to give your miniatures personality is a time-honoured Horus Heresy tradition, so have a look through everything available on the webstore, come up with some cool ideas, and share them with us on Facebook and Instagram.
* Ambushing your opponent with 20 chainsword-wielding Space Marines, hidden behind craters and low walls, is always massive fun.
** Several Legions have special units like these, but we felt that ignoring the Iron Warriors’ Iron Havocs because we’re too busy looking at the Emperor’s Children was very thematic.
