EDIT:

PLEASE NOTE: Horus Heresy Epic development has in general been taken over by the Death of Istvaan III supplement here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24216

The following thread is now locked unless required.

Cheers all

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There were 118 downloads of 0.4. 0.5 is basically 0.4, but with some corrections, a new ability for the Siege Breaker, and a smaller Storm Eagle formation. Oh, and now there's Land Speeder stats.



Changelog (not necessarily complete, but hopefully close) for 0.3 to 0.4
Fire Support Company eliminated
Bike Company moved to Support
Dreadnought Detachment eliminated
Terminators lost Dreadclaws, gained Legion Veterans
All Support formations lose Commander. Armoured Company, Bikes and Raptors get Consul.
Recon Detachment is now Scouts equivalent
Old Recon Detachment renamed to Sky Hunter Detachment
Support Weapon Detachment smaller. Added an Artillery Support Weapon option (Thudd Gun). All are on the Rapier chassis. Very sensible of Forge World. Stats modified. Dreadnought, Fire Support and Siege Tanks upgrades added.
Aerospace moved into Allies section. Harpy replaced by Storm Eagle.
Librarian removed from Commander upgrade
Consul upgraded added for more Legiony zest
Specialists added to the Fire Support upgrade (Specialists fire Volkite weapons)
Land Raider Proteus added to Land Raider upgrade (talk to Forge World)
Legion Infantry upgrade cut back to four units, not six
Veterans are 15 points more expensive (they now have an AA attack). You can't upgrade Veterans into Terminators any more.
Vindicators upgrade is now Siege Tanks
Storm Eagles upgrade added. The Storm Eagle can serve as either an AV or an Aircraft, and I think the rules I wrote for it work well enough. I've been wrong before, though.
Imperial Army removed from Allies
Mechanicum Thallaxi added to Titan Legion allies
A lot of stats got reworked somewhat.

Many Veteran units revised. Consuls entirely new (except the Librarian). Open to discussion on just about anything. Points costs somewhat arbitrary. Thoughts welcome.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

And the grand unified list of all Legions continues.

I've got a couple of things I want to hash out before I post up the actual list. Basically three categories: how I dealt with the Forge World list, how Consuls worked out, and some stats for a few different units.

Forge World's list added a few things that I tried to incorporate. I worked in Consuls as another way to further distinguish the Legions from each other. Destroyers, Breachers and Seekers all made it in as Legion special units. Tactical Support Squads appear as Assault squads (with flamers) and Specialist squads (with Volkite Calivers). Some units saw weapon changes: Jetbikes got Volkite and Heavy Bolters, Predators saw an upgrade to their main gun, Veterans got an AA shot, Land Speeders got Plasma Cannons, and I'm still pondering whether to upgrade the guns on Bikes.

Some things weren't included. Tacticals and Fire Support both were mono-purpose - the tacticals would have had no ranged shot, and Fire Support would have had five. This seemed both excessive and tricky to balance, so conventional weapon fits were kept. Contemptors were omitted. The Spartan is nice and all, but would be either a massive AV or a tiny War Engine, and both seemed strange.

In any case, there's a few things I'm trying to deal with:

Consuls
One character, the Siege Breaker, improves anti-tank shots. I can't figure out a good way to convey this (short of just giving him a MW attack).

I tried to use each consul to represent a trait that defined the Legions. Legion Champion represent honor, Siege Breakers represent tenacity or assaults, the Master of Signals represents tactical flexibility or maneuverability, the Vigilator represents stealth, the Primus Medicae represents purity, and the Forge Lord represents technology and artifice. Librarians were used to fill in the gaps in less personality-encumbered Legions.

That gave me the following layouts:

Dark Angels: Legion Champion, Master of Signals
Emperor's Children: Legion Champion, Master of Signals
Iron Warriors: Siege Breaker, Forge Lord
White Scars: Librarian, Master of Signals
Space Wolves: Librarian, Legion Champion
Imperial Fists: Siege Breaker, Legion Champion
Night Lords: Librarian, Vigilator
Blood Angels: Librarian, Primus Medicae
Iron Hands: Forge Lord, Primus Medicae
World Eaters: Legion Champion, Siege Breaker
Ultramarines: Master of Signals, Primus Medicae
Death Guard: Siege Breaker, Primus Medicae
Thousand Sons: Librarian, Master of Signals (I'd been considering the Vigilator instead, though)
Sons of Horus: Master of Signals, Siege Breaker
Word Bearers: Librarian, Primus Medicae
Salamanders: Librarian, Forge Lord
Raven Guard: Master of Signals, Vigilator
Alpha Legion: Librarian, Vigilator

Suggestions for changes are welcome - I'm not entirely confident in some of them.

Unit Stats
Rapier
Type: Forge World's Rapiers have an infantry statline, and the Baran Rapiers are INF. I think INF's justifiable on that basis.

Save: The 40K Rapier has a 3+ save, as does its crew. I'd go with a 4+ save for Marines.

CC: Should be poor. 6+ is probably best for Marines.

FF: Basically as Baran (5+). The quad Heavy Bolter gets 4+.

Weapons: As Baran, except the Quad Heavy Bolter, which would seem best as: AP3+, 30cm. Each has a role, and though that's a little better than is dictated by the stats, it's about what four heavy bolters should be.

EDIT: Removed unit stats for Storm Eagle and Fellblade, since they're in the list and don't really need much explanation.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

List added. Comments welcome.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

Thx will try it with a few minigeddon games next two weeks

Forty-five downloads. Any thoughts?

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

A few thoughts/questions in no particular order.

There is no land speeder statline, they are available in the Sky Hunter Formation.

Imperial Fist Urban Vets, 0.3 -> 0.4 they lost their EA+1, meaning their FF is now listed as FF4+ MW Ignore Cover. Typo? They also got a CC boost to 3+, typo? Was the loss of the EA+1 supposed to come with FF3 rather than CC3?

Agree Siege Breaker Consul is a bit odd. Random ideas: Commander (follow me into the breach, kinda thing), Something like granting crossfire bonus when not actually in crossfire to convey his shooting improvement (-1 to save is very powerful, might be too good)

Strike cruiser has inflexible transport capacity, ie if I want to only dreadclaw from it, its half the capacity of a modern one, if I use dreadclaws+stormbird+thunderhawks its 50+ stands. Suggest a cap in total stands.

Are Veterans and Veteran upgrades designed to be the only ground AA? 120pts for 2xAA6+ (2vets and a rhino) is pricy, compared to hydras/hunters etc in other lists. Compounded by huge cost of air based AA, 350pts for 'fighters', Storm Eagles 9AA5+ is very good, but having to use a 350pt air assault platform as the only CAP usable formation is iffy. Option for an AA support weapon platform?

Overall I like the list a lot, and think the base list with consuls+unique units is a great way to have a set of legion lists without having to have 18 different ones that would never get the playtests required to move forward, thanks for your time and effort on the list, and I hope to use it soon.

Sorry, just noticed this.

Land Speeders: damn it. I think my indecision about their stat lines may have lead to me leaving them out. Oops. Just use the normal stats.

Urban Vets: Nope. The thinking was that the CC boost would balance the loss of the attack. Having shooty close-ranged lots-of-cover warriors seemed odd.

Siege Breaker Consul: along the crossfire line, extending it out to 30cm might be interesting. Not sure it's that siegey, but interesting. I'll peruse the rules and the unit listing again and ponder.

Strike cruisers: It's bigger than a modern one. You can carry up to five formations - and no formation's smaller than four units (modern cruiser carries 20 units). Then you can carry all the aircraft on top of THAT. Total stands doesn't make that much sense - you can pack a lot of guys into any 40K spacecraft. The real bottleneck is the ability to get them to the ground.

A total stand cap runs into the issue that it's either ridiculously low (20 units? These are 40K spacecraft. You can fit more than a hundred guys on one) or ridiculously high. This lets me pack lots of units on the ship, but limits the ability to load up on a particular deployment mechanism.

-Re: AA: sort of. Forge World used the Hyperios. But dammit, that's post-Heresy (it's supposed to be newer than the Hunter), and the Hunter's ALSO post-Heresy. So other ground AA is basically out (my support weapon fetish notwithstanding). Simplest solution would probably be cutting the formation back to two Storm Eagles (or just allowing Space Marine Thunderbolts). Call it 250 for two?

* * *

Glad you like it. Let me know how the game(s) go.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

Re: Strike Cruiser, if that is the intent then thats fine, but you need to fix the dreadclaw entry in that case. it currently allows 2 units, should be 1 formation.

Re: AA, Vets being the only AA is ok in concept but cost is the main concern. An AA support platform is worth a look imo.


Additionally:

The predator statlines list the Predator Cannon on both versions, is the las (annihilator) version meant to be twinlas turret?

-Fixed in 0.5, which is now up (along with some other stuff).

-People'd have to convert the models. I think, with the Storm Eagles reduced in cost, there's enough air cover to prevent horrible death. "Poor air cover" was sort-of intended as a weakness.

-Nope. Annihilators are post-Heresy.

I greatly appreciate you taking the time to go through the damn thing, BTW. LMK what you think of the Siege Breaker's new ability. It's not exactly earth-shattering, but I think it works.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

A few more things that may be typos or copy/paste errors (v0.5):

Land Speeder stats, Multi-melta land speeders usually have MW FF, error or change?

Scouts: listed as armour 4+, usually 5+. Also the rhino entry allows scouts, but scout formations cannot take them as an upgrade. Rhino transported scouts are a nice small, flexible, cheap formation is the codex list, would be nice to have them to offset the big expensive core formations, unless that would be heresy of course

-Error. Damn you. Reuploaded a version with that corrected.

-Scouts in this case are in power armor, so that's intentional. You've got a distinct point on Rhinos - added the option.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

I hate to keep pulling up issues with your codex, and I do greatly appreciate the work you have done on it, but I am having issues building a list from it that I would feel comfortable using. I love the core ideas you have, unified legions list, consuls/unique units etc and do definately feel it is the way to go. However the Core/Elite/Support structure is so limiting when you come to making a viable army. It is clearly based on the chaos Core/Elite/Support setup, and thats fine, but as it moves away from its chaos roots there are issues that arise.

The elite section is really really desired, it contains so much of the actual nuts and bolts required units for an army to work that it is almost impossible to have the formations I want (need?). This is imo largely due to the Veterans formation, as it literally does everything, it provides AA which is very limited overall, it provides the unique units for most legions, it provides mechanised scouting (mitigated now scouts have rhinos). Add in terminators being in the same section and you have a lot of congestion. Compounded by the 1 Elite per Core. Now of course the whole point of the Core/Elite/Support structure is to limit the good stuff, but at the moment I feel it is too limited to really allow a variety of builds, every army is going to have to stack tactical/assault companies to unlock Vets (who aesthetically look like tacticals aswell, meaning visually it would look samey too) leaving very little room for the Support section.

I think the most logical way to start addressing this is to follow the Chaos route. Black legion lists had exactly the same issue, they had to stack companies (retinues) to unlock the good stuff, leading to nearly every BL list looking very similar. To combat this EpicUK has implemented (and NetEA are trialling) moving the armoured company to Core. This allows a bit more variety in what is used to unlock the desired Elite section and may be enough to allow a bit more flexibility in list composition.

It may be also worth considering spliting out the unique units from being tied largely to veterans, I want to take the signature units, they are cool and useful for each of their roles, but im hampered in doing so by the need to take veterans.

As an example of the issue (3k): I want to have 2 formations of signature units, because they are cool, useful and offer nice modelling opportunites, I also want 2 formations of veterans for AA and mech scouting, 1 formation of terminators would be nice too, but 5 companies to unlock that is not possible. I can drop a Vet formation and add them as upgrades to 2 companies to spread my AA and reduce the Elite count, but 4 Companies is still a lot. If I could get some AA from Support then I could drop the final Vets formation for scouts+rhinos and whatever the support AA is (or an upgrade: eg vets available to armoured company, they already have tacticals as an upgrade option). 3 Companies is more manageable, especially if 1 could be armour, and I could upgrade more than just tacticals with vets for the AA.

Sorry to be a bit down on things, keep up the good work.

This one I think is a bit more philosophical. I see that as a more-or-less necessary restriction. The bulk of a HH army should be big bloody infantry formations. Giving people the opportunity to make do with tanks will move the list away from that.

I've got about three solutions to the whole "shortage of ways to get Legion troops":

1) Change the "one per company" and "two per company" to "one per X points of Core" and "2 per X points of Core". That'll still encourage lots of infantry, but at least open up the option to just make massive Core formations instead of buying a lot of them. I'd like to open the Legion infantry up a bit more, but can't really find a simple way to do it.

2) Add an option for one more Elite formation (i.e. so it's one, plus one per Core).

3) Open up the ways to take Legion troops (many of them could replace Scouts or Raptors).

Also, I really do think you may have a Veteran formation obsession. You know ground AA isn't THAT awesome, right?

Anyway - any of those options seem like they'd address the issue effectively?

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The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

Option 3 would work, essentially the signature units would be taken in the Support section, that would take the pressure off Elite. If you dont want to move armoured company then this is the logical fix imo.

Maybe I am obsessed with AA , but it is important, and not just to splash planes, its primary use in this context is to ensure you lay a blast marker on the formation that is air assaulting you, this gives you +1 or 2 to combat res depending on your own BM situation, that is massive, and as a result can be used to steer an opponents choice of target for the air assault.

In a related note, it would be nice for more formations to be able to get access to it (ie able to take Vets upgrade). At the moment its really only tacticals who can (Vets can but thats only a size increase essentially, and terminators, but adding vets to termies is silly as you stop them teleporting, or fitting in a thunderhawk, or fitting in Land Raider upgrade).

Formations that I think would be nice to have the Vet upgrade to include: Assault Company, Armoured Company (primarily armoured tbh, they are a mix of LRs and Preds so there is transport capacity there).

Thanks for your time and patience.

Seen this?
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/L ... RPIUS.html
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/P ... orpius.pdf

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/L ... ANNON.html
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/New_Stuff/L ... CHERS.html
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/P ... avelin.pdf

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