Horus Heresy Might Not Be Dead, But They’re Working On It

The year has not been merciful for Horus Heresy. While it started well, with a dedicated rulebook that even I purchased, it did not follow up on that. We have been hit by the plague of Last Chance to Buy, which removed a lot of Legion conversion kits. They killed off the MK II armor line entirely. Eventually, they cut off MK IIIs and MK IVs, which was the only logical moves, as we already have plastics for those. You could still get plenty of those in Betrayal at Calth and Burning of Prospero boxes.

Could.

It seems that Games Workshop is killing the production of both of those boxes. This basically a death blow to the most reliable channel for getting new blood in the game. It impossible to overstate what a good deal the boxes were to someone who wanted to get into some of that Horus Heresy action.

Look at this set. If you decide to build an army of 30 Veteran Tactical Marines (I mean, you have the heavy weapons and the Rites of War), 10 Cataphracti Termies, two chars and a dread, you have an army that’s already over 1,000 points, maybe even pushing 1,500. And that’s by spending €120-ish, which is a bargain not only in the realm of lol Forge World bux, but also in 40K: a 1k pts 40K army will easily set you back €300.

The individual kits still remain on Games Workshop’s website, but it’s no longer even close the killer deal that it was. Observe:

We’re not really pushing €300 yet, but this is horrible when compared to what we had before. Especially when you consider that the €120 saved could then be spent buying Forge World resins: better dreadnoughts, pauldrons, heads, whatever. That dream is dead, especially when you consider the price increases that we witnessed that FW finally embraced allowing you to pay by local currency.

But what would happen if, say, you experienced brain death due to a freak VR porn accident and decided you wanted to actually buy an army on Forge World? Here’s what collecting a Calth-like set would set you back:

Oh, hey, it would just cost you a third more than buying plastic… and leave your Tacticals without small arms, heavy weapons or any command upgrades. As you may see, there are no non-legion specific Termies on Forge World and no models to build regular troops aside from MK Vs and MK VIs. So technically, you can’t even start playing HH by buying stuff from Forge World, unless you really like Breachers and Recons or go into RoWs that let you take snowflakes as troops.

Just another day in the most normal business in the most normal hobby in the world. Better get used to playing cardgames.