Welcome back Hobby Maniac’s! Today we’re going to try and scratch the surface on the new Horus Heresy Book Six, Retribution.
Inside the book, the first thing you’ll see is the retribution campaign which lets you go through some of the missions. There’s a lot of fluff in the book which I think is amazing. Today, we’re going to focus on the rules:
There are new rites of war available to all the legions, which hadn’t been represented before. If you’ve bought the five books in the past you might be wondering why you’d want to buy this book. Besides the continuation of the story of course, there’s nine new Rites of War:
Breathern of Iron, Ally in Battle-Automata maniples, and Fury of the Ancients, Dreadnoughts as Troops. (Yes, Please!)
There’s also Legion Specific Rites of War for: Sons of Horus, Death Guard, World Eaters, Emperor’s Children, World Bearers, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion, Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, Ironhands, Raven Guard and Salamanders. Of course, they come with limitations but veteran 30k players are used to this.
Next up, the Shattered Legions section, which is really all encompassing, includes rules that really let you make like a Horus Heresy All-Stars type list. Chosen from the Crusade Army List, you must include units with different versions of the Legiones Astartes special rule. The list must contain at least two different Legions, the paint schemes should be obvious which Legion each unit belongs too; including their HQ’s. It may never include a Primach and must be declared if belonging to Traitor or Loyalist factions. Also, these are not denial units. These guys are too busy seeking revenge to concern themselves with objective markers. Some of the Legion-Specific special rules don’t carry over and some modify.
There’s a couple Shattered Legion Rites of War: After Isstvan, which represents units from these decimated units banding together and striking out as one. Hunter-Killer, which representing the force hunting down those remaining bands.
There’s also an Age of Darkness Theme; Army of Dark Compliance. This allows you to represent armies raised by Horus on conquered worlds. It gives you unique saves if people are shooting at you through cults.
Then there are the Knights Errant. Any loyalist army can add them to their forces. Garro comes with a really cool weapon, Paragon Bolter, 24” Str 4 Ap5 Assault 3, Rending, Master-Crafted. They get “By Falsehood Cloaked” which lets them Deep Strike, don’t scatter, which grants them essentially 1 turn invisibility when they arrive from shooting, and any charges made against them are disordered. He also has a neat little rule, The emperor protects, which lets him take a leadership test the first time he loses his last wound so he can remain in play. Rubio is in here too. He’s a Psyker who gets to re-roll failed attempts, and a lot of the same wargear as Garro.
There’s also a “Build-a-knight” section, which lets you customize your own Knight-Errant but there’s one BIG caveat. You’ll need your legion books to look up the all these war gear options. Forge World, you’re dropping the ball on this point.
There’s another sub-type army in here, the Blackshields and they’re shrouded in mystery; we don’t know if they’re good or bad. You declare if they’re going to be traitor or loyalist at the beginning of the game. They do have some interesting drawbracks, like not being able to take certain units because of their lack of organization. They get special rules, which are in essence their rites of war, but they aren’t called that, one example: Death Seekers, 6+ Feel no Pain, may not voluntarily fail moral checks and if they fail they move towards enemy targets instead of falling back. However, each pro comes with a con.
They come with unique weapons like an Assault 2 Bolter; which lets them charge but it has to be disordered. Their flamers come with Overpressure, which lets them fire at Str 4, Torrent, and, of course, Gets Hot; can’t be used in Overwatch. They have a lot unique stuff. They’ve take the safeties off their weapons because they don’t give a flip. The rest of the section goes into the The Nemean Reaver, Character HQ, The Blacksheild Reaver Lord,HQ, and the Black Shield Marauder Squad which starts out as a 5-man squad.
Then, the book goes into some new Consul types: Praevian, Delegatus, and Herald. These units have cast off their old experimental rules and are now fully ready for battle and downloadable from Forge World. The Herald, I belive, is brand-new, and comes with several different banners that make him pretty nifty.
Then there’s the Leviathan, Contemptor-Cortus, Mastodon, and a few special characters: Endryd Haar, Autilon Skorr, Tybalt Marr, Shadrak Meduson, Cassian Dracos Reborn, Narik Dreygur, Kheron Ophion of the Kyroptera, and Xiaphas Jurr.
Next up, Blood Angels, White Scars, and dark angels. I’m just going to let show you the pages (not including rites of war because, quite honestly, I’m not here for your photocopying needs)
Being able to take Assault Cannon’s in lieu of storm bolters is amazing, everyone is hot and heavy about it, can you imagine a Command Squad with Assault Cannons? It does come with the old weapon jam rule, which doesn’t happen often, but does happen. Very Old school, I’m a fan. All jump infantry can be held in reserves, come in turn one, +1 initiative on the turn they assault, all their shooting attacks cause pinning. Oookaaaay.
White Scars get a neat Power Glaive, User/+1, AP2/3, Melee, which lets you pick which mode he’ll used based on his off hand weapon, if any; +1/AP2 is the Two-Handed version. They get Skyhunter and Outrider squads as scoring, Hit & Run, Infantry without transports start in reserve, units without heavy, salvo, or ordnance gain hit & run and outflank. And heavy weapon teams gain outflank. Kinda neat.
The Dark Angels, get to hit on 3’s if Weapon skill is the same. Interestingly, if the enemy has an equal amount of more units in play at the end of the game they get D3 victory points. I guess you better be good at killing. 30kThey get a new plasma gun variant, Salvo2/3 gets hot, there’s a Terranic Great sword, +2/AP3/2handed/Instant Death; Stasis Shells, causing -1 penalty to Weapon skill, and a Poison heavy bolter shell.
They only get to choose Sky Hunter and Outriders as troops, IC’s in combat can re-roll wounds against targets with toughness values of 5+, Jet Bikes and Skimmers may leave the table and re-enter via outflank, Re-roll Sweeping Advance, and they can get Rad Grenades.
After that, There’s the Mechanicum units which we’ve already seen for the battle-automata maniple, Macroarid Explorator, Ordinatus-Minoris Macro Engine, Mechanicum Cerastus Knight –Atrapos, and updated charts for Cybertheurgy, and Anacharis Scoria.
If you want to see all the pages we talked about today in glorious HD, please go check out the video!
About the Author: Rob Baer
Rob Baer
Job Title: Managing Editor
Founded Spikey Bits in 2009
Socials: Rob Baer on Facebook and @catdaddymbg on X
About Rob Baer: Founder, Publisher, & Managing Editor of Spikey Bits, the leading tabletop gaming news website focused on the hobby side of wargaming and miniatures.
Rob also co-founded and currently hosts the Long War Podcast, which has over 350 episodes and focuses on tabletop miniatures gaming, specializing in Warhammer 40k. and spent six years writing for Bell of Lost Souls.
Every year, along with his co-hosts, he helps host the Long War 40k Doubles Tournament at Adepticon and the Long War 40k Doubles at Las Vegas Open, which attracts over 350 players from around the world.
Rob has won many Warhammer 40k Tournaments over the years, including multiple first-place finishes in Warhammer 40k Grand Tournaments over the years and even winning 1st place at the Adepticon 40k Team Tournament.
With over 30 years of experience in retail and distribution, Rob knows all the products and exactly which ones are the best. As a member of GAMA (Game Manufacturers Association), he advocates for gaming stores and manufacturers in these difficult times, always looking for the next big thing to feature for the miniatures hobby, helping everyone to provide the value consumers want.
While he’s played every edition of Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (since 5th Edition) and has been hobbying on miniatures since the 1980s, Titans of all sizes will always be his favorite! It’s even rumored that his hobby vault rivals the Solemnance Galleries, containing rulebooks filled with lore from editions long past, ancient packs of black-bordered Magic Cards, and models made of both pewter and resin.
