GW’s Saturnine Box Flops Hard in Latest Horus Heresy Fail

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The Saturnine Horus Heresy box stumbled hard on launch day with low sales and support; find out what went wrong with GW’s latest big fail.

Games Workshop’s new Saturnine Horus Heresy box landed with all the usual hype: endless previews, leaks galore, and lots of noise on social media.

But one thing was missing on release day: customers. Despite being packed with over 50 models and offering great value (even while wearing the crown for one of the most expensive starter boxes GW has ever released), it failed to sell out.

For a company that normally prints money on launch weekends, that’s a huge red flag. Here’s the issues as we see them.

Where Are All the Marines?

This isn’t just about sluggish sales. The real issue is that stores looking to stock Horus Heresy products found themselves staring at empty shelves. If they hadn’t bitten on GW’s “bundle deal” for this launch, many would have had literally nothing else to sell.

Just sort by plastic Loyalist Astartes on the GW site to see all the stuff that is out of stock (and not from sales due to the launch, they have been out of stock for weeks, if not months).

Launching a new edition of a game when your core faction, Space Marines, is mostly out of stock, with no clear restock timeline? That’s bold. But not in a good way.

Bundles or Bust

Speaking of those bundle deals, GW didn’t just want stores to order Saturnine; they insisted on packing the order with a mountain of other Heresy kits.

Eleven additional boxes, to be exact:

Everything included in the bundle

However, it turned out to be a silver lining to this Heresy era storm cloud, as these bundles actually gave stores products to sell, unlike Games Workshop’s warehouses.

No Warhammer 40k Crossover, No Sales

One major factor dragging the Saturnine box down is that these Horus Heresy kits no longer pull double duty in Warhammer 40k, and the fact that the Liber leaks ahead of release invalidated many players’ armies. While GW might still release rules for all those units, having those kinds of leaks ahead of your big launch is never good.

This comes after many units once playable in 40k were shifted to Legends status in 2023, cutting off the casual crossover that used to help drive Heresy sales.

Now, GW is scrambling to pick up the pieces with the new Legacies of the Age of Darkness PDF, perhaps to stabilize sales in the face of slow sales and pre-lauch opposition by hobbyists.

Without that crossover appeal, Horus Heresy has become a very niche product, and when the shelves are empty of the models players actually need to build armies, it gets even worse.

Sure, the Saturnine box is technically the best way to get into Horus Heresy right now, but let’s call it what it is: a bag of magic beans.

Even if you wanted to commit, much of the supporting product line is unavailable. Making building a playable army near impossible. 

Short-Term Gains, Long-Term Mess?

GW’s bundling strategy seems laser-focused on short-term revenue. By forcing stores to take on a heap of extra product just to get a few Saturnine boxes, they prioritize immediate profits over building a sustainable player base.

Does anyone remember 2022’s Age of Darkness fiasco? Once GW sent models to Legends, things started sitting still. That disaster led to stores dumping Heresy stock at steep discounts on Black Friday.

Pallets of Skaventide for giveaways and prizes at Adepticon 2025

With this release, stores will likely be left holding inventory they can’t sell. Which we can expect to see heavily discounted around Black Friday, just as in 2022.

Or perhaps we will see stacks and stacks of Saturnine being given away at conventions, just as Skaventide has been for the last year or so.

Empty Shelves Speak Volumes

The kicker? The GW webstore itself is nearly empty of key Horus Heresy kits, from transports to dreadnoughts and tanks. We’re not talking about a post-launch rush either; this stuff has been out of stock for months.

If GW was serious about hyping up a new edition of Horus Heresy, why didn’t they restock? Instead, they’re launching a new starter box into a game with no supporting range available.

The Bottom Line

So yes, if you want in on Horus Heresy right now, Saturnine is your box. The problem is, this product feels more like a cash grab than a gateway into the game.

GW pushed a product with no demand into stores already starved of stock. If it wasn’t for the bundles they allowed stores to buy in most cases, there wouldn’t be much else for new players to even pick up.

All of this seems to indicate Games Workshop is putting an emphasis on new customer acquisition, and current quarter profits above all else…

In short, GW launched a new edition of Horus Heresy without the shelves stocked, without crossover appeal, and without the necessary support to help stores or players.

And yet, somehow, like Palpatine returning, Games Workshop keeps making money year after year.

See Our Review of Saturnine Here

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