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leopard wrote:
means decent sized games though, or house rules to let the titans be either more than 30% or have them as the primary force

I suspect having titans loaded to kill troops and tanks while having some tanks able to go titan hunting as well as heavy tank hunting works

otherwise you have a titan that may kill an enemy titan but is then not all that useful

You can include a Warhound already at 1100points and a Reaver at 1400..

But yeah since the launch lists are very limited and lacking lots of Heavy units, the initial duels might be Titans vs normal tanks. Should be more interesting once rules for e.g Fellblades & Falchion come. Then its more use for Engine Killer(x) weapons, both ways.

Anyway I don't power game, I will vary between the weapons I find cool. Looking forward to the Warhound Inferno Gun with it's template attack even though it might mean the Warhound gets toastedein return.

Anyhow, soon the guesswork will be gone, my parcel is on the Terminal.. 🥳

Its odd that Fellblades and Falchions don't seem to be part of the initial release waves tbh.

Also, you think they'll include the Glaive? I've noticed that volkite weapons/variants seem to be conspicuously absent from the rules thus far. Almost makes me wonder if they are saving them for a future Great Crusade expansion.

So what sort of list people are painting first? Obviously bit limited on options. But here's what I'll be getting first model wise(some spare models as I swap SA for marine half) and painting up first go.

Can't wait to add drop pods, bikes and other air planes to the mix.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I've noticed that volkite weapons/variants seem to be conspicuously absent from the rules thus far. Almost makes me wonder if they are saving them for a future Great Crusade expansion.

There are more than half a dozen volkite weapons, including on the titans, on a knight, on the leviathans, and auxilia commander.

I'm looking forward to the Fellglaive release.

Got the rulebook epub, a box of Astartes infantry and a free Rhino from the local GW. Didn't get the coin as I wasn't aware I'd need to spend 80€ in the shop to qualify - GW shouldn't be a DIKK about it, just state out loud on the WHC coin articles that you can only get the coins by spending money. FFS! ebay time..

The Rhino had quite a lot of parts, I mean I knew there would be but it only sunk in as I was cutting the parts from the sprue. Only 1 Havoc launcher & 1 HK missile per sprue AFAICS

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Reading the rulebook ATM. Even the narration style feels faithful to the original Space Marine boxed game. Adjectives are kept to a reasonable amount. Awesome miniature-based Photoshops (page 10 for example) inside as well!

 tauist wrote:
Got the rulebook epub, a box of Astartes infantry and a free Rhino from the local GW. Didn't get the coin as I wasn't aware I'd need to spend 80€ in the shop to qualify - GW shouldn't be a DIKK about it, just state out loud on the WHC coin articles that you can only get the coins by spending money. FFS! ebay time..

I think different stores have different policies. I gave up trying to get the free stuff from my local GW as the manager uses the free things to guilt you into buying that faction/game/etc.


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 tauist wrote:
The Rhino had quite a lot of parts, I mean I knew there would be but it only sunk in as I was cutting the parts from the sprue. Only 1 Havoc launcher & 1 HK missile per sprue AFAICS

Aeronautica Imperialis was similar. They're surprisingly fiddly to assemble. But for AI you only need a half dozen to a dozen planes, hoping LI tanks aren't too arduous to build given the number required.

Good news is it seems the LI models aren't as typical with 40k/aos part A goes ONLY with part B. Every track goes to every hull. So you can do pile of tracks, pile of hulls and then mass assembly.

Not like in 40k where you better not cut and clean every part and only then assemble. Good luck figuring out is this tiny odd looking part supposed to go with what. Or that arm A only goes to body B so good luck remembering which body was body B.

Assembling 200 clanrats at once no problem as you could just do it in so order. I much prefer assembling 200 clanrats over 10 blissbarb archer and it's not number of pieces model has...It's the one can be mass assembled, one you need to assemble practically model by model.

Well, that was close to infuriating.

FGLS only had two copies of the game on shelf. And when I got in one minute after opening? Both were in the hands of customers.

Thankfully one of those chaps had pre-ordered a set, so we split one with him just keeping the Solar Auxilia.


Also bought a box of Maureens and Kratos.

BTW terrain question. Do you think fields(as in corn fields) have any sensible terrain purpose or would they be more of decoration?

Looking at GW's terrain article obscuring seems way off. 5+ cover save and -1 to hit for every detachment bar titans and blocks LOS. I don't see tanks benefitting too much from hiding in corn field...

Difficult wouldn't block LOS through(good) and only 6+ cover save but tanks starting to be destroyed by crossing over CORN field?

tneva82 wrote:
BTW terrain question. Do you think fields(as in corn fields) have any sensible terrain purpose or would they be more of decoration?

Looking at GW's terrain article obscuring seems way off. 5+ cover save and -1 to hit for every detachment bar titans and blocks LOS. I don't see tanks benefitting too much from hiding in corn field...

Difficult wouldn't block LOS through(good) and only 6+ cover save but tanks starting to be destroyed by crossing over CORN field?

The terrain rules need a lot of parsing out, area terrain for everything is really silly, worse still this idea of making magical 3d boxes that block los but in no way actualyl block anything is really bad. The biggest wtf is structures are the only destructible terrain. So for reference, my titan can charge a building and remove it from play, physically, but a corner ruin is indestructible... yeah.

Heh, I forgot that GW only wants to sell digital books to Apple device owners and so instead of using pdf like regular humans they use the fething epub3 format, which is nigh-unreadable on anything but an Apple fething device... >_>

I guess I'll just have to hoist the black flag then.

Well, first impressions

Opening the box
a lot less plastic frames than other GW boxes, makes sense with smaller models but does feel a bit like "needed a bit more", I think a single frame of terrain would have been good, partly for "look there is this!" and partly to fill the box a bit more.

The tokens are laughably bad, very thin card and greyscale, I hope GW have a plastic token set in the works as this is bad, other games they do get thick card stock.

Decals look nice.

Flipping through the book
As expected, bit of fluff, the book looks nicely presented, nicely illustrated - not gotten to the proof reading stuff but it looks the part. very familiar based on the Age of Darkness book

also looks like it makes an excellent weapon for solving disputes do the mass of it

models - pre-assembly
They look small... as expected.. by eck there are some parts to the tanks too, again not unexpected.

the bit securing the infantry to the base isn't strong enough, several here have come off and are now lurking in the recesses of the box, these ones may need to be stuck to a base before proceeding.

also not a huge fan of the bases, would have actually been happier with a small base on the model (thin) and plain bases. easier to have urban, desert, rubble, whatever then. Expect to be printing some plainer bases for these guys. they are nice quality though

the shadowing on the infantry is annoying but not critical, it can be painted to hide it and the models with it worst put in the centre to obscure it

for out of the box its about as expected, nothing that jumped out as "oh wow!" but also nothing that was "ffs" with the exception of the order counters - which is easily fixable with some MDF discs and some coloured dot stickers

Haven't seen one in person yet, but I did notice on unboxing vids that the box seemed more empty than your typical GW starter. Also is the box smaller than a typical starter? Hard to tell from picture, but it looks like it.

They should included those kratos and maybe a couple terrain sprues to fill out the box

Box seems the usual size, slightly shallower though

and yes a Kratos sprue would be useful, at least then you can use all the marine tanks (as it is the single Demi-Company gets to use the Predator or Sicaran but not both)

have now stuck the plastic Sicaran together, while the number of parts is a tad excessive the resulting models are excellent, my 3d print ones are fractionally larger, the GW ones are a lot more detailed without "silly" details if that makes sense. stuff drybrush & washes will pick out without needing many extra colours.

actually quite impressed with them

Would mean increased price though. While more stuff at discount WOULD be nice it would increase the start up cost though.

tneva82 wrote:
Would mean increased price though. While more stuff at discount WOULD be nice it would increase the start up cost though.

to be honest dropping the Warhound Titans that by the rules in the box you will really struggle to use and giving either a pair of Kratos or some terrain, favouring the latter, would have made more sense

But sells less the big scale of battles. Titans are large part of "epic" feel.

Also starter sets are hyper rarely legal armies to begin with. 600 pts per side + titan is quite usable. Matched play legal forces in starter sets are very rare. Apart from 40k 10th ed but that's due to no real restrictions anyway

If game has restrictions odds are GW starters break more than a few. They aren't supposed to be matched play forces(matched play games aren't exactly meant for <1000 pts games anyway...That's more of realm of bring what you and your friend feel like)

Got the rulebook: way too many special rules.

First fire is useless against chargers with same or bigger scale factor. They engage&pin and remove ability to fire.

Contrary to most battle reports, Ogryns and Veletari can charge with no HQ nearby, as they do no have the Chain of Command rule, and they are Independent.

Only artillery so far is thudd guns.

Well at least you can overwatch, though yes "First Fire" when you get into enemy charge range does seem a bit weak except maybe for larger units

can't see infantry getting much from it

tneva82 wrote:
Matched play legal forces in starter sets are very rare. Apart from 40k 10th ed but that's due to no real restrictions anyway

It probably shows how few GW games I've bought recently, but I think most of the starter sets I've bought I can recall either were or at least weren't too far off a legal army.

Well you can get legal armies from this box, two of them, if you try to get one you end up with a lot not being used.

however you don't need to add too much to make more use of it, box of Kratos and the Marines have two formations and enough points its getting interesting


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It is also notable that as SU-152 points out there are a few rules mistakes in various on line play throughs

leopard wrote:
Well at least you can overwatch, though yes "First Fire" when you get into enemy charge range does seem a bit weak except maybe for larger units

can't see infantry getting much from it

Better to use Point Defence on Advance and shoot in the movement phase.

MarkNorfolk wrote:

leopard wrote:
Well at least you can overwatch, though yes "First Fire" when you get into enemy charge range does seem a bit weak except maybe for larger units

can't see infantry getting much from it

Better to use Point Defence on Advance and shoot in the movement phase.

depends, within movement range of the enemy I expect you are right

So got most of what I ordered, local hobby shop was able to get it out for delivery today (We don't usually get post Fri/Sat/Sun) but as usual, GW hasn't despatched anything.

My first impressions:

Box is nice, sturdy and will be nice for storage of sprues. Box is a little sparse- a sprue of terrain, some nicer plastic counters/objective markers (Like the AT one) or a couple more models of some kind would have been nice for the price. Warhounds are ok I guess but feels very much like they had too many in back stock. First set has at least two minis with weapons that have snapped off, that is a bit disappointing but its about what I expected (had plenty of broken orks back in the day)

Instruction manual is nice and clear, but as usual its sloppy GW. They list the model parts to what is in the individual boxes and not the starter. I'm sure there will be some numbering issues too, haven't seen a GW kit without mistakes in years at this point.

Decals are lovely.

Quick glance through the rule book, not very impressed. The lore section is pretty much just a timeline, the sort of thing I'd expect from a wiki page. The book overall feels very 'beige sci-fi' which is all the rage these days. Its not very inspiring to be honest and the other than a few nice stand out art pages, the same beige photoshop battle scenes are dull and lifeless. I had to laugh at the example battlefields set ups- we have grey urban city area and then we have grey industrial city area. The best things in there are the chapter plate pages and the studio armies. They should have expanded those sections greatly. I'll probably read through the rules once next week and bin them, they don't really have anything in there that is backwards compatible with older versions and the lack of lore/art means I'll never flick through it again.

The models are fantastic. Any love GW has for the game/scale has totally been poured in to those tiny tanks. I've built a box of rhinos, they have some really fiddly bits but are fantastic. The game has left me cold, but god those tiny rhinos are works of art. The marines are not as bad as macro photography & doomsayers would have us believe. I've tidied the first few up and cleaning them up and smoothing out the extra plastic and I honest don't think it will be noticeable on the tabletop at all.

The models are chunkier and they certainly can't be mixed on the same base but now I have them in hand, they will mix in perfectly with vanguard and there really isn't enough of a difference to not have them on the same table top as my old 6mm collection.

The bases are surprising thin and still have decent enough details. I won't be using them but they are impressive.

Overall my opinion is that this is not a great release but the models alone are worth the price of entry and make up for a lot of the short comings in the games overall presentation. It helps that I am using these to supplement an existing collection and continuing to buy a ton of vanguard, but I'd hate to think of the cost of entry for this game for someone that is only interested in the 'bundled GW official warhammer experience'.

I'm going to use the models for E40k games, no real interest in the HH as a setting for a full game. But will likely run some Dornian Heresy campaign days as something different to the Orks/marine/chaos line up we usually do.





Minis are Vanguard-New HH-Old Epic. The old epic minis are on the old E40k bases which is about 0.5mm thicker than the vanguard ones I'm using here, and this one has about a 1mm magnetic strip making it a tad larger again.

thank you the comparison pics! This is a point that keeps being asked, so it's nice to have examples

I'm very happy with my box. Models are fantastic and I'll enjoy painting them. Reserving judgement on the rules until I've fully read them and tried them in a game. Book style doesn't bother me it's pretty keeping with the books for Horus Heresy game. Some will like it, some won't, it's individual taste. I'm just happy to finally get this as I've all day tomorrow to finish building and painting the content s for are a game on Monday.

 Albertorius wrote:
Heh, I forgot that GW only wants to sell digital books to Apple device owners and so instead of using pdf like regular humans they use the fething epub3 format, which is nigh-unreadable on anything but an Apple fething device... >_>

I guess I'll just have to hoist the black flag then.

dude, epub3 is an open format.. google is your friend

Woke up sick as a dog with a fever but no shipping notice. Not going to be able to make it to get a free Rhino (not really courteous in my condition, even if I did have the energy). It seems the universe has something to say about my wanting to get into Epic.

Thanks for those comparison pix! Very helpful!

 tauist wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Heh, I forgot that GW only wants to sell digital books to Apple device owners and so instead of using pdf like regular humans they use the fething epub3 format, which is nigh-unreadable on anything but an Apple fething device... >_>

I guess I'll just have to hoist the black flag then.

dude, epub3 is an open format.. google is your friend

I know. I still have had problems every single time on Windows.

Problems which I don't have with a regular fething pdf (which is now out in the wild). Plus, the format doesn't actually add anything that you can't do with pdf either, so...