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Pretty obvious really.

Trying to start a Pre-Heresy army, and just wondering what units wouldn't be fluffy.

So far, I think that Chaplains would be out of the question. Most if not all special characters, of course, and I'm not particularly sure about Scouts.

Halp?

OK this is a big topic! I will do my best to help.

Scouts are in (see below), Chaplains are technically pre-heresy. They were first formed by the Word Bearers (somewhat ironically considering their later function), but spread to other Legions. They were meant to support the 'no psyker' law laid down by the Emperor at the Council of Niccea. So, you can have them, but IMO Chaplains are synonymous with 40k, and not having one in your force is a way of separating the look of your force from standard 40k.


The following SM vehicles are documented as being post heresy, and so technically shouldn't be part of a Legion *
- Razorback
- Land Raiders Helios, Crusade and Redeemer
- Predator Annihilator
- Land Speeder tempest
-Stormraven(?)

* Having said that, there was a lot more prototyping of vehicles during the Crusade - Admech and Marine commanders were much more willing to jerry-rig stuff if it meant it could get the job done for a particular circumstance. Practically, the Tempus Fugitives (guys who ran some pre-heresy events at Warhammer World) accounted for this by giving explicitly post-heresy vehicles (such as the razorback) a 0-1 option on the army. So, you could have 1 razorback etc. I think this works quite well.

For Pre-Heresy you also have some extra stuff - jetbikes (use standard bike rules for these) are more common for instance. However, there have been several sources which have said that jet packs are not as common yet. I account for this by having no more than 1 jet pack squad for each foot-slogging unit.

But I think the most important thing when doing a PH force is the 'rule of cool' - one of the best things about PH is that there is less documented evidence of what was around, even now with the HH novels, so there is a lot more room for imagination and artistic efforts when making a new force. Providing the colours you use and armour marks are more or less correct (no Mk7! )then most people will immediately identify your force as being Pre-Heresy.

If you want more info, and inspiration, I would thoroughly recommend the Horus Heresy: Collected Visions art book. It's now available as an omnibus, and was the original book from which the Pre-heresy craze began. Definitely worth picking up! http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440354a&prodId=prod842467

Hope that helps!

Pacific wrote:For Pre-Heresy you also have some extra stuff - jetbikes (use standard bike rules for these) are more common for instance.

I always thought of using it as an attack bike - It fits in with having an underslung Heavy Weapon like Sammael.

It depends on the period. =/

If late Heresy then things like anti-gravity technology and the wierder things wouldn't be as prevalent. Chaplains however would be as they were established when the Emperor realised just how much the heresy had taken root and needed to combat it by establishing an order of his most loyal warriors in each chapter (the Word Bearer's, who had Chaplains before this, had already turned traitor, so they aren't quite the same). Librarians wouldn't appear all that much. In the very late heresy when it became anything goes and the ban on psychic powers disspitated you'd have them though.

Basic Dreadnoughts probably wouldn't be as common as you'd be having the more advanced Contemptor as the standard. Razorbacks hadn't been discovered yet, nor was melta weaponary too common.

Terminator Armour would be more common, as would plasma guns, chainswords and jetbikes over motorbikes. In fact if your playing a force with a Legio Custodes element then they would be mounted in a anti-gravity version of a rhino.

Scouts were present, but you also had basic marines in power armour taking up this role. They wore stipped down suits, ie lacking the larger shoulder pauldrons and were more form fitting. Additionally they had the standard scout equiptment of ectra sensors etc, and forgoed their boltguns for lasguns.

Squads were also deployed in larger groups. Devastator squads could be twenty marines armed with lascannons, rather than the smaller squads that took their place due to new tactics and smaller chapters.

Axes were the standard assault weapon, not swords, so power axes/mauls and chain axes would be the norm.

As for armour style it would vary upon the legion and period. Some forces would have a large number of the newer suits, whilst others, who had been fighting for longer or further away from Earth would have to cannibalise suits (much like as is the norm in the 41st millenium).

Storm shields and storm bolters hadn't been invented yet. Hand flamers were common. I don't think jump packs were as common outside of Legions like the Night Lords and Raven Guard.

Purity seals, tomes, gargoyles, all the gothic stuff wouldn't be around unless you were playing Word Bearers or a late Heresy army (if even that). Marines had more of the 1st edition aesthetic, ie more about military functonality than religious significance of the knights in space ideal.

You wouldn't have any of the Land Raider variants other than the standard and the Mk1-3 (with the later, ie the GW standard one, being late crusade).

Assault Squads without jump packs would be the more common variant to further a previos point.




....Bit of a tangent, but just putting down would I can think of the main differences. The Horus Heresy Art book series would be your best resource for this kind of thing. ^^

Wyrmalla wrote:Storm shields and storm bolters hadn't been invented yet.

Could I pass them off as a Mechanicus experiment? I don't want to have to pay for a new Captain and Terminators.

Chaplins they were introduced to prevent chaos

warrior lord wrote:Chaplins they were introduced to prevent chaos

Or, as posted earlier in the thread, to support Nikaea.

Any kind of Astartes vehicle the CSM don't have.

As far as the purity seals go, i believeit was in one of the first books dealing with the Luna Wolves where they are attaching their "oath of moment" papers to their armor, which from the description in the books sounded identical to purity seals.

Storm Shields also show up frequently in the BL HH novels and stories (The Iron Within by Rob Sanders being a prominent one I remember).

No assault cannons, they had the good old reaper autocannon. Storm bolters were twin-linked bolters, and no Aquila on the chest plate. Unless you are doing the Emperor's Children.

cricketofdeth wrote:No assault cannons, they had the good old reaper autocannon. Storm bolters were twin-linked bolters, and no Aquila on the chest plate. Unless you are doing the Emperor's Children.

Which I am

Also, for people referring to HH Novels:

This is PRE-HERESY. Therefore, Heresy Era Technology is not what I'm asking for.

Cool, the EC are nice pre-heresy army to do.
Build some jet bikes, the HH art book has a sweet pic of an EC squad mounted on them.
If you search the site, there are a few really good conversion how-to's for them.

How far pre-HH are you looking at going?

BlapBlapBlap wrote:

cricketofdeth wrote:No assault cannons, they had the good old reaper autocannon. Storm bolters were twin-linked bolters, and no Aquila on the chest plate. Unless you are doing the Emperor's Children.

Which I am

Also, for people referring to HH Novels:

This is PRE-HERESY. Therefore, Heresy Era Technology is not what I'm asking for.

Well. For the most part, "pre-heresy" tends to refer to end-of-great-crusade/start-of-heresy at c.M31. Horus Heresy novel would broadly reflect that.

If that's not what you are looking for, you might want to specify a bit more. Age of Strife? Late 2nd Millenium? Roman Empire? Earth Stone Age?Dinosaurs? Pre-Heresy literally covers a hell of a lot of time.

Early to mid Great Crusade.

When was MK IV Maximus armour invented? That'd be a rough guide (I think...)

Maximus was created at the end of the Great Crusade as the ultimate suit of power armour. Its still the most advanced suit out there, but was quickly superseided by the Heresy and Corvus suits. It wasn't distributed widely, so only the Legions in the core systems probably seen anything like wide distribution (ie I wouldn't imagine more than a few Legion chapters at the most could be equipted with it at a time). It was to serve as a standby before the Legions were equipted full with Terminator Armour and thus its aethetics were included Tartaros suit (also one of the more advanced types of armour).

Anything earlier and you'll be seing just the Iron and Crusade armour variants, which would limit you greatly as for parts. If your playing an army just before the outbreak of the heresy then you're still limited though. I don't think the Emperor's Children turned in the first few years of the Heresy, so it may be that they were still toting about fighting the enemies of mankind for some time (ie making them a viable army), before their corruption.

However I'd note that the Chaos Space Marine codex notes that a lot of their equiptment doesn't match the standard "codex" pattern. I'm reading that as the Legions were issued with a lot of unique equiptment that has since died out for whatever reasoning. So you could well use the vanilla space marine kit parts, but I would still recommend that you convert them to look like prototypes or the like.

OK, thanks for that.

There are a few things wrong with some of the comments in here:

If late Heresy then things like anti-gravity technology and the wierder things wouldn't be as prevalent. Chaplains however would be as they were established when the Emperor realised just how much the heresy had taken root and needed to combat it by establishing an order of his most loyal warriors in each chapter (the Word Bearer's, who had Chaplains before this, had already turned traitor, so they aren't quite the same). Librarians wouldn't appear all that much. In the very late heresy when it became anything goes and the ban on psychic powers disspitated you'd have them though.

This isn't quite right. If you are doing pre-Heresy, you need to establish whether it is pre- or post-Nikea. Late in the Crusade, but before Nikea occurred, librarians had spread to all the legions, and there were no "chaplains" anywhere but among the word bearers (although different legions may have had equivalent roles).

After Nikea, you wouldn't find librarians anywhere, but you would find chaplains becoming more and more common. The Emperor didn't establish chaplains to fight heresy - they spread through the legions after the Nikea ban on librarians, in order to police the legions for signs of sorcery and enforce the Emperor's dictate, among other roles (although ironically many of them were actually instrumental in spreading the warrior lodges and chaos worship from the Word Bearers to other legions).

All that said - you're probably better off leaving Chaplains and Librarians out, or at least taking chaplains taht look different from "modern" chaplains. In other words, if you really want to include one, you should use a "counts-as" instead, because the black armor/skull helmet look is both too recognizable and also probably post-Codex Astartes anyway.

Axes were the standard assault weapon, not swords, so power axes/mauls and chain axes would be the norm.

This isn't true either from anything I've read. Choice of close combat weapon varied between the legions just as it varies among chapters now, but power swords and chainswords were just as common then as now (power weapons in general perhaps more so due to greater availability).

Storm shields and storm bolters hadn't been invented yet. Hand flamers were common. I don't think jump packs were as common outside of Legions like the Night Lords and Raven Guard.

Storm bolters weren't invented, but twin-linked bolters and combi-weapons were. You can leave your storm bolter wielding models as-is and call them twin-linked bolters.

As for jump packs, while the Night Lords and Raven Guard may have made more extensive use of them due to their chosen tactics, every legion had access to them by the late crusade to my knowledge and deployed them often enough to be mentioned in the Horus Heresy novels. The World Eaters in particular definitely had plenty of assault squads with jump packs, and other legions are noted as using them too.

Purity seals, tomes, gargoyles, all the gothic stuff wouldn't be around unless you were playing Word Bearers or a late Heresy army (if even that). Marines had more of the 1st edition aesthetic, ie more about military functonality than religious significance of the knights in space ideal.

Already noted, but at least some legions took oaths of moment, which are essentially purity seals. Emperor's Children would have pretty baroque armor and architecture, so I think you can get away with a lot of 40k bling.

Assault Squads without jump packs would be the more common variant to further a previos point.

Like I said earlier, don't hesitate to put a jump pack assault squad in your army. But this is probably good advice, I'm sure in most legions assault formations without jump packs were probably a lot more common than you see them today.

Wyrmalla wrote:Maximus was created at the end of the Great Crusade as the ultimate suit of power armour. Its still the most advanced suit out there, but was quickly superseided by the Heresy and Corvus suits. It wasn't distributed widely, so only the Legions in the core systems probably seen anything like wide distribution (ie I wouldn't imagine more than a few Legion chapters at the most could be equipted with it at a time). It was to serve as a standby before the Legions were equipted full with Terminator Armour and thus its aethetics were included Tartaros suit (also one of the more advanced types of armour).

If you read Deliverance Lost, the Maximus (mk4) was the ultimate suit of power armour, and in fact this piece of background goes back years to the old formative armour article. However, there was one caveat - it was not designed to stop bolter shells. It was also very difficult to repair in the field - subsequent armour marks, the mk5 (which was a stopgap) and then the mk6 had the advantage of being very easy to repair and articifers could even use any bits of metal they could find and fit it to the suit. So, in the confusion of the heresy, and with the disruption of supply lines, mk5 and mk6 became more popular over the (technically superior) mk4.

If you are making a late Crusade era force, technically you should have nothing beyond mk4. However, as mk5 (and even mk6 - being synonymous with Rogue Trader and 1st edition) are pretty cool looking pieces of armour, and quite distinct from mk7, it's fairly common to see them in 'Pre-Heresy' armies. I've always had some mk5 and mk6 in my pre-heresy force and have yet to have anyone make a negative comment about it.

Which continuity?

You know, there's that anecdote that floats around about Jaghatai Khan leading his forces from the back of a razorback during the defense of Terra.

There's a number of ways to account from this, from outright dismissal, to mis-recorded legend, to "it was one of the first ones produced." But it still is a little oddity.

In my group we're doing pre heresy and we aren't using: Sternguard, Redeemers, Crusaders, and we count all our storm bolters as twin-linked bolters