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Horus Heresy uses it's own ruleset, based heavily on the Warhammer 40,000 7th ed rules. If you can find a used copy of the 7e rules, great!

While the Dark Angels rules will all be in the upcoming Forge World book "Crusade"(preorder on September 4), you'll also need the Age of Darkness: Army List book from Forge World. This will give you rules for all of your basic troops, vehicles, flyers, and so on along with generic Rites of War(these are particular ways to build your army that will give you various small bonuses).

One really important distinction for 30K is that tactical squads will all be equipped with the same weapon. The basic tactical squad is between 10-20 marines, all with bolters. You can also have tactical "support squads" of 5-10 marines, these will have all flamers, plasmaguns, meltaguns, etc.

Your veteran tactical squads are more like standard 40k marine squads, and will be able to have more varied weapon loadouts.

To start with, I'd build at least 20 marines with just boltguns, because you'll almost always need core troops units.

 tauist wrote:

How much flak would someone get for fielding regular firstborn 40K marines as a HH army? Assuming that one mostly sticks to the classic units of course (tac/assault squads, rhinos, landraiders, landspeeders, whirlwinds, drop pods) If one could make an army that would be legal for both 30K as well as 40K, that'd be a win-win for me personally. Ideally, all I'd need to do is to swap the special and heavy weapons models to std squadmembers to switch from 40K to 30K so I'd just build a few extra trooper models. So missile launchers, combiplasma, plasma, melta and flamers are all viable weapons in both systems?

My army is going to be predominantly made out of Mk IV & Mk VI marines, so theoretically could exist during HH as well.. What about terminators, only cataprachtii and tartaros termies allowed?

That's fine. I'm not sure what you mean with "regular firstborn 40K marines", since GW makes the plastic Mk3 and Mk4 squads. Those are both good to go for 30k. Mk6 if I remember right was very late stage Horus Heresy, just before the Siege of Terra basically. For terminators, the current terminator variant existed as well, it just doesn't have any particular rules like Tartaros and Cataphractii do. Just make sure you carve off the Crux Terminatus bits, since, you know, the Emperor wasn't "dead" at that point.

Yes, missile launchers, combi-plasma, plasma, melta, and flamers are all viable weapons in both systems. Missile launcher squads are heavy support squads, again note that each marine will have the same weapon. Same goes for plasma- and meltaguns as well as flamers. Combi-plasma is an option that veterans can take.

Note that the only Whirlwind option is the Whirlwind Scorpius, and that Predators in 30k can't take lascannon turrets.

On the topic of using models in Horus Heresy: frankly, if all you had were current space marine tactical squads with a mix of armor marks that may not have been present in the Heresy, but were super excited to get in some games of 30K, I'd still be more than happy to play against you.While I personally really appreciate the "historical future wargame" aspect of Horus Heresy, the game is a niche wargame with an already small playerbase and anything that gets new people excited in playing is fine by me. Our FLGS has a Salamanders player that I've told multiple times that if he wants to play 30K, he's more than free to use his Primaris marines as proxies. Again, for me it's all about driving up interest in the game and setting and getting more bodies at the gaming table to play.

The 30k community is small enough that we can't afford to turn away potential players just because they may not have the proper armor marks on their marines or the right Forge World tank for the time period. I want everyone with an interest in 30k to feel welcome when they walk up and ask what game is being played.

 tauist wrote:
I guess so but I'd rather buy proper volkite weapons in that case Nothing that matters is glued together yet, and actually since most of my marine kits were bought before the most recent recuts, the boxes didn't come with grav weapons in the first place.

32mm bases are OK though right?

Yes, marines absolutely go on 32mm bases. Terminators are on 40mm.

@OP

Yes, the red books and black books are described as thus based on the color of their covers. The black books are the super fancy, faux-leatherbound hardbacks that are $100+USD, or now also available in softback for several of them.

You mentioned that you want to play Dark Angels, so you will need:

Age of Darkness: Army List
Crusade("black book" number 9, releasing in September)
some version of the 7th edition rulebook OR the Age of Darkness rulebook

I suggested finding a cheap version of the 7th edition rules because there are some minor changes between these and the Age of Darkness rulebook, but cost of entry for Horus Heresy is already stupidly high so why not get by with a cheap eBay copy of the rules until you can spring for the actual FW rulebook?

Age of Darkness: Legions contains all the rules for many of the legions, but not all of them. If you are playing Dark Angels, you should NOT need this book. (If I'm remembering correctly, because all of your rules will be in Crusade and the Age of Darkness: Army List books.)

Hardcover original print run probably hasn't sold out yet.