On Monday, Games Workshop revealed yet another new loadout sprue for the Horus Heresy Space Marine infantry range, this time a selection of combi-weapons and Astartes shotguns. While fans of the game might be slightly underwhelmed by this useful but non-too flashy upgrade kit, I take it as a heartening sign that it’s sticking to its very different approach to the hobby from Warhammer 40k – one that doesn’t just tolerate model customization, but actively demands it.
Modern Warhammer 40k is slick. Thought has been put into minimising confusion for first-time wargamers, ensuring that if a unit has rules it has a current model (notwithstanding GW’s difficulties keeping everything in stock), and that there’s rarely a requirement to hunt down spare parts in order to make a legal unit option, by matching datasheets to the contents of box sets exactly.
The trade off is creativity and player expression. Yes, you can convert models for aesthetic reasons, and plenty of people do. But constraints are liberating – having a challenge, whether it’s making your budget stretch to outfit a unit just so, or representing a cool unit that doesn’t have an official model, certainly gets my creative juices flowing.
Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – and indeed Necromunda – are targeted at older, more experienced wargamers. That doesn’t just show through in the rules, but in how the game supports modelling. First, there’s the design of the range for the Space Marine legions – multiple versions of power armor for the same units to give maximum aesthetic variety, combined with multiple plastic upgrade sets for easy customization, and Legion specific resin components for the real big spenders
Then there’s the rules support. Not only do the core army lists for Horus Heresy include the granular weapon loadout customization of classic 40k, but the many expansions – from Tactica journals to PDFs of legacy content – include units that don’t have any models. There’s no choice but to convert them.
It’s intentional and practical. Games Workshop could make Horus Heresy as self-contained and pick-up-and-play as Warhammer 40k, and the range is big enough that you certainly can build entire Heresy armies without any conversions. But being different lets Heresy service an audience with different expectations and different desires – an audience that, on average, values modelling a personal army just that little bit more.
If you’ve got a carefully converted army, why not come and show it off in the Wargamer Discord community?
Source: Wargamer
