I was there, the day Horus slew The Emperor.

Those words kicked off one of the most loved Games Workshop book series, and with it the initial spark that would eventually create Warhammer The Horus Heresy. Since the 2nd edition of the game was released last summer, we have seen a lot of awesome releases both as plastic Games Workshop kits, but also with resin pieces from Forge World.

But today, one of the most anticipated kits finally goes up for pre order – Horus Ascended.

In this review we will be unboxing Horus Ascended, building him up and getting him painted ready for the battlefield! We’ll also be taking a look at his rules and seeing how The Warmaster holds up in combat!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over a free review copy to unbox and paint for the site! If you would like to support us then why not order your Horus Heresy goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too!

I have also filmed a full unboxing video, which you can see below or over on YouTube

So find your comfiest seat onboard the Vengeful Spirit as we take a look at 1000 points of Primarch!

It’s been about two years since I painted up the original Horus model, and it was one of the most enjoyable miniatures I’ve ever worked on, giving me a real craving to paint up more of his brothers. But when I saw that Horus would be getting a new model to represent his Ascended profile I was very, very excited!

Opening the box you get a full instruction manual, even if the initial exploded diagram of the model is a little intimidating for people who may not have built a resin model before. The Talon alone is in 9 separate parts!

While the kit does have a lot of parts, it’s not actually too tough a build – my biggest piece of advice is to built it in a series of subassemblies. I decided to build his main body, fully built each arm with the weapons attached but left these separate from the body. His head, cloak, wolf pelt, the wolf’s paw and the various parts that make up his base I all left separate. While this left me with a large number of parts stuck to paint pot lids and painting handles, it meant that it was much much easier to paint Horus without other parts getting in the way!

And what a model it is to paint! Every bit as enjoyable as the original Horus and a real joy to work on! Now this was a little against the clock to try and get him painted in time for this review to drop, and I’m sure there are bits I will go back to and improve later, but I’m pretty happy with how he turned out!

For painting this guy I used mostly Two Thin Coats paints, as the strong colours help him stand out on the battlefield! Once finished, I applied a gloss finish to the armour in order for him to shine on the battlefield as this is something I had done on my original Horus and his bodyguard. There’s tones of detail on the base that I could go back to add improve, as its quite impressive in size!

As you can see above, the model is about as tall as the old Horus, however Ascended Horus is a lot chunkier than his previous form, standing a a lot bigger than him if they both stood on a level surface! The display base of the new Horus is also a lot wider to hold his more power swollen form!

There’s some nice thematic links between the two models too – while the original had a more regal face, Horus Ascended looks a lot angrier and is connected to his suit with various pipes and lines. The Talon is a lot more lethal looking with elongated claws, and even the wolf atop his armour is slowly rotting and getting more corrupted. The pose of the new Horus too is a bit more aggressive, as he swings World Breaker down towards his foe! The keen eyed will note that his pose is the same as the well known artwork of him standing above a fallen Sanguinius, which is a really nice touch!

So what’s he like in the game?

Well firstly in his Ascended form Horus costs a cool 1000 points, which means he can only be taken in 4000 point games as your Lord of War allowance. So what do you get for the points?

Well, Horus gets Feel No Pain 4+ allowing him to mitigate a lot of damage, he also gets Rage 3 meaning that he would get a terrifying 10 attacks on the charge!

Bad news to your opponent if they do manage to kill him too, as the first time he is slain he goes into reserves with a single wound remaining, ready to take revenge on whoever took him down! As he also has It Will Not Die there is a good chance that he starts regaining wounds too! This will make it very hard to take The Warmaster off the table!

Once per game he can change his Strength and Toughness to 10 and ignore Unwieldy on Worldbreaker, turning him (for a round at least) the most powerful thing in the game – though watch out for targets such as Dorn who can force you to only wound on a 4+

Finally, he can upgrade units in his army to have the Corrupted sub-type for 25 points, this gives them fear, but also has some downsides – so think carefully! Potentially we may see some synergies here when the Daemon army list is released too.

He is very very cool, but in the size of games that he is going to show up in there are going to be lots of tasty things that can harm him too!

Horus Ascended is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 21st January

Games Workshop sent Sprues & Brews a free copy for review purposes

Published by Matt Crowther

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