From before the release of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer The Horus Heresy and through the following year we have had a series of Exemplary Battle expansions release on Warhammer Community that expand the lore, unit options and missions available to Horus Heresy players.

Today these see their first physical release in Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness Volume 1, up for pre order today, which brings together 4 of these updated for the current edition of the game alongside a new Exemplary battle featuring the Salamanders. We also get rules for Daemon primarchs, and the first of them Fulgrim, along with some expanded rules for the Emperors Children to represent them in a late Heresy state once they have fallen to excess and debauchery.

In this full review we’ll be checking out the content to see just what is included in this 112 page tome, seeing if anything has changed from the free Exemplary Battle PDFs and seeing how Fulgrm looks in a fight!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free review copy to check out on the site – If you would like to support the site then why not order your Horus Heresy goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We also have a full unboxing of the new Legiones Astartes Battle Group up on the site today which you can see just below or read the full written review here

So without further ado, let’s dive into Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness Volume 1!

Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness Volume 1 Review

Games Workshop have often said that The Horus Heresy is more a narrative system than a competitive one – While there are lots of fun Horus Heresy tournaments and events, it really comes into its own when you use it as a framework to reenact battles from across the Horus Heresy novel series. The game is less about simply smashing the face of your opponent and more about being able to collect the armies and forces you have read about in the Black Library series and have fun battles that let you recreate them.

In the run up to the release of the 2nd edition Games Workshop started a series on Warhammer Community called “Exemplary Battles” which was made up of free PDFs that presented a certain conflict or battle from the Horus Heresy saga and offered up lore, narrative missions and new units to represent those more niche and specialist forces those armies used at that precise moment in time during the events of the Heresy.

In Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness Volume One, Games Workshop have put these out for print for the first time. While the unit options had been updated for 2nd edition, this book also takes the opportunity to update the missions themselves for the new edition of the game along with giving everything a new lick of paint to match the aesthetic of the 2nd edition books.

It’s not just old content published here however, as we also get a brand new Exemplary Battle focused on the Salamanders along with a new unit for them the Sanctifier Squad.

What’s more we also get an entire section dedicated to the Daemon Primarchs. Up until now we have not had any rules for these in the Horus Heresy system, but Exemplary Battles takes the opportunity to use these Primarchs in their fallen state as of the late Heresy with rules that capture the feeling of these horrific creatures. We also get the rules for the first of these to be introduced, Fulgrim, to accompany his awesome new model (Which hopefully is on pre order soon after this book is released!). With Fulgrim being a big focus of the book, we also get some new rules that shine a light on how the Emperors Children opperated during the late Heresy with some new army wide rules for them and rites of war, along with a number of new upgrades.

So let’s take a look at what’s included here!

The Defense of Sotha

Each of the Exemplary Battles that have been chosen for Volume 1 are all ones that had been released prior to the release of the 2nd edition of the game.

The first The Defense of Sotha is based around the Night Lords – they gain the Atramentar Terminator Squads (Rules here match the updated rules put out to update the Exemplary Battles series) who specialise in fighting units that are already stuck in combat with bonus to their charge and hit roll if they do. They also can be taken as a non-compulsory Troops choice if Sevatar is the warlord, which is pretty cool!

The Honor in Duty mission has been re imagined for 2nd Edition as Sothopolis Burns – in this mission the attacker has the majority of their heavier elements start the game in reserve, and as the battle goes on various units are brought onto the board based on how light they are, so for example in turn 2 only Troops and Fast Attack can come on to the board on a 3+, from turn 3 other units arrive on a 2+ and then finally everything left turns up turn 4 automatically.

The Siege of Hydra Cordatus

Again we have another older PDF that has been updated for the 2nd edition, this time focused on the Iron Warriors.

The Iron Warriors get the Dominator Cohort again using their updated rules from the update PDF. These are a special retinue for Perturabo that have Feel No Pain (6+) and Thunder Hammers

For the Narrative mission content we get a mini campaign that has the 2nd battle determined by who wins the first mission, with one of the possible 2nd games being a Zone Mortalis battle. The other mission has an interesting mechanic where Objectives controlled only have a 50% chance of giving you victory points, which can cause some random swings in who is leading the field.

The Battle of Armatura

The Battle of Armatura has a focus on the World Eaters with their Red Hand Destroyers who again match their existing rules with their bonus to determining on who has won the combat and increased sweeping advance rolls

Much like with the previous Exemplary Battle, the Battle of Armatura is made up of 3 different missions that are played through in a mini campaign. This mission also introduces rules for the Fog of War, this ranges from giving units Shrouded, to forcing the Night Fighting rule to even making it +1 to wound rolls, all determined from a dice roll at the start of the game.

The Battle of Calth

The last of the returning Exemplary Battles is the Battle of Calth, with a focus on Ultramarines with their Mortifier Bolter armed Nemesis Destroyers who can force morale checks on anyone who is wounded by them.

We also see some campaign specific rules for a variant type of Daemon Brute that can only be used in the mini campaign included in this section. Again, like with the previous few entries we get a mini campaign consisting of 3 different battles and rules to represent the devastation of Calth on the battlefield.

For those who like different types of battles, all three of these missions use the Zone Mortalis rules, which makes a nice change of pace for players used to just traditional games.

The Purging of the Invocastus Sector

While all of the battles so far have previously been available as free downloads on Warhammer Community, the final one included in the book is brand new and focuses on the Salamanders facing off against the Emperor’s Children in the region of space known as The Pale Stars. The III legion have spread whispers and temptation to swap the mortal populace of this sector to their cause, and so the Salamanders have been deployed to eliminate them

Joining the ranks of the Salamanders are the Sanctifier Squad, these are essentially a custom assault squad that can take unique Obsidate Rotor Cannons – these are only S3 and AP5, but are Assault 3 with Pining and breaching 6+, making them pretty tasty!

We also get a new mission here with some really interesting mechanics – basically the battlefield is split into different sectors, with each sector worth a different number of points each turn, leading to the battle to being a dance back and forth across the sectors during the game.

The Emperor’s Children

The final part of the book will be of particular interest to traitor players as we get the full rules for Daemon Primarchs, Fulgrim and expanded Emperor’s Children rules.

The Daemon Primarch rules are basically expanded from the standard primarch rules with them getting Eternal Warrior, Fear (2), It Will Not Die (5+), Bulky (6) and Relentless – in addition they can never have their stats negatively reduced and always fire snap shots at BS. They are immune to fear and pinning, but if they ever fail a morale check they suffer D3 wounds that cannot be negated.

So what’s the very first Daemon Primarch Fulgrim like?

Well I can’t wait to get my hands on him! He clocks in at 600 points but has an impressive profile with Movement 9, Weapon Skill 8, Initative 8, Ld 10 and then 7s across the rest of his profile. Keeping him kicking in a fight is a 2+ armour save and a 4+ inv save. One really cool ability that Fulgrim has is that when he has 4 or less wounds left he actually gets +1 to his It Will Not Die, making it more likely for him to heal once he hits half health, and for the ultimate insult to the enemy if he ever has only 2 or less wounds left at the start of your turn you can return him to the warp – Fulgrim is no longer in play for the rest of the game, but your enemy does not count as killing him for the purposes of any objectives or abilities! This is a really nice way of cheating your opponent out of VP

Fulgrim can opt to use his wings, which increases his movement to 14″ and allows him to move across terrain and models – though he treats difficult terrain as dangerous terrain if he lands in it while flying. he can also run while flying giving him an awesome 24″ move!

His weapon has a split profile – he can either strike with 7 Strength 7 attacks at AP2 and Murderous Strike 4+, or he can trade these for 3 S10 AP1 attacks with Brutal 2 – I quite like this as makes it so Fulgrim has to weigh up which way he’d like to fight, and I’d quite like to see this rule come into effect on other units with Brutal where they get less attacks if they want to make use of the benefits of Brutal.

We also get rules for taking a Legiones Hereticus Emperor’s Children army – this is something that can be selected to represent that these are not just traitors, they are now in the sway of the Dark Gods. If you take Fulgrim your entire army automatically gets this keyword, but you can choose to give it to them manually.

If you do so then you unlock a number of new abilities.

The first of these is being able to become stupefied. When a unit shoots you, you can opt to make the unit stupefied – this has some downsides such as making it so you can only snapfire and any charges are disordered, however you gain +1 strength and it also gives you a damage mitigation roll of 6+ to any incoming shots. At the end of your following turn you are no longer stupefied and then can act as normal. So essentially you trade shooting at full effect next turn in exchange for a pip extra of strength and a chance of ignoring incoming damage.

Playing off this mechanic, the Emperor’s Children get a unique reaction where a target of a shooting attack becomes Stupefied, but with a 4+ damage mitigation roll.

Phoenix Terminators in a Legiones Hereticus force also have rules changes with Living Icon and Phoenix Retinue rules swapped out for a +1 combat resolution modifier which increases to +2 if Fulgrim is nearby.

The Legiones Hereticus also gain access to two unique rites of war.

Brotherhood of the Phoenix is a cool one that allows you to have 5 HQ options in your army, but each of those HQ choice has to be Eidolon, Lucius or a Legion Champion (of whatever flavour). You also have to take Fulgrim. Essentially this represents the various heroes of the legion all trying to get Fulgrim’s attention. and in reward to taking these 5 HQ choices each of your Champions gains Preferred Enemy (Everything), which is pretty cool!

The second is Children of Maraiglia, and this requires an allied detachment of Solar Aux or Militia, but grant the entire allied force Stubborn. In addition, Fulgrim starts off the board and you select a turn for him to be summoned to the battle field, with him appearing within 6″ of a friendly Emperor’s Children unit. There’s a bit of a gambling element here as your entire Emperor’s Children army also gains Stubborn until the primarch turns up, leading to some decision making on when you want him to arrive

Finally, the Surgical Augments are replaced with Debased Augments (And are a little cheaper at 15 points each)

Warp Scream gives the model Hammer of Wrath, and those Hammer of Wrath attacks have Rending 5+, What’s really cool here is that if they already have Hammer of Wrath then it increases the number of hits caused and they all have Rending 5+

Abhorrent Sensoria gives the model Precision hits and shots, which is handy for sniping characters

Finally, Sublingual glands gives them a template attack with Blind and Fleshbane, which again is pretty cool!

My only real complaint is that the Exemplary Battle featuring the Emperor’s Children Sunkillers is not included, which seems odd given this is very Emperor’s children heavy.

Summary

So what do I think of Volume One of this series? Well, as an Emperor’s Children player I may be a little biased here, but i think this is a great book. Yes, a lot of the content has been available online for free, but personally i much rather have content in a bound book rather than simply being on a screen. The new missions give players lots of new ways to play their games of 30k, and the unique units add some flavour to the game. It’s exciting to see Fulgrim in all his glory, and I hope this is a sign that other variant Primarchs (including loyalist ones) are included as the series continues.

Exemplary battles of the Age of Darkness volume 1 is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 28th October.

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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