It’s been a long time since the last true Games Workshop Epic Scale game, sure we have had Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica give us some beautiful epic scale models and some awesome games in their own right, but the last time we were able to field massive armies of tiny infantry and tanks was a massive 20 years ago back in the heady heights of 2003 when Epic Armageddon dropped.

But today, The Horus Heresy Legions Imperialis is finally up for pre order after being lost in the warp for a couple of months and we’re happy to report that it is well worth the wait! In this full review we’ll be taking a deep dive into the new rulebook and seeing just how the game works as well as walking through how to play the game, checking out the army lists and discussing what makes Legions Imperialis different to other games from Games Workshop that have come before it. We’ve also been able to build and paint all the models from the initial launch wave, so we’ll be checking out those kits and letting you know just what it’s like to paint them up.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us free review copies to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your copy of Legions Imperialis through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the Legions Imperialis box set, run through the core book and unboxed all the launch products over on YouTube, or check them out just below!

So gather a legion of troops as we check out the biggest (and also tiniest release of the year!)

Warhammer The Horus Heresy Legions Imperialis Unboxing

Before we get dug into the rules side of things however, let’s check out the massive Legions Imperialis box itself! So what is this? Well essentially this has everything you need for 2 players to start playing Imperialis containing not just the core rulebook but also 2 full armies – One for the Legiones Astartes and another for the Solar Auxilia (appearing in plastic here before their full size versions in Warhammer The Horus Heresy!)

For those who want to pick up their army piece by piece, the rule book is also available separate for purchase by itself, but like with other recent boxed games the full hard back rulebook is included within the box – We’ll be digging into this a little later in the review, but this also contains the two army lists and rules for all the models currently available.

We also get plastic templates, dice, tokens and the ever trusty “whippy sticks” that can be used to measure in place of a tape measure, making this very much a starter set containing everything you need. Another really helpful addition here is a pair of quick reference sheets allowing you to look up core principles in battle without having to flick through the rulebook, something that is always really handy to have on the table. We also get a transfer sheet that contains decals for 4 legions, a number of Solar Auxilia armies, transfers for banners and some Titanicus ones for the two warhounds included in the box.

Warhounds? Yup, two are included in the box – presumably one each to be added to each of the armies in the box as an allied detachment – though like with the rest of the contents, I can see people using these as the starting point for much larger armies. The Warhounds are armed with some new weapon options that we have not seen in plastic before such as Volkite Eradicators, Melta Lances, Shock Lances, Ursus Claws and Missile Pods. What’s really nice about these is that can can actually build each of the weapon options available and with pins or magnets you can make them fully swappable, which is a really cool touch.

The new models in the box however are the real stars of the show, with a lot of really cool bits on show here. For the Legiones Astartes we get the Infantry kit (Which is also available as a separate box – and you’ll want to pick up at least one more box of these for a decent force) which contains Command Squads, Tactical Legionaries, Assault Marines, Terminators, Plasma Gunners, Missile Launchers and even some tiny little Contemptor Dreadnoughts – considering how small these models are, the detail is amazing and I can see a lot of people trying to recreate their larger scale armies in tiny form.

The Marines also get a couple of tanks in the box with a pair of Sicarans and a trio of Predators, each with a range of weapon options – and in the case of the Sicaran you can actually build both different turrets and swap them out between games to ensure you have all the options available to you. As we’ll see later, weapon choices are a very big deal in Imperalis with certain tools needed for different jobs, so the flexibility of swapping them out is really helpful.

The other half of the box is dedicated to the Solar Auxilia and like the Marines they have some amazing models! I’ve been a massive fan of the Forge World Solar Auxilia range and have always wanted to put together an army without selling all my vital organs – so to see them here in plastic, even if it is tiny little plastic, is awesome and hopefully a sign that their larger cousins are on the way at some point soon!

Like with the Marines we get a range of different units in the core Infantry sprue, Commanders, Tactical Command, Auxilliaries, Valetarii, Flamers, Ogryns and the new Aethon Heavy Sential which makes it’s debut in this game. Alongside these we get Malcadors and Leman Russ Battle Tanks which also have multiple different choices for weapon loadout. These in particular look brilliant in their micro machines sized form and I’m looking forward to putting together an entire tank company for the game!

It’s really hard to judge how big these are without any scale, so hopefully the above images give you some insight into how small they are!

We had great fun painting these up, and really found that at the scale they are in that it is more important to create the “impression” of the unit rather than painstakingly trying to edge highlight these for example! Now, I’m sure some people will go all out and do just that, realistically you’re not going to be able to see that detail at tabletop distance, and the most important thing when painting hundreds of individual figures (theres around 220 tiny models in the box that get multi based onto 20mm stands in 5s) is to come up with a method that is quick and efficient. Myself and Jay painting the majority of these models on the sprue, then snipped them off to attach to bases.

The box itself costs £120 (And no doubt cheaper if you use a 3rd party like Element Games) and contains around £160 of miniatures before you factor in the cost of the rulebook itself and the tokens and templates – so I’d say you get around £200 of goodies for your £120 – though if you are only interested in one of the factions then your millage may vary and picking up individual boxes may be another options – though keep in mind all the tanks and the titans are currently only available in this box, though they will be released as separate releases later.

From the point of view of “legal” armies you get the following in the box:

Legiones Astartes

Legion Demi Company Detachment – 222 points

Tanks – 220 points (This can start the basis of a Armoured Company – though this would need a Kratos box to fulfill the minimum requirements) or one of the units (Predators or Sicarans) can be added to the Demi Company.

Either way you’ll want at least an extra box of infantry and a Kratos box in order to get a small force in the region of 800 ish points. You also get a few spare models on the infantry frames that over multiple sets can build up some extra bases.

Solar Auxilia

Solar Auxillia Sub-Cohort – 590 points

The Solar Aux are a little more efficient in that the entire contents of the Solar Aux side of the box fits into a single 600 point Detachment as there are multiple slots to drop the tanks in to. Pick up another box of infantry and the Baneblade kit and you are easily over 1000 points, which is a nice level to start playing some games!

Titan Legions

Warhound Detachment – 330 Points x2 (This can also be fielded as a unit of 2 for 660 points, though that would only be legal in a 2200 point army)

So this gives you 1692 of models in the box, and you could of course use elements of all those forces as allies to make a bigger army – however keep in mind that in games of Imperialis that you can only have a combined 30% of your points spent on allied detachments (Though you could have detachments from different allies) So for example in a full 3000 point army you could take 900 points of allies that could allow you to take the Solar Aux and a Titan from this box alongside 2100 points of Space Marines.

Also out today are a number of individual boxes sets, and we’ve been lucky enough to be sent a couple of those too with the Kratos, Baneblade, Rhino and Infantry boxes for the two armies. Just like with the models in the core box these are absolutely stunning and a joy to paint up. One thing that will be of note for Space Marine players is that the vehicle boxes contain a full transfer sheet covering every legion rather than the selection of just 4 in the core box.

Legions Imperialis – The Rules and How to Play

So let’s take a deep dive into the Legions Imperialis rulebook and see just how the game plays and what is different to other Games Workshop systems.

So first things first, this is a new game and while it shares much of the DNA from early editions of Epic, in particular Space Marine the game is very much it’s own thing. People who are more used to the later editions of Epic will find a few things here that they do not remember, while those who played Space Marine will see lots of returning elements. Essentially they have attempted to capture the feeling of those early editions of epic while at the same time injecting some fresh mechanics into it in order to get the best of both worlds. This is something the Specialist Games team is great at doing and we have seen through their other systems such as Blood Bowl, Titanicus and Necromunda, and it’s something of this stance that I am expecting to see for The Old World when it arrives early next year.

What does a “Normal” game of Epic look like? Well the game is balanced around armies of 2500-3000 points and take place on a 5’x4′ battlefield. We haven’t yet got armies this big, but based on games of Imperalis we’ve set up with 1500 a side on a 4×4 board I suspect things are going to look awesome with a full size game with multiple detachments fighting across cities, Titans stomping around the battlefield and aircraft buzzing overhead. If you want a full size battlefield for Imperialis and you want to use the Games Workshop tiles you’re going to want 3 and a half boxes of them in order to have enough. We haven’t seen these in person ourselves at the time of writing this review, but if the existing Titanicus scenery (Which is also getting rereleased alongside the game) is anything to go by then it’s going to be worth picking up for a fully immersive experience.

One thing that will be a little different to how most GW games work is with the concept of Formations and Detachments. This is core to who armies are assembled and is more in line with what you see for historical games compared to the more freeform list building you see in Age of Sigmar or 40k. First you select your core army – at the moment this is either Legiones Astartes or Solar Auxilia, though other armies will be coming further down the line (I suspect the Mechanicum, Talons of the Emperor and Daemons) and this becomes your primary force. 70% of your points spent has to be spent on this army with the remaining 30% able to be taken from any allied forces. You then go around building your army through a series of Formations each made up of a number of Detachments with an army having at least 1 Formation for each 1000 of the army. Think of a Formation as a large 40k army and these are the building blocks of your Imperialis force. Detachments on the other hand represent units that can be taken, often with supplemental attached units that can be added to them. For example, the core part of an Astartes army is the Legion Tactical Detachment – this costs 35 points and consists of 4 bases of Space Marines, and can be further expanded with bases of Assault Marines, Support and Heavy Support squads and Terminators. And while it may be tempting to load up a detachment with all the bells and whistles one important thing is that every unit in a detachment operates as a single block in game and has to stay in unit coherency. So maybe you might be better taking your tactical Detachment with just basic marines and instead take those other units as dedicated support Detachments able to operate independently of each other.

Each Formation has a number of compulsory detachments and then optional ones that can be filled with supporting units. So if we look at the Legion Demi Company you have to take a HQ detachment, a Support detachment and two core detachments – so using the contents of the Imperialis box this could be the Command Squad, 2 blocks of 4 bases of Marines and a detachment of 4 Contemptors. The rest of your units can then be added as optional detachments or attached to the existing detachments and operate as part of them – so perhaps you want some heavy weapon support and load out your Tactical detachments with attached plasma and missile squads, while leaving your terminators and assault marines as optional detachments to give them the benefit of moving away from your blocks of troops. There’s no requirement for different detachments within a formation to stay together, just units within a detachment – so there’s lots of room for list tuning to fit your favoured play style.

Another reason for having multiple detachments also comes from the core game mechanic of placing orders to units. At the start of each turn, each player assigns each detachment an order in secret, with the orders essentially giving the models the ability to act or have an advantage in a particular phase, but often locking them out of other phases. The orders are:

First Fire – Allows the unit to fire in the First Fire phase of combat, but not move in the movement phase. Essentially they give up their movement for a chance of shooting before any unit that doesn’t have a first fire order.

Advance – This is essentially the default order, units can move in the movement phase and can fire in the Advancing Fire phase of combat (This follows the First Fire phase, potentially leaving your units open to being shot by First Fire units). This also allows your units to Overwatch, allowing them to shoot at an enemy unit at any part of it’s movement at a -2 to hit modifier. The other big twist here is that Advance fire comes not just after First Fire, but also after melee combat!

March – This allows a Detachment to move in the movement phase twice its movement stat, or 3 times if it is made up of just infantry, but cannot shoot at all

Charge – This is very similar to March, but allows a unit to move twice its movement value, but also to move into engagement with the enemy. In addition if a unit has a charge order, it gets to add 1 to its fight rolls as long as it has moved at least an inch, making a Charge order a great idea for a unit that you think is going to be charged, as you should be able to get your fight roll bonus as you pile into combat

Once orders are placed and then revealed, the players roll off for initiative in a similar way to Age of Sigmar with a player having the possibility to flip between going first and second throughout a game. Where things are different to Age of Sigmar however is how phases are resolved. Within each phase players take turn activating detachments, with their opponent activating a unit after them, and then back to the first player and on until all units have been activated. This is a great mechanic as it ensures that games are engaging without “dead time” as you are waiting for your opponent to finish their turn. Your opponents first activation could well spoil the plan you had for your own unit, or give you things to think about as you can dance in and out of range of units that are advancing towards you, set up a temping unit to use as bait for a counter charge or position in such a way to mess up their push towards an objective.

This back and forth also applies to combat, with units alternating between units with the first fire command, then all other eligible units before moving onto units that are in close combat. This means that with clever activation you could potentially take out an enemy unit that is primed to shoot one of your important units before they get to fire – especially if you make use of First Fire orders with your decent ranged detachments. The game becomes a real game of keeping your nerve and knowing when to pull the trigger in order to try and force your opponent to shoot a unit they don’t have to. Shooting is quick and easy with just a hit roll and a save made – there’s no rolling to wound here, if you are hit you lose a wound unless you make the save! Armour modifiers exist as in Heresy and 40k, but there’s some really interesting things here that work really well for making you want to take a well rounded army. A laser destroyer for example rolls 2 dice, hits on 4+ and has an AP of -2 making it really good at killing tanks (A predator for example has a 3+ save and only 1 wound, so if they failed that roll it would be destroyed) but the laser destroyer has the Anti-Tank keyword meaning that it has AP 0 against infantry, you’re going to want to bring some dedicated anti infantry weapons if you want to take out the troops. In building lists I really had to make sure I had supporting and complementary units and weapons in order to ensure I had both tools I could use to take out key enemy units, but also covering my bodies with other units in order to claim objectives and hunker down in buildings. This is a refreshing change to having units in 40k that can deal with tanks or infantry regardless and having no downside.

Close Combat is very different to most other GW games in that you pair off bases across the detachments in engagement range and then each player rolls 2D6 and adds their CAF characteristic (Which represents how good they are at combat) – if one side rolls higher then the other side loses a wound, no saves are made! If it is a tie then the combat continues next turn, but the participants add an extra dice for each turn they are in combat. Sometimes you might not be able to pair off units and instead have one unlucky base in combat with 6 enemy bases – in this instance you would have 6 different fights, with the poor loner having to win each in turn to survive!

As you can imagine this makes close combat particularly brutal, and in some cases you can have whole chunks of detachments evaporate in combat with a few resilient bodies staying slugging it out a few turns. But if one side does win, then suddenly they may feel a little exposed as the Advancing Fire phase follows close combat, and that victorious unit may suddenly be sat by itself and be the prime target for some incoming shooting.

I really love the breaks in convention here – firstly Engagement in the middle of shooting seems weird at first, but it really does give you lots to think about such as covering your close combat units with a nearby shooting unit with a first fire order who can neutralise a unit that could be a threat in the Advancing Fire phase to your melee unit once they have won the fight. The fact that players alternate between these detachments also makes the game really exciting to play and when your ploys and tricks pay off it makes them all the more exhilarating for it!

Like with Horus Heresy, there are a lot of special rules, weapon types and surprisingly detailed rules about buildings, titans and aircraft that makes this a combination of quite a complex game that has combat phases that complete quite quickly compared to other games. I do think that cheat sheets with all the various keywords and special rules will be really useful here, and Games Workshop actually sell packs of cards with the unit and detachment stats on that I would recommend picking up and placing on the edge of the table to remind you of these and speed up gameplay.

Matched Play

The book contains a section detailing how to go about playing a game of Legions Imperialis, and in particular how to run balanced matched play games. There is a little side bar talking about narrative and open play, and I suspect we will get a series of campaign books that delves into this side of the hobby, perhaps exploring some of the large conflicts of the Horus Heresy, but for the core book the focus is on your traditional Matched Play style game. We get a chart of 12 different missions, which already gives you a lot of different games to get your teeth into, with them revolving around units capturing objective markers on the battlefield. The cool thing here is that we see something similar to “OC” in 40k where a unit has a value that shows how good it is at capturing an objective – Infantry are worth 5, Cavalry and Walkers 3, Vehicles 2, Knights 1 and Titans are 0 as they are far too large to be able to effectively hold an objective. This again makes it so that you want to take big blocks of troops to do the leg work of taking objectives while your stronger units try and force your opponent off them, while transports and flyers then ferry your units across the board in order to take them for yourself. Without this I think there would be the danger that we just see Titans sitting on objectives with noone able to do anything about them. Yes, Titans are ridiculously powerful, but they have a particular role to play, with your basic grunt being who is going to win games for you.

As an extra twist to missions, each player also rolls 2 secondary objectives from a random list and select the one that they want to try and achieve – these tend to give you a scaling number of objectives based on how well you achieve them – so for example the Plant the Standard secondary has you give a flag to one of your models with the aim of planting it within 12″ of your opponent’s board edge – if at the end of the game you are carrying it but have not planted it you get 5 points, if you have planted it but there are enemy units near it you get 10 and if you have planted it and it is not contested you get 15 – these extra points for secondaries can very often be the difference between winning a battle, so it’s important that you take units that you can rely on to perform all 6 of these, especially since you randomly generate the two you get to pick from.

The final half of the book is dedicated to the 2 army lists plus the supplemental list of Knights and Titans. Now I love Legions Imperialis, but my one black mark against the game is that we have seen a lot of cool models on Warhammer Community, but not all those models have rules in the book. We have no jetbikes and drop pods, or Solar Aux artillery tanks in the book for example. I suspect as new expansions are released that we will see new units for each army list introduced in each book, which unfortunately may lead to the situation we had with 1st edition Heresy before the army list books got released where you need to carry around a stack of books for each game. I do feel it is a real shame they didn’t just include the full lists in the core book, even if they then added legion specific bits and other factions in future books and I really hope they have the option of rules in the boxes or as a download for units not contained here. Of course, there is the possibility that we do get complete “Codex” style releases later, but it still annoys me a little that we don’t have the complete army lists in this book, especially as we know so much cool stuff is on the way. I suspect this is a victim of the delayed release of the game, as I imagine the first expansion and the 2nd wave should have been released in December to follow the initial wave a few months ago – sadly this is probably delayed until next year now.

What is in here is fun though, covers all of the current releases along with all of the available Titans, Knights, Aircraft (Every era correct Aeronautica unit that was present in Heresy) and some other bits that are yet to be released such as the Tarantula, Rapiers, Leviathans and Deredeos. Interestingly, some of the Formations have optional choices that do not have models available, so it seems that those core Formations have been future proofed to allow any future units to just slot into them once they are available.

The final part of the army list are the “Strategic Assets” – this represents all the Knights and Titans and there’s a lot of stuff here basically containing every single Adeptus Titanicus release, which is great news for players who have an existing collection. Sadly, you are not able to take an army of just Knights and Titans – which seems a bit of a shame, however I do understand why they have limited them as they are very very powerful and I’m not sure how fun it would be to fight an entire army of them. That said, you can always create your own narrative and open games and try and recreate some of the cool moments in books such as Mortis using the Legions Imperialis ruleset rather than the Titanicus one. the big thing to keep in mind is that combined allies can only total 30% of your army, so with things such as a Warlord Titan clocking in at a massive 600 points or a pair of Cerastus Knights costing 415 points, realistically you are only going to be able to take one or two of them in a force (And you are not able to mix multiple different Titans in an army as you can only take a single Strategic Asset detachment)

The book closes out with a full listing of every single unit and weapon profile in order to make reference during the game really easy – there’s also a photocopyable sheet of all the order tokens so that if you just pick up the book by itself you are able to print these out to use in your games.

Summary

So what do I think of Legions Imperialis and the initial releases? One of my favourite games ever was Epic 40k, the spectacle of being able to field battles with hundreds of models, columns of tanks and the mass movement of units was one of my fondest gaming memories, and while Legions Imperialis has more in common with its older sibling Space Marine than Epic 40k, I’ve already fallen in love with this system too. From the back and forth of alternate activations, to the rock/paper/scissors of weapons being specialised against specific targets and the fact that those tiny infantry units being the models that are best at capturing objectives while the full horrors of warfare in the Horus Heresy erupts around them, Legions Imperialis really feels like the Black Library series and the epic scale of battles you can not fully represent using the “big” Horus Heresy ruleset.

The models are gorgeous and are quick to paint while still looking like their larger counterparts and nothing even comes close to seeing two full Imperialis armies facing each other on a lovingly crafted battlefield, it really is at another scale to 40k and it’s hard to show just how “epic” it looks in pictures!

As mentioned earlier, it;s a shame that not all of the upcoming models have rules in the book, and that they will most likely sit within the supplements, but that is one small mark against an otherwise excellent release form Games Workshop – I can’t wait to see what the future holds for the game and what goodies are on the way!

Legions Imperialis is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 2nd December

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews free copies for review purposes.