Liber Questoris brings Horus Heresy players rules for using Knights and Titans in games of Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition! One of 5 Liber volumes up for pre order today alongside the Saturnine box, this one is dedicated to both armies of Knights and Titans, but also the ability to take one as a Lord of War choice in any other army.

In this review we’ll be checking out the book, having a look at all the new profiles and seeing just what a Knight army looks like this edition.

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

We have a truck load of Horus Heresy content up today including reviews of the other books, the Core Rulebook and the Saturnine box itself, which you can check over on our Horus Heresy hub!

We’ve also filmed some round table deep dives into the books, you can see the Liber Questoris one just below or over on YouTube

So gather together your Maniple and get ready to check out all the awesome stuff in Liber Questoris!

Liber Questoris Review

Liber Questoris is an exciting book for me, as a fan of all things Knights and Titans. In the previous edition, the rules for these were contained in the Liber Mechancium volume, but this time they have been given their very own book with half of the page count dedicated to each army. This is ace as it gives lots of page count to make each of these feel like their own army, and as we’ll see in a little while the Titans in particular get a lot of love with a whole 10 pages dedicated to their rules in games.

We’ll be taking a look at both of these lists in turn, along with all their special rules and any changes from the previous edition of the game.

First up, let’s check out he Questoris Familia Army List

The Questoris Familia Army List

First things first, building a Knight army is quite different to the previous edition. In 2nd edition, list building was quite restrictive as you had to take two Armigers for every Knight in the army. This really meant that your Knights were actually outnumbered by the Armigers, and if you wanted to do a nice thematic list with just big Knights then it was difficult to do.

That is a thing of the past in Liber Questoris with the new Knight Detachment allowing for 4 Lords of War. You’re not allowed any allies or external Lords of War here (so no taking a Titan along with a Knight force), but each of these 4 slots is a prime slot, which can be used to give each Knight a different household rank – we’ll look at these in more detail shortly, but 4 of the ranks unlock Additional Detachments allowing you to add more units to your army.

If you take a Scion Aspirant then you unlock a detachment with 4 Armiger slots. This allows you to still take Armigers while limiting the Armiger spam we saw last edition.

Taking a Scion Marshal unlocks an additional two Lord of War slots, allowing you to lean into an army of just big Knights

Preceptor Ranks unlocks a new detachment of Mechanicum robots – this allows you to take a unit of each of the following – Domitars, Castellax (The standard Bolter loadout only), Vorax and Vultarax. This is very cool for those like me that love these robotic beauties and gives you some variety on the battlefield.

Finally Lord Scions unlock a detachment of Solar Auxilia containing two Troops slots, 2 Heavy Transport slots, a Recon slot and an Elite slot – opening up a lot of options to put feet on the ground for your army.

You are limited in some cases by the numbers of each rank you can take, but you’re free to take all or non and anything in between to have a nice mix of units on the battlefield. I love this as gives you so many different fore makeups, and a nice excuse to add new models to your army and match them all up in the same scheme.

This is enhanced further with the choice of Paradgrims you pick for your army when writing a list – essentially this determines if your army leans into Armiger, Solar Aux or Mechanicum heavy, with each of the three removing the cap on the rank that unlocks that slot. So for example take a Imperial House paradigm and you can have multiple Lord Scions unlocking multiple Solar Aux detachments. Each of the three also unlock one of those three detachments without needing an appropriately ranked title either. Again this opens up loads of list building potential, and each also unlocks new vows and reactions too – so lots more customisation than we got last edition!

Each Knight added to your army gets a choice of one of 10 different ranks, and they each grant bonuses on top of any detachment additions mentioned above.

Seneschals are limited to 1 per army and reduce incoming damage by 1, which is really nice – but they give up Slay the Warlord when destroyed

Lord Scions are limited to 1 per army and can make 2 repairs a turn

Scion Arbalester is limited to 1 per army and allows the Knight to get the benefit of staying still when it moves half movement

Scion Aspirants are Expendable, so give away less points if killed turn 1

Aucteller are limited to 1 per army and have Precision 5+ on their melee weapons

Scion Dolorous are limited to 1 per army and cause Fear (2)

Scion Implacable are limited to 1 per army and gain Firestorm, allowing them to Volley Fire at full BS

Scion Martial represents the average Knight, and so offers no additional benefit.

Preceptors are limited to 1 per army and gain Battlesmith (2) and an Intelligence of 8

Scion Uhlan are limited to 1 per army and gain Fast (2) and Impact (A), which increases their rush and charge distance and gives them an extra attack on the charge

As you can see, there’s lots to play with to create a nice varied force of Knights

Knights themselves get some new rules in Liber Questoris that essentially just explain how they work, They are basically vehicles with just front and rear armour, while still having combat profiles. They are able to rush (run) in the movement phase just like any model with an Initiative value, and they ignore dangerous and difficult terrain. They can move through any other models, however interesting they do not have the rule seen on some of the Daemon Engines that allows them to walk out of combat – Knights will stay in combat like any other model

Liber Questoris Knight Profiles

So let’s take a look at all the units in the new book!

Armiger Helverin

The autocannon wielding Helverin is back, and 3/4 of its previous cost, it does lose an attack compared to last edition, but now has Outflank allowing you to bring it on from board edges! The Pharton Autocannon is nice, giving it 6 S7 shots at AP3 with Breaching making it really versatile against multiple targets.

Armiger Warglaive

The second flavour of Armiger is the Warglaive, this trades the twin cannons for a Thermal Lance (a bananas melta weapon that can do up to 8 damage when inside 12″ of a target) and Reaper Chainblade that can even chop through Terminators. These look ridiculously good for the points! They are however also a prime target for similar weapons.

Armiger Knight Moirax

This is replicated from the Mechanicum book, and has the large range of weapons that has always been available to it. One nice touch is the Rad Furnace which reduces the Toughness of anything in combat with it by 1

Knight Questoris

The standard stock Knight with a whole range of different weapons available to it, making it easy to fit these out for different tasks. They are now a little more fragile than they used to be with only armour 11 on the rear, meaning that even Strength 6 weaponry has a chance of penetrating it.

Ion shields now give a 5+ save to the front and 6+ save to the rear, but also gives them another 5+ save against glancing hits too, really meaning you need to pile on the penetrating hits to kill them. They have 10 wounds, but when things like the Thermal Lance can do 8 wounds at close range you still need to be really careful with them

Knight Magaera / Knight Styrix

Two profiles exist for the Mechanicum Knights, which have the same profile but different weapons. They don’t have Ion Shields like the Questoris Knights but instead have Ionic Flare Shields – These are bsically better Ion Shields that have all the same rules, but also nullify the effects of Armourbane (Which now allows glances to penetrate)

The weapons on these are very cool with themes carrying over from the Mechanicum book.

Cerastus Knight Castigator

The Cerastus Knights share the same armour values as the stock Knight with 13 on the front and 11 on the rear, however they have 12 wounds each making them a little tougher. The Castigator has a high volume fire bolt gun, which can cause headaches for Marines, but the star of the show here is the Tempest Warblade with has Aflame (2) which reduces the leadership of anyone wounded by it for 2 for the rest of the phase.

Cerastus Knight Archeron

Toting a mighty Infernus Cannon, this thing uses the Hellstorm template to hit multiple models at Strength 7, and if it stands still this is at AP3 – a great choice for the Rank that allows them to move half distance and get the benefit of being stationary.

Cerastus Knight Lancer

The Lancer is the last of the plastic Cerastus Knights currently available and hits hard with its Shock Lance, striking at S10 and damage 4 (5 on the charge). The Ion Gauntlet Shield also gives it a 5+ inv against Melee attacks too.

Cerastus Knight Atrapos

Everyone’s favourite Gravity Gun armed Knight is back! The Atropos is rocking some immensely powerful weapons that can delete a Knight in a single shot! The Phasecutter is only 12″ range but if stationary can do 12 damage, and the Singularity Cannon has a S9 AP2 blast that does 8 damage, but with overload there’s a 1 in 6 chance you hit yourself with it every time you fire – which can almost kill itself in one misfire!

Acastus Knight Porphyrion

Moving onto the Acastus chassis Knights we get the Porphyrion – this is armour 14 at the front but still 11 at the rear meaning S6 guns can still hurt it. 18 HP are a lot to chew through, but we’ve seen some of the firepower other Knights can put out and focused fire can still do a lot of hurt to it. The Neuron Wave battery is insanely powerful, putting out 4 S12 shots with damage 8 when stationary, making this amazing at taking down other Knights and Titans – clocks in at a lot of points though!

Acastus Knight Asterius

The other flavour of over the top firepower is the Asterius, this trades volume of shots and a few pips of strength for multiple 7″ blasts that get more powerful the further away the target is. At long range this can kill multiple armigers, dreads and units of Terminators in a single shot

Vows and Reactions

Finishing off the Knight half of Liber Questoris, we also get a selection of Questoris Vows and Knight Reactions.

Vows are cool – these are picked at the start of game and for each Knight you have deployed you give them a challange to kill a specific unit type – for example a High Command unit, Lord of War or any other unit – if the Knight manages to kill the vowed unit type then they get bonus VP for secondaries like Slay the Warlord for example

Three new reactions are included (and its worth pointing out that Knights get an additional reaction point every turn) – One is stomp, which allows you to place a blast marker on a combat with you, dealing AP3 Dam 2 hits at the base Knight strength. The next is Rotate Ion Shields which increases your invulnerable save by 1 for a single volley of fire coming your way. Finally Joust allows you to counter charge a unit that has declared a charge on you – stopping any bonuses they get for charging.

Knights seem really fun, and with the reduced rear armour I feel most armies will have ways of dealing with them now too!

Liber Questoris – Legio Titanicus

The second half of Liber Questoris is what really excites me though, rules for running Legio Titanicus armies in Warhammer The Horus Heresy! In the previous edition Titans were in an odd spot – rules as written you could only take a Titan allied force within your allotment of Lord of War points, which meant that you could only really use them in massive games. Yes, you could always house rule it or play Titan only battles for fun, but it’s always nice to have some official framework.

In Liber Questoris you still have the option of taking a Titan as part of your Lord of War allowence (for example, a Warhound Titan fits nicely into any 3000 point army), but what’s new are the Engine Kill Missions. This is a suite of bespoke missions designed for Titan vs Titan, or Titan vs an army battles – as you make your list in heresy after selecting the mission that also means that everyone playing is able to tailor their list to face the enemy Titan. Something that maybe isnt suited to tournament style play, but at it’s heart Horus Heresy is a narrative game, and anything that lets you field the awesome power of Titans in friendly games gets a massive thumbs up from me!

The Titan Ordinal is a new detachment that allows you to put together armies for Engine Kill missions – this has a single Lord of War slot, and the text states that all limits on numbers and percentage of an army’s points are ignored here. So you’re free to take a single Warlord Titan if you want, which is really cool! You also get a Command Slot, 4 Troops Slots and 4 Transport Slots allowing you to use the Secutari forces also found in the army list. This is nice for filling up those spare points if you take a Reaver for example. You’re also allowed to take an allied detachment and a single Lord of War from a different army list. Now the chart does only have one LOW slot, so I’m a little unclear if the intent is that you only take one Titan – but the text mentions to ignore limits on numbers so I’m sure players who wanted to run a maniple of Warhounds for example would be able to come to an agreement here. While you can take a Titan as a standard Lord of War outside of titan games, the text does state that it’s best to make sure your opponent is aware so they can build to counter it properly.

Excitingly, the book does mention that future supplements may include other classes and types of Titan too… Speculation time, but I do wonder if they will do a Dire Wolf in Heresy scale at some point…

The book has 10 pages dedicated purely to how to use Titans in games, and I’m really impressed at the detail here.

Titans are really big, so if they want to turn then it costs them 10″ of movement in order to rotate them any direction, otherwise they always move forwards – so no sidestepping behind buildings with your Titans

Titans also interact quite differently in combat – they can never attack in a fight directly, instead their melee weapons operate from a rules pov as a short ranged gun. So for example a Titan Power First as a 6″ range and is “shot” in the shooting phase at an enemy target. If they do get charged then they are able to try and stomp on what has charged them before wandering off in their own turn. Though watch out as theres rules for enemy units attempting to scale and board titans in order to do damage, which is done with it’s own phase and detailed rules, which is really cool.

Titan profiles are very different now, and they have statlines for each part of the Titan – arms, legs, carapace and head, with enemy units able to target different areas (with some modifiers, targeting a head for example requires snap firing)

These different areas have two armour profiles – a standard one and an exposed one. This feels very much like a video game boss fight with multiple health bars – you pick away at the standard armour until you break it and from then on you start penetrating on the weaker exposed armour value. This is really cool and makes it feel like you’re slowly blowing the armour off them. As you do this the Titan can start to take damage on these critical systems doing things such as stopping the Titan from making multiple shooting attacks by damaging the head, to targeting the guns to reduce BS, or damaging the legs to reduce movement. It’s going to take a lot of firepower to get an Engine Kill, but it really feels like an epic battle now rather than a few lucky rolls on a damage chart.

If you manage to get a location to zero HP then that area is crippled and has further negative effects on the titan – but just because you have crippled a titan doesn’t mean you’ve killed it yet!

At this point we get the cinematic moment when everyone tries to pour as much firepower on the titan as possible – you start to count up any excess damage and start to roll on the Titan Critical Damage chart to see if you can kill it. What’s cool is that if it’s lucky a Titan on negative wounds can still stumble on for a few turns trying to cause as much damage as possible until it explodes – eventually however you’ll finally take it down ranging from making it slump motionless in place, fall over, or even have it’s reactor explode hitting EVERY model on the board with a 4 hit, and anyone unfortunate to be standing within 6″ taking a S16 AP2 Damage 10 hit to the face as the reactor explodes with the power of a sun!

These Titan rules in Liber Questoris are ludicrously cool, and i can’t wait to get my Reaver and Warhound on the battlefield!

So what do we get in the army list?

Secutarii Axiarch

The command slot has just one option, the Axiarch – this is your Secutarii commander with a choice of a few different weapons and a Mag-Inverter Shield – this basically reduces the range of incoming charges making them a little more difficult. The stock Arc lance is pretty good too, hitting at +1 Initiative and AP 3 to fend off any troops heading towards your Titans.

Secutarii Cohort

The only troops choice is the Secutarii Cohort, and these are now a combined profile – they come base with the lance and shield, but can be swapped out for free for the Galvanic Caster which is a high volume of fire assault weapon with shred and Rending.

Triaros Armoured Conveyor

We also get a transport in the form of the Triaros from the Mechanicum book. The one in Liber Questoris is actually a Transport slot rather than Heavy Transport, allowing you to fit it into the standard Titan detachment.

While only a couple of non-Titan options, that does allow you to fill any spare points with boots on the ground (especially as Titans can never score)

Titans

All 4 of the current Titans are included in the rules here – Warhounds, Reavers, Warbringers and Warmasters. The points are roughly in line with what they cost in the previous edition and both the armour and HP increases alongside scale. What’s new this edition is that when adding a titan to your army you can pick how experienced the crew is. This tends to cost a couple of hundred points per upgrade and basically gives you a higher ballistic skill and also a higher crew level, which comes into effect when infantry try and swarm the Titan to cause damage – the higher the level the harder it is for them to do it.

Titans have a number of common special rules across them:

War Horns can be sounded to reduce the Advanced Characteristics of models (friend or foe – your Secutarii have rules to mitigate this) which is pretty cool

Void shields essentially become additional armour that the enemy has to break through before they can hit your Titan. These are armour 13 and collapse with any glancing or penetrating hit, but crew can reignite them at the end phase, with the likelihood increasing with higher level crew – again making it well worth paying the points for a better crew.

With Repair Crew they can also restore hull points each turn – with a Warhound repairing D3 damage each turn all the way up to a Warlord repairing D6+1

Finally the larger Titans have Reinforced Structure which works in a similar way to Enteral Warrior by reducing incoming damage from non ordnance weapons.

There’s lots of weapon options and again this edition these have no points cost for different weapons like with last edition. Honestly most of these guns can take out an entire continent, so in the grand scheme of things it doesnt make much difference – but the nuances will be interesting when fielding against other titans or when having a single titan facing off against an army

Engine Kill Missions

Liber Questoris has two Engine Kill missions in it, one designed for a “normal” army facing off against a Titan force that is trying to destroy a strategic target that is located just off one edge of the board. Think the Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back with the titans using their weapons to try and destroy a Command Post while the plucky defenders are trying to hold it off. It’s all very epic and makes a Titan battle a massive event that everyone can enjoy rather than just one side being steamrolled by something they can’t kill. I hope we see more of this going forward, and do wonder if this will continue in the Journals with themed missions with simialr set ups but allowing things such as army wide deep strike, or city fights in dense terrain etc.

Just before we wrap things up, I just want to shout out that Liber Questoris has a full Rules Appendix that lists out all special rules, wargear and weapons at the end of the book. This covers everything that is covered by the units in the book and is a much better experience than it was for 2nd edition. No more flicking through the book trying to find them, and no cross referencing rules in the Core Book, everything is contained here, which is an amazing change.

Summary

So I don’t think it’s any surprise that I’m a massive fan of Liber Questoris, and the 3rd Edition of Horus Heresy in general. In 2nd Edition I was always a little turned off a Knight army due to the need to take 2 Armigers per Knight, and Titan forces wasn’t really something you could do within the confines of a 3000 point game. With the changes in this book both of those options are now possibilities, and I feel they have made Knights a little easier to kill, making them more suitable for event play while also making Titans more survivable and lead to a more epic and cinematic experience compared to what came before.

If you’re a fan of skyscraper sized war engines then you’re going to enjoy Liber Questoris, and I’m really excited to be able to use my big models a little easier than I could previously.

Liber Questoris and the entire Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition release range is up for pre order today and released on Saturday 19th July

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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