Saturnine is here, and with it the 3rd Edition of Warhammer The Horus Heresy! Today we’re checking out the awesome Saturnine box, building up everything and seeing what it looks like painted up! This is just part of our Heresy coverage though, as we’ve also done full reviews on all the Liber books, the Core Rulebook and the Istvaan suppliment too! You can find all this over on our Horus Heresy 3rd Edition Hub

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

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the Saturnine box, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado, let’s jump into the brand new box and see what is inside!

Saturnine Unboxing and Review

So it’s finally with us, the brand new Warhammer The Horus Heresy box – and this one is absolutely chock full of goodies!

This retails at £195, which is the same price that the old Age of Darkness box was repriced to before it was discontinued. There’s a little bit of a mix of contents compared to that one too, but I feel we have decent value here.

Before we jump into the plastics though, let’s take a look at what else is included in the box:

First up we get a brand new transfer sheet covering both the Iron Warriors and the Salamanders – these are on the box art for the set itseld, and I suspect just like with the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Fists last time around, these will probably be the Legions used in all cover art for other boxes as they get released. It’s nice that they have mixed up the legions a little bit compared to last time, especially as the focus looks to be Isstvan this time round!

As ever with these boxes we also get dice and blast templates, though the “whippy stick” has been replaced with a more solid ruler from the Middle-Earth range.

What is new however is a sheet of tokens for Statuses and Objectives. These are really handy as Statuses are a big deal in the new edition, and keeping track of them during games is much easier with these tokens on hand. You can use them as they come, or just spray them in a neutral colour and then paint the raised detail. I found a base of Steel legion and then paint the raised surfaces black they can then blend into the table with the symbols visible – though of course you could paint them up in metalics and make them look like coins too!

For those who are maybe new to Heresy, the construction guide also has some quick start rules that talks you through the basic mechanics of the game – this is a great touch and means you can simply build your models, and then have a go with some simplified profiles to learn the ropes before you progress to picking up a Liber volume and building a full army.

From an army building point of view there is around 2000 points of miniatures in the box – and depending on how many veteran squads you build then you could potentially push this a little higher too. Either way, the Saturnine box has the foundations of a full army and is a great value starting point for putting together a new Heresy force or even add to your existing army.

You also get a full hardcopy of the Age of Darkness Rulebook in the box, and this is a massive 350ish page tome filled with both lore and rules – we’ve got a full review of this up on the site which you can check out today, and also see below our full video run through of the book too

Also included in the Saturnine box are two quick reference sheets – these are very good for looking things up mid battle, and the fact you get two of them in the box is brilliant as each player can use one. It’s worth noting here that you could easily start two armies with the content of the box by painting them in different schemes, much as GW do on the back of the box.

So what about the miniatures?

There’s a lot of awesome stuff here, so let’s take a look at it one by one!

My first army I collected for the first edition was Thousand Sons, so I decided to put together the box as a way of expanding that army and getting things it ready for 3rd Edition.

First up we have the big centerpiece model in the box, the Saturnine Dreadnought! This thing is amazing and was a real joy to build up. From a size point of view its a similar size to the Custodes Telemon Dreadnought, and much like the Leviathan before it, the Dread is fully ready for magnet swappable weapons. The main guns and the slots they go into already have 5mm holes for them, so its simply a case of popping some magnets in, and you’re ready to switch out the guns when the second weapon sprue is released. The body weapons also have magnet holes, these ones are 3mm and again really easy to do while you’re building the model.

The Shoulders are seperate pieces too, so you can easily leave these off to spray them a different colour and then snap them back on once painted – the Dreads tend to look good with different coloured shoulders, so it’s worth doing this!

Next up in Saturnine is the Araknae Quad Accelerator Platform. This thing is massive, much bigger than i expected to be! Each of the legs extends around 3 and a half inches out, and these legs are actually fully articulated, allowing them to position over terrain for example. I can imagine this thing dropping out of orbit and the legs folding out to fit whatever it lands on.

Interestingly, the turret fits perfectly on a Sicaran tank – so it wouldn’t surprise me if a new Sicaran varient comes to a future Journal Tactica using this as the basis for a conversion.

Next up we have the Saturnine Praetor, and this is a really impressive kit. There’s lots of options for customisation here from different weapons to the fact of each of these weapons go in alternate hands in order to break up the silhouette a little more. It does have a cloak, which I left off my model as felt it was a little hard to attach it and still be able to get to detail to paint it – You can actually paint that seperatly and attach it once the model is painted, but I quite looked the clean look without it.

The other HQ choice in the box is the Centurion in MK2 armour, and this is really nice too – not as much potential here for customisation compared to the Praetor, but it’s a really nice model and does have a couple of different heads to choose from. This is a fiddly one to build however, and positioning the arm and the servo skull so he floats above the right arm is a bit of a faff!

Another kit in the box which are going to be popular are the Saturnine Terminators. These are cracking models and have a range of weapons you can give them. I think the best choice is going to be duel disintergrators, but you only get 6 of those guns in the box – so if you build 3 as those then the other 3 will need to be duel plasma, or plasma and fist. I do wonder if we’ll see more varients of these in the future, as looks like it would be pretty straight forward for an upgrade sprue for these to appear.

The box also contains 40 new MK2 marines – I’m a big fan of these older suits of armour, and like with the MK6 marines they are now in sets of 5 fixed poses. While some people will miss the ability to change the poses, this does mean that they are fully compatible with the existing set of Horus Heresy upgrades such as weapons and command squads for example.

I opted to build 30 of them as Tactical Marines as these are really handy to have in the core of your army for the purpose of the Line special rule getting you more victory points!

The other 10 I painted up as Veterans, and there’s 2 full sprues of Disintergrator weapons included, which are a new option for these squads. It’s worth pointing out here that those weapons cant be taken in special or heavy squads, just in vets – and there’s a variety of different disintergrator weapons on that frame that can be used, adding a bit of variety to your units. You have enough here to build 2 full squads, though that would also mean you can only build 2 squads of Tacticals.

Summary

Just like the Age of Darkness box before it, I think Saturnine is a brilliant intro box to Horus Heresy and I can see myself picking up another box to use for other Legions. Rather than push fit or basic kits, we get the full kits here and are suited for any of the Space Marine Legions. As ever you’re getting a substantial discount here too, as I expect the seperate cost of the models in this box alone would be around £300 – and you’re getting the core rulebook too on top of that!

It’s nice that we get a different mix of stuff compared to what was in Age of Darkness too, if you have started an army through that box, then picking up this set and you’ve got easily 4000 points to draw an army from!

I know some people have been a little concerned about existing armies too, but don’t forget we also have the full Legends lists to come – these will be fully legal at GW events and will cover models and load-outs not currently available to buy, while the Libers just contain rules for models you can buy

This is an amazing time to get into the system, and I’m really excited to seeing the continued support that Horus Heresy gets

Warhammer The Horus Heresy – Saturnine is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 26th July

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

Published by Matt Crowther

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