Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition is finally here! After being the worst kept secret since, well 2nd edition Heresy, the team has promised this is a refinement and re-tuning of the previous system rather than a massive overhaul – and in this full review we’ll be checking out just how different Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition actually is. We’ll be diving into the rules changes, taking a look at what’s new and how the new rules updates will affect your current army.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us an early 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?

This core Rulebook review is just part of our extensive Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition coverage, we’ve also checked out each of the Liber volumes to see how the armies work and what the new rules are, built and painted the entire Saturnine box and dived into the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre Part 1 Journal Tactica. All this content is over on our Horus Heresy 3rd Edition hub, so make sure to check that out after this!

We’ve also filmed a full look through the Rulebook which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So strap into your Drop Pod as we dive straight into the new Horus Heresy Age of Darkness 3rd Edition Rulebook!

Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition Review – Core Rulebook

13 years ago in the distant days of 2012, after the popularity of the Horus Heresy series of novels by Black Library, Forge World released the first book in The Horus Heresy Black Book series – Betrayal. Framed around the Battle of Isstvan III, the book was the first to bring gaming rules to the Horus Heresy era and was essentially a supplement to the 6th Edition of Warhammer 40k.

Rather than being it’s own ruleset, it instead used the core 40k rules as a foundation for playing out battles in the Age of Darkness. I think it’s safe to say it was ridiculously popular, spawning an entire series of books and become the main product range for Forge World, which had up until that point been more about niche and advanced kits for experienced modelers.

5 years later, with 8th Edition 40k on the way, Forge World released their first standalone rulebook for The Horus Heresy, taking the best parts of 6th and 7th edition and making some tweaks to better balance the game for Marine Vs Marine combat. This book was the core rules for The Horus Heresy for the next 5 years until in June 2022 2nd Edition exploded onto the scene.

If 1st Edition was aimed at Old School players who longed for the complexity and narrative action of previous editions of 40k, 2nd Edition is what catapulted the Horus Heresy into the mainstream – with a massive push to taking the huge resin backcatalogue and starting to turn them into plastic kits. With this they also took the core rules and gave them some polish along with a number of new and exciting features like reactions that brought new life into the aging system.

3 years later in July 2025, Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition is here.

This has been rumoured to be coming for a long time, and there’s been a lot of worry about what has changed and if it is still at it’s core the offspring of that suppliment book released 13 years ago. Happily I can report that yes, Heresy 3rd Edition is ace and while maybe having some rather large changes compared to what was suggested was coming, it still feels like The Horus Heresy.

The Release Schedule

So before we jump into the book itself, I want to touch on the release schedule for 3rd Edition Horus Heresy. With the book having pretty substantial changes, it was quickly shared that all of the Army Books (Liber volumes) would be invalidated and replaced with a new range of books. This time around 5 of the 6 books are available day 1 with Liber Astartes, Liber Hereticus, Liber Mechanicum, Liber Auxilia and Liber Questoris all up for pre order today (we also have reviews for all of these up on the site today) and a Liber volume for Talons of The Emperor following later in the year (We tend to see quarterly big releases from specialist games, so I’d guess October if I had to)

For release Games Workshop will also be offering free downloads for “Legacy” forces – this is rules for any units that do not have models available to buy – the Liber volumes only contain kits that can be bought today. Now, all of these Legacy lists will be “legal” in GW events, so if you have any older Heresy kits then don’t worry, you will be able to play with them. On day 1 a “get you by” list will be released for Talons of The Emperor too, until the new book is released.

Over the next few months until the end of the year there will also be monthly releases for Warhammer the Horus Hersy 3rd Edition with army lists and rules for Militia, Daemons, Inducti, Blackshields and Shattered Legions getting released on Warhammer Community. This is great and a sign that Games Workshop are looking to fully support the new edition, and it means if you have an existing army you will still going to be able to play them (Though with the detachment changes you might need to shuffle them round a little)

The future is looking bright for The Horus Heresy, and even if you’re a new player this is a great time to jump in.

The Lore

At it’s heart, Warhammer The Horus Heresy has and always has been a narrative focused game. Now, that’s not to say that tournament play isnt popular, but even in that setting then the narrative is a big focus. The appeal of this game is being able to put together the battles you’ve read about in The Horus Heresy novel series, and even maybe create your own “what if” moments.

With narrative being so important to the game, it’s no surprise that the first 154 pages of this massive 352 page book are dedicated to the Lore and background of The Horus Heresy itself.

If you’re an existing Horus Heresy fan, then a lot of this will be engraved on your memory already, but this is a decent summary of Lore decanted into these 100 odd pages, covering each of the legions, factions and key events that happened over the war. We do get some new stuff in here too. Saturnine Armour for example is detailed as being used during the Unification Wars and eventually consigned to the history books, until the primarch Vulkan took it upon himself to take this historic pattern and improve and refine it’s technology. He achieved his goal and shared it with all 18 Legions shortly before the events of Isstvan III – meaning that once Horus had started his war, the new armour was already in traitor armories.

Some don’t like lore changing, but Heresy lore has always changed from day 1 – think of all the various media we have as different accounts of something half remembered that happened 10,000 years ago – sometimes get overlooked, omitted or redacted, and no one really knows the truth of how things actually went down. This is one of the strengths of the Horus Heresy, as it’s in the gamer to decide what their version of the truth is.

Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition – The Rules

So now we get to the big one, the core rules themselves.

Now, one thing that stood out to me in all the 3rd Edition books is how much easier it is to find things now. In the previous edition (which development was impacted by Covid) we had the odd situation where Universal Special Rules were split between multiple books, and the actual rules content was a little messy and hard to navigate – All of my old books are filled with post it notes to try and ease finding things, and this is made much easier in the new edition. Each of the Liber volumes has the full list of Universal Special Rules, Wargear and Weapons in the back of the book to make things easier to navigate, and the core book itself has a decent and easy to follow Index while also including USRs and Psychic power lores in the very back of the book – no more having to page back and forth through multiple books to find what you need!

So what’s new?

Well one of the bigger ones is the change to both unit and weapon statlines. All of the stats from previous editions still exist, but they have been joined with some new ones inspired by Rogue Trader, the first edition of Warhammer 40k. Cool (CL) is a stat that represents the model’s ability to deal with negative events on the battlefield and interacts directly with the new Tactical Statuses. The higher the stat then the less likely you are to be affected by things such as Pinning and Suppression, while also being easier to shake these effects off if you are impacted by them. Willpower (WP) is the models ability to tap into the warp and cast psychic powers, but also a models resistance against said powers. Finally Intelligence (In) is the model’s technical skills – the ability to repair vehicles and Automata for example. By using these 3 stats in addition to Leadership it allows there to be a higher degree of specialisation for your units. Heroes in particular can now specialise into one of these different fields, giving you more reason to take different types of characters in different games.

Weapon profiles have also had a major overhaul too, with a couple of new stats such as Firepower (FP) showing the number of shots a weapon has, and Damage (D) allowing a more elegant replacement for Brutal by allowing some weapons to do multiple points of damage. Melee weapons also get a pretty big refresh with weapons now having new stats such as Initiative Modifier (IM) which adds or subtracts a value to Initiative in a move to make more weapon options interesting by allowing for a trade off between speed and damage. Some weapons even have Attack Modifiers (AM) which allow you to roll additional attack dice when using them.

In Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition there’s now an expanded suite of Model Types that interact with the core rules. Some of these are familiar, for example being Infantry allows you to embark and disembark from transports, or Cavalry can fall back from combat further than other units. But we also get some new ones too – Paragon is a new unit type that applies to models like Primarchs, meaning that other big things that operate in a similar way, but aren’t actually Primarchs to be able to have the same special rules. Heroes have been split into a few different types too – for example a model with the Champion or Command type can issue challenges, while a Sergeant cannot.

One thing I would recommend to do is give the book a full read, especially if you are a player of a previous edition of the game, as there’s quite a few bits here that work quite a bit differently to older editions, and I think lots of people will be assuming things work the same way as 2nd Edition. For example, Ballistic Skill no longer has any impact on scatter – you simply roll a D6 and a scatter dice and it moved that far (with some weapons adding multiple dice to that scatter to make them less accurate)

Tactical Status

One of the bigger new things added in Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition are Tactical Statuses. These represent a number of different effects that can be applied to units, and I think this is going to be a key part of the new edition. Most of these are applied by new weapon conditions, however there are a few other ways of applying these to units, and you’re going to want to be using these in conjunction with abilities that modify advanced characteristics in order to get them off as successfully as possible.

There’s a few rules that apply regardless of which status you have. Firstly, you always count as making a disordered charge if you have a status. This means you don’t get any bonuses you would normally get for charging. Secondly, and this one is going to be really impactful is the fact that if you have a status then your initiative is set to 1. “Setting” a characteristic means that modifiers and bonuses simply do not work, your Initiative is 1 until you lose the Status, regardless of what weapons, powers or abilities you have. This is massive and with clever play make even the underdog have a great chance if a key unit is affected by a Status. You’re also not able to claim or contest objectives.

Pinned is predominately caused by Pinning Checks from weapons that apply the effect, and in addition to the generic rules that are above you also can’t move, including the ability to peruse or disengage during combat.

Suppressed means that your weapons can only snap fire – which is great at putting on nasty units that are targeting your key units.

Stunned stops the unit from making any reactions, again great at getting off on a unit that is likely to use a reaction during your turn.

Finally Routed means that you can only snap fire, and at the end of the movement phase they fall back (Though in 3rd edition units are not destroyed when engaged if they are falling back)

Interestingly, vehicles can also gain these statuses, and have a chance of repairing them each turn. I feel when list building you’re going to want a range of weapons with decent changes of applying statuses, if only for the Initiative setting.

Reactions

Reactions was one of the core things added in 2nd Edition, and in Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition reactions have been built on further. Previously you could do one reaction per phase, with some Warlord Traits granting you additional ones – this has changed now with in a 3000 points game each player having 2 reaction points to spend per turn, allowing you to usually do 2 reactions (Some future reactions might cost more reaction points if they are particularly powerful however). No unit can have more than 1 reaction per turn, but there’s no longer a restriction against using the same reaction multiple times on different units.

There’s now 9 core reactions and the Liber volumes also introduce other new ones that can be used by specific armies.

Reposition allows a unit to make a move equal to initiative – this can now be in any direction so can even be used to sneak onto an objective or hide behind a wall

Return Fire allows a unit that is shot to shoot back at full BS

Overwatch is similar but allows a unit to shoot at full BS when charged rather than doing Volley Fire (more on this later)

Death or Glory allows you to try and hit a vehicle that moves into you – you attack with a single weapon (melee or shooting) and your attacks automatically hit – manage to destroy the target or pin it and your plucky unit lives to fight another day, otherwise your model is destroyed

Intercept allows you to snapshot a unit that has been brought on from reserves

Evade has changed a lot, this is now used when a unit charges you in order to move the unit equal to it’s initiative to try and get out of range of the charge. There’s now no reaction that gives you a wounds mitigation save when you get shot.

Nullify can be used to try and stop a psychic power

Heroic Intervention allows you to declare a challenge with one of your models if the enemy chooses not to. Worth noting this is the only way of doing a challenge in your opponent’s turn

Lots of other reactions exist across the other books, with a lot of Psychic abilities now being in the form of reactions, which makes them more of a valuable resource but with decent effects.

I love these changes and continues to make both yours and the opponents turn engaging as you try and work out when is the best time to use those precious reaction points – Sure you can just overwatch or return fire – but maybe it’s worth holding on to them to evade to pull a unit into a trap, or have one unspent as insurance if you want to get in a challenge.

Vehicles

Vehicles have changed somewhat in Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition. For a start, with a damage charactersistic there is the chance for vehicles to take a lot more damage. Because of this across the board vehicles have been given increased wounds characteristics. They are also a little more survivable now that glances do not remove wounds. Instead, a glancing hit inflicts a random status – which isnt the end of the world as all vehicles can repair this, and some units are able to remove these debuffs.

Armourbane has changed too, meaning it now just makes a glance count as a pen – so close range meltas will still hurt them, but on the whole your vehicles will be kicking a little longer without a lucky shot taking out an entire tank turn 1.

There’s some changes to weapons on vehicles too – you can now choose to fire all weapons at one target at full BS, or choose to split fire – here you pick each weapon or group of weapons you want to fire at a target, and then pick the next weapon or group of weapons to fire at another target. You can’t pick the same target twice, but crucially you don’t have to pick your target until each individual round of fire is resolved. There is a trade off here, as all these shots will be snapshots – though some vehicles have rules that bypass this.

Vehicles feel faster too, as moving has no impact on your shooting (Though some weapons gain an additional benefit if the model stays still) – so no worrying about moving half movement for example, you can always move full movement and still shoot at BS. Vehicles with the Rapid type can even choose to Rush (the new term for advancing) though this will affect their ability to shoot.

Flyers have also had a big change and feel more like aircraft in games such as Epic or Legions Imperialis. Essentially, they start off the board on a nearby airbase and can be assigned different Combat Assignments. This could be a Drop Mission to unload troops, an Extraction Mission to pick up troops, a Strike Mission to take out a critical target before pulling out back to reserves or a Straffing Run which allows you to open up with more firepower on the target, but leaves you vulnerable to return fire. These feel really cool, and with Flyers getting access to a new Advanced Reaction “Combat Air Patrol” to send in your fighters intercept and stop these missions. Aircraft on the battlefield was always a little wonky, so these new Missions make it feel like your vehicles are moving at high speed before the camera goes into slow motion to show what happens at the critical moment of the Mission.

The Turn Sequence

So let’s run through a turn and touch on the various rules – I’ll only really shout out what has changed here, but there are quite a few subtle additions.

The Turn opens with the Start Phase which is where any “start of turn” abilities trigger and the active player may need to do tests to trigger these.

Next up is the Movement Phase, and this starts with reserves coming on, then normal movement and then finally routed units fleeing. It’s worth pointing out here that while you can bring on multiple reserves a turn, only one unit a turn can deep strike. I do wonder if there will be a rules pack in a future Journal to allow a themed battle with a Drop Assault for example, because currently there’s no way of doing that in the rules as they are.

As mentioned earlier, moving has less of an effect on your shooting ability, but some weapons with the Heavy trait gain additional bonuses for standing still, so it’s more a carrot situation for staying still rather than a stick for moving.

Models can opt to “Rush” (The new name for advance) and give up shooting in order to move an aditional distance equal to their Initiative.

Finally Routed units fall back, and in a change from the previous edition, if they hit the board edge they now get to test to rally – pass and the status is removed, fail and the unit is destroyed. I like this as stops those really unlucky situations where a unit just runs off the board turn one – at least you have a chance of passing it now. Units do move a little further when falling back however, as they will fall back from combat and fall back again in the following movement phase before they get the chance to rally. the book has some designer notes saying that this is designed to stop units “pingponging” in and out of combat, which makes sense.

The Shooting Phase sees some changes with an adjusted to hit chart. Once your BS is 6 or higher, you have a chance of scoring a critical hit, these wound automatically bypassing the wound roll – as your BS gets higher the odds you roll this increases.

Equally, snapfire now also scales with BS, with an average BS of 4 snap firing on a 5+ and someone with BS 8 doing it on a 3+

Weapon groups are also resolved one at a time, which stops some shenanigans with wound allocation. Things such as “Wound tanking” on sergeants is a thing of that past now that Artificer Armour isn’t something that can be bought on squad leaders. This makes the game flow a lot quicker too and stops some of those interactions that always felt a little weird like the guy with artificer jumping in front of all the bullets!

The Assault Phase perhaps sees the biggest changes in the edition. Charging is very different now, with a unit first making a Set-Up move which is based on their Movement + Initiative. For a Space Marine M+I is 11, which on the chart allows a 3″ set up move. So you move your marines 3 inches closer to the target and then both the charging unit and the charged unit do Volley Fire. This allows you to snap shot with assault weapons to try and thin out the other side. For a reaction point you can instead choose to Overwatch and fire everything at BS. I like this as it makes Assault weapons a great choice for both units you want to guard objectives but also for those you want to push onto them.

Once Volley Fire is done you then make a charge roll – this is 2D6 and remove the lowest. Observant readers will have noticed that this makes 9″ the maximum charge range of a Space Marine, and makes charges much less likely unless you close the distance first. On top of that, if you fail a charge you now have to make a cool test – if you fail it you gain the stunned status, leaving you sat out in the open, unable to react and with Initiative 1! Needless to say, failing a charge is very dangerous!

Challenges are meant to represent the epic battles we see between characters in the books, and Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition tries to replicate that with the new Challenge Phase. Only certain model types can issue and accept challenges, and if accepted this places both of the models into their own fight to the death. Players will take turns picking Gambits – these are a list of different abilities and modifiers that interact with the challenge. Maybe you want to go out and deal more attacks at less damage – or maybe you want to trade speed for more strength or damage – or what about putting your guard up to stop incoming attacks at the cost of only making one attack yourself? There’s lots of cool stuff here and I really feel it captures the feeling of those duels in the books. Once both sides have picked, the two players roll for initiative and the battle takes place in that order, meaning that even if you have a “slow” weapon there’s a chance you strike first – especially when combined with some of the gambits and combat abilities characters have. It’s exciting and there’s always a chance the underdog can play an absolute blinder!

Another nice change here is that you no longer have situations where a hero with a unit challenges a hero without a unit and the unit of the first hero can happily punch the poor challenged hero with no downside – all models in the challenge cannot be affected by any models not in the challenge. I always thought the rules interactions were weird with this, so very happy to see this changed.

Standard combats for the whole work as they used to, but final resolution is now different – models that lose and gain the routed status still run away, but there’s no danger of getting cut down by the enemy. Any units that are not routed get to pick if they want to disengage (allowing them to simply move away from the other unit), this stops the problem of units being stuck in battles they cannot possibly win, or even give a winning unit the chance of leaving a heavily depleted target to go hunt better prey.

A winning unit can opt to consolidate (moving initiative in any direction), Gun Down the unit that is fleeing by using their Assault Weapons using the Volley Rules, or Pursue – but the difference here is that if they catch the fleeing unit it instead puts them back into combat for the next turn rather than destroying them. This feels more like the push/pull of Old World combats, and again has less chance for an unlucky unit to just get deleted due to a fumbled dice roll.

Army Building

Another major change in Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition is how armies are constructed. Now don’t panic, most existing armies should be usable in 3rd Edition, but you may have to tweak your list or add a couple of heroes.

First thing to point out is that technically armies are now built once you know what the mission is. While this probably won’t come up at tournaments, it means that in casual play you can build your army once you know what the mission is and who you are playing. This also means that Games Workshop can put out scenarios dedicated to some more unusual battle types. Want to fight a Titan? Awesome, you know you’re playing an Engine Kill scenario and so can build your list with that in mind. For non-tournament play this means that you’re able to tailor a list that both fits the narrative while also ensuring you have the units that you need. It also means that in an event the TO could perhaps provide the missions and you could write a couple of different lists to cover different missions rather than just using the same list all weekend.

List building is very different now – all players start with a Primary Detachment allowing for a High Command, up to 3 Command, up to 4 Troops and up to 4 transports. Filling these slots gives you access to additional detachments and slots. So for example fill the High Command slot and you gain access to an Apex Detachment – there’s a few generic ones, plus some army specific ones and these generally give you your more elite units and any units that are thematic to your particular army.

Each Command Slot that you fill gives you an Auxiliary detachment of your choice, and if that Command Slot has the Officer of the Line special rule, then you get a second Auxiliary detachment. This makes taking things such as Centurions very useful in allowing you to have a more diverse army. These Aux Detachments each give you a number of “slots” for units of a certain type – for example Tanks, or Dreadnoughts or Fast Attack. It sounds confusing at first, but most armies should easily be able to transition to this way of list building – your only limitation might be if you don’t have many heroes.

Some slots on the detachments are designated as Prime slots too – these can be used to give the unit in that slot a bonus, or can be used to unlock any unit slot of your choice, which is a great way of adding the odd dread or heavy transport to your army.

There’s no compulsory choices as such, but this is built in such a way to encourage you to take certain units in order to gain a benefit – but you’re not penalised as such for not taking them, other than limitations of maybe not having enough slots to take all the toys you want unless you take a couple of Commanders.

Most armies to far have units with Officer of the Line, so you don’t even need to spam your HQ in order to gain access to all the detachments that you need – I can see most armies having their High Command, an Officer of the Line and a 3rd hero giving you enough slots to do most things that you want to.

You also get access to a Warlord Detachment at 3000+ points which gives you enough slots for a Primarch, a unit to accompny them and a transport, which is great as they don’t then eat into your other slots. You can take up to two Lord of War slots too, as long as the cost is no more than 25% of your army.

Finally, up to 50% of your list can be taken from an allied army. They get their own detachment with 2 Command Slots and 4 Troops Slots, and those Command Slots can be used to generate more aux slots for your allies to use.

This basically makes this the most flexible army building we’ve seen for Horus Heresy, while still having a framework to help stop the spam of silly units. I really like it and I’m tempted to do what i did back in the Epic days and make a load of index cards of various units I have to make list building easy. I’m sure the app makers will have solutions by the time the Libers are in the wild, but honestly pen and paper is the way to go for now!

Missions

The Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition Core Rulebook has 3 missions in it, along with the classic three deployment maps, though I expect this will be expanded further in both supplement books and the Journals.

In 3rd Edition all (well most – Automata, vehicles and cavalry are excluded for example) units can score and contest objectives, with the Line rule now giving you a bonus to the victory points you can score. Interestingly, different objectives have differing points values to score, and with some units getting points for clearing units off objectives while other units do not give up points for being destroyed turn 1, it gives you lots of tactical options when writing your list. I suppose this leans into the fact that you are meant to write your list after you select your mission and allows you to tailor to the units you need.

All games only last 4 turns too – which in our experience in the past the game was over by turn 4 anyway!

Secondary Objectives still exist too, with Slay the Warlord (Kill a High Command model), Giant Killer (Kill a Warlord of Lord of War), Last Man Standing (Have more units than the enemy at the end of the game) and First Strike (Kill something turn one) all scoring bonus points.

Summary

So this has been over 5000 words already, and even then only really gives an overview of the bigger changes – theres lots of subtle stuff to get your teeth into when you work through the rulebook yourself, but I do feel that Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition does have a lot more changes than I first expected it to have. This isn’t a bad thing, at it’s core this is still Horus Heresy, but it feels there has been a real effort to get rid of some of the stuff that felt a bit off in the last edition, those odd interactions that didn’t really feel like the narrative.

Spam (in particular Contemptor spam) has been dealt with through the new Detachment system, and honestly I think this is going to make army construction really fun – yes you have some limits, but take enough heroes, especially those with Officer of the Line and you still have access to all the toys you want to take – it’s really just the extremes like Fury of the Ancients that aren’t going to be that easy to take any more.

There’s been a lot of kneejerk reactions, but the same happened for 2nd Edition too – My best advice here is to sit down, read the full rulebook and try some games. Don’t assume that a rule works like it does in 2nd, and instead treat your first game of 3rd like your first game of Heresy – you’ll find a lot still works the same, and the new bits add some narrative flavour and fix some of the rough edges we previously had.

Is 3 years too quick of an edition cycle? Yeah, maybe – we are talking a large investment in just books for people who want everything, and I hope that if another edition comes in 2028 that it’s more of a refinement and that the Libers are still valid. With the new approach of releasing the Journals, we could perhaps see a faster release cycle of cheaper books that contain a couple of units and a few new ways of playing, rather than having this tied into £30+ hard back books. It’s worked well for Old World, and seeing them here I suspect they have been good sellers for GW too.

The future is looking bright for Horus Heresy, and I’m excited to see what goodies we have on the way this edition.

Warhammer The Horus Heresy 3rd Edition is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 26th July,

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