The Mailed Fist of the Legiones Astartes rolls its way over the battlefields of the 31st Millennium in the latest Journal Tactica for Warhammer The Horus Heresy.

Ever wanted to play battles of Warhammer The Horus Heresy with entire detachments of Super-Heavy Tanks clashing with each other? Ever wanted to have more Super Heavies than you could ever field before? Well, Mailed Fist is the book for you, with a focus on massive tank battles with even more massive thanks!

In this full review we’ll be checking out the book, taking a look at the new things that are added and deciding if this is something that will be worth picking up for games of The Horus Heresy.

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

That’s not all we have up for today though, we’ve also got a full written review of the Liber Custodes and we’ve also cracked open the new Custodes Battle Group box which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s crack open the Mailed Fist and see what goodies lie within.

Mailed Fist Review

So first things first, what’s a Journal Tactica?If you’ve not read one before then essentially these are soft back 48 page supplements designed to give players extra rules, lore and other fun stuff to their games of Warhammer The Horus Heresy. We are still getting bigger books now and then, like the Liber volumes, but it seems that the majority of new content will now be in this format. They are cheaper, and you can pick and choose which you pick up based on your interests – though I have to admit I did enjoy those bigger hard back suppliments.

So what’s this one about?

Well this is very much the Super Heavy Tank supplement for Legions Astartes. We’ve got a number of different Marine Super Heavies on the way, but normally you are quite restricted to the number of Super Heavies you can take in a normal army. To get around this, Mailed Fist is all about Super Heavy tanks, with a new game mode allowing you to take a lot more of them in your army!

The first half of the book is essentially a Super-Heavy source book – you’ve got narrative and history about a number of different encounters and battles that featured masses of massive tanks, but there’s also some cool stuff in here about tank markings, numbering systems and how to make them lore accurate.

As a fan of big tanks I approve, but my tank dreams really come true in the rest of the book.

The big addition in this book are “Leviathan Missions” – these are asymmetrical games that pit an army of Super Heavies against a force looking to hold off against them. The book suggests that these games are also ideal to use multiple teams of players in order to fully represent the huge forces we would see in the narrative for these types of battles.

The Attacker in all these missions is the tank heavy side, and in order to allow them to put together the absolutely bananas type of armies we would see for these, they get access to a new Apex Detachment, the Armoured Fist. This allows you to take 3 Lord of War choices that do not count towards your Lord of War allowance, which of course means you can also take your normal Lord of War choices too – you’re going to be rocking a lot of massive tanks here, which is really fun. Of course, if you wanted to you could always use some other non-tank based super heavies too – but the missions really are built around the idea of lots of tanks rolling across the battlefield.

The defender also gains access to a new Apex Detachment too, The Bastion of Fire which has 3 support slots – which might be useful if you want to take lots of gun turrets!

Missions work a little differently, as one side is going to have lots of tanks that are not going to be able to take objectives. So instead, one side will fight over objective markers, while the other will be trying to take control of “sectors” – A sector is a portion of the battlefield that can be controlled if your side has a number of vehicles with a higher hull point count than the other. So the attacker might have tanks with a combined hull points value remaining of 20 compared to the defender’s 10, so the attacker would have control of that sector until the defenders can roll in more armour or take out some enemy tanks. This is cool, and really allows you to go all out with full tank armies if they want to!

There’s 3 different missions in Armoured Fist along with a Legendary Mission, giving you a good pool to start playing massive tank battles. As a player with a massive tank based Sons of Horus army then this is very much my vibe, and I can’t wait to pick up a couple more super heavies to take advantage of the new missions! There’s a nice mix of different map layouts and objectives here to give you lots to play with if you do enjoy these types of games. I’m hoping that we see more like this in the future.

Building on from the Battlefield Assets in previous Journals we also see a couple of new ones in this book – Tank Traps, which are impassible to vehicles but can be destroyed. Shroud Canisters can be activated to give units nearby the Shrouded rule. Neutron Bombs can be triggered by a vehicle or walker by moving past them and have a 50% chance to give that unit Suppressed. Auto Repair Servitor Clades do what they say on the tin, they give friendly vehicles Auto Repair 4+. Finally we have the Wayfinder Device, and this can give your units Move Though Cover – especially good for clearing a path through terrain with your vehicles. I like that these are all themed around the campaign, and there’s some great model examples for you to convert up your own!

We also get a couple of new profiles added in Mailed Fist – The first one is interesting, but I feel this may become a no-brainer choice on all Super Heavies. Your Fellblades or Falchions can purchase a Decurion Magna upgrade, and this is an absolute bargain for what it does – it allows your super heavy to Overwatch and Return Fire against non-Super Heavy targets. That’s crazy good, and for the points I would always take it if I took one of those tanks just for the danger it puts your opponent in if they try and take out your tank. On top of that though, it also gives you 4+ auto repair against the Stunned or Suppressed Status! This is such a good upgrade, and makes an already good tank even better!

Finally, the book also contains the profile for the new Whirlwind! I’m really looking forward to the new model coming out, and it has a pretty standard Rhino chassis profile – it’s weapon by default is a S6 blast with Stun, but can be upgraded to have a S5 blast with Panic which can be nice for pushing back enemy units. I’m not sure when the tank itself comes out, but I’m really excited to paint one up for my Sons of Horus!

In summary, this is a nice little book for those who like lots of tanks! If you or your regular opponents don’t have a super heavy filled army then your millage may vary a little here, but I think this shows that they can now do very focused Journals based around a specific theme. There’s lots of scope here for future books such as Aircraft based armies, or maybe turn 1 deep strike armies, or maybe the return of Dreadnought forces. These games and missions probably won’t show up in tournaments, but for those who love more narrative games then Mailed Fist gives me exactly what I want to see in my games of Warhammer The Horus Heresy.

Mailed Fist is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 4th April

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