Greetings fellow sorcerers and students of the mystical arts. I come to you now, not with offerings of painted models but rather to discuss Horus Heresy: Inferno. It must be said that this book has been eagerly awaited now for a while and has been met with a mixed reception.
On the one hand there are the Thousand Sons, Space Wolves, Custodes and Ad Mech who appear to be over the moon with what they can now do. Magnus is a steal at 495pts, Sekhmet are hilarious for only 5pts over a regular terminator, Ammitara are unreal, and then there's the Wolves.... 'tactical' squads with a metric fuck-ton of power weapons, bonus WS and Priests.
Then there are those who're on the wrong end of the psychic phase or encounter the joys of assault marines with combat shields and a kine shield, who's 'Pride of the Legion' force gets done by Magnus single-handedly and aren't too chuffed. I do understand their frustration as I've been on the wrong end of a sudden shift in the meta, and when long-awaited rules changed arrive they frequently feel unbalanced and overpowered, especially when traditional ways of playing appear not to work, and often the first examples we see of new forces are the OTT horror shows that always appear on first release of the book in question. I always find that things settle soon, a couple of severe defeats tend to highlight glaring weaknesses in these forces and soon people are focusing on the next book and what it will bring instead.
But this is not the focus of this post. This post is about the rest of the book, the lore of what is meant to be the greatest of tragedies.
Firstly the book hints at an awful lot: the annihilation of two legions by xenos/psyker forces is interesting. The role of the Wolves (the censure of the World Eaters by them is ignored) is chewed over, and Russ is looked at in a different light. The genetic instability of both Legions is debated and there is a good amount of information on birthing of both Legions, and their position in the Imperium, pre-Primarchs. The Sons don't come across as particularly noteworthy or interesting to be honest. Their role on the Crusade is unspectacular, and rules aside there's nothing to endear a gamer to them. I feel they don't quite 'line up' with the Black Library's depiction personally. There's no mention of Tutelaries, which was a big bit of A Thousand Sons. Their notable engagements are pretty forgettable other than the 'wipe out Knights with magic' (three deaths, one is from a Knight falling on him...) in that way of 'your guys are awesome, here's stuff that will never transfer to the tabletop to demonstrate it'. There's one that shows Magnus's abilities of prescience, and one that.... I can't remember, think it's against a rogue technocracy. No mention of Magnus felling the Ork Gargant that could've at least sounded cool if we aren't worried about transferring it to the tabletop. None of the stories feature the named characters or units which I feel is important if those are the things that set your army apart. Now, I'm not asking for those awful 'please buy Stormtalons/Thunder Wolves/Death Company articles that plagued the White Dwarf but at least a proper mention of either side's unique stuff would be nice. In the Battle for Tizca there's various mentions of the Space Wolf Varagyr terminators and the Cult of Blindness actually doing stuff, but the only real mention of anything new is of the Sisters of Silence and the Custodes (this will be returned to in a bit). There's a couple of things I'd like to focus on.
1) The Spire Guard. This is the human army that defends Prospero. They work directly with the Thousand Sons. So when the Wolves attack they are the first line of 'defence'. As a result they assume that the Space Marine landers/flying transports of death are 'helpless'... really?? You've been allied with marines for a century plus, you've seen their weapons of war up close, and what? Missed the big gun on top and the four or more heavy weapon sponsons? The Spire Guard prepared their defences as though they were facing a conventional foe...? Having seen the horrific toll inflicted on her forces the Commander of the Solar Auxillia attempts an honourable surrender? In the Imperium? A place where it is known that surrender never works? Against the Space Wolves?
2) The Custodes. And by proxy the Sisters. The Sons sit there in their pyramids watching them come, psychically monitoring them as they approach. How does the presence of either come as a surprise? The Sons are 'equipped for every aspect of war, with a full set of Legion resources'. So why on earth would they a) try psychic shenanigans on the Sisters b) engage the line of gold in hand to hand? Why not flatten them with Vindicators? Why throw your clearly outmatched Sekhmet terminators into them when they can't get the benefit of their psychic powers? It is written in a way that screams 'buy fucking Custodes!!!' 500 Custodes and 1500(?) Sisters wipe out over 6000 Thousand Sons who they've cornered (how?) for the loss of 100 Custodes, some Sisters and Valdor takes a wound, killing 30 (yes 30) of our most elite Blade Masters on his own. This harks back to the nonsense days of writing High Elf lore with 'they battled for a day and a night...'. It's not House of the Flying Daggers, spare us the overblown nonsense. It's meant to be a great tragedy where these heroes of the Imperium are 9possibly) unjustly brought to hell and effectively wiped out, and whilst the book states this repeatedly, the story just doesn't carry the same message. rather the Sons are punching bags who are generally outwitted at every turn, demonstrating how amazing the Custodes are and how fierce the Wolves can be. At no point do you ever feel Russ is in danger, indeed by the end I was left wondering why Russ, Valdor and his 1000 Custodes didn't just do it on their own and get the same outcome with less loss of life.
3) There's no heroic last stands or awe-inspiring moments. I get that it's meant to be a historical account, written by the Imperium in the aftermath, but when you've spent £70 on a book you want to be thrilled by it, to feel that you couldn't put it down, not skim read some bits then flick to the rules section. The format is interesting, it's well laid out with nice colour sections and interesting ideas for paint schemes. I do like the pre-Magnus colour scheme that is becoming very popular for Legion Veterans now, I will likely try my hand at it for some MKII/III artificer armour on characters. The rules are good but the rest of the book is monumentally underwhelming. Inferno? Rather cooling embers of what could've been a great book that was starved of the oxygen needed to make it crackle.
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