Horus Heresy 3e Review: Reconnaissance Squad

Warpstone Flux Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

4/5 stars. I am personally quite fond of the Recon Squad and they have their purpose. 

Background.

Roaming ahead of the main lines and conducting all manner of operations behind enemy lines, the recon squad is the forward eyes and ears of the legions. They can be armed with long range sniper weapons, or something a bit more up close and personal - either way they're useful. 

Strengths. 

Although at first glance they look expensive, what you are really paying for here is the ability to infiltrate a small squad to pack a punch. They also come with move through cover to help them advance (use this) although they are also a support squad (at a level of 2) so not quite as effective at grabbing objectives as you might otherwise like. 

Customization options range from making the marines short range fighters with shot guns, to long range snipers with nemesis bolt guns. Both are valid. 

Don't forget though that they provide a way to also bring a buried power weapon or similar to an early fight, as well as melta bombs. 

Weaknesses. 

The points cost can add up fast here, so you will need to think carefully about how you infiltrate them. 

Builds.

5 Recon Marines, Shotguns, Sergeant with Power Weapon and Melta Bombs, Nuncio Vox (140 points).

Up close and personal with a buried power weapon of your choice. Take on your target early game, but don't expect to survive long without back up. Increase squad size to 10 if you wish. Multiple of these represent a very interesting threat. 

5 Recon Marines, Nemesis Bolters, Nuncio Vox, Augury Scanner (155 points).

Use infiltrate to set up in position (probably a tall, central ruins or building) and shoot at your targets at liberty. Highly annoying to your enemy in all probability. Bonus tactica to infiltrate right on top of an objective in mid-field! 

Praetor Challenge: Iron Warriors vs Shattered Legions

Happy New Year!

A new feature for Warpstone Flux this year is the Praetor Challenge! This will largely supersede the Wargames Gallery (but I will keep the tag going all the same). The core idea of the Praetor Challenges is to suggest what you would do in a given tactical situation on (a segment of) the game board. Sounds simple enough right? But you would not believe the disagreements that arise. Not merely from pure mathematics or statistics, but also from fluff (what would Angron do, after all?), duty, honour, or anything else combined. There's no right answer to Praetor Challenges, but there might be optimal plays, and most fluffy plays, and those are the kinds of comments we'd like to see and talk about!

So here is the first of 2026's Praetor Challenges: Iron Warriors facing off against the Shattered Legions!

Iron Warriors:

Tactical squad x7 (Sergeant with Power fist and plasma pistol, bayonets all round, 1 vexilla)
Iron Havocs x3 (all with Lascannons);
Cataphractii Terminators x4 (2 with chain fists and combi bolters, 1 with heavy flamer and power fist, 1 with thunder hammer and combi bolter);

Praetor in Cataphractii Armour (Thunder hammer and combi bolter - unwounded). 

Shattered Legions:
Mor Deythan x3 (2 melta guns, 1 combi melta - spent already);

Salamanders Praetor in Cataphractii Armour (2 wounds remaining; thunder hammer and combi melta - spent);

Salamanders contemptor (twin meltas - 3 wounds remaining);
Salamanders tactical squad x4 (sergeant with power fist; standard marines otherwise);

Iron Hands Heavy Support Squad x3 (Auto cannons x3). 

The Iron Warriors have finished their movement phase. What should they do next for shooting and charging / close combat? The Shattered Legions have 2 reactions in hand. Critically, the tactical squad is already sat on an objective (the necron scenery). What is the right play? The optimal play? The fluffy play? Or just a mad play?

Over to you in the comments, Praetors!

The 2025 Retrospective

Greetings on the Eve of a New Year (Western Terra that is). 

As befits the date, this is the annual retrospective, with a few stats thrown in for good measure. 

The major gaming event of the year 2025 for Warpstone Flux was, of course, the release of the Third Edition of Horus Heresy. Of course, with any new edition, there are controversies. I am not immune to them either. I think when third was first released I was in shock about not merely the scale of the changes, but also the limitations (i.e., squad options that were lacking) placed on units at the point of release. Most, but not all of this, was cleared up with a FAQ and the Legacies release. But my word: this was nowhere near the clean launch that the community wanted or deserved. I recognize full well that there are many folks still playing Second edition, either in protest or that they genuinely prefer the rules set. This is reflected in Warpstone Flux with my summary pages for Second Edition still being exceptionally popular even after Third Edition was released. And I get it. 

For Third Edition though, I have grown to like it. It isn't perfect. Some of the issues about dreadnoughts (contemptors) still remain. Speaking personally, I never liked the switch away from using armour values in First Edition for dreadnoughts (roast me). But the pysker powers work, the army building is actually more fun (you can take almost what you want) and the rest slots in nicely. I'm disappointed with the nerf that Primarchs have had and displeased with Master of the Legion not granting Rites of War any longer -- that was a massive and unnecessary change. Challenges are interesting now and you won't get tar pitted against Vulkan for an entire game at least. I approve! Overall, Third is a different game, but I actually like it now. 

[Image: Corax duels Alpharius!]

I am still in the midst of reviewing the main legions, and will finish next year. Then on to Questoris Knights, Mechanicum, and the rest. I might go lightly on Black Shields since many of the rules are the same. And: Shattered Legions works in third edition now (unlike Second - hence this is a massive improvement in my opinion!). 

Here on Warpstone Flux, some pages have been more popular than others, as you might expect. With the release of Third, the summary page for the new edition remains in the number one slot. And of the legions that I have had chance to review so far, the Alpha Legion dominates by a good margin. Again, this does not surprise me. The next legion down is the Iron Hands which, to my mind, remains one of the strongest legions in third edition. 

For Third Edition, the most popular unit review to date is for the Saturnine Terminators. This is closely followed by the other types of terminators: Cataphractii and Tartaros. It seems that I am not the only person in the world with a fondness for terminators of all different kinds! Even the Indomitus Terminators review scores in the top 30 for the year. The most popular legion entries are also terminators, with Gorgon Terminators and Lernaean Terminators right up there with the Phoenix Terminators some way off. 

For my armies, I have decided to pause my Alpha Legion collection - it does not need to grow any larger unless there are specific characters released that take my fancy. The same pretty much goes for my Iron Warriors. I am currently focussed on expanding World Eaters and Emperor's Children, alongside the Shattered Legions of Salamaners, Iron Hands, and Raven Guard. I am tempted to make an allied force of other legions (I'm thinking Death Guard or Thousand Sons at the moment, but that might change). 

The other thing that I am working on right now is to save up some money to buy the resin Primarchs. I've got a few now, and I am really a big fan of not only assembling them, but also painting them up. I've really enjoyed working on Angron in particular this year and had a blast painting him up as he literally stomped over his unwanted "sons" on the base. Such a tragic figure and a tragic legion really. I also really like the legion specific models in resin. If money weren't an object, I'd snap up a unit of every terminator belonging to every legion to be honest!

Plans for 2026 then are to:

(1) conclude the World Eaters and Emperor's Children factions that I have. 

(2) expand the shattered legion forces.

(3) where I can afford it, expand my Primarch collection. 

(4) consider a new force as an allied detachment to begin with. 

Long term aim is to have a unit from each legion in my collection, but I favour some more than others, it has to be said.

I hope you've enjoyed this small retrospective and look forward to more reviews and hobby goodness from Warpstone Flux in 2026! 

Winter Break

Dear Readers,

It is that time of year again and I will be taking a short Winter Break from blogging. Thanks for reading along so far this year! I will try to have an annual review before the end of the year and then get back to more hobby goodness in 2026 alongside yet more Horus Heresy reviews and thoughts. I hope that Santa brings you some hobby goodies if you have been good girls or boys(*)!  

Merry Christmas from Warpstone Flux!

(*) Angron helping paint everything red in honour of the season. 

Meteor Hammer Conversion for World Eaters Sergeant

A bit of a conversion piece today in the form of a Meteor Hammer for a World Eaters assault squad sergeant.

The meteor hammer is made out of several distinct parts. At the lower end (the meteor part) is the head of a power maul / mace. This works out quite nicely as the heavy end as it communicates the weight nicely even though it is not just a spherical mass. 

Attached to the maul's head is a chain taken from spares of the Noctilith Crown portal scenery piece. These are suitably spike laden (and if you press to hard will indent into your skin - ouch). I've pinned the power maul head to this and also drilled through the sergeant's hands to get the positioning spot on. The other end of the chain is from the same range and terminates in a small spear like tip. 

Joining both hands is a curved chain that I think is from the older chaos range - I can't be certain as it has been sat in my bits box for years on end being unused! Possibly the old chaos tank accessories frame? Again, I'm guessing, but let me know if I'm wrong. 

It took quite a bit of shaving and clipping to get the positioning correct on this curved piece regardless, but I think it connects to the hands quite well after a lot of dry fitting and fiddling around. 

Finally the eagle eyes will notice that the head is also a conversion. Here I've used a head front from an eight bound and the rear of the head from a standard helmet and glued the two together and used green stuff to hide everything. In hind sight, I would not choose to do this again and would buy a regular head from the Khorne range to depict the nails. Still - it works very nicely and I am pleased with the overall result here. 

 

Building Phoenix Terminators

In part frustrating, but overall okay. 

Building Phoenix Terminators from Forge World has been a pleasure when I'm now able to look at the final product and see the sheer detail that has been included in the sculpts. It is very impressive. However the assembly process itself was a bit fraught. 

The main issue is the two handed spears. Despite dry fitting many times over, getting these style of spears into the exact position is a pain. The issue is that the bond locations (shoulders and wrists) lack nubs or any kind of obvious joint to help with placement. [Aside: for the uninitiated, there are d6 like marks on the arms and spears to help you get the right parts at least (i.e., ".." on the wrists aligns with ".." on the rest of the body - 2 dots, just like the d6 result of a 2). 

In the end, my approach was to pin one of the shoulders into the approximately correct location. I then glued the spear on to this arm, and then proceeded to attach the other arm into what I trusted was more or less the correct spot. It worked out - just about. My pose on the right hand terminator above looks like a mid-strike movement which I am happy with. The head angle certainly helps communicate this fluidity. 

Conversely, the terminators that are wielding the spears one handed were much, much more straight forward and easy to assemble. They certainly look good in the end, much to my relief!