Horus Heresy

For those of you who don't know, back in October we all went over to Spiel in Germany. Whilst over there one of the purchases I made was Horus Heresy. Unfortunately because of bag restrictions I couldn't get it back to Birmingham and had to wait for Malcolm to bring it over (he did put some money in for 1/4 of it, so this isn't so bizarre.)

You know the drill: it's a multi-counterfest two player game where one person plays Horus and the other plays the Emperor fighting it out for control of Earth at the very end of the Heresy. As Mal pointed out, it's not clear who you should be vying for. After all, the Emperor is unremittingly evil, killing absolutely anyone who fails to toe his very exacting standards. Although I still confess I have a hard time understanding why anyone joins chaos; if I was just some random schmoe I'd be planning to spend my life boozing and getting laid, but as soon as I saw that the mesdemoiselles of the Traitors were chaotically mutated freaks I'd be thinking 'Heh, those loyalist chicks have fairer skin, smell nicer and don't have tentacles.' I don't think anything would make me go for Horus's side. Anyhow, I digress...

The main game mechanic is an initiative track. You both start at one end and as you take actions you move  down it. Whoever has spent the least initiative gets to take the turn. As the initiative track advances, various stages are marked telling you to refill your selection of Order cards (which you use to make actions); play a scenario-dependent Event card; check to see if Horus has won (if, after half way through, he has four spaceports, he's won); and if the game ends (when you reach the end of the track - at which point Super Fascist Jim, otherwise known as the Emperor, wins the game.) Throughout, the Traitors get to bombard the loyalists, turn them to chaos and generally beat up on them. Given that they have to control four locations (the spaceports) and the Emperor needs to hold out until the end of the initiative track, they've got a tough task ahead of them so need all the help they get.

The game's fun. Lots of rules, but not an insane amount. I'm fairly sure one or two play throughs will do you just fine. Here's how our game went:

So this was set up. Just after this Horus blows the crap out of my men with his defence lasers and orbital mounted rail guns, before converting some of the dudes to the Dark Side. It's pretty mean.

Indeed, he managed to convert almost everyone in the bottom right to the Ruinous Powers. He then drop-podded a load of Slaaneshi forces there, dropped a load of Khornate forces on the bottom left next to the spaceport that he bombed the crap out of, and then gave me the hat trick by dropping a load of Nurgle dudes in the north.

I moved some dudes in the Imperial Palace out to meet Mortarion and his forces, and then the Master Fabricator to meet the Khornate Forces. I was a bit against moving fellas to fight outside of the Palace walls because I couldn't shake the feeling that the game was about the Emperor hiding in his Palace and Horus hiding on his ship and waiting for the end game to play out with one fighting the other.

This understanding of the game, by the way, is deeply, deeply flawed.

So a little while on, I've made fatal errors of moving troops to reinforce the Emperor on the eastern part of the palace. Here they are:

It's very pretty to see that many loyalists in one location ready to fight the enemy. But it's not a frackin' spaceport that they were defending. So the traitor forces moved on in, slaughtered everyone they found in my undefended ports and won the game:

As I write it in black and white I see how bloody foolish it was to not concentrate 100% on defending the ports. I mean, I realised at the time, but there had - in the name of learning the rules - already been a lot of backtracking as we figured out what was going on. So even though I knew I made fatal mistakes I didn't call the toss. And then lost.

But next time, and given the game is fun there will be a next time, I'll know exactly what's going on and have a better idea of what tactics to use. Doubly so given that I'll have a chance to read that nice, meaty rulebook.