Horus Heresy

It was pretty much this.

One of the single biggest events in Warhammer 40,000 fluff, second only to the giant orgy of the Eldar that created a Chaos God of pleasure and decadence. This is when nine Space Marine primarchs rebelled against the Emprah, along with numerous Imperial Army forces, under the banner of Horus who was worshiping Chaos. The battle eventually waged onto Holy Terra in a great siege of Grimdark proportions where it was virtually impossible for both parties to win this way and so was settled when Horus and the Emprah had a duel to the death (because seriously, when you have millions of men, marines and daemons battling for the domination of the galaxy, they TOTALLY will stop just because their general is dead).

The Emperor won against Horus but was fucked up to the point where he had to be permanently attached to a life-support machine known as the "Golden Throne" just to survive. In his absence, logic within the Imperium gradually decreased and thus, eventually turned into the Grimdark empire it is today. And it was already pretty damn grimdark.

Warhammer 40,000 Fluff

The Horus Heresy screwed almost everyone's plans (Except the Chaos Gods' of course, but they always win) and changed the flavour of the Imperium's Grimdark from Stalinist Soviet "if you breathe a word about religion, we rape you with knives" to Catholic Inquisition "if you breathe a word about the wrong religion we rape you with knives".

The heresy lasted for several years (somewhere between seven and ten) and was fought all over the galaxy. The following are the most important battles and campaigns during the Heresy:

• Battle of Isstvan III
• Burning of Prospero
• Drop Site Massacre
• Battle of Calth
• Shadow Crusade
• Thramas Crusade
• Signus Campaign
• Battle of Phall
• Siege of Terra

The Board Game

First published in 1993 by Game Designer's Workshop, it was the Emprah versus his evil bastard of a son in the scorched earth of Terra. Units include titans and Chaos spawn. *GLARBLBLBLBLBLBL*

The more recent edition (2010) is published by Fantasy Flight Games. Also a two-player war game, it includes over 100 sculpted minifigs, sculpted buildings, and even Horus and the Emprah themselves are units on the board. It also adds more territory, as the fight can be pushed back onto the traitor's flagship Vengeful Spirit. Combat is less dice-y and more card-y. (Not to be confused with the lame Horus Heresy card game, who's only saving grace was the awesome card art that would appear in the Horus Heresy artbooks anyway)

The Book Series

For the last few years, Black Library has been publishing novels that explore the events of the Horus Heresy, looking at the rivalries among the Primarchs and exploring just why everything went down the tubes. The novels are by a selection of different authors, which is a total pain if you like to organise your books alphabetically by author. Generally all the books in the series are damned good (except the ones that suck), especially the first three. Mmmmm, Dan Abnett...

The Tabletop Wargame

Forge World is producing a new line of books and models (in addition to Imperial Armour and Warhammer Forge) to allow players to fight battles from the Horus Heresy in Warhammer 40,000. This includes rules and models for the Primarchs (both pre- and post-fall, for the Traitors) as well as ancient vehicles. No xenos, unfortunately. Presumably this came about because GW felt that they just weren't making quite enough money from die-hard marine/chaos players and figured they could literally buy a dump-truck full of gold plated cocaine each if they made a version of the game that requires only Forge World minis AND thousands upon thousands of them. Still worth it, though.

Betrayal

Forge World starts big, as their first book covers the battles on Istvaan III, in which Horus sent the remaining loyalist elements of the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, and World Eaters to the surface, ostensibly to rout the anti-Imperial resistance that had taken hold in the capital city, and then fired Exterminatus torpedoes (of the life-eater virus bomb variety) onto the city to wipe them out.

Unfortunately for Horus, not everything went as planned; not only did the loyalist Death Guard frigate Eisenstein escape to the Phalanx with word of Horus's betrayal, but loyalist elements on other ships were able to disrupt the bombardment and warn the loyalists on the ground that it was coming. Between the disruption, the warning, and good old-fashioned Space Marine toughness, only a third or so of the landed force had actually died. Horus would have fired another bombardment, but Angron and his traitor World Eaters jumped the gun and made planetfall; the other traitors were left with no choice but to deploy themselves and destroy the remaining loyalists personally.

Betrayal contains a Great Crusade Legion army list (for which we have a tactica), and rules for special characters and units from the Sons of Horus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters Legions, including their Primarchs (even Fulgrim, who was not actually at the battle) and several major characters from the book series such as Garviel Loken.

See Also

• Alternate Heresy, for a discussion of other possible outcomes of the (not necessarily Horus) Heresy.

External Links

• Horus Heresy (1993) at BoardGameGeek
• Horus Heresy (2010) at BoardGameGeek