Warhammer 40K: Can The Horus Heresy And 40K Survive Together
Let’s talk about the big new game on the block. Horus Heresy, and what it means for 40K.
The GW Adepticon Preview has come and gone. With it was the announcement of a new big edition of the Horus Heresy. But what does this mean for 40K? Let’s take a look.
A More Accessible Mainstream Edition? 
We don’t know too much about the new edition of the Horus Heresy yet. However, there have been a ton of rumors floating around over the past months. In the main those point towards an edition that is more “mainstream” than the last. Talk has centered around this being an edition that moved from Forgeworld Resin to mainline GW and plastic models. In addition, its been described as being a “core game” for GW alongside 40K and AoS. While we don’t know if this is going to be true yet, the preview does hint at it.
Take the announcement of the Legion Praetor. GW had this to say “The Praetors are some of the first kits moving to plastic, making the game more approachable than ever before.” This very much seems to line up with a large scale move to plastic with aim of a more mainline game. Indeed the large cinematic trailer and new logo are pretty reminiscent of the kick of 9th edition (#new40K) one of the other major GW lines. All this points to Horus Heresy being a major thing going forward.
Can The Two Games Coexist
Maybe this seems like a no-brainer. After all 40K and Horus Heresy DO coexist right now. Both games have been around for years at this point without destroying each other. Sure you could argue that a stagnant HH has lost a lot of players to 40K in recent years, but that’s more due to issues with HH. But we also have to consider that the games exist in different forms right now. Horus Heresy is currently very clearly a smaller, spinoff side game.
It uses not only different models, but by and large models that costed differently, are made differently, and are purchased from a different source than mainline 40K. It’s a more exclusive, less-accessible game. It’s more aimed at older established hobbyists. At the end of the day it’s not a competitor to 40K and it doesn’t really try to draw in the same crowd. However, a push to make Heresy more mainstream, more orthodox if you will, could end this. An all plastic GW (rather than Forgeworld) backed modern Horus Heresy could be a competetor to 40K.
Can 40K Learn From Horus Heresy?
Let’s be frank. 9th Edition is not in an amazing spot. It’s a game that seems to have thrown balance out the window. It’s been hit with pretty massive power and rules bloat. Even a lot of long-time hard-core fans are turned off by 9th’s meta right now. A massive new Warhammer game with a different set of rules coming out right now is going to get compared to 40K. So what if Horus Hersey is a better game? HH’s newly modified 7th Edition and 40Ks 9th Edition are vastly different games. If people like Heresy more, could that lead to major changes to 10th Edition?
A Combined Rules?
It feels like having two mainstream Warhammer games with vastly different rules isn’t ideal from GW’s prespective. This isn’t a case of a small skirmish game like Kill Team and a large company based game like 40K. This is two games that are essentially the same idea and scale, that you can in some cases even use the same armies in, with vastly diverging rules. Running side by side and with people comparing them. What seems like a more ideal situation would be for one of the two games to come out as a clear winner. Once the better game is found then you could make a combined rule set for both of them. Maybe Warhammer 10th edition will do that.
Only time will tell.
Let us know what you think the new Horus Heresy means for the future of Warhammer, down in the comments!
