Horus Heresy: ‘The Depths of Tredecimmia’, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Today we take a look at the new Horus Heresy supplement, The Depths of Tredecimmia.
Not only do we get some very interesting lore related to one of the more lore starved factions in Horus Heresy, the Dark Mechanicum, but we get a slew of new units, abilities, cyberthurgy and weapons to take against the legions and armies of the false emperor.
The Depths of Tredecimmia is a surprise Exemplory Battles supplement released by Forge World to give rules to some of the forgotten Chaos demon engines that were left out of the Mechanicum and Traitor Legion books. If you were hoping to dust off your Brass Scorpion, Blood Slaughterers, Kytan or Decimator you’ll be happy to know that all of those are covered in this supplement along with interesting and powerful army wide rules to use along with your other Dark Mechanicum forces.
Download the Rules Supplement HERE
The Good
I’ll start by simply saying that I really do love surprises when it comes to supplements, more so when they include armies and units I own and even more so when that army is painted. So I may be overly bias in this assessment. Lets get into it:
Corrupted Engine Subtype
This new unit subtype brings some interesting flavor to the corrupted engines of the chaos variety.
1. Engines gain Fear (1) and this stacks.
2. Engines are immune to fear.
3. Corrupted engines automatically pass Regroup tests, cannot choose to fail morale and on the off chance that they are forced to fallback they stay in the fight for the low or potentially high cost of D3 wounds. Given the fact that most of the corrupted engines thus far are close combat monsters with reasonably high initiative stats they shouldn’t be the ones running from combat outside of running into a Primarch.
4. You’ll be choosing an Aetheric Dominion for your corrupted units either Heedless Slaughter or Malevolent Artifice, both are great for a variety of units and free. Heedless Slaughter allows for additional close combat benefits including +1 to charge distance, +1 to score combat outcome and +1 to sweeping advance result. Malevolent Artifice on the other hand helps the durability of your engines by letting them reroll armor saves below their toughness characteristic. Both Aetheric dominion are great with few if any drawbacks.
Cyberthurgic Arcana: Animal Malefica
This Cyberthurgic Arana is great. If you’re running a more support oriented Magos this Arcana is perfect especially if its run in tandem with a Warlord trait like Logic of Victory which has your Magos sitting on the sidelines directing traffic and not using any shooting attacks and is avoiding combat like the plague. By leaning into this comb your Magos can apply 2 reactions in each relevant phase and you get the following for one your corrupted units. If you’re running multiple Cyberthurgist units, this means that you can apply the Animal Malefica effects to different units.
1. Unit may immediately move a number of inches equal to its initiative stat, use the highest initiative
2. All models improve their Invulnerable Save by +1 to a max of 3+ until the beginning of your opponent’s next turn
3. All models in the unit add 1 to their WS and initiative stat until the end of the subsequent Assault phase.
All of the above is awesome. I sure wish I could slap these on units other than corrupted.
Decimator – 265pts
What’s not to love, we’re getting a Contemptor Dread-esque stat line and base 5 attacks with two decimator siege claws or 4 with a siege claw and either a Butcher cannon or Soulburner petard. Now I don’t love the weapon options outside of the Siege Claws, I think its best to leave this unit as a close combat juggernaut. You want him continually advancing up the field picking fights with Elite terminators or dreadnaughts. Keep him buffed and happy with the Animal Malefica, most especially the option to increase his WS to 6 and Initiative to 5 and you’ll be swimming in a sea or your opponents tears.
The only downside here is the points cost. These are especially expensive at 265pts and you can’t run them in squadrons, so they take up a whole Elite slot which tend to be valuable. I think these become auto includes in many traitor mechanicum forces as they offer a way to counter other dreadnaughts effectively.
Blood Slaughterer – 110pts
I love these, they are truly awesome units and I think they will find a home in many traitor armies. They are fairly quick and absolutely lethal against base marine squads with their slaughter blades. The other fun little trick they have is the ability to take an Impaler Harpoon which when it hits allows your units to re-roll charges against the target unit. Best of all…you just need to hit. The Impaler harpoon is free to the unit and I think its worth trying to guarantee a hit so it might be worth taking 2 in a squad of 3 Blood Slaughterers. Also they got hit and run which allows them to bounce out of combat and keep your army advancing while providing a way to improve your chances of making long charges.
Kytan Daemon Engine – 420pts
Nothing screams slaughter more than the Kytan. This traitor only Lord of War is everything you need to close the gap and sweep up your opponents. Pair this with Heedless Slaughter and you’ll only be increasing the odds some truly barbaric close combat results. This thing moves like a Cerastus Knight with 14″ movement, it has WS6 so you’ll outclass pretty much everything outside of Custodes w/ Nemesis, some special characters and Primarchs. When you finally close the distance and engage in close combat you’ll be coming in hot with Hammer of Wrath (4) and Rampage (D3) on top of your usual 4 attacks. This is combined with some truly fearsome damage potential in the Cleaver of Slaughter. The cleaver is about as gross a close combat weapon that exists in Horus Heresy. Coming in at Str 10, AP2 w/ Brutal (3) and Shred you’re not going to be missing much and when you connect its gonna be bleak for your opponents.
The Bad
Great Brass Scorpion – 440pts
For such an iconic war engine I suspect I was hoping for more. Its fine, it has plenty of shooting most of which isn’t particularly scary. You have your turret mounted scorpion cannon, centerline despoiler cannon and 2 hellmaw cannon. The Despoiler cannons are really the only range weapons on the Great Brass Scorpion that you have to watch out for. At Str10, AP3, blast, sunder, rending 5+ and Brutal 3 not much is going to survive this hit outside of Terminators, HQs and Terminators. Thankfully if you spread out and avoid the centerline front facing you should be okay.
Breach the Command Centre – Mission
Overall fun mission set in the Zone Mortalis Scheme. The downside here is a plethora of door shenanigans that can hypothetically stymie the attacker by locking down choke points throughout the game. Also the mission is ZM which means that you probably need more specialized terrain to play this properly. Those of you who picked up the boarding boxes should be set.
The Ugly
No Build a Bear for Corrupted Mechanicum Units
The one thing I don’t love about this supplement is that corrupted engines are a very limited. I am absolutely starving for ways to get that keyword onto any of the existing Mechanicum units. Thallax, Thantar, Castellax, Dominatar, you name it, they could all benefit immensely from one of the three Animal Malefica boons and Aetheric Dominion options. I can imagine a juiced up Domitar actually becoming incredibly scary as a corrupted unit.
Corrupted Unit Type
While awesome the corrupted unit type does have some downsides. There are a number of abilities and units in game that call out additional damage, re-rolls, and even instant death (or d3 wounds) against corrupted units. I would expect this list of force weapons and abilities to grow as more black books are released. If someone is coming tooled to fight corrupted units, it’s gonna be a rough game for the demon engines.
Tying it All Together
While I certainly think that there is a great reason to run this supplement alongside your existing Mechanicum force. Something really speaks to me about allying this to a Space Marine legion army. I think the lore points to World Eaters and I’m all about it. The Corrupted Engines handed out in this Exemplorary Battle are unique, flavorful and awesome. There are definitely tools in place to help a legion like the World Eaters who are close combat oriented but can struggle to get into combat as they lack any kind of real movement tricks like their loyalist analog Space Wolf kin.
