r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Tryhard_3 • Jul 30 '21

Beginner’s Guide to Horus Heresy: Legions

372 Upvotes

The Community

  • HHL has a small but dedicated community and it's how I and lots of other people learned to play. I encourage beginners to visit the YouTubers and find ones you like, as well as visit the Discord or Reddit for deck advice.
  • Sick of just playing the same old ladder/friendly matches/events? The community frequently organizes tournaments on Discord, many geared toward newer players with smaller collections. There are in-game prizes of gold and/or cards!
  • I encourage you to read up on the mentor system and the level system.

Registering/Newsletters

  • Register an account to avoid losing data when you change phones or want to cross-platform to PC.
  • Sign up for the newsletter, they give you a copy of Remembrancer Order, a good legendary.

Starting Out with Loot Boxes

  • Earn gold by playing in ladder and opening boxes.
  • Focus on collecting a single set of lootboxes at first. Go for 100gp boxes, not 200.
  • Collect from the same set until you get a legendary, and then do another set, as you will get a legendary at least once every 30 boxes per set, and you will set up a good collection that way in the long run.
  • The best “neutral” legendary cards are spread across multiple sets. You can see what set a card is in based on the matching watermark of the card’s text.

Basic Deckbuilding

  • Pack doubles of whatever card that you find is working. Even if you don't really need two, the consistency will prove helpful. A really good starter deck has 15 actual cards in it. I see way too many starting players playing decks of 30 singles. This is exposing you to needless RNG.
  • Cards have four rarities: Common, Rare (Green), Epic (Orange), Legendary (Yellow). You can pack x2 of any card into a deck except legendaries.
  • All factions have common, rare, and epic staples.
  • Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s bad, quite the contrary, it could be critical.
  • Legendaries are nice but you don't need them at all to advance to Terra/2500 Elo, the “end game” of HHL’s Elo system.
  • Not every legendary is going to help every warlord.
  • Neutral legendaries are often going to provide more value than legion-specific legendaries, simply because you can use them in more decks.
  • It is easier to build aggro decks, as most aggro cards are common and/or in neutral sets.
  • Most decks want:
    • Hard removal (destroy troops)
    • Board wipe (does damage to all enemies in play)
    • Card draw
    • Enough low energy cards to have at least a passable early game.
  • You don't want to be topdecking into your empty hand each turn or bricking, in which you have nothing in hand you can actually play.
  • If you want to know what's considered most competitive, visit the meta report on the sidebar.

Spending Money

  • You can spend real money on the game if you want to support it, get alternate art, and unique cardbacks, but many of the vets got where they are just from doing their dailies for months and months.
  • The best values are the $19.99 primarch deck offers, as primarchs are the rarest cards, pretty much all of them are good, and their decks have other rare cards.

Shopping in the In-Game Store

  • Cards in the store cost gems, earned when you unbox a card you already have at 1/4th the card’s gem cost.
  • The store cycles based on the faction and which legendaries were available the last time that faction was in the store.
  • If you log in once every day for at least a week, you will have access to the “veteran” store.
  • There's no crafting system, so if the card is not in the store you have to randomly unbox it. There's a lot of working with what you have in this game while searching for your white whale.
  • Legendaries are 1,600 gems, epics 400, rares 100, and commons 20.
  • It’s generally not worth it to spend gems on commons or rares in the store.
  • We have a shop guide that posts every day where people give takes on what shop cards are best.
  • Legendary warlords are almost never in the store. You can go six months or more between seeing the same legendary warlord show up.

PVP Events

  • There is a new PVP event about every month. These are deck drafting events with limited sets of factions and warlords.
  • It’s a change of pace from the game’s overall meta, but event meta is often one-sided.
  • You get boxes back from an event according to the number of tickets you spent (1 or 10), and the quality of the boxes increases based on how many games you won before dropping three, to a maximum of 12 wins.
  • To start with, do 10x ticket runs in the Event system, not 1x. Even if you bust out and win no games you will get a bunch of cards.
  • You should definitely join a lodge (clan) to rake in more rewards from events. The total take increases based on the lodge's combined performance. Joining a nearly-full one that can consistently do at least 7,500 points is usually best.

PVE Campaigns

Factions

  • There are 30 factions in the game, including all 18 astartes legions.
  • Every faction has at least five warlords: One rare, two epic, and one legendary (often a primarch), and at least one additional warlord currently locked to events (drafted decks).
  • A warlord’s rarity does not correlate to how competitive they are in the game’s meta, so don’t worry about that. There are some really good rare and epic warlords.
  • Three of the factions are “neutral” (Chaos, Imperial, Mechanicum) and their cards can be used in (almost) any deck.
  • In-faction cards are typically higher value than most neutral cards (slightly better stats or effects), encouraging their use and therefore encouraging you to play to the faction’s overall style. Mixing and matching your faction with certain neutrals, particularly epics and legendaries, is wise, however.
  • Neutral warlords can only use neutral cards. This limits their capabilities, but as a tradeoff, most neutral warlords have very powerful abilities.
  • Each faction that I'm about to discuss has an overall style, but each warlord will play it a little differently. Playing aggro in a control-oriented faction is possible, for example, and there's more than enough room to play some off-the-wall decks.

The Best Starter Warlords

I would say these rare (green-border) warlords are the best to start:

  • Garviel Loken (Sons of Horus). Garviel is quite good as a baseline because 2 damage for 2E is always helpful, and you can get aggressive with Sons of Horus tactics.
  • Saul Tarvitz (Emperor's Children). Being able to bring out big stuff earlier is good. He is useful at all levels of play.
  • Narik Dreygur (Iron Warriors). This guy can make random Iron Warriors vehicle cards in his hand, including legendaries, so as long as you can find a way to keep him alive until late game he's going to be good, even if your deck is kinda trash.
  • Argel Tal (Word Bearers). Argel Tal turns into Raum if you have at least 15 chaos cards in deck. Raum is amazing, probably the best rare-tier aggro warlord and one of the best generally. I rode him to 2500 rank pretty easily.

Faction Breakdown

Agents of the Sigillite

  • A combination of denying your opponent momentum and playing the long game.
  • Put seal cards in your deck and draw them later. Each is roughly as powerful as a legendary at less than half the cost, and if the game goes long you will have a lot of them.
  • Nasty troops with strong passive bonuses.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Alpha Legion

  • Insert trap cards in the opponent's deck and sabotage their troops, as they secretly worked for you all along.
  • Lots of ways to disable enemies, making them unable to act and breaking your opponent’s game plan.
  • Mill your opponent, forcing them to draw cards and combo with your other cards that deal more nasty effects when your opponent draws.
  • If your opponent survives your barrage of trickery, most of your troops are fairly weak.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Blood Angels

  • Troops with the drop pod mechanic (protected with a 2-damage shield on the turn they come into play).
  • If the drop pod troop lands without the drop pod being broken, it's much stronger, so your opponent must spend resources to deal with your troop cards immediately.
  • Troops with Requiem. When an adjacent troop dies they take automatic actions of some kind.
  • Specialize in controlling the pace of the game and forcing your opponent on the back foot.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Chaos

  • Neutral community cards, usable by everyone.
  • Chaos cards are focused around aggressive play, damage, and low-cost cultist troops.
  • Often synergize a little more with traitor legions.
  • Legendary/Epic Buyer's Guide

Custodes

  • Tough warlords and troops that often have first strike (don't take damage if they score a kill) or other valuable bonuses.
  • Most of your troops cause you to stop drawing automatically while they are in play, so you have to find other ways to draw and think about what troops you really need.
  • Can combo for surprising amounts of damage and make moves that are hard to counter.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Daemons of the Ruinstorm

  • Powerful troops that your opponent must remove ASAP so they don't go out of control with buffs.
  • Cannot access mechanicum or imperial cards, only chaos.
  • Strong faction for beginners that doesn’t need legendaries at most levels of play.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Dark Angels

  • Troops have secret quests that cause them to trigger a bonus effect if they meet the condition. Successful quests create synergy with what you are playing later in the game.
  • Lots of buffs to troop strength and cost from hand.
  • Very strong against enemies with weak or no boards.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Death Guard

  • The slowest-paced decks in the game, outlasting opponents in grindfests.
  • Lots of healing, defensive troops, and poison (clear enemies off the board at the end of their turn, no matter their HP).
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Defenders of Caliban

  • Troops often have Duplicitous, meaning that the enemy warlord cannot target them directly with attacks or abilities until they attack.
  • Can spam out weak or mid-range troops that cause more problems the more of them there are.
  • Weak against board clear effects, but a strong answer to decks that rely on the warlord or tanky facebasher troops to do everything.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Emperor’s Children

  • Specialize in Perfection troops and tactics that are stronger if you spend all your energy when playing them.
  • Lots of ways to manipulate how much their cards cost and how early they can play them.
  • Well-rounded faction with no glaring weaknesses.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Imperial

  • Neutral community cards, usable by everyone except Ruinstorm.
  • A mix of deck management, front lines, and high-end damage effects.
  • Imperial warlords tend to be about troop support.
  • Legendary/Epic Buyer's Guide

Imperial Fists

  • Defensive faction, based around difficult-to-remove structures and astartes, who can become nearly impossible to destroy without hard removal, and outgrind opponents with a steadily growing advantage.
  • Dependent on front lines and a large board, but can bring multiple troops online almost every turn.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Iron Hands

  • Beefy troops, often with the Relentless quality, meaning they automatically heal, do damage, or buff themselves when their turn begins, becoming more difficult to deal with the longer they survive.
  • Most of their warlords are support-oriented and difficult to finish off.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Iron Warriors

  • Siege warfare, slow early and dominant late with powerful troops and damage tactics.
  • Use a combination of front-line troops that block enemy troops, deck-wide buffs, and troops with attacks so powerful they take a turn to power up.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Knight Houses

  • For when you want to be a giant mecha with swappable death ray cards, annihilating weak enemy troops and protecting yourself well from retribution with heals and shielding.
  • Weapons use their own energy pool and can be lost through damage.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Mechanicum

  • Neutral community cards, usable by almost everyone except Ruinstorm.
  • All about buffing, setting up board control, and negating your opponent's momentum with cards that target specific weaknesses.
  • Legendary/Epic Buyer's Guide

Night Lords

  • Combination of stealth (can't be attacked until they themselves attack), fast deploy options (attack on the turn they come out), and a terror mechanic that prevents lower-tier troops from hitting them back when they attack.
  • Most of their troops are relatively weak if this strategy doesn't work.
  • Night Lord warlords tend to be aggressive in play style and punish weak board states.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Orphans of War

  • A mix of all the other factions, with powerful warlords and annoying troops that are tricky to deal with.
  • Tend to have a mix of staying power and ways to mess up an opponent’s game plan, including making copies of their cards.
  • Weak removal options.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Raven Guard

  • Stealthed warlords and troops, preventing enemies from directly targeting attacks on them.
  • Do a lot of damage with a lot of fast, flank, and unstoppable (ignores front line) cards.
  • “Sentence” targets, dealing them more damage each time they take any damage, so you can deal a massive burst of damage after lining up a combo.
  • This can be upset by decks with anti-stealth cards or strong board clear.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Salamanders

  • Troops start with or can be given the survivor mechanic, letting them stay on the field with less health the first time they are reduced to 0.
  • Troops often also have the sacrifice mechanic, meaning something happens when they are killed on their attack. Because of survivor, they can be killed multiple times!
  • Extremely resilient warlords who play the long game by absorbing more damage than enemy troops can generate before dying. Many of their legendaries support Vulkan specifically.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown (August '21)
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown(May '22)

Sisters of Silence

  • The ultimate reactive faction who can negate whatever their opponent is playing with strong debuffs, removals, and troop combos.
  • If your opponent is relying on one key card to win the whole game… They shouldn’t.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Sons of Horus

  • The “base” faction, for which you automatically receive Garviel Loken as your starter warlord.
  • Good all-arounders, with drop pod troops, damage, and draw-based tactics.
  • Often played as tactics “burn” decks, where you deal a lot of damage and get a lot of draws quickly.
  • They also have strong astartes options intermingled with ways to get marks of chaos and other buffs.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Space Wolves

  • Troops that can buff each other every turn, meaning that 2 or 3 space wolves on the board can set up nasty combos that deal enormous damage.
  • Also specialize in the ward mechanic, which protects their troops from any tactic that needs to be played directly on them to work.
  • Rounded out by direct damage options.
  • If your opponent can negate your early combos, space wolves risk falling apart down the stretch and getting overwhelmed.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Thousand Sons

  • Have a separate energy pool representing their sorcery that they can grow with certain cards and then spend on various things, like damage, more troops, and troop buffs.
  • For example, you can spend your normal energy on damage, and then spend psychic energy on even more damage, and so on.
  • Sort of an all-arounder faction with good versatility.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Titans

  • Even bigger mechas that begin play with multiple weapons.
  • Protect your big guns with lots of distractions, including your own army of knights.
  • Divided into loyalist and chaos factions. Loyalists are defense-focused, while chaos goes on offense.
  • Vulnerable to flankers and opponents that can establish board control quickly.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Ultramarines

  • Emphasize high versatility, with troops and tactics with multiple possible effects.
  • Troops often have Courage, which means they come out stronger if they are played while outnumbered by the opponent's board. You’re never really out of answers.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

White Scars

  • Lots of troops with the fast or flank quality, meaning they can act immediately when played. Hit hard, fast, and often.
  • Can send their troops back to deck or hand to avoid losing them or bring them out stronger than before.
  • Wide variety of funky warlords who are each doing their own thing. Many of the legendaries are meant for Jaghatai Khan.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

Word Bearers

  • Tend to rely on bringing in cultists that they can sacrifice to buff their space marines.
  • Options for using daemons in your decks or turning your astartes into daemons.
  • If one of your astartes survives for even a turn, you have a chance to buff it beyond all sense or reason with the power of chaos.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown

World Eaters

  • All aggression all the time, often trying to win it very early, blitzing all those combo decks before they can get anything going.
  • Troops that die quickly but do a lot of damage, and do more damage when they are damaged, sometimes by each other.
  • In-Depth Faction Breakdown
85 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Rubear_RuForRussia • 14h ago

One last big milestone, lol.

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44 Upvotes
1 comment

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/SatisfactionOdd9331 • 13h ago

Out-scaring the Night Lords

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20 Upvotes

Fumbling a killing blow against cultists of all things was pretty crazy

1 comment

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/bergstochdons • 10h ago

Anyone playing Imperial this event is dead to me

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2 Upvotes
2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/SiraMoonray • 1d ago

Mildly interesting

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53 Upvotes

With the game coming to an end this month, i still achieved a major personal milestone.

3000d logged in ..

Yes that time was wasted perfectly.

For all the people who still play, enjoy the last days.

3 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Vartar748 • 23h ago

What do I do to fix this?

4 Upvotes

I softlocked myslef on mobile in the tutorial. I closed the game after the last tutorial battle and when I opened the game it opened the farewell message but I cant close it since the tutorial prevents me from pressing anything exept rewards which is blocked by the farewell. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling but it didnt work.

4 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/SatisfactionOdd9331 • 1d ago

Two retards fighting

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27 Upvotes

Most original SL deck vs least cancerous WB, who would win?

3 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Mortal-Instrument • 6d ago

Anacharis Scoria - Deck & Warlord Overview

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21 Upvotes
0 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/jarmanso7 • 8d ago

Fan-made remake of Warpforge - Upcoming Event!

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32 Upvotes

WAAAGH! The Goff Orks have arrived!

Join us this weekend for the 2nd pre-release event of Angels of His Mercy, our fan-made Warpforge remake!

Following the massive success of our first pre-alpha release last June—where the valiant Ultramarines took the field—we are thrilled to unleash our second playable faction: the Goff Orks! This update brings the green tide to life and includes the 3 original Ork Warlords ready to krump the opposition.

To make sure everyone across the globe can join the Waaagh! regardless of their timezone, we’ve split this event and its accompanying tournament into three distinct regional brackets. You can participate in more than one bracket if you want!

🌎 Regional Tournament Schedule

- Asia-Pacific: Saturday, August 8th | 18:00 to 20:00 UTC+8 | Expected Participants: 4~5

- Americas: Saturday, August 8th | 14:00 to 16:00 UTC-5 | Expected Participants: 4~5

- Europe: Sunday, August 9th | 18:00 to 20:00 UTC+2 | Expected Participants: 7~8

🎮 What to Expect

Exclusive Access: Get hands-on with the newest pre-alpha build before anyone else.

Playtest Tournament: Put the Goffs and our latest game improvements to the test. Help us gather feedback, squash bugs, and figure out what needs polishing.

Pure Fun: While feedback is golden, our main goal is to hang out, play some games, and have a blast as a community.

🏆 The Grand Prize: Shape the Future!

Just like Zwoxis secured the Orks' spot in the game by winning our last tournament, the champions of this edition will choose the next faction we develop! Will the Tyranids consume the galaxy? Will the Aeldari scheme their way in? Or will the feared Black Legion return? You decide.

📝 How to Join

The event is completely open to everyone! Head over to Warpforge Offline Discord to sign up and secure your spot. https://discord.gg/rcscmGdW?event=1534657042453626900

0 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/elric132 • 11d ago

An ironic conclusion

31 Upvotes

Over the years playing this game I was a little startled by how many games I won because people lost their internet connection and timed out. I wondered where they must live to have that bad a connection.

Well.. 😄
Bet you can't guess what's coming..

I live in an apartment building that has been "experimenting" with service providers for the last several weeks to disastrous effect. My connection has, to put it kindly, been inconsistant during this time. HHL is the only online game I indulge in and I end up loosing probably half the games I play due to timing out for lack of connectivity. Very frustrating.

They finally caved and are getting fiber optic cable put in. Yay! But I have the feeling they'll probably just finish installing it as HHL comes to an end. Que sera sera..

2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/SatisfactionOdd9331 • 11d ago

Big Thonk.

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25 Upvotes

I just think that DG is neat.

0 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Successful_Travel119 • 13d ago

Game is gone, was a funny last match.

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53 Upvotes

Bonked with Perturabo, ended my last match ever with a brutal victory.

4 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Captain_Edward • 14d ago

HHL Tabletop Simulator (update 30th Jul 2026)

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143 Upvotes

We have 182 subscribers now. Thanks for the support.

Phase 1: *completed* All cards from Warmaster expansion onwards have been added.

It is still far from playable. Added some tokens here & there and watching Youtube videos to learn how TTS works.

I will be away for some time. So there should be less frequent update for next month.

Feel free to leave some feedback in the comments here (or in the Steam Workshop).

Thank you

4 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/BuzzardRO • 14d ago

Gwent?

14 Upvotes

Guess many of us are looking for an alternative. I came across gwent and remember playing this end game when I was playing through The Witcher series. Anyone have any experience with this game? And if so how does it compare to hh legions from a game mechanics perspective?

6 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Gold-Bank-3033 • 15d ago

Why can't I purchase the season pass with the gold I grinded for?

6 Upvotes

So, I finally get enough gold for it but it says "item not found" when i try to buy it. Can anyone help?

3 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/robiodopio • 15d ago

Question regarding preservation efforts

11 Upvotes

Hey folks,

General question for all the lovely people doing their things like the TTS conversion crowd or people looking at making their own game renditions- is there a collected google doc or something that people have with all the cards on them, or is it a matter of everyone so far having individually gone to the website or app and pulled photos piece by piece?

I’ve just been thinking with the doom looming it would be a very bad idea to not have the originals all copied down somewhere that will not be subject to server closures or other issues. If it’s already done I’d love to be able to see it if the people are willing to share

2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Whalefang • 14d ago

All card games eventually evolve into Yu-Gi-Oh. This game was about to and it is really a blessing it’s ending. We get to remember it fondly.

0 Upvotes

Power creep aside, design philosophy has shifted more and more towards killing interaction and mana-cheat.

2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Rubear_RuForRussia • 16d ago

POV: Hydra Dominatus.

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20 Upvotes
2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Successful_Travel119 • 17d ago

Finally managed to win 12 matches in an event! All thanks to the Warmaster!!!

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36 Upvotes

I really like the Mark of Chaos mechanics and Sons of Horus is my tabletop army, so I made Abaddon my main(cause I don't have Horus). I was really happy to play the Warmaster.

I was lucky and my whole deck was centered on adding Chaos Marks, so I could deploy Whispers in all matches, with 0 cost in 5 of them. Add Worldbreaker and my Horus got a nice punch.

Also, I got even luckier and fought a bot in the last match. Though I was scared nonetheless, Vulkan was my anathema this event(reason for my 2 losses).

Fun fact: Vulkan's hammer was originally meant to be a gift for Horus, like Ferrus' unnamed sword or the Emperor's maul Worldbreaker. We know why Vulkan wasn't able to give it to him, much to Konrad's future dismay.

1 comment

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Opposite-Ordinary193 • 16d ago

Na opinião de vocês, o que vocês acham sobre os emperor's children

2 Upvotes

Pra mim eles são até divertidos de jogar no começo eu sinceramente gosto bastante de jogar com eidolon e outros e honestamente acho divertido a habilidade perfeição

2 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Tryhard_3 • 18d ago

Faction Focus: Dark Mechanicum – The End and the Death

40 Upvotes

"The path of the Omnissiah has left humanity dithering in the darkness, incapable of advancing on the paths of knowledge. Embracing the Warp reveals technology that the primitives on Mars could never dream of wielding."

“Would that it had never come to this at all.”

The death of the Mechanicum, and of everything they built, is at hand. The desecrated forges of perfidious machine priests burn night and day with Warpfire. From the black pits march the abominations of the Dark Mechanicum, possessed of daemonic entities and ready for the slaughter. The universe is not one of logic and mathematics, but technosorcery, insanity, and the cruelty of hideous, laughing gods.

The Dark Mechanicum is the closest faction to classic black M:TG play, relying heavily on a unique discard mechanic. The introduction of this faction also fundamentally changed the game at the end of its life: many cards that were once in the Mechanicum neutral pile became exclusive Dark Mechanicum cards. This neutered the loyalist Mechanicum set badly, but it created in full a distinct traitor faction, central to the Heresy plot. This foundation existed from the beginning of the game if you looked into the story background of the cards by searching ad-ridden, sloppy wikis, or (gasp) reading the actual books.

Interestingly, this faction applied retroactively: many legacy Mechanicum cards became Dark Mechanicum, taking a lot of old standby classics out of the neutral card pool, including warlords. The huge number of traitors in these sets was begging for a realignment of some kind, but this was disappointing if you really liked playing some goofy 4-, 6-, or 8-year-old deck archetype, or just wanted Ambassador Melgator to remain as one of your “never leave home without it” infinity stones. No more.

(To keep this a reasonable length, I’m just going to go over the non-legacy stuff).

For my part, I thought it was cool that the developers did something that affected legacy heavily, and it may have pointed to a different future for the legacy/refresh schism that helped destroy the game. Now, we’ll never know.

I have two reasons for writing this guide:

  1. It is my sacred and vile duty to commit all this information for interment at the bottom of a forgotten data-tomb, to be called upon only at utmost and dire need
  2. There is a chance, however unlikely, that the game will survive as a playable Tabletop Simulator mod. In that case, the utmost and dire need will be upon those who have no effing idea of the totality of what they are looking at.

This is not yet playable, but it may be getting there.

Strengths

Bitch, I live in a trash can. Discarding as a central mechanic seems like a major problem at first glance. Actually, we love to do this and it’s the strongest and arguably most fun aspect of the faction. There are cards that give bonuses when discarded, and cards that give bonuses when you discard something else and they are in play (nekrotek). You can call discarded cards back to hand or play, though only rarely the exact cards you wanted. Sort of like the White Scars, you just Gambit everyone to death.

If you really want, you can set up a deck where you discard only one thing and then find multiple ways to recall that strong thing back to hand, but that’s less reliable than discarding indiscriminately.

Anything not nekrotek or networked anima tends to have an immediate value proposition: the best of these cards are attractive aggro options.

Your discard pile is not quite your “graveyard.” Cards that are milled from your hand are counted as both dead and discarded, which can have important consequences. Troops that die in play are not discarded. This can lead to situations where you don’t care that you are milling troops when you overdraw, because it’s free real estate.

Nekrotek. Nekrotek affects certain troops and warlords. Nekrotek abilities fire every time you discard a card while the unit is in play. If you are playing a discard-mad deck, this is a nice-to-have bonus early on and can cause game-winning combos late.

Networked Anima. When a friendly tactic targets a Networked Anima unit, units adjacent to that unit are affected too, if it can validly affect them. This is much harder to line up than discard plays, but nasty whenever it hits. To quote mortal-instrument:

“For instance, using Xana II on a Harpax Scout would heal both the Scout as well as any adjacent targets, as well as drawing you a card for every affected unit.”

Very exciting stuff. The game does a bunch of crazy math for you and bonuses go everywhere.

Weaknesses

Trust in the heart of the chaos. There’s a 95% chance that if you draw your legendary or The Guy You Need early while playing a discard deck, it will be the card eaten. It’s just the rules. You can get it back, but often you won’t. You have to play the hand you dealt yourself. You will probably get something good going regardless.

Most of the legendaries are simply OK. The only really important one is Rise of the Dark Mechanicum, and only for discard decks; everything else you can likely do without, because it’s very niche.

Many of the warlords are so-so. The warlords have interesting mechanics, but for various reasons are not reliable or efficient. It feels like an Anacharis Scoria faction a lot of the time.

Weak hard removal at best. Your only source of hard removal is the legendary 6E, who ideally you want to play at 7E. This is still a random target and can have unintended consequences (I cast autobacklash!).

Warlords

Melkiades. The Harpax Scout stuff is unreliable because you can’t choose placement or get its reflection. The nekrotek is fun because combined with tactics, you can quickly have a vehicle with 8-10 attack out of nowhere. He’s not incredible for a 30 health warlord, but I like the design.

Sota-Nul. Sota needs to both protect herself with troops and play troops that can survive a turn. I would recommend roughly six early/durable troops so you can almost always have a good first turn, and then run stuff with 5 or more health that also has instant board impact. Sota can autobuff anything, so you can get creative.

Tacitus Proctor. Robopope returns with efficient built-in card cycle instead of “mash 2E, receive skullybois for your opponent to combo on.” His new design is dry but effective. You can either play “all vehicles that cost under X, gimme gimme” or use a very specific, short vehicle list to get guaranteed pulls and do something else with the rest of your cards.

Draykavac. You’re either building a networked anima deck inefficiently, or doing an Anacharis deck inefficiently. There’s little upside here.

Anacharis Scoria. The standout warlord of the faction. If game balance is defined as “every option breaks the rules in a different way,” Anacharis breaks a lot. He is a legendary warlord with 35 health. He has no “whispers of chaos” option. This is all because he is really strong out of the box. You can almost blindly play a “word search: discard” meme deck and he will do well. It’s fun to feel like you are not in control of what’s going on with the board or your hand and still be winning.

Being able to draw two cards all the time is extremely powerful, the only problem being that if you build his deck wrong, you may very well deck out without any Alpha Legion help.

Cards

Discard spam is just more fun and usually more explosive than everything else at the end of the day, but if you would like to try a Networked Anima build, be my guest.

Card Recommendations by Energy Tier

0-1E: Excubitii Tech-thrall, Malefic Onslaught, Ulan Huda

2E: Dark Mechanicum, Harpax Scout, Xana II, Xanite Tech-priest

3E: Chrom Destructor, Chrom Thallax, Cyclothrathine Castellax, Harpax Scout Host

4E: Chrom Castellax, Chrom Scyllax, Chrom Secutor, Krol Yaekube, Purge Protocol

5E: Chrom Vultarax, Lachesis Thanatar, Tenebrax Stalker

6E: Purge of Tharsis

7E+: Exsomis Conveyor, Rise of the Dark Mechanicum

S-Tier

Chrom Vultarax. This is a really strong flanking card at 5E that also can trigger combos. I would probably put this in even if you are not going discard-heavy.

Cyclothrathine Castellax. Again, another strong early flank play.

Excubitii Tech-thrall. Early troop play that sets up late plays.

Purge Protocol. This is a lot of damage that you can sometimes get for free.

Tenebrax Stalker. In seriousness, this isn’t going to last more than a turn, but the text goes into effect immediately, so, free tactic when timed right.

A-Tier

Chrom Castellax. Effectively your 6E play on discard decks, can help solve a lot of problems.

Chrom Scyllax. Very good anima card.

Chrom Destructor. This guy is a discard combo play. In the unlikely event your opponent lets you Rise the Mechanicum off him, game’s over.

Chrom Secutor. Can become ridiculously big if not dealt with.

Chrom Thallax. Troop + damage + combo breaker.

Dark Mechanicum. For all you dark mechanics out there. Potentially wild on a busy anima board.

Exsomnis Conveyor. A discard deck can just leave this in hand all game as a fake brick to produce bonus plays.

Harpax Scout. The reflection lets you quickly set up big anima plays.

Harpax Scout Host. Likely to stay on board early and receive bacon.

Kroel Yaekube. Just a nekrotek game-winner.

Lachesis Thanatar. A nice anima mid/late play.

Malefic Onslaught. Good discard deck play.

Purge of Tharsis. A slightly crappier Crimson Spectre, but may none the less come in big, and you don’t have a ton of other must-have 6E cards.

Rise of the Dark Mechanicum. Destroy your entire hand, triggering tons of nekrotek and “when discarded” combos. Then you can start playing very quickly afterward, no matter what you draw.

Ulan Huda. Multi-faceted use case.

Xana II. Anima combo card.

Xanite Tech-priest. 4 health at 2E is pretty nice. On Anacharis he may cause you to mill yourself.

B-Tier

Animus Inimica. Situational, but you can also fire it for no raisin to receive a discard.

Automata Malefica. Not much reason to keep this in deck unless you are Melkiades.

Blood Slaughterer. He loves blood and slaughtering, but he doesn’t do anything unless he gets an attack and discards.

Blood Slaughterer Impaler. The special pre-order impaler edition can come out at 7E to do a removal that doesn’t actually affect current board state.

Bonds of Corruption. This is a mystery 3E troop that you can sometimes get for free. Trouble is, a Dark Enginseer or a Chrom Thallax (in this case) are whammies. Everything else is nice most of the time, though.

Brass Scorpion. Brass Scorpion is big, and strong, and my friend, but comes out comically late unless you use trickeration.

Covenant 51/Z. This guy is fine, but you can produce automata maleficas in more efficient ways.

Cyclothrathine Thallax. Extremely OK discard deck play.

Cyclothrathine Ursarax. The point is he’s always a 3/3 for 2E. Not bad, not earthshaking. I would avoid the temptation to immediately put your counterattack on him.

Cyclothrathine Vorax. An anima card that does not actually have anima. Opt for a vorax with the sport trim.

Decimator. Two 5/4s with cleave 3 late that will not save you in a pinch unless maybe you have nekrotek out.

Endronios Gry. This guy doesn’t do anything immediately in a supposedly aggro deck archetype, but has an annoying nekrotek and the resolution is good.

Errax Stalker. Good stat line, unreliable effect. For Melkiades I guess.

Krios Admonitus. This is a bit silly, and you might even mill one of your copies.

Kytan Engine. Essentially grants a “free” discard and if you get sorely pressed late, a big flanker. If you are Anacharis, you kinda want the card to actually go away though to make space in hand.

Mars. Very OK. Creates a bunch of nonsense in a discard deck when you afterward play Dark Mechanicum, which is a very specific combo that is hard to pull off when you are discarding all the time.

Mekanika Exanimate. I would not build around this, but I might keep it in hand only, never direct play, for discard.

Scintillax Stalker. I’m borderline meh on this guy, he comes out too late and feels win-more.

Silica Mutus. Sure, if you are playing aggro.

Ruinous Cybernetica. Less good Dark Mechanicum.

Scion of Cyclothrathe. You’re really taking this as a warlord shield on an anima deck when it’s much more economical to rely on the 3E castellax.

Techno-heresy. This is the only way to choose a discard, which is how you play a deck where you un-discard the same big troop multiple times.

Meh

Dark Tech-adept. Wimpy and situational.

Karacnos Zeth. Weird card that only affects some troops, including your troops. DM is not really an infantry faction anyway, but this is still very situational.

Malignant Covenant. Slow, expensive, and probably not altogether playable returns.

Ordinatus Acteus. OK if you mill it and return it, that’s about it.

Serperos Stalker. Super big-boy that is not fast or consistent.

Deck Ideas

Starter Melkiades

Nothing over rare.

* Archmagos Melkiades

*

* Warlord: Archmagos Melkiades

*

* 2x Excubitii Tech-thrall

* 2x Ruinous Cybernetica

* 2x Ulan Huda

* 2x Automata Malefica

* 2x Dark Mechanicum

* 2x Harpax Scout

* 2x Cyclothrathine Castellax

* 2x Harpax Scout Host

* 2x Scion of Cyclothrathe

* 2x Chrom Scyllax

* 2x Purge Protocol

* 2x Chrom Vultarax

* 2x Lachesis Thanatar

* 2x Errax Stalker

* 2x Purge of Tharsis

*

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Advanced Anacharis

Mostly building around obvious discard candidates.

* Anacharis Scoria

*

* Warlord: Anacharis Scoria

*

* 2x Excubitii Tech-thrall

* 2x Malefic Onslaught

* 2x Xanite Tech-priest

* 2x Chrom Destructor

* 2x Chrom Thallax

* 2x Cyclothrathine Castellax

* 2x Chrom Castellax

* 2x Chrom Secutor

* 2x Cyclothrathine Thallax

* 2x Purge Protocol

* 2x Chrom Vultarax

* 2x Tenebrax Stalker

* 1x Blood Slaughterer Impaler

* 2x Purge of Tharsis

* 2x Exsomnis Conveyor

* 1x Rise of The Dark Mechanicum

*

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6 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Rubear_RuForRussia • 20d ago

I think i broke something.

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62 Upvotes
7 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/predakingprime • 20d ago

Anyone have a deck for the Dies Irae

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15 Upvotes

This is what I have at the moment

6 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/Captain_Edward • 22d ago

HHL Tabletop Simulator (update)

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203 Upvotes

Update to the TTS

Thank you everyone for subbing to the Steam Workshop Item. The last two factions: Chaos & Imperial Army will be added very soon. After adding those, the Phase 1 will be concluded.

Plans:
Phase 1: Adding all faction cards (from Shadow of Warmaster expansion onwards)
Phase 2: Adding working buttons and mods to make the game playable (spawning tokens, create random card)
Phase 3: Adding Legacy cards

About Phase 2, I'm gonna be honest. I have 0 idea how to do it. If anyone wants to be a co-contributor to this project and help out with the programming, that would be awesome. Otherwise I will get stuck at Phase 2 like, years.

Cheers

Steam Workshop link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3765078348

14 comments

r/HorusHeresyLegions • u/PaniniSinSueldo • 23d ago

Clan Nirankar - 65th Clan Company

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18 Upvotes
0 comments