Last week, the Horus Heresy team released a free PDF with rules for Blackshields. These came out in second edition as part of the Battle of Beta-Garmon campaign, whereas this digital release is part of GW’s plan to get everything from second edition back in the game.

I was incredibly surprised and excited to read this document, and this sentiment is shared across the rest of the Goonhammer team. This is not a hastily phoned-in document, and it contains unquestionably the most adventurous and enthusiastic games design of the edition yet. I haven’t a clue if it is any good or not, but it's certainly compelling and that is all I could ask for from a Heresy release. Hats off to the team!

We’ll be back to write something about demons soon!

Lore

Often confused (and also at times interchangeable) with the Shattered Legion forces, a myriad of groups and motivations fill up the scattered ranks of the Blackshields. Representing not a unified allegiance, group or methodology, individual groups of Blackshields make up hundreds of smaller warbands with no master except the lord that leads them. They make up the bulk of unaffiliated Astartes forces in the Heresy found outside of the 18 Legions of the Emperor and Warmaster. They exist for a variety of reasons: Rebellion, piracy, discontent with their genefather’s choices of allegiance, Warp shenanigans, opportunity, mercenary work, and much much more.

Blackshields represent an opportunity as a gamer for you to custom craft your own Space Marine faction and the lore that follows it. You might want to play a pirate lord seduced by Xenos weaponry, a warband of cloned super soldiers, a group of rebels against their Legion, or the crushed remnants of an Astartes battleforce.

Some Blackshields follow the classical allegiances, and others fight as a matter of triumph and convenience. Classic examples of Blackshields include Endryd Haar of the Fangs of the Emperor; the Ashen Claws, formerly of the Raven Guard; Kyr Vhalen, formerly of the Iron Warriors; and the Nemean Reaver of the Dark Brotherhood.

Imagine Breacher Shields from your MIND Credit: Soggy

Rules

Okay, so how do you Blackshield? The first step is understanding this is fundamentally a normal Marine force. You choose Loyalist or Traitor as normal, and all your units and detachments are from the front of the Liber Astartes/Hereticus. You can take everything that isn’t specific to a Legion: Tacticals, Centurions, Jetbikes, Terminators, whatever takes your fancy! You essentially replace the Rite of War and Legion Armouries with the Blackshield equivalent.

There’s no armoury you get to choose from, but you can get access to one if you like. More on that later.

There is a Legion Tactica: The Bastard Sons of Fate. The name for this goes hard and the rules do too. When a Blackshields gain a Pinned, Suppressed or Stunned Status, they get +1 S and +1 T. If they have two Statuses, they gain +2 instead. Obviously, getting Statuses is bad and this doesn’t negate that. You’re still unable to take certain actions, control objectives and will be fighting at Initiative 1, but it certainly gives an upside to these conditions. You might not be scoring that objective, but your opponent will be wounding them on 5+ with bolters (or 6+ if they’re VERY Statused).

They also get a special gambit for use in Challenges: Beholden to None. You can only use this gambit if your opponent is Unique or a Paragon, so the most powerful characters in the game. If your character is killed during this strike step, you can inflict D3 wounds with the damage and AP of the weapon you were using. This feels like a much more reliable version of the Iron Warriors Gambit, and incredibly appropriate for desperate battles against superior foes. I love this on Master Sergeants with Power Fists, who might have a lucky shot to somehow deal the final wound to a mighty foe.

Finally, like normal Marines, if you have Master of the Legion, you get an extra reaction!

Oaths of Moment

Not that one! You don’t get to re-roll hits against a single unit each turn. This game doesn’t have a command phase! Don’t be daft…

Instead, while building the army you choose a certain number of Factionwide abilities from a total of 15. If Blackshields is your Primary Crusade detachment faction, you get two choices. If they’re an allied detachment, you can only choose one. Think of these like Militia Provenance of War, each unlocks different and highly customisable ways of playing the faction.

Let’s get started on the list:

Panoply of Old

Simple, expansive, diverse. You get access to all of the equipment from your old Legion. No Legion Tactica, Gambits, Special Detachments, units, just the stuff in the Armoury selection. I think this includes Prime Benefits, since those are found in the Armoury section and aren’t excluded from the text of the rule explicitly, unlike every other thing the Legions get. This probably deserves an FAQ, but I’m going to assume Prime Benefits are allowed for this article and for Goonhammer events until told otherwise.

There’s 15 options here and I’m not going to list them all, but some highlights:

Alpha Legion gets you Venom Spheres and Power Daggers (meh), but if my Prime Benefit thing is correct, then you get a Reward of Treachery, offering access to a single Legion specific unit. Yuck.
Night Lords gives the Headsman’s Axe, the best melee weapon in the game, and Fear (1) for 10pts. The Prime Benefit is a bit of a miss though.
Space Wolves gives an entire suite of very cold melee weapons that will hurt.
Salamanders give an entire suite of very hot melee weapons that will hurt. This is not a copy paste error from above. Drakenscales and Duty Before Death will also keep their models alive.

NotThatHenryC: Legion wargear is rarely all that great. If this let you take a Legion unit or two we’d be talking but otherwise this doesn’t do a huge amount.

Hot Melee Weapons on a Salamander's Centurion. Credit - Soggy

Eternal Vendetta

As they hate other Marines so much, your entire army gains Hatred (Legiones Astartes) for a +1 to wound while in combat. If the enemy’s primary detachment is Astartes, you get +1 to hit as well while in combat. There is a downside to this: you have to charge Astartes if you’re within 12” of them, but you want to do that anyway since +1 to hit and wound is a lot. There’s a risk you’ll Stun yourself attempting an impossible charge, but then you’ll at least be +1 S and T.

In a game about Marines and killing them, this rips at killing Marines and is exceptionally powerful. Useless into other Factions, but you only seriously need the help against Mech.

NotThatHenryC: A very powerful bonus here without much of a drawback. Your melee units are tougher and your shooty units probably ought to move to where they aren’t within 12” of the enemy anyway.

Only in Death Does Duty End

They said the thing, dad! Their oaths are now ash! Whenever they’re Routed, they can take D3+1 wounds with AP - to immediately discard the Status. This is the only Status you really hated, and now you don’t have to worry about it. This would have been good if it was at AP2, so at AP - it is very good.

It’s gotta be some kind of suicide squad!

NotThatHenryC: This happens in the End Phase, so your unit has probably already done a Fall Back move in the earlier Movement Phase by this point. It doesn’t actually say when in the End phase but let’s assume it’s in the Statuses Sub-Phase. So your unit will probably be able to score an objective, in the rather unlikely event that it’s somehow on one after having run away.

All of this means that this Oath isn’t quite as great as it might seem. You’re having whatever is left of a unit, after something caused it to rout in the first place, stop running away. Okay, but it happens at a time they would have been able to try and rally with a LD check anyway and after the interesting bits of your turn where they might have accomplished something.

The Mithriac Consensus advances at the Goonhammer Open

The Spoils of Victory

The Blackshields go full Death Skulls and go wild looting everything. This is the first of a few oaths where they completely disregard conventional scoring tactics, including any version of Line (X) and Vanguard (X). Instead, the unit gains a similar amount of Loot The Dead (X) (half Vanguard, full from Line), which means when they are on the winning side of a combat (any combat, not just one on an Objective) where the enemy is destroyed, Falling Back or Disengaged, they can select a special Aftermath option. The unit becomes immediately Pinned, and they score X victory points.

This allows combat armies to potentially score a lot of victory points, but it also means your army will be Pinned a lot as they look around for the good stuff! They’re also completely unable to control or contest any objective marker, allowing your opponent to potentially easily run away on points scoring.

Like the rest of the alt Victory Point options, this is either going to be buck wild or monumentally disadvantageous, depending on your matchup and the extent of the mission. I’ll definitely be writing a few narrative missions where this is the only Victory condition for both sides though.

NotThatHenryC: This is pretty interesting. Loot and Pillage is easier to score than Vanguard but probably harder than Line. I think it could work well on Despoilers and Assault squads, who’ll get Loot the Dead (2). You can get points here by killing enemies who aren’t on objectives, like back field support squads. Pretty good, if you can find something they can actually beat in melee to score.

Even those units that don’t have Line or Vanguard still can’t control objectives. Of course you can take allies or something with Line, but that would be the coward’s move. Much more interesting to embrace the madness fully. On the plus side, the enemy isn’t going to score any Vanguard points against you, since there’s no reason for you’d go anywhere near objectives.

An Eternity of War

These Marines have been driven mad with rage and wrath. Instead of moving normally, your units get to Fall Back in the Movement Phase in any direction of their choosing, and if they connect with an enemy model you lose Routed and count as being locked in combat. This doesn’t count as a charge, so there’s no Volley Firing on either side.

However, if you aren’t locked in combat in the Controlling Player End Phase (after turn 1), your unit has to pass a Cool Check or automatically get Routed.

This is a wild double edged sword! Your shooting units might just become completely useless and charge into combat, but you might also randomly start running away during your end phase, and let your opponent do whatever they want to you in your turn.

NotThatHenryC: This is really weird. The problem is that Routed units can’t charge. That means you’ll actually approach the enemy relatively slowly, between about 5-10” per turn. A Legion unit can just rush at least that far, or else move normally and make a charge move, so they’ll close the gap faster than people with this Oath.

The timing is also odd. Units that aren’t locked in melee in the Effects Sub-Phase test to see if they rout. It’s then immediately the Statuses Sub-Phase, so they can test to stop Routing before anything even happens.

Horus Heresy Second Sphere Defense Credit: Soggy

The Flesh Is Weak

Another big saying! This means all your Infantry become Automata, and get a new special Rule, Linked Cogitator Units. The unit can Control and Contest Objectives and loses Line (X). Additionally, if there's less than 5 of them they score 1 less VP on an objective, and if more than 10 of them they score 1 additional Point. You also can get a bunch of favourable interactions with Automata from various Mechanicum abilities and wargear, but lost the ability to React unless you can find a Cortex Controller somewhere.

They also get increased Transport Capacity and the ability to transport Automata with Augmetic Transport Bay, helping you stuff robot Tacticals in a Rhino, or your Praevian Castellax in a Land Raider!

NotThatHenryC: Automata can’t ever gain Statuses, which is great but not a great combo with the Blackshields’ The Bastard Sons of Fate rule, which will never apply to them. It’s also a straight downgrade for your scoring potential. Most of the units you can take in units above 10 already have either Line, which is better, or Vanguard, capping their VPs at 1 per objective. Of course, they’d never have to worry about gaining a Status and losing the ability to score.

The obvious thing is to run units of 15 Despoilers in Rhinos, which wouldn’t be bad at all. You’d never be Pinned if the Rhinos blew up at least.

Legacy of Nikaea

Everyone is a psyker! All of your Sergeants, Champions, Specialists or Commands become Psykers with a new discipline: Malignant. This grant two Assault Psychic Weapons, one of which is 4 shots with S4 AP4 and D1 with Deflagrate (5), Overload (1) and Force (FP), and the other is 1 shot S5 AP2 D2 with Deflagrate (5), Overload (2) and Force (RS). Both of these are incredibly spikey and high variance, and the AP2 one in particular is pretty likely to kill a Terminator or Veteran body, but also likely to blow up the user, especially since your Psykers counts as WP 5 when rolling Perils of the Warp. Ouch! I wouldn’t go for the Force option unless you’re in a pickle.

NotThatHenryC: Nah, go nuts and blaze away.

Members of the Mithraic Consensus explore a ruined ship. Photo Credit - Soggy

The Broken Helix

Someone attempted to make their own Marines, but not as good as Big E, Fabius Bile or Cawl. All your models lose Fury of the Legion, Line (X) and Vanguard (X), but instead gain either Clone or Aberrant.

Clone reduces the Ld, Cl, In and WP by 1 for your normal infantry. Your characters (including Sergeants and Specialists) don’t get this disadvantage, being from a superior gene-stock. It also removes their ability to use Reactions. The upside is getting a Cloned Resilience Damage Mitigation roll of a 5+, which will keep the idiots around longer.

For Aberrant, your “lesser stock” suffers the same disadvantages, but get +1 Strength and Attacks. In an edition where extra attacks are harder to come by, it rules! However, you must declare a charge if a unit is within 12” of you, even if you can’t make the charge. Looks like you’ll be stunning yourself even more, especially with the reduced Cool.

NotThatHenryC: I wish I liked Clones but really the enormous downsides are way too much. I’m a tiny bit tempted to get some Aberrant allies for my Raven Guard, for some assault marines to represent their less-than-successful attempts to speed up recruitment.

In Disgrace All Are Equal

The first of the weird list-building restrictions, where the whole army has no characters, only dozens of souped up Petty Warlords. The whole army has no Command or High Command Slots, and all slots are Prime Slots that can only be used to take the special Prime Benefit: Petty Warlord. This is a souped up Prime Sergeant with the normal benefits: a Sergeant gains +1 Attacks, WS and Leadership, gains the Champion Sub-Type (or gets +1 Ld if it already has it). They also get their own Auxiliary Detachment, as if they were a Command Choice, and these units can only be their own Petty Warlords. The bad news is this completely removes access to Apex Detachments, and makes Veteran and Retinue units effectively impossible to get.

NotThatHenryC: For me this is the archetypical Blackshield army. Random warriors thrown together by fate with nobody in particular in charge. Having no bonus Reaction will hurt but you might not miss Elites and Retinues as much as all that, since you won’t have access to the Legion-specific units that often fill these slots anyway. With every unit unlocking a Detachment, you’ll have no problem bringing as many vehicles or Dreadnoughts as you want in support.

Pride Is Our Armour

Do you miss Pride of the Legion? I do too and it lives here. Every Troops Slot in your Primary or Allied Detachment replaces their Troops Slots with Elite Slots. No cheating or messing around, just Veteran Tactical and Veteran Assault Squads everywhere. Let’s hope no one uses this to run 100 Seekers with a Delagatus.

NotThatHenryC: The opposite of “In Disgrace”, basically. And yes, not too many Seekers, please!

Some Blackshields massacre a poor Militia unit Credit: Soggy

Taint of the Xenos

Adds a selection of exotic Xenos weaponry to your Marines. The Deathlock and the pistol Doomlock both get added to the special weapons list: both are FP2 RS6 AP2 D1, Shred (6+) and Overload (2), with the Doomlock having Assault and Pistol with a 9” range, and the Deathlock having 18” range. These are a nutty pair of weapons, essentially disintegrators on steroids, but much more expensive and even heavier on risk/reward.

Meanwhile the Halo Blade is a Paragon Blade on Steroids, being added to the Legion Officer equipment for 15pts, the same as a Thunderhammer. They fight at initiative, with S +2, AP2 and damage 1. Shred (5+) also means you’ll be doing 2 damage more often than you’d expect. This is a powerful weapon in a challenge; more effective than a Paragon Blade and much faster than a Thunderhammer.

While Xenos warblades are a fun lore and modelling opportunity and this is a solid weapon, it’s not a big enough upgrade to justify giving up half of your Legion trait.

NotThatHenryC: These are way better guns than Disintegrators, with AP2 instead of 3 and S6 instead of 4. They are FP2 and D1, which is better than the Disintegrators’ FP1 and D2. Unfortunately, Overload (2) makes them absurdly lethal to their bearers. An option for Clones, maybe? Halo blades are excellent for Centurions, who can’t otherwise buy a Paragon Blade.

The Weapons of Desperation

Swap all your bolters and bolt pistols for mundane “reclaimed” weaponry. All of these have Assault for some nasty Volley Firing, and either have Statuses (Stun (0) on shotguns and Suppressive (0) on the Heavy Stubbers) or Pistol. On a normal Tactical Marine, you can swap your Bolter and Bolt Pistol for TWO weapons with Pistol, meaning each Marine could fire 6 S3 autogun shots in a single shooting action by dual wielding. The only one with serious teeth and range is the Heavy Stubber, which you can only get on 1 in 3 models, but it's certainly an option if you love rolling entire buckets of dice and want to entirely remodel your army to be dual-wielding civilian weapons.

NotThatHenryC: Dual-wielding Tacticals are certainly interesting but I also like the idea of Assault or Despoiler Squads where everyone has a Shotgun or Heavy Stubber instead of their bolt pistol.

Totally Loyal Berserkers. Credit: Lenoon

The Blade of the Just

These doomseekers once again eschew their Line (X) and Vanguard (X) and get Doomed Heroics (X) when fighting superior foes. You always get at least Doomed Heroics (3), and units with Line or Vanguard get double the value they had for that special rule.

You score Victory points equal to X when winning a combat against a unit that:

Outnumbers you twice over
Contains the Paragon type, or more Commanders than you have.
Their majority Weapon Skill is higher than yours.

It goes without saying that winning these kinds of combats is hard, but the reward is huge. Unlike Spoils of Victory, you can still score normal victory points, this is just a bonus! As with the other alt Victory Point options, this will either win or lose you the game (literally). Some missions might favour it more, and some might favour it less, depending on how highly indexed conventional Primary and Secondary VP are.

NotThatHenryC: This seems pretty interesting with Terminators and Assault Veterans, which bring Vanguard 3 to make Doomed Heroics (6). Those might often be outnumbered 2:1 and still win a fight. It’s annoying that there have to be more than twice as many of the enemy, instead of just double your numbers, as it means your five dudes need to beat up a unit of 11+ Tacticals to score.

Reaper of Lives

Another alternative VP option, this time rewarding points for killing units. You can’t control or content Objectives, but gain D3 VP every time you kill a unit in shooting or combat.

I really dislike this. It reduces Heresy to a shooting gallery where you can ignore mission play and just win by killing things. The game is best when you make decisions that interact with a narrative besides removing units, and when it encourages taking units with Line and Vanguard.

This is almost certainly a good special rule (mission and matchup depending), but I don’t see a world where it's ever fun for your opponent. I’d avoid it.

NotThatHenryC: Agreed. You can score VPs by having your Rapiers destroy a Rhino, which they were going to do anyway. It encourages gunlines.

Imagine if this was your whole army. Horus Heresy Second Sphere Defense Credit: Soggy

Alone and Forgotten

Simply one of the most incredible army rules I’ve ever seen, focusing around a Seven Samurai / Last Chancers / A-Team / Knights Errant gang of Centurions trying to get themselves killed. This is the closest Horus Heresy can get to the Fellowship of the Ring. It activates my neurons. I can smell a 20 something Centurion army in my future.

Blackshields that are Alone and Forgotten can only include Command Choices, replacing every Troops slot in a Primary or Auxiliary Detachment with Command Slots (that can only be used on Centurions and Terminator Centurions). All your Command Choices can choose 2 options from a suite of stat upgrades: WS, BS, S, T, I or W. You can stack the WS and I on a Paragon of Battle Centurion to get to WS6 and I6, or WS8 on a Champion! Ouch!

Your Centurions and Terminator Centurions gain To Fight And Die Alone, granting +4 Combat Resolution and +1 extra Combat Resolution for each Wound lost in combat (not dealt) if they’re fighting a combat alone. If your character also dies in any Initiative Step (critically not in a challenge), you gain D6+1 VP. They also can’t join other units or be joined, but you don’t have any units to join anyway (unless you take the coward’s path of running allies).

The list construction is a little difficult here. Mounted Centurions (or other Consuls) in your 3 “real” command slots are a great idea, to help you get in faster, and jump packs are a great idea across the rest of them. You’re conservatively looking at 20ish Centurions in a 2.5k list. I’d love to run this, and I have no idea if it's actually any good, but I hope it is.

NotThatHenryC: I think this might be one of those things that turns out to be less cool on the table than in your head. You’re basically going to take a bunch of guys with jump packs and power fists/hammers and try to get into melee. It might work very well but, rather than the eclectic collection of individuals, it’ll risk being a bit samey. Still, you can build a Heresy army from two boxes of assault marines, plus maybe a command sprue or two, which is nice. Combine with the Blade of the Just to cash in on VPs whenever a Centurion wins a fight, or go mad and make them all Psykers.

realSnice: I think that this is an incredible way to add a small allied force of Knights Errant to any other army (including a Blackshield Primary)!

The men and women of Anti-Tank Squad 43 do sterling work all weekend Credit: Lenoon

Final Thoughts

What a stunning set of rules! So many options for enthusiastic kitbashers and lore heavy Marine players wishing to make a faction of their own. I’m looking forward to seeing these rules hit the table in some local games, and I might try running my Revenant Legion as them soon!

NotThatHenryC: When I heard we were getting a new edition I was a bit worried for anyone who’d started the laborious process of converting up a Blackshield army for second edition. Would they have even got the army to the table before their rules were deleted? Would their converted models even be legal when their new rules arrived? So I’m really glad to see the rules appear this soon, for free, and with similar themes to before. It’s great that they’ve retained the no holds barred approach to customisation, without producing too many options that seem broken or useless. I’m very happy with all of this.

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Tags: Horus Heresy | the horus heresy | blackshields | heresy 3rd edition