I love Heresy. A grand operatic galactic civil war, with themes of betrayal, the sins of fathers, ideology gone wrong. It’s hot stuff. The miniatures rock. For a game that’s basically what if 40K was just space marines it’s got surprising amounts of flavour and variety.
Heresy Is Jank
But Heresy has some problems. As a game system, it’s pretty unwieldy, inheriting the baggage of 7th Edition 40K with added 30K encumbrances. Mix this with an incomprehensibly Byzantine system of special rules, wargear rules and unit types (and sub-types) across several poorly indexed rulebooks and, baby, you got yourself a jank system. And for what is generally considered a more narrative game, as a ruleset there’s a lot left unexplored that truly supports that type of play beyond a few thematic missions. Heresy’s narrative reputation is more a testament to the strong narrative of the books (both 1e sourcebooks and Black Library), the incredible dedication to good hobby in the community and the fantastic events scene cultivated by people who really love the game. But even that can’t paper over the fact that whenever I play this game me and my opponent will come across yet another strange rules interaction which is either needlessly fragmented across three parts of the rulebook or a genuine edge case that requires a MTG-judge-like inference of the word ‘may’.
But I love it. I love it for all the bizarre design choices, its inherent imbalance and its function as a vehicle to sell overinvested hobbyists expensive resin (self callout). But it does make Heresy a hard game to get into.
Beyond its arcane ruleset, the standard game size is a big step for any beginner, with typical Heresy play recommended between 2500pts – 3000pts. That’s a lot of dudes, and that can be pretty intimidating. List building also requires some element of fore-knowledge to build a functional list; something not too strong, not too weak, enough line for objective play etc. It’s pretty easy to commit to months of hobby on an army that might not even be that fun to play at the table.
As for alternatives to full fat Heresy, the only official option is Zone Mortalis, which whilst a more manageable entry point at 1000pts – 1500pts, still has a number of caveats: As it’s mostly infantry, so you’ll probably be painting more models than if you had a mix of vehicles and you’re also missing out of some of the cooler stuff in Heresy (things that blow up, things that go zoom etc). But the biggest blocker of all is that ZM requires you to have a dedicated dense terrain set to play on, which isn’t always a guarantee even at larger gaming clubs.
Downsizing Heresy
In all its other flagship games, GW has realised this need for accessibility, with easy to learn, easy to build, entry level formats like 40K Combat Patrol and AoS Spearhead. Whilst it’s not necessarily Specialist Design Studio’s main focus (I fully subscribe to Lenoon’s theory that Heresy strategically acts as net to capture the type of hobbyists that fall off of 40K and would normally drift towards historical wargaming/scale modelling), it’s still frustrating that 2e Heresy didn’t replicate the useful onramps of 1e, like centurion or the alternate game modes from the black books like city fight and strategic raid.
As with all things Heresy, be it house ruled balance passes, unit caps or mission packs, if GW won’t create it, then the community will. For 1500pts – 2000pts there’s a few centurion style rulesets out there, from the folks at Panoptica (who took on the herculean task of house rule rebalancing of the entirety of system with various extra units and factions) to the more streamlined restrictions of the Eye of Horus podcast Centurion ruleset. At a lighter points level this is definitely more accessible for beginner games than big Heresy whilst still allowing most of the toys you’ll enjoy in larger games. Most also employ some unit restrictions to nudge you in the direction of good list construction (1 dread per 1K, some line etc).
Thank Goodness for Small Heresies
Now, don’t get me wrong. 1.5K is much more manageable than 3K but we’re still looking at months of hobby and work to get someone who already might be a little on the fence about buying into Heresy invested and playing the damn game, so we need to imagine something even more compact. We need to imagine combat patrol level Heresy; a few squads of power armoured marines and rifle tercios battling it out over some trivial objective, a fraught constrained battle sequence like the ones littered throughout the Heresy novels and black book colour plates. Luckily there are already a couple of ruleset that really capture this level of play, firstly War Head’s Civil War ruleset, and, taking direct inspiration from it, Litanies of Death by mp_minatures (Manel Parellada) and CastHeretico.
In a nutshell they’re both 500pt Heresy formats with a couple of tweaks and rules changes to make that sort of scale of play actually work. With both, your list creation is much more constrained, limited almost solely to units with 3+ saves (or worse) and with nothing higher than 3 wounds (and depending on which ruleset you pick, some additional limitations on slot choice, 0-1 Elites, Fast Attack and Heavy Support). Battles now take place on a 4×4 board, with your units battling it out over a number of objectives, playing similarly to some of the more objective based mission types from the rulebook. Helpfully both systems include a couple of scenarios in their packs so you don’t need to worry about converting any of the larger mission types over.
War Head’s ruleset was born out of tradition. An annual gaming event, at first using 40K as its basis, but in the last couple of years, using Heresy, it’s goal was the construction of small heavily themed forces with a strong emphasis on hobby. As such it features the most minimal changes to the Heresy ruleset, playing very similarly to ‘Big Heresy’ bar using Zone Mortalis reactions and some other minor tweaks (especially for multiplayer games).
Litanies of Death takes this idea, but goes a bit further, trying to make small Heresy feel more like a modern skirmish game by adopting an alternating activation turn structure (I move one of my units, you move one of yours, until the movement phase is done, then I shoot one of mine etc etc). You lose reactions but as the turn structure is already dynamic enough I don’t think you feel their absence; your next activation effectively replaces any reaction. Personally, I really think that alternating activations plays a bit better at this scale but both rulesets play really well.
Other than that they both rulesets are basically the Heresy you know and love, all the same weapon rules, unit types & sub-types etc. Both of them give you a good taste of what scaled up Heresy can be, without overloading you remembering what each of the 15 units on your side of the table do, let alone your opponents.
It’s probably a bit contentious to champion something that is fundamentally a big set of house rules as an entry point to the game, but here’s why I think it’s good:
- 500pts(ish) – Very achievable hobby goal, great for beginners, second armies, allies detachments etc. Also, as superbly demonstrated in the armies featured in both the Litanies of Death and Civil War events (2023, 2024), allows committed converters and army themers to really shine. I am consistantly blown away by their efforts.
- List restrictions – With restrictions to anything with >3 wounds and 2+ saves you exclude a lot the current ‘meta’ of Heresy (Dreads, Terminators and some egregious legion specific units) and finally gives power armour its day in the sun and Troops becoming the real MVP of the format. Litanies of Death also adds in some additional flavour for marine players that allow you to run something like a Rite of War‘, opening up your Troop slot to specific unit type (destroyers, sky hunter squadron), broadening your scope for theming.
- Rules – Moving to alternating activations is a big step away from ‘Big Heresy’, but I think it’s definitely in service of more engaging gameplay. Regardless, both formats are great learning environments for the rest of the Heresy rules.
- It’s Short! – Most games I’ve played have been between 1h and 1h45h vs the 3h+ of big Heresy. This opens up the possibility of a quick Heresy game and the potential to get multiple games in at a longer gaming session/event.
To give you a flavour of what this looks like here’s a couple of example legion agnostic marine lists that work in both formats. If reading these lists doesn’t get your juices flowing, try making a couple yourself. I promise you, its an interesting little puzzle all on its own:
List 1 – All rounder
Tactical Squad (10), Power Maul, Combi-Grenade Launcher
Veteran Squad (5), Power Mauls, Plasma Gun
Seeker Squad (5)
Heavy Support Squad (5), Autocannons
List 2 – Need for speed
Assault Squad (10), Power Lances, Power Fist
Despoiler Squad (10), Power Lances
Rhino, Heavy Bolter
Sky Hunter Squadron (3), Volkite Culverins
Spatha Attack Bike
List 3 – Defensive perimeter
Breachers (10), Meltagun, Combi-Grenade Launcher
Recon Squad (5), Nemesis Bolters
Tarantula Sentry Gun Battery (3)
Heavy Support Squad (5), Plasma Cannons
This all comes together to create something that I think has a lot of traction both as a fun little format to squeeze in when I don’t have the time / when I only want to take one case of minis somewhere and something that potentially has a lot of play in an event setting.
Event Play
Some of my most fun gaming moments have been at events. There’s a huge sense of camaraderie implicit in getting a load of folks together to smash out 4-5 games of Heresy over a weekend, even before you add in all the spicy additions in more narratively based formats. But even in this setting I’ve also had a couple of games that were absolute stinkers, where the vibes are fucked and I’ve had my shit pushed in on turn 1. In a club or pick up game you can always call it early and reset, but in an event there’s a certain pressure; you’ve both paid money to be there, the outcome of the game will have some sort of impact on the narrative (however tenuous), so you’re sort of in a position where you have to play it out. And that’s not fun. Whilst this might be more of a rare occurrence, when you’re thinking about events I think you’re always looking to reduce the ‘feels bad’ moments, from things like house rules and list restrictions, to the allied detachment shenanigans of the Goonhammer Open. But I think this is where smaller scale games can really shine; any potentially bad match-up is over much quicker, allowing you to get on to the next game, play different armies and see the fantastic hobby on display.
Recently I thought I’d test this out and ran a little Litanies of Death event down at my local club to see how easy it was to teach and run, both to Heresy newbies and 1e heads, and I have to say everybody dug it. For the veteran players, list creation proved a challenging little puzzle and an interesting palette cleanser, and for newer players it allowed them to get a painted army to the table and test out the system without months of additional commitment.
Rules-wise whilst the format proved quick to teach, alternating activations took a bit of time to get used to (I would highly recommend printed out the rules as play aids to remind players). We tried an ambitious three games in about five hours, which, whilst I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, mostly worked (probably give yourself another hour for moving stuff around, chatting etc). Despite that we managed two solid games and one very rushed four player game in. We also played with quite dense terrain, taking everything you’d see on a 6×4 board, squeezing it into 4×4, which I think helped.
I’ve been chatting to people at events recently so I know other clubs in the UK have also given Litanies a go with similar results. I’d really love to see how this could scale up as an actual event type, especially for smashing out one day events that don’t require finding a cheap travelodge near a school hall in the midlands.
Final Thoughts
I really like this format, though if I were to run another event again I think there’s potential to improve some elements of the game:
- Increase the points cap to 600pts. 500pts felt pretty tight for marine lists and I think an additional 100pts give you the space to have a good amount of units and some fun wargear – though this does make the hobby prospect much bigger for Aux/Militia players
- A real emphasis on good cover. I think it’s probably implicit that would want nice dense terrain for this but there’s very little in the rulebook a 4+ save, so just make sure you’re being generous with your designations and have a good mix of 4+ to 6+ on the board (also prevents AP3 meta and gives militia/aux more of a fighting chance when basically every marine gun is AP5 or better)
- Allow combat squading. If a unit has 10+ miniatures, allow it to be split into 2 equally sized units. This gives a player more space to play and means that more concentrated forces aren’t completely out activated. Also it fuels my nostalgia for the humble 5 man tactical squad – Guilleman had to get that idea from somewhere!
Civil War & Litanies of Death ultimately fills a space that I think still exists for Heresy right now, a compelling entry point for new players to the hobby. Especially as it’s a format that leans very heavily on all more affordable plastic kits GW has been putting out recently [insert obligatory joke about the close combat weapon sprue here]. Not only that but I think it’s really useful for those who want quicker, more interactive games of Heresy and opens up really interesting opportunities for events. I hope GW adds in a format like this in any future edition of Heresy, but if they don’t we know that we can always rely on the community to build it.
I’m super interested to know if you’ve had any experiences with the format, both positive and negative. Also let me know if there are any glaring omissions of smaller formats and Heresy hacks that you think we should cover next.
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