30K: Army Building in the 31st Millenium

We previously talked about what you need to get into 30K. Our upcoming series about the Space Marine Legions and the Mechanicum might help you with your decision about what faction to play. But there's still some groundwork to be layed before we can dive into the details. The Horus Heresy is a different beast entirely, and some stuff you know from 40K is not applicable. Let's take a look at how to build your 30K army, and how to customize your list (or, in other words, how to differentiate one Space Marine army from the next).

FOC rules as King

In 40K, Formations are the way to go in list building. Truth be told, some of the most unbalancing issues 40K has are thanks to overpowered formations. In one fell swoop The Horus Heresy gets rid of this issue: there are no formations in 30K!

Everything in 30K is based on the good old Force Organisation Chart (FOC). Army building is much more restricted when compared to 40K, where you can ignore the FOC thanks to Formations (or by going Unbound). In 30K, you need one HQ unit or character and could take a second; you need two Troops units and can take up to six; you may take up to three each of Fast Attack and Heavy Support choices, and could take up to four Elite units (not just three, for some reason). There are other Detachments, but they are clearly marked as optional, meaning that you'd have to get your opponents consent if you want to field one of those.

Furthermore, while these standard lists may take one forification and one Lord of War (LoW), the latter is strictly regulated: you may only take a LoW if you play a game of 2,000 points or more, and may not spend more than 25% of your available points on your LoW.
There are ways to bring more than a single LoW. For instance, if your LoW has less than 8 hull points, you could field two of these "lesser" LoW. Thing is, bringing two will not be easy thanks to the 25% rule.

Some might say the basic balancing factor of The Horus Heresy (or: the reason why 30K is more balanced than 40K nowadays) besides the limitation on LoWs, is the fact that we're mainly (but not exclusively!) regarding ourself with Space Marine versus Space Marine in 30K. But that's only half the truth. Space Marine Legion forces can vary wildly from one Legion to the next, and even within the same Legion, One factor are the special units and characters of each Legion. The arguably bigger factor are the Rites of War.

Rites of War

Taking a certain type of character – most named characters including the Primarchs, or a Praetor (more or less the equivalent to a 40K Chapter Master), or a specific version of a Centurion (roughly equivalent to a 40K Captain) – enables you to choose a "Rite of War" (RoW) when building your army (said characters have the "Master of the Legion" special ability). The RoW of your choice will have a tremendous effect on your list:

• They change the rules for choosing your units in various ways. For instance, they might switch the slot of certain units around (an Elite choice becomes a Troop choice, etc.), or limit types in some way (for instance: you may not take more Heavy Support than Fast Attacks).
• They grant certain units or your whole army special abilities.
• They may offer different choices for Dedicated Transports and/or means of deployment.
• ... and so on and so forth.

Rites of War in a way may feel like Formations, but they're not. First, they only give guidelines, abilities and restrictions concerning your unit choices; Formations are much stricter than that. Second, most RoW don't offer only boons, but limitations too.

When building your Space Marine force, the Rite of War you choose will have significant influence over the composition of your army.