The Horus Heresy’s new chunky lads take the spotlight in Journal Tactica: The Forges of Saturn

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Games Workshop shifting to a unified rules release model for most of its “B-tier” games — y’know, the ones that come in big boxes, but aren’t 40k or Age of Sigmar. These journals are slim, 48-page softcovers containing both lore and rules and are designed to be released on a regular basis. I’ve recently picked one up for the first time — Journal Tactica: The Forges of Saturn — for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy. As it’s my current GW game of choice, I figured it’d be a good opportunity to cast a discerning eye over the book and get a feel for the new(-ish) format.

The book, which is the typical high quality I’d expect from GW, with nice, thick, glossy paper, has about sixteen pages of rules. The rest is devoted to lore, artwork and photography. The focus is on Saturnine Dreadnoughts and Terminators, the brand-new chunksters released alongside the 30k’s new edition earlier this year. It’s genuinely good stuff. 30k’s faux-historical vibe suits this kind of deep dive well, getting into the nitty gritty of these archaic devices and how they’ve been utilized by various legions over the course of the Horus Heresy. If 30k scratches your brain for the same reason it does mine — you like the idea of nerding out over military history and technology, but find mining real conflicts for entertainment a little off-putting — Forges of Saturn will absolutely hit the spot.