Video Game / The Horus Hersey: Legions

A ccg game which is based on the Horus Heresy series. It features cards that are based off the characters and events on the series. The game was released in April 18 2018 on Android, and made available on PC on Steam in Mar 29 2019.

The games shares many similarities with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The game features Warlords from either the 9 Traitor legions or Loyalist legions of Space Marines with cards based of their respective factions, along with unaligned factions like Defenders of Caliban, Imperial Knights and Orphans of War. Finally there are three neutral factions that can be used by the others: the Imperial Army, Mechanicum, and Chaos. Energy is generated per turn with a maximum of ten. These are used to summon troops(creatures), or use tactics(spells) or unit abilities(hero powers or unit powers). To win a game, a player must reduce the opposing warlords health to 0.

---

This game provides examples of:

• Ascended Meme: One of Magnus's shouts is a petulant exclamation of "I did NOTHING wrong!"
• Attack Animal: The Space Wolves have a card ability that summons two Fenrisian Wolves. The Sisters of Silence have Cyber Jackals for troops.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The main strategy of the World Eaters Legion. Their cards are focused around damaging enemy units, or enhancing the attack of their own cards. Their primarch Angron's strategy focuses on attacking the enemy warlord directly, and he gains an attack bonus when there are no friendly minions in play.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Many Reckonings seem very powerful on paper but are crippled by their activation conditions: Horus in particular suffers from his Reckoning outright requiring a deck built around it, because it starts at an unplayable 20 cost reduced by 1 every time you play a Chaos card, the problem being that your Sons of Horus cards are often flat out better than the generic Chaos cards and you only have thirty slots in your deck. Even the more playable ones take a guaranteed spot in your opening hand, reducing your options in the early game.
  • Missions suffer much the same problem, taking another spot in your opening hand and some requiring extremely tricky conditions to pull off, such as the Alpha Legion Mission asking that your opponent doesn't attack for a total of four turns. They all then give an additional card which costs one energy to play and gives your Warlord a passive, Resolution or Relentless effect, meaning that many of them give you no immediate advantage for the effort put into pulling them off.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: Chimeras and Rhinos appear as usable cards. They usually provide support to other units, from generating units to healing units, to acting as Front Liners to soak up damage.
• Back from the Dead: The Agents of the Sigillite legendary Cerberus resurrects himself each time you play a Seal card, reflecting a rule in the tabletop game where Garviel Loken can cheat death once per game, itself reflecting his survival of Istvaan III.
• Bad Boss: The Iron Warriors have cards and abilities that strengthen their unit by destroying a friendly troop. Perturabo’s Whispers of Chaos card requires friendly troops dying on the player's turn to reduce its cost.
• Barrier Warrior:
  • The Shield trait represents this, being able to absorb all damage from any source once and then disappearing.
  • Units with Front Line prevents enemies from attacking other units without Front Line, unless they have Unstoppable allowing them to bypass them.
  • The Imperial Fists' special ability is Bastion, which blocks an amount of damage dealt to the unit that has it.
  • Drop pods act sort of like shields: they start off with two hit points, and if they take too much damage they break, leaving the occupant unharmed. If they survive the opponent's turn, however, they break on their own at the beginning of the owner's next turn: many Blood Angel troops have abilities that activate if their drop pods make a safe landing.
• Boring, but Practical: Garviel Loken is the starter warlord every player is given from the tutorial, boasting 30 health, the ability to pay two energy to deal two damage to any target, and starting the game with an additional card. No fancy Super Mode, no particularly flashy ability, but his kit is perfectly effective and a well-built Loken deck can compete a good way up the ladder.
• Cold Sniper: The Alpha Legion Warlord Exodus, whose role is a sniper: he needs a turn to set up and take aim, but then the next turn he can spend all your remaining energy to hit the foe for huge damage.
• Confusion Fu:
  • The Alpha Legion unsurprisingly excel at this, beginning right from their Warlords. Every Alpha Legion Warlord begins the game as a 35 health Alpha Legionnaire, but has a card added to their starting hand allowing them to reveal their true identity, adjusting their health accordingly. As a result it's impossible to know which of the four you're up against until their secret identity is unveiled or if you're able to figure it out based on the cards being used with them. And even then, their epic One of Many allows them to generate a new identity from among the four, meaning that at one moment you could be fighting Exodus, only for him to become Alpharius, before another One of Many turns him back into Exodus.
  • Fitting their future penchant for secrets and paranoia, the Dark Angels Quest mechanic involves some of this. When played, you choose one of three conditions: deal damage to the enemy Warlord in combat, destroy an enemy troop in combat, or be the target of an enemy tactic, with the Quest effect only triggering if that condition is met. This forces your opponent to either carefully consider what you would have picked when dealing with such a troop or throw caution to the wind and risk triggering the Quest.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: The Ultramarines' Courage mechanic, which only triggers if your opponent has more units in play than you do.
• The Corruption: The Mark of Chaos. When cast on troops they receive a random mark from the four Chaos Gods. Khorne grants 2 attack, Slaanesh gives them Terror, Nurgle makes them poisonous and buffs their health, and Tzeentch gives them +1/+1 and Unstoppable. When a unit has 4 Marks of Chaos they transform into a random Greater Daemon.
• Deck Clogger: The Alpha Legion can insert trap cards into the opponents decks who's abilities are activated when they are drawn, and often harm or cripple the enemy.
• Elite Army: Custodes have stats and abilities that are quite impressive, especially for their relatively low power costs.
• Fridge Brilliance: Konrad Curze’s Reckoning card, Madness, has a set energy cost, rather than needing to be lowered like the other Primarchs’. Curze has precognitive abilities, so of course he’d know in advance when his Reckoning would be available!
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The White Scars' theme. Their troops can attack on the turn they're put in play, and have tactics and abilities that put them back into the player's hand or deck.
• Human Sacrifice: The Word Bearers unsurprisingly lean heavily into this. A number of their troops can destroy a friendly Infantry for a power bonus, like Ashen Circle gaining Fast for the turn. Their mission hinges on it, in fact, requiring one troop to destroy a friendly troop four times. Kor Phaeron's ability, while unremarkable at first glance in that it summons a random 2-cost cultist, basically insures he'll never run out of lives to offer the Dark Gods.
• Good Counterpart: The Agents of the Sigillite have much in common with the Alpha Legion: a large number of stealth units, traps, preventing or redirecting enemy attacks, hand manipulation, and creating cards that are then shuffled into the deck (seals and traps respectively). It makes sense, given that Alpharius was (supposedly) personally trained by Malcador.
• I Am Spartacus: The Alpha Legion's use of this via their iconic "I am Alpharius" phrase is adapted mechanically via all of their warlords beginning the game in disguise as a generic Alpha Legionnaire. Until you willingly reveal which Warlord you're actually playing, your opponent won't know if you're playing Ingo Pech or Alpharius himself.
• Jack of All Trades: The hat of the Ultramarines Legion, represented by many of their tactics allowing you to choose one of two different effects when played as a reflection of their generalist nature. However, these effects are more inefficient than equivalents from other Legions which can only do the one thing as a trade off.
• Jet Pack: Assault Marines, and other units with Unstoppable have the ability to ignore Front Line. Their cards also have jetpacks on top of them signifying their ability.
• Life Drain: Fulgrim's ability after using his Whispers of Chaos allows him to drain three health from any enemy.
• Magikarp Power: Rather ironically given his Legion's focus on speed, Jaghatai Khan's most commonly used strategy is akin to this. Initially, he's rather unremarkable for a Primarch, with his ability merely giving him Sneak Attack for the turn. Worse, because he starts with one less energy and he's almost guaranteed to go first (ie. no counterattack for +1 attack that turn), he can't even activate said ability for a free opening shot: the fastest guy in an entire legion of fast guys can't really do anything of note on his first turn. But once he survives to the lategame and gathers the required pieces, a combination of his Reckoning ^note Boosts his attack to 3, heals him for 8 and gives him permanent Sneak Attack , Skilled Rider ^note Lets him act again after attacking and killing a troop for the rest of the game, and White Tiger Dao ^note Gives him +2/+0 during your turn for the rest of the game turns him into an absolute monster capable of wiping the opposing board without getting a scratch himself every turn.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: The unique mechanic of the Alpha Legion is shuffling traps into your opponent's deck. These traps trigger when drawn and have effects that can either damage or stun the opponent's units. They also have many card abilities that gets both players to draw cards from their decks, making it quicker for the opponent to draw traps, but may also get them some cards that they want. Also they have cards such as The Harrowing which do damage depending on how much cards the opponent has in their hand.
• Mecha-Mooks: The Mechanicum have several cards that are robots used by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: The Alpha Legion Warlords don't start with their assigned Warlords, rather they start with a different Warlord called the Alpha Legion Legionary, and a special card which turns that Warlord to the assigned Warlord.
• Mythology Gag: Many dialogue lines from Warlords, especially the Primarchs, are either lifted from or references to the Horus Heresy novels. For example, Konrad Curze and Sevatar recreate their famous dialogue
  Sevatar: How can you lie to me like this? How can you lie to yourself?
  Curze: You overstep your bounds, First Captain.
• One-Man Army: Certain deck builds focus on strengthening Warlords who can win fights alone with little help from troops. Examples include Angron of the World Eaters and Jaghatai Khan of the White Scars, the latter notable for his ability to sweep the opposing board by himself every turn with the right setup.
• One-Winged Angel: Most of the legendary warlords provide you with an additional starting card unique to them (referred to as Reckoning for Loyalist Primarchs, Whispers of Chaos for Traitor Primarchs, and various names for others) that typically must have its cost reduced by some thematic method to be usable, but once played restores some of the warlord's health and turns them into a more powerful form with higher base attack and a stronger effect. A couple of the commoner warlords have this ability too: Argel Tal, for instance, can become Raum once he personally kills enough troops with attacks or his ability, or you can fill your deck with Chaos cards and start as Raum right out of the gate.
• Orbital Bombardment: Several tactics provide fire support by striking one or more enemy units. Many of them are starships providing orbital strikes on enemy units.
• Play Every Day: Players get a free crate every 6 hours, but they only give 3 items. Two other daily quests offer 5 items for completing them. One only requires the player to win 5 times, and another requires the player doing certain actions in a game to complete.
• Power at a Price: Most Chaos daemons have the ability Maintenance which reduces the amount of Energy the player has on their next turn.
  • The Ruinstorm faction has many strong daemon cards, and they don't have Maintenance on them. However they cannot use cards from the Imperial Army or Mechanicum and can only use Chaos cards as support.
  • The Legio Custodes troops have strong stats and abilities. But their special ability is Sentinel, which prevents the player from drawing cards so long as they are on the field.
• Power Equals Rarity: Legendary cards are often extremely powerful, with many being outright staples for their Legion, and the Legendary Warlords are flat-out better than their rare and epic counterparts by virtue of beginning the game at 40 health to 30 and 35 respectively.
• Purposely Overpowered: The Agent of the Sigillite Seals all have ludicrously good effects, but they must be first generated via some ability or another, then drawn after they are shuffled into the deck.
• Randomly Generated Quests: One of the daily quests involves doing a certain amount of actions in a game, such as summoning a number of minions, or using your warlord's ability. The quest objectives vary from day to day; some don't require the player to win, while others need the player to do something and win. The reward is a crate with 5 random items either gold, cards, or tickets. The higher the results, the better the rewards.
• Sentry Gun: The Imperial Fists have several ways to spawn Sentry Turrets, weak 1/2 Structures that can't attack but automatically shoot a random enemy for two damage at the start of your turn.
• Smart People Play Chess: Malcador the Sigillite's interaction with Magnus has him challenge the latter to a game of regicide.
• Stealth Expert:
  • Units that have the Stealth trait are untargetable by the opponent until they are revealed, and both the Raven Guard and the Night Lords are the masters in the field, having most cards that either have, give or interact with it.
  • The Duplicitous trait acts as a lesser version of this: they can't be targeted by warlord effects or attacks, but can be targeted by opposing troops and tactics.
• Siege Engines: Several vehicles that are mortar carriers, or artillery units.
• Stone Wall: The Imperial Fists' penchant for defensive warfare is represented by their Bastion mechanic, effectively extra health that only works when not attacking. The ultimate gameplan of many of their decks is to build up a board of Sentry Turrets protected by strong Front Line troops, rendered nearly unkillable by Bastion stacks from effects such as Shield Cover and Stalwart Defenders, then slowly wear the opponent down with pings from the Turrets.
• Tank Goodness: Many cards are tanks fielded by the Space Marines and Imperial Army from the humble Predator to the mighty Fellblade superheavies.
• Twin Switch: As a reflection of their lore, Alpharius's equivalent to the Reckoning/Whispers of Chaos mechanic of legendary Warlords is to perform one with his twin brother Omegon.
• Unstoppable Rage: A few units are so blinded by bloodlust that they are given the Berzerk trait, which forces them to act each turn, even if you'd rather they didn't. Appropriately enough, this trait mostly appears in the World Eaters legion and in daemons of Khorne.
• We Have Reserves: The unsurprisingly Traitor-aligned Word Bearers and Defenders of Caliban factions both have very few compunctions about sacrificing their own troops to serve the cause.
  • The Imperial Army also excels in this, as many of their cards generate troops or recycle them upon death.