"Istvaan III (Isstvan III) help..." Topic

Greetings and a quick troop question about the Istvaan III campaign.

Its been 2 plus years since I read the Istvaan III book. I cant recall if their were any Traitor Guard or Cultist units included in the battle order. Thanks for any tips.

U.K.

It was all Legions, as far as I remember…

Thats kinda what I remembered too though you would think Horus had access to large numbers of traitor guard in his fleet. I guess its nire of a supposition on my part.

Istvaan 3 was the first battle where Horus cleansed his own nonloyal troops from the Luna Wolves/ Sons of Horus, the DeathGuard the Emperor's Children and World Eaters.

They traitors then moves to Istvaan 5 where they were initially assaulted by the loyalist Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders. The Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion And Night Lords were to be the 2nd wave but attacked the loyalists instead.

The only traitor legion not present at either battles were The Thousand Sons.

At that point the Thousand Sons had their own problems to deal with in the form of most of the Space Wolves legion involving Propero (if I remember correctly)

Im assuming the second FW Heresy book will be Istvaan V and the third will deal with Calth and Prospero.

That would continue the pattern of introducing about 3 new Legions per book.

Btw, another reason I figured Guard units could be present is the fact that the clearing of I3 took over 3 months and caused the Traitorsmass casualties. Seems that Guard units could have been plugged in to replace casualties.

Most of the Horus Heresy was covered as flavor text in the old Space Marine boxed game as flavor text. The books have been fleshing it out a bit more.
I always liked the Dark Angels and was a little suprised in the 90's? when they changed to green and got Deathwing…but they have seemed to dropped that episode from their mythos.

I recall that as well. Very iconic cover of the Space Marine game! That along with Space Hulk are my two favorite GW games ever.

Sadly I dont remember any of the fluff from the game. I am catching up on all of the Heresy books right now. Im on "Fear to Tread " currently.

No traitor guard were present at Istvaan3 according to the HH novels. In Raven's Flight a relief force of Raven Guard and their home world guard rescue Corax and the remains of his legion.

Supposly if you believe the rumors the 2nd forgeworld book will be Night Lords, Word Bearers, iron Hands and Salamanders and be called Retribution.

The Thousand Sons were loyal to the Emperor until the very end. Only when Magnus used his "powers" to warn the Emperor of Horus's treachery, did they slip to the dark side, but only because they felt they were betrayed by their "father" the Emperor. They turned when the Space Wolves were sic'd on them.

Regarding the initial post- I don't think any imperial army units were deployed by Horus to scour the loyalists from his Legions. The battleground was too toxic.

There must have been army units with the first wave that got hit by the virus-bombing, though, as one of the audio books (Garro, Legion of One I think) has them come across the remains of army troopers on Istvaan 3. I expect though that none would have survived the initial bombing, so it's safe to say that there would have been no army units in the battle orders for either side.

Leigh

Thanks Leigh!

PS, for those that havent seen it yet, the new Betrayal 30k book provides a good map of the Choral City on Istvaan for use in campaign games. You can simply overlay a grid in the map and viola you have your game map.