I bought this yesterday and have had the chance to assemble about half the models at this point, read the rule book, paint one of the models and play two of the six scenarios.
The models are brilliant as usual. I've been hoping that GW would release some Horus Heresy plastics and they sure have.
In the boxed set you get 30 Legion Tactical marines. There are options to make 3 squads with either a heavy bolter or missile launcher as heavy weapons and/or flamer, meltagun or plasma gun as special weapons options.
You can also make a sergeant who can be armed with a powerfist, lightning claw, chainsword, powersword, combi-bolter or plasma pistol or some combination of those.
The Tactical marines are much like the ones you would get in a boxed set. They come in multiple pieces:
Torso back
Torso front
Legs
right arm
left arm with hand
bolter
back pack
Right shoulder pad
Left shoulder pad
Plus various pouches, grenades, knives and so on.
There is also a contemptor Dreadnought. This goes together quite easily and can be built with an assault cannon or a multi-melta. I've done mine with magnets so you can put either on.
Then there are five Cataphracti Terminators which can be assembled with lightning claws or twin bolter and powerfist. There is a sergeant who can have an assault grenade launcher and a power sword instead of the power fist. They also have an option for a heavy flamer.
Then there are two characters, a terminator captain and a chaplain.
For the game itself they have used the Captain, the Terminators and a squad of marines as the Ultramarines and the Dread, the chaplain and the rest of the tactical marines as the good guys.
The figures are very well designed, as you would expect. There isn't anything new or particularly impressive about any of them as far as being beyond what you would expect from GW.
It is interesting that they are multipart and not the two or three piece kits that they have been producing for their last several generations of starter sets.
It seems like they produced these kits for the long haul rather than for some limited release and I mean limited release like how Battle for Macragge and Isle of Blood were limited releases.
The game itself comes with four reversible tile board pieces, some command cards for each side, specialty dice that are unnecessary and various tokens plus the rules.
The combat and movement are pretty simple as you would expect from a miniature/board game hybrid.
The combat is slightly more complicated than Space Hulk but the movement is slightly less complicated so overall it is about as complex as Space Hulk.
It is not Space Hulk, Space Hulk is brilliant, one of the best games ever for simulating what it is designed to portray.
This isn't that. There are six quick scenarios. They are kind of fun to play but it is probably not something that I will go back to again and again.
The rules are not organized in a way that I thought was easy to get at them. Other people may see this differently though.
It took me a while, after the first read through, to figure out how to use the command cards and how you got them.
The first game is a scenario where you are trying to get models off the table running next to the enemy. It is pretty neat scenario because you really need to kill one of the enemy to win, or at least one more of them than they kill of you. If you get too bogged down in the fighting you won't make it off at all though.
In the first game I didn't really remember the command cards and they can be very useful.
The second scenario seemed a little unbalanced in that the Chaos forces were able to mass fire from a few models while the bad guys were not able to do this because they had all Terminators.
Overall I bought the game for the models. What would normally cost about $240 USD from GW was about $150 USD in this set. The models are versatile for doing any Legion you want and if you are waiting to start doing some Horus Heresy or Crusade stuff, you needn't wait any longer.
Two of these boxed sets plus a couple or three other kits from Forge World and you will have a pretty decent Legion army.
Even just one set will get you a fairly decent force to use in 40K. I'm not sure what the current points are for this stuff but in the last edition (5th?) the stuff would be about 1,000 points as a 40K army. This is without the Chaplain as a Chaos force. If you add him in as some sort of Dark Apostle or something then you could probably add another almost 100 pts.
I don't see any reason why you couldn't proxy the whole thing as a Chaos Space Marine army. The equipment options should be identical.
My recommendation is that if you are looking to get into either 40K or Horus Heresy with the 40K rules this is a fantastic starter set for you. It is a good price for what you get and you get a bonus game in there too that is decent and worth playing through.
If you are looking for a really interesting board game with miniatures there might be better ones on the market.
