In the table below, we’ve outlined the individual values of each kit in the box to give you an idea of what you save. The Lion has risen from his 10,000-year slumber, and he’s wasting no time putting traitors to the sword. The Primarch of the Dark Angels is a monstrously powerful duelist and indomitable battlefield leader, armed with the Emperor’s own shield and a massive power sword named Fealty. Your first chance to get him is in this celebratory launch set.*

Boarding Actions can only be played using the specific Boarding Action missions found in the Arks of Omen books and on the Boarding Actions battlefields you can build with either the official terrain set or with Kill Team terrain from the Into the Dark season. Setup for these missions are quite different from 40K missions, both because of the special indoors terrain layout and the replacement of one big deployment zone for each player with several entry zones for each player in which you can place a unit at a time. From the first battle round onwards, a Reinforcement Step lets you field the units you have in reserve into those entry zones. Yep, the points cost goes way over the 500 point threshold required for Boarding Actions – and that’s before calculating all the extensive wargear options. All models are supplied with their appropriate bases. These miniatures are supplied unpainted and require assembly – we recommend using Citadel Plastic Glue and Citadel Colour paints. Clad in bulky exo-armour with a rune-etched RAM shield and Autoch-pattern combi-bolter, the Einhyr Champion leads the assault with impunity. Alongside him are five elite Einhyr Hearthguard, plus a squad of Cthonian Beserks, wielding powerful mining tools that double as weapons of war, and ten Hearthkyn Warriors armed with a variety of powerful hulk-cleansing wargear. The massive Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyer is an armoured beast , mounting a triple-barrelled neutron laser battery onto a rugged Spartan hull to create a devastatingly focused anti-tank weapon. It can detonate tanks in a single blast while shrugging off return fire like it’s nothing – everything you want in a Lord of War. Sicaran Venator Tank HunterBoarding Actions does away with the Stratagems of your codex and core book, and instead replaces it with a Stratagem list of its own, as well as a short list of stratagems for each faction. Rules for playing Boarding Action games of Warhammer 40,000 can be found in the Arks of Omen: Abaddon supplement. Additional rules for Leagues of Votann Boarding Patrols can be found in Arks of Omen: The Lion. I think this is a really tough call and honestly, I’m not sure how I’d want to really mix-max everything at this point. Without having seen any real games or tournament data on the army we’re all going in based on the Dataslates here. That said, if we’re starting a new army I’d want to keep my options open. I also am not the type of person who only collects the “power units” and that’s it. So, if this was my army, I’d split the difference and get one unit of each the Hearthguard (225 points + wargear) and Thunderkyn (120 points + wargear). And as far as character support I’d go with the Grminyr (90 points). If you don’t have any Characters in your Boarding Patrol detachment, you can selsect one of your unit champions as your Warlord. You can also select any special army traits granted by your codex (with some exceptions we’ll get into in the next section), and you can select an Enhancement instead of the Warlord Traits and relics you would normally use (more on that below as well).

What’s so interesting about this detachment is the presence of zeroes in the list above: You don’t have to bring an HQ, or even any Troops! This opens up the possibility of all sorts of fun, thematic lists (the author of this article is currently working on an all-Einhyr list for the Leagues of Votann with an added Thunderkyn unit which he would otherwise never even have bought for his 40K army, for example), and it keeps your model count relatively low. Additionally, when a Boarding Actions game begins, any units with 10 models must be split into two 5-man squads, which are then treated as two separate units. The size of Boarding Actions armies is also very different from the kind of 40K games that have become the standard of competitive play: The points limit for a Boarding Actions army is 500 points (as opposed to the regular 1500 or 2000 points, and your army uses a special detachment called a Boarding Patrol Detachment, in which you can take the following: Operate Hatchway: This can also be performed in the Movement Phase, and allows a unit to try to open a door in the Boarding Actions terrain. If there’s an enemy unit on the other side of the door trying to prevent you from opening it and passing through, you roll off to see if you succeed.This brings our total to 1845 points + wargear. I think this is the more well rounded version and give you the chance to actually use these units before you decide to play with other options. Or before you opt to follow a specific playstyle for the army. You can always go all-in with the other direction later. The List Rules for playing Boarding Action games of Warhammer 40,000 can be found in the Arks of Omen: Abaddon supplement. Additional rules for Leagues of Votann Boarding Patrols can be found in Arks of Omen: The Lion . Apart from these general special rules, the game mode has many other exceptions from the 40K ruleset too numerous and specific to mention here, but some examples are that Indirect weapons now have to be able to see their targets, eligibility of targets in combat is calculated somewhat differently to discourage players taking too much advantage of the different distance rules mentioned above, and that, as also mentioned further above, many faction-specific rules now work quite differently. Final Thoughts Dice and Tape Measure: Just like regular 40K, Boarding Actions uses 6-sided dice and a tape measure in inches to play the game.

It remains to be seen how much of a breath of fresh air the game mode will actually be when all factions have had all their special rules released – will it become almost as complicated as playing regular 40K? But until them, Boarding Actions is a refreshingly streamlined, faster way of playing 40K that fits much better into the casual dinner table games that most of us actually have time for than the 2000 points way of playing 40K that’s dominating tournaments and matched play in general.

Over at Warhammer Community, our coverage of the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 continues with the reveal of a brand new Tyranid unit and close examinations of how characters and weapons work in the new system. I hope these guys keep their Feel No Pain in the next edition. They are easy to get shot down if you aren't careful, but if you can get them into combat they will pummel/slice their way through anything you throw at them. Combine that with the legendary mole grenade launcher, and you've got yourself an awesome unit. Hernkyn Pioneers There’s much profit to be found in the esoteric salvage secreted aboard these rotting void-barges – and you can acquire it for the glory of your own Hold with five cybernetically-enhanced Cthonian Beserks, five diamond-hard Einhyr Hearthguard, and 10 geared-up Hearthkyn Warriors, all led by a proud Einhyr Champion.