28/04/2026
++ ARMY FOCUS | “The Carnifex” ++
Warzone Heresy Scotland team member Alex attended the recent Warzone Heresy Presents - The Canticle Wars: The Depths of Gehenna Part 1 event, and in between a spot of EO-ing, found some time to play the Zone Mortalis event. On this occasion he brought his Blackshield army for us to see, and to enjoy some of his first games (!) of Horus Heresy 3rd Edition.
So without further ado, we’ll hand over to Alex to talk you through his weekend at the tables.
- Chris
• THE CARNIFEX
The Carnifex are an excommunicated Blackshield warband, once a proud company of the VII Legion, the Imperial Fists.
They were declared Excommunicate Traitoris in 007.M31 following the Vannic Reach Atrocity, a campaign that should have been a footnote in the Great Betrayal, but instead became an epitaph.
They had once been the 4th Line-Breaker Cohort, specialists in brutal close assault, where the more patient doctrines of their parent Legion gave way to the necessity of brutal close combat. Where other brothers built walls, The Carnifex tore them down.
Their heraldry, twinned axes on a void-blue field, marked them as executioners in all but name, called upon when compliance required more than siegecraft.
They were the Emperor’s final sanction.
On Vanic Reach, for eighty-seven days, the 4th Cohort were perfect in their brutality. On the eighty-eighth, they learned that knowledge does not always lead to power…
Aaaaand that’s as far as I got with my pre-event fluff!
What an event, and some of my very first games of Heresy 3.0 to boot!
Army selection for me was quite a challenge, I had my Emperors Children, my original Blackshield force (The Wraiths of the Lacunae Abyss), and I had a ZM specific army of 40k-ish Executioners that I had built for Badab War gaming.
The Executioners had been a total bits box army (so they ended up very heresy-centric anyway), with a zero spend goal, and I almost inconceivably made that happen!
With Gehenna being a ZM event, and with a pile of scratch-built breachers to use, it would’ve been rude not to use the Executioners army, renamed as above, The Carnifex.
I think that wee bit of fluff convincingly brought the army into the Horus Heresy and is something I’ll expand upon now our event is complete.
With two units of 10 breachers, 10 veteran breachers, and 10 terminators, all I needed now was a few units to make up the points. Assault marines seemed a fluffy and slightly unwise choice given ZM’s movement limitations, so of course that’s what I decided on.
I had really wanted to stay away from dreadnoughts and the new saturnines, one because I like the idea of massed gene-hanced mega men, and two, I didn’t have any painted for that army, and I was pretty light on hobby time leading up to the event due to work commitments.
Luckily my limited unit choices were fluffy, and seemed to be a pretty strong army following my very first Heresy 3.0 game the night before the event with fellow Warzone Heresy member Graham. Out of the two practice games I had a win and a loss apiece, which given my famously ineffective habit of using cool units because they’re thematic, or meme-y units because they’re funny, and not really paying attention to how they’d perform on the tabletop, this was a nice change of pace.
For the four games of the event itself I got another perfect 50/50 win/loss split.
- Game 1
- Opponent: Tom (Blood Angels)
- VPs: 11-1 (Won)
This was a great first game, against the attendee voted Best Army, always a great start to an event when you get to play a recipient of the coveted ‘coolest models’ award.
In true ZM fashion, the opening of a single door changed the outcome of the whole game, with a brutal challenge forcing his terminators to become routed, I smashed my own terminators into his squishy power armoured main force, holding them in place with tight lines of breachers. Left with no where to go the Blood Angels were picked off unit by unit, though if the game had gone on for another turn his still fresh contemptor would’ve wreaked bloody havoc.
A great game, with challenges galore for both players, and a worthy Best Army winner.
- Game 2
- Opponent: Alan (Space Wolves)
- VPs: 19:15 (Won)
Alan’s Space Wolves I think would’ve had me, but the vagaries of ZM saved my bacon in Game 2. WZH events always feature NPCs, special units or characters given to a player for a game, or unique missions for certain players.
In Alan’s case he got a unit of Bilge Denizens, a 10-man unit of crazed mortal cultists. which ended up being the biggest headache for us both. They managed to hold up my tactical support squad in an assault for 3 turns in a choke point that effectively divided the board in two, trapping both of our ‘Praetor and terminator friends’ units away from the main action. Again, my ability to tactically manoeuvre around (or rather, flee from) Alan’s contemptor and Saturnine terminators was the deciding factor.
This was yet another great game against another wonderful opponent and I really enjoyed playing against such a cool example of the Rout.
- Game 3
- Opponent: Lewis (Raven Guard)
- VPs: 17-8 (Loss)
During the game with Lewis and his Raven Guard shenanigans (insert vigorous fist shaking here) we used blip tokens to show the position of unknown units as they made their way around the board, only revealing which unit a blip represented when they were in line of sight of an enemy unit. I proceeded to enact my own shenanigans by using my Investigator, by himself, to pull Lewis’ tooled up white scars allied unit to the opposite corner of the board from the main action.
Even with that, I was out shenanigan-d, with three of my units stumbling across a Raven Guard unit that popped out of nowhere, and effectively ended any gameplan I might have had! From that point on it was a brutal slaughter, the Raven guard slowly chopping through The Carnifex. This was exacerbated by a rabid alien Spinewasp (one of my favorite WZH special NPC units 😂) bursting out of the chest of a Raven guard sergeant, infecting one of my units in turn, and turning the main combat into a confused fight against marine and wasp.
All-in-all it was a great game with a hilarious and kind opponent!
- Game 4
- Opponent: Craig (Loyalist Alpha Legion)
- VPs: 5-4 (Loss)
While this game is a ‘loss’ in the win/loss tables, it was very much a combined effort to destroy the reactors that, we had very carefully been told by the EOs, were very unstable, would have lasting effects on part 2 of the Ghenna series, and were worth enough victory points to secure the win for either side at this critical juncture!
However fellow WZH member Craig and I were in immediate agreement that dousing the whole facility in mega-radiation (making everyone in the table -2 toughness) was a hilariously wonderful goal, and it seems it did to a great majority of the events attendees from the scoring.
Playing on the awesome ‘secret mission’ table in a separate back room, complete with ambient geiger-counter soundtrack and flashing hazard lights, we set about bringing maximum destruction. The first few turns were a flurry of wiffed Meltagun shots and wildly innacurate Lascutters. However we finally got the job done, destroying both fusion reactors, for better or worse, before setting about each other’s armies.
With every model now reduced in toughness it became a very quick affair to wipe out 90% of the remaining models on the table. With some great rolls, and the Alpha Legion’s damnable ‘everything is 2” further away’ rule, Craig managed to out range, out manoeuvre, and out charge me at every turn, leading to a hugely well deserved win for the Loyalists!
That game brought my games for Gehenna Part 1 to a close, and boy was it a great belated introduction the Heresy 3.0.
Four great games, four wonderful opponents, screams, shouts, and laughs galore. I hope you’ve enjoyed my event rundown and I look forward to seeing you across the UK at more Horus Heresy events!
- Alex
