An Expansion to The Horus Heresy?

This has been on my mind as well...

Just so there's no confusion here, I'm on about the board game published by Fantasy Flight Games. The reason this came up is that there has been a discussion on the forums about the possibility of an expansion to the game; basically speculation as to whether or not one is being developed, or if it's even possible. The most likely outcome at this point is that they may expand on some of the cards that you need to play the game, since the currently exisiting decks can be a little limiting. The whole thing is available to read here: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=170&efcid=1&efidt=356284&efpag=0 but as I've already posted on it, I thought I'd offer my take on the matter:

An expansion to the Horus Heresy itself seems unlikely. Black Library are publishing a wealth of background information on the matter including a series of about 20 novels, but if you read them the major battles that occur are kind of integral to the fact that Horus ends up at Terra and bombs the place. It would be no fun trying to recreate the entire Istvaan V massacre, for example; Horus has to win that and the game setting would have to reflect it, and for many gamers playing games they know they haven't got a chance of winning is no fun at all. Same with the battle between the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves; I haven't read that but since the Thousand Sons make an appearance at the Siege of Terra, it's pretty obvious which side wins. So I can't really see them expanding on that because given the setting and the game mechanics, there's nothing to expand on.

What FFG might consider, and I've heard nothing about this at all and I'm purely speculating here, is putting some elements of the Horus Heresy in to a different gaming system all together. Still using the Horus Heresy background, but essentially different games. Again, I haven't read all the novels in the series, but how does a Space Hulk style stealth-em-up sound for Battle for the Abyss? A Roleplaying scenario based on Legion? A questing knights style game, which could probably be done with cards, to represent the early days of the Dark Angels? A space treck through the warp for Flight of the Eisenstein? If these things can fit in to board or card games, then it's Fantasy Flight who have got the imagination to make it happen, and it wouldn't necessarily have to tie in with the currently exisiting game. So what would you like to see?

The other bit that was mentioned on the forums that I wanted to comment on was an exansion that would use the Horus Heresy system to represent the war on Armageddon. On the surface, I think that's a fantastic idea; the 'mass battles' system that HH uses would be great to put on Armageddon and give you a feeling of controlling the whole war. I think that game would work very well. It's not going to happen though, for a number of reasons discussed on the forums, not least of which Games Workshop won't let them do it.

Now there's a lot of spiteful blogs going around about GW at the moment so let me be clear on this: My comments are to do with their intellectual property and their licensing agreement, and less to do with their so-called illicit business practices. For Fantasy Flight to produce games based on the Warhammer/40K background, they have to have a licensing agreement. For those of you who don't know what that means, well, FFG have to ask GW permission - and in all probablity pay them some money - to produce games based on the background. FFG have now produced a wealth of games based on Games Workshop's intellectual property. Now I don't claim to have read their licensing agreement, and I certainly haven't played all the games, but one thing is common to all the games FFG have produced: You can do NOTHING in those games that you'd be able to do by wandering in to Games Workshop one day and asking for an introduction to the game. My obvious example is Horus Heresy, you can't buy that game in Games Workshop and they certainly don't have a game like it. (I never played Epic 40k, but even if there were similarities in the mass-battle system GW don't support the game anymore.) Blood Bowl has been and gone, but FFG have released a card game for it. There are certainly no more roleplaying games you can buy at GW anymore, and FFG have produced quite a few of those. And FFG's games that do involve battles have completely different systems to the games that GW now produce and support.

Stay with me here... Think about what happens in the Horus Heresy game, it's participants, and it's game system. You can buy none of them as a model in Games Workshop. You can't buy a model of The Emporer, or Magnus the Red, Rogal Dorn or Fulgrim to use in games of 40K - and quite rightly so; there's enough balance issues in 40K as it is without putting the Primarchs in the mix. And yes, I'm aware that there are some published rules for use of the Primarchs in Apocalypse or whatever, and apparently there is a model of Angron floating around Forge World, but they're not readily available from the shop, and I've certainly not seen either. Then there's the Adeptus Custodes, the Mechanicus, Pre-Heresy World Eaters, the Fabricator General - I've never seen any of those at GW. What FFG have done is created a game that GW does not even come close to replicating with the models and systems that they have at the moment. I'm not saying they never will - perhaps one day they'll come up with a version of Apocalypse that requires an entire housing estate to play on, in which case it might be possible to use the Primarchs without unbalancing the game; I wouldn't put it past them - but for now, they seem to be happy with their 'replace the core games and army books once every five or so years' strategy.

Whereas Armageddon... The battle was every bit as huge, granted. But if you think about what happened and who participated in that, you'd find that with a more, for want of a better word, contemporary piece of 40K history, GW have the grounds covered to be able to replicate it themselves. There was Ghazkull and the Goffs, who you can buy and paint, Commissar Yarrick and the Armageddon Steel Legions who you can model off their exisiting products, and the Space Marine chapters involved were Black Templars, the Salamanders, and I'm pretty sure the Dark Angels were involved as well, possibly even Blood Angels. You can get models for all of those things already, and there's nothing in the setting that can't be represented from the terrain that GW now produce. So even if FFG had approached GW with the idea, GW are not going to want FFG to build a game that can be done with GW's currently existing product. If people want to do a Armageddon campaign, they can do already do it with the GW stuff, so GW's response would run along the lines of 'Sorry guys, we've got that bit covered already.' Which is a shame, because the system would work really well for that battle.

Now I'm aware the guy on the Forum referred to the original Chaos invasion of Armageddon. I'm not entirely aware of the story for that but I would imagine that GW have all that covered as well. So that kind of expansion seems unlikely.

There is of course the fact that the game may not be big enough to warrant an expansion; would enough people buy it? Well, it's fun to speculate...

I'll be back with some game reports in a bit, but I've just realised what time it is and I really do need to get out of bed now.

See y'all soon...