No, Horus Heresy Is Not An Historical Wargame

Some folks seem to be under the illusion that playing this game makes them historical wargamers. I am mostly a very permissive, live and let live kinda guy, but maybe this is what finally turns me into an intolerant old crank. Let’s see!

To start off with, I get where HH players are coming from when they say this. The Horus Heresy is not part of the current Warhammer 40K setting, it is settled “history.” Furthermore, the only real definition of an historical wargame is one that takes place in or depicts an historical setting (yes, I am going to keep using “an” in its historical usage). Horus Heresy depicts events from the in-universe history of Warhammer 40K, therefore it’s a historical wargame, right? No, absolutely not. I have two very strong objections to this thesis, one factual and one abstract.

First off, the factual objection: Historical Wargaming should, does and needs to mean games depicting actual, written history, as best we understand it. That is to say, a “real” setting, or as close as we can get. This doesn’t mean every single aspect of the games and miniatures need to come from documented sources, but an effort needs to be made to depict settings and armies as they were. Why does this matter? Well, if The Horus Heresy is an historical setting, so is The Old World, since it takes place 200 years before the end times, right? What about all Star Wars games, since they take place “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away?” How about Lord of the Rings, with its swords and horseback riding? At the end of the day, HH is a made up setting – a rad one, which I love – but none the more real for that.

Secondly, the abstract objection: The Horus Heresy is missing something that I think is integral to historical wargames, which is abstraction! Usually, this comes in the form of command friction, which basically means you don’t always get to do what you want to do with your army or units. In HH, Old World and 40K you get to move and shoot your whole army in your turn. In LotR, X-Wing and Armada the player actions are staggered by initiative order, but you still get to do everything you want. Legion has the most command friction out of any of these games, but it still boils down to taking turns activating units. Most historical games will go far beyond this, sometimes as a way to make a game more engaging, but in the best games it simulates the difficulty of commanding historical forces. I am going to save my examples for a future article I have in mind, but suffice to say that IGOUGO is very much not the norm in historical games.

Lastly, I find it just a bit insulting when Horus Heresy players claim to be historical gamers, though I love you guys and I do not think anyone is doing it on purpose! I will grant that there are some similarities. Researching different marks of space marine armor and civil war uniforms scratch the same itch for me. Replaying battles that have already been decided still holds appeal for me. However I think the mindset of the historical gamer is fundamentally different from that of others, and I think I can show what I mean by quoting one of my favorite rules authors. Greg from Little Wars TV wrote a set of rules for the American Civil War called Altar of Freedom. At the end of the main rules is a series of appendices, one of which is an army builder, which begins with the following quote:

“So despite my pleading and insistence on the use of historical scenarios only, you really want  to play a random pick-up game. And worse yet, you want a points system to make the battle  “fair,” even though no battle in human history–much less the Civil War–was ever “balanced.”  Aren’t you more interested in testing your generalship against the real-life challenges of your  famous historical counter-parts? Do you really want to just play a meaningless, random battle?”

That sums it up for me, but what do you think? Are Horus Heresy players really historical gamers? Sound off in the comments!

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