Warhammer: The Horus Heresy has a new Core Mission Pack and five new Primary Detachments for the Legiones Astartes, and they're a free download. Warhammer Community announced them on November 11, 2026. The headline changes: three types of Primary Objective, more deployment maps, longer games, Vehicles and Cavalry that can now score objectives, and new detachments for Terminators, Dreadnoughts, antigrav craft, tanks and orbital assaults.
Published November 11, 2026, based on the Warhammer Community announcement. The mission pack and detachments are free to download now.
What's in the new Core Mission Pack
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The Horus Heresy team says the new Core Missions follow last month's updated FAQ and are meant to be used the same way as the Core Mission pack in the Age of Darkness Rulebook. The difference is that they include several new elements based on player feedback. Here's what changes.
Three types of Primary Objective
Instead of one way to score, the pack has three Primary Objective types. You can score victory points for:
- Controlling objective markers, the classic way to play.
- Controlling sectors of the battlefield, so the fight is over areas of the table, not just single points.
- Destroying enemy units, for players who just want a straight brawl.
The team says these also give a taste of the variety found in the mission packs inside the Journal Tactica supplements. If you've only played the core rulebook missions so far, this is an easy, free way to try different styles of game without buying anything.
Escalation or Hammerblow
Two of the three Primary Objectives can also be played with one of two scoring variants:
- Escalation: you score victory points at the end of each turn.
- Hammerblow: you only score at the end of the battle.
Warhammer Community points out that end-of-battle scoring will feel familiar to players of earlier editions. The two variants change how a game plays a lot. With Escalation, every turn matters and you have to hold ground early. With Hammerblow, the opening turns are about setting up, and everything comes down to who is standing where when the game ends. That rewards a strong last push and punishes armies that peak too early.
More deployment maps, more turns
The missions come with more possible deployment maps and are played for more turns than many other mission packs, so games should feel less samey from one battle to the next. Longer games also give slower armies more time to reach the fight.
Vehicles and Cavalry can score objectives
This is the big one. In these missions, Vehicle and Cavalry units are able to score objectives. Warhammer Community says this lets you lean into more unusual army archetypes, and it mentions it twice in the same article, so they clearly want players to notice. If you've always wanted to field a tank-heavy or bike-heavy Legion but held back because those units couldn't win you the game on objectives, that reason is gone in these missions.
Five new Primary Detachments for the Legiones Astartes
Alongside the missions, the team has made a range of new alternative Primary Detachments for Legiones Astartes armies. They're based on popular army builds from the past, and each one gives bonuses that fit its theme along with a set of restrictions.
| Primary Detachment | Built around |
|---|---|
| Pride of the Legion | Veterans and Terminators |
| Fury of the Ancients | Massed Dreadnoughts |
| Sky-Hunter Phalanx | Swift antigrav craft |
| Armoured Spearhead | Vehicles |
| Orbital Assaults | Orbital drop assaults, with an all-new deployment method |
Orbital Assaults is the brand-new one. It's designed to represent how the Legions launched orbital drops, and it uses an all-new deployment method meant to capture both how devastating and how risky it is to drop your army into the middle of the enemy. The other four bring back army styles that veteran Heresy players will remember.
Put the two halves together and you can see the plan. Armoured Spearhead and Sky-Hunter Phalanx armies are built from Vehicles and fast craft, and the new missions now let those units score. Pride of the Legion gives elite Terminator and Veteran armies a home, and Fury of the Ancients does the same for Dreadnought lovers.
Where to get it
The new Core Mission Pack and the Primary Detachments are free to download now from the Warhammer Community Downloads section. You'll still need the Age of Darkness Rulebook for the core rules. If you're new to the setting, the Horus Rising novel is the classic place to start the story, and our Horus Heresy lore guide explains the war in plain English. For army ideas, see our look at the Horus Heresy Battle Group boxes.
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My take
Letting Vehicles and Cavalry score is the change that will shake things up the most. Tanks and fast units were always fun to bring, and now they can actually win you the game. Fury of the Ancients is interesting for me after looking at Dreadnoughts in 40K this week (see our Ironclad Champions Dreadnought article). It's a different game, but it's the same question: can a Dreadnought-heavy army hold its own? And Orbital Assaults sounds like the most fun of the five, as long as you're happy to gamble. Which new Primary Detachment would you try first?
WIZY Blog is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Games Workshop.
Sources
- Warhammer Community: New Core Mission Pack for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy (Nov 11, 2026) warhammer-community.com
Written by the WIZY creator
A lifelong gamer and Warhammer painter, and the maker of the WIZY RPG game. I write about games, hardware, Warhammer and crypto in plain English, and I check every fact against its source.
