Abbadon is the right hand man of Horus, a Cthonian born ganger transformed into a son of horus he quickly climbed the ranks of the legion and became a chief member of the mournival, Horus’s trusted advisors along with the master of the Justaerin, Abbadon on the outisde seems like a merciless tyrant but on the inside he is an honourable warrior, destaining the use of sorcerery and chaos corruption, eventually becoming the main strategic leader of the Sons when Horus became too absorbed in chaos, but Irony would come for Abbadon, with his ultimate destiny to be surviving the siege of terra and the scouring to become the warmaster of chaos.
In game Abbadon is themed around the justaerin and just being a indestructible brick of stats and a blender in melee. He costs 250 points the most of any SoH high command choice and comes with standard cataphractii praetor stat lines but with a buffed weapon skill and an extra attack, leaving him at WS7 and 6 attacks.
He is one of few named characters with options, he may swap his combi bane strike for a paragon blade, I wouldn’t be pressed either direction too hard, its free and both have an argument for and against them, the main attraction is his Cthonian power claw, a monstrous S+4, initiative -3, Ap2 Damage 2 fist with shred 5+, getting hit by this thing will most likely take half or more of your wounds away and he gets to swing 6 times at a high weapon skill.
Combined with his toughness of 5, eternal warrior (1) and usual cataphractii praetor stats of 5 wounds, a 4+ invuln and 2+ save leads Abbadon to be quite durable in a challenge, or even taking hits for his bodyguard against damage two weapons as he reduces them to damage one.
Abbadon has one large issue though, how you plan to get him and the boys into the fray, being in cataphractii armor he has the heavy keyword, and only moves 6 inches, this makes him and his bodyguard need to be deployed in a land raider, or via his master of the justaerin rule, which gives a unit he joins deep-strike and a 5+ feel no pain on the turn he lands in, this sounds awesome but realistically he doesn’t want to actually use this ability as it leads him to only land in on turn two, then be able to declare a charge turn three at the earliest, and in a game with 4 turns having your minimum 500 points death star stuck only getting to throw hands once, maybe twice at a stretch is painful, so a land raider is the play but this means he basically doesn’t make any use of his special ability, which makes him feel a bit over costed when you could save an extra 100 points or so just running a normal praetor in terminator armor with a hammer, who will be as sufficiently lethal to majority of units, and can even roll in a tartaros suit, which allows you to skip on the land raider at the cost of a less durable bodyguard as you will need a tartaros command squad.
Overall, I go back and forth on Abby, he isn’t bad, he deals a lot of damage on his own and is incredibly durable, but suffers from this edition’s change to how deep strike works, where units really want to be started on the board or in a transport if they have any melee capacity, play him for fun and if you enjoy his character throughout the books.
As first captain of the Sons of Horus, Abbadon is featured prominently throughout the books, particularly in the opening trilogy (which turn 20 years old this year) along with the siege of terra series, my favorite appearance of Abbadon is in the book “saturnine”, and unlike most heresy era mortal characters he reappears in 40k, with his own trilogy, the black legion trilogy. Which are really worth reading if you want to see how the first captain copes with everything he ever believed in going wrong
If you couldnt tell by the photo, his mini is old and has aged like a fine milk, he is a lot smaller than modern characters and his pose is uh, a relic of the early 2000s resin casting, and unfortunately he comes coupled with Loken who didn’t age much better, and you cant even run both in the same army as Loken is a loyalist while Abbadon is traitor locked. This has led to a lot of people looking for alternative sculpts, two common ones are the generic Sons of Horus praetor in cataphractii armor with his weapons swapped to appropriate ones, and Abbadon’s 40k sculpt with some adjustments to represent cataphractii armour better as technically the 40k sculpt is wearing indomitus tereminator armour. I would use these in a heart beat over whatever is going on with the 30k sculpt of Abbadon.
