The newest addition to the Sons of Horus line up if named characters Vheren is a praetor level character who first appears in the siege of Cthonia, a hardcore Cthonian nationalist born in the dark depths of Cthonia’s tunnels, Discontent with the corruption spreading throughout the legion Vheren refused to fight on terra, instead opting to reclaim Cthonia with his company of “true sons”
The title of first reaver was given to Vheren due to his relentless method of combat, always on the offensive and giving no ground, earning the respect of Horus and formally creating the reaver attack squads common throughout the legion. In game Vheren is a high command choice like many of his brothers and is themed around unsurprisingly is themed around being a warlord for a reaver heavy army, but like most of the things added last edition during the siege of Cthonia supplement he is paying for his sins of last edition.
Coming in at 205 points Vheren is an expensive character, the second most expensive high command available to the sons and sadly isn’t worth it. He has mostly normal praetor stats with an extra pip of weapon skill. He comes quiped with a vexila for an extra +1 to combat resolution, a pair of banestrike pistols called the fusilade which is 4 shots of S5 damage one breaching 6+, neat but nothing game changing as a normal praetor can pack a nemesis rifle or a archaeotech pistol for inflicting statuses or just killing people in a sigle shot, but it does work with the legion trait handily.
The star of the show is his special axe, the Axe Serpentis which is an initiative +1, S user, damage one AP2 close combat weapon with critical 6+…. Its worse than a normal paragon blade, trading a strength for an Initiative which sucks given you’ll be wounding other marine characters in power armour on a 4, terminators and magi on a 5 and god forbid you hit a saturnine praetor or archmagos on abbeyant as you’ll be wounding on 6s, the extra weapon skill is nice but is lacklustre when compared to a proper weapon like a thunder hammer, power fist or whatever monstrosity a magos will swing at you, initiative is nice but there’s no point going first if your only goal is preying for 6s while the opponent will hit you once with aa killing blow saturnine hammer and make your DNA quiver in fear
This is where you would expect me to write about his special rules like Abbadon’s feel no pain to his justaerin or Maloghurst providing line to his unit but for some reason Vheren just doesn’t have any, he lost his cool rerolling invulns armour, his battle hardened, his unique reaver command and he doesn’t even have the generic special rues reavers get like precision or counter attack, he just kind of blows. He’s not even that good at melee, statistically loosing a fight to everyone else in the legion bar Maloghurst, the legion’s resident paraplegic
Vheren is available as a forgeworld mini from Games Workshop and is made of resin, commonly used to convert generic captains or consuls for the sons of Horus
