Custodes are adding some serious aerial firepower to their arsenal in Warhammer 40k. Check out everything you need to know on the Ares Gunship.

If you missed it, the Ares Gunship is a new flying cannon coming to the Custodes force in 30k/40k. We first saw details on how to assemble it as well as its rules for the Horus Heresy so be sure to check that out before you jump into the rules for 40k!

Custodes Ares Gunship From Malevolence

In Horus Heresy the gunship has same basic statline is the Orion flyer. The nose-mounted gun is replaced with the Magna-blaze cannon with two firing modes.

Statline 1: S10 AP1, primary weapon 2, exoshock, mastercrafted, armourbane, and instant death.

Statline 2: S8 AP2 heavy 2, large blast.

Bolt launchers also get replaced with Infernus firebomb clusters: large blast, heavy flamer bombs which ignore cover.

Garro also gave us some kind of new rule that looks to be specific to the unit:

The ship also has a rule that if it suffers an ‘explodes’ result on the penetration table from its rear-facing, on a dice roll of a 5+ it actually dies representing the exposed ammo bits for the magna-blaze cannon.

Ares Assembly Instructions Spotted

Thanks to hobby hero Garro, we’ve also seen first-hand pictures of the Ares Gunship assembly fresh out of the book. It, of course, shares a lot of the same parts as the Orion dropship as well.

Looking at the general overview of the model, it looks like there is almost thirty main assembly steps. (There are a lot more than thirty bits).

The design team did a great job of keeping the theme of the Custodes in 30k. This flyer isn’t “far out” from what the other war machines in their arsenal look like.

The Ares comes loaded with a nose-mounted Magna blaze cannon and two Arachnus heavy blaze cannons. All of the firepower is at the very front of the ship so positioning will be key with this unit in the Horus Heresy.

The biggest design flaw of the ship is actually a completely exposed Fusion Reactor in the back of the ship. This is the rule that Garro was talking about earlier when the plane actually explodes on a 5+ for the vehicle damage table. Great job on giving this thing a massive Achilles heel, Imperium.

Finally, it’s got two Infernus firebomb clusters mounted on the underside of the hull. You might want to leave these and the Fusion Reactor off of the model when you’re doing your painting. It’ll just make it easier on you to get into the nooks and crannies of the hull when you’re doing your detailing.

The Ares is a potent terror weapon, bypassing enemy armies as it blazes over their lines in the shadow of its eclipse shields. Using its immensely destructive Arachnus magna-blaze cannon against the monuments and edifices which an enemy culture hold most dear to their hearts, it strikes a decisive blow against their will to wage war.

The Ares is a potent flyer that can bully just about anything it wants to shoot at. You can do mortal wounds with your Infernus Firebombs each turn and obliterate anything with multiple wounds using D3 shots from a flat 6+D3 damage cannon. Plus it has two shots with is normal blaze cannon as well that even re-rolls wounds against Vehicles. Math (or maffs) seems to point to 26-34 wounds against vehicles with no invulnerable save per turn when near re-roll auras.

This thing is essentially a flying Knight at T8 and 22 wounds. Combined with a 5++ invuln AND -1 to hit modifier (-2 if a vexilla is nearby), the potential to wreak havoc is high.

If you want to keep your rerolls after your first move, you can also drop into hover mode next to Trajann and the special vexilla that gives the -1 to hit bubble as well. You might be staying still, but you keep the -1 to hit modifier and make every shot count (even more). According to this it’s power level is 21 and now just like its sister ship the Orion it is NOT classified as a Lord of War anymore! So, you’ll be able to take these ships in the Flyer section of your lists. Plus since it’s not TITANIC it can also benefit from the prepared positions stratagem giving it perhaps a -2 to hit 2+ 5++ save.

And there you have it! Overall, the ship doesn’t look too difficult to put together with the main portion being the hull/wing assembly. As far as rules go in both 30/40k it looks like it’ll be a fast, aggressive armor-popper. Just be careful with its back-end in your Heresy games.

What do you think about the Ares Gunship rules? Will you replace your Orions with the Ares in 40k? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group, and sign up to get your free hobby updates newsletter (with discount coupon codes) each morning as well!