The Horus Heresy MkIV 'Maximus' Power Armour Pin Badge - Limited Edition Betrayal at Calth Promo (2015)

Product Overview

• Item: The Horus Heresy MkIV 'Maximus' Pattern power armour pin badge
• Brand: Games Workshop
• Copyright: Games Workshop Ltd, 2015
• Edition: Limited edition promotional release
• Occasion: Issued to celebrate the launch of the Betrayal at Calth box set
• Original Distribution: Free gift with White Dwarf issue 93, 7 November 2015
• Design: Front-facing Space Marine in MkIV Maximus plate, Ultramarines blue with silver detailing
• Construction: Enamel on metal, butterfly clutch fastening
• Format: Sealed in original polybag on printed 'Exclusive!' backing card
• Availability: Never sold at retail - promotional distribution only

Description

In November 2015, Games Workshop did something it had not done in a very long time: it put the Horus Heresy into hard plastic. Betrayal at Calth was the moment the Age of Darkness stopped being a Forge World resin luxury and became something a player could actually buy off a shelf, and the hobby responded accordingly. This badge was the small ceremonial marker of that launch - a gift, not a product, handed to the readers who were there when it happened.

The design is MkIV 'Maximus' plate, rendered in Ultramarines blue. Maximus was the high-water mark of Astartes armour engineering - the most technologically advanced battle plate available to the Legions at the height of the Great Crusade, produced when the forges of Mars still ran at full capacity and lost technology flowed back into human hands. The Heresy ended that. As the Mechanicum fractured and supply lines collapsed, MkIV ceased to be widely producible, and the plate became a marker of which Legions had been favoured with stock before the galaxy came apart.

The choice of an Ultramarine is not incidental either. Calth was the Word Bearers' surprise attack on the Ultramarines in their own home system - a betrayal so total that the war for the planet continued underground for generations after the surface was rendered uninhabitable. The badge wears the colours of the wronged party.

Collectible Value

Promotional items occupy a distinct tier in the Games Workshop secondary market, and this one has the two attributes that matter most: it was never available for purchase, and it was tied to a single magazine issue on a single date. Every example in existence came out of a copy of White Dwarf 93. There is no reprint, no Made to Order run, and no possibility of additional supply.

Most of these pins were removed from the card and worn - which was, after all, the point - so surviving examples still sealed in the polybag with the printed backing card intact represent a small fraction of what was distributed. The card carries the copyright line and the explanatory text confirming the Betrayal at Calth connection, which is the provenance documentation that separates this from an unidentified loose pin.

Collector interest has also strengthened with time rather than faded. Betrayal at Calth is now recognised as a genuine inflection point in the Horus Heresy line, and the MkIV plastic kits it introduced were retired when second edition arrived with MkVI armour - making 2015-era Calth memorabilia a marker of a closed chapter. For collectors building a complete Horus Heresy ephemera set, or Ultramarines players who want a piece of the launch, this is a small item that punches above its size.

Order Now

A sealed promotional badge from one of the most significant Warhammer releases of the last decade - and one that cannot be reissued. Add it to your cart today before it finds another collection. Carefully packed and shipped promptly from Hammer of War in Tacoma, Washington. Assembling a Horus Heresy collection? Message us about combined shipping and about what else we have coming in from this consignment.