Horus Heresy Campaigns in the Age of Darkness: The Martian Civil War

[Lord Marshal]

And it's not even Thursday!

 

 

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As the Imperium burned in the fires of Horus’ ambition, the tech-adepts of the Mechanicum were no less riven by the Warmaster’s schism. Many who felt constrained by the Emperor’s edicts were lured by the promise of forbidden secrets, and even Mars itself was torn apart by civil war as Magos turned against Magos to seize the tech-vaults beneath the dunes.

 

You can refight this brutal war for control of the red planet in The Martian Civil War, the next narrative expansion in the Campaigns of the Age of Darkness series full of new lore, rules, and missions for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy.

In addition to an expansive section of background covering the Schism of Mars, its internal strife, and Rogal Dorn’s campaign to safeguard the defence of the Sol System, this expansion book contains rules for fielding a variety of malefic technologies previously seen in Exemplary Battles, from Questoris Knights in the early stages of corruption to the fearsome Daemon Engines that rose up amongst Mechanicum clades which fully harnessed the secrets of the warp.

 

Edited July 8 by Lord Marshal

[Matcap86]

Oh dang, that looks cool.

[roryokane]

Excited for the additional lore snippets this is going to offer! :)

[SkimaskMohawk]

The exemplary battle units make me very nervous after the daemon fulgrim book, but the list construction changes does some work to give me hope. 

 

Its a little weird though. Stuff got kicked out of the core lists because there weren't dedicated 30k kits for them, but we now have 2 books that are going to have stuff that...still doesn't have dedicated models lol. 

[Joe]

To be honest, the daemon engines rules as-is aren't actually that bad. I can't see them making them any worse.

 

I would hope they at least look at bringing stuff like the Blood Slaughterer and Decimator into plastic, though.

[Lord Marshal]

3 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Its a little weird though. Stuff got kicked out of the core lists because there weren't dedicated 30k kits for them, but we now have 2 books that are going to have stuff that...still doesn't have dedicated models lol. 

 

Aren't all the Daemon Engines in the Exemplary Battles still rocking in-production models though? 

[Nagashsnee]

I know hype is the first step on the road to disappointment,  but i have been waiting for this book ( and fires of cyraxes) for so so so long. How long?

 

When i first heard of the idea for a mars schism book at a FW open day i was not going bald. 

When i first saw the sketches for a volike dunewalker crab tank none of my close friends have kids ( some of them have 3 now).

When this book was first being talked about the idea of a second edition for HH centered around a TON of plastic kits would have you laughed out of a room.

 

I cannot help but be hyped for this book, the possibilities for mech are endless, skitarii, myrmidon cult subtypes, more automata, special characters. Dark mech is a given and the article adressed them at least. 

 

My fear is this will end up being 30% re prints, 30% space marines and 30% dark mech. Then some campaign stuff. 

 

Spirit of FW pasts heed my plea! Be the people who got bfg rules into imperial armor, be the the writers we need you to be and knock this out of the park! Give us tech assasins and crazy myrmidon priests, give us legio ordinatus and Knights of Taranis, give us a wacky titan special character, go crazy and go far!

Edited July 8 by Nagashsnee

[Dark Shepherd]

Feels like they would have talked up new models more if there were many if any coming with this

[Marshal Rohr]

Please GOD include the Skitarii models

[Cerbero666]

I was expecting this for years, sadly the announcement feels like it will just be a ton of background (which I'm glad about) and a compilation of past rules with a couple of new traits and maybe characters. But I'm afraid this is not the release we were expecting since the days of the black books (no new automata, no new skitarii, no new daemon engines, no new weapons, etc...). Hope I'm wrong. 

[Lord Marshal]

15 minutes ago, Dark Shepherd said:

Feels like they would have talked up new models more if there were many if any coming with this

 

To be fair they were revealing the Bacon-Gammon characters right up until the days before pre-order. We didn't even know some things like Legiones Auxilia and Optae existed until the leaks/influencers. For whatever reason they don't seem to drop everything at once with the Horus Heresy campaigns. 

 

For my money I reckon there'll be at least one new plastic thing for Mechanicum if the Hermes Sentinels for SA were anything to go by.

 

Revealing this book on a Monday and not just waiting for an upcoming Thursday is probably a good sign there's stuff in the pipeline too (even if it ends up being resins).

 

Edited July 8 by Lord Marshal

[Zoatibix]

When they revealed the Mechanicum battleforce they were clear that there was more to come for Mechanicum. I would be very surprised if they meant just one book.

 

 

[Lupercals chosen]

Didn't the Imperial Fists get involved in the Martian conflict in order to secure astartes equipment from the forges before they fell, namely Mk iv power armour? Could this see the release of new plastics for this armour type? Or has that now been retconned?

Edited July 8 by Lupercals chosen

[Lord Marshal]

4 minutes ago, Lupercals chosen said:

Didn't the Imperial Fists get involved in the Martian conflict in order to secure astartes equipment from the forges before they fell, namely Mk iv power armour? Could this see the release of new plastics for this armour type? Or has that now been retconned?

 

Iirc it was MKVI that Siggy's force procured from Mars.

 

Beta-Garmon featured Shattered Legions and Blackshields without giving us MkV plastics and the current round of rumours are pointing to MkII next year instead. 

[Joe]

Not Mark IV, but rather a large stock of Mark VI and early prototypes of Mark VII. It's likely from this source that the Traitor Legions acquired the STCs for the armour pattern to be able to produce their own.

[Petitioner's City]

By including traits like the Sarum one, I presume this will cover more than Mars itself, but the mech more widely. 

[Marshal Mittens]

This sounds pretty cool, I am optimistically hopeful. 

[Noserenda]

Ups and downs on this announcement, its great that they are finally covering mars after teasing it for sooome time as @Nagashsnee eloquently put it :D But it seems like its going to be a single book with a bunch of reprints and dark mech is now back to being a Rite of war rather than their own list (At least for now). 

I guess we will see but it feels truncated to me, boasting about upping the Titan limit as a scenario rule feels particularly shallow, like, people were already just doing that if they wanted 40k scale titan battles with infantry etc.

[Petitioner's City]

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

I guess we will see but it feels truncated to me, boasting about upping the Titan limit as a scenario rule feels particularly shallow, like, people were already just doing that if they wanted 40k scale titan battles with infantry etc.

 

It also sounds like a campaign only strategem, which - while easy to apply to non-campaign games - is something someone can do anyway.

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

I have enjoyed all the book for HH 2.0 so far so I welcome this with open arms. The lore and art is always a thrill to me and I just absolutely love the whole Horus Heresy setting. Mechanicum aren't a faction I'll be piking up but I'll definitely get this as soon as it releases. Hopefully this means the release of Mechanicum units isn't far off and in turn maybe Space Marines will actually get some proper support. 

[Petitioner's City]

Praetorian, I really wish I could agree, but there is something not quite working with the past three books - something lesser compared to what came before. However, I'm hopeful this book, which must build on ideas that originate with Bligh and French (based on seminars at heresy days ten years ago :( ), may be much stronger 

[Mr Farson]

I'm hoping for the long awaited skitarii list but expecting a book with reprints and a few Warlord traits / wargear options and not much else.

 

Either way I'm buying it for long awaited new fluff on the Martian schism. This feels very overdue 

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

Not all in this live must be Astartes! I really hope they include rules for Skitarii and similar units, present in W40K. And more plastification.

My SoH are nearly complete. Maybe is time to start a new army, isn't it?

[SkimaskMohawk]

7 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

 

Aren't all the Daemon Engines in the Exemplary Battles still rocking in-production models though? 

 

Ya, the daemon engines have models. But unless they completely redo the knight dark blessings, there's a whole bunch of chassis that need conversion work to run.

 

Not that they're even fully consistent with the "no model, not in main rules" thing anyways. There's a number of units that still have models but oddly didn't make it, like the Medusa, tarantula, various planes and larger tanks, etc...

 

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@JoeTo be honest, the daemon engines rules as-is aren't actually that bad. I can't see them making them any worse.

 

I would hope they at least look at bringing stuff like the Blood Slaughterer and Decimator into plastic, though.

 

Oh I don't think the rules are bad for all the engines.  Just reselling unchanged PDFs is a bad precedent they've already started.

Edited July 8 by SkimaskMohawk

[Marshal Loss]

Would have (much) preferred to see the melee weapons, but that cover is gorgeous and it's nice to see Mars finally appear in a book after all these years. I hope they've done it justice.

 

I thought the narrative in the Beta-Garmon campaign book was pretty poor, to be frank, but there's a lot of potential for the Martian setting. Hopefully there are lots of nice colour plates and the book is a better end product than the last publication drawing upon exemplary battles content.