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

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

To be fair Goonhammer are usually pretty scathing with their Horus Heresy content, to the extent I was genuinely surprised they wrote a largely positive review about this one. Their Legions Imperialis review in particular was very negative and that seemingly hasn't been enough to get them put on the naughty list.

 

 

 

Mandragola usually writes the in depth ones that call out rules issues. He didn't do this one, but I'm glad their writer still went fairly in depth with the review. Never forget their siege of cthonia review where they just refused to review the new rules lol.

[DuskRaider]

Goonhammer is usually pretty measured with their reviews and point out issues with GW material if it’s there. Even the recent review of the LI Tallarn expansion pointed out some head scratching issues with the book and rules, even if the review was generally positive. 
 

I have no horse in this race since I haven’t played HH for years, but the review seems pretty unbiased all things considered. In contrast, go read reviews of Star Wars (or Marvel) material and you can see exactly what shilling looks like, it’s blatantly obvious and it’s why I no longer trust media reviews on any content when it comes to that. 

I'll say this: I have no interest in playing HHv2, but the Dark Mechanicum stuff seems interesting, if not a little reserved for what it’s supposed to represent. Then again, this is taking place early in the Heresy, so I guess the really crazy stuff wouldn’t appear yet. 

[Nagashsnee]

 

 

Personally speaking I've just ordered the book so will make up my own mind whether it's any good or not, I don't need Youtubers with far less experience than me to tell me the pro and cons of a product. 

 

 

Reviews exist precisely so you don't have to BUY something to find out if it's any use/good. You buying the book makes pros and cons meaningless for this product, and at best might affect future sales.

 

Gw put out more then one article hyping this book up for mech players, as a loaylist mech player without reviews I would have a book that is literally useless for me for anything but lore. Which based on reviews is  marine bolter polishing to a significant degree anyhow.

 

 

 

[Petitioner's City]

In terms of reviewers, probably the most detailed from a mini perspective is chaos bunker, who well deserves his free models with the critical and intellectually/creatively rigorous approach he takes:

 

Eg

 

https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/2024/08/31/review-horus-heresy-mechanicum-thanatar-cavas-siege-automata/

 

Alas I don't think any reviewer does analysis of lore and fluff and art from the same exhaustive (Germanic!) perspective.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

Reviews exist precisely so you don't have to BUY something to find out if it's any use/good. You buying the book makes pros and cons meaningless for this product, and at best might affect future sales.

 

Gw put out more then one article hyping this book up for mech players, as a loaylist mech player without reviews I would have a book that is literally useless for me for anything but lore. Which based on reviews is  marine bolter polishing to a significant degree anyhow.

 

 

 

What do you mean “not buy”? How do you learn this power?

[Doghouse]

 

What do you mean “not buy”? How do you learn this power?

 

The dark side of the hobby is a pathway to many abilities some considered to be...unnatural. 

[Doghouse]

 

Reviews exist precisely so you don't have to BUY something to find out if it's any use/good. You buying the book makes pros and cons meaningless for this product, and at best might affect future sales.

 

Gw put out more then one article hyping this book up for mech players, as a loaylist mech player without reviews I would have a book that is literally useless for me for anything but lore. Which based on reviews is  marine bolter polishing to a significant degree anyhow.

 

Yeah but I buy non-gw stuff without reading reviews as well though. I don't need a review if I buy a new novel by an author I'm invested in or go to see a film I really want to see, that's how we did things before in the days of the internet. We formed our own opinions and tried things and found out ourselves. I'm buying it for myself because I feel that it will be of use and interest to me personally regardless if what any review says so no point in me reading a review for someone else's opinion.  

 

It's like I stopped buying 10th edition stuff because I formed an opinion based on my personal experience with the product and decided not to invest any more money into it. I didn't need a reviewer to tell me that, if others do need a review then it's fine.

 

Me buying it or not buying this book isn't going to make even the slightest difference in the greater scheme of things what-so-ever and I have no control over GW marketing. I really do not command that level of influence.

 

I do get the impression though you are not happy with the book in which case I am genuinely very sorry for your disappointment and I sincerely hope next time they make something that you feel is a better product that will meet your expectations. 

[SvenIronhand]

 

 

Only one I know of is Sword N Steele who thinks it was because of her video discussing the female Custodes.

 

 

 

 

 

I think it was her output more generally. She panders to a very specific subset of the fanbase.

[Taliesin]

I was interested to go back and see when they first mentioned doing a Dark Mechanicum book and found this slideshow from HH Weekender 2017. Start at 26:30

 

Clearly book 8 Angelus was imagined to be covering a huge amount of ground and its interesting to see that now in 2024, we are still seeing content imagined from that book.

 

 

 

[Petitioner's City]

 

I was interested to go back and see when they first mentioned doing a Dark Mechanicum book and found this slideshow from HH Weekender 2017. Start at 26:30

 

Clearly book 8 Angelus was imagined to be covering a huge amount of ground and its interesting to see that now in 2024, we are still seeing content imagined from that book.

 

 

 

 

It was first mooted in 2015 (at least) as "hopefully among the next four black books!"

 

 

 

For those waiting for an exploration of the more esoteric Heresy-era Adeptus Mechanicus cults in 40K, it probably won’t happen, as they don’t really exist in a notable form in 30K. (Names of cults were named, but went over my head – sorry.)

 

It’s not likely there will be skitarii models in the foreseeable future. Though they’ve been featured prominently in the novels, the tone of Alan and the designers was that they saw thallaxi and tech-thralls as the primary Heresy-era troop choice for the Mechanicum – so perhaps expect to see more of those in the novels from now on.

 

Myrmidon weapon packs are on the way soon.

 

Considering the often close relationship between the Iron Warriors and Mechanicum, there have been some discussions of crossover within their lists. As we know, Perturabo eventually builds a unit of robot bodyguards as he doesn’t trust his own men to protect him – along with the Heretek experiments the IV get into later, this may provide some Astartes/Mechanicum crossover.

 

Alan did want to explore the Raven Guard’s esoteric tech-use in ‘Extermination’, but there wasn’t room. The rules/background was written, and it will be in a later book.

 

Everyone is really looking forward to getting their teeth into rules and models for the Dark Mechanicum – “They will get scary.” On the Loyalist side, they may not have the warp-reliant stuff, but they will experiment with dark, historical (pre-Unity? Pre-Old Night?) tech which is just as dangerous in its own way.

 

There will be Mechanicum transfer sheets on the way – in fact, there will hopefully be a lot more transfers in general in the coming months, as FW have just hired someone to work full-time on decals. “Jes Goodwin’s daughter, funnily enough.” I don’t know if that was a joke or not, but if it means I get Alpha Legion transfers sooner, then cool.

 

Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal will get rules and ultimately a model. Hopefully a book – or at least a book section – about the Civil War on Mars will show up somewhere within the next 4 FW book releases.

 

There are ideas for Mechanicum flyers being floated (hah!) but you may not see the exact flyer described in ‘Garro: Shield Of Lies’ anytime soon.
 

 

 

This event included talks by people including "beautiful assistant" Andy Hoare, lead model designer Mark Bedford and of course Alan Bligh :)

Edited September 1 by Petitioner's City

[Marshal Rohr]

Important to note, “reviews” from influencers are actually infomercials, not reviews. Getting a hot tub streamer to talk about your video game after early access is not the same thing as a review. 

[Mandragola]

So I write the occasional review for goonhammer. I can speak to a couple of points on what the experience is like. It's not necessarily as much glitz and glamour as some of you might imagine.

 

Getting free toys is nice, obviously. I've had the opportunity to review a few kits and it's tricky because to be honest GW's models are nearly all very good nowadays. I try and talk about the construction, options (can they be magnetised etc) and maybe any tricky bits. Painting models up in time for a review deadline can be tough, especially when they aren't anything to do with your own actual army. And of course you can't post WIP shots online, at least till the review is published. So far I've never actually received a book in a usable format, so I end up paying for the ones I want. I don't think I'll bother with this one for now as there isn't anything in it that I need.

 

At goonhammer we benefit from having a lot of contributors, which helps a lot with book reviews. We chat about things and especially try to check we agree on what the rules mean as it's very easy to mess this up. We decide who writes a review on a case by case basis, so we split the Cthonia book, I did BG and someone else did Mars, mainly because of who had the capacity at the time. I'm about to move house and don't know much about mechanicum so I stayed out of this one.

 

This is a tricky book to review because you have the actual content of the book to review and also the question of what people would like the book to be - essentially a whole new faction book for badmech. I guess you could spend some time writing about what the book doesn't do but arguably there's a case for talking about its actual content.

 

Once a review is in the wild the main rule is that you can't win - some people will be angry because you say nice things and some because you are critical. I didn't like parts of the BG book and got a bit of stick for it, here and in other places. This time we have a relatively positive review and we're getting stick for that instead. That's just how it is on the internet in 2024, and probably how these things have always been. You can't really complain about people giving their point of view about your reviews when, as a reviewer, you have a big platform for your own. And anyway it's all engagement.

[Sky Potato]

 

So far I've never actually received a book in a usable format, so I end up paying for the ones I want.

Sorry if this is already common knowledge, but what does this mean, the review books aren’t in a usable format?

[Mandragola]

 

Sorry if this is already common knowledge, but what does this mean, the review books aren’t in a usable format?

I don't think I can really talk about it, but generally it's not in a format that would be convenient to use in games. It does tell us what the rules are to be fair, so you could play using it.

[Cactus]

 

I don't think I can really talk about it, but generally it's not in a format that would be convenient to use in games. It does tell us what the rules are to be fair, so you could play using it.

So... brass-bound folio size editions. In cuneiform.

[TheArtilleryman]

 

So... brass-bound folio size editions. In cuneiform.

I was thinking binary
 

01000011 01100001 01101101 01110000 01100001 01101001 01100111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000001 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000100 01100001 01110010 01101011 01101110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00111010 00100000 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110010 01110100 01101001 01100001 01101110 00100000 01000011 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101100 00100000 01010111 01100001 01110010

[siamtiger]

 

Sorry if this is already common knowledge, but what does this mean, the review books aren’t in a usable format?

 

In my case, I receive a password protected PDF that is heavily watermarked. So, yes, I can read it to write a review, but I could not take screenshots for it for reviews or extract any other information to break apart the wall of text. In some cases the preview articles from Warhammer Community provide enough imagery, that I can use that instead.

 

 

In terms of reviewers, probably the most detailed from a mini perspective is chaos bunker, who well deserves his free models with the critical and intellectually/creatively rigorous approach he takes:

 

Eg

 

https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/2024/08/31/review-horus-heresy-mechanicum-thanatar-cavas-siege-automata/

 

Alas I don't think any reviewer does analysis of lore and fluff and art from the same exhaustive (Germanic!) perspective.

 

Thank you very much for the feedback, highly appreciated :)

[Petitioner's City]

 

 

Thank you very much for the feedback, highly appreciated :)

 

Absolutely, I've loved your blog for years, for many reasons, including what I wrote above - and when you became a reviewer, thought it was the perfect choice by GW to involve you. 

[Xenith]

Hobbyists: Complain when a models rules go to a pdf as they say people won't allow them to be used in stores/official settings. Also complain when GW makes an official publication of those pdf rules to legitimise them in events. 

 

Hopefully people see this for the tongue in cheek post it is. I'm aware heresy players and GW have said that the HH pdf's are acceptable for organised play. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't complain if they made an official book out of the 40k legacies PDF and commited to supporting it. 

[Mandragola]

At the GHO in June I played against someone with a borrowed army, including a couple of blood slaughterers. None of us knew if they were a single unit of two or a talon like dreadnoughts and we didn’t know which pdf they were in. You could argue that the player should have known the rules for their army but they didn’t, and a book would have been useful. They also had a brass scorpion but I killed that before we had to find out what it did. 
 

That’s unlikely to come up again so I won’t bother with this book. The only thing it does for me is render the only Raven Guard special character that I’ve built useless. I’m not paying for that. Kaedes Nex can just sit in a box till the next edition. That might actually be fairly soon if the rumours are true, so who even knows how long the rules in here will survive. 

[Petitioner's City]

 

At the GHO in June I played against someone with a borrowed army, including a couple of blood slaughterers. None of us knew if they were a single unit of two or a talon like dreadnoughts and we didn’t know which pdf they were in. You could argue that the player should have known the rules for their army but they didn’t, and a book would have been useful. They also had a brass scorpion but I killed that before we had to find out what it did. 
 

That’s unlikely to come up again so I won’t bother with this book. The only thing it does for me is render the only Raven Guard special character that I’ve built useless. I’m not paying for that. Kaedes Nex can just sit in a box till the next edition. That might actually be fairly soon if the rumours are true, so who even knows how long the rules in here will survive. 

 

It sounds like you should just use the commonly shared online comprehensive PDF! Every document in one, in a good order 

[Razorblade]

 

That’s unlikely to come up again so I won’t bother with this book. The only thing it does for me is render the only Raven Guard special character that I’ve built useless. I’m not paying for that. Kaedes Nex can just sit in a box till the next edition. That might actually be fairly soon if the rumours are true, so who even knows how long the rules in here will survive. 

How did the book render him useless?

[ZeroWolf]

 

At the GHO in June I played against someone with a borrowed army, including a couple of blood slaughterers. None of us knew if they were a single unit of two or a talon like dreadnoughts and we didn’t know which pdf they were in. You could argue that the player should have known the rules for their army but they didn’t, and a book would have been useful. They also had a brass scorpion but I killed that before we had to find out what it did. 
 

That’s unlikely to come up again so I won’t bother with this book. The only thing it does for me is render the only Raven Guard special character that I’ve built useless. I’m not paying for that. Kaedes Nex can just sit in a box till the next edition. That might actually be fairly soon if the rumours are true, so who even knows how long the rules in here will survive. 

I think the rumour was a rules clean rather than ditching things. Definitely don't think it's a 10th edition style deal.

[Valkyrion]

Is 30k a main game or a specialist game? It is listed under the 'more' section of their website, so I'm guessing it counts as a specialist game.

Do specialist games follow the same 3 year cycle as the main games? I don't know enough about the AoS games or KT/Munda to notice. 

[Mandragola]

 

How did the book render him useless?

Worse guns and can’t now join any units, so he’ll just die. 

 

I think the rumour was a rules clean rather than ditching things. Definitely don't think it's a 10th edition style deal.

The rumours don’t agree on that. For now I’ll hold off buying this book that I don’t urgently need. 
 

These campaign books are optional. I don’t think I’ll use any of the content of this one so I’m not going to buy it unless that changes. There may be others for whom this is a perfect book. If so, great.