Martian Civil War Lore

I had the chance to read through the lore section of The Martian Civil War, the latest Horus Heresy campaign book, and...well, it's interesting. I do like a lot of it, but I won't deny that I came away feeling largely disappointed.

First, though, let's get this out of the way. I've seen a lot of complaints on social media about how a Mechanicum-centered book is a Legiones Astartes book instead. They are mostly exaggerated. Yes, the lore is about Space Marines...fighting Dark Mechanicum. But it's not only about the Legiones Astartes. The Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and Blood Angels are joined by Loyalist Mechanicum forces - the Pilgrim Skitarii being a very fascinating addition to the lore - and Solar Auxilia in the form of Saturnye Rams and Jovian Grenadiers (you'll remember these guys from Graham McNeill's Mechanicum), and the Legio Custodes. And the big bad, the primary antagonist, is the Dark Mechanicum. No two ways about it. The Alpha Legion shows up sporadically, but no other Traitor Legions appear. This is by and large a Loyalist "everybody" versus Dark Mechanicum book.

What, did you think the Dark Mechanicum will only fight Loyalist Mechanicum? That the Astartes stationed on Terra won't do anything about Traitors right on their doorstep?

Look, I get where the complaints are coming from. We pretty much have the Daemon Engines from The Depths of Tredecimmia exemplary battle encountered by the Imperial Fists when they launched an invasion of Bodt, a mustering ground and defensive bastion for the World Eaters, reprinted here. They are the Blood Slaughterers, Decimators, Kytan Daemon Engine and Greater Brass Scorpion. The Anima Malefica from that exemplary battle makes a return, but it has been updated with new rules! Specifically, you gain access to it if you take the Aethertek Proscribed Techno-arcana. You also get reprinted Corrupted Knight rules from The Battle for Felweather Keep exemplary battle. That aside, yes, we have no new datasheets or new models for the Mechanicum, aside from reprinted datasheets from a free exemplary battle PDF. I get that people are upset and disappointed.

But focusing on the three Unique Characters given to the Legiones Astartes (plus a fourth in the form of Legion Previans getting access to daemon engines for Traitors) and claiming that this is a Space Marine book is a bit of a stretch. Rules wise, there's plenty to indulge in if you're a Dark Mechanicum player. Reprinted Daemon Engines aside, you get new Warlord Traits and new Proscribed Techno-arcana. If you're talking balance or whining about how weak or useless these are, then I don't know what to say because I'm not a competitive player, but from what I can see, they seem very flavorful and open up new options. Nekrotek seems pretty fun, Malefekite is interesting with the Ruinous Cybernetica upgrade, and even Aethertek gives you a Decimator in your Troops slot. Plus there's an assassin one that's the Dark Mechanicum version of the Myrmidon, called Malimina.

The Krios gets a new weapon option - irradiation blaster - which hints that we might be getting a new plastic model. A squadron will pair well with the Triaros Armored Conveyor. Triaros and Krios. Hey, they rhyme!

I wonder if publishing the Corrupted Knights and Daemon Engines in free exemplary battle PDFs earlier was a mistake on Games Workshop part. People tend to be upset when you have to pay for stuff that was originally available for free. I do hope this doesn't put them off from creating new exemplary battles in the future, but they'll need to balance reprinting these with additional new content. That said, it is pretty cool to have exemplary battles' units officially published in an actual book so you can just refer to that single book instead of printing out the PDFs. Maybe. Your mileage may vary.

Honestly, though, I bought the book for the lore. As a Loyalist Mechanicum guy, I won't deny being disappointed that there was almost nothing rule-wise for me, whether it's datasheets, Warlord Traits, Techno-arcana, or whatever. There is a sweet campaign system that I will try out if I ever have a chance and get a group going, but aside from that, the lack of rules - though disappointing for Loyalist Mechanicum players - didn't really bother me. I was more interested in what was going on in Mars, if there was any new narrative content that wasn't covered in Graham McNeill's amazing Mechanicum novel in the Horus Heresy series.

...there was, but it was...disappointing to say the least.

To sum it up, there are three separate campaigns or battles/missions/events/incidents/whatever you call them in The Martian Civil War. The first one is a tale we're all very familiar with, especially those of us who have already read Graham's Mechanicum. Instead of Dalia Cythera's little group, the Knights of House Taranis, the Loyalist elements of Legio Tempestus or any mention of the battle at Koriel Zeth's Magma City (it's mentioned offhand, but that's it), we zoom in on the Imperial Fists' battle to secure munitions, power armor and war materials from Zagreus Kane's forge at Mondus Occulum. Sigismund and Camba Diaz lead four companies to Mondus Occulum and Mondus Gamma, with Camba Diaz accompanied by cohorts of Jovian Grenadiers. The Imperial Fists and Solar Auxilia are beset upon by the frenzied cyborgs and automata of Lukas Chrom.

Sounds familiar? That's because it's a more detailed account of that incident in Graham's Mechanicum.

There's also the Saturnye Rams who fought at Ipluvien Maximal and got wiped out. Ouch. I do like the detail that they added about the Saturnye and Jovian forces having a grudge because of a bitter history between them - the polities of Saturn having bent the knee to the Emperor first and thus received more favor than those of Jupiter, who resented them for it despite believing they deserve as much prestige. However, Jupiter resisted for much longer, which was why they weren't as...favored.

Legio Mortis shows up, as well as a bunch of Knights. The poor Knights weren't even given a name nor their House identified, just called the hunting dogs of Legio Mortis. I assume they are House Vextrix because a Knight in its colors gets a footnote and they are known to serve alongside Legio Mortis. Apparently, Legio Mortis and House Vextrix were hunting Legio Agrivades (Agravides?) and House Zavora.

There's a cool moment when the Legio Custodes teleport to save the beleaguered survivors of the Jovian Grenadiers, which I appreciate. Always gotta look out for the mortals. Good on you. Um, Sigismund, the Imperial Fists, and Zane's Taghmata took out the Knights accompanying Legio Mortis, but were forced to retreat because they're no match for the Titans.

After that, Knights are never mentioned again in the lore section. I call utter BS.

I won't lie, it's frustrating to see illustrations recycled from the old Horus Heresy black books from 1.0 - Conquest, Tempest, Retribution, etc. - with lots of Knights fighting alongside Taghmata forces. In those original black books, Knights are frequently described clashing against each other alongside opposing Taghmata forces. Yet, there was little to almost no mention of Knights, aside from nameless Knight fodder blown up by the Imperial Fists, and three pages of random Knight characters who aren't involved in any of the three incidents at all. Really?

The Martian Civil War, which was a great opportunity to flesh out non-Space Marine factions such as House Taranis, maybe House Zavora, perhaps House Vextrix - much like how the old black books went into details on the various Knight Houses (hell, you can see my Knight articles in the blog) - did not. I don't mind the inclusion of Imperial Fists, Raven Guard and Blood Angels. It makes total sense that they will dispatch missions to Mars. But why are you excluding House Taranis and other major Mechanicum/Knight factions that were involved in the Heresy? Why is there no mention of the Loyalist Legio Tempestus's last stand?

Omnissiah, this is a major disappointment.

The second battle is Corvus Corax leading a contingent of Raven Guard to Mars alongside the Legio Custodes to save the Arch-genetor Kephram Unguor, a Martian gene-wright who helped the Emperor create the Custodian Guard. He also helped elevate the adults (think Luther of the Dark Angels or Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers) to near Astartes level with his technology, though it had a high failure rate that proved fatal. Along with Shield Captain Sola Morvae Arcas, the same commander who led the Custodes force who rescued the Jovian Grenadiers earlier, Corax was to infiltrate Perditum Incendor with his sons. Reaching Mars, they met up with the Aedis Theta-14 Skitarii Pilgrym Conclave, commanded by First Ordinal Theta Gao, before taking off to Perditum Incendor.

Long story short, they failed.

Turned out the whole thing was a trap by Lukas Chrom to lure Custodians to Perditum Incendor so that he could kill and capture them for further research. He set daemon engines upon the Astartes and Custodians, as well as Skitarii. Lots of Loyalists die, despite taking a toll on the daemon engines, automata and tech-thralls, but Corax was able to fight his way to Chrom and grievously wound him before the villain teleported away. Kephram Unguor, by the way, was long dead, his body among a pile of Magi Biologis genetors ritually massacred for Chrom's dark designs.

So basically the Raven Guard (and a few Custodians) lost a lot of men for nothing. The Pilgrym Skitarii got wiped out (ouch), and further purges were done on Loyalist holdouts across Mars. Holy Omnissiah, this sucks for us Loyalist Mechanicum. It gets worse and worse.

The Pilgrym Skitarii is actually an awesome concept, and I wish we get rules for Skitarii in Horus Heresy. I really do. Hell, I think a lot of the flak this book is getting would be mitigated if they just provide Emperor-damned datasheets for Skitarii Rangers and Vanguard as Line Troops for Mechanicum. Let them take Triaros as transports, just give them Line and make them an option in Mechanicum armies (instead of the weird half-assed Titan detachment they get). Ugh. Ironstriders, Sydonian Dragoons and Onager Dunecrawlers will be cool too. For Omnissiah's sake, just give us actual Skitarii rules for Horus Heresy (not just the weird Titan detachment one for Secutarii)! The Pilgrym Skitarii are armed with photon and galvanic weapons, apparently - lots of photon rifles mentioned, so maybe we might be getting new Horus Heresy era Skitarii later down the line? I doubt it, but a cyborg can wish. Still, Skitarii for Horus Heresy and photon rifles...cool.

Oh, Corax, the surviving Custodes and Raven Guard leave empty-handed. What a waste of time.

The third and last battle is when scrap-code was transmitted from Mars to the servitor-slaved kill-sats in the Oort Cloud - especially some awesome titanic automata called the Arca Silentus, which was a spacecraft and construction platform combined to endlessly replicate attack automata-satellites among the Oort Cloud asteroids. The Arca Silentus, as you would expect, is corrupted by the scrap-code sent by Lukas Chrom (AGAIN), and turns into a gigantic daemon-automata thing that the Custodes struggle to defeat until they receive unexpected assistance from two Dark Angels Destroyers, who blow the whole platform to the warp with rad torpedoes. Again, this Custodes contingent is led by none other than Shield Captain Sola Morvae Arcas. Not sure if they (yes, Arcas is non-binary, it seems, and if you're going to whine about woke, go...wake up) survived. There is an aftermath addendum that says they discovered the wrecked Dark Angels destroyer, and though the mortal crew (serfs) and servitors were dead, they found the Astartes and Custodians in deep sus-an coma, and recovered them as high priority subjects. Arcas might be among them, I don't know.

Very rad.

On the other side, you have Praetor Aster Crohne leading Blood Angels Inductii and a single Dreadnought by the name of Hamonah, to Mars to destroy whatever was sending the scrap code. They are accompanied by a Legio Cybernetica Cohort named Capita Aquilae, commanded by Archmagos Domina Erane Shurol.

Again, long story short, the Blood Angels and Cybernetica army were beseiged by Chrom's daemon engines, and almost died when a Legio Mortis Titan showed up, only for Skitarii to show up and save their asses. Not only do they blast apart the corrupted automata with exotic energy weapons, they also produced an Ordinatus engine that blew up the Titan in two shots. Hah!

The Blood Angels had to fight a Brass Scorpion later, which was guarding the two siege-walkers that were transmitting the scrap code. They destroyed it, along with lots of other automata, but two more Brass Scorpions showed up! Thankfully, the Arca Silentus was destroyed by the Dark Angels at that moment, and the feedback hit them, shutting down the daemon engines or something, allowing the Blood Angels to counterattack and destroy them. Hamonah sacrificed himself to detonate the reactor of one of the engines, which blew up and wrecked its twin. Loyalists win. Oort cloud servitor-satellites were secure and safe from scrap-code. Chrom, as usual, escaped again (this is getting annoying), but at least this isn't meaningless like the Raven Guard one.

The lack of Knights is...disappointing. We get brief mentions - House Taranis Questoris Knight Styrix "Mors Iram" and its scion who escaped the doom of the Magma City and pledged her service to various Loyalist enclaves and roving warbands against the Traitors. At least she will be reunited with other scions of House Taranis after the Siege of Terra as distant detachments returned to their homeworld.

There's also Hastam Glorae, pilot of the Cerastus Knight Lancer (the damned book didn't even get it right, it called it a Questoris Knight Lancer, shows you how little effort they put into the poor Knights), "Rubricatus Exul," part of the 19th Vanguard Lance of House Taranis. He was waiting to embark a House Taranis conveyor-barque when the Death of Innocence erupted across Mars, and fought through the Ring of Iron to his transport along with other knights of House Taranis. Fortunately, the Knights of House Taranis escaped the Ring of Iron and Mars safely.

But...yeah, Knights of House Taranis, apart from these brief anecdotes, are not involved in the main story at all. It's very disappointing. At least give us a datasheet of Raf Maven or Leopold Cronus? C'mon. We do get Steadfast Aegis the House Vextrix Knight Atropos I mentioned earlier hunting poor Knights of House Zavora and Titan Legio Agrivades. But that's it. Compared to the black books of 1.0, this is...very disappointing. In Conquest, Tempest and Retribution, we have accounts of entire Knight Houses clashing. That was where House Vyronii first appeared, and pretty much became the poster boys for Horus Heresy Knights. You have House Malinax for the Traitors. They were very involved in the main conflicts of the Horus Heresy. Yes, Space Marines Legions were the main players, but the Legiones Astartes were not the only factions to be embroiled in civil war. You need to expand on the Knights as well.

At least the Mechanicum get a token mention. Skitarii, Pilgrym Skitarii, Capita Aquilae, etc. on the side of the Loyalists against the daemon engines and twisted automata of Lukas Chrom and other Dark Mechanicum forces. But Legio Tempestus? House Taranis? House Zavora? C'mon.

I might be nitpicky, but there's another thing that really, really annoys me as a Mechanicum fan. Always, the Astartes are described as superior, more skilled, blah blah blah than the "limited" programming of the automata. Until that "limited" protocols were overcome by the Dark Mechanicum's proscribed daemon engines, then the corrupted engines became a match for the Astartes. The "Emperor's Genecraft" was often pitted against the "machines of Mars" and proved superior, until Daemons are involved. Yeah, yeah, I don't need you to tell me two or three times how the Astartes/Custodians are superior to automata (which kind of makes no sense, given that the automata are tougher and have more firepower on the tabletop, and cost more points). It's always how the Astartes lose only a dozen, but they slaughtered dozens of automata and hundreds (if not thousands) of Tech-thralls. Or the Custodes butchered dozens of automata while losing only one of their number. Only the limitless numbers of the automata and daemon engines end up overwhelming them.

Tech-thralls being fodder, I can understand, but c'mon, leave my precious automata alone. It's getting depressing to read. Am I supposed to concede if I'm playing Mechanicum and my opponent brings Space Marines or Legio Custodes? I know Astartes are "awesome," but surely there has to be a better way of illustrating it rather than simply mowing down endless hordes of automata. Like, the Castellax is tougher than the typical Astarte Legionnaire, yet the latter are somehow destroying dozens of the former with bolters and chainswords without taking relatively many casualties in return?

I call BS.

Seeing your faction turned into a punching bag does not feel good. And this isn't the Skitarii we're talking about here. The hundreds of tech-thralls getting massacred, I understand. If a hundred Skitarii fall for a dozen Astartes in exchange, that's a good trade. But automata? How? Are you going to bring them down in points in the future or something? It's like someone forgot how robots in Warhammer 40,000 are supposed to work.

It's just a nitpick, and while it doesn't feel good to read how automata are being massacred by the dozen without doing much to the Astartes opponent, honestly, it really isn't a big deal. Units get nerfed all the time, lore constantly changes, and I'll just move on. Valrak says there's a new streamlined edition next year, so hopefully they'll balance everything out rather than just favor Astartes. I know the game is Astartes centered, but honestly, that doesn't mean you nerf all the other factions to oblivion or exclude them from the lore. I wish there was more involvement of Knight houses in The Martian Civil War instead of token anecdotes - and seriously, you're reusing all those amazing illustrations from the first edition Horus Heresy black books with lots of Knights in them! For Omnissiah's sake, make use of them in the lore as well!