The Chime of Eons - The Astra Militarum

“I have at my command an entire battle group of the Imperial Guard. Fifty regiments, including specialized drop troops, stealthers, mechanized formations, armored companies, combat engineers and mobile artillery. Over half a million fighting men and thirty thousand tanks and artillery pieces are mine to command. Emperor show mercy to the fool that stands against me, for I shall not.”

– Warmaster Demetrius, at the outset of the Salonika Crusade.


Welcome back, readers, to The Chime of Eons, a column about the fluff of the Warhammer 40,000: Conquest LCG.

To date, we’ve beheld the fallen glories of the ancient Eldar, looked upon the rising star of the Tau Empire and seen humanity’s gene-engineered superheroes, the Adeptus Astartes. This time, we bring things back to plain, basic, wonderful humanity. This article is about the Astra Militarum – the countless regiments that make up the bulk of the fighting forces of the Imperium of Man,

All factions are not created equal. While this faction has been in place since the very first Rogue Trader edition of Warhammer 40,000, they’ve likely not received the attention they deserve. Rebranding and revisualising has occurred, with the Imperial Army of the Rogue Trader era becoming the Imperial Guard of most of the editions proper, till recently they were redubbed the Astra Militarum, with GW likely hoping that a cool latin-style name will up the style factor and draw in the fans.

This name change has triggered strong responses in the GW fan communities, but personally I've not any strong feelings one way or the other. GW is always messing with their setting's lexicon, and we can still call these guys the Imperial Guard if we want to, we just have the option to call them the Astra Militarum as well.

Their miniature range has also evolved, with the mid-1990s changing them from just default soldiers into a whole range of individually styled regiments, and the last few years seeing them receive some of their prettiest miniatures and new vehicles yet.

Despite this, they’ve never been quite as popular as the Space Marines. They’re not high-tech super-soldiers, and they don’t really have the “knights in space” vibe that makes Space Marines such great poster boys for the 40k product. They’re basically and recognisably human soldiers. They’re ordinary men (and women, occasionally, though the miniature range and official art shows about as many females as it does non-caucasians, i.e. not many) holding a rifle and hoping that the alien gribblies don’t devour them. Their tanks look like tanks, their artillery is great big howitzers and their high tech close combat upgrade is a bayonet or combat knife.

This though, is part of their greatest appeal to those who do love them. They’re the human viewpoint in a futuristic and alien universe. They’re heroic not because they have superhuman skill at war, but because they don’t, and because they fight on anyway.

This makes the Imperial Guard the common choice of the older player who finds the quiet camaraderie of squaddies more heroic than superhuman strength, of the historical wargamer tempted to science fiction and of the dedicated fan of the underdogs.

The sheer number of miniatures you need to play with them on the tabletop means that they’re not an investment for those who want to invest lightly into 40k. An Imperial Guard fan is a true 40k fan, who knows that half a year’s wages and five years painting will pay off when you can line up five hundred miniatures in serried ranks, and who shrugs resignedly when ten eldar, space marines or necrons kill half of them in one game turn.

Happily this is an LCG, so you can now be a fan of the Imperial Army with no more financial or temporal investment than any other player. Damn you!

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THE ASTRA MILITARUM
The Astra Militarum Faction Meta-Fluff Score: 2/5

The Astra Militarum (as we Imperial Guard fans still haven’t got used to calling it) are the primary land army of the Imperium at war. While the Navy engages in space battles, the Planetary Guard protects and garrisons, the Arbites enforces law and the Astartes act as a rapid response force, the bulk of the fighting done by the Imperium is done by the Astra Militarum.

As we said before, not all factions are created equal.

There’s approximately one million Space Marines fighting for the Imperium, and there’s not many Eldar about in total (how many exactly is a favourite fan argument with various quotes and sources suggesting anything from a hundred thousand to tens of billions for Craftworld, but for the sake of being arbitrary, I like the feel of the estimate of 30-40 billion across all Craftworlds with only a fraction of these representing fighting forces), there’s only one world-city for the Dark Eldar, the Tau are thinly spread across thirty or so worlds, and so on. For the coverage the wargame gives, you’d think there were more space marines than anything else, but that’s not the fluff at all. The Imperial Guard is the big army, with so many soldiers that the Departmento Munitorum can’t even estimate it to within an order of magnitude.

Many billions of soldiers across many millions of regiments is the guideline, with a regiment representing anything from a few hundred soldiers to tens of thousands. The Fortress World of Cadia alone has around six hundred million men and women under arms, and while its notable as the most militarised world of the Imperium, there's any number of hive worlds with massive populations that tithe a proportion of their soldiers to the regiments.

At a conservative estimate, Imperial Guard outnumber Space Marines 4000 to 1, and perhaps even 40000 to 1 or more. When the Imperium of Man goes to war (and war has been its state of being since its inception) it is the Imperial Guard who fight the battles, and most warzones will never even see a single space marine, let alone a whole deployment of them. Even the Cadian Regiments alone outnumber the Space Marines six hundred to one, and likely their forces under arms also outnumber the total numbers of fighting Eldar, of fighting Tau, and so on. If we were going to enforce a strict guideline of having all battles in the 40k galaxy be shown proportionally, it'd make for a hell of a lot of Imperial Guard vs Orks games!
The base unit of the Imperial Guard is the Regiment, which consists of a group of soldiers recruited from a single world on a single founding. Once the Regiment is formed, it is sent forth to wherever the Adeptus Terra decrees, and most often they’ll never see reinforcements. Either they’ll fight their way to honourable disbandment, or (as is considerably more likely) they’ll fight till their numbers are ineffective, and be overwhelmed by one of humanity’s many enemies.

The equipment of the Regiments is based on the idea that everything needs to be able to be mass produced on the cheap, and must be reliable and easy to fix if broken. The trusty lasgun is the armament of choice, turned out by the millions every day by the Forge Worlds of the Adeptus Mechannicus.

The deployment of Regiments is also a ponderous thing, with any request for military help needing to work its way up to the Adeptus Terra, run through its bureaucracy, and passed back to a suitably placed force. Even then, the Astra Militarum can’t move on its own, as it is forbidden for regiments to have their own interstellar craft (as creating a mobile fighting force with millions of men under arms is an invitation for secessionary empires) and so must wait for the Imperial Navy to transport them to their warzone.

The Administratum of the Adeptus Terra isn’t terribly efficient or well informed either: its entirely possible a steel pin haphazardly stuck into a map in the wrong place might send an entire army to the wrong warzone, or that a “regiment” to reinforce a battlefront might consists of two dozen troopers who survived the last campaign (wandering the cavernous halls of the Galaxy Troop Ship assigned to transport them), or that a backyard rebellion of a hundred heretics is met by two tank regiments and twenty infantry regiments (when it was meant to be met by two tanks and twenty infantryman).

If the Astra Militarum is the hammer of the Emperor, its sometimes one wielded by a blindfolded man.

Indeed, with bureaucratic delays, travel times and warp storms, it is possible a regiment will arrive days, weeks, decades or even centuries too late to fight in the war. A regiment might be dispatched to put down a small rebellion and arrive to find an entrenched independent republic that has escaped Imperial rule for a hundred years.
In game mechanics terms, what we want from the Astra Militarum is massive force, massive numbers, attrition warfare that is won through meatgrinder tactics, and murderous ponderousness. If we wanted a truly accurate Imperium-at-war experience, we’d have the Space Marines playing the first (D3xD3)+2 turns of the game desperately trying to keep the Eldar or Orks at bay, then the arrival of a dozen Galaxy Troops Ships each carrying five to seven regiments suddenly turning the war very firmly in favour of the Imperium.

This is tough to achieve in an LCG, and though there are game mechanics that might have done it, we’d be looking at a totally different sort of game. Instead, we’re reasonably looking for a force that has large numbers of low quality troops, one which slowly builds momentum until it is unstoppable, and which is perfectly happy to sacrifice Army Units to gain an inch of ground.


Broadly, it’s not much of a success. There’s a nice feeling of swarm tactics with benefits from sacrifice from Guardsman tokens, though they really should have been Guardsmen plural. Yeah, I know at this stage a lot of people are sick of me hearing about pluralisation, but here it really is jarring.

Edit: To be clear here, this doesn't make Conquest a bad LCG. In fact, its the best LCG out there, and an even better way of experiencing the W40K IP than, say, the W40K wargame! Though the game does fail (in my eyes) in representing the fluff of the Astra Militarum to some degree, as we've already seen it does succeed in representing the Space Marines, Eldar and Tau. Also, failing in fluff representation of the Astra Militarum isn't the same thing as it being not fun to play. This is a great and enjoyable LCG faction in a great and enjoyable game! The reasons for this are in great game design, a nice sense of game balance, good strategic depth and excellent aesthetic design.

The Mobile trait is nicely and conspicuously absent, but there’s no feel that the Astra Militarum are especially slower on the startup or stronger in the endgame than other factions. We’ve got the big tanks and the individual troopers, but there’s few unit cards that could feasibly represent infantry turning up by their thousands. Its not a terrible fluff depiction, per se, but there seem to be a lot of missed opportunities that hopefully later cards will rectify, to make playing the Astra Militarum feel more like playing the Astra Militarum. For one thing, it’d be great to see a Warlord or Support card that lets you build momentum somehow, like an end-stacked version of Promethium Mine that gives you 6 resources in 3 turns time, or a card that promises stacks of Guardsman tokens on a planet, but only 2 turns from now. This faction has time to get fluffier, but its not quite there yet.
The Alliances are, for once, perfectly placed:

The Space Marine alliance is fine, as we’re looking at two militaries that serve the same Imperium. Personally I’d much rather have seen a different way of representing the Imperium than two discrete factions, as the Imperial way of war is more one that incorporates dramatic Space Marine interventions with the slow attrition of the Guard, the space support of the Navy and the integration of multiple other forces (such as the local Planetary Guard, the Adeptus Sororitas, the Adeptus Arbites, and so on). That’s regarding the game as the whole though, and within the current structure, Space Marine allies make more sense than any other faction.

The Ork alliance is actually entirely appropriate as well, which is mildly ironic given that "orks and astra militarum" are the most commonly given example of why the Alliance Wheel doesn't fit the fiction when you chat about this game on the internet.

While Orks mostly fight everybody, there’s a lot of older fluff that talks about the Bloodaxe Clan working with the Imperials, Freebooterz hiring themselves out, and so on. The current canon fluff mentions this far less often (it was much more of a front page feature of the 2nd Edition of the wargame (and we're now on the 7th)), but the alliance charts in the current wargame rules suggest the association hasn’t ever been retconned, so Ork / Militarum alliances remain wholly feasible. We'll mention this alliance a little more from the Ork point of view next week!

Actually for Alliances the main fluff problem with the LCG is that there’s not much reason for the Militarum not to be placed as allies to many other factions too.

The Tau, for example, have subverted whole human populations to their Empire, and that has to include some Guard Regiments, if only Planetary Defence Forces rather than Astra Militarum. In return the Imperial Guard has often employed Kroot Mercenaries, whose Shaper Warbands are AWOL from the Tau Empire carrying out unsanctioned meat-sampling of distant sectors.

An Imperial Guard commander is less likely to pridefully turn down Eldar assistance than most, especially if facing a joint enemy.

The biggest omission though is Chaos: entire regiments have gone traitor many times in the setting’s history.

You might argue, of course, that we’re not looking at mainstream Astra Militarum proper when looking at these alliances, but certainly Eldar alliances are at least as likely as Ork ones, and while Chaos Marines and Tau Fire Warriors serving a loyal Militarum commander is highly unlikely, disloyal Militarum forces defecting to Chaos or Tau is very likely!

Overall, I’m glad to see the Astra Militarum have a presence in the Core Set, and I’m happy that FFG has made some effort to represent that they’re all about expendable infantry, big guns and big tanks.

I’m less happy that the ponderousness of the faction hasn’t been emphasised (beyond a lack of mobile and poor card draw), and that small scale is so often the default scale for an Astra Militarum card.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again: in a game about battling for planets across a sector, the default scale for an Army should have been Space Marine Company / Imperial Guard Regiment / Eldar Warhost / Ork Warband and not Ratling Sniper / Penal Legionnaire. Hell, even Ratling Sniper Squad and Guardsman Squad is too small! If the Astra Militarum deploys even a single platoon to take a planet, you're either looking at a high command snafu, or Colonel Schaffer's Last Chancers!

It is for this faction especially that the lack of scale is most jarring, and hardest to forgive.





THE SIGNATURE SQUAD

Colonel Straken (Core Set)
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 5/5

Colonel “Iron Hand” Straken is the regimental commander of the Catachan Second Regiment. Likely the game dropped the “Iron Hand” bit to avoid confusion with the Iron Hands space marine chapter (and the Iron Hands Techmarine card) which, to be clear, he is entirely unrelated to.

To understand Straken you have to understand the Catachans.

In the Imperium, there are many different sorts of worlds defined by various characteristics. There are Hive Worlds that have hundreds of billions of citizens in crowded cities divided by polluted wastelands. There are Agri-Worlds given over to farmland, there are Fortress Worlds that guard key strategic stellar locations, Forge Worlds that turn out war materiel, Shrine Worlds devoted to the Ecclesiarchy, and many other types beyond. Of these Death Worlds are of note, as they are categorised as planets which harbor life, but where the environment and natural threats make human life near impossible.

Catachan is one such world, covered with a dense jungle that is teeming with life, but almost all of it poisonous, predatory or worse, and all of it seemingly determined to rid the planet of its human inhabitants.

Only 12 million humans live on Catachan, and every day is a struggle for survival. The Catachan Jungle Fighters from this world are experts in survival and warfare, who learnt to shoot a gun in childhood before they could walk. Indeed, survival on this planet is only possible because of the supplies the Imperium sends in exchange for their soldiers’ tours of duties in the Astra Militarum.

Colonel Straken is a typical Catachan tough-guy. He is nicknamed Iron Hand because of his bionic arm, the original arm having been eaten by a Miral Landshark, who Straken famously killed a few moments later by biting its throat out!

That’s how ridiculously tough he is – he gets his arm bitten off by the death world variant of a giant tiger, and then kills it with his teeth. Denigrators might say that the story is mistold, and that it was actually his “Catachan Fang” (i.e. his combat knife) that he used, but even so that’s impressive: he’s had his arm bitten off, and he pries his knife from his own dismembered right hand, then left-handedly defeats a monster!
In the fiction, he’s depicted as the tough, scathing drill-sergeant sort who is rough round the edges but will never leave a man behind. He’s the sort of inspiring leader who the men will hate at first, then be willing to die for. In other words, he’s pretty much a walking Vietnam War movie cliché, turned up to 11 for the OTT madness that is Warhammer 40,000.

His special ability is appropriate, in that you can see that he’s the sort of man that inspires followers to greatness. While we might call it a stretch to have him earning the respect of Orks and Space Marine soldiers and warriors as well, we can allow this ridiculousness given the inherent madness of the character’s fluff. You can totally see a Games Workshop author describing how he wins the Goff Boyz respect by winning undergoing and winning their face-eater squig trial, and by headbutting their boss into unconsciousness.

The art looks right: all the right equipment is there, from the red bandana to the Catachan Fang. Emergent play feels perfect too, with a commander who is adept at piling into the thick of combat, and who does best when in direct command of proper soldiers and warriors.

Overall, he's not my first choice for a core set Astra Militarum commander because he doesn't really typify the faction. The "standard" Imperial Guard commander is the upper class officer who dines in the Mess, doesn't fraternise with the troops, and congratulates his peers on three hundred yards of territory gained at a mere ten thousand men lost. Straken is an exception to the rule, and thats what makes him interesting, but it also means that if we're looking for a Core Set faction that typifies the usual style and feel of the Astra Militarum its not going to be found in anything loyal to the fiction background of Colonel Straken, and vice versa. Contrast the excellent choices of Shadowsun and Cato, both of whom represent the orthodox mainstream approach of their factions, and thus are better Core Set choices.

This choice doesn't reduce the fluffiness of the Straken card - he's a 5/5 in his own right for fluffiness comparison of card and background - but it does create fluff design conflicts in his signature squad, as the designers seem torn between representing the style of Straken, and the style of the Astra Militarum, as we shall see...


Straken’s Command Squad (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

This is a mixed bag in fluff terms.

If we’re feeling positive, we’d observe that a command squad makes excellent sense as an HQ choice for an Astra Militarum warlord. The defence in depth card ability makes for nice emergent play as well, giving the fluffy feeling of there always being more guardsmen in the next wave, and emulating the fluffy feeling of an Astra Militarum who believe in warfare by attrition. As an Astra Militarum card in general, it doesn’t make much sense that you have to lose a Command Squad to gain the Guardsman, as that’s pretty much the opposite of how it’d work: with the death of the command squad, the lines are likely to falter and break. It’d make more sense fluffwise for the Guardsmen to come into play when the Command Squad does, and to have the Command Squad be unattackable while there are Guardsmen in play. Emergent play justifies this though, as the overall sense of making a deck feel like it is a meatgrinder of attrition warfare supports the ability as it stands. Thus, I’m tempted to say 4/5.

The art of the card is good too, pretty much depicting the Catachan Command Squad minis. The Catachan banner is shown, and the style of dress of the squad is very Catachan, which is unsurprising as it’s a straight lift of the box art of the Catachan Command Squad miniatures.
If we’re feeling negative, which I sadly am, I’d observe the following:

Firstly, for Colonel Straken himself, Command Squads aren’t a big thing. He’s one to lead his regiment from the front, shouting his orders himself. More sensible would be his signature squad representing the Catachan Devils, who are the veteran soldiers that make up the bulk of the Catachan Second Regiment. While a Colonel is a commander of a Regiment, and while each Infantry Regiment is typically made of multiple platoons each with its own Command Squad, four command squads for Straken seems an odd choice, especially when we don't see the rest of the platoons represented and especially when the Catachan 2nd is comprised of small numbers (being from a low population world) of veteran soldiers who tend to operate in single squads specialising in guerilla work and small unit tactics. Clearly this is 4x because a design decision was made for Signature Squads to be 4x, regardless of fluff.
Secondly, for Colonel Straken, a theme of war by attrition and defence in depth is thoroughly discordant with his established background.

This is the commander who dragged and carried a single fallen guardsman halfway across the continent of Martark to get him to the medicae. He emphatically does not believe in sacrificing his troops, nor in attrition warfare, nor in victory by meatgrinder tactics. Rather, his goal is to defend his men as they defend him, and to count every casualty taken as something to be regretted. If he puts his men in danger, he's always right there alongside them, first into the breach and first in the line of fire.

So the card is a great Astra Militarum card, but a poor Signature Squad card for Straken.

Omega Zero Command (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

The art here is nice: a great iron bastion that is halfway in appearance between a temple and a fortress, classic Imperium style. The effect is again, great for Astra Militarum in general, but its not representative of Colonel Straken.

The effect suggests vast reserves of Guardsmen, who just need to be deployed and who are held back by logistical factors rather than manpower. If this were a card in the signature squad of a more typical Militarum warmaster, or if it were just a Loyal card rather than a Signature card, it would be 5/5 for fluffiness.

As it is, the mismatch of it being a Straken card sets it back significantly. Our Warlord is a front line field-commander, not a REMF! His most famous quote is "Damn it, follow me, I'll show you how it's done!"

Glorious Intervention (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 2/5

This is getting repetitive now: sacrificing units for the greater war-plan is perfect for Militarum, terrible for Straken.

A Straken card should read that the Warlord takes the damage instead if a Unit at the same planet, and then he attacks the attacker.

I guess we could take this as saying that Straken is the sort of commander who inspires heroic interventions from his followers, but we're stretching now...
This card scores lower than the other signature ones as the art doesn’t fit the concept either. We have orks closing in, and a Commissar taking cover with his back to them. I'm not sure what that is in his left hand: if it’s a radio and he’s calling for help, then that’s terrible fluff fit for the card. If it’s a hand grenade, its better (though it does look more like a radio), but it still doesn’t explain why he’s preventing damage. A better art fit would have been a guardsman leaping into the line of fire or into the thick of the enemy lines.
In fact, I’d say the art for Bodyguard makes more sense for Glorious Intervention, the art for Glorious Intervention would be better for Fall Back.
Also, the art also seems unrelated to Straken or the Catachans, making it an odd choice of art piece for a signature squad.

Straken’s Cunning (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 1/5

The art here makes me laugh:
“Ah those perfidious and elusive eldar! They outwit us at every turn! But you have a cunning plan, Colonel?”
“Yeah, you see that tree?”
“Yes, dear Colonel?”
“I’m gonna hide behind it.”
“With your glowing bionic eye?”
“Hey, worked for Sam Fisher.”

But that aside, the effect itself makes me grimace in annoyance rather than smile with delight. Straken sets up an expendable unit with his Baldrick (of Blackadder) level 'I have a cunning plan, milord" plan of “we shoot them, but we use a bigger bullet” and when the pawn is sacrificed, he suddenly has reinforcements turn up.

Again, this is “leave no man behind” Straken, apparently having a change of heart and realising that the best way to get reinforcements from HQ is to have some of his men get killed.

Imaginative headcanon will allow us to pretend that the card draw thing is Straken going revenge crazy and gathering up the troops for righteous vengeance, but that doesn’t sound especially cunning.

The emergent effect of this card’s ability is good for an overall Astra Militarum “you’re all expendable” attitude, even if that is fluffy for the faction rather than the warlord.

Overall, we’re looking at a Signature Card that is thoroughly un-Straken but thoughly Militarum at the same time. Replace Colonel Straken with the ruthless but brilliant Warmaster Slaydo, and its looking fantastic. Or replace the Signature cards with Nork Deddog, Stonetooth Harker, 3 “Catachan Devils “ Squads, 2 x Catachan Trapwork and 1 x Leave No Man Behind, with a synergy amongst soldiers theme, and you have something that feels like his style.

We’ve been here before with Sicarius' signature squad making sense as a Space Marine signature squad but not as a Sicarius one, and Eldorath's signature squad being awesome for his Ulthwe cousin Eldrad Ulthran, but seemingly out of place for an Alatoic leader.

Here, we’re establishing at least that FFG can do generic Astra Militarum style cards, so we move on with sanguinity to the Loyal Cards…



LOYAL CARDS

Bodyguard (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

While the Astra Militarum don’t have a monopoly on bodyguarding its very much a part of their military mindset to understand that its better to take casualties in one quarter to preserve more valuable assets. This makes the effect extremely fluffy.

What is slightly less fluffy is that a bodyguard is someone who protects everyone else rather than just one person they’re bodyguarding.

The card being named “Expendable” would have been better and fluffier, with the indication that this attachment is an indication of a callous and calculating command decision, not of a heroic soldier leaping like a demented bullet-loving flea around taking the hit for everyone else in the battlefield.

Also, the art is just of a soldier fighting in the midst of some orks, and I humbly propose that it fits MY cardname a lot better!


Cadian Mortar Squad (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 4/5

Cadia is amongst the most strategically important planets in the Imperium, probably coming in behind just after Terra, Mars and the four Segmentum Fortress Worlds.

It sits directly over the one stable passage in and out of the vast permanent warpspace-realspace gate known as the Eye of Terror, and thus is on the front line against the daemonic legions of the Chaos Gods. Essentially, when daemon hordes, the lost and the damned, and chaos space marine warbands spill out of that nightmare realm, they’re almost always forced by warp currents to pass through the region of space known as the Cadian Gate, and must therefore pass Cadia.

71% of Cadia’s population is under arms at any one time, with the majority of the rest supporting the war effort in other ways.

The art here is great, and 2/1/3 with Ranged is fine as well. The reaction is harder to understand in fluff terms. We can, I suppose, try to visualise that as each ally is over-run, the mortar squad have a little more time and a fresh set of coordinates to rain their attacks on. Whats nicer here is the emergent effect, that makes Mortars at their best when used as part of a combined arms force, which is in-fluff.


Captain Markis (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 4/5

Soldier and Vostroyan are nice traits to see.

Its a good thing that so many of the Astra Militarum Army Units have homeworlds attached to them, as this is the primary means of characterisation for the faction. Officer also is a nice trait to see too, but its one of many traits that FFG seem to have applied without consistency across the cards. What makes Markis an Officer when Straken and so many others who clearly have rank aren’t?

Vostroya is a world ruled by the Techtriarchs who are a mix of Adeptus Mechanicus Magi and normal governors. During the Horus Heresy they refused to send troops to aid the Emperor, claiming the need to preserve their population and manufacturing capabilities. As penance for this act of disobedience, they have since sent the firstborn son of every regiment to the Imperial Guard: the Vostroyan Firstborn Regiments. They’re experts in winter combat, renowned for their brotherly bonds to each other, and to their great devotion to their duty and penance.

Also, they’re one of two regiments that fans will call… Russians in Spaaaaaace!

Markis is a new character, so we know nothing about whether his ability is appropriate. 2/2/3 seems to be inordinately high stats for a mere human, but we forgive scale discrepancies for any unique named character, as disproportionate combat efficacy for named characters is a well established setting trope. The emergent play effect is nicely Astra Militarum, and the Vostroyan bit gels with Loyal categorisation.

Enginseer Augur (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

Enginseer!

It’s a great word, isn’t it?

It tells you everything you need to know about the Imperial attitude to technology: the Adeptus Mechanicus aren’t rationalists, they’re priest-mystics who consider the theology of technology more important than its science.

As always, automatic fluff kudos is gained for the representation of any non combat personnel in this game. The art is correct, the card ability is perfect save that it isn’t internally logical that an Enginseer only finishes his building work when he dies. Again, this is a case of the broader and fluffy sacrifice theme overriding the fluffiness of an individual card.


Leman Russ Battle Tank (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

Leman Russ was the Primarch of the Space Wolves (space marines) but the tank is just named in his honour: it has nothing at all to do with the Adeptus Astartes and is in fact the primary battle tank of the Astra Militarum.

The Leman Russ is solidly built, mass produced to template and armed with a dirty great battle cannon. Thus, it typifies the “Emperor’s hammer” aspect of the Imperial Guard - if in doubt, open fire with big guns. Preferably, lots of them!

4 command seems excessive when so many less ubiquitous units get less, 4 attack 6 toughness is good enough, given the chosen scale, though as always I wish they’d gone with tank companies and guard regiments rather than individuals. Vehicle and Tank traits make sense, Elite trait makes no sense at all. Anyone who has played these units in the wargame knows that Area Effect would make sense too, as the blast plate template dropped onto the wargaming table from this tank's main gun is often fondly referred to as a "Pie Plate of Doom"

Emergent play takes us back to 3/5, as we basically have a big solid thing that shows that the Astra Militarum means business. Men are expendable, tanks less so.


Preemptive Barrage (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 2/5

The card name and art are instantly fluffy. To quote the Imperial Guard Codex: “Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.”

This card plays out that concept nicely, and gives us a representation of one of the Astra Militarum’s main tactics.

The fluff disconnect comes in emergent play. It works best when you’ve got at least three AM units out who don’t already have ranged attack, and who have decent attack values, and who are too fragile to survive to get their strike in later.

Let’s say an Enginseer Augur, Straken’s Command Squad and a Stalwart Ogryn are targeted. Now, they suddenly become long ranged fighters! Are we saying they immediately get given artillery support directly proportional to their close quarters fighting strength? They’re exhausted because they’re personally operating the Artillery? Wait: you let Ogryns fire your howitzers? Ah, that’s what that crater in the centre of our gunline is!

Lets take the other extreme example: you have three Cadian Mortar Squads. Now your Preemptive Barrage achieves… nothing. Of course you can’t make a Preemptive Barrage using artillery, that would be far too logical!

A fluffier effect by far would be to have a Ranged unit with an Artillery trait deal indirect damage equal to its attack rating before the Ranged step begins.

For the idea of having a Preemptive Barrage card for Militarum and for the appropriate art, we add to the score. For the execution of the effect, we deduct.


Rockcrete Bunker (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

This works, more or less. It’s a nice concept, represents fluffy Astra Militarum fortification strategies, has the right art, and nicely represents that under sustained fire the Bunker collapses to pieces.

Weaker is the idea that one Bunker placed at HQ being able to protect any army it wants across any number of planets, which doesn’t make sense for a static fortification. I'm inclined to ignore this, however, as its not so much a fluff mismatch as a deliberate abstraction for LCG purposes.


NON-LOYAL CARDS

Assault Valkyrie (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 2/5

This is the main VTOL air-transport used by the Regiments.

This Unit has exactly the right keyword, stats, art and traits.

To be picky as hell, I can complain that technically this isn’t an Astra Militarum vehicle but rather an Imperial Navy craft that transports Astra Militarum troops, but without a complete reworking of how factions are defined, its basically nearly impossible to show this, and likely irrelevant anyway.

More pertinently, emergent play doesn’t yet represent in any way how these Transports actually function as transports. Unless we’re going to see event cards that manipulate this trait (and I pray to the Emperor that we will) this is just a flying tank.

Catachan Outpost (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 0/5

The art depicts a fairly sizeable fortress in the jungle, which is more or less what the outposts on Catachan are, though the proximity of the jungle to its walls suggests that the Catachans inside haven’t been diligent in maintaining the scorch-plains that hold the hostile ecosystem back. Not a problem, as natural selection will take them out of the genepool, soon enough. So far then, so okay!

But lets establish up front: the card and its art represent a stone fortress on the planet of Catachan, not one in the Traxis Sector, as the Catachans aren’t going to bring jungle and fortress to Y’varn.

WARNING: I’m about to go off on a massive tangent, but we will swing back to the card eventually. If you want your sanity to remain intact, skip down to where it says “COME BACK NOW!”

Now we run into trouble. We know Traxis Sector must be in the Ultima Segmentum, and because the Tau are involved, it must be within the reach of the Tau Empire.

Well, Catachan is in the Ultima Segmentum so that’s alright, yes? Actually, no!

The Imperium is divided into five Segmenta, and the middle Segmentum Solar is centred on Terra, which is actually to the galactic west of the middle of the galaxy. Surrounding Segmentum Solar in north, east, west and south directions are Segmenta Obscurus, Ultima, Pacificus and Tempestus respectively. Because Segmentum Solar is west of the galactic centre, Segmentum Ultima actually contains most of the stars in the galaxy! Catachan is marked on our maps as being about halfway between Terra and the galactic core, and the Tau Empire is right out on the Eastern Fringe of Ultima Segmentum.

Okay yes, clearly I’m thinking too hard about the abstractions of this game, but this is kind of the point of the Chime Of Eons column, so please bear with me!

As we said, Traxis Sector must be within the reach of the Tau Empire. In practical terms the galaxy is ninety thousand light years across and fifteen thousand light years thick. The Tau Empire reaches a couple of hundred light years from T’au and their military operational range beyond that is limited by their slow FTL and lack of psychic Navigators. That means Traxis Sector must be more or less next door to the Tau, and certainly within a few hundred light years of the edges of the Tau Empire. We’re talking about the Tau a lot, as they’re the only faction in the game who aren’t able to get all over the galaxy (well, the Orks are slow too, but they’re everywhere anyway). Distances are hard here, as we’re talking a 2D representation of a 3D map, but best guess puts T’au about 50,000 light years from Terra, and about 30,000 light years from Catachan.

Lets look at something else now:
The Imperial Guard Codex says:

"Ten thousand light years can be traversed within 10-40 days by warp-capable spacecraft. By the time ships have been moved into position, munitions collected and troops assembled, the response time over this distance is in the order of between 30 and 120 days, typically about 75 days. This is the standard repsonse time for the raising of Imperial Guard armies, though for prolonged conlficts troops may be brought in from much further away."

So for a Catachan Outpost to affect Traxis Sector, we’re talking about anything from a third of a year to a year of warp travel, which is about three to ten years of time for those not on the warpcraft (as time tends to flow differently in the warp). Warpstorms, safe channels and so on will change this, as will quality of navigator and warpship (which is why we can see sometimes Astartes acting on the far side of the galaxy within a few months journey), but when the Astra Militarum is involved, nothing is quick.

We don’t know the exact timescale of the Conquest LCG, but we know the conflict scale, and a battle between an “army” consisting of a Guardsman, a Ratling Deadeye and Markis versus an Umbral Preacher and a Bloodletter isn’t going to take long at all. The nature and scale of the battles suggests a skirmish on a small battlefield. Lets call it between two to three minutes and two to three weeks, depending on how we are visualising the LCG battles and turns.

The Ratling sniper lines up a ranged shot at the Bloodletter, and its not going to be enough to drop it. Colonel Straken notices this, and has his astropaths send a message back to Catachan, which via high priority relays takes only a week. Then the Catachan Outpost says “yes, we have something that will help” and boxes up some hotshot rounds for the Ratling. Administratum clears it, and for once this takes an hour instead of a year, and a special chartered trader is sent out with the precious cargo. Warp tides are in his favour, and he moves really, really fast. The journey takes him just two months of perceived time, and the temporal reflection goes in his favour too: just eight months of realtime.

Eight months later, the Ratling loads up the ammunition and is ready to take his shot at the very patient Bloodletter. Now the Ratling now is almost but not quite doing enough damage to kill the Bloodletter. But that’s okay, because there’s a second Catachan Outpost ready to help out…

Anyway, rant over, lets snap back to reality. Lets ignore the distances, ignore the art and pretend that Catachan Outpost represents a tent near the front line with a Catachan Veteran handing out strategy advice and helping plan ambushes. It’s still not looking like a location that would give +2 attack wherever and whenever you want it on any planet you want. The emergent effect might be effective in gameplay, but it makes no damn sense: why does a guardsman suddenly become a stone killer?
This is a great card in game design terms, but I swear by the relic pickled sphincter of Solar Macharius, it makes no sense at all in fluff terms!

We now return you to your article.

COME BACK NOW!

Elysian Assault Team (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 4/5

Elysia and the Elysian Drop Troops are only thinly fleshed out in fluff, but the main thing you need to know is that they’re Imperial Guard paratroopers who specialise in ambushing enemies from the sky. Their credo is "On Time, On Target", and their deep strike insertions will often turn the tide of battle

The emergent play effect here is nice: they’re cheaper than a unit with Ambush, because you can play them for free, but they’re not Space Marines, so they can’t just turn up with perfect precision whenever you want. They’re a light regiment, so they can’t take much damage.

Essentially, they’re mobile reserves, who command will deploy when the situation demands it but they won't necessarily always be "on time, on target" because thats an ideal, not a combat reality.

Basically, a great antidote to the fluff-induced rage I felt with the Catachan Oupost. Whew.


Guardsman
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 2/5

I know this is a Token Unit card, but its worth looking at nonetheless.

Positives: Great effect on gameplay, giving you the feeling of commanding an Imperial Guard that has reserves, that can’t necessarily deploy as fast as other factions, but which ultimately has big numbers.

A warning here, before I reach the obvious negative: any readers who are sick to death about hearing about pluralisation should skip straight on to the next card!
Negatives: As a Guardsman, singular, the card has way too much firepower and toughness. To use the words of primarch Roboute Guilliman: “a space marine is worth a dozen ordinary soldiers, of course, but with the right commander he can have the effectiveness of five or ten times that number”. The LCG makes Guilliman look like he is full of bravado, as one hundred and twenty of these guys are going to cause Cato Sicarius serious trouble in a straight up fight.

A 0/1/2 Guardsman makes the Adeptus Astartes look like it is just there for the propaganda posters, and that a single Imperial Guard Regiment of ten thousand men is worth any four or five Space Marine Chapters put together.

I’d note also, that a guardsman singular is otherwise known in Astra Militarum terms as “a deserter.”


Hostile Environment Gear (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 0/5

Hostile Environment Gear is special issue equipment for the Astra Militarum for when their soldiers absolutely require it. It gives them such high tech benefits as an independent air supply, and a suit that is sealed against the outside atmosphere and protected against radiation. Guardsmen don’t normally get this sort of equipment, as generally equipment costs more than lives, so as long as a Guard can survive the environment for a month or two, he can campaign for a bit then be replaced. Also, of course, if you’re wearing a Hazmat suit, its kind of inconvenient to march, and combining Flak Armour at the same time is likely too bulky, and its hard to do useful things like get up from a prone firing position, or have peripheral vision.

There is a fully armoured and battle-functional high tech version of hostile environment gear, of course, and its called Power Armour, which is what space marines wear by default, and which even the highest ranking Astra Militarum officers don't get to have.

Thus if you equip this Hostile Environment Gear to an Imperial Guardsman, he’ll likely wear it because he figures he wouldn’t be issued this stuff if he weren’t being assigned to a hostile environment, but his combat effectiveness will fall.

If you equip this to an Ork ally, he’ll chew it for a bit, then break it up for parts.

If you give this to a Space Marine, he’ll laugh, and tell you the Emperor already protects him, and that the means of that protection is a very expensive suit of much better environment gear than a guard commander will ever see.

Imperial Bunker (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 0/5

As a building to be deployed to a warzone, a bunker makes sense. As a cost discounter it makes no sense at all.
Imperial Landing Pad, Imperial Logistics Centre, Departmento Munitorum Field Enforcement Corps or simply Galaxy Troop Ship would have been better.

Also, Unique is allocated here clearly for game balance reasons, rather than because an Imperial Bunker is in some way one of a kind.


Infantry Conscripts (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 5/5

Here’s finally a card I can get behind, fluffwise.

First, it is awesome that they lack the Soldier trait and have no command icon: these aren’t professionals, they’re forced inductees who are a long way from home and don’t want to be here.

Second, its great that they have pluralised, making this Army card an actual army in the imagination.

Third, the special ability is just wonderfully fluffy from emergent play. As the war goes on, as the supply chain falls into place, the conscripts go from being green rookies to well equipped, well disciplined and effective killers. Or, if you have the logistics infrastructure already in place, then the troops are effective from the outset.

They’re just great for fluff: they show the Astra Militarum as being a force who can muster the most impact late in the war, who can take the casualties and keep going, and who are unstoppable once they’ve established their presence.


Mordian Hellhound (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

No major problems here: the card does what the fluff suggests, providing a great gout of flame that scours away unarmoured and weak units while leaving vehicles unimpressed.

3 attack is my only complaint: a Hellhound doesn’t have any other weapon systems of note, so it shouldn’t be able to focus fire like this.

Little details niggle too, llike not being clear what command icons actually mean in this game, and like being able to fire a flamethrower to take down a high altitude flyer and so on.

There is nothing here that breaks suspension of disbelief badly though, and generally I like the fluffiness of how a flamethrower tank has been represented.


Penal Legionnaire (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

Zero cost is good and an Ally trait isn't unfitting as it suggests inherent unreliability of loyalty. See Guardsman comments on negatives though, to avoid me being too repetitive!

Ratling Deadeye (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 2/5

So, you know Hobbits from Lord of the Rings? Well, back in the 1970s, a little roleplaying game called Dungeons and Dragons made Hobbits even more popular, though they called them Halflings most of the time.

Not long after, a competing game called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay took the lead from D&D and included Halflings as well. Then, not too long after that, a game called Warhammer 40,000 took the Warhammer races and dumped them in space, adjusting their backstory to make them fit. Thus, in the dark future of the 41st Millennium, you have Ratlings!

In the fluff, Ratlings are Abhumans: stable mutation variants of humans who have formed a sub-race. As the descendants of mutants, abhumans are the subject of prejudice in the Imperium (and the Imperium is not the sort of scientifically minded place where you can explain that every living creature is genetically a mutant and the descendant of mutants) so the only way they can get acceptance is in serving in the army. Ratlings, as it turns out, are cowardly and physically weak, are prone to larceny and more likely to have stains from second breakfast on their uniform than a medal of bravery. Luckily, they’re also great shots, so they make decent snipers.

So on the upside, we have a unit that is quite fluff-obscure, and which has appropriate traits, game role and art.

On the downside, we have a chosen scale of one Ratling, and a command icon that is very abstract in what it represents (because snipers help you control places, yeah? Which is why a Sybarite Marksman… doesn’t)

In emergent play the command icon often results in one Ratling Sniper overseeing the logistics supply chain of a whole planet for you. So if you’re wondering why the last supply shipment had all the lho sticks, amasec and pay-chests filched from it, you’ve only got yourself to blame.

Sanctioned Psyker (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 0/5

Psykers are a pretty important part of the setting, so we’ll take a little time here to explore their fluff.

In the 40k setting, mutation is a mark of the influence of the Chaos powers, and none more so than the mutation that grants psionic powers.

However the Imperium, in its hypocrisy, simultaneously abhors mutants demanding their death, and recognises that some mutations are just too strategically useful to completely reject.

Navigators, for example, are the specialised mutants that allow Imperial starships to travel long distances through warpspace and their essential role in maintaining the Imperium means that the mutant Navis Nobilite houses are amongst the most powerful of Imperial factions, despite being (in principle but not in practice) "reviled mutants".

Psykers are also much used and abused, but don't benefit from high status. Part of the reason for this is that each Psyker is a conduit for the powers of the Warp, which is the home of daemons and the chaos gods. A Psyker can defy the laws of physics with his magics, but he can also unwittingly become the subject of daemonic possession, or even have his mind and physical form break open to form a warp gate, connecting the realms of the daemonic and of mundane human reality.

It is little wonder then, that an entire major branch of the Imperial Inquisition is dedicated to hunting down witches and rogue psykers, and that within the Imperial creed “Suffer Not the Witch to Live” is a commonly repeated catechism.

Most human psykers that emerge are killed. Some will escape that immediate fate, and will be gathered up by the League of Blackships, and will be transported to Terra where they will either be sacrificed to sustain the carrion form of the Emperor, or drained into powering the warpspace beacon known as the Astronomican, which is the prime means by which Navigators can navigate. Without their sacrifices, the Imperium would cease to function as a single entity.

A few will be luckier still, identified as having enough strength of will to be sanctioned as Imperial servants. Of this minority, the larger proportion will be subjected to the Soul Binding Ritual that leaves them blinded, but which gives them considerable resistance to daemonic possession. These blinded psykers will train to be Astropaths under the auspices of Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and their long distance telepathy forms the basis of interstellar communication in the Imperium. Astropaths might be honoured individuals on distant worlds, or seconded into the armed forces of the Imperium, or might just get sent to a Telepathica Relay in deep space, forever to repeat and resend any messages that pass their way.

A smaller proportion even than this will be judged to have the willpower to stand alone without the Soul Binding ritual. These are called Primaris Psykers and they receive Imperial Sanction - that is, the right to be a filthy witch without being burnt at the stake, so long as they remain in the service of the Imperial armed forces.

While no psi-use is without risk, Sanctioned Psykers train to manage this risk better than most, and can bring their sorcerous powers to bear against the enemies of the Imperium.

As the main thing that differentiates a Primaris Psyker from a lower grade psyker is force of will, its little surprise that sub-factions within the Imperium that are known for their force of will (such as the Space Marines and Inquisition) turn out Primaris Psykers almost by default.

In the Astra Militarum, however, a Sanctioned Primaris Psyker represents a rare resource: a one in a thousand individual with an ability that already manifests only in one in a million. They’ll be deployed as psychic shock weapons when battle requires it, though as witches and mutants, they’ll never be trusted with command.

Its common for an Astra Militarum psyker to be deployed only under the watchful eye of an Imperial Commissar, who will shoot them dead at the first sign of corruption.

We now swing back to this LCG card. The artwork and flavour text is good. The psyker trait is appropriate.

Sadly, the 2/0/4 stats are just about wrong in every single way. This is an individual who will never be trusted to command, who absolutely cannot be trusted to be deployed on his own, and who will be feared and hated by local Imperial population. He has considerable psychic might at his command, and while he’s no Space Marine Librarian in puissance, his abilities are still very much geared around war. He’s also just one man, a plain (if puissant) human being that dies just as easily to a gunshot wound as the next soldier. 0/3/1 would have made sense, and there should have been some indication of their unreliability and risky powers. This isn’t a unit the Astra Militarum sends out alone to hold a planet away from the frontline: thats what happens in play during the LCG, but its a mismatch from their role in fiction. This should be a unit that is deployed on the frontline, with a Commissar stood behind him watching for signs of corruption, and a meatshield infantry unit giving him covering fire, or literal cover against enemy firepower.

One of my favourite tactical tricks for this unit is also one of the unfluffiest. Pair this guy with Warlord Nazdreg, and you suddenly have a Psyker inspired to orkish brutality! As he takes gunshots to the gut he turns greener, bigger and stronger! Don't make him angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry.


Stalwart Ogryn (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 1/5

Like Ratlings, the Ogryns are a stable abhuman variant, whose ancestors were mutants, but whose current inherited genetics essentially makes them a separate human variant race.

They’re genetically strong and tough, stupidly devoted, devotedly stupid and generally need to just be pointed in the right direction and given a gun that they can’t mess up or break. Indeed, the infamous Ogryn Ripper Gun is designed so that it can be used as a bludgeon without interfering with its effectiveness, and has such a high rate of fire that even an Ogryn would have trouble missing at short range.

The art and the chosen traits for this card are fine. The stats I dislike for reasons that should be obvious by now.

Immune to Events makes little sense as well when we comsider what Events there are in this game. While an Ogryn might be less prone to Suppressive Fire because of their stupidity, they have no especial immunity to psychic powers, or to dire mutation, or to Exterminatus being called down. Seriously, no matter how thick your skull is, a cyclonic torpedo that demolishes continents is going to trouble you!


Suppressive Fire (Core Set) +
Overall Fluffiness Rating: 3/5

I like this card, in that it encourages the idea of numerical supremacy being more important than quality, and because it’s a very fluffy thing for a battlefield simulation LCG to be showing the value of suppressive fire.

On the downside, it can often lead to some nonsensical moments in play, like a Snotling keeping a Blood Angel Daring Assault Squad locked down with its pea-shooter pistol, or a raging Bloodletter daemon cowering in the face of a single Penal Legionnaire with a lasgun.

The autocannon in the art is the sort of weapon that would work for suppressive fire in most circumstances, and a fluffier (though gameplay inelegant) solution would have required the Suppressive Fire exhausted unit to have had an attack value comparable to the cost of the target unit.

CONCLUSION

As always, I’m hating the LCG’s sense of scale, or rather the lack of sense of scale.

Its a problem here especially, as for the Astra Militarum, war is all about big numbers and big firepower.
Deploying several (or several hundreds) of regiments at once is the Imperial Guard way, and it doesn’t make sense for a game about planetary conquest to not involve at least an infantry regiment or three, a tank regiment or two and an artillery regiment rolling in on each planet.

The LCG never attains this wonderful sense of epic warfare, and instead we see an entire 50 card deck containing significantly less firepower and presence than your average 3000 point army in the wargame. Ten men make a squad, several squads make a platoon, multiple platoons make up a regiment, multiple regiments make up the typical Astra Militarum deployment to take on a multi-planet warzone.

Honestly, it is kind of pathetic in the potentially grand vista of the mind's eye to be taking a planet with a Ratling Deadeye, a Penal Legionnaire and a Guardsman. Here in this faction, more than any other, the game is clearly dealing with the wrong scale, but a whole order of magnitude or more. For those readers who are bored about hearing about this same topic again and again, you can rest assured that as this faction is the worst offender, this is the last time it'll be so emphasised!
On the upside we have a faction that is reassuringly non-Mobile, that tends to outnumber its opponents in the LCG, and gives a nice feeling of attrition warfare (even if the scale is all wrong) and combined arms tactics. It still feels like Astra Militarum in how you move the cards about, even if the cards are representing the wrong things.
So I’ll grudgingly give the Astra Militarum and Conquest the benefit of the doubt, and remind myself that for all its fluff failings, this is a great LCG that is a lot of fun to play.

Even if the representation of the Astra Militarum is so much less fluffy than it could have been, this is still an LCG that lets you deploy a thin grey line of Guardsmen against a pack of kroot carnivores, pin them down with suppressive fire, and when the attrition starts to wear you down, have Elysian drop troops swoop in to save the day! It's 40k, and its Astra Militarum, even if its on a piddly squad vs squad level.


Next time, we’re leaving behind the “good guys” of the setting and starting our descent into the savage, the bestial and plain ‘orrible.
Some of this settings villains are malicious and malign, causing suffering for its own sake or for the glory of dark gods. Our next targets aren’t like that though: they just want a good scrap, and love fighting because fighting is great fun. They don’t mean anything nasty when they burn your hive worlds or murder your armies: they just think it’s a laugh.

You know who we mean.


WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!