Astra Militarum players have been waiting impatiently for their Codex to drop new ways to play the army since the start of tenth. The good news is that this time around they aren’t among the last Codexes of the edition. But how do they fare? In this review, we’ll look at the new Codex, its rules and datasheets, the new detachments, and what they mean 

We would like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Codex. In addition, we have been provided with details of some day-1 FAQs accompanying this book, plus an early look at a set of points that are going to be provided online alongside the launch of the Army box for use with the Codex before its full release. The recommendation from GW will remain that tournaments shouldn’t use the new book till full release, but they’ve learned from the last few army boxes that people want a way to use their new toys in casual and practice games straight away. 

Army Overview

The Astra Militarum represents the combined might of the human armies of the Imperium. Forget those weird, power armor-clad zealots and the spindly nerds slaving over machines, the real heart and soul of the imperium are the Guard. The Astra Militarum is a shooting- and action-oriented army that combines relatively cheap infantry units with pulverizing fire from tanks and ordnance batteries while moving around the table. They’re an army well-suited to tenth-edition missions, able to hold objectives, perform actions, and pick off key threats at a distance. If big tanks are your thing, this is the army for you.

The Video Version

If you’d rather watch this review than read it, we have you covered with the video version of this review here:

Where’s Crusade?

As always, we’ll be reviewing the book’s crusade rules on Tuesday, so check back then for our review of how the book’s new narrative play rules.

Five Things to Know

This new book includes five detachments, with a revised version of the Combined Arms detachment plus four all-new Detachments, and adds datasheets for a host of units from the Death Korps of Krieg.

We think the following are five standout features of this book:

1. Detachments: Astra Militarum done badly can feel fairly one-dimensional, but the five detachments on offer here (supplemented by the Grotmas present of Bridgehead Strike to give them six in total) provide a good mixture of themes and incentives.
2. Tanks: Tanks get plenty of love, including a new option for fielding Rogal Dorn Tank Commanders.
3. Novelty: The Guard are a venerable faction, but they get a healthy clutch of new Datasheets to play with this time around, adding new Krieg weaponry, and reviving a broader suite of Catachan-specific choices.
4. Orders are back: Orders were fun, flavorful, and one of the game’s strongest army rules. We’re happy to see them back and in more or less the same form.
5. Rogal Dorn Tank Commanders: No seriously, now you can credibly field six Rogal Dorns in a competitive list.

In terms of what we don’t like:

• Prices: Bluntly, the interim book points we’ve been shown for this codex are a bit too cautious, and would leave some of the shiny new toys DOA for competitive purposes. We hope GW will use the staggered release to revise this.
• Missing Links: The new Krieg units are cool, but they’re badly missing a fold-in of the old Watchmaster, plus a generic version of a Death Rider leader. We were hoping there would be a generic build option from Marshall Drier’s kit, and that doesn’t seem to be the case.
• A Farewell to (Buff) Arms: Some of our favorite characters have passed into Legends – most notably Iron Hand Straken and Sergeant Harker. Some less important, generic datasheets are also gone, but there are obvious replacements, i.e. Cadian Heavy Weapons Squad replaces the Heavy Weapons Squad.
• Day 1 Errata: There are some obvious omissions here like Militarum Tempestus Scions losing Deep Strike. The good news is that they’re getting Deep Strike back in the book’s day 1 FAQ/Errata doc. The part we don’t love is needing that, to begin with.

Army Rule – Voice of Command

Astra Militarum’s regimented command structure helps their units operate at peak efficiency, represented by Officer models issuing Orders to other units. Each Officer has a specified number of Orders they can issue to units with specific Keywords within 6” (with some ways of boosting it, or longer ranges for some units), which they can do either in your Command Phase or at the end of a phase in which they either get Set Up or Disembark from a Transport. Each unit can only have one Order active at a time (unless something special happens), and an Order cannot be applied to a Battle-shocked unit (and falls off if a unit becomes Battle-shocked). Finally, only ASTRA MILITARUM models in a unit benefit, so an Inquisitor snuck into a Battleline unit does not benefit.

Note: For experienced Astra Militarum players, these rules (and the effects) are identical to the Index rules with the Balance Dataslate changes incorporated, so you can skip ahead from here.

There are six effects that can be applied, as follows:

1. Move! Move! Move! +3” movement. This is a super powerful option, particularly in a world where Actions require not Advancing, as this lets your units sprint off the line to get where they need to be. It also lets tanks line up surprising angles or push forward to contest an objective.
2. Fix Bayonets! +1WS. Key for supporting Rough Riders and Death Riders, and Lord Solar is printed here as being able to order any Militarum unit again, but we don’t know if the current Balance Dataslate rule that stops him from doing this is staying.
3. Take Aim! +1BS. This, on the other hand, is an absolute staple, and you want this active on every good shooting unit as often as possible. Note that this and Fix Bayonets improve your characteristic, and so can stack with effects that give +1 to hit.
4. First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire! +1A on Rapid Fire weapons. Great for sending Kasrkin and Scions to the moon damage-wise.
5. Take Cover! +1 to Save Characteristic (maximum 3+). Useful for protecting large Infantry squads, and particularly powerful with the new Recon Element detachment.
6. Duty and Honour! +1 to Ld and OC. Fantastic for flipping objectives with minimal commitment, throwing off enemy scoring plans.

This remains a strong army rule, and packing in enough Orders for your key units is vital to success, especially Vehicles. Luckily, you have a new option on that front which we’ll get to in Datasheets.

Detachments

Astra Militarum has five detachments in this book. We’ll be covering each of these in separate Detachment Focus articles, which you can find linked below:

Detachment Focus: Combined Arms

This all-rounder detachment will sound familiar to players familiar with the Combined Regiment Index Detachment – this uses many of the same tools, but there are some key differences. Reinforcements!, Fields of Fire, and Inspired Command all return, while the rest have changed. You still get [LETHAL HITS] against targets based on your unit type.

Detachment Focus: Siege Regiment

This flavourful detachment represents your waves of Infantry going over the top while artillery pounds the foe. Every battle round you choose one type of artillery support for your army, which can range from shells that slow the enemy down to smoke to provide cover for your advancing units.

Detachment Focus: Mechanised Assault

This transport-focused detachment is all about pressing  the foe with elite Infantry leaping out of Tauroxes and Chimeras. Every time you disembark from a vehicle, you’ll get +1 to your Wound rolls for the rest of the turn.

Detachment Focus: Hammer of the Emperor

Tanks, sir, hundreds of them. This is your big tanks Detachment, and every time one of your Squadron units Advances it can automatically add 6” to its move and go through enemy units. 

Detachment Focus: Recon Element

A detachment themed around sneaky Infantry, creating a powerful way of unleashing a board control horde build. Gives your Walker and Regiment units the Benefit of Cover and +1 to their saves if they get the benefit through any other means.

Detachment Focus: Bridgehead Strike

It’s not new in this book but the Bridgehead Strike Detachment is still perfectly legal and gives you a way to run Militarum Tempestus armies. It’s also pretty strong.

Datasheets

We’re breaking the datasheet updates in this book into a few different sections. First, let’s start with what’s not here.

Removed Datasheets

As with all 10th Edition Codexes, the resin reaper has visited the Astra Militarum range, and taken out the following units:

• Iron-hand Straken
• Sergeant Harker
• Regimental Attaches
• Servitors

In addition, there has been a wave of de-genericisation, with the following being replaced with specific versions for Catachans, Cadians and Krieg:

• Platoon Command Squad
• Heavy Weapons Squad
• Infantry Squad

The last one is a bit weird, as it means there’s no longer an option for sticking a classic heavy weapon team in an Infantry unit.

Finally, the Regimental Preacher gets replaced by the Ministorum Priest, but this is basically just a re-skin providing the better weapon options that the plastic kits have.

New Datasheets

Krieg

The Death Korps of Krieg has sent in the next wave, adding the following datasheets to the Militarum range:

• Lord Marshall Dreir
• Death Riders
• Krieg Command Squad
• Krieg Combat Engineers
• Krieg Heavy Weapons Squad
• Artillery Team

Death Riders are a new skirmishing cavalry option, with a modest melee punch. Every model has a choice of swinging with a frag lance or a power saber, and the claws of their steeds have a point of AP, so they can at least chip through medium infantry. They also get the helpful Screening Line ability, which is a 6” reactive move with the standard 9” trigger. One unit is probably nice as a utility mid-board piece, but they’re not quite good enough at anything to be exciting at their current price. They also don’t have any of the legendary durability they used to get in previous Forge World incarnations. Lord Marshall Dreir can lead them and adds Devastating Wounds on the charge, which ups the unit’s threat somewhat, and he’s also plausible as an independent utility piece, as he’s durable, provides three Orders, and stands back up on a 2+ the first time he dies. It’s possible that the sheer volume of attacks a full unit throws down might make them more exciting with Dreir than they look, as with Fix Bayonets you’re looking at a healthy 8-9 Devastating Wounds damage pushed through, and in Recon Element you can also bulk up the durability substantially, so there might be a place for them.

Combat Engineers are a Mortal Wound bomb, getting both a free use of Grenades and having a Remote Mine that can trigger more Mortals once per game on a target within 12”, quite a lot of Mortals (d3+3 on a 3+) if the target is a VEHICLE. They also get Scout 6” to move them into position for this. The challenge here is that they end up as a nightmare to price, and while the book cost (a comical 35pts) was way too low, we think the new cost might be an overcorrection, though we’ll see – two units of these in a Taurox or Chimera can stage up and then is an extreme deterrent to enemies pushing forward.

You can theoretically lead these with the new Krieg Command Squad, but in practice that does very little for you since they’re a throwaway Mortal bomb. Instead, you stick these with a full squad of Krieg Infantry as a sticky board control piece, because they add the neat ability that you continue to benefit from Orders even if you become Battle-shocked, which since there’s also a Regimental Standard in there, means you can have your unit operating at a minimum of OC2 even under the worst of circumstances (given you apply Orders before rolling Battle-shock). You also get a once-per-game second Order off the Officier, which can be transmitted via a Master Vox, so one big brick like this seems like an interesting utility piece.

The Krieg Heavy Weapons Squad is an interesting surprise, coming with two surprisingly nasty unique options (compared to the other HWTs). The standout here is the Krieg heavy flamer, which is d6 shots, Torrent, S5 AP-1, so far so regular, but hits for D2 at 18” range. In addition, the unit comes with a Fire Coordinator who lets the HWTs shoot on death on a 3+, which makes these a vicious Strategic Reserves threat. Bring them in, flame something brutally, Overwatch to flame them again, then go back on a 3+ for more flaming when the opponent takes revenge. There’s also a powerful S6 AP-1 twin-linked Heavy Stubber option which fills an interesting mid-weight shooting slot for this army but pales in comparison to the viciousness of the flamers.

Finally, the artillery team provides a gigantic gun, even heftier than Field Ordnance teams, offering a lower-mobility alternative to taking Basilisks or Manticores. There are a few options, but the standout is fairly clearly the siege cannon, which hits at S12 AP-2 D3. The unit also has a defensive profile more like a light vehicle than an infantry unit (T7, 3+, 10W), meaning they won’t just fold the second the enemy gets a line on them. In line with some of the other things here, the price may have ended up roughly 5-10pts higher than it should be, but caution with any indirect stuff is very warranted in our opinion. In addition, when you hit something with this it drops a Battle-shock test on them, not something that the Astra Militarum Index had cheap access to, so one of these camping on a home objective has good utility value.

Everyone Else

Among the rest of the novel toys, the datasheet that’s got our tank fans most excited is the new Rogal Dorn Commander, just in case Leman Russ Tank Commanders weren’t hefty enough for you. This does what it says on the tin – it’s a Rogal Dorn with two SQUADRON orders out to 12”, and which swaps out the Ablative Plating for the (very good) Called Shots ability, giving it one hit, wound and damage re-roll each time it Shoots. Losing Ablative does make it slightly less good in a “one big threat” role because Dorns were great at that due to being able to shrug off a Railgun shot or something, but the new ability is better when using it as part of an array of armored might, and just by existing this lets you push up to an overwhelming complement of five or six Dorns, which our tank fiends are thrilled about.

Elsewhere, there are a couple of datasheets that have popped back into existence to give Catachans some unique options back, specifically Command and Heavy Weapon Squads. Regular Heavy Weapon Squads have been re-skinned as Cadian ones, and the Catachan alternative gets a different (and probably better) suite of abilities, having Scout 6” and the Bring it Down ability, built-in re-rolls of 1 to hit and wound against Monsters and Vehicles. A combination of support getting into position and better reliability makes these exciting, as does being able to push them up the board in a transport, though they do get a mild downgrade in how they interact with Chimeras, with each model now counting as two for the purposes of using Firing Deck, so only one can shoot out the back. Still, this is a surprising and fairly welcome addition, and if these stay dirt cheap then you might see occasional use.

The Command Squad provides Catachan Jungle Fighters it attaches to Assault on all their weapons, while also coming with the standard suite of med kit, standard and special weapons. These have some plausible applications in the two horde Infantry detachments as ways to get good Enhancements into a big unit that aims to seize the board.

Updated Datasheets

Before going on the rest of the updates, we should highlight something that looks like it’s changed but hasn’t. We were surprised on receiving the book that Scions and Tempestus Command Squads no longer had Deep Strike, which would obviously be a huge nerf. We have had it confirmed that this was a mistake, and a day 1 errata will restore this.

Minor Changes

There are quite a few small changes to Datasheets that we should just blast through before hitting the more impactful ones. These are as follows:

Buffs:

• Cadian Castellans go up to two Orders. This makes them slightly more appealing.
• Bullgryn get their base Save improved to 3+, making it slightly more plausible that you could include a Slabshield or two rather than going all Bruteshields.
• Kasrkin can now activate their bonus additional Order at the start of any phase (once per battle round), adding the option to have a bit of flexibility between Take Cover! and Duty and Honour! when you’re scrambling for board control.
• The Ministorum Priest gets access to the potent Zealot’s Vindicator option seen in other recent books, making them slightly more attractive, particularly added on to a full Catachan stack with a Command Squad.
• Most all-purpose Officers like Commissars can be attached to Combat Engineers in addition to their old options.
• The Valkyrie can now use its trick of disembarking a unit at the end of the Opponent’s Movement Phase on any Infantry, not just stuff with Deep Strike.

Neutral/Mixed:

• Death Korps get a slight rejig of how their weapon options work, presumably to align them to the box, and get to take a second Watchmaster and Med-pack in full-sized units, the latter changing the number of models revived to d3+1 when doubled up.
• The Med-kit on all command squads now revives d3 models in the Command Phase instead of giving a 6+ Feel No Pain.
• Catachan Jungle Fighters now get +1 to Wound on the charge instead of +1 to S/AP.

Nerfs:

• Rough Riders lose the Ignore Modifiers part of Horsemasters.
• Sly Marbo’s abilities get tightened up a little, gaining the standard restriction of only being able to shoot back at a unit that shot and triggered his One-Man Army rule, and only gets to make a fire and fade move in your Shooting Phase.
• Primaris Psykers lose a few shots on their Focused Witchfire mode.
• Sentinels of both types only come in maximum-size units of 2.
• Scout Sentinels lose the part of their Daring Recon ability that removes the Indirect penalty.
• Basilisks only reduce Movement and Charge rolls, not Advances as well.
• Any sort of Heavy Weapon Team now counts as two models each for Firing Deck.
• Having a Tempestus Command Squad as your Warlord no longer makes Tempestus Scions Battleline outside of Bridgehead Strike. Scions themselves have lost Deep Strike, but they’ll get it back in the first pass of FAQs/Errata for the faction, as they kind of need it for the Bridgehead Strike Detachment to funciton.

Bigger Changes

These are the biggest changes to the datasheets, and the ones that are going to have the largest impact on your games.

Buffs

• Tank Commanders of all shapes gain a second Order, opening up many options for them, and significantly increasing their utility in the OFFICER role.
• Leman Russ Eradicator receives a new ability that subtracts 1 from Damage when receiving the benefit of cover. Is this enough to see one hit the table this edition? We’ll see; it is uncontestably a good ability, but it may not be enough to warrant inclusion over other options.

Neutral/Mixed

• Taurox Primes and Tempestus Scions have swapped their natural abilities. Primes now grant full hit rerolls in the same way they used to grant wound rerolls, and Scions now natively gain wound rerolls in the same way they used to gain hit rerolls. All things considered, this may make Scions more independent as the wound roll was typically the more difficult roll to pass against non-INFANTRY targets. The Prime gains some utility by it’s gatling cannon gaining [TWIN-LINKED] and [DEVESTATING] wounds to compensate for moving the more valuable rule to the native Scions datasheet.
• Baneblade hulls have gone to movement 12” with their Firing Deck rules being halved. Unfortunately, these big cats are largely left in the wind due to explicit inclusion in almost all of this book’s benefits. Unfortunately, these datasheets were largely dead on arrival, and are therefore irrelevant. 
• Ratlings have seen a glow-up; gaining damage on their weapons along with a unique anti-tank weapon. Unfortunately, because these diminutive heroes are the only non-CHARACTER unit the book has access to with the infiltrators’ rule, these guys will probably have very few opportunities to use their weapons throughout a game. Good luck Ratlings, we hope you survive turn 1. 

Nerfs

• Manticores probably intended to be a sidegrade. In reality, reroll hits were much more valuable than both abilities this platform picked up. Decreasing OC by 1, to a minimum of 1 is a rule that is rarely going to come up. Anti-infantry 2+ is less useful than being natively strength 10 because it loses out on utility against non-INFANTRY targets.
• Leman Russ Demolishers and Demolisher Tank Commanders lost 2 shots on their Demolisher cannons. This brings them closer in line with other main guns found on these platforms. Hopefully, this cost comes down to compensate and allows more diversity in the Leman Russ types we’ll see.

How They Will Play

The base rules offered by this book do not significantly change how this army plays on the battlefield. The Astra Militarum Order system is a well-established system that thematically represents conventionally trained military forces operating in a grimdark galaxy inhibited by horrors beyond human comprehension. If you keep playing out of the Combined Arms Detachment, you’re going to feel very at home using this book as you transition from the Index. That being said, this book offers an absolute wealth of play style diversity with its very well-written detachments. We’d direct you to those Detachment focus articles for more on how they’ll play in each of those, and we thank most of them have play competitively.

Final Thoughts

If you’d like to hear more about the fantastic detachments offered by this book, you’re going to just have to come back to your favorite Goonhammer article distributor and bless us with more delicious article views. We’re tremendously optimistic about the outlook for this faction here at Goonhammer HQ; this book allows players to collect and play a wide range of models from this iconic faction. If you’re already Guard-pilled and you have a secret reserve of the Emperor’s most humble warriors stashed away under your pillow, you’re going to find a way to immediately field your collection. 

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