The Martian Civil War is the third book in the Campaigns of the Age of Darkness series for the Horus Heresy. It follows Battle of Beta-Garmon and the Siege of Cthonia, with which it shares a general format and actually a few pages of duplicated content covering campaign rules and Core Missions.

The first half of the book is a huge pile of lore covering the events of the civil war on Mars that lasted most of the Heresy. This is followed by that campaign system with some new Stratagems and Apex Missions, then a lot of new rules for various Traitorous Mechanicum units and upgrades: Dark Blessings for your proto-Chaos Knights, a selection of Automata Malefica (new Warlord Traits and reprinted Demon Engines), and the Orders of Prooscribed Techno-Arcana, a new set of Traitor-locked equivalents of the High Techno-Arcana.

In addition, there is a new set of missions called Relic Hunt that are very cool and we’ll cover in detail in a second article.

As well, there are also a few new loyalist Space Marine HQ choices who were prominnent characters in the Civil War: Aster Crohne of the Blood Angels, Kaedes Nex of the Raven Guard and Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists. There’s one non-Traitor locked Ad Mech unit in the whole book, a new (and *seriously* cool) Irradation Blaster Krios Venator.

Let’s break it down.

The Lore

The Martial Civil War and the Loyalist blockade around the red planet lasted from the start of the Horus Heresy all the way to the early Siege of Terra. The book has three main strands between the Death of Innocence (what the Ad Mech called the initial hours of the Civil War) and the Siege.

• Early in the Heresy, the Imperial Fists led by Sigismund and Camba Diaz attempt to steal new power armour patterns for the Loyalists.
• Loyalists under Corax and Kaedes Nex undergo an assassination and disruption campaign called the Perditum Incursion.
• At the end of war, towards the Siege of Terra, Aster Crohne and his Blood Angels Inductii attempt to stop a Traitor scrap code infection.

There is a lot of riveting material in here, well worth a read!

Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Mars Campaign

See our review of Siege of Cthonia for our thoughts on the Onslaught Campaign System and the Age of Darkness Core Missions, intended for both Narrative and Matched Play. Reprinting them here is fine as it means you don’t need to carry both Siege of Cthonia and this book around with you, but there’s no need to review them again.

Wbat we get in this book is a special set of Stratagems and Apex Missions for the Martian Civil War.

The new campaign special rules are:

• Scrap Code Infection forces robot units to pass Leadership Checks to make reactions
• The Remant of War adds random new terrain to the board with some potential fun effects,
• The Machine God’s Domain gives bonuses to Siezing the Iniative and Reserve rolls if you’re a Mechanicum player.

New Campaign Stratagems are:

• Automata Reserves: When an Automata Unit dies, on the roll of a 6 you can put an identical unit in reserve. Too swingy for my taste, but this might bring back a big unit.
• Titan Support allows you to ignore the points limit set on Titans in that game.
• Taghma of War is awesome and allows a Mechanicum Allied detachmennt that is stacked with 4 EACH of Elites, Heavy Support and Fast Attack.

We are treated to three new Apex Missions.

First up is the Death of Innocence, where Camba Diaz’s Fists fight the Traitor Mechanicum to retrieve stocks of MKVI power amour. Progressive scoring on neutral objectives that have to be evacuate. The Attackers get a points bonus, whereas the Defender gets to deploy Troops units in No Man’s Land.

In A Cage Of Bone, Lukas Chrom deploys his ambushing demon engines on a Raven Guard and Custodes incursion, and while the Attacker seeks to destroy enemy Elite units, the Defender must kill the opposing warlord and survive, made difficult by some Traitor favouring special rules.

Finally, Giant Killers focuses on Aster Crohne’s Blood Angels trying to destroy a Mechanicum Lord of War. Points are scored here by Lord of Wars killing units and being killed respectively.

As normal for an Apex Mission, they seem fun and fluffy, but are very weird. Death of Innocence seems like a standout to me.

Questoris Household Dark Blessings

We saw these before back in The Battle for Felweather Keep, released digitally in September 2023, and I can’t notice any big changes. Importantly, these can go on an allied Lord of War slot Knight instead of being locked to a Questoris Household Force Organisation Chart like their generic equivalents.

They’re split down the same lines as the Ætheric Dominion special rule. There are couple of duds that are equivalents (or downgrades) to Household Ranks, like Conqueror of Worlds which works the same as Seneschal, or Putrid Corruption, which is a downgrade of Implacable for less points. Some weird ones include Infernal Tempest, which gives access to some psychic powers (but at a very low leadership which gives a chance of Perilsing) and Heedless Slaughter, a free upgrade that debuffs the Knight itself by WS and BS by 1, but allows you to give all Armiger units in the same army Rage (2). Make the little lads angry!

Most of these feel a little overcosted compared to their non-faction locked equivalents, but nothing is stopping you taking a mix. They are, however, all ludicrously cool and very thematic.

Automata Malefica

Next up is a gorgeous compilation of horrid demon engines you can take, along with some new Warlord Traits. The Demon Engines were previously issued digitally (but I can’t find from where).

First up is a handy calrification, if you take a Traitor Praevian, you can grab one of these instead of a Castellax, but only a max of one, however many Praevians you have! This is a nice touch to make this book more relevant for Astartes players.

There are four Warlord Traits in here for Traitor Mechanicum. Scion of Scylothrathe modifies Haywire against your Automata so it’s less lethal, a niche but helpful touch. Scion of Xana II gives an Advanced Reaction that improves the Malific Invulnerable save of a nearby Automata unit. Scions of Retlaxi stops your Automata dying with weird reactive shielding stuff. Scion of Sarum is a rare Warlord trait that opens up Blood Slaughterers as Troops and/or Fast Attack choices, and gives Line to ones taken as Compulsory Troops. The good news is that Blood Slaughterers aren’t as filthy as Dreads, but this still spooks me.

As for the units:

• The Khytan Demon Engine is a 420pt Cerastus Knight equivalent with a Dreadnought fist-esque melee weapon, a gun that looks like a Castigator Bolt Cannon, Rage (2), Hammer of Wrath (4) and critically WS6. This thing is an absolute nightmare, and the PDF version was already quietly tearing up tables at some events I’ve been to.

• The Greater Brass Scorpion is another 440pt Knight equivalent. It has a despoiler cannon (essentially a Demolisher cannon with Rending (5+) instead), a Scorpion cannon (an Assault 9, Pinning, Shread Heavy Bolter. Ouch), two Hellmaw cannons (a Torrent (6”) S7 AP4 template weapon) and a pair of Brutal (2) Hellcrasher Claws, along with Rampage (D3), Hammer of Wrath (4) and WS5. This thing is similarly horrifying. It eats knights and dreads for breakfast.

• Blood Slaughters have the profile like a Casteferrum Dreadnought, but its weapons are only AP3 and Rending (6+) with no Brutal. They’ve still got a collection of neat special rules, with Move Through Cover, Furious Charge and Hit And Run. A solid unit that might be a little too expensive.

• Decimator: A traditional dreadnought profile, complete with Hammer of Wrath (2), Furious Charge (2) and Move Through Cover. Interestingly it has a Malefic Aegis and not a Atomantic, so it can be Instant Death-ed. It has a couple of underwhelming ranged options, but you’ll want to run it with double Decimator Siege Claws. Critically, it has the Malevolent Artificer Aetheric Dominion, meaning it re-rolls armour saves against weapons that wound at S6 or less, making it completely immune to small arms fire.

These are four cool and baseline nasty demon engine units, that can be buffed up even more with the various Mechanicum High Techno-Arcana, Proscribed Tech-Arcana Warlord Traits and Cybertheurgic Arcana.

Relic Hunt

A completely new mission pack I really like. It has five tightly-themed missions, Datacoil Download, Unlock the Vault and Secure the Crash Site, Relic Extraction and Convoy Raid. Each missions is then scrambled a little by the addition of unusual Unstable Ojectives and Arcane Objectives, that add extra spice to the game that increase in intensity over the course of the game.

This is a great and neatly themed mission pack, and I prefer it quite a bit to both the standard book missions and the Onslaught campaign missions. They seem great for both casual and matched play. I’ll probably write a full article about this coming up. All the missions are zone control or objective paced, any randomness it is satisfyingly and gives both players and opportunity to react to it, and there is a bit less of an advantage to the player with Strategic Advantage.

Techno-Heresies

Gang, I love Techno-Arcana. They honestly make my brain fall out my ears. When I play a Mechanicum army, I just wait for my opponent to tell me all the nonsense and bullshit their warlord can do and is armed with, and all the not-psychic-powers psychic powers they have, while I nod agreeingly, head-empty and heart full of joy. I then respond ‘My Praetor has a Paragon Blade and a Bolt Pistol, and the Warlord Trait doesn’t really do anything apart from give me a movement reaction.’

In my quest to write the forthcoming Mechanicus Faction focus, I am attempting to learn these wondrous things. It was hard before they added all this high-grade techno-heresy.

It’s going to be impossible to break all of this down in a preview article so I’m going to do a whistlestop tour. Good news is, it’s all weird, tightly themed and some of it’s probably good? Head-empty, heart full of joy.

Basically, you can take these on your Archmagos instead of an Order of the High Technoarcana, but obviously only if you sold your rusty soul to the Dark Gods.

Malefikite

This is all about cascading scrap code. It lets you give Cybernetica the Ruinous Cybernetica effect which means you ignore Programmed Behaviour (which you can also hand out in the shooting phase instead of shooting. It also gives out two Arcana: Indicum Malefica does wounds and Crew Stunned, meanwhile Diabolis Quirtatus gives a Data-Djinn attack that messes up Automata and Dreads.

Nekrotek

Mechanicum necromancy? Hell yeah. It slaps It Will Not Die (5+) on all your Cybernetrica, increases your Archmagos’ wounds by 1, and gives out a pair of powers. Viteum Adficio deals wounds to nearby allies, and then heals your Archmagos. Tactus Mors is a melee, unwieldy Haywire weapon that fucking rocks.

Malamina

Malamina is all about making demon weapons. It let’s you take the Infernus Abomaination, the Demon Assassin, as an elites choice and let’s you give all your models with power weapons or blade arrays a new Breaching (4+) weapons that gives +1 to hit if they have wounded models. No Arcana here.

Aethertek

Aethertek is about demonic machine spirits inhabiting Cybernetica. This lets you take a Decimators unit in your army as non-compulsory troops. It also means your Corrupted Engines can ignore negative characteristic modifiers while within 6” of the Archmagos. It’s got two Cyberthuergies. Animatus Malevolence let you buff your Corrupted Engines in a similar manner to the Cybernetica Exortus, whereas Amthea Excrusis is a Blind, Deflagrate gun.

All this stuff ROCKS. Makes me wanna kitbash a thousand messed up Mechanicum warlord sby sticking a popsicle stick covered in superglue into my bitz box and shaking it up.

Additional Rules

Three Astartes characters are here:

• Aster Crohne leads the 94^th Inductii company of the Blood Angels, and is a 3 wound Centurion who goes into reserve when you kill him on a 4+. He also leads Induuctii spells, and has a Rending (5+), AP3 axe with Duelist Edge. He rocks, but is a little pricey at 155pt.
• The Raven Guard Moritat-Prime Keades Nex is a motherfucker. He’s a 160pt Centurion with only power armour (I guess this is Artificer Scout Armour). He’s got more special rules than you can shake a stick at. He’s forced to go solo. He ignores loads of stuff that would make him shoot worse, never snap shoots, can’t be Shrouded, has a superpowered infiltrate or outflank. He can either fire 2 Brutal (2), AP2 sniper shots, or do 12 shots of AP4 Pinning, and in melee he has Rending (5+), Precision Strikes (4+) and Brutal 2. Gosh, this guy is an absolute murderer if he gets the chance, but the lack of bodyguard means he’s going to get overwatched to death a lot of the time.
• Camba Diaz is the Captain of the Imperial Fist 50^th Company. This guy is 120pts, the same as a base Praetor, and somes with a few special rules, and a AP3 Rending (5+) two handed axe. He’s not as killy as our other options, but he is very cheap.

It’s worth mentioning that Kaedes Nex and Aster Crohne both had rules in the Legacies of the Age of Darkness PDF, but they’ve both changed in some meaningful way. Camba Diaz is fully new. All three of these are exactly what you want in a special character, a cool guy with some special rules who is a little to expensive and weird to be an autoinclude. Chef’s kiss!

Finally is the Krios Squadron, which is a reprint except for the new Krios Irradiator and its Irradiation Blaster. This is either a Hellstorm Fleshbane flamer, or a 16” range Fleshbane beam weapon that has you drawing a line and hitting everything that it touches. Also, if you Penetrate a vehicle (unlikely at S7) then it does Fleshbane hits to the models inside. Why don’t all Template weapons do this?

Conclusion

This book rocks, but it’s not for everyone.

This feels less like one of the “Blackbook” campaign books of Beta-Garmon and Siege, and more similar to the Exemplary Battles book that came out last year. There is a lot of reprinted stuff from PDFs, and this book is shorter, clocking in at 168 interior pages to the 240 of siege of Cthonia and the 208 of Beta-Garmon. (Dear Editor: Can I write a Double Event bit here from Pacific Rim?)

Bottom of the line, this isn’t really a campaign book, it’s a Dark Mechanicum faction book, and I’m okay with that because they’re a selection of absolutely kickass rules and lore in here for that Faction. That said, it’s not so much of an instabuy if you play any other Faction, sadly including loyalists Mechanicum. I wish the Loyalists had been thrown a few bones.

With the new Mechanicum released earlier this month, more plastic Mechanicum hopefully coming, every one of you should buy this book and make yourself a little Mechanicum allied detachment, so they make more stuff like this. The Relic Hunt missions and the incredible lore and art are also worth checking in for.

That said, if you’re not interested in collecting Mechanicum and not bothered about the lore, this one is definitely a skip.

Stay tuned for our full Mechanicum Faction Focus coming next month.

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