Warhammer 40K RUMORS: Astra Militarum Hellos & Goodbyes
There’s a new set of Astra Militarum rumors doing the rounds – with some units saying hello, and some old ones saying goodbye!
The IG have had a long lamentable 8th and 9th Edition. Abe has been beside himself with grief for years. But apparently coming up towards the tail end of 9th Edition codexes or maybe the very last one, it was perhaps only a matter of time until some Astra Militarum rumors started to trickle down.
Here’s the latest.
The Rumors
We have three previous batches, and one new one to catch up with. The previous 3 have all been kindly collated together over at B&C.
Batch 1 (April 2022)
These come from Valrek and are roughly a month old:
- Plastic/Re-Cast Kasrkin
- Dorn (a tank) is chunky, comes with lots of weapons (but could still have a name change!)
- A new infantry kit, with a shift towards a more “veteran” -theme, sort of like “the last sons of Cadia”
- New Command Squad
- New Heavy Weapons Team
- New Sentinels, which will be “Cawl-ified”, aka better tech?
- New HQs/Commissars/Generals
Batch 2 (April 2022)
These come via Simply Warhammer who got it from a playtester (who has been right on several codexes before, including Aeldari)
- Rogal Dorn Tank will be Toughness 9, also probably 15/16 wounds
- Tank Commanders BS 4+ but Leman Russ turrets will be plus one to hit and can fire out of combat
- Deathstrikes revamped esp firing mechanism, 3D3 mortal wounds to everything within 6 inches and can fire 3 missiles
- Krieg in the codex
Batch 3 (April 2022)
These come via Reddit
- A new Lord Solar in the book and that he will be riding something…
Batch 4 (The NEW ONES!)
These come from the GSC Discord (by way by B&C)
- Veteran Squads and Special Weapon squads are gone from the book, and Infantry squads lose access to heavy weapons, but gain a second special weapon slot.
- You won’t be running pure cadians (of course you could) You will be able to mix and match different regiments into one force.
- Your army bonus doesn’t care that half is catachan and the other krieg, you’ll still get your army rule.
- The only benefit in running say a unit of catachan is to use a strat like “vicious traps”
- In enemy charge phase spend X cp When a unit is charged and is in terrain, roll a d6 +1 if unit is catachan or guerrillas +1 if unit has a melta mine +1 if sly marbo is on the battlefield
- On a 2-5 the enemy unit suffers d3 mortal wounds, on a 6+ the enemy unit suffers 2d3 mortal wounds
- The command squad is now the hq
- You don’t get individual characters leading
- Field Ordinance Battery Choices
- Bombast field gun
- Heavy lascannon
- Malleus rocket launcher
- Scions range is now 24″ get the regiments bonus and also 6’s to hit score additional hits
Thoughts
This feels like a bunch of rules minutia. But the interesting bit is the addition of three new types of “Field Ordinance Battery Choices”. Combined with the new Tanks listed in the earlier sets of rumors, it looks like GW is really pushing Astra Militarum to be the “lots of vehicles/guns” type of army instead of the infantry horde route. The loss of Veterans and Special Weapon squads feels like the recent “No Model, No Rules” trend striking again.
Overall this feels like a set of rumors that streamlines the infancy side of the army, which face it was always overly complicated for how crappy the individual models were, while opening up a lot of heavy firepower new kits to blow away the badguys. Not a bad big picture concept for an army that may be the weakest in the game. I have no issue with positioning the Astra Militarum as the “most big guns” faction.
If there is any army that is desperately in need of a total makeover – it’s Astra Militarum!
