I've sort of accidentally built up an Astra Militarum army for Warhammer 40,000 over the past few years. I'd been playing them mostly as [unofficial] add-on units to other armies, because I like to mix and match my 40k armies. I purchased the physical data cards for the army because I think I didn't want to commit to being an Astra Militarum player. I don't have any great affinity to the Imperial Guard. They seem kind of boring, in fact. And yet I've enjoyed the army so much that I finally decided it was time to purchase the codex that defines them. This is my review of that book.
Before talking specifics though, it's worth explaining what a Codex is in Warhammer 40,000.
In Warhammer 40,000, a codex contains the rules and background lore for a faction. It tells you the history of the faction, and provides all the game specifications ("datasheets") for the plastic miniatures you use to play the game.
The Astra Militarum is the army of humans that fight to preserve the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. In lore, they're the ever-present front-line of the endless galactic battle to keep humanity safe from the threat of xenos and the dark powers of chaos. They often serve as the backdrop for a space marine task force sent in to bring a stalemat to a swift end, but they're a playable army with lots of variety and interesting options.
The first part of the book is a fictional military history of the forces of the Astra Militarum. There's a bunch of the usual stuff about the Imperium and how bravely people fight and die for it, but then it gets into the specifics. There's pages and pages about the Death Korps of Krieg, and Cadia, and the Mordians and Tallarns and Catchans and others. As with the Space Marines Codex, this serves not only as a fun read but as a gentle reminder that your Astra Militarum force can be from a system and planet of your own invention.
It's made abundantly clear that the Astra Militarum has several different uniforms depending on each regiment's homeworld, so there's implicit "permission" for you to even create your own troops. Incidentally, that's exactly what I've done with mine. I use off-the-shelf soldiers as Astra Militarum. I was still learning about model ranges when I built them, so it's a pretty motley assortment of uniforms and weapon types, and I admit I'd do it differently if I could do it all over again. But it's my Astra Militarum regiment, and they've fought zombies and xenos and chaos space marines and more. As an exercise of your imagination, the Astra Militarum is suprisingly one of the best armies you can choose.
The lore is extensive, too. Krieg gets 7 pages of history, Cadia gets 2, and then there's a page each for Catachan, Valhalla, Mordian, and Tallarn, and Armageddon regiments.
After all the lore, there's pages and pages about the weapons and equipment used by the Astra Militarum, and it's exactly what I want in a codex. I learned about Manticores, Basilisks, Sentinels, Valkyries, Hellhounds, and other types of ordnance, tanks, seige engines, even the different models of las guns, plasma weapons, melta weapons, grenades, lances, and much much more. When I finished reading this, I went back to the start and read it again.
There are about 14 pages of photographs, covering individual models and large-scale dioramas. I don't tend to sit and stare at these photographs while reading a codex, although I can imagine that if I'd had these books as a kid I'd have been captivated for literal hours. But as an adult, they're probably the section I look at most while painting models. I can't invent a good colour scheme to save my life, so these photographs are basically instruction manuals for me. I love looking at how the professionals combine colours, and I shamelessly steal ideas from any army that looks god for any army on my painting table in need of colour.
As with other 10th edition codexes, this one features a Combat Patrol list for a small 40k game format. This Combat Patrol list, Drayden's Lance, happens to be of little interest to me, but only because I'm not very interested in the motif of a scifi cavalry. The list consists a command squad, Attilan Rough Riders, a Kasrkin unit, and literally more Attilan Rough Riders. It's a lot of cavalry. If the idea of space army men on horses appeals to you, then this would be a fun list.
Personally, I want a more generic list, like a squad or two of rank-and-file infantry, a squad of Tempestus Scions or Kasrkins, and a command unit. There may well be such a Combat Patrol army out there by now, either in a White Dwarf article or as a free download. Ultimately, that's the main appeal of Combat Patrol for me. I don't love any specific Combat Patrol list so much as I appreciate the acknowledgement and admonishment to play small games of 40k. Grab a handful of miniatures, put them on the table, and play.
The army rule is Voice of Command. I've played it, I love it. It's thematic, it forces an interesting choice, and it's a simple and quick way to make you feel like an army general. I appreciate how a game like Epic Warpath uses tokens during a command phase, forcing you to determine what each unit is going to do before the round begins. It feels realistic, like you're the orchestrator of an army rather than a part of the army. But that's also a lot of tokens to put down on the board. Voice of Command has a similar feel to it, but you have just the one order that applies to the entire army. Not terribly realistic and not very efficient (why have units if all of them are getting the same order?) but in a game like 40k it really works. And you've got 6 whole orders to choose from, so there's no lack of options.
In short, I love Voice of Command. It makes you feel like you're really running the Astra Militarum. As much as I enjoy my Adeptus Mechanicus Imperatives, I have to admit the Voice of Command feels better.
The detachments for Astra Militarum let you focus on aspects like infantry, cavalry, ordnance, and so on. Of course you can put practically any kind of army list on the table and use any detachment, it's just a question of what tactic you want to emphasise. This makes for an interesting choice for the player, because you'll probably have an army list that could benefit from a few different detachments, so it's up to you to choose which benefit is the likely to be the best for the battle you're facing most immediately.
I've said it before, I'm saying it again. I love detachments. It's a great design concept that lets you put models on the table and apply a template of rules on them to emphasise a different strength.
After the rules there are lots, and I do mean lots, of data sheets. I bought the physical Astra Militarum data cards, and it's got at least twice the number of cards compared to any other faction I own. There are so many, I think, partly because there are so many regiments (Krieg, Cadia, Catachan, and so on), but there are also lots of vehicles and ordnance. Heck, there's even a wall. Yes, there's a data sheet for a literal wall (the Aegis Defence Line, look it up).
There are also data sheets for a few units that aren't strictly Astra Militarum, specifically the Ministorum Priest and the Tech-Priest Enginseer.
Close-up pictures of actual models of weapons, clearly labeled. This, combined with the information in the lore section about weaponry, is very nearly the armoury I want. I still think there's room for a spat book that's just pictures of weapon models with a page of text all about the fictional lore of that weapon. They got really close to that with the weapons section in Rogue Trader, but I think there's room to milk it for more money. They'd make at least one sale.
Warhammer 40,000 has a campaign mode so you can link games together, and level-up your army the more battles they fight. I play mostly in campaign mode, so the Crusade chapter of any codex is one of my favourite parts. Although I've played campaigns with my Astra Militarum army, I haven't played one while owning the codex, so I have yet to try these subsystems but I'm very excited to try them.
The Legistics Points subsystem is an intriguing mini-game. Before a game, you assign Logistics Points to 4 categories: Materiel, Morale, Lexmechanicus, and Tithe. Then, using the chart on page 150, you determine what category has a surplus and what has a deficiency. A surplus confers a bonus, and a deficiency imposes a penalty for the game. Yes, it's yet another rule to try to remember during a game, and realistically I'll probably forget, but gosh it seems fun.
There's all the other usual subsystems, too. Requisitions, agendas, experience points (XP) that you trade in for Battle Traits, and Battle Scars when a model falls during battle, and so on.
Look, Games Workshop produces rules for games, and they are prolific. Ignore the rules you can't remember, use the ones you like. That's what I do, and hey it works.
The Astra Militarum is a versatile army, because strictly they really really are just toy soldiers. You don't have to buy Citadel miniatures to build an Astra Militarum army. Grab some toy soldiers from Wargames Atlantic or Victrix, maybe do some kitbashing to make it clear that they're carrying scifi weapons (or not, a rifle's a rifle, right?), paint them in army green or khaki or blue and grey, and you've got your army. Maybe more than any other faction in the 40k universe, the Astra Militarum practically invites you to bring anything to the table.
As for the codex, it's a must-have book. This is the scifi military history of my dreams. It's enjoyable, evocative, brutal, analytical, informative, and most importantly fun. The 2-page stories dropped in here and there for flavour are exciting and effective. There's nothing more I want from Astra Militarum Codex. It's perfect.