Review of Armageddon chapter 1

I bought Crusade: Armageddon for Warhammer 40,000 10th edition. Having finally finished my Pariah Nexus campaign, I'm reading Armageddon chapter by chapter. This is my review of the first chapter, War without end.

I haven't played any of the missions yet, so this is just a review of the lore. I expect to play the missions, but I'll post about those as battle reports once I've played them.

The short version of the review is that Armageddon is a good book. The lore continues a story that began, as far as I know, way back in 1992 in White Dwarf 151, but this book does a great job of getting us up to speed and then developing a new series of battlefronts on a planet that;s already seen its fair share of carnage. If you like to read about fake wars in a fictional future, this is a fun book.

War without end

The first chapter of the book provides a history of what's gone on around Armageddon system. The details of the history are interesting enough, but once famous characters like Ghazghkull Thraka and Comissar Yarrick get mentioned, you have enough data for another year of personal research. Then Abaddon makes an appearance, the Cicatrix Maledictum rips apart reality, and we're up to date in just 2 very efficient pages.

Just as interesting are the maps. There are star charts and planetary maps, and I can't get enough of it. Maybe it's a hold-over from Imperium Maledictum, but lately I just can't get enough of detailed star systems. These charts don't disappoint. Each planet only gets a few words as desciption, but it's enough to fire the imagination and inspire whole new custom campaigns.

Also, one planet is called Pelucidar, a name pulled straight from Edgar Rice Burroughs, so I definitely want to go there.

Once we're all caught up, there's a 2-page spread introducing the warlords of the current campaign.

• Rothwyr Morvans: A Grand Master in the Grey Knights, Morvans has come to Armageddon to solve the problem of the Red Angel's Gate (a portal letting daemons into realspace). He believes the answer lies somewhere underground, which sounds inticingly like a dungeon crawl to me, which I will never refuse.
• Styrbjorn Flinteye Having read the Dawn of Fire trilogy, I can't say Space Wolves are my favourite chapter, but Styrbjorn sounds pretty cool from his introduction. He arrives on Armageddon with the firm belief that it can be saved, which is admirable in itself. To ensure that can happen, he takes command of the military operations on Armageddon Prime (one of the major land masses on Armageddon, the planet not the system.) I can definitely respect a good project manager.
• Castellan Holzer: From the Black Templars, Holzer has brought troops to Armageddon to purge the system of heretics. His efforts focus on Armageddon Secundus (the other contenent.)
• Angron: They call him the Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, but I knew him back when he was just ol' Angry Angron in the time leading up to the Horus Heresy. In the introduction, he has not yet broken through to realspace, but is being drawn to the Red Angel's Gate.
• Carrok Skreel: Possessed by daemonic forces, Skreel is determined to spill enough blood for the blood god to bring Angron into reality.
• Askarra the Ensanguined: Ex-Imperial Guard, Askarra encountered a remnant left over from Abaddon's conquest and has been a blood-thirsty chaos cultist ever since.

In addition to this introduction to the main players, this chapter also contains a list of what each army deployed, and two tactical maps providing where the frontlines were and where they moved to over the course of the war. You get such a clear idea of the placement of each army's resources and, by rheir movement, the resistance they encountered and the problems they had to solve.

The chapter isn't long, but it's packed with information. More imporantly, the information is conveyed in a variety of formats, which helps you gain a satisfyingly complete picture of the conflict. This is an excellent start, and the next chapter tells the full tale of the war.