Imperium is a weekly hobby magazine from Hachette Partworks. In this 90-week series, our intrepid magazine-receiver will be reviewing each individual issue, its included models, and gaming materials. A Premium subscription was provided to Goonhammer for review purposes. 

Did you know the singular of Skitarii is Skitarius? Is this foreshadowing? Read on to find out!

The Magazine

The headliner this week is the Skitarii Marshal; a veteran Skitarius tasked with leading the footsoldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus into battle. They typically are even more tooled up than your rank and file cyborg supersoldier, armed with weapons that would spike the blood pressure of any Nuclear Regulatory Commission deskjockey. I guess in a universe of unending war where the average life expectancy is 15 hours on the battlefield, a gun that gives its wielder turbo-cancer isn’t a huge concern. These Mechanicus Middle Managers serve as the semi-autonomous command nodes of any Magos or Techpriest, containing just enough sentience to occasionally make their own calls. Naturally, as we obtain one of these little guys this issue, we get a Battle Record to roll on:

Zyto-Neumann-XXVII, Shield-General of the Alacritous Conquerors and the sole Skitarii Marshal on Derek’s Mom’s Dining Table IV, surveyed the battlefield. The Mk 4.XII Incinerator hanging off his hip thrummed with radioactivity, while the Mk. 3 Purifier in his left hand was just as radiant with authority. There had been so much death, so much bloodshed, so many sacred machines destroyed in the defense of this world. An unsanctioned divergence within his encoding had him feeling melancholic; a feeling thought long excised from Neumann and his cohorts. His tethered servo-skull, Blessed Kinetic Transmorpher (a family name) blurted out an order from the Magos. Once more – just once more – would Zyto-Neumann-XXVII need to lead his troops to battle. The war for Derek’s Mom’s Dining Table IV had reached its final chapter.

If cyborgs aren’t your bag, we’ve got some elves in the back that are just as good if you squint a little. Here, the Paths of the Aeldari are covered in light detail by Inquisitor Gallius Shaarn. Essentially, after the Fall of the Eldar, the Asuryani figured out a way to avoid the temptations and vices that brought on the fall of Eldar civilization: hyperfixate on one thing for hundreds of years until you master it, then move on to the next. Joke’s on them: if they went into computer science they’d never get invited to the cool parties anyway. The Path of the Outcast takes them out into the frontiers, hunting alien treasure and rediscovering lost Aeldari territories. The Path of the Warrior is pretty self explanatory, following the Aspects of the war-god Khaine in any number of fighting styles reflecting their devotion. Last is the Path of the Seer, where they can learn to become a brain wizard, eventually becoming a Farseer and leading their Craftworld or turning completely to psycho-crystal. I didn’t know they had a Bizarro version of the old Chaos Dwarf tendency to turn to stone after using too much magic, so joking aside it’s cool that I’m still learning stuff 84 issues into Imperium.

It’s storytime now, and we’re going to Magnitha Primus (emphasis theirs) to see what these nice miners are up to. Believe it or not, this subterranean mining colony where people would live their entire lives mining radium without seeing the sky bred some adverse working conditions. It’s the day of Ascension, and the Genestealer Cults are rising from below while Tyranid organisms rain down from above. Fortunately (?) Skitarii Marshal Thepsis-Gant 415 (or 451, depending on the sentence) and his Skitarii troops are here to keep the peace at this, I cannot stress this enough, cancer factory. After clearing out the initial wave of cultists, Skitarii Marshal Thepsis-Gant 415 skulk through some ruins and the story turns into Predator for a few paragraphs before some Gaunts show up and the entire Skitarii cadre gets owned. Every so often, a distant Magos beams some comforting thoughts or helpful information to the Marshal, including the final sentence of this story, after all the Skitarii are dead:

++/MISSION OBJECTIVE COMPLETED

CASUALTY RaTE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LIMITS\++

Should we all wish to have such benevolent bosses.

The Hobby Materials

This week we receive a single Skitarii Marshal: an Adeptus Mechanicus infantry commander. This small, single-sprue model is beautifully detailed; maybe even a smidge too much in the central torso area. The painting instructions even call him out as being a detailed model, so it’s worth listening to the primary source here if you don’t believe me up here in the cheap seats. Assembly is simple, with some fragile components but even spindly bits like the servo skull are firmly mounted. There are no weapon options in the kit, but anyone with some leftover bits could make a distinctive conversion with just a head and/or weapon swap. The backpack could also easily be left off for ease of painting. Personally, I’m hoping to give him a bare Cadian or Kasrkin head and make some kind of Necromunda tech-enforcer out of him. The instructions to build him couldn’t be more straightforward, and the painting instructions will carefully take any painter through the bevy of details on this lad towards a lovely result. Personally I’d love to see some blending this late in the game to get some softer volumetric highlights on his cloak, but I’m firmly wet palette-pilled at this point.

The Gaming Materials

This section opens with Adeptus Mechanicus Warlord Traits, which don’t apply to the current game anymore but do contain the term “Necromechanic” so they’re not all bad. Obviously, we get rules for the Skitarii Marshal this issue. While the specifics of his rules have changed, now that we’re out of 9th and into 10th edition, you’ll find him functionally similar. He’s still a cheap as hell support hero, and one geared specifically to help out your Skitarii units. Slightly more relevant is this week’s mission, in which Tsiphos is Besieged. This moon holds the Adeptus Mechanicus radium vats, and the Necrons intend to spill these and cause a radioactive chemical attack. Now, last I checked, radium was a solid and not a liquid, but whatever, maybe they’re just vats full of radium marbles. The mission itself is a simple one, with a trio of objectives, points for holding one, two, and/or the center objective, and a secondary mission giving points for each quarter without enemy units in it. Let’s call it Dismiss on All Fronts. The mission isn’t anything special, but would make for a perfectly fine 1000 point game.

Final Verdict 84/90:

We only had two pictures of one of this dude so you’re getting to check out his booty. A Skitarii Marshal will cost you $35, so the $13.95 cover price for one of these little guys is fairly sweet as far as deals go. The hobby guides will give you some great results, and if we were still in 9th edition the rules section would be great for fleshing out your little Adeptus Mechanicus force. The narrative materials are pretty weak, making for a somewhat middling issue buoyed by a beautiful model at a great price.

See you next issue, warhams.

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