Imperial Armour 10: The Badab War – Part 2 - Book Review

Imperial Armour 10: The Badab War – Part 2 - Alan Bligh et al.

Once again having just completed the latest Imperial Armour book from Forgeworld I thought it would be a good idea to treat you to a good in depth review, however once again Gotthammer over at Collegia Titanica already beat me to it. So rather then write something that pales in to comparison next to his work I thought i would check with him and then post it over here. so for the most impressive review of an Imperial Armour book to date check out the Collegia Titanica here:

Collegia Titanica: Full indepth and detailed Imperial Armour 10: The Badab War - Part 2 Review

For me IA:10 was excellent, more reviewing of the fluff of the vehicles is nice as its something you can never have enough of, not to mention the mention of a medium Marine tank out there in the aether somewhere! I found that when reading this that whilst all the chapters were really well written about I felt that the Space Sharks and Mantis warriors needed more (the Mantis Warriors especially after the Deathwatch novels - I mean are they forgiven or still on the crusade?) but that was probably because they were the two chapters that most caught my eye!
Also given the Mantis Warriors were big contributors of Marines to the ranks of the Deathwatch what happened to their Marines on secondment, or infact Marines from any of the Successionist Chapters that were not "at home" as it were? That to me was the only real bit of fluff I would liked to have seen answered, who knows in a Garro style there may have been loyal Astral Claws on secondment within the Imperium, what happened to them?
My other favourite parts though were the colour plates, the way the armour was mixed so mk3 and mk8 were mixed up with other mks on one Marine was great, to me it answered a lot of questions I had about looks and is now gonna cost me a fortune in FW models. The well thought out schemes and vehicle markings shown on these colour plates are always what make the FW books for me, below are some examples.

Some of the little snippets, side notes and events suchs as those involving the Salamanders, Astral Claws and Executioners - the Red Hour or even The Doom of Hive Dominar should be written as a novel! Infact the Badab campaign could be the next Horus Heresy style novel chain for the BL - if only! My only complaint was the ending, too short and not enough clear up. The story just seemed to end with little or no details on what happened next, any follow up skirmished or subjagation of rebal populations of civilians or what the Claws did on their charge for the eye.

For me the overall rating for this book is a 5 because even though the end was so very short the overall look of the book and its partner just made it worth the obscene amounts of money it is from FW!

Availible from:

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk

Imperial Armour 10: The Badab War – Part 2 - Alan Bligh et al.
Hardback, 208pp