Damocles: Mont'ka Part 1 - The Lore (Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Review, 7th Edition)

Serving as the third and perhaps final chapter in the War Zone: Damocles books, Mont'ka is a story which has been coming for many years. For quite a look time we've seen skirmishes, running battles and a few serious engagements against the Tau Empire, but for the most part the Imperium of Man has deemed them a lesser threat in the face of the Hive Fleets or the Despoiler's latest Black Crusade. This time however, in the face of a First Founding Chapter Master's death and their increasingly brazen strikes against major worlds, the Imperium has put together forces to cripple their advance. Bypassing several secondary worlds, the Imperium hopes to crush the ongoing Third Sphere Expansion by exterminating all tau life from the cornerstone of Shadowsun's crusade: Mu'gulath Bay.

As a story this one is problematic to say the least, mostly as it carries over the same basic elements as the last story, but it lacks a few of those strengths and adds a few additional weaknesses. This isn't to say it's bad, and this certainly isn't to say that Mont'ka isn't worth reading, but given it's price you might be left raising an eyebrow at how certain new flaws arise which could have been sidestepped. The experience you're left with is a book which takes one steps forwards, but then five backwards. Now, to be completely fair we'll be looking into the strengths first and how the story shapes up on the whole, but after that we'll be looking into the laundry list of narrative flaws.

The Good

There's no denying that Mont'ka starts out strong, hitting the ground running and quickly moving on from there. While a good four pages or so are spent setting the scene and examining the prior events leading up to this book, it seems that the writers were aware most would be following this storyline tome to tome. As such, there's just about enough there to keep new people up to date and satisfied with the ongoing war, but the rest is quickly spent concentrating upon the impending battle.

Unlike last time, this isn't some trap Shadowsun has laid ready for their arrival or assault force being launched by the Tau Empire. This is the Imperium going on the offensive, and the book emphasizes just how big a threat this is to the Empire's latest Sept World. We get a few brief moments emphaising just how badly the have underestimated the Imperium and there's a few nice moments which shows their differing knowledge. Between the Imperium's casualties and the death of a Chapter Master (who the tau considered to be the king of all space marines, in an oddly nice touch referencing their techno-barbarian nature) the tau considered the Imperium to be a spent force. Because of this, there's a real sense of impending dread as the Imperial fleet drops out of the Warp, with the book focusing upon the sheer scale of the inbound armada. Each and every part comments on how the Imperial forces are preparing against tau tactics, ready to annihilate all resistance in one fell hammerblow, all the while the tau are still celebrating their victory. While it's not completely Pearl Harbour-esque, the Empire's victory speeches and focus upon terraforming a world the Imperium ruined adds a little sympathy to their side. Not much, they are still planet grabbing with-us-or-against-us nutters, but it's enough in the dark world of 40,000 to give a little variation.

In contrast to last time, the actual opening hours of the assault are treated as highly professional attacks and the Imperials hit hard from the start. We see their force emerging rapidly, taking orbital supremacy within hours and using their best elements to quickly gain the upper hand. They have the advantage of surprise and use it to the best of their ability, striking with a speed the tau would not usually associate with Imperial forces. 

Interestingly, Mont'ka doesn't simply forget about the Imperial fleet there and it does take time to address their use in the war. So often in this universe even the great books tend to overlook the use of fleet elements or question why bombardments can't be used to win the whole war. Oh they bombard key positions to be sure, taking out significant ground targets and wiping out key installations. However many areas are simply easier to take via the ground rather than have orbital bombardments wipe them off the face of the planet, which is where the ground forces come in. From there on, the Imperial navy blockades the world, causing the tau no small amount of trouble as their close orbits make life difficult for any potential reinforcements to land on the surface.

The opening section as a whole, right up to the first major ground engagements really serves as the strongest point here, with neither side coming down badly. It's brilliantly juxtaposed against the victory the tau had at the end of Kauyon; showing that for all their efforts they had basically just been poking the proverbial bear until it finally decided to do something about them. Even caught with a relatively minimal military force, the tau do not panic or abruptly flee. Their stations fight in orbit until they are burning wreckage, Shadowsun calmly calculates how long she needs to hold against the humans until the bulk of the tau navy arrives and tries to delay the inevitable. 

The tau fight a series of hit and run attacks, hiding their forces as much as possible to keep the enemy at range and slow them down. This is a major point of tau strategy, and their efforts to slow down their foe by harassing incoming troopships, sniping officers and engaging at maximum range remains a thorn in their side. Despite constantly retreating, they are only doing so after inflicting sizable casualties upon their foe. This actually keeps catching the Imperium off guard at first, even with their heard learned lessons, and it takes some time to gradually force them into open battle. Such acts are usually only accomplished thanks to the astartes, Imperial Guard and Mechanicus (yes, they're in this as well) working in concert, with one acting as the anvil against another force's hammer.

Much of the character development and attention this time has been shifted about. While this sadly pushes Khan and the newly promoted Chapter Master Shrike into the background, it allows for more time to be spent on forces otherwise overlooked. In particular, the Imperial Guard are at the forefront this time, and much of the action is shown through the eyes of their line officers. Rather than simply being ignored or pushed aside, they are instead serving as a key power in this book, and most of the major engagements between the Imperium and the Tau Empire stem from their efforts rather than astartes glory hogs.

It honestly seems as if the writing team wanted to make up for completely overlooking the Imperial Guard at first, as there is a definite effort to push their venerated history and past experiences. While built upon a few key battles and engagements, the sections outlining the structure and history of each Imperial Guard taskforce in turn by focusing upon their glories in a prior battle. While this would usually be a point of criticism, this actually pays off rather well. It honestly gives the writing a great deal of depth by comparison, as merely talking about them squad by squad has seemed rather flat in this book. As such, while it might be focusing upon the people here and now rather than the regiment's long and lauded history, the vivid descriptions of the Guard taking down Ork WAAAGHs! or other threats really brings them to life.

The final serious point in the book's favour stems from the character dynamic between certain groups. While the Imperial force itself is largely bereft of any diplomatic fractures or rivalries, the tau are instead the ones to give a little more insight into this time. Once Farsight shows up - AKA the guy Mont'ka treats as a complete surprise, ignoring that he's on the cover and that it's named after the strategy he mastered - there's obvious tension. This is a renegade who turned on the Empire after all, coming to help stall the invasion and Shadowsun has long been shown to hunger for a reckoning between the two. While sadly not handled quite as well as it could have, Shadowsun herself seems to undergo no small amount of character development thanks to meeting her, and we get a better look into Farsight. Rather than merely being the weapon used to promote hateful fanfiction as canon material (consider this another reminder that Codex: Farsight Enclaves is yet another book which needs to have every copy burned into cinders), Farsight here is presented as an old soldier. Someone tired of the constant fighting, slowly worn away by war, but still driven on by his iron will and sheer brilliant, resilience in the face of all threats.

Unfortunately, it's actually shortly after Farsight jump-kicks his way into the story that things start to unravel. While there had been fractures before that, it's this hammer blow which pushes things over the edge.

The Bad

So, yeah, there's a lot of bad here, and that unfortunately begins with the very concept itself. Now, everyone knew this was coming. The Tau Empire has always been left on a knife edge and their success has been dependent upon being largely ignored by the bulk of the Imperium in favour of more pressing threats. If the Imperium attacked, they were all but dead, if it ignored them, they would become unstoppable, it's simple as that. Well, now the Imperium has attacked with a massive force but it lacks the massive shift you would expect.

While the book comments upon the sheer scale of the invading force, the sheer size overwhelming the initial tau orbital facilities, once things reach the surface things slow down. The battles never really emphasise the sheer size of the attack, they never pause to display how outnumbered the tau themselves are or focus upon how the invasion could strike from anywhere. Instead the Imperial Guard land somewhere, apparently once place with them all there at once, and then start to march across the desert towards a stronghold in the distance. The battle is treated effectively as another Taros, where the Imperium's presence seems to be ridiculously limited and lacks the ability to use multiple landing zones. From there on, the whole war is effectively written as one force making a bee-line towards a single location, without any effort to secure major settlements or any locations in the slightest.

While review might have praised the presentation of the Imperial Guard earlier in how it builds them up, the same sadly cannot be said of how they fight. This is, to be blunt, probably one of the most insulting depictions of the army to date, embodying every fodder cliche imaginable. The Guard here are presented as having three things: Leman Russ battle tanks, a few Super-Heavy variants, and lots of Guardsmen with lasguns. While a few Sentinels or ogryns are mentioned here and there, these are quickly forgotten, and Chimeras only put in a single appearance as a lone burning wreck. Nope, they're not even presented as used even once. Because of this, the reader is repeatedly treated to descriptions of the Guard basically marching through the desert and being killed off by longer range tau weapons. 

There's no effort to mention the obvious additions of artillery, snipers or any army elements which might counteract the big tau advantage of this book, and even the use of air support seems to be quickly abandoned entirely. Worse still, the only tactic any Imperial force seems to know is throwing men at the enemy until they run out of bullets or are overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The very idea of actually securing a position or performing a flanking maneuver is something reserved only for those with borderline tactical genius, and often even that fails. Now, this isn't to say that there aren't armies who would have fitted the bill for this. The Mordian Iron Guard or any force led by Colonel Chenkov could have been written this way, but even they would have still used artillery or better equipped forces to combat long range battles. The guys here? Save for one background exception, they're all Cadian units. These are the guys who are supposed to be among the best disciplined and best trained armies in the Imperium, tasked with holding the Eye of Terror back at all costs. Here they're treated like any old generic PDF unit and are basically expected to die at the drop of a hat.

It would be an easy thing to claim that this book is biased towards the Tau Empire as it treats the Imperial Guard as a sacrificial lion alone. Unfortunately, there are more than a few bits which corroborate that opinion. Chief among these is how, the second things start to go wrong, the Imperial Guard forces are effectively abandoned. The astartes promptly disappear from the book save for a brief mention and the Mechanicus only show up for a bit to try and play Grand Theft Stormsurge, a point which is never properly resolved. Beyond that, a huge chunk of this book devolves into the Tau Empire whaling on the Guard until they stagger away, bloodied and almost broken. The entire deck is effectively stacked in their favour, and any moment it seems the Guard might start to have some kind of victory, minor or major, it's quickly reversed.

Over and over again, the book makes the point of reminding the reader that the tau are only losing thanks to sheer attrition. Any time the Imperial Guard starts to push against them, it's either quickly countered or eclipsed by a victory so massive it renders such a battle pointless. In one of the few moments where an Imperial hero outdoes a Fire Caste character, Knight Commander Pask manages to out-think and outfight Longstrike in an armoured engagement. Managing to catch him at close range, they surround Longstrike's forces and start ripping into them. So, what happens? Longstrike escapes. The book doesn't take even a single paragraph to explain how in the hell he escapes, he just does. Then, a few pages later, Longstrike shows up unharmed and (without Pask ever seeing it) blows his tank to hell, putting him out of the fight. Multiply this a few times over and you have the general tone of this book.

Even the very language itself is so openly in favour of the Tau Empire it starts to become hilarious in that wince-worthy cringing way. Seeing the writers going out of their way to remind the reader that the tau have won every major battle in the book at every possible moment, emphasising Guard casualties whenever possible, is embarrassing at best. The real problem here isn't that the Tau Empire is winning or holding its own, it's that they're not earning it. It's like reading the Zeist Crusade or an exceptionally bad Grey Knights story; one army has its arms tied behind its back, another beats the living hell out of them, and the author boasts about how awesome they are. When it comes to describing the tau, the book is practically glowing in praise, but when it gets to the Imperials, well, just read this intro:

"Here was a clash not just between armies but between ideologies. The Tau were forward thinking and logical, they believed in integration and technological advancement The Imperium was stagnant, resistant to the future as they clung to a past that had long ago slipped from knowledge into superstition."

... This passage certainly true in many regards, but it's boasting about the positive aspects of the Tau Empire while focusing upon the Imperium's greatest failings. Normally you could put this down to propaganda or perhaps even just biased storytelling thanks to following one side. Instead what we end up with is something treated as fact which is woefully weighted in favour of the xenos, leading to every problem you can imagine.

Even without the biased storytelling, or the writer's near fetishistic obsession with detailing exploding Leman Russes, there's no shortage of problems to be found here. Many descriptive terms rapidly fall into downright cliches and are hammered in so many times that they lose all meaning. The one which you'll quickly come to notice is the overuse of moments with tau commanders where the book notes “even as s/he gunned down/stabbed yet another poor fucking infantryman/rusty metal shitbox of a Leman Russ, they were already evaluating their position/keeping track of tactical events.” Honestly, it happens so often you could turn it into a Damocles drinking game. The same goes for how often certain battles repeat the same terms or play out in exactly the same way. There's no variation, no imagination here, and honestly no tension to these fights. The descriptions just don't do them justice, and things quickly become very run of the mill.

The actual invasion itself is, in all honesty, extremely easily defeated. After one major engagement, despite vastly outnumbering their foe, the Imperials are hurt so badly that they deploy an entire Officio Assassinorum strike team to the world below. Yes, the force so deadly it requires the majority of the High Lords to support it and is usually reserved for targets like Horus is sent in to destroy the tau. Unsurprisingly, they fail. How do they manage to do so? Because the Imperials can't even do the right thing when the plot hands them victory on a silver platter.

Rather than simply having them all jump the local Aun and killing him to break tau morale, they instead split up to go after every major target at once. This results in one being killed in close combat with Farsight, another being shot point blank by Shadowsun, Darkstrider more or less one-shotting another and the last one succeeding. Problem is, like so much here, very little of this seems earned. While they're played up as being serious threats, many go down to easily or honestly just have certain powers forgotten about entirely. The Eversor, for example, dies without exploding right next to his target and the Callidus abandons her disguise within seconds of seeing her target. Hell, the Vindicare is effectively iced by a flashbang and a few precise shots!

Now, while the book might be heavily weighted in the Tau Empire's favour, they do have their own problems. One of these is tied into the target of these assassinations, Aun'Va. Yes, the spiritual leader of the Tau Empire, the legendary flying space pope himself, is successfully killed by a Culexus agent. This has massive ramifications, massive potential for new storytelling elements and a huge wave of changes within the Empire. All of which the book doesn't bother to try and address. It's added so late into the storyline that the closest we get to any developments are Shadowsun covering up his death via holograms. The book doesn't even begin to look into the sheer weight his death might have upon the Aun themselves or how it might affect their expansion, instead it just deals with other matters. Like a very brief description of how the Farsight Enclaves are fighting a Hive Fleet in a completely unrelated story.

Now, while many are likely to cry out against Aun'Va's death given his lack of development and the sheer lack of tau characters, if anything it was stopping things before they got any worse. Rather than the wise leader, the spiritualist with an almost zen-like state we've seen before, what we get is basically a politician. Rather than being a true believer, Aun'Va is scheming, driven by how he is viewed by others than his beliefs, tries desperately to manipulate others to his will and doesn't even die bravely. If anything, his final moments serve to cement him as a fraud. Rather than any dignified end, he dies running, terrified after having all his followers sacrifice themselves in a meaningless way, openly hating humanity in an extreme display of xenophobia. Yeah, this wasn't a death so much as a mercy kill before things could get worse. Sadly, it's also more or less confirmation that Mont'ka's writers were determined to stick with the "Ethereals are all stupidly evil frauds" banded about by Codex: Farsight Enclaves.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all, however, was the finale. Spoilers ahoy, but here's how things eventually pan out: The Imperium loses the ground war. The Imperium then, via some Omnissiah ex Machina device, sets the entire Damocles Gulf on fire. In space. This not only burns Mu'gulath Bay but creates a massive barrier between the Tau Empire, the Enclaves and the rest of the Imperium. Because a recent retcon decided the tau don't have Warp technology (no, really, they've retconned that in favour of vague FTL stuff - AKA the stuff they retconned from the necrons for being unfitting for the setting) they can't get through it. 

Let's ignore for the moment that space is not two dimensional and we know ships can fly up and down. Let's ignore the fact that FTL capabilities should allow them to cross great distances and the retcons saying the Damocles Gulf was almost impossible for the tau to navigate. Let's even ignore the fact that, somehow, we're supposed to accept that this interstellar forest-fire effect is supposed to last possibly hundreds of years. Instead, let's focus upon one detail: This should be game over for the Tau Empire.

The Imperium's Warp drive allows them to bypass the event barring their continued advancement. They have been permitted to use Exterminatus level bombardments on targets and now have the resources free to launch a large scale crusade. Hell, they don't even need the ground forces, just the ships. The Imperium could have ships simultaneously launching virus bombs on T'au, Vior'la and Dal'yth within months, an act which would cripple the Empire. There's nothing here to suggest they can't or shouldn't do this either, and the Empire is only spared because the plot demands the Imperium retreats.

Even ignoring the fact that total defeat is only staved off thanks to plot driven stupidity, the worst crime is how they is put in place to ensure the status quo. We've had multiple characters on each side die, multiple battles fighting one another and big changes here and there. Yet, when it finally comes to genuinely push the story forwards in even this one small part of the galaxy, Games Workshop balked. They drove the Tau Empire back to its previous worlds, set up a barrier to stop further invasions, and then the Imperium buggered off again. So, everything is simply back to square one with little real improvement or story progression.

Yeah, not the best note to close out this trilogy on.

The Artwork

The final point to talk really about, mostly to end this on something positive, are Mont'ka's visuals. Specifically strength of the artwork and certain models. We've gone through several years with Games Workshop failing to strike a true balance between recycling iconic artworks and producing new images. For a very long it seemed that, with each codex, we'd be getting perhaps one or two minor new works for every ten we've seen taken from elsewhere. Even when those new works where put together, they often tended to clash. This was thanks in part to the mixed quality of colouring older black and white works, but predominantly thanks to the older, scratchier looks of prior styles failing to blend with the clean edges of new pieces. This time however, the editing team struck a near perfect balance between the two. 

While several older massed battle scenes or famous images are carried over from past books, the big focus here is on some major new art pieces. Each of these are dynamic and extremely striking, from massed army assaults to commanders surveying their forces, and whoever is producing these new works has a clear eye for striking imagery. Better yet, there's more of a distinct rift between the Imperial and Tau Empire works, where the former tend to have much harder edges or details than the latter's overly smooth design.

For all the praise which can be offered however, it is evident that there were more than a few communication errors when it came to certain pieces. The Mechanicus are shown several times with multiple Warhound titans supporting them, even after it's made explicitly clear that no Titan Legion could be spared to support the crusade. Then there are those pieces reused from past works, many of which contradict the story in baffling ways. One, in particular, shows several members of Farsight's vanguard still fighting hard long after they were confirmed killed. Another, a famous recycled piece showing an Imperial command centre, shows a hologram of eldar war machines rather than any tau battlesuit. Yeah, it gets a little wince worthy at these points.

The visual imagery and direction among Mont'ka's models has also been significantly improved. While there was nothing overly wrong with the product shots of armies on display from Kauyon, there was a sense of uniformity they never quite managed to shake. Like products on display for kids to demand - make your own joke, they're all good - each of them seemed to follow the exact same camera angles and general environment. While most of those same elements are present, there seems to have been more of a general effort to diversify certain elements. Elements of the backgrounds seem to have been shifted about here and there, the lighting retains more of a natural quality despite its haze, and many units now have somewhat differing placements when it comes to more unique units. The assassins are given more of a prominent placement on their page, setting them up as a display piece, and super heavy vehicles are shot to emphasise their sheer size. Minor things, but they're usually enough to make a serious difference here and there.

Verdict

Overall, Mont'ka is a book in which the writers are clearly trying to do something great and interesting. There are many ideas here which could have succeeded and many points where they seem to have responded well to old criticisms. The problem is that, in their efforts to push for big new ideas and new concepts, they just ended up doing very little at the end, and we're left with a bitter aftertaste in what should have been a fantastic book.

Unless you're a die hard fan of the Tau Empire, and you aren't that attached to the Aun, this one is probably not for you. While personally I do want them to continue this format and experiment further with this campaign series, this is not exactly a good installment at the end of the day. If you want to see this sort of pyrrhic victory done well then the Imperial Armour volume The Doom of Mymeara is strongly reccomended, but don't put too much stock into this one. 

So, that's this part of the lore done. Next up, the rules.