There's a trend in the Armadaverse. A good number of you have said on the official Facebook page that you read through all the current books just prior to a new release.

This is the ultimate guide to surviving a read-through Armadathon!

Of all the regiments in the Imperial Combine's Conventional Air and Ground Assault forces (CAGA), there is none so infamously brutal as Tanker Regiment. Led by Colonel Catark Baiste, the regiment is an armoured fist of muscle and bone. Its sole purpose is to smash, batter, and devastate enemy facilities, neutralising opposing units as traumatically as possible.

Tanker Regiment arose in response to external threats which were difficult to counter using conventional approaches implemented by average humans. Finding that many hostile alien species utilised warriors who were bigger, stronger, and faster than humans, the Imperial Combine set about the task of assembling a task force of soldiers with extreme physiology, soldiers who would be willing to push their bodies beyond those extremes artificially.

Over time the benefit of this strategic resource was made clear repeatedly, and the initiative was expanded many times over. For administrative purposes, the soldiers involved in the programme were reorganised into a single unit. Thus was Tanker Regiment born.

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Every human schoolchild knows that wormholes are the phenomena which allow the Imperial Combine to control almost three spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.

Humanity knew that wormholes were mathematically possible long before they travelled to the stars, but it was not until many centuries later that the technology caught up with the maths. In the early days of wormhole travel, voyages to other star systems were inefficient, horrifyingly expensive, and fraught with danger.

The main issue with early wormholes was that they were all 'unbound', meaning that although the point of origin was more or less anchored in space, the destination end was free to wander. This meant that a ship travelling through the wormhole would experience increasing turbulence, and even if it survived transit it might not arrive exactly where the crew expected it to. It was not until humanity encountered the Lem Bataan that this problem was solved.

Nothing quite sums up the culture of the Imperial Combine like the most popular sport of the age: maulball.

First seen in List of the Dead, maulball is a full contact sport in which players attempt to acquire and maintain control of a ball in order to acquire points.

The sport is insanely popular across the entire reach of Imperial space. This is partly due to the highly competitive league structure, and partly due to the extreme violence which can occur during matches. Social commentators throughout the Imperial Combine have long speculated that the boisterous, aggressive nature of maulball allows the citizens of the empire to 'blow off steam', vicariously and without personal risk.

A maulball match can include between three and seven players, depending on the league and division. In local divisions, teams usually comprise players from a single city or district. In the divisions of the major and pro leagues, teams usually comprise players who represent their planet or star system.

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