Legion Game Philosophies from 2002 3rd Edition

[Candleshoes]

After the latest round of 6th edition Chaos Legion rumors, as well as a few "Warband VS Legion VS Renegade" threads, I found this quote in a Chaos Space Marine column Pete Haines wrote when he played his famous Iron Warriors.

 

Though this deals with 3rd Edition, and the emergence of the IA articles, I particularly appreciate the acid test remark, as this former designer gives his personal opinion that sometimes structure and restriction do help cement identity, even if the other option includes a "feel free to play anything with anything" attitude that follows the current renegade/former legion Warband view.

 

Anyways, here it is, food for thought:

 

When writing Warhammer 40,000 background, I do not believe in promoting a modus operandi for an army that cannot possibly work on the tabletop, and in this regard, my experience with the army proved invaluable.

 

The Index Astartes articles did leave me with quite a few models that I couldn't use any more (all my daemons and cult marines for example), but this was a small price to pay for a more consistently themed army. It did feel strange to use an army whose modifications I had written myself, but when I added a vindicator to my roster with the additional heavy support choice and saw how good it looked with spikes, my reservations quickly disappeared...

 

By this time, I had already begun work on the revised Third Edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines, so I was well aware that some level of change was on the way. The Cityfight campaign had indicated to me that it was about time to make changes to the roster in any event, if for no other reason than to freshen up the army...

 

This brings me to the present day. Thanks to the Index Astartes there are now boxed sets of Legion specific Chaos Space Marines available... Occasionally being committed to using a single, particular army can be frustrating as you look at some of the other armies and think, "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those?" The acid test is whether you have enough enthusiasm to collect and paint one; every time I apply this test, I end up deciding I would rather just collect more Iron Warriors.

[Yogi]

When I read that I just wished he had liked thousand sons..

[Trel]

That's a great quote. I can't believe it's been ten years.

 

It really does give more perspective on the monstrous task of designing Chaos forces. In all honesty, I always thought that they had it right with the previous version of Chaos in WFB (mortal and daemonic units comprising a unique Force Org. chart).

 

I think that could work in 40k too. Replace the Force Org. chart with HQ, Marines, Daemons, and the Lost & the Damned. Then have players build the forces they want (with some 0-1 restrictions for balance purposes.)

[Brother Ambroz]

That is a great quote. While yes the renegade codex we use now does promote freedom to use whatever you want, it really doesn't give your army the theme and identity you want when playing a warband with some of the origional traitor marines. Hopefully with the new codex in sight we'll get some of that back.

[Inquisitor Engel]

Pete Haines had a great idea, but ultimately the wrong motivation for it and it showed. The Iron Warriors came out GREAT, as did generic Chaos Marines. Every other Legion However, was a mangled mess of archetypes with no style and often, no real bonuses.

 

Not only that, but letting a man who admittedly loves Iron Warriors write both the Iron Warriors IA AND the Imperial Fist one? Criminal. Talk about a conflict of interests. I'm glad the Horus Heresy novels are moving Dorn's rivalry away from Perturabo and moving it towards Curze. Much cooler.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Meh, the only problem with the Imperial Fist IA to me is that it starts with "And then Rogal Dorn showed up on a giant ship!" We learned nothing whatsoever about his early life or homeworld, but the homeworld is a very unsubtle Inuit reference, given that it's called Inwit, and is unsurprisingly a frozen planet.