[LIP] The Legio

[Brother Tyler]

As the Eye of Terror issue of the Legio Imprint comes to a close (hopefully), I've been doing more planning on the Legio-themed issue of the imprint. I think that the current plan is for the next issue to be part 2 of the Dornian Heresy (which is highly anticipated by many of our members), with the one after that being up in the air. To be honest, I don't care if the Legio is in #3, #4, or #n - but as our mascot chapter, the Legio deserves its time in the spotlight.

 

Just looking at the file size of the Eye of Terror and realizing that any e-zine dedicated to the WH40K will of necessity be image-intensive, my goal with the Legio issue is to get 64 pages. With four of those pages being the front/back/inside/outside cover, we're down to 60. That will be very easy to fill.

 

The mods have been working on revising and updating the Legio background for some time, so one article will be that revision. At this point, I'm thinking about writing it in the format Forge World is using in the Imperial Armour books. That takes up 6-8 pages, perhaps more if we consider the sheer diversity of Legio Space Marines. To be honest, this will probably be a hybrid of Insignium Astartes and the chapter article, taking considerably more than 6-8 pages as one of the big issues we've been refining is the appearance and organization of the Legio. And elements of recent codices, including 1 or 2 special characters, will also be incorporated. So there's a good chance that this portion (or portions) will take up 20 or more pages.

 

I'd also like to incorporate the shields of the Legio. There are a number of viable methodologies, though I currently favor combining this with a Legio mini-me showcase where we show a Legio mini-me model along with his honour and death shields, perhaps along with a brief bio of the Space Marine's service in the Legio. Three or four of these should be sufficient, with a few additional renditions of honour and death shields to round things out. We'd only need three or four additional versions of each type of shield to round things out. All contributors would have to do here is provide a Legio mini-me (preferably from minor chapters) and a scribbled honour shield. Sexxing up the honour shields would be fairly easy for me.

 

I'd like at least one short story, maybe two. For this, I think I'll solicit help, or maybe even make it a contest. If we follow the contest methodology, the winning entry would be featured in the e-zine while the other entries would be published later in a "Tales of the Legio" format. Alternately, we might just solicit authors for short stories featuring the Legio and then require them to bounce things off of me to ensure they portray the Legio "correctly."

 

A Legio B&C BFG fleet would be great, along with a BFG table and mission/campaign*.

 

I'm also going to modify the Space Marines versus Chaos Space Marines rules I've been working on to feature the Legio. That will be a short campaign, but will also serve as a vehicle for showcasing Legio terminators and some traitors (probably some of the despised traitors from the Legio). The rules alone will take up at least eight pages, and then each mission will take up two more, so there's another good chunk of the page count.

 

Both the BFG and Space Hulk missions/campaigns might actually be part of a larger campaign that crosses games, to include standard WH40K (and its expansions - notably Apocalypse, Cities of Death, Planetstrike, Battle Missions/Kill-Team), Epic Armageddon, BFG, and Inquisitor (?!!! - maybe a Deathwatch adaptation would be better here). We might also build in the Zone Mortalis rules from Forge World. And all of this might be built around another little science project we've been working on - a set of campaign rules that resembles a lite wargame such as Risk or Rex (where the engagements would be fought out using the normal games). Obviously, the bigger this gets, the more difficult it becomes, so we might choose to keep it reasonable and use standard stuff. Just providing a decent short campaign can take up a significant page count, including the history, showcases on key individuals, maps, and missions. Adding in a totally new set of lite wargame rules would be highly challenging and would add even more pages, so it's not absolutely necessary and will only be done if we can get the rules finalized, playtested, and sexxed out with cool art. I honestly expect to not have the wargame rules as part of the issue unless we decide that we want to go big.

 

The Arena of Death is also a likely candidate, using the lite rules that we typically use at Games Day. The intent here would be to promote using this concept at local game stores or among friends for "filler" entertainment. This might even include an AoD batrep and be written around a short story/vignette. And the whole thing might be included as part of the overall campaign (if we do that, that is).

 

Regardless, the games stuff in this issue will be applicable using any other chapters, with the Legio simply serving as the example.

 

And something I'd definitely like to do is feature at least one full Legio army. I highly doubt that I'll have mine done (or even started), so I'm hoping that -Q- or StrayCatt will have theirs done and will allow it/them to be used. If that's possible, I'd like to give full background on that army, taking up even more pages. This might also provide us with a painting guide.

 

Something I'm going to have interspersed throughout are excerpts from the "Ars Victorum." The concept here is that some Chapters treat the Codex Astartes as a living document. Some Space Marines "meditate" or "comment" upon the Codex Astartes in different ways. The Vengeance Hawks (my DIY, and I'm only using it because as my DIY it's a tabula rasa and I don't risk GW changing things on me unless they adopt my chapter name for some reason) are one of the chapters that follows this practice. So a Vengeance Hawks battle brother is seconded to the Legio and eventually rises to the rank of captain. His meditations on the Codex Astartes are a journal titled the "Ars Victorum" (Art of Victory - an amalgamation of Sun Tzu's Art of War and Suvorov's Science of Victory, but in BS Latin). These excerpts will really focus on some issues that I want to present for later use in a B&C worldwide campaign (external to this Legio Imprint, so don't get excited). These excerpts will also fill white space, though I hope to tailor them to the theme of whatever article they are joining.

 

A couple of other potential articles will cover the website, shifting away from the game. One of these is a potted history of the Bolter & Chainsword, and the second might be an editorial (a la Jervis' "Standard Bearer" articles) from one of the admins, preferably Brother Argos or Kurgan the Lurker due to their position/longevity.

 

Ultimately, I think that filling 64 pages will be easy, and we could very easily go over that.

 

This has all been an initial "vision" thing. I'm sure it will be refined. In the next installment I'll start looking at planning specific articles.

Edited March 22, 2012 by Brother Tyler
Damn typos!

[Lysimachus]

Sounds very interesting Bro T! Looking forward to hearing what revisions are coming for the Legio fluff, and I'd be happy to offer help on the writing side of this, either stories or Legio mini-me bio (always meant to write one up and never got round to it!).

[Brother Tyler]

There won't be a lot of "revisions," per se, but more of a refinement. The current article is fairly accurate, but we're doing a little tightening up of things and making a few small additions and clarifications. Using the Imperial Armour format, we can provide some historical events as stepping off points for campaigns or to provide members with a source of inspiration for their own Legio armies.

 

Let's open the door - is anyone interested in contributing to this issue? The things I'm looking for right now are Legio mini-me models with honour shields*; a Legio fleet for BFG (small fleet - one battle barge, two strike cruisers, and any number of smaller squadrons); short stories/vignettes**; Terminators for a loyalist versus Chaos Space Marine Space Hulk (ideally one member or multiple members local to each other so that pictures can feature both sides in games); and ideas for both the Selected Battle Honours portion of the article and the campaign.

 

* The mini-me model can be done in either 28 mm or 54 mm scale, while the shield can either be a painted model or can be rendered on the computer.

 

** I'll probably open the short stories segment up to the wider B&C membership as a Tales of the Legio contest that I mentioned earlier, but that won't happen until I'm ready to run a contest to fruition. You guys can get first crack at it, though, by having advance notice that it's coming.

[Badaboom]

Hello guys,

 

Forgive my abscence during these months, but I haven´t had time for side projects and so I had to focus on some other duties. Anyway, if I can help with some works to the development of this issue, I´ll happily do so, as a couple of my fellow illustrator friends will gladly do if our schedules allow.

[Brother Tyler]

This is being re-posted from the previous thread as a separate pitch.

 

Note that for now we're going to hold off on this one pending the outcome of discussions among the admins.

 

It would be quite easy to come up with stuff on the Legio. I don't know whether or not we could fill 100 pages, but we could easily fill 64 pages:

• We've long been working on expanding and revising the Index Astartes: Legio article.
  
• Assuming we have volunteers to paint up their own Legio armies/minis, we could have some showcases. -Q- has been working on some stuff, I have a Legio army planned, and StrayCatt has recently mentioned painting up a Legio army. We might be able to lean on Joker to see if he ever went anywhere with his Legio army. People might paint up kill teams, etc. This whole thing might dovetail into the background piece by showing the "Chapter Approved" livery while also showing how players might incorporate their own personalization into the army.
  
• The Hive of the Dead scenario that we were working on for Games Day Chicago this year (bust because of a work conflict) could easily be added, along with showcases on the minis (a few scouts, a storm raven, a horde of zombies, and a cool table).
  
• The Arena of Death could be showcased, with baseline concepts and optional variations provided. We could easily augment this with an encapsulated update and revision of the Legio-based storyline AoDs we've run in the past.
  
• The fleet of the Legio might provide a good backdrop for a BFG article or two, perhaps including a scenario/campaign and a showcase for the ship minis (I have the ships for this, though others would be more than welcome to assist/lead). This might also be augmented with an article on creating a BFG table and "terrain."
  
• We might have an article or two on using the Deathwatch RPG rules to play the Legio.
  
• We could always showcase some of the Legio mini-me's. This would definitely include past/existing minis, but we could easily have a new contest and feature the minis from the new contest, too.
  
• We could always include some Apocalypse datasheets for formations, using Legio minis for the graphics.
  
• I'd like to see either a "proper" Space Hulk scenario (i.e., Space Marine Terminators versus genestealers) or an adaptation of Space Hulk (power armoured Space Marines versus Orks? loyalist Terminators versus traitors? something else?). This might be augmented with an article on building a Space Hulk board.
  
• We've been planning out a campaign featuring the Legio, and this campaign and its rules might easily be featured in the issue.
  
• And the list goes on and on ...
  

Basically, just about anything we can think of to write up in an issue can be adapted for the Legio. There is most definitely not any kind of shortage of information or potential content.

[Brother Tyler]

Note that we've made significant adjustments to the concept of the Legio, and those are still in development. So this LIP is off limits and will be handled by the mods/admins when we are ready.