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Experiences with Black Legion Supplement


Valaskjalf

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@ abadizzle

 

Rock, paper, scissors happens all the time in this game but it is still a valid point. If I did however see that my opponent had Orbital Bombardment (normal tournaments that I play require a list for your opponents) I would start the prince in reserve so that the bombardment wouldn't even have a change to target him.

 

I think the strength of the Black Legion is that it basically allows us to ally with our 'parent' codex opening up the FOC.

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Which will probably be ratified in the new "official" tournament rules. Sadly. 

 

The strength of the Black Legion should be in the validity of the basic Chaos Space Marine or in the fielding of Chosen with a ton of special weapons, sadly the first is a mirage and the second an expensive setup that rarely works. As I have said, some way to add a Relentless character would make the CSM squads of 20 a brutal setup. 

 

In the end, the supplement is golden due to its fluff, a very awesome fluff at that, but as for the rules, those still fail to impress me. None of us asked for more Helldrakes or I Win buttons but simply to make the basic Chaos Space Marine a strong and viable choice,... again team Chaos was ripped off. 

 

In the end sure the artifacts are fun but when you begin to make a proper list you curse the Warmaster's name when you see an average of 70-100 points lost due to the Veterans upgrade, and if I play Black Legion I surely don't want to play cultists. 

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I couldn't agree more Tenebris, I was extremely happy with the fluff section for the BL and only slightly happy with the rules provided. I do like the 'feel' of the Black Legion and what the rules are trying to do, but it could have been done better.

 

Alas, this isn't the complaint thread so I will leave it at that.

 

Most of my games are home games, where I'm more than happy to spend too many points on units becuase I'm playing for fun. Once my 20 man units are all built I will be trying them out ala Black Legion just for the heck of it. I may even try Abaddon and a retinue of the upgrades terminators just to see what sorts of shananigins I can pull, again all in the name of fun. Now that I have been thinking about the BL, I also want to try the prince with the Last Memory (which may or may not be able to be used while locked in CC, will check when I get home) as this could lead to a fun tarpit model for dealing with hordes.

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Has anyone else played the altar of war missions? I sure don't hear them talked about very much. You have (if you so desire) a 50/50 roll-off against your opponent to see if you play them but I never hear about them. I LOVE them and think they're where the supplement really delivers a black legion feel (and I love chosen troops)- not from allying w the CSM dex and only slightly from artefacts and bringers of despair
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Interesting thought abadizzle, and I can see where your logic is headed. More often than not its the rules for making army lists that are talked about (or rather complained about) and not the other supporting elements of the Black Legion supplement. From what I gather about most of the negative things said about the supplement are about how it doesn't feel like the Black Legion. Maybe we all have just been missing that last ingredient to get what we want by not ALSO using the BL Altar of War missions.

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A nova is a sub-type of witchfire (pg 69 BRB) [if it has one of the following subtypes, use the rules for that subtype.] It then lists beam, focussed witchfire, maelstrom, and nova. Witchfire explicitly states in paragraph 2- "the psyker must be able to see the target unit (...) Cannot be locked in combat, must not have run... Etc. When nova says "automatically targets and hits all enemy units within range, regardless of line of sight, being locked in combat, intervening models..." Its referring to enemies in combat still being hit- not the psyker still casting a witchfire in combat. That's my understanding
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Thanks for clearing that one up abadizzle and Xenith, I don't have my codex or brb with me so I was going off of memory for both the Last Memory and the Nova spell type.

 

So with that settled, its not quite as good, but giving the Prince a shooting type attack would increase his damage output overall. The Last Memory seems like a good fit, as the Prince can jump into a large grouping of enemy infantry models and use the LM before assaulting. The only thing that hurts is that you are taking away a daemon weapon from him, but he's still a monsterous creature and has a decent number of base attacks.

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So I used the BL supplement for the first time earlier this week and thought Id share it with you guys. Since the start I wanted a way of making Warp Talons viable and try to find a way of making them effective. Had a 1500pt game against an Assault-heavy BA army with Mephiston as the HQ and Corbulo as the squad leader of a tactical unit. Along with a couple of 10-man Assault Squads all with Sang-priests for FNP and a 10-man Vanguard Squad. 8-man Devestator squad with FNP and 4 x PCs


- I ran BL as the primary detachment with a Slaanesh Jump Chaos Lord with Skull of Ker'ngar and Spineshiver Blade to join the 6 Slaanesh Warp Talons

- 2 squads of 10 cultists employed as the annoying "pain in the butt" and "always in the way" units. 

- 1 squad of 5 Noise Marines with a Blastmaster, joined by a level 2 Slaanesh Sorcerer in Rhino (Rolled Symphony of Pain and Endurance)

- 1 x 3 Nurgle Spawn

- 2 x 2 Nurgle Oblits

 

So without going into too much detail about the rest of the army I want to focus on the jump lord and Warp Talons:

- I decided to not DS any of the Jumpers but start on the board behind cover and keep any of the longrange (PC Devestators) at bay using my Oblist.

- Made sure I got my cultist as far forward as possible to shield the jumpers on the right-hand flank - the Cultists put out enough shots onto the Assault Marines that they HAD to charge the cultists.

- Managed to get my Talons out of cover, moved forward and Jumped into the ongoing combat, thus evading Overwatch.

- I rolled "Black Crusader" for my WL trait at the start of the game so the talons had re-rolls to hit ((1s) and shred - took out 8 Assault Marines before they could even strike. With 19 re-rolling AP3 hits at I5, not even FNP could save them.
- Jump Lord challenged the Captain and again, overkill...9A re-rolling at I7 made short work of him. I rolled on the Boon-table and got "Melee Attacks are ID"!

- Next turn I jumped over to Mephiston (who was tied up in combat by the Spawn), Challenged him and we attacked simultaneously at I7. He had 5A S10, putting 3 wounds on me (my Lord was DEAD), but I attacked back with 8 attacks, needing 6's to wound, he failed a 2+ save and was ID'd with a couple of wounds remaining....first time I had a Double KO in a challenge, it was fantastic.

 

The extra I and D6 attacks from the Blade was the telling factor, without either of those he would have squashed me - And eventough he did kill me, at least I managed to take him down with me. 

 

Was also impressed with the Talons - I admit, BA in 6th edition isnt anywhere near as competitive or shooty as many armies out there, but I wanted to try them out and find ways of limiting their losses from overwatch and picking the right moment to move out from cover. 

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I haven't played a game since the dawn of 5th, having felt a bit uninspired about Chaos in general for some time now (wonder why). The Be'lakor dataslate and Black Legion stuff perks my interest a bit, though. Be'lakor's wicked, if expensive, but not the focus of this thread.

 

I love, by the way, how the Black Legion background focuses pretty much entirely on vindicating Abbaddon of his Internet-granted "Failbaddon" moniker. He comes across as badass, that's for sure.

 

Allying with ourselves opens up some nuts 8-Baledrake-8-Oblit-unit goodness, though at that level you're probably better off playing Apocalypse and it's not like the game will be all that interesting.

 

New Artefacts are cool. I'll admit, I'm not in Malisteen's camp as I am on pretty much every other issue. The RAW is murky (obviously enough that we've had all these controversial threads over it) and the apparent RAI of the parent book doesn't seem to support things like the Skull taking a weapon. But that's a bridge I'll have to worry about burning when I actually start playing again, see how my FLGS and I hash it out.

 

Kind of on the topic of Malisteen's last question about the utility of the Skull on the Prince: I can't say for sure, but the fact that the Tau player at my shop, last I saw him, started pitching a tent every time he talked about Railguns instagibbing Princes out of the sky is kind of giving me a bias.

 

I wrote a few lists fiddling with these rules a bit; forcing us to take Veterans of the Long War is a bit of a tax, especially on units where it's clearly overpriced. Wish I could go back in time, hand Kelly my fandex, and yell, "take it, take it you fool! It's free, print this **** and roll around in the money, I don't care! For the Warmaster and the Legions!" and pop back into my weird time-warphole. You guys would never believe me, and some sniveling renegades player would probably whine about how Kelly's new Codex focusing on the Legions didn't properly represent his Bleak Brotherhood and totally nerfed his Slaaneshi-Lash-Prince with Plague Marine Troops and Obliterators (all totally fluffy according to his thrown-together Company of Misery background).

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Congratulations on the victory, Val.  Fortune definitely played a pretty big part, there (lucky to run into an elite, low model count, melee oriented, power armored army, where warp talons have the best chance of doing something; lucky the captain didn't have artificer armor/ lucky to roll ID on your boon result; lucky to roll sixes to wound and to have mephiston roll ones to save), but even so it's great to see the talons do well, and it's always great to see a black legion victory over blood angels.

 

On the artifacts thing - I really wasn't trying to argue that one interpretation was correct, just trying to point out that the controversy existed, and that there wasn't a clear answer, and that the only thing clear by the rules (that non-weapon artifacts take weapon slots for black legion), pretty obviously wasn't intended and that I've never heard of anyone playing by the written rules in that case, myself included.  I personally stick to one artifact per character not because that's my own reading of raw or rai (my own reading is one weapon, any number of non-weapons; and yes one choice from the ranged weapon category as well), but since it isn't clear and I don't feel I can strongly defend any one interpretation by the raw, I stick to one artifact just to avoid potential arguments at the game table (that's what the internet is for).  If you do take multiple artifacts, its something you want to check with your local group in advance, or you might end up in one of those 'dice off the rule' situations where everyone leaves the table bitter, feeling like the other guy was trying to cheat.

 

I really wish GW still did FAQs to clear the darn issue up, as well as the infiltrate issue and other bits.

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Good slayin' valaskjalf! What mission did you play? Did you roll-off for altar of war missions? I am dying to hear others' experiences w those! For the Warmaster!

It was "Big guns never tire", but in the end it meant little because the BA guy was tabled. Apart from the BL lord who (as Malisteen pointed out) was quite fortunate in his rolling/blessings on the Boon table, the stars of the show was probably the Spawn. They were the Grand Canyon of stumbling blocks for a Fast BA Army - With a Sorcerer in the backfield casting Endurance on them they were immovable and it was pretty much a tactic of suffocating them to death.

 

In our 40K group it is mostly other Power Armour armies, which is probably why I tried the Talons in the first place as that's what they would excell against. The other armies are SW / GK and Tau....Now I havent played against Tau since the guy got himself some riptides so I think that might be an issue for me.

 

I do, however, think that in the absence of Drop Pods and reliable DeepStriking that the only other way I could see overwheling the enemy is to overwhelm them with fast moving/high T models. Thats what I tried out with the Spawn and having T6 Beasts hurtling over the board to the JPs did the trick in this instance.....pretty much tie them down before they can get to me. The idea was pretty much to use my entire FA slot as suicide squads and just get into assault as fast as possible, thereby negating overwatch to other units without T6.

 

Will have to work on my list further, especially as I KNOW DP Space Wolves will be a nightmare to deal with - especially since Im not a fan of Helldrakes and would most like never run them.

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Congratulations on the victory, Val.  Fortune definitely played a pretty big part, there (lucky to run into an elite, low model count, melee oriented, power armored army, where warp talons have the best chance of doing something; lucky the captain didn't have artificer armor/ lucky to roll ID on your boon result; lucky to roll sixes to wound and to have mephiston roll ones to save), but even so it's great to see the talons do well, and it's always great to see a black legion victory over blood angels.

 

On the artifacts thing - I really wasn't trying to argue that one interpretation was correct, just trying to point out that the controversy existed, and that there wasn't a clear answer, and that the only thing clear by the rules (that non-weapon artifacts take weapon slots for black legion), pretty obviously wasn't intended and that I've never heard of anyone playing by the written rules in that case, myself included.  I personally stick to one artifact per character not because that's my own reading of raw or rai (my own reading is one weapon, any number of non-weapons; and yes one choice from the ranged weapon category as well), but since it isn't clear and I don't feel I can strongly defend any one interpretation by the raw, I stick to one artifact just to avoid potential arguments at the game table (that's what the internet is for).  If you do take multiple artifacts, its something you want to check with your local group in advance, or you might end up in one of those 'dice off the rule' situations where everyone leaves the table bitter, feeling like the other guy was trying to cheat.

 

I really wish GW still did FAQs to clear the darn issue up, as well as the infiltrate issue and other bits.

Yeah you're quite correct. I did have more luck than I usually do, I think this was payback for the previous game where I rolled 4 1's out of 5 dice and lost an entire Heavy Weapon squad! I did taylor my list accordingly though...had I come up against a non-assaulty army it would have looked much different, definitely would have had more bodies on the ground.

 

This was my first outing with the BL supplement and overall I was impressed, it wasn't perfect but what I like about it was that it made a Jump Lord with a Daemon weapon viable - something that probably doesnt fit so well in 6th edition, but it's pretty killy and even though Mephiston for some reason lacks an invul. save I was just really happy that I could get past his I7 S10 Attacks, that in itself felt like a victory to me. Well....I still got killed, but probably wouldnt even have landed a hit had I not had D6 extra attacks.

 

I also understand where you're coming from with the 1 Artifact per Model - but I somewhat tried to meet it halfway by only making one of those Artifacts weapons. I see tons of SM lists with guys wielding Burning Blades/Shield Eternal and tbh, the level of crazy HQs that puts forth cannot be matched by anything Chaos so I don't feel guilty about my S4 AP3 Lord worth 200 points lol

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I definitely agree with Valaskjalk with our counterparts taking burning blade / shield eternal, getting stuff like orbital bombardment and chapter tactics for free, s/m being better the csm's from the get go, and us lacking such basic things a drop pods (really GW ?? How are csm's supposed to get from our ships to the planet surface ? A shuttle bus ?) . Some one would be hard pressed to make me fell that I couldn't put 2 artefacts on my chaos lord (who even with them would still be hard pressed to stand up to many other IC's and SC's).

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Nowhere in the CSM nor the Black Legion codex mentioned you can't put more than one artifact on a model. The only restriction is no two copy of the same artifact in the army. So go ahead and take it. 

 

Though if you ask me, the only artefacts worth taking is the LMoY and the Skull. 

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Nowhere in the CSM nor the Black Legion codex mentioned you can't put more than one artifact on a model. The only restriction is no two copy of the same artifact in the army. So go ahead and take it. 

 

Though if you ask me, the only artefacts worth taking is the LMoY and the Skull. 

The Skull indeed is really cool, Ive only used it once but it worked well. Havent tried the LMoY, that's for another time but I found the Spineshiver Blade handy as well - turned my Slaanesh Jump Lord into I7  with +D6 Attacks....the problem is that you're stuck on S4, which is a problem if you take on really tough guys in combat. AP2 would have made the lack of additional Strength far more worthwhile I think.

 

Come to think of it, the SSB is probably best suited on a DP instead of a Lord. 

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Just got my hardback copy and besides the really cool background on Abaddon, I particularly like the special rule that reduces all Deep Striking BL Chaos Terminators to D6" scatter and lets them re-roll Mishaps!  (Oh wait, that's a Stratagem for the wildly popular Cities of Death expansion.  But the real kick in the pants is that the fluff for this entry isn't linked to city fighting in any way, and seems to indicate that BL should always be able to finagle this.  Talk about missed opportunities ...)   

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But they can now only use that expertise when they're in a city?  That makes no sense (not that I expect "sense" from GW at this point, but still.)  Lack of reliable deployment options is arguably the biggest complaint about the current CSM codex and when they actually do something to address that in the BL supplement, it's only for an outdated and rarely played expansion?  Not that I think this is some attempt to get CSM players to buy more copies of Cities of Death (they're too disfunctional for that) but IMO it does stray into "adding insult to injury" territory - c'mon GW, get your act together!     

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I did notice that myself and laughed. They are pretty expensive them Bringers of Despair, can't see why they couldn't have had the addition of 1d6 scatter as part of their upgrade......

 

Got to say, the fluff really is pure awesome in this supplement though.

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