++ The Bringers of Despair - A Black Legion Community ++

[Sith’ari]

YESSSSS! I’ve almost finished rebasing my legionnaires though I’ve hit a relatively minor bump in the road - my bikers. I absolutely hate the bike bases they are on currently and I’m looking to switch them over to some of those sweet, sweet ovals, though I’m unsure which size would be the best fit. Does anybody know offhand what size I should go for?

[Gederas]

YESSSSS! I’ve almost finished rebasing my legionnaires though I’ve hit a relatively minor bump in the road - my bikers. I absolutely hate the bike bases they are on currently and I’m looking to switch them over to some of those sweet, sweet ovals, though I’m unsure which size would be the best fit. Does anybody know offhand what size I should go for?

Congrats. And as to the new ovals, the new base size for bikes seems to be 75x42mm (source: Orks bike mob and the Ravenwing boxes now come with those)

[Sith’ari]

Awesome! Thanks mate!

[Closet Skeleton]

I put my bikers on the smaller oval ones that come in the big Sector Imperialis kit, which are bigger than the ones flesh hounds and daemonettes come with.

Only photo I have right now is this one, they're in the corner.

[Midnightmare]

That is an impressive collection right there mate!

[Midnightmare]

”Gha d’Shend” - Spear from Afar

An ancient Hellforged Deredeo, currently piloted by Malik, The Punisher, an ex-Sons of Horus Heavy Support Legionary. Malik was interred into the captured Deredeo sarcophagus after falling in the same battle on Makan the dreadnought was taken, against the Blood Angels of Sanguinius. A favoured champion of the Black Harbingers Lord, Khargor Bane, the mortally wounded traitors’ own Havoc squad were responsible for ending the dreadnoughts participation in the battle before Malik himself was cut down in single combat by a Blood Angel sergeant. Not wanting to lose such a skilled leader and heavy weapons specialist, Bane had his Warpsmiths begin tech rituals to make the Black Legionnaire one with the Blood Angel Deredeo. Over the following years within the Eye, the ancient noble Blood Angel machine spirit and the stubborn Malik have became one, the bitterness and corruption within becoming obvious without. The dreadnought takes particular relish in destroying Sanguinius’ gene-sire, living up to its name of The Punisher, the “Gha d’Shend” - the Spear From Afar in the Black Legion mongrel tongue

 

http://i.imgur.com/ck0XibK.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/JuCZpbA.jpg

 

More HERE should you like :tu:

 

”We are returned”

[Brother Mayhem]

...looks like I'm going to have to get one of these along with the Leviathan *sigh* .

[durdle-durdle]

So tournament stats seem to beat out that black legion is the most competitive way to run chaos marines. Why do y’all think that is? Is it “because abbadon?” Because otherwise their trait and stuff seems...not extremely impressive. What am I missing?

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

It's mainly because of Abaddon the Despoiler but also due to the fact that the legion trait and stratagem are synergistic.

[Closet Skeleton]

Attended a small tournament yesterday (list was posted here) to see if this list was worth taking to two other tournaments I've got this month. I decided to bring it to the next one which is a more mono-faction friendly event but to do something different at the other ITC based one (which had a list submission deadline for today).

First game against Dark Angels, mission was beachhead

I seized the initiative and managed to kill a scout or two with my bikers and take 2 wounds of a rhino. Most of my army shot at his dark shroud and did no damage despite spending 5 cp on various stratagems. I also failed to get warptime off on my melee helbrute so barely advanced.

The Ravenwing zoomed forwards.

And trapped two squads in their rhino, stopping me from contesting the center objective he had advanced a scout squad containing rhino onto. So I just got 1 point for my deployment zone.

My obliterators came down and I spent most of my turn killing his flyer who had flown right up against my warlord. I tried to use smites and charges to free up my rhino but it didn't work. 10 cultists got out of a rhino and charged some bikers to trap them after piling in, but he spent 2 cp to interupt and then used a ravenwing stratagem to fall back instead of consolidating.

I warptimed my melee helbrute on second try and managed to get him into combat with the enemy dread on his home objective, but failed to kill it and got destroyed. Thankfully next turn my raptors came down and managed to kill once dread and next turn helped the remaining biker to clear the zone around his home objective.

I managed to wipe out or tie up his regular bikers and my lascannon/fist dread charged and wiped out the black knights, but not before they had stopped me claiming a point for my home objective for that turn. Sammael then killed my warlord after failing to charge the pervious turn.

He fell back from the trapped rhino, blew it up and then gunned down most of the marines inside, but I was able to warptime another squad in to help the stragglers charge the scouts holding he center objective.

I managed to take his objective and the center on the at the end of turn 3 but the round ended and thanks to the mission I didn't get any points so I ended up losing despite having more left at the end. With another round I would have pulled ahead.

Second game was against House Raven/Vostroyans and I conceded since I couldn't even score any points and lost most of my army in the first two turns.

Third game was against Nurgle (DG and Daemons), mission was four pillars

I rolled to deploy first but since he had just a plague burst crawler for shooting I chose to go second. I spent my turn one shooting at Mortarion until he dropped down to 8 wounds and sacrificed a 5 man squad by throwing them onto an objective right in front of a plague marine horde. My bike squad got me first strike by toasting some nurglings who had deployed forwards onto an objective. I charged 5 marines, the bikers and a rhino into the last nurgling who I killed with the bikers, freeing my rhino (one squad still inside) up to pile/consolidate into the plague burst crawler. This gave me 3 points on turn 1.

The battle played out so that one objective was safe in my deployment zone, the one north of it was swamped by 30 plague bearers while the one in his zone was held by the plague burst crawler and Typhus tried to retake the one south of it from my bikers.

My melee dread charged into Typhus but failed to kill him while the second squad got of their rhino and charged the plague burst crawler to tie it up and nab its objective. His warlord daemon prince took two rounds of combat to finish off the rhino.

I charged 10 cultists up against Typhus and a plague marine squad to make sure I had the objective after the marine squad was depleted down to the sergeant (who died thanks to Typhus' mortal wound aura).

His plague bearers got arrogant and charged both the sacrificial squad who had stolen their objective and a squad of 10 cultists, i got very lucky on saves and both units survived the onslaught, freeing my heavy support to blast away at the big daemons.

Mortarion survived two turns of shooting on 3 wounds, only to die to a smite followed by a daemon shell from my Chaos Lord, his putrid explosion finishing off my sorcerer (who had mark of nurgle so I probably made a mistake there). This freed up my Obliterators and havocs to blast Rotigus into paste.

The Plague bearers rolled a 1 on their morale as we ran out of time and 5 came back despite my Chaos Lord and remaining sorcerer trying to whittle them down.

The game ended 6 points to 5 in my favour.

I think my list is okay against mid tier mono-faction but I doubt it will do great against Eldar or knights. I will have to see next weekend at Death before Dishonour in Stockport.

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

What Forge World Units are best for the Black Legion?

[Panzer]

Attended a small tournament yesterday (list was posted here) to see if this list was worth taking to two other tournaments I've got this month. I decided to bring it to the next one which is a more mono-faction friendly event but to do something different at the other ITC based one (which had a list submission deadline for today).

 

<snip>

 

Great batreps. Unfortunately it turned out that I've been right with my first feel that the list struggles against Knights and such but hey that's how we learn.

[Tallarn Commander]

Skeleton, great batreps. I really like your list. Did you ever feel your 2 termie sorcs were too slow and, if so, would jump pack sorcs have been better? It looks like they were buffing Helbrutes some with Warptime? Did they have difficulty keeping up with the faster brutes?

 

Or did you find termie sorcs fit your list nicely.

[Closet Skeleton]

I could do some okay damage to a knight, my army just died too fast going second.

 

I use Terminator Sorcerers because I made a Cyclopia Cabal of them in 7th ed that I never used. I wanted all my characters to be terminator only for fluff reasons but 8th ed ruined that by introducing Exalted Champions who can't take terminator armour and are quite good. For competitive reasons I should probably just take 1 foot sorcerer in PA with prescience and 1 jump sorcerer with warptime but there's a lot in this list which is just the way it is because I had those models.

 

Black Legion aren't competative enough for me to waste money on making them more competitive, I just bring them out every now and then to get some use out of the stuff I was collecting for collecting and painting's sake.

 

The main reason I brought out this list was Terminator sorcerers dropping below jump pack sorcerers in points.

 

The combi bolters were neat with bolter discipline though. The 2+ save only came up once but along with the extra wound it did save the sorcerer against that plague bearer horde with their double damage banner.

 

To be honest I'd almost consider the full 140 points for a warptime biker sorcerer worth it. If a 40" move can score you the points to win a game then that's cheap.

 

The Sorcerers were too slow but only because I kept rolling 1s to run them.

[Midnightmare]

Great report and pics Skeleton, always nice to see the Legion in action :tu: Also, no Abaddon?? The internet will hate you :D

 

What Forge World Units are best for the Black Legion?

I can only speak for myself, and I am not the most competitive of players, but I use Laser Destroyer Rapiers, a Hellforged Deredeo and/or a Sicarian which can all reap quite a tally between themselves. I also drop in Terminators with Abaddon. It either works really well, or they all die horribly :D

[Khornestar]

I've been wondering about those rapier laser destroyers, because I have 9 (!) of them from 6th/7th edition renegade guard when they were badass weapons.

 

The 36" range is my main concern, as they could just get sniped by lascannons and do nothing about it.

 

How do you mitigate that? I would assume bring long-range shooting of your own and/or rush assault units to distract their shooting? Does Black Legion do anything for them?

[Tallarn Commander]

Hmm, I'll have to give termie and biker sorcerers a shot then. I usually use jump pack sorcs.

 

Thanks!

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

So I was looking at Dark Apostles and it seems if you make them your Warlord, give them the trait First Among Traitors, and the Black Mace Relic they are mini Abaddon on a budget.

[Midnightmare]

I've been wondering about those rapier laser destroyers, because I have 9 (!) of them from 6th/7th edition renegade guard when they were badass weapons.

 

The 36" range is my main concern, as they could just get sniped by lascannons and do nothing about it.

 

How do you mitigate that? I would assume bring long-range shooting of your own and/or rush assault units to distract their shooting? Does Black Legion do anything for them?

They do have a short range, but I haven’t found it an issue unless playing the length of the table, and even then after a slight redeploy there is always something to shoot at. I do bring them with a Deredeo and a Sicaran when playing 2k points, and they tend to be targeted first. I do drop in Terminators as well with Abaddon, though if you have so many Rapiers he may be better amongst them granting them his juicey re-rolls.

[Closet Skeleton]

That battle report seems to be slightly popular so I guess I'd better get some photos this weekend. I had a look at the other lists and there's quite a lot of knights I doubt I'll do much against despite the tournament rules nerfing their access to CPs. There's also two nurgle daemon lists and an alaitoc list that will give me a lot of trouble. I don't have much hope against guard either. The other Chaos Marine players are world eaters with a helbrute and mauler fiend list, an Emperor's Children list with 2 Heldrakes and a ton of chaos spawn and an Iron warriors list with a few battalions and a Thousand Sons list with a bunch of Scarab Occult. To be honest I'm probably more interested in seeing how the one Sisters of Battle player does.

 

One of the two Necron lists is three of those new Forge World Superheavies so that will be interesting to see. Someone else has two Knight Castellans which will probably demolish me while not being that efficient as a knights list.

 

So I was looking at Dark Apostles and it seems if you make them your Warlord, give them the trait First Among Traitors, and the Black Mace Relic they are mini Abaddon on a budget.

 

I'd rather have an Exalted Champion and a Daemon Prince/Chaos Lord together. All three sounds too expensive.

 

Unless your squads are over 10 strong then lord+champion is better buff wise than Abaddon and you can give one the murder sword and the other the black mace.

 

 

Hmm, I'll have to give termie and biker sorcerers a shot then. I usually use jump pack sorcs.

Thanks!

 

I like my terminator sorcerers but I wouldn't switch if I'd started with jump pack ones. I'm more glad that the price drop means I'm not shooting myself in the foot anymore.

[Panzer]

I'd like to hear how that one Necron list does as well. Someone clearly has too much money. o_O

Also it sounds like the CSM players are either desperate to find a list that works or have mostly given up on winning seeing how there's a funky Helbrute&Maulerfiend list and a double Heldrake&Spawn spam list. :D

[Closet Skeleton]

I'd like to hear how that one Necron list does as well. Someone clearly has too much money. o_O

Also it sounds like the CSM players are either desperate to find a list that works or have mostly given up on winning seeing how there's a funky Helbrute&Maulerfiend list and a double Heldrake&Spawn spam list.

 

It was advertised as a semi-casual event, but it seems even explicitly banning you from gaining CPs from allied detatchments still ends up with people mixing Knights and Guard.

 

The Heldrake/Spawn list only has 225 odd points of spawn and a contemptor, havok and obliterator unit to back them up. Its mostly a noise marine spam list with some rhinos

 

I double checked and there are actually two World Eaters Maulerfiend lists.

 

One has 3 units of 10 berzerkers in rhinos, Khârn, an exalted champion, a forge world blood slaughterer, a forgefiend 3 maulerfiends and then a allied bloodletter bomb and herald.

 

The other has a black mace lord, Khârn, an axe daemon prince, 3 units of autogun/heavy stubber cultists, 2 units of plasma pistol berzerkers, two rhinos, an exalted champion, a defiler, 2 maulerfiends and 3 helbrutes with melee weapon/twin lascannnon.

 

The Nurgle Daemon engine lists just look a lot scarier than the khorne ones and that's sad.

[Panzer]

 

I'd like to hear how that one Necron list does as well. Someone clearly has too much money. o_O

Also it sounds like the CSM players are either desperate to find a list that works or have mostly given up on winning seeing how there's a funky Helbrute&Maulerfiend list and a double Heldrake&Spawn spam list.

 

It was advertised as a semi-casual event, but it seems even explicitly banning you from gaining CPs from allied detatchments still ends up with people mixing Knights and Guard.

 

The Heldrake/Spawn list only has 225 odd points of spawn and a contemptor, havok and obliterator unit to back them up. Its mostly a noise marine spam list with some rhinos

 

I double checked and there are actually two World Eaters Maulerfiend lists.

 

One has 3 units of 10 berzerkers in rhinos, Khârn, an exalted champion, a forge world blood slaughterer, a forgefiend 3 maulerfiends and then a allied bloodletter bomb and herald.

 

The other has a black mace lord, Khârn, an axe daemon prince, 3 units of autogun/heavy stubber cultists, 2 units of plasma pistol berzerkers, two rhinos, an exalted champion, a defiler, 2 maulerfiends and 3 helbrutes with melee weapon/twin lascannnon.

 

The Nurgle Daemon engine lists just look a lot scarier than the khorne ones and that's sad.

 

 

Even back then ~7 years ago it rarely worked to announce a tournament as semi-competetive or casual. There are always people coming with competetive lists and proceed to wreck the others. Some because they want an easy win but also some simply because they don't have a feeling for what's actualy competetive or not (seriously, the AdMech player in my group is physically incapable of writing a non-competetive list. He thinks he wrote a weak and casual list when he added a unit of 5 rust stalker to his double dunecrawler+knight, double battalion 1500p list etc).

 

The Emperor's Children list actually sounds semi-competetive. Slaanesh shooty units are obviously competetive due the double shoot stratagem so Obliterators and Havocs are going to rock but we all know EC aren't the best choice CSM can go with on tournaments regardless of how good Noise Marines are and Heldrakes are very underperforming currently as well. I think he hit the spot of a strong semi-competetive list perfectly well even though I personally would've added a Sonic Helbrute and a melee unit of Chosen or Possessed as well. ^^

[Closet Skeleton]

Its one unit of autocannon havoks and one of obliterators so the same as my list (except I have a second unit of havoks). I know it can do okay but triple obliterators would be safer.

 

Admech have so few options you can't really write an awful admech list like you can write an awful marine list. I would throw a lone knight into a fluffy admech list if I had the time/money to start admech and triple dunecrawlers is just how you buy admech thanks to the start collecting box. Without relics/warlord traits I'd actually argue that throwing a knight into an admech list IS being casual (my admech experience is all from WintersSEO battle reports and he stopped using lone knights pretty quickly).

 

There's only a couple of horrible lists (the plague bearer/bloodletter one is what I'd bet on), most of them are just less optimised but still quite nasty lists. I don't know how you write a bad knight list. Its not easy to write a bad guard or ork list either.

 

All I really care is what proportion of my games are going to be a waste of time. If only 1 turns out to be a completely impossible match up then that's an okay tournament experience. Poorly matched armies are only really bad when one player literally might as well not take their turn for what effect it would have, a match up where I'd lose 3/4 of the time but there's still several turns of gameplay where I can make choices is at least a game that isn't completely wasting my time even if its not the game I'd choose if I had a regular club to attend (which I don't so I have to travel or not play at all).

[Panzer]

Considering that the Knight basically won him the game on its own (opponent was playing SW) I wouldn't ever say adding a Knight at 1500p is casual (though to be fair this Knight did have a warlord trait and a relic). Also I'm playing regularly against this AdMech player, he has enough other options to make weaker lists but he just can't do it. This was just one of many examples. ^^

 

I don't think writing a bad Knight list is actually possible. They are a bit undercosted for the amount of damage they put out compared to other factions tanks I think and that's without stratagem support. The worst Knight list I could think of would be a full melee list with nothing but Knights so low CP pool and a hard time securing objectives against infantry, but who would want to play such a list.