Which tactical "holes" were in the Space Marine Legions?

[Urriak Urruk]

When I wrote how Legions weren't good at "specialized anti-xenos stuff" I meant the small kill teams that Deathwatch does, not the general "kill everything" of the legions.

[SkimaskMohawk]

It's kind of an impossible comparison. Deathwatch is an extremely small and specialized organization meant to serve the ordo Xenos, where they do things like special search and destroy missions, or capturing specific targets for study.

 

That level of specifity wasn't something the legions concerned themselves with as part of expedition fleets. If there were Xenos, they'd kill them. If there was a high value target that needed to be slain they'd use things like seekers, moritats or destroyers.

 

To illustrate how different in scale the two are, most legions hovered around 90k legionnaires (word bearers and ultras had more, alphas a bit unknown) with 18 legions, for about 2 million marines. There's supposed to be 1 million marines total in pre-primaris 40k, with the deathwatch being made up of donations

[Kizzdougs]

 

 The Dark Angels are an excellent example of an 'all-rounder' Legion that can be given a lot of flavour and character (when writing a list). As the First Legion, the Dark Angels specialised in all aspects of warfare that other Legions to go on to make their own during the Great Crusade. They were all most like a collection of different Legions under the one banner in the early days of the Crusade. This variety and diversity of capabilities come from their various 'Wings'. The Ravenwing is a rapid response formation which operates in a similar style to the White Scars; the Ironwing is made up of massed armour formations, similar to the armoured companies of the Iron Hand and Iron Warriors; the Dreadwing is a weapon of last resort and total destruction, similar to the Space Wolves, World Eaters, and Death Guard; the Stormwing specialised in boarding actions and Zone Mortalis engagements, similar to the Imperial Fists and World Eaters; the Deathwing is the Legion's elite formation made up of the Legion's most deadly warriors with the best equipment that the Imperium can provide; the purpose of the Firewing is currently unclear. Hopefully Angelus with give us some more detail. So even though the Dark Angels are an 'all-rounder' Legion there are still numerous specialist formations that excel in a particular aspect of warfare.

 

I hope that the Dark Angels' versatility is adequately reflected in the 30k game. I made a thread previously about whether or not the pattern of "Each -wing of the first legion merits its own Rite of War" would be followed for all six -wings, but unless the Angelus book confirms this pattern there's no guarantee it will have one. 

 

My guess is that the Firewing is the psyker/anti-psyker division of the Dark Angels. The Dark Angels had to be able to cover all their bases as the First Legion, and given the diversity of foes faced during the Great Crusade, it's almost certain that they had to face and adapt to foes using psyker abilities before dedicated psyker/anti-psyker forces (like the Sisters of Silence and the Thousand Sons) were formed during the GC. Besides, psyker abilities give access to unique advantages (such as Divination) accessible in no other way. 

 

Can't we also deduce some of the legions' "tactical holes" by referring to the ingame rules? The Blood Angels and Raven Guard both have restrictions on the number of tanks they can field, so we can safely say that they didn't emphasize armoured warfare as much as the other legions did.  Similarly, the Iron Hands are restricted in the number of Fast Attack choices or unit types they can use, so clearly Ferrus wasn't someone for raiding or rapidly exploiting breakthroughs.  Or how the White Scars will be stuck operating at suboptimal capacity during the Siege of Terra since they are at their deadliest when moving above a certain speed, which they will rarely get to do so in the street-to-street fighting of Holy Terra. 

 

Sometimes the holes get revealed in fluff, too, such as with the Raven Guard at the Battle of Gate 42 where they were ordered by Horus to conduct an offensive siege action and suffered heavy losses because they didn't have the tanks, the manpower, or artillery support suited to taking fortifications out in the open that other legions like the Iron Warriors did. 

 

Can we also say that the Alpha Legion was also an all-rounder legion? Their Mutable Tactics is uniquely versatile. I'd still like to see how Legions like the Dark Angels or Alpha Legion faced down hordes of angry World Eaters or other rampaging melee forces. At least the Alpha Legion have access to Counter Attack, but even that's not much more than a speedbump for an Alpha Legion tactical squad up against a Nob squad or enough World Eaters. 

 

I doubt that we'll see a Rite of War for each wing (at least to start with). The Ironwing and Ravenwing Protocol RoW are both pretty characterful and are totally different to a standard Legion list so they've already got plenty of diversity. I imagine that the Deathwing will be covered by an elite Terminator unit. You could just take Pride of the Legion if you want a Deathwing force, no need for a unique RoW. The Stormwing could be built using a standard Legion list because Breachers are Troops or even the Zone Mortalis Assault Force RoW if you wanted to. I'm not too sure about the Firewing or Dreadwing. I always imagined the Firewing was an aircav or orbital assault force so Decent of Angels, Orbital Assault, or Drop Assault Vanguard would work fine for them. If they are an anti-psyker force then they would need their own RoW or unit entry.

 

Edit: The Warhammer Community page has recently mentioned the different 'Wings', this is what they had to say on the Stormwing and Firewing:

 

The Stormwing: A formation used in the Great Crusade, consisting exclusively of Breacher Squads with boarding shields. The Stormwing specialised in spaceborne boarding operations.

 

The Firewing: The Firewing was one of the six wings of the Hexagrammaton during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. Its purpose is not known, completely lost to the mists of time. There are, however, intriguing heraldic links between the Firewing and the sigil of the Consecrators, a Successor Chapter of the Dark Angels.

 

I don't think we should read too much into the possible Consecrators link, but it's definitely interesting. The Consecrators aren't really known for a particular style of warfare that might give us a clue to the nature of the Firewing. They are known for using and maintaining a lot of Heresy era equipment and their colour scheme is pretty much the same as the 30k era 1st Legion so there is that connection, but it doesn't tell us too much about the possible nature of the Firewing.

 

Legion special rules can give us a bit of insight into some of the Legions' weaknesses, but I wouldn't read into it too much. The rules are designed to represent the most typical aspects and strengths of each of the Legions and they represent the strategic tendencies/preferences of that Legion. So they tell us more about what that Legion is really good at and how it prefers to operate rather than where that Legion is weaker. Yes, the Iron Warriors or Iron Hands would defeat the Raven Guard in a straight up armoured engagement such as Tallarn, but that doesn't mean that armoured warfare is a 'tactical hole' of the Raven Guard, but rather a strength and focus of the IW and IH. With the Blood Angels I'm sure that they had potent armour capabilities, but their preferred style of warfare emphasised aerial assault, so their armoured companies would perform more of an ancillary role than in Legions that had armoured capabilities at the core of their order of battle. So, the rules try to push us towards creating lists that are 'typical' of the Legion in question, rather than really tell us too much about the Legion's actual operational capacity or materiel capabilities.

 

Book three, Extermination says this about the Raven Guard's armoured capabilities:

 

While retaining its expertise in stealth and infiltration, the XIXth integrated formations of battle tanks, super-heavy war machines, artillery, assault vehicles and fleet assets, mastering each with the skill engineered into them by the genius of the Emperor. para. 2, page 137.

 

Though best known for the skills of its warriors in rapid assault, reconnaissance and infiltration protocols, the Raven Guard Legion possessed and utilised the full range of engines of war produced for the Legiones Astartes by the genius of the Mechanicum. The Raven Guard maintained entire battalions of heavy armour of all types, the Legion Armoury and Fleet Reserve held hundreds more, and individual companies were assigned individual war engines as and when required. para 1, page 146. 

 

I think most Legions would have suffered similar casualties at Gate 42, but Primarchs such as Perturabo, Angron or Mortarion would be more willing to suffer the kind of casualties taken by the Raven Guard than Corax was. The tragedy was that Corax could have taken the Gate with fewer casualties if he had been allowed to apply his on strategy (draw the enemy out and then destroy them before taking the Gate), but he was pushed into a corner by Horus, Perturabo and Russ (Horus demanded a swift victory and Perturabo accused Corax of cowardice because he less willing to spend the lives of his warriors cheaply). Gate 42 demonstrated that the Raven Guard had a less costly (but slower) way of doing things, but if forced to take the more direct approach could still get the job done.

 

Yes, the Alpha Legion are definitely an 'all-rounder' Legion but with definite strategic preferences. If they had to fighting against the World Eaters then they would only 'face down the hordes' if there was no other option, and for the Alpha Legion there is nearly always another option. Game rules and mechanics don't really reflect the Alpha Legions capabilities vis-a-vis other Legions such as the World Eaters.

 

Rather than looking for a tactical "hole" to fill, I think a better approach would be to look for a Primarch specialty that's missing, and extrapolate the missing tactics from there. For example, which consul roles are missing? We have a Forge Lord (Ferrus), a Chaplain (Lorgar), a Librarian (Magnus), Master of Signal (Guilliman), and so on... but no Apothecary. We're missing the apothecary Primarch, and therefore the apothecary legion. Which leads us to the following:

 

Observed Strategic Tendencies: Biological Warfare, Xenos Identification and Classification, Natural Disaster Relief Efforts, Post-Compliance Renewal Operations.

None of those strategic tendencies really fit with what the Legions were designed for (war/conquest) except for Biological

Warfare and that would probably be covered by the Death Guard, Alpha Legion, and Mechanicum.

 

Xenos Identification and Classification is covered by the Magos Biologis. The Mechanicum is much better suited to this task.

 

Natural Disaster Relief Efforts don't really suit the Legions. The space marines are humanity's ultimate living weapons, not firefighters. Plus natural disaster relief would be covered by localised forces (Imperial Army, Militia, Mechanicum etc.), not a crusading force of hyper-killers. By the time a space marine fleet could react to a natural disaster it would be way too late (warp travel is unreliable and the galaxy is a big place). And the Mechanicum are better suited to that kind of task anyway.

 

Post-Compliance Renewal Operations: that's what the Word Bearers were all about before their censure at Monarchia, and they were punished for being too 'slow' as well as their Emperor worship. The Emperor needed to conquer the galaxy as quickly as possible, that's why he created the Legions. The post-compliance tasks were mostly performed by the Imperial Army, Militia, and Mechanicum. The Legions were need on the front lines. Some Primarchs such as Guilliman and Perturabo left Legion forces to guard/govern worlds. In the case of the Ultramarines it would only have been a very small group of senior astartes tasked with overseeing the rebuilding of the world/cluster and they were the largest Legion so they could do this without slowing their overall progress. The Iron warriors resented this task and would only have been left of the most dangerous or strategically important worlds that 'regular' human forces could not be relied upon to manage.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Kizzdougs

[bluntblade]

How can two separate posts about two books by the same author both disagree...

They don't. The posts about Scars and PoH both have the Scars executing intricate plans. Also their thing in Little Horus.

[Icarus1138]

 

 

 

Rather than looking for a tactical "hole" to fill, I think a better approach would be to look for a Primarch specialty that's missing, and extrapolate the missing tactics from there. For example, which consul roles are missing? We have a Forge Lord (Ferrus), a Chaplain (Lorgar), a Librarian (Magnus), Master of Signal (Guilliman), and so on... but no Apothecary. We're missing the apothecary Primarch, and therefore the apothecary legion. Which leads us to the following:

 

Observed Strategic Tendencies: Biological Warfare, Xenos Identification and Classification, Natural Disaster Relief Efforts, Post-Compliance Renewal Operations.

None of those strategic tendencies really fit with what the Legions were designed for (war/conquest) except for Biological

Warfare and that would probably be covered by the Death Guard, Alpha Legion, and Mechanicum.

 

Xenos Identification and Classification is covered by the Magos Biologis. The Mechanicum is much better suited to this task.

 

Natural Disaster Relief Efforts don't really suit the Legions. The space marines are humanity's ultimate living weapons, not firefighters. Plus natural disaster relief would be covered by localised forces (Imperial Army, Militia, Mechanicum etc.), not a crusading force of hyper-killers. By the time a space marine fleet could react to a natural disaster it would be way too late (warp travel is unreliable and the galaxy is a big place). And the Mechanicum are better suited to that kind of task anyway.

 

Post-Compliance Renewal Operations: that's what the Word Bearers were all about before their censure at Monarchia, and they were punished for being too 'slow' as well as their Emperor worship. The Emperor needed to conquer the galaxy as quickly as possible, that's why he created the Legions. The post-compliance tasks were mostly performed by the Imperial Army, Militia, and Mechanicum. The Legions were need on the front lines. Some Primarchs such as Guilliman and Perturabo left Legion forces to guard/govern worlds. In the case of the Ultramarines it would only have been a very small group of senior astartes tasked with overseeing the rebuilding of the world/cluster and they were the largest Legion so they could do this without slowing their overall progress. The Iron warriors resented this task and would only have been left of the most dangerous or strategically important worlds that 'regular' human forces could not be relied upon to manage.

 

 

First, I don't believe there being overlap in specialties means that it's an unlikely specialty for a legion to have. Yes, the Magos Biologis handled Xenos identification. That doesn't mean a legion couldn't as well: we might as well say that the Iron Warriors couldn't have had a siege specialty because that was the Ordo Reductor's thing, or the Iron Hands couldn't have a technological focus because all of the Mechanicum existed. The Imperial Fists couldn't have a focus on naval combat, that was the fleet's job. The Emperor's Children couldn't prefer swift attacks and have a thing for jetbikes because the Scars already did that. The Luna Wolves couldn't be called the Luna Wolves because etc etc.

 

Second, I think it's entirely likely for a missing legion to have a specialty that's not entirely in-line with what the legions were created for. We know for a fact that multiple legions already had elements of culture that clashed with their job: The Thousand Sons collected lore, definitely not in the legion's job description. The Word Bearers, as you pointed out, went way off-mission. Would it be all that surprising to learn that at least one legion that "failed" was even less of a fit for their calling? If they were perfectly suited for their task, I daresay they might still be around. It's silly to assume a lost legion must have been model Astartes (no pun intended).

 

Finally, pointing out that no legion did anything similar to disaster relief, post-compliance work and so on as an argument that a lost legion wouldn't have done it either kind of defeats the purpose of the OP. We're specifically looking for niches that aren't filled by existing legions, after all :) 

[Trevak Dal]

I sort of saw the alpha legion as half Mission Impossible, half A Team. With some "big damn heroes" and "marines don't plan we improvise" tossed in to garnish.