Legions Imperialis & Epic hobby chat!

[SkimaskMohawk]

It's plasma cannons as the last heavy weapon. No idea what stats those'll give. Maybe more range more dice, but toherwise similar stats to plasma guns?

[dice4thedicegod]

Well, never built and painted a Baneblade in a single day before :)

 

I’ve really got to get moving on finishing one unit!  So far, I’m just dabbling on whatever seems interesting…

[Nagashsnee]

So i had my first couple of semi serious (i,e, we have actually fully read the rules) games at 1500 points. And while i am finding it very fun, one thing that has come up is the multi legion force.

Namely the game pretty much penalises you for not playing multiple different legions, with legion tailored to each force. 

 

One of my games was against a army with Death Guard demi company (obj campers and made key terrain dangerous), a world eaters demi where he spammed assault marines and tactical marines to push  and i dont remember what his armored company was but it wasnt the previous options.

 

I play Blood Angels, and it really felt like he had an unfair advantage, as each 'part' of his force was made to work with their specific legion 'buff'.  And chatting it over other there is no real reason NOT to do this other then painting issues. Even lore wise there are SO many big multi legion battles in the heresy its not like its actively unfluffy. 

 

Are we missing something here? Like i am staying to pure BA cause they are my bois, but i would have thought there would be SOME mechanism in game to stop people just min maxing legions traits. 

 

Edit: Also poor SA did not even get regiments or something, anything. Cohorts, just something. 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Nagashsnee

[Pacific81]

I think at the moment it's probably skewed due to the fact you are only playing with 60% of a complete game. Once all of the different base units (land Raiders, jet bikes, drop pods etc) come in then that should increase variety of what you see on the tabletop, tactics and army list variety and might help balance out some of the difference in power level of the legion traits. You have to also assume things like Space Wolves will get legion-only specific units to compensate for their, frankly awful, legion trait. There are a couple of others that are very situational, compared to example the Raven Guard one or the World Eaters getting extra dice on the charge, which from my experience of playing Epic over the years, and the way CAF and roll-offs work, is a truly monstrous trait.

 

It's the same also with the Solars and them not having artillery, which again should be a staple of that force, and I would expect to change in one of the first expansions - making that faction fully complete in the process.

[Nagashsnee]

Wont more units make the problem worse? The more and more specialized units added the greater and greater gains are to be made by pairing them with the appropriate legion trait.  With no downside to mixing legions the issue would remain.  Now there might be cases where the optimum pick could be 2-3 different legion, like jetbike formation, white scars for jink or world eaters to go charge tanks, etc.

 

But ultimately more units wont change the core problems, and legion specific units will make it worse too! While some may be locked by allegiance (say ghal vorbac) most wont be. And as legion special units tend to be along the line of legion specialty it would further cement playing legion-trait formations. 

 

I am not taking about unit variety, but role, why would a assault formation be it terminators (with transports soon), jump packers or other ever choose to be white scars rather then blood angels or more likely world eaters?

 

Why did they not lock legion to 1 per army rather then a open field of per formation? Or say if your primary army is marines 50% of the force ( in points) must be from the same legion?

 

It is a wargame and some people will play it as a game and give not a single hoot how lore friendly their list is. Objectively from a gaming standpoint i find no reason to NOT mix and match. Mono legion is 100% downsides for as far as i can see 0% positives.  

 

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Nagashsnee

[Valkyrion]

As it stands now, you are right. 

I think there'll be a book for loyalists and a book for traitors that will open up the Legions more fully and maybe give a more imposing Legion ability that requires a greater focus on a single legion. e.g Blood Angels Detachments in your army get the bonus move thing, but if all detachments in your army are Blood Angels then you gain an additional +1 charge bonus or something. 

 

At least I hope so. I think Titanicus had something like that. I'd rather not see legions fleshed out two at a time behind campaign books, but there are going to be several opportunities for mono legion lists to be viable, be it gated behind legion abilities, warlord traits, formation rules and so on.  Hopefully, anyway.

[Captain Idaho]

I suspect it'll be books for battles and engagements personally. Like the Shadow Crusade which will cover rules for Ultramarines, Word Bearers and World Eaters. Then they only need to support 3 Legions at a time.

 

Be interesting to see how they promote these things eh.

[DuskRaider]

It seems that not only is Legion mixing encouraged but it almost seems necessary to the game if you’re looking to be competitive… that being said, I fully intend to play pure Death Guard and I’ll take my lumps if it happens. 
 

I won’t state that mixing goes against the narrative because it most certainly doesn’t, most major battles during the Heresy involved multiple belligerents on both sides, I would just rather have one cohesive Legion on the board that fits my own narrative. 

Edited December 18, 2023 by DuskRaider

[Nagashsnee]

1 hour ago, Valkyrion said:

As it stands now, you are right. 

I think there'll be a book for loyalists and a book for traitors that will open up the Legions more fully and maybe give a more imposing Legion ability that requires a greater focus on a single legion. e.g Blood Angels Detachments in your army get the bonus move thing, but if all detachments in your army are Blood Angels then you gain an additional +1 charge bonus or something. 

 

That could work, if the non marines also get things ( as you cant just keep giving 1 army free 'buffs'). Tho i fear having multiple specialized mini bonus will almost always trump 1 slightly better but general bonus.  I really feel they should have a % be mandatory mono legion for marine armies, which they can then play with in expansions/battles/subfactions (shattered legions). 

 

But assuming Mechanicus and others join the game they would have to have their own versions of all this. I kinda wish they had not done legion traits and just done units/primarchs/formations. 

 

7 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

It seems that not only is Legion mixing encouraged but it almost seems necessary to the game if you’re looking to be competitive… that being said, I fully intend to play pure Death Guard and I’ll take my lumps if it happens. 
 

I won’t state that mixing goes against the narrative because it most certainly doesn’t, most major battles during the Heresy involved multiple belligerents on both sides, I would just rather have one cohesive Legion on the board that fits my own narrative. 

 

Yeah same, it going to hurt in some games, but no matter the lore (where something like BA+FISTS+SCARS for the siege) i cant bring myself to doing a multi legion army. 

[Pacific81]

1 hour ago, DuskRaider said:

It seems that not only is Legion mixing encouraged but it almost seems necessary to the game if you’re looking to be competitive… that being said, I fully intend to play pure Death Guard and I’ll take my lumps if it happens. 
 

I won’t state that mixing goes against the narrative because it most certainly doesn’t, most major battles during the Heresy involved multiple belligerents on both sides, I would just rather have one cohesive Legion on the board that fits my own narrative. 

 

I'll be right there with you with my full Night Lord army, with their thematic but fairly useless sounding Legion trait

 

But I'm not playing in tournaments. I guess if you intend to try and go 'fully comp' then it will be easy to break the game, like most of GW's games.

Personally I think if you want to play tournaments then you are better off playing Armageddon - that game has actually been developed as a tournament system and has had years of fine-tuning and balancing, and a good active tournament scene (if you are in the UK). So your victories will come down to your skill at playing the game, not 'gotchas' with combination of cheesy legion rules because you're willing to paint your stuff up in 7 different combinations of colours.

[DuskRaider]

Yeah, I’m not a competitive player… at all. I will admit that I was really tempted to have World Eaters Assault Marines, but that’s only because I have a hard time picturing Death Guard Assault Marines (though I know they did exist). 
 

I do believe that the Death Guard trait is pretty good as it is. My goal in any of my armies is to tell a story, even if it’s just for me. 

[Captain Idaho]

All Ultramarines purity for me. Whilst I can imagine some tournaments being a free for all, I reckon most will develop a single faction rule, especially things get relentlessly yuk.

 

Wonder how they implement such things? Like, will they just ban it, or will they allow a portion of points to be spent as if allies?

[SkimaskMohawk]

Ya theres absolutely no rules reason not to tailor each formation with a different legion bonus. Emperors children for the initiative steal, white scars for flyers, world eaters/ba for assault units, etc...

 

It feels super wonky that adding in solar aux is limited to 30% for slightly different tools, but there's no limit on mixing marines. Kinda feels bad for solar aux to lose that added layer of depth, but simultaneously might explain why some of their units are just...better than standard marine ones; the marines are being "encouraged" to tailor into the various legions. 

 

Ultimately, my biggest gripe is something that i mentioned in the news and rumour thread with the bat rep: mixing too many colour schemes in looks like a mega battle and breaks that mass-army spectacle that i associated with epic. Just looks bad.

 

Anyways, our spitballed change is similar to what Idaho mentioned; allies. You can take a sick world eaters assault formation, but it's the same as taking a sick solar aux ogryn tidal wave.

Edited December 18, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Mixed Legion armies for grabbing multiple perks for zero downsides:

 

This won´t affect me because I am doing exclusively single-player scenarios.  For all other folks going to tournaments or events it will be like pulling teeth battling someone with multiple Legions with your mono-build. But this is not news and applies to every wargame. If you deviate from the strongest list too much then don´t expect to do well when participating in organized contests. 

 

What have I planned for my minis? SM will be Iron Hands (what else?!) and the SA will be Ash Scorpions because their Scorpion icon is imo the best one. It also reminds me of playing Command & Conquer with tiny pixel soldiers (see what I did here?) back in the 90s as NOD also had a similar faction icon. Hmm, even the colour scheme is not all that different as the colours are inverted. Yep, confirmed. Ash Scorpions are NOD in the far future.  :)

[vadersson]

I personally love mixed legions.  My biggest problem is getting them painted.  Which is why my force will be pretty much mono Ultramarines right now.  Technically you should even be allowed to mix traitor and loyalist legions as here were examples of pretty much every legion having some on each side.  And if they ever expand to the great crusade then that would be perfectly fine.  The Emperor built the legions to work together and complement each other.  I am actually glad to see that in the game.

 

However i will admit that when legions do work together that way it is a huge advantage (hence why they were designed so.). I see that serious tournaments may have to put some limits or other restrictions to try and balance things.  But I am not sure yet how tournament oriented LI will be.  It will be interesting to see how it develops as more people get minis and can play.  (Still waiting for my main army, just a single starter so far.  :( 

[DuskRaider]

For those who are bothered by mixed Legions, perhaps there should be a cap and a max you can take. Perhaps a 30% rule much like Support but not counting toward such. Perhaps a max of one allied Legion detachment or whatnot. 
 

I don’t know, it doesn’t bother me personally what my opponent takes (including over the 30% threshold) but it may be a bugbear for others that perhaps they can work out. 

[Gillyfish]

Hmm. Rules-wise, there is an issue, so perhaps it ought to be the Legion that forms the majority of your army (or pick if tied). I would guess that they were going for the original Epic sense that you had with Chaos armies or mixing diffrent gods and, therefore, legions (plus colour schemes).

[Pacific81]

Part of the thing I really loved about pre-Heresy (or even Heresy-era) if that you had a lot more of a combined arms element to the forces. So you had these Legions with tens of thousands of marines committed, and they were doing everything involved in that warfare to bring it to conclusion; garrison duties, loading artillery, probably even driving trucks (and latrine duty? ;) ) Contrast with the 40k setting, where marines are so rare and can only be used in that elite/strike setting.

 

So I loved doing War Hounds/World Eaters artillery, heavy weapons troops etc. because even the assault-orientated Legions would have needed some of them to wage war successfully.

For me doing Legion mixes loses some of this, even though I also think things like shattered Legions combined forces can be really thematic too.

I guess ultimately it's a personal choice, and probably arguments can be made (and be valid) for both approaches.

[Nagashsnee]

58 minutes ago, Pacific81 said:

Part of the thing I really loved about pre-Heresy (or even Heresy-era) if that you had a lot more of a combined arms element to the forces. So you had these Legions with tens of thousands of marines committed, and they were doing everything involved in that warfare to bring it to conclusion; garrison duties, loading artillery, probably even driving trucks (and latrine duty? ;) ) Contrast with the 40k setting, where marines are so rare and can only be used in that elite/strike setting.

 

So I loved doing War Hounds/World Eaters artillery, heavy weapons troops etc. because even the assault-orientated Legions would have needed some of them to wage war successfully.

For me doing Legion mixes loses some of this, even though I also think things like shattered Legions combined forces can be really thematic too.

I guess ultimately it's a personal choice, and probably arguments can be made (and be valid) for both approaches.

100% Agree with this on the backround/theme level.

 

The issue comes to how they implemented it in the rules. While having many specialists would be good and the positives rules wise are there. They did nothing to show the negative the lore has shown us did happen.

 

Different chain of commands clashing and stopping a organized response. Different legions having different ultimate objcts leading to on the ground issues. Total failure to agree on strategy/deployment/methodology. 

 

The crusade and heresy is full of these. From the loyalist side having 3 supreme commanders at betta garmon until Sanguinius showed up.  To Konrad Curze getting ready to shell a library the 1k sons had created a human shield around. You have Alpharius and Dorn/G man, Corax and Horus coming to literal blows. Huge section of the Crusade activly avoiding serving with the Revenant legion or World Eaters, etc etc etc. 

 

The rules only represent the positives of a mutli legion force, but we know it wasn't all positives.  That many of these coalitions cracked and failed BECAUSE they were multi legion forces where each legion was 100% ready to put personal honour/interests/goals over their cousins still warm bodies. And that mono legion forces DID also have positives. 

 

So to me this is a failure on a thematic level too, plus the obvious issue of multi legion lists being flat out better. 

 

 

[Pacific81]

Interesting post @Nagashsnee. Would be really cool coming up with some 'uncomfortable allies' type rules for different Legions fighting alongside or with each other - suddenly those Blood Angles stop following the orders of the accompanying Night Lords, who have taken it too far with civilian casualties in this conflict, for example.

Even if nothing official comes, it might be fun coming up with some narrative 'negative traits' of combinations of Legions.

[jaxom]

On 12/18/2023 at 3:38 AM, Nagashsnee said:

Are we missing something here?

 

On 12/18/2023 at 10:17 AM, SkimaskMohawk said:

Ya theres absolutely no rules reason not to tailor each formation with a different legion bonus. Emperors children for the initiative steal, white scars for flyers, world eaters/ba for assault units, etc...

 

On 12/18/2023 at 10:53 AM, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Mixed Legion armies for grabbing multiple perks for zero downsides

 

On 12/19/2023 at 8:47 AM, Nagashsnee said:

The issue comes to how they implemented it in the rules. While having many specialists would be good and the positives rules wise are there. They did nothing to show the negative the lore has shown us did happen.

 

Just want to make sure, but does this mean you all consider Broken to be a meaningless penalty? Breaking up your forces into more Formations leads to lower Break Points and then all the units left in the Formation are Broken. Can only Advance Order or Charge Order, -1 to Morale; maybe it's not as effective against Formations that want to charge anyway?

 

Hobby stuff:

Sample base 1 didn't come out so good, but I put some Lasrifles on it just to see if the colors worked.

 

Here's how I've been chopping sprue for priming and painting and normal infantry

 

[SkimaskMohawk]

26 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Just want to make sure, but does this mean you all consider Broken to be a meaningless penalty? Breaking up your forces into more Formations leads to lower Break Points and then all the units left in the Formation are Broken. Can only Advance Order or Charge Order, -1 to Morale; maybe it's not as effective against Formations that want to charge anyway?

 

It depends on the formation and what the point of it is. A white scars air formation basically only wants so be using advance and doesn't have morale on the flyers. A super cynical EC formation for the initiative steal is just there to steal the initiative. A Terminator focussed world eater formation that's going for deepstrike doesn't want to much more than advance and charge, and doesn't take morale for losing combats. 

 

Doing tons of msu formations just for no reason is definitely bad. But tailoring normal sized formations across various legions has no downside. Like, practically, my armoured company should never be iron warriors. There's no benefit from the legion trait and no game reason not to make it a different one that would give me a benefit. 

[Nagashsnee]

33 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Just want to make sure, but does this mean you all consider Broken to be a meaningless penalty? Breaking up your forces into more Formations leads to lower Break Points and then all the units left in the Formation are Broken. Can only Advance Order or Charge Order, -1 to Morale; maybe it's not as effective against Formations that want to charge anyway?

 

 

What makes you think we are taking about taking more formations then we would normally?  No one is saying take extra formations. We are saying that in a game where 2-6+ formations (depending on points) is 100% the norm.  And formations are naturally formulated around themes, i.e. you are not taking tank formations to hold objs, and you are not stuffing flying transports full of shooting units (at least for now). 

 

So since formation naturally tend to lean into 1 specific use/role, and legion traits naturally tend to buff specific use there is no reason not to pair them, and no reason to take extra formation for the pairing to happen.

 

For an example in my last game (1500 points) i had 3 formations. 1 demi company full of tacticals with missiles, dreadnoughts and rapiers for taking and holding ground and shooting things while doing it. A second demi company of 2x pure bolter tacts for marching up the board and charging targets of opportunity, 2x8 assault marines (1 in flyer and 1 on foot) for assaulting things that can fight back/don't want to get charge (ogryns) and a t-hawck. Lastly a barebones tank company with a xiphon.

 

Now i played pure BA, but it was 100% logical NOT to do this. Purely from a rules standpoint, i should have done something like world eaters for the assault formation, death guard for the camping formation and maybe something like iron hands for the tanks (not sure on the tanks). There was never a need to take extra formations or make my existing smaller. Nothing changes with break points or morale.  I simply GAIN things. 

 

So no one is remarking on broken in this case, as multi legion forces dont affect it in any way. 

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

It depends on the formation and what the point of it is. A white scars air formation basically only wants so be using advance and doesn't have morale on the flyers. A super cynical EC formation for the initiative steal is just there to steal the initiative. A Terminator focussed world eater formation that's going for deepstrike doesn't want to much more than advance and charge, and doesn't take morale for losing combats. 

 

Doing tons of msu formations just for no reason is definitely bad. But tailoring normal sized formations across various legions has no downside. Like, practically, my armoured company should never be iron warriors. There's no benefit from the legion trait and no game reason not to make it a different one that would give me a benefit. 

 

Legit.

 

2 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

What makes you think we are taking about taking more formations then we would normally?  No one is saying take extra formations. We are saying that in a game where 2-6+ formations (depending on points) is 100% the norm.  And formations are naturally formulated around themes, i.e. you are not taking tank formations to hold objs, and you are not stuffing flying transports full of shooting units (at least for now). 

 

So since formation naturally tend to lean into 1 specific use/role, and legion traits naturally tend to buff specific use there is no reason not to pair them, and no reason to take extra formation for the pairing to happen.

 

For an example in my last game (1500 points) i had 3 formations. 1 demi company full of tacticals with missiles, dreadnoughts and rapiers for taking and holding ground and shooting things while doing it. A second demi company of 2x pure bolter tacts for marching up the board and charging targets of opportunity, 2x8 assault marines (1 in flyer and 1 on foot) for assaulting things that can fight back/don't want to get charge (ogryns) and a t-hawck. Lastly a barebones tank company with a xiphon.

 

Now i played pure BA, but it was 100% logical NOT to do this. Purely from a rules standpoint, i should have done something like world eaters for the assault formation, death guard for the camping formation and maybe something like iron hands for the tanks (not sure on the tanks). There was never a need to take extra formations or make my existing smaller. Nothing changes with break points or morale.  I simply GAIN things. 

 

So no one is remarking on broken in this case, as multi legion forces dont affect it in any way. 

 

That was not my intent, apologies. Your example and @SkimaskMohawk above did remind of something so I went back to check and I think you're onto something. I think the designers intended Astartes to operate with multiple legions in their lists. From the "A Closer Look at the Legiones Astartes" article:

 

Quote

Importantly, each Formation you select can be from a different Legion – after all, the biggest engagements saw multiple Legions fighting shoulder to shoulder – giving you extra tactical depth.

 

Maybe not what would work best for mono-legion builds (unless we see more options later?), but definitely pushes larger mixed forces like those at Molech, Sothos, Istvaan, Garmon, etc.

 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

4 hours ago, Pacific81 said:

Interesting post @Nagashsnee. Would be really cool coming up with some 'uncomfortable allies' type rules for different Legions fighting alongside or with each other - suddenly those Blood Angles stop following the orders of the accompanying Night Lords, who have taken it too far with civilian casualties in this conflict, for example.

Even if nothing official comes, it might be fun coming up with some narrative 'negative traits' of combinations of Legions.

Someone already did a complete ruleset for Orks & Eldar. Doing an allies matrix appropriate for LI wouldn´t be much work in comparison.