Lets get stuck in then.
No. 8 - Night Lords.
Due to some early stereotypes and poorly written codex entries Night Lords were classified as either a bike or Raptor filled army. The story 'Lord of the Night' though having a more well rounded bit of Night Lords background than the codex had, did little to dispel the 'They're a bunch of Daemonic Jump Marines' vibe. Fortunately in recent times they've been given over to Aaron Dembski-Bowden who's books 'Soul Hunter' and the more recent 'Blood Reaver' have done a lot to help with ideas for building a 'fluffy' army.
Personally I wouldn't use the Chaos Codex as it is poorly equipped to represent them in any kind of usable form due to the Raptors in it being more expensive than Assault Marines while at the same time being worse and the fact that their basic Chaos Marines suffer from a lack of the 'And They Shall Know No Fear' rule.
The Blood Angels Codex however, gives us a number of viable options. The ability to have your whole army set-up as a precision strike force with Jump Packs allows you to represent the 'Raptor' side of their character while the fast vehicles give you the ability to make a quite scary mechanised 'Lightning Assault' force. The 'Red Thirst' rule is easily justifiable in a Legion recruited from a world full of criminals.
Of course another less used, but entirely viable option is to use the Space Wolves Codex. Obviously this option moves away from the 'Raptor Cult' aspect of the Night Lords and moves more towards the 'Warband' style of army. The wide variety of equipment options (on Wolf Guard especially) enables you to recreate the more random equipment that a bunch of renegades would have access to and the HQ's make representing a Warband leader a piece of
No.9 - Blood Angels.
They have their own Codex which does the job just fine.
No. 10 - Iron Hands.
A Legion of Marines who like chopping bits off themselves, think being encased in a Dreadnought is a promotion and like Techmarines (a lot) leads us nicely to the standard Marine Codex. Master of the Forge and Tech Marines are freely available as 'Iron Fathers' and mass Dreadnoughts can be used if required. I personally think Games Workshop screwed us over by not giving us a named 'unique' Master of the Forge character to use to lead Iron Hand armies, but they didn't so we'll have to make do without one.
Alternatively as their companies are basically individual clans led by a revered representative, any Marine codex that has access to TechMarines or equivalents (so all of them except Chaos then) could be used. The Blood Angels Codex could represent them as the apparently brutal force they are alleged to be with Sanguinary Priests 'Feel no Pain' rule representing keeping their Bionics in order rather than their biological systems.
Space Wolves are an equally legitimate choice as they have (if anything) a more suitable Techmarine representative in the form of Iron Priests and can actually be led by a Venerable Dreadnought (Bjorn) if you so desire.
No. 11 - ???
If Primarchs themselves are forbidden to mention the 2nd and 11th Legions then I'm probably best off keeping away from the subject as well.....
No. 12 - World Eaters.
One of the few Traitor Legions that can actually be represented using the Chaos Codex, Admittedly it would be a fairly one dimensional army but I've used (almost) mono-Khorne armies with some success on multiple occasions.
Blood Angels are a better choice if you want to win games though. My own custom chapter 'The Night Reapers', 3rd Company is made almost exclusively of Khorne Berzerker models with weapon options to suit their use with either of the aforementioned rule-sets. Sanguinary Priests become 'Berzerker Surgeons', Chaplains become 'War Priests', A Blood Chalice doesn't even need to change it's name at all, lol. Librarians are a bit trickier to justify from a 'fluff' point of view but if you think of their powers as 'Gifts of Khorne' it's not much of a stretch.
I'm sure you've all seen Khorne Berzerkers on Juggernauts of Khorne 'counting-as' Thunderwolf Cavalry by now so that's an obvious option. Lone Wolves also work well as Berzerker Champions if you think that rather than them not wanting to join other Marines it's the other Marines that don't want to join them.....
No. 13 - Ultramarines.
As the Space Marine Codex might as well be subtitled 'Codex - Ultramarines' then this one should be obvious to everyone.
I think that's enough for today, I'll continue with Part 3 in a couple of days starting with Death Guard as I have my Tuesday 'House of Paincakes' post to sort out first.
As usual feel free to comment away if you wish ;-)
Great work again GMort, loving this "getting in touch with the your roots" so to speak series (inc the primarch ones)
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to the remaining Legions.
Also I meant to say in the Dark Angels - for much the same reason as you say above the SW's can represent certain builds there just due to the WG vs Vets (which are quite customisable) and bikers (WG on bikes, or WG/Priest led swiftclaws). Its a push but just shows the versatility of some of those units in the SW codex with a bit of imagination.
night lords can also rather aptly use fear of the dark librarian power
ReplyDeleteand iron hand space wolves can have terminator sgts (wolf guard leading) which goes back to previous fluff
Space Wolves is such a flexible codex due to the wolf guard and wolfguard battle leaders/wolf lords that you can do quite a bit with them to help represent quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteWell done there on the Night Lords.
ReplyDelete@ Derina - Thanks. I need to get around to finishing this series of articles as I still have a few Legions left to cover. I may try my hand at a few army lists in an attempt to illustrate some of my points as well.
ReplyDeleteIm using the BA codex fo mine.
ReplyDelete@ Derina - Having just read 'Blood Reaver' it's an even more reasonable choice than I previously thought. Unfortunately the currently available Raptor models aren't much like Aaron Dembsk-Bowden's description of them and much I prefer his interpretation of them than Gav Thorpes.
ReplyDelete'and I much prefer' I meant.
ReplyDeleteBook out in the GW stores?
ReplyDelete@ Derina - I went to the 'Black Library Live' event at Nottingham and they were letting you buy certain stuff early. I'm not sure if it's on general release yet.
ReplyDelete23rd of next month :( bugger I'll have to waite a whole month to finish the trilogy. mind the last Horus Heresy book was rubish.
ReplyDeleteI have Throne of Lies on my netbook.