Where had we got to?
Okay, now I remember.....
No. 14 - Death Guard.
One of only two legions that can be recreated with any kind of viability using the actual Chaos Space Marine codex (the other being World Eaters) due to the fact that Plague Marines are fairly survivable and can take a pair of special weapons even at five men (or seven if were being 'fluffy' about it).
From a background (or 'fluff' if you prefer) point of view the Death Guard were a Legion who favoured the deployment of massed infantry rather than mechanised assaults even though such vehicle support was as much available to the Death Guard as they were to any other Marine Legion of the time. They also were prolific users of Terminator armour as presumably it fitted their doctrine of 'advance towards the enemy while refusing to die'. This gives us a number of options for their representation though some require a bit more flexibility of imagination than others.....
Firstly as I mentioned earlier we could use the Chaos Space Marine codex utilising Plague Marines and some support units with the Mark of Nurgle which would be borderline viable but in no way optimal due to the relatively high cost of.....well..... everything in the codex really. If we want to do a 'foot' marine army then any Marine codex is viable but as with the Chaos codex isn't exactly optimal either.
Much as it seems to be my 'solution to everything' in these articles the Space Wolf codex is a definite option. The relative cheapness of Grey Hunters makes foot armies an option with the ever useful Wolf Guard enabling us to insert Terminators pretty much anywhere we please and Wolf Lords being so customisable it makes the Chaos player in me die a little inside. It's entirely possible to fit a tooled-up Wolf Lord, 6x10 Grey Hunters with a Terminator Armour wearing Wolf Guard attached to each unit into a 1500 point army and still have change for some Long Fang units. Now some people may question it's viability in the world of mechanisation but can you stop over 70 marines of which all but a few will be scoring?
Of course if we want the 'Feel no Pain' version then we could always go with Blood Angels but it requires a bit more imagination. Our provider of 'Feel no Pain' (the Sanguinary Priest) could be considered more like a 'Chaplain' encouraging the unit to keep on going despite the odds (Feel no Pain) before destroying the enemy in a devastating final assault (Furious Charge). Whether your force is Pre-Heresy or Post-Heresy makes little difference as Feel no Pain justified by a 'stubborn refusal to die' is little different from 'not noticing your arms fell off' in game terms, lol.
No. 15 - Thousand Sons.
Okay, we need to get something out of the way first. Thousand Sons from the Chaos Codex are not good.....no, they're not. A 4+ Invulnerable save is nice but I'm afraid Marines die to torrents of fire more often than not and the roll of a 1 or a 2 still equals an expensive dead Marine. Not to mention the fact that you have to take a 70 point (he's actually 60 points but he has to take at least one power and the cheapest is 10 points), single Wound Sorcerer that is effectively useless if you play against Eldar and that they're pretty shit in combat. Also their much vaunted AP 3 bolters are much less scary in a game that now gives out cover saves free with breakfast cereal. Now that's out of the way we can move on ;-)
Thousand Sons are a giant coven of Psyker/Sorcerors with access to all sorts of esoteric powers who due to mutation and mass attrition (courtesy of the Space Wolves later on and issues with geneseed early on) are extremely small in number. If only there was a codex that allowed you to field a small elite army of psykers.....
Yes, I'm suggesting using the new Grey Knights Codex to represent the Thousand Sons both for Pre and Post Heresy forces. Virtually everything has psychic powers (including the vehicles), the ability to upgrade the strength of their weapons is a fair approximation of 'Inferno Bolts', their Librarians are particularly powerful and can purchase a wide variety of powers and upgrades and Inquisitors (you'd need to make them psykers for 'fluff' reasons) can take retinues of Psykers that could easily be Thousand Sons acolytes. As long as your not thinking of painting Dreadknights in Tzeentch Colours then I see no reason why this isn't completely reasonable*
* This is the one thing I'm expecting to get Flak about which Is why I've given a fair bit of explanation about my reasoning.
Some people have suggested that the Space wolves codex is usable as well due to the ability to take 4 psykers (via Rune Priests) in an army. Though there are arguments in it's favour, imo the rest of the codex is too different to make this a good option. However Chaosgerbil may well have an opposing viewpoint.....
No. 16 - Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus*
* As far as I'm concerned this Legion ceased to exist at the moment Abaddon took control as 'The Black Legion' are a completely different animal altogether and don't really 'count' as an original Legion any-more but rather as a Warband**
** albeit a fucking massive one, lol.
A well ordered and tactically efficient legion that can be represented by any codex that you feel like if were being honest.'Vanilla' Space Marines are probably your best bet with Space Wolves an extremely close 2nd. Due to the fact that many of the original Luna Wolves were recruited from violent Hive gangs from Cthonia I suppose Blood Angels aren't unreasonable either.
Sorry if I wasn't much help there.....
No. 17 - Word Bearers.
Another tricky one here. Effectively a 'normally' organised Chapter albeit with a different set of motivations (compliance through religious conversion rather than force of arms) a truly Pre-Heresy Word Bearers army could be represented by any Marine Codex with Chaplains in it. However, once the Word Bearers discovered gods that not only allowed worship (unlike the Emperor who actively opposed being worshipped) but bloody well demanded it they became much more.....interesting.
With the ease of including Icons, the relative cheapness of Lesser Daemons and the utility of the generic Greater Daemon you could make a Word Bearer army using the Chaos Space Marine codex.....but Lesser Daemons are unreliable at best and there's little available from a HQ point of view to represent a Dark Apostle (basically a Chaos Chaplain).
My personal preference would be to use the Blood Angels codex as it enables you to take up to five Chaplains equivalents (2 Reclusiarchs and 3 Chaplains) if you wished. Sanguinary Priests could also be used to represent Chaplains/Apostles with a little imagination as Feel no Pain and Furious Charge can be a result of religious fanaticism rather than some kind of medical effect ***.
*** Which, lets be honest makes more sense as having an area effect than an apothecaries abilities. I mean what does he do throw hypodermic needles and plasters at injured guys in other units for fucks sake.....
Unfortunately it has nothing to represent Lesser Daemons but there's no rule that says Word Bearers summon Daemons wherever they go just that they can do it really easily if they so desire.
Okay, I seem to have gone on a bit more than I intended so I'll just have to turn this into a 4 part series rather than a 3 part one ;-)
See you next time starting with the Salamanders Legion.....
i was hoping you'd put thousand sons as grey knights, i think the codex works really well for them. so much so that i kind of want to do it :P
ReplyDelete@ Citizenwilliams - I'm expecting the 'Fluff Nazis' to get all twitchy about it but imo it's entirely viable. If you do a pre-rubric Thousand Sons army it's almost mandatory, lol.
ReplyDeleteThink GK codex is pretty much the internet standard for the talk of pre-heresy 1KSons - nothing controversial there at all. It makes perfect sense really.
ReplyDeleteWB is something I am thinking about doing pre-heresy - and I was planning on the BA codex - the great demon would be Mephiston (come on...) modelled down to a decent size (so I'd just use a demon champ or something), and for the lesser demons - some of the assault squads or something like vang guard vets or sang guard would be them - I cant say I thought it out all that hard, but that was some of the lines I was thinking along.
Already painting my first Pre Heresy Thousand Sons Terminators for my Grey Knight counts as army.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Grey Knights didn't even cross my mind as one of the possible substitutions but now that I think about it the GK codex is perfect for representing Thousand Sons.
ReplyDeleteThe great thing about the Black Legion (aside from the awesome color scheme) is that they can include literally anything and still be fluffy. It was for that combination of aesthetics and flexibility that I chose Black Legion for my CSM. Of course, when I say flexibility it's mostly in theory. We all know how flexible the current codex is.
The only thing about this list that I disagree with is the word bearers, who, like LatD fit the GK mould well. Odd?
ReplyDeleteThe only proviso is that you take coteaz and use henchmen, or as I like to call them, daemons (or worshippera).
I know the psychic abilities don't fully meet, but oh well :)
I also think the grey knights codex is perfect for thousand sons. My only problem is where to get the bits to make them look like pre heresy sons?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I see no reason not to include a (converted) dreadknight. It could represent the robots the sons used in the battle of prospero (so could the dreadnoughts for that matter).
There is nothing in the knight codex that would be unsuitable for thousand sons in my mind.