Firstly our new benefits from Traitor Legions:

Chosen are Troops

Chosen, Chaos Space Marines and Cultists get Infiltrate.

When the warlord dies, pick a new warlord and role a new trait. This trolling can continue until you have no more characters (basically your opponent will have to kill 100% of your army to receive Slay The Warlord; completely invalidating this VP IMO).

VoTLW for free.

Our Drawbacks:

No Marks (I assume this also means no Cult Units (Rubics, Plagues and the like)

No Unique Characters at all. (Big woop, who needs them anyway )

Relics:

The Mindveil: At the start of your movement move 3D6 immediately, this can take you from combat & enemy cannot consolidate;

Blade of Hydra: An AP5 melee weapon that Rends, and has Daemon Weapon. It's unique gimmick is the Multi-headed special rule every roll of 6 to hit generate another attack and extra attacks DO generate yet more attacks.

Viper’s Bite: A bolter with S5 AP2.

The Drakescale Plate: Warpsteel armour that gives a 2++ vs. flamer weapons

Hydra’s Teeth: Another special bolter, this one has blast, ignore cover and poison (2+).

Icon of Insurrection: Friendly Cultists within 12” gain zealot.


This IMO is all very nice and fluffy; so well done GW.

Firstly almost all our infantry can infiltrate. This has MASSIVE power. Infiltrate 20 CSM onto a central objective, screens of 30 cultists as distractions and small units of 5 Plasma Guns assassinating key targets are just some of the application I can think of off the top of my head.

Chosen as Troops really feeds into this playstyle of dominating the early game. They bring big firepower where and when you need it.

The rest of it is just icing on the cake for me, mass infiltrate is just insanely awesome

I kinda want to see Trazyn versus Alpha Legion. Warlord Trolls!

The Icon of Insurrection will be pretty damn useful-Fearless Hatred Cultists are no joke.

While you're right that the basic squad can Infiltrate, PLEASE don't make the squad 20 dudes. It won't do you any good.

However, who cares about them when the Chosen exist. They become troops like in Black Legion, but you get Infiltrate instead of Hatred against everyone. The former is so much better, and this would be an excellent way to spam special weapons while keeping Cultists as meat shields for them.

Also keep in mind we have a unique character kinda from FW. That would require an FAQ though, but the character himself isn't bad for the points.

That does lead into the next point of how awesome the Warlord thing is. If you have just enough characters, it could be frustrating for your opponent if they need that last VP and can't get it

My initial reaction is, that Alpha legion will make a great objective secure, MSU army.

*Grabs "The Instrument"*
If any of those "Meta" Player comes near Alpha Legion, Ill Blow their Heads off!

Anyway, the Relics and Rules Seem really good, Especially Chosen as Troops+They Can Infiltrate, Reminds me of my 30k Alpha Legion...

Plus its sad with the "No Unique Characters" rule
I wanted to use the IA:SoV Alpha Legion Guy... (He has T5, a S+2 Power Sword with Rending AND gives Counter Attack to his Unit!)
Arkos the Faithless i believe his name is...

There would be an FAQ I imagine. His WarLord Trait was pretty cool if I remember correctly.

Shame they didn't port Arkos the Faithless' rules into AL, but otherwise I don't think anyone will be complaining. A fluffy set of units and special rules, decent restrictions that don't hinder the army, and a selection of relics that pretty much all have their uses (And some of which are actually epic) and that's a lot more than can be said for some armies relics.

I think any competitive CSM player would have to be mad not to take at least a small detachment of AL.

 TheManWithNoPlan wrote:
Shame they didn't port Arkos the Faithless' rules into AL, but otherwise I don't think anyone will be complaining. A fluffy set of units and special rules, decent restrictions that don't hinder the army, and a selection of relics that pretty much all have their uses (And some of which are actually epic) and that's a lot more than can be said for some armies relics.

I think any competitive CSM player would have to be mad not to take at least a small detachment of AL.

Of course they didn't because it is Forge World. For the same reason you didn't hear anything about Zhufor and Necrosis.

Sorcerer Cabal
Punchy Chaos Lord
Bike unit
2x 5 Chosen w/ Plasma in Rhino
2x 5 Chosen w/ Melta in Rhino
30 Cultists with the Fearless Relic
Season with Havocs/Oblits to taste

Infiltrate the Cultists to screen, Chosen to assassinate high value targets with Rhino's to let them get around/shield them from small arms fire.
Cabal + Bikes + Lord to deal with light/medium assault threats and take over dangerous shooting units.

Profit?

I don't even play a CSM army, but the idea of cultist infiltrating is awesome!

Imagine multiple different blobs, I don't care if it is competitive, it seems so cool!

and AL cultists look awesome so thats good too.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I don't even play a CSM army, but the idea of cultist infiltrating is awesome!

Imagine multiple different blobs, I don't care if it is competitive, it seems so cool!

and AL cultists look awesome so thats good too.

My thoughts exactly.

Pointed out in some other threads. As part of the AL decurion you can take Lost and the damned formation as a aux choice which lets them return on 4+ (if I remember correctly) to ongoing reserves. The decurion bonus ALSO lets them do the same thing but is a different rule.

So it LOOKS like decurion cultists can come back on a rerollable 4+

Either a rerollable, or two separate triggers of the instance. Potentially getting 2 squads for every one that dies.

It's vague.

On another amusing note, remember the Helcult? That dataslate of "one Helbrute and 2 Cultist units?" The one where the Cultists lose ObSec but get Fearless, which becomes Zealot if the Helbrute is destroyed?

Those Cultists can now Infiltrate.

Can you say roadblock?

So between infiltrating cultists, cultists that never really go away, and fearless/zealot cultists, you have a plethora of ways to stall your opponent out with blobs. What else can you do?

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
So between infiltrating cultists, cultists that never really go away, and fearless/zealot cultists, you have a plethora of ways to stall your opponent out with blobs. What else can you do?

Well, you've got the chosen troops that can infiltrate in and waste targets with tons of special weapons. Also with the warlord trick you can be really aggressive with HQ choices since them dying doesn't give up points in most situations.

Speaking of which, the codex is really confusingly written. Can you bring 4 special weapons or 5? It's written as 4 can take a list of weapons including weapons like melta/plasma, but then you have another slot that says one guy can exchange his bolter for a melta, plasma, heavy weapon, etc.

It sounds like you have the option to bring 5 weapons total, with one being a heavy weapon, but I couldn't really tell.

So I guess you use cultists to get in the way and generally cause havoc as chosen and chaos marines move up behind as fire support to take out isolated targets and generally pitch in fire as needed.

I'm not super familiar with the chaos codex, I just had a small alpha legion painting project I was working on and now I actually have a reason to use them, so I'm learning all this as I go.

It's 5 models total that can bring it. The way it's written, since it's "up to 4 models" for the Special, and "one Chosen" for the Special/Heavy.

This means up to 5 Specials or 4 Specials and 1 Heavy. The way it's also written, the Chosen Champion can take a Special (which can always be cute with either shooting Chaos Boon, but that's more fluff than something to plan around).

 Ir0njack wrote:
Pointed out in some other threads. As part of the AL decurion you can take Lost and the damned formation as a aux choice which lets them return on 4+ (if I remember correctly) to ongoing reserves. The decurion bonus ALSO lets them do the same thing but is a different rule.

So it LOOKS like decurion cultists can come back on a rerollable 4+

They are actually 2 separate rules. Cult Uprising creates a cultist unit that is part of the ALIF (Alpha Legion Insurgency Force). Tide of Traitors creates a cultist unit that Outflanks and is part of the LatD (which also makes them part of the ALIF since the LatD is part of the ALIF). Note that Cult Uprising units also Outflank because they have Infiltrate due to Forward Operatives, but they don't actually get that from Cult Uprising.

Contrast this with the Blood Angels Red Thirst which appears in both the Angel's Blade and Battle Demi-company. Here it's the same rule with the same name in both places. Also note that the Red Thirst in Angel's Blade actually does something since it confers to the other formations in the detachment. If Cult Uprising were just Tide of Traitors repeated it would do literally nothing since there's no way to include cultists in the ALIF except through LatD.

So basically Cult Uprising gives your LatD units a chance to spawn up to 2 units when they die. You need to keep track of which rule spawned which unit though because units spawned from Cult Uprising are not part of the LatD and therefore only get a Cult Uprising roll when they die, with no 2nd roll for Tide of Traitors.

One annoying thing i noticed with the DA from the LaTD formation is he can't ever actually infiltrate with the bloody cultists!

 Latro_ wrote:
One annoying thing i noticed with the DA from the LaTD formation is he can't ever actually infiltrate with the bloody cultists!

On the other hand he's better off in your bike/spawn star together with lord with mindfuk relic.

Do these rules allow Havocs to infiltrate? Because Havocs can take 4 special in addition to heavy.

I'm imagining that Alpha Legion could also do a credible Bike army too. The protection versus Slay the Warlord goes hand-in-hand with MSU builds, and by combining a Warband and CAD, you can have up to 5 Obsec Bike units with turn 1 Shrouded, alongside multiple units of Infiltrating Obsec Chosen...the only thing would be the generic Marine tax.

Or maybe Night Lords could do it better. Either way, fast Chaos is more possible than it has ever been.

I've played the warband + lotd AL. Was a small 1k pt game but still managed to fit everything in. Double respawning cultists are quite good. Oh, and i got the cult leader warlord trait - furious charge and 6+++ for cultists within 12" of the warlord. So, yeah.

Unfortunately, the full infiltrate didn't work out as good as i thought it would cause it was basically a +6" deployment for just marines and cultists. It's gona work great as a cultist star though. The one with sorcabal for invis and 1-st turn charge, Kharn and now the mindveil apostle to spice things up.

I'm still gona add the AL latd to world eater's warband with 2d6 movement. Though cultists only get one respawn in Lotd, they still have infiltrate to screen up the advancing eaters against counter-charges and the mindveil relic could be great for a mini kharn-star. Will see tomorrow.

 koooaei wrote:
I've played the warband + lotd AL. Was a small 1k pt game but still managed to fit everything in. Double respawning cultists are quite good. Oh, and i got the cult leader warlord trait - furious charge and 6+++ for cultists within 12" of the warlord. So, yeah.

Unfortunately, the full infiltrate didn't work out as good as i thought it would cause it was basically a +6" deployment for just marines and cultists. It's gona work great as a cultist star though. The one with sorcabal for invis and 1-st turn charge, Kharn and now the mindveil apostle to spice things up.

I'm still gona add the AL latd to world eater's warband with 2d6 movement. Though cultists only get one respawn in Lotd, they still have infiltrate to screen up the advancing eaters against counter-charges and the mindveil relic could be great for a mini kharn-star. Will see tomorrow.

That seems kind of pointless to be honest. You will only end up infiltrating 6" ahead as you said earlier (18" away form enemies and all) and that's the front of the units meaning your tail could extend beyond the 1" base size, that basically log jams the free 2d6 move from the berzerkers to at best 5" after you account for the cultists base as I said, that's if they are one think row. That will be an easy screen to charge through or just shoot past. Cultists are not that cheap not with an apostle forced on you to boot, not when every point in that WE detachment is so important. I also feel the mindveil is being misused in a WE detachment, if your in assault your happy, not many scenarios in 7th you will use that as a WE. Your gona want to hide in assault which will already be an issue since you'll probably kill what ever you engage in a turn. Granted you can recharge but anything that survived two rounds is probably something you won't want to recharge.

Something that caught my attention when looking at our armour relic, are there even any AP2 flame weapons (as defined by the rulebook) in the game?

The only thing I can think of is the SM warlord trait giving Rending to a squad with a flamer in it.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
I'm imagining that Alpha Legion could also do a credible Bike army too. The protection versus Slay the Warlord goes hand-in-hand with MSU builds, and by combining a Warband and CAD, you can have up to 5 Obsec Bike units with turn 1 Shrouded, alongside multiple units of Infiltrating Obsec Chosen...the only thing would be the generic Marine tax.

Or maybe Night Lords could do it better. Either way, fast Chaos is more possible than it has ever been.

That has been the staying power of the codex since it came out, great FA choices mixed with lackluster HS, Elites, and decent HQ and Troops

 Perth wrote:
Something that caught my attention when looking at our armour relic, are there even any AP2 flame weapons (as defined by the rulebook) in the game?

The only thing I can think of is the SM warlord trait giving Rending to a squad with a flamer in it.

Necrons have the Gauntlet of the Conflagrator.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Perth wrote:
Something that caught my attention when looking at our armour relic, are there even any AP2 flame weapons (as defined by the rulebook) in the game?

The only thing I can think of is the SM warlord trait giving Rending to a squad with a flamer in it.

Necrons have the Gauntlet of the Conflagrator.

Which is not a flamer. None of the flamer weapons have sufficient Ap to matter. Only really wierd cases could even trigger it.

So can Typhus turn Cultists into zombies that are outside his detachment? The zombies would be able to Infiltrate without needing a tax from Huron or Ahriman.

Hi all, not quite tactics, but can someone with the book say what the fluff/modelling of the mindveil is supposed to be? It looks like a great relic to create a sneaky, maneuverable leader rather than just a beatstick. I'm already looking to model a lord with it. Thanks very much for any light on this

A long cloak stitched with interlocking teeth of dostoy primes chameleonic hyrdasharks.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
I've played the warband + lotd AL. Was a small 1k pt game but still managed to fit everything in. Double respawning cultists are quite good. Oh, and i got the cult leader warlord trait - furious charge and 6+++ for cultists within 12" of the warlord. So, yeah.

Unfortunately, the full infiltrate didn't work out as good as i thought it would cause it was basically a +6" deployment for just marines and cultists. It's gona work great as a cultist star though. The one with sorcabal for invis and 1-st turn charge, Kharn and now the mindveil apostle to spice things up.

I'm still gona add the AL latd to world eater's warband with 2d6 movement. Though cultists only get one respawn in Lotd, they still have infiltrate to screen up the advancing eaters against counter-charges and the mindveil relic could be great for a mini kharn-star. Will see tomorrow.

That seems kind of pointless to be honest. You will only end up infiltrating 6" ahead as you said earlier (18" away form enemies and all) and that's the front of the units meaning your tail could extend beyond the 1" base size, that basically log jams the free 2d6 move from the berzerkers to at best 5" after you account for the cultists base as I said, that's if they are one think row. That will be an easy screen to charge through or just shoot past. Cultists are not that cheap not with an apostle forced on you to boot, not when every point in that WE detachment is so important. I also feel the mindveil is being misused in a WE detachment, if your in assault your happy, not many scenarios in 7th you will use that as a WE. Your gona want to hide in assault which will already be an issue since you'll probably kill what ever you engage in a turn. Granted you can recharge but anything that survived two rounds is probably something you won't want to recharge.

There's generally still place. Also, could outflank some of the cultists when needed. And they help to mitigate the further deployment a bit.

While everybody is getting so worked up about Cultists I've been looking at other Auxiliary options. The Terminator Annihilation Force in particular seems great with the new Mind Veil relic. Packing a Sorcerer in that formation and attaching him to a squad of Termies will give insane mobility in the turns after deep striking. This combined with the formation's free shooting attack after DS and the cheap Combi-Weapons that Chaos termies get can add a lot to the already plentiful Plasma or Melta spam from infiltrating/outflanking Chosen squads. Hatred is pretty nice too against Xenos armies that VotLW don't already let you hate.

Captyn_Bob wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 Perth wrote:
Something that caught my attention when looking at our armour relic, are there even any AP2 flame weapons (as defined by the rulebook) in the game?

The only thing I can think of is the SM warlord trait giving Rending to a squad with a flamer in it.

Necrons have the Gauntlet of the Conflagrator.

Which is not a flamer. None of the flamer weapons have sufficient Ap to matter. Only really wierd cases could even trigger it.

I sold my Necron codex, but IIRC, the Gauntlet of Fire is a Flamer "as described on the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook", and the Conflagrator is otherwise treated as a one-shot Gauntlet of Fire.

So, can we put the Drakscale Plate one a Daemon Prince? Wouldn't a 2+ DP be kind of cool?

Edit: And if it is a Daemon of Tzeentch it gets re rolls on saves of 1.

Can Cypher be taken in an Alpha Legion list? Seems like Infiltrate is kind of his thing, so it could be good?

it would be pointless tho. i mean the army already has infiltrate why take cypher?

I don't mean take his formation, I mean just take him. He doesn't confer Infiltrate to his unit, but since he already has it, he could infiltrate with a squad of AL Chosen or something. I'm not sure it would actually be that great, but I was just throwing it out there as a possibility.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I don't mean take his formation, I mean just take him. He doesn't confer Infiltrate to his unit, but since he already has it, he could infiltrate with a squad of AL Chosen or something. I'm not sure it would actually be that great, but I was just throwing it out there as a possibility.

That would actually work quite well since the champion could challenge block, and Cypher then gets 18 meatshields from which to dole out plasma all the day long.

Can't take Cypher in an AL list - no unique units allowed.

I'm interested in how a Warpsmith might perform when given the Mindveil. You could spread out the units from the Fist of The Gods formation and have your Warpsmith jump around the battlefield to be where he needs to be for repairs. With his in-built melta and flamer, and the huge number of attacks he has you can essentially use him as your sweeper unit, being where he needs to be any given turn to add a little extra firepower or to shore up a vulnerability in your lines. The Warpsmith looks like the ultimate versatile/support unit. This artifact should allow him to be everywhere at once, fixing whatever needs fixing.

I haven't got the book yet so I haven't read the fineprint of the Mindveil but does it count your unit as moving when you use it? Because one of the first thought that came to mind with using it would be to stick one of your mandatory HQ's in a Havoc squad and have it jump around the board laying down fire on whatever needs blasting that turn. Teleporting a heavy weapon squad around each turn seems like an excellent way to bypass their otherwise static placement.

It replaces your move,so yeah counts as moving.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cypher can be in his own detachment, so doesn't have to be AL, but he comes with... Infiltrating chosen... So not worth it..

I just noticed the FAQ stating IC's without infiltrate can't infiltrate with units

Ramzin wrote:
So, can we put the Drakscale Plate one a Daemon Prince? Wouldn't a 2+ DP be kind of cool?

Edit: And if it is a Daemon of Tzeentch it gets re rolls on saves of 1.

There's no reason why not- it's what I'm planning to do. 2+ re-rollable armour save and a 2+ re-rollable cover save on T1 is awesome!

Captyn_Bob wrote:
It replaces your move,so yeah counts as moving.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cypher can be in his own detachment, so doesn't have to be AL, but he comes with... Infiltrating chosen... So not worth it..

The difference with the Chosen is that they have ATSKNF instead of the now default LD10. It isn't the worst way to get Chosen if you absolutely want Cypher, who in the end is still pretty killer himself.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Either a rerollable, or two separate triggers of the instance. Potentially getting 2 squads for every one that dies.

It's vague.

They are separate rules so they should stack, like stealth and shrouded.

Err... infiltrating troops is cool... but now our IC's can't join them during deployment. No lords or sorcerers joining chaos marine, chosen or cultist units. That's pretty bad.

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Err... infiltrating troops is cool... but now our IC's can't join them during deployment. No lords or sorcerers joining chaos marine, chosen or cultist units. That's pretty bad.

What HQ would want to join any of those units anyway (PLEASE don't say Cultists because they're not meant for anything but meatshields)? HQ's are likely mounted on something and should be fast enough regardless.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Err... infiltrating troops is cool... but now our IC's can't join them during deployment. No lords or sorcerers joining chaos marine, chosen or cultist units. That's pretty bad.

What HQ would want to join any of those units anyway (PLEASE don't say Cultists because they're not meant for anything but meatshields)? HQ's are likely mounted on something and should be fast enough regardless.

A sorcerer? A cheap lord?

It's fine if all of your IC's are on bikes but if not they don't have many options now.

It's irritating sure. You don't Have to infiltrate stuff, you can choose to deploy normally.

 Snake Tortoise wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Err... infiltrating troops is cool... but now our IC's can't join them during deployment. No lords or sorcerers joining chaos marine, chosen or cultist units. That's pretty bad.

What HQ would want to join any of those units anyway (PLEASE don't say Cultists because they're not meant for anything but meatshields)? HQ's are likely mounted on something and should be fast enough regardless.

A sorcerer? A cheap lord?

It's fine if all of your IC's are on bikes but if not they don't have many options now.

Sorcerers are already going to be on bikes to help vs ID, and a cheap Lord? I know we don't give up STW easily with Alpha Legion but you shouldn't want to help them out.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Err... infiltrating troops is cool... but now our IC's can't join them during deployment. No lords or sorcerers joining chaos marine, chosen or cultist units. That's pretty bad.

What HQ would want to join any of those units anyway (PLEASE don't say Cultists because they're not meant for anything but meatshields)? HQ's are likely mounted on something and should be fast enough regardless.

A sorcerer? A cheap lord?

It's fine if all of your IC's are on bikes but if not they don't have many options now.

Sorcerers are already going to be on bikes to help vs ID, and a cheap Lord? I know we don't give up STW easily with Alpha Legion but you shouldn't want to help them out.

I'll tell that to my unmounted sorcerer model

Better hope a mounted lord doesn't roll infiltrate for his warlord trait or he can't join bikes or spawn on deployment. It just irritates me that an IC without infiltrate can't deploy with an infiltrating unit even if that unit doesn't choose to infiltrate, and vice versa


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
It's irritating sure. You don't Have to infiltrate stuff, you can choose to deploy normally.

The problem is I don't think you can. Infiltrators are forced to deploy last, and you can't just put them in your deployment zone in coherence with an IC and have those units attach to each other immediately

From the recent official rulebook faq
Q: Are models with the Infiltrate special rule allowed to not use
the rule to deploy and then charge normally in the first turn?
A: Yes.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
From the recent official rulebook faq
Q: Are models with the Infiltrate special rule allowed to not use
the rule to deploy and then charge normally in the first turn?
A: Yes.

Wow, didn't notice that one!

Thanks

Everyone ignore me from now on

It is pretty dumb that AL IC's can't infiltrate along with their guys. It seems the only reason this is the case is to force one of the warlord traits to be infiltrate for your WL. Pretty sure GW could have come up with an extra trait and added infiltrate to the warlord (and to DA's from the LatD formation too). It's not gonna break the game to allow that for those two IC's. Without it AL deployment just becomes janky. You either deploy your IC's solo (meaning they die fast) or you don't make use of your guys infiltrate (how is THAT fluffy?) or you stick them on bikes. I frickin hate bikes. Seems the current incarnation of 40k has a hard-on for bikes. Everyone has to be on one. And then if you do stick your Lord on a bike and roll infiltrate anyway, well then you're just stuck with flying solo or not using the trait. It's all a bit of a mess tbh. Really no reason not to just throw infiltrate on the warlord and on a DA from a LotD formation as part of the detachment rules. It'd make a LOT more sense and ahrdly break the game.

Speaking of breaking the game I am trying to list build a basic AL force using the detachment and minimum units required to pull off the AL feel. The formations cost so many points to pull off it's ridiculous. You can barely squeeze out a bare bones Warband + LotD (a practically mandatory aux choice for the AL). You can squeeze in a second aux formation of you go really light on the warband and completely bare bones on the cultists but this is pushing it. AS soon as you try to add anything resembling a vehicle (including Rhino's) you're starting to push the limit of what you can do in an 1850 list. I don't see how a bit of infiltration and the chance of regening a few crappy cultist squads can possibly compare to free transports all-around (plus myriad other bonuses). It's a shame that realistically you can barely make use of these formations in a game. They look good on paper but in reality they're empty promises. It looks like the force org chart is where legions shine, with their x unit as troops and half the legion bonuses handed out to them.

I get GW is trying to push models by scaling up the game to higher points values but in order for most of these chaos formations to work on the table then GW is going to have to address the over-pricing of the codex units. Or give chaos free units too. Instead of repeating the LatD rule for bringing back dead cultists GW should have given AL a free 10 man squad of cultists (to start in reserve with outflank) for every chaos marine squad taken in the warband. That would have free'd up a lot of points from the practically mandatory aux pick so you could pick up something else instead and not lose half your legion rules because you didn't buy cultists.

Yeah. these formations add up quick.

an alternative is to Use the Black Crusade detachment, which gets the Lost and the Damned as a core. Of course you only get one roll to bring back each unit of dead cultists then.

Demantiae wrote:
It is pretty dumb that AL IC's can't infiltrate along with their guys. It seems the only reason this is the case is to force one of the warlord traits to be infiltrate for your WL. Pretty sure GW could have come up with an extra trait and added infiltrate to the warlord (and to DA's from the LatD formation too). It's not gonna break the game to allow that for those two IC's. Without it AL deployment just becomes janky. You either deploy your IC's solo (meaning they die fast) or you don't make use of your guys infiltrate (how is THAT fluffy?) or you stick them on bikes. I frickin hate bikes. Seems the current incarnation of 40k has a hard-on for bikes. Everyone has to be on one. And then if you do stick your Lord on a bike and roll infiltrate anyway, well then you're just stuck with flying solo or not using the trait. It's all a bit of a mess tbh. Really no reason not to just throw infiltrate on the warlord and on a DA from a LotD formation as part of the detachment rules. It'd make a LOT more sense and ahrdly break the game.

Speaking of breaking the game I am trying to list build a basic AL force using the detachment and minimum units required to pull off the AL feel. The formations cost so many points to pull off it's ridiculous. You can barely squeeze out a bare bones Warband + LotD (a practically mandatory aux choice for the AL). You can squeeze in a second aux formation of you go really light on the warband and completely bare bones on the cultists but this is pushing it. AS soon as you try to add anything resembling a vehicle (including Rhino's) you're starting to push the limit of what you can do in an 1850 list. I don't see how a bit of infiltration and the chance of regening a few crappy cultist squads can possibly compare to free transports all-around (plus myriad other bonuses). It's a shame that realistically you can barely make use of these formations in a game. They look good on paper but in reality they're empty promises. It looks like the force org chart is where legions shine, with their x unit as troops and half the legion bonuses handed out to them.

I get GW is trying to push models by scaling up the game to higher points values but in order for most of these chaos formations to work on the table then GW is going to have to address the over-pricing of the codex units. Or give chaos free units too. Instead of repeating the LatD rule for bringing back dead cultists GW should have given AL a free 10 man squad of cultists (to start in reserve with outflank) for every chaos marine squad taken in the warband. That would have free'd up a lot of points from the practically mandatory aux pick so you could pick up something else instead and not lose half your legion rules because you didn't buy cultists.

1. Bikes have been good for most of 40k. This is nothing new.
2. You get a chance to reroll your Warlord trait assuming you're Battleforged. Rolling Infiltrate is not a big deal.
3. I don't care if you personally hate Bikes. The thread isn't about how much you hate certain aspects of the army because. We are talking about how good things are, and Bikes do several things that are nice.

Demantiae wrote:
It is pretty dumb that AL IC's can't infiltrate along with their guys. It seems the only reason this is the case is to force one of the warlord traits to be infiltrate for your WL. Pretty sure GW could have come up with an extra trait and added infiltrate to the warlord (and to DA's from the LatD formation too). It's not gonna break the game to allow that for those two IC's. Without it AL deployment just becomes janky. You either deploy your IC's solo (meaning they die fast) or you don't make use of your guys infiltrate (how is THAT fluffy?) or you stick them on bikes. I frickin hate bikes. Seems the current incarnation of 40k has a hard-on for bikes. Everyone has to be on one. And then if you do stick your Lord on a bike and roll infiltrate anyway, well then you're just stuck with flying solo or not using the trait. It's all a bit of a mess tbh. Really no reason not to just throw infiltrate on the warlord and on a DA from a LotD formation as part of the detachment rules. It'd make a LOT more sense and ahrdly break the game.

Speaking of breaking the game I am trying to list build a basic AL force using the detachment and minimum units required to pull off the AL feel. The formations cost so many points to pull off it's ridiculous. You can barely squeeze out a bare bones Warband + LotD (a practically mandatory aux choice for the AL). You can squeeze in a second aux formation of you go really light on the warband and completely bare bones on the cultists but this is pushing it. AS soon as you try to add anything resembling a vehicle (including Rhino's) you're starting to push the limit of what you can do in an 1850 list. I don't see how a bit of infiltration and the chance of regening a few crappy cultist squads can possibly compare to free transports all-around (plus myriad other bonuses). It's a shame that realistically you can barely make use of these formations in a game. They look good on paper but in reality they're empty promises. It looks like the force org chart is where legions shine, with their x unit as troops and half the legion bonuses handed out to them.

I get GW is trying to push models by scaling up the game to higher points values but in order for most of these chaos formations to work on the table then GW is going to have to address the over-pricing of the codex units. Or give chaos free units too. Instead of repeating the LatD rule for bringing back dead cultists GW should have given AL a free 10 man squad of cultists (to start in reserve with outflank) for every chaos marine squad taken in the warband. That would have free'd up a lot of points from the practically mandatory aux pick so you could pick up something else instead and not lose half your legion rules because you didn't buy cultists.

It does make deployment awkward. Maybe a good fix would have been a relic giving infiltrate to the IC and his unit, but never mind

Our legion rules may not be as good as gladius but in fairness if you want to make a very strong MSU army I think you can with the warband, respawning cultists and enough warp charges to get some of the new horrors summoned. I could imagine AL could be very strong in the objective game and slay the warlord is going to be a difficult task.

I kind of share your dislike for bikes. I'd happily field plenty of regular bikes given their strength and the big buff they get with turn 1 shrouding, but putting my IC's on bikes doesn't interest me at all. There are so many great chaos lord and sorcerer models it seems a shame to have to convert one using the boring (and ancient) bike models we have, and even in 40k the idea of marines on motorbikes seems a bit silly if it isn't just for the purpose of scouting. I think it helps to imagine them jumping off before CC begins

In any case, it's hard to deny how good bikes are at the moment. Our troops units have been buffed a bit but didn't start out too great to begin with, but in the warband our bikes got better and were already good

The issue of a non-infiltrating HQ (by default) is a big bummer. However, the Warlord traits are all pretty good, and a few give you options. One trait straight gives you Infiltrate, and another lets you swap places with a character on the field. You may as well be able to infiltrate that way. If you use a Dreadclaw (like I do), you can drop in turn 1, pop out, and join a unit. It's not ideal, but it's an option.

Unlike many of the other Legions, I actually don't think the Chaos Warband is the way to go. There are too many non-optimal units, and the Lost and Damned formation is redundant, and makes you lose Obsec (which is HUGE). Sadly, I feel a straight CAD with the possibility of another detachment or formation will be the way to go. Infiltrating Chosen, Infiltrating Cultists who re-spawn, with Obsec, can be game-winning. No need for garbage transports to get upfield; just infil or outflank. If you can get an HQ (particularly an Apostle for Hatred) with a max unit of Cultists, AND get the warlord trait for furious charge and 6+ FNP on them, that Obsec blob will get work done.

I'm throwing a few list ideas around, but the one I'm starting to like more and more has a max unit of cultists and an Apostle with the Mindveil to join them. Make them faster and just sweep Infantry. Chosen with Plasma Guns infil around them as well for fire support.

You can't get ObSec respawning cultists as to get the respawn rule you either need the LatD formation or the full AL detachment, neither of which give cultists ObSec.

A big advantgae of using a DA with the mindveil is that he can jump to hook up with newly spawned cultists to bring them into the action quicker. If they respawn in the late game they may not see further action, but the mindveil can bring them back quickly.

I think if you were to take a plasma squad you'd want to go havocs. One less gun but chosen are paying for an extra attack and in-built combat weapons. If you don't use that you're wasting points by not using an essential part of their kit. Better to give the chosen melta of flamers so they can shoot and assault. Havocs can take the plasma without paying for that extra cc. I'd like to stick a lord in with them along with the AP2 bolter for that extra gun and the fearless. He can also carry the CC if they get assaulted too. A plasma squad you probably don't want to infiltrate anyway. If you infiltrate your opponent can see where they're placed. If you can bring them in through drop pod or take the legacy of ruin that grants outflank then you have tactical flexibility that can't be countered until the unit hits the ground running.

I'm inclined to use the chosen with flamer/melta combo's and run them behind the cultists, sweeping aside choice units that will trouble your cultists so they can tarpit the rest.

I disagree. Plasma is best used in redundancy and Chosen can get more close to the enemy for the cost compared to regular squads.

Demantiae wrote:
You can't get ObSec respawning cultists as to get the respawn rule you either need the LatD formation or the full AL detachment, neither of which give cultists ObSec.

A big advantgae of using a DA with the mindveil is that he can jump to hook up with newly spawned cultists to bring them into the action quicker. If they respawn in the late game they may not see further action, but the mindveil can bring them back quickly.

I think if you were to take a plasma squad you'd want to go havocs. One less gun but chosen are paying for an extra attack and in-built combat weapons. If you don't use that you're wasting points by not using an essential part of their kit. Better to give the chosen melta of flamers so they can shoot and assault. Havocs can take the plasma without paying for that extra cc. I'd like to stick a lord in with them along with the AP2 bolter for that extra gun and the fearless. He can also carry the CC if they get assaulted too. A plasma squad you probably don't want to infiltrate anyway. If you infiltrate your opponent can see where they're placed. If you can bring them in through drop pod or take the legacy of ruin that grants outflank then you have tactical flexibility that can't be countered until the unit hits the ground running.

I'm inclined to use the chosen with flamer/melta combo's and run them behind the cultists, sweeping aside choice units that will trouble your cultists so they can tarpit the rest.

My bad, missed the Cultists only getting to respawn in the Sons of Alpharius detachment. Losing Obsec for those cultists is the nail in the coffin for the Lost and Damned formation.

If you switch to Havocs, you lose Infiltrate, which is massive. Getting up close with the Plasmaguns turn 1/2 is why you have them.

Plasma gun havocs don't seem like a bad use of the havoc/helbrute slot but I'm just going to stick with autocannons. Set them up in cover and they can benefit from shrouding and possibly stealth on turn 1 to be too much trouble to deal with early, and when the shrouding bonus has gone you'll have other units providing a bigger threat

Actually with turn 1 shrouding I'd even be tempted to fork out for lascannons, where I wouldn't have considered them before. They aren't much more expensive than plasma guns, but I'd definitely add a few ablative wounds to the unit if I went down that route

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Plasma gun havocs don't seem like a bad use of the havoc/helbrute slot but I'm just going to stick with autocannons. Set them up in cover and they can benefit from shrouding and possibly stealth on turn 1 to be too much trouble to deal with early, and when the shrouding bonus has gone you'll have other units providing a bigger threat

Actually with turn 1 shrouding I'd even be tempted to fork out for lascannons, where I wouldn't have considered them before. They aren't much more expensive than plasma guns, but I'd definitely add a few ablative wounds to the unit if I went down that route

After doing a quick cost-analysis I've switched my position to support the plasma chosen rather than havocs. For the same squad of 5 (champion + 4 plasma) the chosen are paying just 7pts more and come with free combat weapons, +1A base and infiltrate. I think that's worth paying for on a unit that needs to be close to the enemy and is likely to be the target of an assault. It looks like havocs are better suited for heavy weapons unless you somehow can't fit plasma/melta into your army in other ways.

Don't they cost 4 ppm more each? So, it's a 20 pt difference. They do get ccw, so you can consider it a 3 ppm difference.

Ah, i got it, they don't need to pay 10 pt for the leader.

Can dedicated transports also infiltrate along with the infantry?

Having a bunch of inflitrating Rhinos sound kinda cool.

Dedicated transports can indeed follow their squad...

I see this as a way of getting good dirge caster coverage.

 koooaei wrote:
Don't they cost 4 ppm more each? So, it's a 20 pt difference. They do get ccw, so you can consider it a 3 ppm difference.

Ah, i got it, they don't need to pay 10 pt for the leader.

It's weird that some units in the game get free squad leader upgrades and others pay for them, especially when you have no option to leave them out of your list. They should either be universally free or they should go back to having to buy them (or not if you prefer not to pay for a character).

Basically the havoc squad would be cheaper in that you wouldn't feel as much need to buy power weapons for the champ as you would with a chosen champ, but when you consider that a plasma squad is gonna get assaulted (it's effective range exposes it to the likelihood of being assaulted given it's high firepower) you're gonna want to get combat weapons and a power weapon in there. At that point the chosen will just do better for a few points more.


Another thought I'm having, there's a legacy of ruin in IA13 that gives a 12" bubble FNP for units with an Icon of Vengeance (book says Icon of Wrath but Foregworld have apparently confirmed it's a typo and is meant to state vengeance). Costs a bit less than an MSU cultist squad (also gives a bunch of other stuff that is ok on top of the FNP bubble). I'm thinking that this legacy on a walker of some kind (or a land raider you intend to shove in your opponents face) would work quite well for all your infiltrating weapons teams. You have to buy icons for all your chosen but then they get fearless to boot. For an army that's designed to be operating at close range to the enemy (but isn't equipped to dominate the assault phase) I think this might be the Alpha Legion's answer to not having access to marks of Nurgle or Slaanesh banners. Particularly first turn with shrouded - your chosen may as well be deathguard in round 1.

Demantiae wrote:


After doing a quick cost-analysis I've switched my position to support the plasma chosen rather than havocs. For the same squad of 5 (champion + 4 plasma) the chosen are paying just 7pts more and come with free combat weapons, +1A base and infiltrate. I think that's worth paying for on a unit that needs to be close to the enemy and is likely to be the target of an assault. It looks like havocs are better suited for heavy weapons unless you somehow can't fit plasma/melta into your army in other ways.

Fair point. MSU chosen seem like good value compared to MSU havocs and CSM, but I'd be nervous about maxing out plasma guns with only the unit leader as ablative wounds. 33ppm is a steep price to pay for models no tougher than a basic MEQ. Then again I tend to prefer bigger units with extra bodies and I know people do well with MSU

MSU definitely feels like the way to go. I was originally on the "Spam Weapons for Chosen" train, but I feel like adding squads with 10x Marines, with 2x Melta in a Rhino is better than 5x Chosen, etc.

In a list I posted to Army Lists I end up with over 120 or so Models within an 1850 List. Sure, none of it is particularly astounding on their own, but it's a massive amount of bodies.

Demantiae wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
Don't they cost 4 ppm more each? So, it's a 20 pt difference. They do get ccw, so you can consider it a 3 ppm difference.

Ah, i got it, they don't need to pay 10 pt for the leader.

It's weird that some units in the game get free squad leader upgrades and others pay for them, especially when you have no option to leave them out of your list. They should either be universally free or they should go back to having to buy them (or not if you prefer not to pay for a character).

Basically the havoc squad would be cheaper in that you wouldn't feel as much need to buy power weapons for the champ as you would with a chosen champ, but when you consider that a plasma squad is gonna get assaulted (it's effective range exposes it to the likelihood of being assaulted given it's high firepower) you're gonna want to get combat weapons and a power weapon in there. At that point the chosen will just do better for a few points more.

Well chosen and possessed champions have identical stats to the rest of their units and don't cost anything extra. The strange case is the terminator champion who costs 2 points more, has the same stats but annoyingly has to pay more for his wargear. In most other cases in the codex you get a boost to the unit's leadership and the character has another attack and sometimes an extra weapon

I'd be in favour of free unit leaders though

 Cephalobeard wrote:
MSU definitely feels like the way to go. I was originally on the "Spam Weapons for Chosen" train, but I feel like adding squads with 10x Marines, with 2x Melta in a Rhino is better than 5x Chosen, etc.

In a list I posted to Army Lists I end up with over 120 or so Models within an 1850 List. Sure, none of it is particularly astounding on their own, but it's a massive amount of bodies.

That's a lot less special weapons for the price though. If you really want bodies we DO have Infiltrating Cultists.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Cephalobeard wrote:
MSU definitely feels like the way to go. I was originally on the "Spam Weapons for Chosen" train, but I feel like adding squads with 10x Marines, with 2x Melta in a Rhino is better than 5x Chosen, etc.

In a list I posted to Army Lists I end up with over 120 or so Models within an 1850 List. Sure, none of it is particularly astounding on their own, but it's a massive amount of bodies.

That's a lot less special weapons for the price though. If you really want bodies we DO have Infiltrating Cultists.

Two-3 less special weapons, 5 More bodies. I feel you. It seems like a tossup.

Building up a theory list for myself right now so I can look at my collections and figure out any purchases I need. I love the idea of endless chaff of cultists so I'll be going for the Insurgency force.

Chaos Warband:
1 chaos lord (unsure on loadout)
1 unit of chosen with 4 plasma guns
2 units of 5-man CSM (not sure how I should equip them)
1 unit of 3 bikes (not sure on wargear)
1 unit of Havocs (lascannon or autocannon?)

Lost and the Damned:
1 Dark apostle (once again, unsure on wargear)
4 units of 10-man cultists

At this point I'm torn between a Raptor talon with three 5-man units of raptors or the terminator annihilation force with 3 3-man units and a sorcerer. Either one I go for what should my loadouts be? keep the raptors naked or give the champ a power weapon? On the termies should I go with combi-weapons?

For my chaos warband should I add anything there and what weapon options should I go for on my Havocs and CSM squads?

I'm not a big fan of the dinobots so Id like to stick to more traditional vehicles. The fist of the gods sounds appealing but it's been so long since I've used rhino chassis vehicles, is it a worthwhile formation?

Thanks in advance for your tips.

So the main stuff they're good at would be chosen infiltrating with rhinos alongside cultists and maybe a regular CSM unit or two just to have bodies to hold an objective. Where do you go from there?

Autocannon havocs seem like a given. I love my autocannons in the IG codex so I feel like they'd do some good.

Would there be any use for terminators? I'm building my Alpha Legion out of the Betrayl at Calth box so I'm trying to come up with uses for the terminators and the dread.

Also, what kind of HQ would work best for them? I feel like the Dark Apostle (whatever their chaplain equivalent it) would be a natural fit lorewise but I'm really not all that familiar with what chaos has access to. Would a generic lord in terminator/power armor work instead?

The thing with sticking a load of special weapons in a chosen squad without ablative wounds is only a thing if your only source of heavy firepower is your one unit of chosen and you don't have anything resembling a distraction carnifex. The idea should be (especially for AL players) to take redundancy in your units, take two squads of plasma chosen instead of one if you need that heavy shooting. Or take plasma chosen and a plasma hellbrute. Paying for ablative wounds on chosen is cost-prohibitive. You're paying for that extra attack, the extra combat weapon and the higher base leadership. If you're not going to use them to assault then you're wasting those points. A couple bolters in a squad firing at MEQ/TEQ's isn't going to do you much so the extra firepower won't help you. You'd be better off investing in two squads so one of them will get the job done.

As AL you don't have to worry about bodies on the table. Spam cultists for critical mass and keep your marine units lean and focused. You don't need 10 man basic marine squads to hold objectives. A naked 5 man (with a special weapon if you really need it) should be good enough if you use the cultists to screen and block for them. Place objectives near a board edge and you have a good chance of constantly respawning squads to block for your MSU marines.

For HQ's I'm looking hard at sorcerers. A sorcerer with geomortis and the mindveil looks amazing. Many geomortis powers are bubbles or have a 24" or less range. Being able to get anywhere on the board quickly to make use of that disciplines ranges seems powerful. This then ties into havocs (and the AL mentality of being self-sufficient). If you throw missile launchers on havocs and buy the flak missiles then your geomortis sorcerer can buff them with ignore cover and indirect fire. They can hide in a building and pretty much deny the skies to your opponent without ever having to expose themselves. And if they are threatened your sorcerer can just jump them across the board. Or you could use the sorcerer to buff some predators and hide them in ruins to pulverize enemy armour (taken in a squadron with tank hunter 3 preds can practically vaporise a land raider per turn without ever having to draw LoS.

The other powers from geomortis are great for AL too. Locking down enemy units, pinning them etc can make your initial infiltration golden. You can't assault turn 1 after infiltrating but neither can your opponent when you lock him down. Force to shoot you with your shrouded and prepare for your own turn 2 assault. This is where chosen with flamers/melta's will shine.

Dark Apostles would only be worth taking if you run a LatD formation or you build as assault based list and run them attached to your cc chosen. They want to be in combat with their zealous and free power weapon, though Al wouldn't normally be building for that. AL seem to want to be shooting at close range rather than assaulting. cultists don't count because they're just expendable units thrown at the enemy to tie him up and buy time.

The warband is driving me nuts. Its easy to throw MSU units at it in order to squeeze in a second aux formation but is that going to be effective? Lets say you take a melta/plasma chosen, two MSU marines, an MSU bike squad and a havoc squad with the normal autocannons. Is this enough firepower? Can you deal with massed/heavy armour? Droppods? Camping gunlines? Probably not. You're going to want to take the cultists for cheap bodies and to make use of the endless respawn (it's a waste to ignore half your detachment specials when it costs so much to get them) so you can then take one more thing, something that has to cover all your bases in one. Maybe the Oblit/Mutilator formation could work if you mindveil the muti's into combat every turn. but it's gonna be tough. I think the better option would be beef up the warband, take multiple chosen/bike/raptor/havoc squads and rely on ObSec. But then you're ignoring half the units in the codex. It's difficult getting the balance right.

I think MSU is the way to go with AL, trying to keep the units cheap as well I think should help a lot too. My goal in building a list will be to try and vary my threats to the point that my opponent can't easily decide on what units need to be shot at first. Having an army with no clear target priority for your opponent to follow sounds like it could be effective and quite fluffy.

I have a question about the "Many heads of the Hydra" rules. It says to choose a character and make them your new warlord if your current warlord dies. How does this work with independent characters? If my chaos lord dies can I choose my sorcerer as my new warlord or since it says "character" do I have to pick an aspiring champion? On that note what about the warlord trait that lets you swap places with another character, can my chaos lord infantry warlord swap places with the aspiring champion from a CSM squad? I'm really confused on what these rules allow you to do and disallow.

You can pick any character.

I think a good AL warband could be made with bikes as the focus. Three large units of bikes (even a unit of ten is only 210 points before upgrades) with at least one chaos lord attached to one of the units, then a daemon prince with drakescale plate, a bunch of spawn as an auxiliary and your chosen, 2 CSM squads and havocs to finish the formation. T1 2+ jink saves are maximised, and there would be enough bodies on the table that you could safely outflank whichever CSM/chosen units you like, or just infiltrate them as close as possible.

I think use the Black Crusade detachment for an AL army is actually a good option. You lost the extra cover save on the first round, but you are a bit more free to choose your army units.
and weeell....the 2 boon throws each turn on your warlord and cross fingers to transform him on a dp as well gain some extra T xD

A Dark Apostle with the mind veil could be more or less useful on the cultist formation, A way to take advantage of the hate on cultists (keeping the Dark Apostle far from enemy characters haha)

My problem with chaos (usually bad) formations is that we play at 1500 pts (even if we can play more points, my friends refuse ) so is really hard use a legion detachment and be able to put what you want.


Also I already usually carry a couple of demons on csm army (give nice evil look xD). Now with new horrors, think that add a herald and at least one unit of horrors is nearly a must for chaos space marine codex to be viable, since wil lbring you a nice unit to keep an objetive and warp dices. but maybe is because I playing chaos love magic xD

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
You can pick any character.

So does that mean only aspiring champions and cultist champions and the like? So I couldn't choose my sorcerer or lord? For the purposes of this rule do independent characters count as characters?

Independent characters are still unit type character

And yes, your Cultist Champion will be Alpharius for a turn.

Thank you for the clarification.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Building up a theory list for myself right now so I can look at my collections and figure out any purchases I need. I love the idea of endless chaff of cultists so I'll be going for the Insurgency force.

Chaos Warband:
1 chaos lord (unsure on loadout)
1 unit of chosen with 4 plasma guns
2 units of 5-man CSM (not sure how I should equip them)
1 unit of 3 bikes (not sure on wargear)
1 unit of Havocs (lascannon or autocannon?)

Lost and the Damned:
1 Dark apostle (once again, unsure on wargear)
4 units of 10-man cultists

At this point I'm torn between a Raptor talon with three 5-man units of raptors or the terminator annihilation force with 3 3-man units and a sorcerer. Either one I go for what should my loadouts be? keep the raptors naked or give the champ a power weapon? On the termies should I go with combi-weapons?

For my chaos warband should I add anything there and what weapon options should I go for on my Havocs and CSM squads?

I'm not a big fan of the dinobots so Id like to stick to more traditional vehicles. The fist of the gods sounds appealing but it's been so long since I've used rhino chassis vehicles, is it a worthwhile formation?

Thanks in advance for your tips.

I completely misunderstood the rules for the Insurgency Force and how it interacted with the Legion of the Damned formation, and so I completely flip my views on the Insurgency Force. I like it, and I think the shell of what you have here is pretty good. I personally plan on trying out a Lord with Drakescale Plate (for 2+ armor while still being able to sweep in combat) and power fist/lightning claw/sigil. The Chosen with Plasma are great, I'm personally going to run 2 units of them. For the CSM, I'm going to try giving one unit an extra CCW (essentially making them Chosen), and a Dreadclaw; the Lord and Apostle will go in there for an assault unit. The other CSM squad maybe have more Plasma or a flamer? For the bikes, most people go Melta squads, but whatever you give them, they'll do great. Havocs, I'd recommend Lascannons, since the list is a bit light on AT. I plan on giving the Apostle the Mindveil for guaranteed hit and run, plus extra movement to catch my prey.

I think kitting out an expensive HQ is the opposite if what AL should do, in my opinion. They benefit from simplicity. There is no priority target for your opponent. Warlord is pointless, they won't get it unless they table you. Cultists will come back, or even double. Mindveil let's you control combat and assaults. Infiltrate let's you control board presence.

They're different from most things in that respect, and that's hat makes them exciting to me.

I think AL can be played in different ways but I think I'll be playing mine more similar to how Cephalobeard is thinking. I like a lot of the relics so I'll be giving a relic to each of my HQs, the hydras teeth sound fun for some ignores cover blast shenanigans, I'd love to put the daemon sword on a Raptor Chaos Lord and mindveil seems like just the toy my apostle could use to position himself and his cultists where they can be the largest nuisance. I'll keep my squads as cheap and light on wargear as I can, MSU to flood target priorities. It won't be the hardest hitting force but I should have enough bodies (especially with infiltrate) to play the objective game. Tie up my opponent with cheap chaff cultists while my MSU CSM and chosen run around, snag objectives and shoot plasma.

I do think I'll be running Lascannon havocs to begin with too. My list is very light on AT, now if only we had a Havoc box set that was worth buying...

Hydra's Teeth seems very situational. If you examine it it isn't that good for the majority of engagements. I did a quick guestimation of it's value and it came in at around 3-5 bolters worth of fire depending on your MEQ/GEQ target. Basically an IC with that gun in a 5 man unit of marines will double their firepower. But it's still quite weak firepower. Where it will shine is vs T7/8 or against Death Guard. I'd use it against Deathguard and Tyranids mostly. Against Other marines the AP 2 gun is better. Against guard the ignore cover is nice but you'r still only going to hit 3-4 guardsmen in all likelihood. You'd be better served just assaulting them and taking the cover for yourself. It's a good looking gun but it's by no means an auto-pick.

What's the Black Crusade detachment like? Can you take LatD as core in that detachment? Maybe that would be a great way to go for AL?

About the AL bike army, wouldn't Emperor's Children be better for a bike army? Or Death Guard? It seems a waste to build an army around a turn 1 (only) 2+ jink (meaning your fire turn 2 sucks to boot) when you're ignoring half your legion bonuses (not making use of infiltrating nor respawning cultists). It'd be like building an armoured Death Guard with all the tanks and few dudes on the table. If you're playing AL without cultists is there a point to playing AL? At that point other legions would probably serve you better.

I'm using min squads of Bikes, so 3 each, and attaching a bike Lord to each one.

Double Plasma, Hydra's Teeth and Vipers Bite respectively. Purely shooty. Zip in close, position well turn one due to shrouding, maybe even stealth depending on WT, then get in close and rapid fire plasma and relic weapons.

Bikes are a great addition, but I think much like everything else, they're great tactically. By putting a relic in each squad, with a lord, and causing all of these other small target groups of targets, it's another mind game to your opponent where you're giving them a LOT of choices to shoot at, but none are particularly effective for them to shoot at.

Sure, someone can spend a few squads shooting at a bike squad turn 1, but you have a 2+ jink and it's only 4 guys, etcetc.

Alpha Legion benefits from how vague, or even how plain it may be. You spread power across the board, and YOU get to make the tactical decisions, while your opponent hopes to move around within your cultists and MSU squads.

Edit:

It's worth noting, and a tactic I hope to use, that by placing a dark apostle from LOTD into a group of 35 cultists and giving him the mindveil, you can effectively move very far (on averages 11 inches) and then still charge an enemy squad, potentially multicharge, and then on your following turn you can simply mindveil away. Your opponent was NOT able to shoot into this blob, you kept them locked in combat, and now you get to shoot into it and even charge back in.

Demantiae wrote:


What's the Black Crusade detachment like? Can you take LatD as core in that detachment? Maybe that would be a great way to go for AL?

About the AL bike army, wouldn't Emperor's Children be better for a bike army? Or Death Guard? It seems a waste to build an army around a turn 1 (only) 2+ jink (meaning your fire turn 2 sucks to boot) when you're ignoring half your legion bonuses (not making use of infiltrating nor respawning cultists). It'd be like building an armoured Death Guard with all the tanks and few dudes on the table. If you're playing AL without cultists is there a point to playing AL? At that point other legions would probably serve you better.

You can take LatD as core but then you don't get the extra roll to respawn the cultists, though they would benefit from infiltrate. No shrouding. It would also mean if you wanted anything other than cultists to infiltrate you'd have to take a CAD for the chosen and/or CSM's, though you would benefit from chosen as troops if you wanted.

Night Lords would do a better bike army and overall would improve my own intended list, but then if I just wanted the strongest rules I wouldn't play CSM to begin with. Bike shooting post-jink would be next to useless but with a turbo boost turn one they could charge practically any enemy shooting units the following turn. Also infiltrate isn't completely wasted because you'd need at least two CSM units in the big formation and possibly a chosen unit too.

I don't think there is a good way to utilise every Alpha Legion bonus, practically every list is going to go without one or two of them. To take advantage of every Alpha Legion benefit you'd have to find a way to utilise:

Chosen as troops
Infiltrating CSM, chosen and/or cultists
Turn 1 shrouding
Two rolls to respawn cultists
AL relics

I think a CSM army can benefit from AL rules without cultists

I like the idea of small units of bikes, lef by a lord with one of the shooty relics. I do like that str 5 ap2 weapon, it seems fun and would add to the plasma I have really well. I feel like grey knights would hate fighting this army, too much plasma for their termies to handle, too much chaff throwaway units for them to chew through in melee. I'm excited to try my force out.

I'm excited as well. The Armoured Task Force boxes will be perfect. I'll pick up a few loyalist boxes, and convert loyalist marine sprues into CSM, Chosen, Havocs, etc. Will fit well with the whole "Not corrupted by chaos" theme, I think.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
I like the idea of small units of bikes, lef by a lord with one of the shooty relics. I do like that str 5 ap2 weapon, it seems fun and would add to the plasma I have really well. I feel like grey knights would hate fighting this army, too much plasma for their termies to handle, too much chaff throwaway units for them to chew through in melee. I'm excited to try my force out.

You can have 3 Lords with shooting relics if you count the Brand as well. Been awhile since a shooty HQ existed for different armies.

Brand, to me, pushes in close to the point of "unit is too expensive", but I've been toying between either it or the poison one. I like the poison one, though.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Brand, to me, pushes in close to the point of "unit is too expensive", but I've been toying between either it or the poison one. I like the poison one, though.

The Brand isn't THAT expensive for what it does. It is a larger investment than the others, true, but it is a super hard counter to Marines that fell out of their Rhinos or Scatterbikes and any Necron that isn't a Wraith or Lychguard.

Oh, Certainly! It's absolutely a solid choice.

I've considered using it opposed to the poison one, but I feel very happy with my list where it stands point wise, especially with being able to fit 90 cultists into it. I don't, however, look forward to painting that! Haha.

The burning brand is one of my favourite artifacts of all time. I put it to very good use in the past and it was one of the shining stars in the dirt that is the 6th edition chaos codex for me. Having 3 shooty HQ's sounds actually very fluffy to me for an AL army and I'd definitely try it out. If only I could guarantee an HQ would get infiltrate so that I could use it T1. I wish we could get Chaos Lord mini HQ's with lower stats but at a discount, kind of like the difference between a Commissar and a Lord Commissar, that would work well for an AL shooty HQ.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
I'm excited as well. The Armoured Task Force boxes will be perfect. I'll pick up a few loyalist boxes, and convert loyalist marine sprues into CSM, Chosen, Havocs, etc. Will fit well with the whole "Not corrupted by chaos" theme, I think.

I'm using Betrayl at Calth marines and gear for mine so I'm in the same boat.

If there was ever a chaos army that wouldn't be covered in weird mutations and whatnot, Alpha Legion would be it. I'm even considering painting up vehicles in different chapter colors to look like they're disguising the vehicles to infiltrate loyalist forces (aka use the vehicles I already have for other armies without bothering to repaint them )

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Oh, Certainly! It's absolutely a solid choice.

I've considered using it opposed to the poison one, but I feel very happy with my list where it stands point wise, especially with being able to fit 90 cultists into it. I don't, however, look forward to painting that! Haha.

90 cultists? You mean 180 cultists right? Because if you get good rolls on your respawn you could well be rockin 180 cultists on the board turn 6!

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Cephalobeard wrote:
I'm excited as well. The Armoured Task Force boxes will be perfect. I'll pick up a few loyalist boxes, and convert loyalist marine sprues into CSM, Chosen, Havocs, etc. Will fit well with the whole "Not corrupted by chaos" theme, I think.

I'm using Betrayl at Calth marines and gear for mine so I'm in the same boat.

If there was ever a chaos army that wouldn't be covered in weird mutations and whatnot, Alpha Legion would be it. I'm even considering painting up vehicles in different chapter colors to look like they're disguising the vehicles to infiltrate loyalist forces (aka use the vehicles I already have for other armies without bothering to repaint them )

It's gonna look pretty naff fielding a bunch of randomly painted models as an army. When Alpha Legion infiltrate and masquerade they do it right - their entire force is going to look convincingly like the legion they're impersonating. It's also gonna look much better on the table to have your army look like it belongs together. But you're right about the not corrupted by chaos look. The force I'm putting together is taking models from all over the place, none of them chaos! I think the only chaos parts I'm using are some of the gargoyle heads from the vehicle kits, I have a neat trick with those. Everything else is going to be a mix 30k models and third party bits along with genestealer cult cultists with head swaps. I've got chaos vehicle kits but I;m only using the base marine chassis and accessories. It's a shame, I love the Dark Vengeance models but they just don't work as AL.

Alpha legion is very good if they play the objective, but to me we still dont have those knight/stormsurge killers. I was going into some deep analysis. These are my potential tourney builds:

msu alpha legion + death guard for double recycling plague zombies. this acts as tarpits for the knight or the riptide

msu alpha legion+ msu iron warriors (oblits) this uses the oblits to destroy battle company players and they can do some damage

msu alpha legion + msu black legion. this will be termies with one chainfist and combi meltas that are obsec

this is where it gets....funky

msu alpha legion + riptide wing this deals with the problems of power i have

msu alpha legion+ stealth cadre same as above

msu alpha legion+ daemons this gets us the khorne knight and maybe some heralds

msu alpha legion+ msu ork obsec bikers again more obsec...

msu alpha legion+ renegades this gets us some ordinance for the killing the knight

thoughts?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
as you can see i love the concept of msu

Stormsurges and Wraithknights will always be a problem because of stomp.

The very idea of allying AL with Tau just makes me sad.

I know it's possible, and very likely strong, but I hate the very thought of it.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
The very idea of allying AL with Tau just makes me sad.

I know it's possible, and very likely strong, but I hate the very thought of it.

I was thinking of making the riptides look like demonic constructs but obviously that does not make sense with AL

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
I like the idea of small units of bikes, lef by a lord with one of the shooty relics. I do like that str 5 ap2 weapon, it seems fun and would add to the plasma I have really well. I feel like grey knights would hate fighting this army, too much plasma for their termies to handle, too much chaff throwaway units for them to chew through in melee. I'm excited to try my force out.

I personally would prefer the small units of bikes as a separate force, with Spawn as escorts for your characters instead. It's easier to join a Sorcerer to a 30-60 pt spawn unit rather than a 90-pt unit of Bikes for that reason. Just make your Mindveil-bearer the Warlord in case you get relevant Warlord traits, as you have the option to bail a small squad out of melee once per game if you get Faceless Commander. (Swap and Veil)

 Cephalobeard wrote:
The very idea of allying AL with Tau just makes me sad.

I know it's possible, and very likely strong, but I hate the very thought of it.

The AL infiltrated the Tau (yes kind of ridiculous) and pulled strings to get the riptides.

They're kinda like orks in this regard. They can infiltrate a carnifex.

Well, they always could convert to the chaos some tau.

There are tons of xeno races that adores chaos Gods, not just humans xD.

I know is hard on taus, put still possible.


Or maybe some orks looted the riptide and the AL lord hired them as mercenaries

Something I realized today. I'd that upgrades on cultists are finally worth taking! That 1pt. You spent on an auto gun actually gives you 2-3 over the course of the game.

And since there is a 100% statistical chance for a cultist unit to come back, those points actually have serious staying power!

75%.

At the very least the Flamer is an attractive option.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
75%.

50% (4+ from Cult Rising) + 50% (4+ from LaD) surely that = 100%? since they are independent events. (I haven't done stats in about a year so I might be wrong )

 The Deathless Host wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
75%.

50% (4+ from Cult Rising) + 50% (4+ from LaD) surely that = 100%? since they are independent events. (I haven't done stats in about a year so I might be wrong )

Yeah you're super wrong. While they are independent, it is in the same manner as saying flipping a coin twice will give you 1 head. That's not how it works.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 The Deathless Host wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
75%.

50% (4+ from Cult Rising) + 50% (4+ from LaD) surely that = 100%? since they are independent events. (I haven't done stats in about a year so I might be wrong )

Yeah you're super wrong. While they are independent, it is in the same manner as saying flipping a coin twice will give you 1 head. That's not how it works.

Ah wait I get it! In the 4 possible outcomes 3 of them include at least 1 positive, 1 contains 2 and 1 contains no positives; therefor it is a 75% chance of having AT LEAST 1 positive result. My bad sorry.

Still cultists really are worth taking upgrades on now! (I'm thinking 8 autoguns and a flamer)

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 The Deathless Host wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
75%.

50% (4+ from Cult Rising) + 50% (4+ from LaD) surely that = 100%? since they are independent events. (I haven't done stats in about a year so I might be wrong )

Yeah you're super wrong. While they are independent, it is in the same manner as saying flipping a coin twice will give you 1 head. That's not how it works.

If you flip the coin in half it has a 50% chance to give head 100% of the time.

 koooaei wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 The Deathless Host wrote:

Captyn_Bob wrote:
75%.

50% (4+ from Cult Rising) + 50% (4+ from LaD) surely that = 100%? since they are independent events. (I haven't done stats in about a year so I might be wrong )

Yeah you're super wrong. While they are independent, it is in the same manner as saying flipping a coin twice will give you 1 head. That's not how it works.

If you flip the coin in half it has a 50% chance to give head 100% of the time.

60% of the time, it works every time.

Ok, so did someone summon a math nerd?

1 unit of cultist kick the bucket 2 rolls here is how it shakes out:

Chance of getting zero units back: 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
Chance of getting two units back: 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4
Chance of getting just one unit back: 1 - (1/4 + 1/4) = 1/2

So there are two ways to think about this, first as a single set of rolls, in which case any given roll will have a 25% chance for no units, a 50% chance of a single unit, and a 25% chance for two units. Then there is the long term average per cultist killed, given a large enough set of rolls the expected average number of units you get per cultist death is (2 * 1/4) + 1/2, for an average of a one unit of cultist returned for every cultist killed.

Oh math nerd, bestow upon us your knowledge; statistically is it better to field small units of Cultists? (e.g. 10) or Large units? (30)

So...how the hell does Faceless Commander work? By RAW, it looks like you can't use it to displace an IC from an actual unit. I assume it also does nothing from inside a transport too.

It works fine on ICs in units. Not in transports, as they have to be on the battlefield.

Rules get weird with non-ICs. Suggest suspending disbelief and ruling that once a non IC has left it's unit, it's not part of it any more. (And is part of any new unit it's teleported into)

I feel like alpha legion rules get trumped hardcore by genestealer cults

You roll off for infiltrate, they win, they daisy chain their 20 genestealer with broodlord across your board 3 inches from your guys. Suddenly you dont have any space on the board at all you can infiltrate 18 inches away from the enemy or 12 out of sight.

How would you fight genestealer cults with the best trick trumped?

 Orock wrote:
I feel like alpha legion rules get trumped hardcore by genestealer cults

You roll off for infiltrate, they win, they daisy chain their 20 genestealer with broodlord across your board 3 inches from your guys. Suddenly you dont have any space on the board at all you can infiltrate 18 inches away from the enemy or 12 out of sight.

How would you fight genestealer cults with the best trick trumped?

Deploy regularly with most of your stuff and outflank/infiltrate the rest - preferebly rhino marines.

Yeah deploy normally and use your mass heavy weapons to nuke that buzz kill unit. I have planned for this eventually with a squd of 5 flamer chosen. Pull that and I'll crisp them.

Also it doesn't negate respawning cultists and first turn shrouding so its OK IMO.

I played a game yesterday using a 35-man Cultist squad with pistols/ccw, and joined a Dark Apostle with the Mindveil to them. I rolled for Stealth on my Dark Apostle warlord trait (I was trying for Infiltrate or Furious Charge, but rolled twice and got Stealth). Started in my deployment zone (deployed normally, foregoing Infiltrate), and was in position to charge on turn 2. I failed my 8" charge on turn 2, but was in combat by 3 in the enemy DZ. Put out a metric ton of hits/wounds, then Mindveil'ed out my following turn, just to charge back in and finish off the unit. Worked like a charm.

The giant Cultist blob was easily my favorite part of playing that game, tons of fun. Now, trying to paint each guy to be somewhat unique, that's another story.

 Homeskillet wrote:
I played a game yesterday using a 35-man Cultist squad with pistols/ccw, and joined a Dark Apostle with the Mindveil to them. I rolled for Stealth on my Dark Apostle warlord trait (I was trying for Infiltrate or Furious Charge, but rolled twice and got Stealth). Started in my deployment zone (deployed normally, foregoing Infiltrate), and was in position to charge on turn 2. I failed my 8" charge on turn 2, but was in combat by 3 in the enemy DZ. Put out a metric ton of hits/wounds, then Mindveil'ed out my following turn, just to charge back in and finish off the unit. Worked like a charm.

The giant Cultist blob was easily my favorite part of playing that game, tons of fun. Now, trying to paint each guy to be somewhat unique, that's another story.

I do not envy you. I have to paint 50+ guys in the next month for my IG army (who will double as cultists for my AL) I am not looking forward to it...

I haven't seen anybody discuss the warlord traits yet. What do you guys think?

Four of the options are worth having for my chaos lord, but the cultist one and faceless commander are useless to me. The way my list will work I'll probably just roll on the strategic traits from the main rule book. The first trait (the ruins one) is pretty situational but all of the rest are decent or great. Master of ambush allows the warlord and three units to infiltrate, and strategic genius gives +1 to seize and allows reserve re-rolls. I feel like the Alpha Legion traits are a weak version of the strategic traits to be honest

After the chaos lord dies I'd probably go for the BRB's personal traits on one of my CC characters. Rolling on the Alpha Legion traits after a warlord switch seems pretty pointless

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
I haven't seen anybody discuss the warlord traits yet. What do you guys think?

Four of the options are worth having for my chaos lord, but the cultist one and faceless commander are useless to me. The way my list will work I'll probably just roll on the strategic traits from the main rule book. The first trait (the ruins one) is pretty situational but all of the rest are decent or great. Master of ambush allows the warlord and three units to infiltrate, and strategic genius gives +1 to seize and allows reserve re-rolls. I feel like the Alpha Legion traits are a weak version of the strategic traits to be honest

After the chaos lord dies I'd probably go for the BRB's personal traits on one of my CC characters. Rolling on the Alpha Legion traits after a warlord switch seems pretty pointless

I understand not liking the Cultists one, but FacelessCommander is pretty gnarly in certain circumstances. Switching with another Biker Champion was really nifty in one game.

How did you and your opponent play Faceless Commander with regards to coherency, engagement in CC, etc?

 MagicJuggler wrote:
How did you and your opponent play Faceless Commander with regards to coherency, engagement in CC, etc?

We decided not to touch what happens in CC because that's for a more official FAQ, but regarding coherency we marked exactly where everyone was with an empty base.

It needs more playtesting but it has good potential to be very powerful.

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
I haven't seen anybody discuss the warlord traits yet. What do you guys think?

Four of the options are worth having for my chaos lord, but the cultist one and faceless commander are useless to me. The way my list will work I'll probably just roll on the strategic traits from the main rule book. The first trait (the ruins one) is pretty situational but all of the rest are decent or great. Master of ambush allows the warlord and three units to infiltrate, and strategic genius gives +1 to seize and allows reserve re-rolls. I feel like the Alpha Legion traits are a weak version of the strategic traits to be honest

After the chaos lord dies I'd probably go for the BRB's personal traits on one of my CC characters. Rolling on the Alpha Legion traits after a warlord switch seems pretty pointless

If you build a list that focuses on the strengths of the Alpha Legion (infiltrate, good relics, lots of special weapons thanks to Chosen), then the AL warlord traits are pretty darn good. You don't really need Master of Ambush, because all your important units can already infiltrate. Stealth is great on a unit, furious charge on a cultist blob is scary, etc. What kind of list are you running?