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Let me preface this thread with the disclaimer that I am mostly satisfied with Traitor Legions. It gives a lot of new crunch, with cool tactics, detachment bonuses and artifacts that are more than just "Melee Weapon +1." That said, when there's a lot of good with a codex, it makes the bad things stand out even more! So, a grievances thread seems in order...let's just keep it civil of course! I won't discuss 1k Sons much as that's a whole different can of worms but otherwise let's let loose!

-My biggest grievance is that many Legion tactics either don't improve the signature unit of said Legion, or in some cases make them even less attractive compared to the alternative! This is most apparent with the World Eaters: They can take Berzerker Troops, but all World Eaters get Furious Charge and Fearless anyway, making them Berzerkers on a budget. They can take the Maelstrom of Gore as a core choice, but the Butcherhorde lets all units re-roll charge anyway, removing half the point of taking the Maelstrom! If the Legion bonus replaced Furious Charge with "models replace Rage with Rampage", and the Butcherhorde let units "run and charge" rather than re-roll charge distances, it would give the Maelstrom a reason to exist in the first place!
-Some Warlord Traits are wtf. Notable ones include Fearless for Iron Warriors (chances are you're Fearless anyway), but the Alpha Legion trait Faceless Commander takes the cake due to its wording making a mess of YMDC. Similarly, some artifacts are inexplicable trash, with Warpbreacher also being situationally usable or useless, depending on how you play out rules for a Shaken vehicle that suddenly becomes Possessed.
-Typhus is ironically useless for Death Guard, since all Cultists must take Mark of Nurgle, while Cultists that want to become Plague Zombies cannot take any other options. He *can* turn Cultists from another detachment into Zombies, such as Infiltrating Alpha Legion Ninja Zombies. I'll let that image sink in your head.

What grievances do you have with Traitor Legions, be they funny or just sad?

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Let me preface this thread with the disclaimer that I am mostly satisfied with Traitor Legions. It gives a lot of new crunch, with cool tactics, detachment bonuses and artifacts that are more than just "Melee Weapon +1." That said, when there's a lot of good with a codex, it makes the bad things stand out even more! So, a grievances thread seems in order...let's just keep it civil of course! I won't discuss 1k Sons much as that's a whole different can of worms but otherwise let's let loose!

-My biggest grievance is that many Legion tactics either don't improve the signature unit of said Legion, or in some cases make them even less attractive compared to the alternative! This is most apparent with the World Eaters: They can take Berzerker Troops, but all World Eaters get Furious Charge and Fearless anyway, making them Berzerkers on a budget. They can take the Maelstrom of Gore as a core choice, but the Butcherhorde lets all units re-roll charge anywy

Festivus is over. You'll have to wait until next year for the airing of grievances.

All I wanted was cost effective Rubrics and a list that didn't need special characters to be effective. All I got was the same crap Rubrics with even more absurd options and another special character more mandatory than the last.

The Traitor Legion book was a nice addition to CSM overall but it's clear nothing significant will change until the CSM book is redone.

It works as an interim bandage. Even has some nice bits here and there e.g. I am Alpharius.

Does it make CSM competetive? Not really, it raises them just above the mire of DE, Orks, et al.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
It works as an interim bandage. Even has some nice bits here and there e.g. I am Alpharius.

Does it make CSM competetive? Not really, it raises them just above the mire of DE, Orks, et al.

I disagree. Death Guard are certainly more competitive, but I will say I think it makes them more like Tyranids, I.E. one or two competitive builds.

Fair comment but it is quite obvious Death Guard have become the go to. People may not want to play Death Guard.

EC became good as well with mass 4+ FnP but are far too pricey.

It is a help but I doubt many tournaments will be won with CSM irrespective of this release.

Just my 2p worth, although I don't play competetively so those who do may know better.

My biggest beef is the treatment the Thousand Sons got. Reprinting the same junk from the Wrath of Magnus book was just lazy. I get the detachments in the WoM book, it represents the types of forces we see in the story. But the current legion rules do not represent what I always imagined an actual Thousand Sons army being. I expected something like

Rubric: All models must take the mar of Tzeentch is able to do so. All non character non daemon infantry models with the Mark of Tzeentch in this army gain Slow and Purposeful, their initiative becomes 1

Sorcerer Lords: All Characters in this detachment must upgrade to a lvl 1 sorcerer for 25pts, and they must replace a melee weapon or pistol with a force weapon

Daemonic Intergration: All Vehicles are allowed to take the 'Daemonic Possession' upgrade, even if not normally allowed. All deamonic units in the army get the 'Daemon of Tzeentch' special rule.

I also expected to see more ways to mutate opponent models turning them into spawn.

As my legion of choice, Iron Warriors was a major let down. Someone coined the phrase "worse Iron Hands" and i fully believe it. Warlord traits are trash- woo, fearless on an ALREADY FEARLESS MODEL, for starters... Relics- overpriced 2+ save that gives a 1/3 chance of not dying as quickly, gee wizz batman, and an axe that costs double for 2 mediocre rules? Golly gee. Oh look! I can now possess my own tank and make it eat one of my own dudes for the hell of it, who needs BS4 when you're powered by marine corpses!
But most of all, the universal 6+ FNP is just a load of fecal matter. Every other legion got something badass and unique, to them among chaos marines AND loyalist ones and IW are left with half of the iron hands chapter tactics, and its not even the good half. IW should have been the pnes to get relentless, not DG.
Oblits and muties as troop? Who wants to pay 70 points for a 2 wound troop choice that can be slagged by a single stray melta gun? I could almost get a predator tank for the cost of one! Havocs as troops would make much more sense since, you know, havocs were rather common in the ranks of IW and oblits are supposed to be rare AND mutilators aren't even related to IW according to their lore!
Mutilators, according to their fluff, were just regular marines obsessed with their stabby toys, nothing even close to the obliterator virus.
And that's just the start...

Noise Marines: still have Salvo on their guns, still not relentless.

World Eaters: still lack a reliable transport. 40k technology and 1st century logistics.

Black Legion: great alpha assault but no way to mitigate deep strike mishaps.

Iron Warriors: no ordinance weapons in the stock Codex except on Defilers. Need to take a CAD to get anything exotic, which mitigates benefits.

Word Bearers: remind me again what's special about them? The summoning thing might be great if you could take enough Sorcerors to do a decent job summoning.

Night Lords, Raptors charging from Deep Strike with their shoelaces tied together.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Noise Marines: still have Salvo on their guns, still not relentless.

World Eaters: still lack a reliable transport. 40k technology and 1st century logistics.

Black Legion: great alpha assault but no way to mitigate deep strike mishaps.

Iron Warriors: no ordinance weapons in the stock Codex except on Defilers. Need to take a CAD to get anything exotic, which mitigates benefits.

Word Bearers: remind me again what's special about them? The summoning thing might be great if you could take enough Sorcerors to do a decent job summoning.

To be fair, Iron Warriors also get accurate Vindicators and Vengeance Batteries. If you add FW, you can also grant Outflank to one of the Vindicators.

Word Bearer summoning is ok (I prefer a Palanquin Sorcerer) if you add Daemon allies for batteries and a Paradox Herald. I've found the bonuses slowly add up. The other bonuses are bleh of course. Mix-and-match Marks are still useful regardless.

One of my other larger grievances is how the special Legion Detachments are very "copy-paste" in actual organization. Other than the 1k Sons and Black Legion, most Legions will have have the same auxiliaries to work with. The assorted Codex Chapters in Angels of Death have more variance in their custom detachments and something does feel wrong about that too.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Noise Marines: still have Salvo on their guns, still not relentless.

World Eaters: still lack a reliable transport. 40k technology and 1st century logistics.

Black Legion: great alpha assault but no way to mitigate deep strike mishaps.

Iron Warriors: no ordinance weapons in the stock Codex except on Defilers. Need to take a CAD to get anything exotic, which mitigates benefits.

Word Bearers: remind me again what's special about them? The summoning thing might be great if you could take enough Sorcerors to do a decent job summoning.

To be fair, Iron Warriors also get accurate Vindicators and Vengeance Batteries. If you add FW, you can also grant Outflank to one of the Vindicators.

Word Bearer summoning is ok (I prefer a Palanquin Sorcerer) if you add Daemon allies for batteries and a Paradox Herald. I've found the bonuses slowly add up. The other bonuses are bleh of course. Mix-and-match Marks are still useful regardless.

One of my other larger grievances is how the special Legion Detachments are very "copy-paste" in actual organization. Other than the 1k Sons and Black Legion, most Legions will have have the same auxiliaries to work with. The assorted Codex Chapters in Angels of Death have more variance in their custom detachments and something does feel wrong about that too.

yeah, although they only had so much space, as I noted elsewhere, traitor legions actually has MORE formations then angels of death and more pages of rules, so part of the issue is simply chaos suffering from a shallower unit pool in their codex, (a pool that gets even worse when you realize so many legions are restricted on cult troops). as well as the fact that so many of the formations are, being taken from the Black Legion supplement or wraith of magnus, specific to a single legion. many of the BL formations could have been opened up to allow less repetition of formations (as a result of this we have a lot of formations that are essentially doubles) and allow more formations for variaty. or simply more formations with other traitor legions in mind (ECs and DG got 1 token formation each. and then the non-cult legions all have to share 10 formations between them

There are quite a few formations that are very similar to one another.

The Chaos Warband and Black Legion Warband.
Favored of Chaos and Tormented.
War Coven and Cyclopea Cabal.
Daemon Engine Pack and Helforged Warpack.

There are also very few "not a formation" options, with the main ones being Spawn and Lords of the Legion. Iron Warriors get Fortifications and Thousand Sons get their choice of options, but that's it.

Likewise, there are very few actual restrictions. Stuff like the Iron Warriors not getting access to a Raptor Talon in their Grand Company, or Death Guard not getting access to Sorcerers as a command choice (they would still have the option via a Warband or Terminator Annihilation Force) would make the detachments less copy-paste and be more in line with how said legions nominally fight.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
There are quite a few formations that are very similar to one another.

The Chaos Warband and Black Legion Warband.
Favored of Chaos and Tormented.
War Coven and Cyclopea Cabal.
Daemon Engine Pack and Helforged Warpack.

There are also very few "not a formation" options, with the main ones being Spawn and Lords of the Legion. Iron Warriors get Fortifications and Thousand Sons get their choice of options, but that's it.

Likewise, there are very few actual restrictions. Stuff like the Iron Warriors not getting access to a Raptor Talon in their Grand Company, or Death Guard not getting access to Sorcerers as a command choice (they would still have the option via a Warband or Terminator Annihilation Force) would make the detachments less copy-paste and be more in line with how said legions nominally fight.

yeah I understand that a lot of the BL formations where initally introduced as BL specific in earlier material, my guess is they where concerned about changing the formations and thus confusing people. but I woulda prefered them do that to give more room for variation.

Voidraven5829 wrote:

Oblits and muties as troop? Who wants to pay 70 points for a 2 wound troop choice that can be slagged by a single stray melta gun? I could almost get a predator tank for the cost of one! Havocs as troops would make much more sense since, you know, havocs were rather common in the ranks of IW and oblits are supposed to be rare AND mutilators aren't even related to IW according to their lore!
Mutilators, according to their fluff, were just regular marines obsessed with their stabby toys, nothing even close to the obliterator virus.
And that's just the start...

Obliterators and mutilators as troops is pretty amazing. Top level tyranid builds where deepstrikeing lictors and rippers for ages since it gave so many ways of capturing/contesting objectives. Paying a 5-20 extra points over a lictor to add objective secured and/or a gun on top sounds excellent. Losing precision deepstrike is a big hit, but cursed earth can help mitigate that. I fully expect flying circus daemons+obliterators to be competitive army.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

-Typhus is ironically useless for Death Guard, since all Cultists must take Mark of Nurgle, while Cultists that want to become Plague Zombies cannot take any other options. He *can* turn Cultists from another detachment into Zombies, such as Infiltrating Alpha Legion Ninja Zombies. I'll let that image sink in your head.

You need to be careful with the wording of the rules... Typhus' plague zombie rule says: "Any Chaos cultist units in the same army as Typhus can be nominated as plague zombies... and cannot purchase upgrades."

Meanwhile the pertinent Death Guard rule says: "units that can take a Mark of Nurgle must do so."

Typhus' rule works when you nominate a cultist unit and that nomination occurs before purchasing upgrades... once you make that nomination the unit "cannot purchase upgrades" and thus cannot take a Mark of Nurgle. They are therefor unaffected by the requirement.

As far as Alpha Legion infiltrating plague zombies go... Your reading appears to be correct since Typhus' rule applies to Chaos cultists in his army and not just his detatchment... and plague zombies are still "Chaos cultist"... That said it seems a very Alpha Legion move to hide pens of plague zombies in a city they want to take over.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 coblen wrote:

Voidraven5829 wrote:

Oblits and muties as troop? Who wants to pay 70 points for a 2 wound troop choice that can be slagged by a single stray melta gun? I could almost get a predator tank for the cost of one! Havocs as troops would make much more sense since, you know, havocs were rather common in the ranks of IW and oblits are supposed to be rare AND mutilators aren't even related to IW according to their lore!
Mutilators, according to their fluff, were just regular marines obsessed with their stabby toys, nothing even close to the obliterator virus.
And that's just the start...

Obliterators and mutilators as troops is pretty amazing. Top level tyranid builds where deepstrikeing lictors and rippers for ages since it gave so many ways of capturing/contesting objectives. Paying a 5-20 extra points over a lictor to add objective secured and/or a gun on top sounds excellent. Losing precision deepstrike is a big hit, but cursed earth can help mitigate that. I fully expect flying circus daemons+obliterators to be competitive army.

I think the problem with Obliterators and Mutilators goes back to the fundamental overcosts in the codex and not a grievance of the Traitors Legion book.

The IW rules bring 4 things to them... Objective Secured, 6+ FnP, free VotLW, and tank hunter... I think that justifies the 70pt cost but really requires you to build your strategy around them to make the most of them. The MSU approach of taking 6 units of individual Obliterators seems to be the popular move... they create target saturation with a unit that's challenging enough to kill despite a vulnerable toughness value... forcing your opponent to either ignore them or use a more costly unit to kill it which is that much likelier overkill. Even if a meltagun kills one, it still effectively an opponents whole squad tied up to kill one model.

While deep strike is too unreliable and sacrifices at least one turn of shooting it gives the opportunity to contest an objective more rapidly than most any CSM troop choice, while presenting the opportunity to get vantages to shoot weaker vehicle facings.

About Typhus and zombies on death guard, people are divided on 2_
- The zombies exist and dont take mark because "cant take options"
- Because the special rule or the army, the zombies must take the mark.

About Typhus allied to AL for zombificate infiltrating cultists... Is not better a way cheaper chaos lord (or a sorcerer) with the relic that transform cultist into zombies? That way they keep the 2 attacks at melee (think) and save you some points

 aka_mythos wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:

-Typhus is ironically useless for Death Guard, since all Cultists must take Mark of Nurgle, while Cultists that want to become Plague Zombies cannot take any other options. He *can* turn Cultists from another detachment into Zombies, such as Infiltrating Alpha Legion Ninja Zombies. I'll let that image sink in your head.

You need to be careful with the wording of the rules... Typhus' plague zombie rule says: "Any Chaos cultist units in the same army as Typhus can be nominated as plague zombies... and cannot purchase upgrades."

Meanwhile the pertinent Death Guard rule says: "units that can take a Mark of Nurgle must do so."

Typhus' rule works when you nominate a cultist unit and that nomination occurs before purchasing upgrades... once you make that nomination the unit "cannot purchase upgrades" and thus cannot take a Mark of Nurgle. They are therefor unaffected by the requirement.

As far as Alpha Legion infiltrating plague zombies go... Your reading appears to be correct since Typhus' rule applies to Chaos cultists in his army and not just his detatchment... and plague zombies are still "Chaos cultist"... That said it seems a very Alpha Legion move to hide pens of plague zombies in a city they want to take over.

I give this response a 10/10 for mental gymnastics. But what will the judges over on YMTC have to say?

Just a shame the zombies cant transform the people they kill into more zombies hahaha, THAT will make them so funny

Not mental gymnastics, that makes perfect sense. Typhus allows cultists to become zombies. Having become zombies they cannot take any upgrades, including marks. Therefore they no longer count as a unit that can take MoN, so the rule about needing to take it *where possible* doesn't apply to them.

Before I begin I'll say I love the traitor legions book- it was much more than I hoped for

That said, nothing is perfect. A bit more care with certain rules would have been nice. An errata/FAQ could fix things like the AL warlord trait faceless commander, for example. The bizarre drakescale plate armour that provides a 2+ save and a 2++ against flamer weapons may as well be just a 2+ save because I don't know of any AP1/2 flamer weapons, but that's a very small issue and the price you pay to give a daemon prince a 2+ save is still great value

It's the AL decurion that's most frustrating I think. I really like it anyway, but it would have been nice if we could take chosen or cultists instead of CSM given we can have chosen as troops in a CAD and the respawning cultist rule given by the decurion only comes into effect if you take the cultists auxiliary which already allows respawns on a 4+

Same goes for the other legion formations. Just a little bit more thought and tailoring for each legion would go a long way

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
Before I begin I'll say I love the traitor legions book- it was much more than I hoped for

That said, nothing is perfect. A bit more care with certain rules would have been nice. An errata/FAQ could fix things like the AL warlord trait faceless commander, for example. The bizarre drakescale plate armour that provides a 2+ save and a 2++ against flamer weapons may as well be just a 2+ save because I don't know of any AP1/2 flamer weapons, but that's a very small issue and the price you pay to give a daemon prince a 2+ save is still great value

Rending Flamers?

Franarok wrote:
Just a shame the zombies cant transform the people they kill into more zombies hahaha, THAT will make them so funny

Who says they don't? Remember that "removing casualties" does not always mean the model is dead for good, just that they are out of the battle.
I think there is every reason to believe that the victims of the zombies do in fact turn into more zombies. We just don't see it in game time because is may take a few hours, and the battle most likely takes less than an hour.

On topic, I don't see much wrong with the TL. It effectively makes CSM jump a tier up on the competitive scale. Still not top tier, but they can now go toe to toe with 95% of armies without it being a foregone conclusion of defeat.

-

I actually like Obliterator/Mutilator troops more than Havoc troops, simply because even if it was nominally fluffy, Havoc Troops would just really emphasize playing Chaos as a static gunline and that's no fun. While Obliterators are not a cost-effective shooting unit and have never been, they've always been a versatile unit, able to adapt to a lot of different roles.

Raptor Troops make sense for Night Lords. You're weaker than the equivalent Blood Angel army, but you can do that "Fast CSM" build you've wanted to do, especially if you do a double-CAD for 6 Fast Attacks or so. 4 Raptor units, 4 Bike units and 2 Spawn units sounds like a solid start for an army.

It's definitely food for thought either way. I'm a fan of:
-A Legion Tactic should apply to all Veterans. (Ex: Alpha Legion should have Move through Cover, Word Bearers should either have Crusader or Free Marks)
-It should have a bonus that applies to a smaller subset of units. (Night Lords get Hit and Run for all Jump Infantry, Word Bearers Daemons move, run and charge +3", etc).
-Each Legion needs a more distinctive detachment.

My two cents, really.

Literally building a chaos army because of this book

Read through a bit of the book, felt it was largely another phoned in lackluster "we need something to release this month" thing. Left it on the shelf. It really does just feel lazy and poorly thought out, written with only a passing knowledge or care of the source material and largely completely missing what people have been trying to spell out in big letters to GW for almost a decade at this point,, as was to be expected.

Alpha Legion, effectively, are pretty trash.

Cultists are trash; LatD, even in an Alpha Legion Insurgency Force, are objectively worse than the alternative choice, the Unending Host for Renegades. And since when did the Alpha Legion run Dark Apostles!?
Alpha Legion got specialties in Chosen and CSMs, two other trash units.
T1 Shroud is nice, but need to run the Decurion for it.
CSMs had access to Infiltrating Unmarked Shrouded Chosen through Cypher previously, and they sucked balls
Mindveil is fun, but has to be run in a CAD to get access to a delivery method (re: ForgeWorld).
We still lack a Fearless/...ATSKNF equivalent.

Honestly though, I did like the Warlord rules though. If the underlying units (Cultists, Chosen, and CSMs) were fixed, it would work well. But, they're awful. There's just a lack of synergy, 'cause I like both the Drakescale Plate, Mindveil, Infiltrate... but it doesn't fit together.

hmm I mean it's pretty much the CSM 3.5 codex that everyone wanted, it is surprisingly quite similar... now everybody wants something else?

 Gunzhard wrote:
hmm I mean it's pretty much the CSM 3.5 codex that everyone wanted, it is surprisingly quite similar... now everybody wants something else?

An update for 7th edition?

 Gunzhard wrote:
hmm I mean it's pretty much the CSM 3.5 codex that everyone wanted, it is surprisingly quite similar... now everybody wants something else?

People wanted the customizability and background adherent options of 3.5 (even if not necessarily some of the more abusive stuff). The new book doesnt really do that. We still dont have actual Cult armies or appropriate cult units outside of Tac equivalents for things that really should have them, the Legion stuff is in many respect just poorer Chapter Tactics, and a lot of the choices really dont make sense (e.g. IW's using Oblits as Troops).

It's a very far cry from what really made the 3.5 book click with people, and fails to address many longstanding issues.