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As the title of the thread implies, it has been my experience that Penal Legions are the little appreciated and much overlooked unit in the Imperial Guard Codex. The reasoning for this is certainly not without ground. 80 points for a squad of Guardsmen seems a bit step, and in a few situations Penal Legions are certainly less than useful. However, in my gaming life with the new IG codex, I have found these little jail birds to be more than worth their cost in almost 99% of all games because of their ability to trap powerful units in combat, pull units off objectives, and lay a good number of rends on the occasional terminator.

Instead of simply rephrasing what has been stated in the past, I feel obligated to quote Polonius on his interpretation of the Penal Legion abilities:

The first roll, that of assault 2 lasguns, is most boring but in many ways the punchiest. 18 24” range shots per turn, even at BS3 and S3 will lay three wounds on T4 a turn, which is the same as a heavy bolter heavy weapon squad, and can move while doing so. In this role, the legionaires are best used as a simple screen, scouting forward to begin shooting right away, and falling back to avoid getting charged. As stubborn troops, they will be expected to charge the enemy, and hold with the last few members of the squad to prevent the enemy from getting the charge on my valuable squads.

The second roll is that of Psychopaths makes the squad slightly faster and slightly better in combat. This unit should either be outflanked to deal with enemy light fire support, or kept on a flank or as a mobile reserve to tie up the enemy when they’re breakthrough is approaching. Again, unless the unit charged can kill 10 guardsmen, they’re testing to hold on LD8, which passes 73% of the time. The fleet rule is the big winner here, as it stretches the charge range nicely.

The final roll make the unit knife fighters, gaining a second attack and rending, turning mild mannered guardsmen into extremely low rent genestealers. With the ability to actually do a few wounds on the charge, as well as retaining the ability to be stubborn, psychopaths are the clear winners. They can countercharge, they can outflank, they can hold up the enemy, they can screen your better troops, all for a mere 80pts a squad.

I have played many many games with this unit and have fought virtually every opponent with almost every combination of these abilities and every time they are useful. Sure, rolling the Rending result against a Deathwing army is far better than gunslingers, but this does not render them useless by any means. As Polonius briefly mentioned, these guys tarpit and they do it well. Stubborn ld8 is nothing to laugh at, and outflankers whod fleet & furious charge or rend are a threat that cannot be ignored.

With this sort of reasoning, I find it confusing that more IG players opt not to run Penal Legions but instead scoff at them. Understandably, these guys are easy to overlook when most Guard players are loading their Guardsmen up into Valks and Chimeras, but the ability to Outflank quickly alleviates this problem.

I play a competitive Guard list, and by no means do I sacrifice utility and effectiveness for looks or fluff. The purpose behind this post is simple: am I alone in my thoughts on Penal Legions? Are there any of you out there who either run Penal Legions and find them effective / been attacked by them and hate them? Do any of you just think they plain ol' suck?

Dakka, what are your thoughts? Are Penal Legions worth it?

I've faced them several times. The opponents who've fielded them love them because they can Outflank in largely static deployment lists.
I play Marines, so I'm not all that scared of them. 4s to hit, 5s to wound, 6s to Rend? Meh. They're an annoyance, and one I can clear out in two Assault phases with bolter butts alone.
Now, if they charge one of my Biker squads, I'm more miffed. I need those bikes moving and shooting meltaguns and plasmaguns at things. Pulping prisoner face is not the MO for my bikes!

The biggest weaknesses of the Penal Legion are shooting (since pretty much anything cuts them down without a save), and Outflanking. Yes, Outflanking. Unless you invested in a Master of the Fleet (or whatever that guy is that gives rerolls to Outflankers), you have a 33% chance of coming in on the totally wrong side of the board.
I once faced a guy who had his Penal Legion outflank, rolled the wrong side of the board, rerolled with the MotF, and still got the wrong side of the board. He parked them in a riverbed for some cover, and was hoping to contest a table quarter. I rolled a Dread in from Reserve, who promptly placed a heavy flamer template over most of the squad, and burned them down. The rest were eaten by the Dread's powerfist. I gained about 12" of bonus movement that turn after assault moves and consolidation.
I explained to my opponent post-game that since we were playing killpoints, it would have been smarter to have them come on inside his own lines, instead of inside mine with no available targets.

Lesson to be learned? They're great little buggers who can monkeywrench your opponent big time with Stubborn charges, but if you don't have a contingency plan, they're a free Kill Point.

I think they can be quite useful, especially because of the outflanking ability. However, the lack fragmentation grenades - which is bad, because then even other Guardsmen and Tau in cover will strike before them and they only have their 5+ armour. The disability to take special weapons narrows their use down to fighting light infantry at range and light to heavy infantry (rending) in CC.


Actually, I thought about running a squad of them in my Catachan army - only not as Penal Legionnaires but as Catachan Devils. Stubborn, hard-as-nails guys who are pure death with a knife in their hands that scout ahead of a main force? Sounds like the devils to me. Their BS is lower than that of ordinary veterans, but hey, Catachan vets in their own codex were only BS3, too. Shooting is less helpful in the jungle than knowing your way around a blade.

No frags, no special weapons, no vehicles. Against any decent mech list their pretty useless, as they're too slow, too fragile and too weak.

Wait, they can take a vehicle, unless I am misremembering, and anything can be stuffed inside a valkdetta.

I actually ran a list today of nothing but penal legionares. 4 squads of them for a fun list. In this case I played eldar, and everything had a job. The vendettas were to pulp the avatar and transports. The Leman russ was to provide the supporting fire so the eldar didn't get to daring in movement. The commander was to assassinate the farseer. The penal legionares were to scream bloody murder, soil themselves, foam at the mouth, and shank everything that was a warlock, fire dragon, or guardian. They did very well.

Lessions learned form this game. They will tie up a superior fighting force for multiple turns before running or die. They will win more ofter then not against an equal fighting force due to the fact that they don't leave, so they keep fighting. They will roll up inferior fighting forces within the turn they charge, due to high number of hits or high strength hits. As well they guard things very well, and will handily eat up firepower as it comes without moving, hence effective objective holding. For larger games (and, while no offense is intended, more tactically minded players) they should not be the backbone of your army, they are effective as an emergency response unit to infantry threats, because they do well at slowing things down and not wavering.

There's a variety of reasons penal legionnaires aren't very useful. First they make a terrible screening unit. The thing you want a screening unit to do, is die in one assault phase. Penal legionnaires have knack for taking 2 to kill. This is very advantageous for your opponent. They can be used as countercharge and hopefully tie up a unit for a turn, but there are way better options for this. If you want counter charge you're better off taking rough riders who can actually kill the enemy, or just use shooting and run an infantry squad in front of the enemy to block them. They can be used to outflank, but their targets of opportuniy are pretty limited. Most things will beat them in combat, so they may tie something up for a turn, but is that really worth 80 points? You can get two scout sentinels for that and tie up things way longer. The only actual use I've noticed for them is to outflank and take an objective, which can be very useful in capture and control. Other than that though, they're pretty limited.

Try Again Bragg wrote:Wait, they can take a vehicle, unless I am misremembering

You are.

In my opinion they have no valuable place in the world of 5th edition. If you want outflankers grab Al'Rehem. Then at least you can get outflankers that can support eachother and have good weapons.

I ran a fun list of six Penal Legion squads, some Russ support, and a Lord Commissar for HQ. It was FUN! I went up against an Air Cav IG list. Knife fighters took down two of his Valks! A squad of psychopaths took down his CCS. Was this a competitive list? No not at all. But it was the most fun I've had fielding IG since 4th Edition Last Chancers.

80 points for basic guardsmen seems expensive at first, until you start factoring in their other rules; lets break it down. 50 Points for a base platoon squad+35 points for a Commissar(lose the stat-boost, the Morale re-roll, and extra body we can call it 20 points for Stubborn), that leaves 10 points for both Scouts and Desperadoes. This actually puts them at a Discount for their abilities. As all three roles for Desperadoes makes the Penal Legions highly mobile and Stubborn means removing them from an Objective is going to be difficult; they are the perfect Objective grabbing Unit for any guard force. If you were to roll gunslingers just march them towards an objective and have them encircle it(not by spreading out but by moving in circles around it) trying to avoid getting into melee and blazing away with their Assault 2 lasguns. If you roll Psychopaths March onto the objective and stay there until the enemy gets close enough for a good charge. If you roll Knife fighters follow the same logic as Psychopaths.

They are very useful in certain IG builds due to their ability to outflank and because they are stubborn. They strictly exist to go after objectives, you can almost ignore their abilities.

In a static IG gunline, they are very useful, in a mech list they have little to no place.

Its possible that other benefits of the unit are a little less concrete.

The fact that the units strengths differ from game to game will force you to adapt your tactics and change their roles relatively dramatically, especially if you are playing with a lot of them. This could make you a much more open minded experimental player.

Also, the fact that they have no wargear options could make for some fun and interesting conversions since WYSIWYG isn't really that imperative, just be able to ID the custodian and you are good.

Just a thought

Think about this combo for 120 points
Penal Leagion
-Ministrum Priest: Righeous Fury[Reroll to hits on assualt] with a Evisarator

You're paying 120 points for a unit w/o grenades and with paper armor, that still doesn't strike very hard in close combat. Priests belong in blob squads, but even that's iffy as you are usually better off rapid firing.

Anpu42 wrote:Think about this combo for 120 points
Penal Leagion
-Ministrum Priest: Righeous Fury[Reroll to hits on assualt] with a Evisarator

That's an interesting possibilty for a alpha strike. Load them into a valk/vendetta and scout 24" forward for a turn 1 disembark/charge.

Outflanking, Scoring, Stubborn, unit for 80 points.....my buddy runs 2 and they work really well I don't worry about them but it is something I have to deal with and...it scores so I can't not deal with it. Officer of the Fleet also helps them come in where you need them,