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So what makes the legion so special?
What is their "thing"?
I mean wordbearers have the book of lorgar, and apostles.
World eaters have berzerkers and mindlessly rampage like bamf apes
thousand sons are magic freaks
iron warriors 40kgasm over technology
Nightlords pirate everything.....
Etc....
So what does the legion do? Why are they so special?
Any good books about the black legion?

Black legion were originally called the Luna Wolves, and later on the Sons of Horus.

Their primarch, Horus, was the Warmaster. He was the favored son of the Emperor and left in charge of the Great Crusade when the Emperor went back to Terra.

Their most famous tactic/combat style is the speartip. They attack directly with incredible power at the head of an enemy to eliminate the opposing command. The first several books in the Horus Heresy (Horus Rising, False Gods, & Galaxy in Flames) all revolve around the Luna Wolves / Sons of Horus and I would definitely recommend them all. As a legion they were general considered to be the greatest attackers. (in one of the books there is a conversation between a marine from this legion and one from imperial fists debating who would win between the greatest attackers and the greatest defenders).

Lastly, as a chaos legion Black Legion worships all four gods of Chaos. Small warbands within the legion may be devoted to a single god, but many of them will worship whoever will help them the most at that time.

The Black Legion were the Luna Wolves who had Horus as their father, Horus the great betrayer, the turncoat son. The Black Legion themselves have Abaddon and that itself is enough to make them infamous and feared throughout the Imperium

They are the largest and most active of the traitor legions.

They are the ultrasmurfs of Chaos

so from what lexicanum told me, they are rather cowardly, and pretty standard.
Not really sure how I feel about abbadon either.

I think the horus heresy should be renamed the lorgar heresy.

i play black legion and from my personal experience, Abaddon is an absolute beast in hand to hand combat two spearate games he took out a squad of death company as well as pretty much the entire bloodangles hq single handedly

 Pwn'd You wrote:
i play black legion and from my personal experience, Abaddon is an absolute beast in hand to hand combat two spearate games he took out a squad of death company as well as pretty much the entire bloodangles hq single handedly

that is actually pretty cool, not gonna lie

i orginally went with world eaters for my army after readin black legion fluff because i thought the same thing that they were cowards and embarrassed but i loved abaddon and threw some berzerkers in with kharn who is also unbelievable, so i get the best of both worlds

so you made a "Crusade" army?

I wanted to have my standard marines to be black legion, and have iron warriors transports, kharn, some berzerkers, thousand sons etc. So it resembles a crusade.

But the fluff for the black legion....... ugh lol

i have abaddon, black legion troops, cultists, chosen, raptors and havocs, have squad of khorne berserkers, forge world khorne berserkers, and kharn. so basically its just undivided and khorne i stick with, as beneficial as the other chaos god's powers can be im stubborn and absolutely despise them and refuse to use them or anything related to them.....and i still really wanted straight world eaters so i started a pre heresy world eaters army with angron

Preheresy stuff, courtesy of FW right?

Yes, and ebay

The strength of the Black Legion is in their cohesion and their ability to bring loose chaos elements and warbands together for a common cause. The Black Legion can get a band of Khorne Berserkers and a conclave of Tzeentch Sorcerers fighting the same battle (though not side by side) and not have them kill each other afterwards. The Black Legion is excellent at maintaining order in such a way that limits in-fighting as much as possible, something rather important if CSM want to get anything done.

Cowardly an interesting choice of words for the black legion, preserving ones life to accomplish a goal that no one else can accomplish, not even the daemon primarchs, would seem smart imo. Black legion are the mortar that hold chaos crusades together, take away that and well you get the point. Jareddm basically said the same thing i suppose >.<

Because unlike the Ultramarines and so many factions where we are told their 'cool', with the Black Legion we are shown they are cool. They were the badass of the bad during the Heresy, the Warmaster's personal guard and an unstoppable fighting force. After the Legions fled to the Eye, everyone took it upon themselves to beat up the Sons of Horus. But did they take it like a and cry? No! Abaddon pulled the Legion together, said ' EVERYTHING!' And proceeded to beat the snot out of the Emperor's Children, the Word Bearers and everyone else who got in their way, then they launched the first Black Crusade, threw themselves into the thickest of the fighting and continued to shout their warcry of ' EVERYTHING, WE ARE RETURNED!'

There is not a single faction in the universe the Black Legion like. In the early editions they used to have hatred against other Chaos factions, to show there was no forgiveness for the traitors actions in the Eye. They are consumed by hatred and fury, but are not pants off crazy like the World Eaters, they are sociopathic, cold, bitter, and controlled. And they coined the wonderful warcry, 'Let the Galaxy burn!'

That's why Black Legion.

Wow biaz
Intense.
although.... (look at sig) lorgar started the "let the galaxy burn" burn thing.

That post changed my opinion about the legion. They seem.... more bad-ass than I initially assumed.
bravo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reread your post, yes they did start the warcry, but not the first utterance. I gained respect for abbadon too. He reminds me of the kind of man who says " we f***** up, lets go again, and prove we are the best"

I really don't get the BL hate. I know there the Chaos poster boys. But people say the UM are disliked because they are 'perfect' no flaws, lack personality, over powered fluff etc

But iv never seen the BL portrayed like that, they are riddled with flaws, personality, no mary sue displays of power like Calgar and the Avatar.
They were and are top dogs for Chaos simply by being the meanest, ruthless and most organised and able to pull up followers from all corners of the legions.

As for Failbaddon... Why?
The gothic war stole 2 Blackstones (although he's probably disappointed he didn't get them all)
The Black Crusades prior to that took the means to activate them
The 1st took drach'n'yen
Not all the black crusades were failures, some dare I say most would have achieved their objective.

I believe its mentioned that all others prepared the way for the 13th. Keep in mind all the legions splintered into warbands, Abaddon cant just order them as Horus did. Service is bartered, negotiated and threatened a multitude of other warbands.

In fact iv always had a thing for the 'underdog' or 'disliked' I kinda want a black legion army now.

The Failbaddon perception seems (in my experience) to be because "OMG 12 Black Crusades and he STILL hasn't made it to Terra. FAIL!!!!1!!!"

What people always forget is that (as Eetion says) the aim of these campaigns wasn't to get to Terra, it was to take objectives, see Eetion's post above for examples, and building Abaddon's power to allow the 13th Black Crusade to try for Terra.

I don't think they're cowards or weak, that was just my initial perception before I really read about them and saw what they were all about, I absolutely love them, I got so much crap from my local gaming store for starting them, it seems recently people flocking towards burgle themed armies

The Black Legion's "niche" is that they're big and organized, mainly. They're the epitome of the threat that CSM are meant to represent. They also field every kind of Chaos-affiliated troop: besides the regular CSM arsenal they also have Berzerkers/Plague Marines/Noise Marines/Tzneetchian sorcerers, a large fleet, siege equipment, cultists, mutants, traitor titans, daemons, and so on.

There's a piece of fluff out there that states the Black Legion is like 8 times the size of the Word Bearers, the 2nd largest single CSM force in M41.

2nd largest? Then who's 1st?

Post heresy the Black Legion has to be my favorite legion because of Abaddon.

I always thought wordbearers were the biggest?

In dark apostle, that one singular warhost had 2000 men.... multiply that by all the warhosts, some of which exceed 10000... that's a lot of marines. Plus daemons, and cultists. That's billions of people (maybe more maybe less totally depends on how well the hosts are doing their job)

Maybe black legion just has a better recruitment tool.
as this thread goes on, I continue to admire the legion more and more. Keep it up!

On a side note, who saw ultramarine? It portrayed the legion like common guard, and babbling scum. What was up with that?

It was a poorly made piece of crap that I regret spending money on.

Black legion are the largest of the CSM legions in terms of marines at least, followed by Word Bearers. I'm not sure how the numbers stack of you include normal human warriors and such.

 aapch45 wrote:
I always thought wordbearers were the biggest?

In dark apostle, that one singular warhost had 2000 men.... multiply that by all the warhosts, some of which exceed 10000... that's a lot of marines. Plus daemons, and cultists. That's billions of people (maybe more maybe less totally depends on how well the hosts are doing their job)

It's stated in Dark Apostle that the Black Legion dwarfs the Word Bearers, but I've always seen them as a smaller core of hard veterens who had to rely on rapid shock tactics and the like to make up for their numerically inferior numbers (due to suffering heavy losses during both the Heresy and in the Eye). At least, that how Lexicanum described them. I suppose they have been doing alot of recruiting since then, allowing any proven warrior to 'take the black' ( ) so long as they swear an oath to both the Legion and the Warmaster. Where-as the Word Bearer's are alot more elitist, and don't seem to like any outsiders in their Legion.

 aapch45 wrote:
Wow biaz
Intense.
although.... (look at sig) lorgar started the "let the galaxy burn" burn thing.

I'm glad you liked, I do love the Black Legion

However, the quote is first used by Horus in Galaxy in Flames, just before the virus bombing of Istvaan III. As Horus plunges the galaxy into civil war and hands his soul over to the Gods he says; "Let the Galaxy burn... Let the heavens bleed."

 KingDeath wrote:
They are the largest and most active of the traitor legions.

they are not the largest, the word bearers were/are


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aapch45 wrote:
So what makes the legion so special?
What is their "thing"?
I mean wordbearers have the book of lorgar, and apostles.
World eaters have berzerkers and mindlessly rampage like bamf apes
thousand sons are magic freaks
iron warriors 40kgasm over technology
Nightlords pirate everything.....
Etc....
So what does the legion do? Why are they so special?
Any good books about the black legion?

black legion are the Ultramarines of chaos. They are incredibly varied. They are the only legion that could poentially be fielding EVERYTHING in the chaos book.

Word Bearers are cool, but dont have cult troops
Night lords are cool, but dont have possessed or cult troops
Iron warriors are cool, but dont have cult troops
Alpha Legion are cool, but dont have possessed, warptalons, or cult troops
World Eaters are cool, but dont have cult troops outside bezerkers or psykers
Death Guard are cool, but dont have cult troops outside plague marines
Emperors Childred are cool but dont have cult troops outside of noise marines
Tsons are cool, but dont have cult troops outside of Tsons.

Black Legion has it all.

Alpha and wordbearers are literally infamous for their cult troops.....
World eaters don't have psykers .khorne would kill them where they stood



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Exergy you make some good points.
But lexicanum says otherwise about most of it.
The BL is varied heavily, and consists of everything. That is true.

Exergy wrote:

 KingDeath wrote:
They are the largest and most active of the traitor legions.

they are not the largest, the word bearers were/are

The Black Legion have been stated in canon to be the current largest Chaos Legion. Pre-Heresy it was the Word Bearers, but that is no longer true.

aapch45 wrote:Alpha and wordbearers are literally infamous for their cult troops.....

Cultists (Human meat shields) =/= Cult troops (Berzerkers, Plague Marines etc)

Iron warriors do have cult troops, some khorne loving nutter led his berzerkers as the forlorn in storm of iron. Night lords do have possessed in some of the more twisted warbands, word bearers don't need cult troops with the amount of possessed they have