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Rapid Fire Lasgun has been the standard for Penal legions back to 2nd edition. But 2/3 of the special skills given to them by the Desperadoes special rule, they are unable to make use of CC tactics. A Ministorum Priest seems to be an obvious add-on in the flavor and color of this unit, but their Righteous Fury only adds benefits when charging.

Instead of the STR 3 AP - rapid fire 24" range Lasgun, why not allow them to take STR 3 AP - assault 2 12" range Shotguns so they can make the most of their street fighting abilities. After all, are they really known best for their marksmanship, over and above their ferocity and desperation?

Hell even laspistols would be an improvement. Give them the ability to take a laspistol and a CCW.

They still die just as easily as normal Guardsmen, except that Guardsmen can take Special/Heavy weapons, can have Orders and can blob up. Giving them Shotguns isn't much of an improvement, if anything you need them to be able to take more than 10 in a unit for them to be of any real use.

 Valkyrie wrote:
They still die just as easily as normal Guardsmen, except that Guardsmen can take Special/Heavy weapons, can have Orders and can blob up. Giving them Shotguns isn't much of an improvement, if anything you need them to be able to take more than 10 in a unit for them to be of any real use.

Making them as tough as Terminators is not the goal. One of the three things they can get at random is Knife Fighters, an extra CCW with Rending. Another is Psychopaths, Furious Charge and Fleet and Counter-Attack. The third is Gunslingers, their Lasguns upgraded to assault 2. All three of them features as Desperadoes make them better able to use Charging. It's their main weapon that holds them back. They will never be able to compete with even IG standard infantry because no one in the 40K universe is stupid enough to trust them even with Frag grenades, let alone Krak or Meltabombs. This is intentional.

A 20 man Penal Legion unit would be terminally unbalanced. Imagine teaming 20 of them with a Ministorum Priest or with a Commissar, as per the fluff, and then Outflanking the enemy like the sneaky SOBs they are. Blobs of Mobs don't charge in from the enemy's rear flanks. Small suicide squads do. Guardsman Marbo suddenly appears behind you. 20 or more guys don't.

TomWilton wrote:
A 20 man Penal Legion unit would be terminally unbalanced. Imagine teaming 20 of them with a Ministorum Priest or with a Commissar, as per the fluff, and then Outflanking the enemy like the sneaky SOBs they are. Blobs of Mobs don't charge in from the enemy's rear flanks. Small suicide squads do. Guardsman Marbo suddenly appears behind you. 20 or more guys don't.

Tell that to Creeeeed!

But seriously, Penal Legion squads are next to useless in their current configuration. Random abilities seem to be added when one needs to help tone down a particularly powerful unit. Penal Legions, on the other hand, are Guardsmen with worse equipment options so the random aspect really hurts their implementation.

There are lots of ways to improve the unit but I agree with you to a certain extent about being wary of overpowering them. Here are a couple of options I think walk the line:

1) Give them the Combined Squads rule for other Penal Legion squads only. Not only is this fluffy, it would also allow them to potentially overcome the limitations of T3/5+ with bodies. Obviously this would also require the 'random' skill generation to be selectable instead so as to avoid mixed squad weirdness.

2) Allow them to exchange their lasgun for a laspistol/ccw for free. This could be structured to either stack or not stack with Knife Fighters (4 rending attacks on the charge is pretty good for a Guardsman, even at WS3/S3) depending on how overpowered it might become.

3) Give them a transport. I don't recall if they can take a Chimera (I don't believe so) but if not, that would certainly help their situation. Foot slogging a blob of 40 Guardsmen is hard enough. 10 of them, even outflanking, is just easy kill. If you want to get really inventive, I would even suggest some sort of Chimera Assault Vehicle variant (a la Higgin's Boat). I know we already have the Gorgon, but that's a monstrosity and I think it would make sense to have Penal Legions throwing their "best and brightest" directly into the enemy as quickly as possible.

Whatever the changes, it boils down to the issue that any time you take a Penal Legion, you were probably better off taking another squad of Guardsmen or, better yet, Veterans. The only thing they bring to the table is a slightly more effective charge/counter-charge unit (depending on which skill they get) and even then it's pretty lacklustre, especially since they require a babysitting IC to even be remotely usable. Even the people I've seen who play 'Penal Legion' armies don't actually take Penal Legion squads. As always, YMMV.

DoW