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Basically, is there any advantage or benefit or army I could build with a BL supplement book? Is it worth picking up?

More of a personal preference thing, you get chosen without paying for abbadon, there are a few cool artifacts but other than that its just a normal chaos codex but with the Votlw tax on everything.

One other thing why people get it is to ally with normal Codex CSM to open up a fourth fast attack slot and heavy slot, so you see 4 helldrakes now or more spawn and maulerfiends.

It's a pretty good read....

I bought it Sunday and read it today. I like the expanded fluff on the 13 Black Crusades, for sure. As for the rules and artifacts in it, I like the plain C:CSM better.

No

I don't play Black Legion (Iron Warriors) but I can see it being a good read for the fanatical BL player.

Some of the artefacts are pretty good but you do give up ones like the BBOS or AOBF to get them unless you take them as allies.

I managed to download it for free (shock! gasp!) so have got the bonus of being able to play the book without paying for it if I wish.

If GW make an Iron Warriors supplement I will pick that up.

I found it interesting for the fluff, but trust me, read the lexicanum , you can found the same information if not even more.

The rules are absolutely useless, a couple of artefact are interesting, but pricey. You have the opportunity to create a couple of super killing machines with the BL artefacts starting from Lords and Sorcerers, but if you are going to spend 200+ points you can as well take Abaddon which is also more resilient.

The only competitive use of the BL supplement is the possibility to take a fourth FA slot. Apart from spam (which, in my opinion, is not even competitive), I'll definitely try a list with 2 Chaos Spawns units and 2 Helldrakes, which I doubt anyone would say it's not funny/fair etc.


My advice: DO NOT buy it. If you want to use it as an allied attachment, just know that everything that can purchase VotLW must buy it (so use cultists as troops and take Abaddon as HQ ). Then add your FA/Heavy unit of choice. Stop.

I'm just going to quote myself from a previous thread on this topic...

Mozzamanx wrote:
It plays near-identically to the stock Chaos Space Marine Codex and is essentially a new list of Artefacts rather than any meaningful changes to the army.

- Chosen are now troops, which would be a nice thing if they weren't a unit defined by T4 and spamming expensive weapons. They were a mediocre unit to begin with and are completely unsuitable for Scoring due to high cost, low resilience and combining both your damage dealing and scoring capabilities onto a platform far too fragile to survive the appropriate response. You basically remove any incentive for the opponent not to shoot them since they represent something so valuable that can be removed so easily.
It's also not really a unique shift in that the army was already capable of making this FOC swap with Abaddon. It's nice to get it for free but it's not exactly a good option.

- Bringers of Despair are hilariously awful. This supplement works to turn your disposable suicide drops into extremely expensive drops while offering no boosts to reliability, resilience or indeed anything useful beyond BS5 Combis. Requiring Abaddon is the icing on the cake.

- VotLW is cheap enough on the small guys to be ignored. It gets rather more obnoxious on Chosen and Terminators, which you might notice are the foundations of this expansion. It also directly contradicts the background of the Legion being new recruits, so it's offensive on that front as well. It is a nice idea horribly executed, and becomes progressively worse value as it is applied to your Elites, HQ, and generally the units most suited to being Veterans.

- 3 of the new Artefacts are nice. 3 of the existing Artefacts are also very nice, except they don't come with an army-wide tax for the privelege.


Do you have a hankering for large numbers of Chosen to be gracelessly hammered into unsuitable roles and don't care that your army is ~10% smaller as a result?
Do you prefer the Last Memory, Spineshiver and Skull of Kern'Gar to the usual trinity of Mace, Axe and Brand?
Do you want 4 Chaos FA/HS slots and don't mind burning your Allies slot to get them? Do you want to be carried by flights of Heldrakes while still retaining a decent escort for your HQ?

These are the only roles in which I could recommend the Supplement, and would advise the regular book in all other instances.

Good idea quoting yourself from a previous thread. Here's my alternate perspective: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/561108.page#6211910

All the things other people have said are somewhat true, but I strongly disagree with their conclusions. I have been playing Black Legion since the electronic Codex first came out and am very satisfied with it.

Here's why:

- First off, the artefacts allow you to build a VERY powerful Chaos Lord. Used correctly, he wrecks other armies by absorbing a lot of shots and having the potential to wipe out units in a single round of combat. The one I used has gone down as a casualty in exactly one game and that was because I forgot to charge with him.

- Secondly, being able to take Chosen as troops is a big deal. I originally took 5 flamers with each unit, but have moved on to Plasma. Either way, they are almost impossible to assault and deadly to most things at 24 inches.

- Third, the VoTLW thing is nowhere near as big a deal as people are making it out to be. On average, it takes about 2% of the cost of my army to get troops that are harder to break and hate Space Marines. This pays off most of the time.

- Fourth, the terminator rules... require you to take Abaddon. It's not hard to make a CL that's tougher than him. But I could see this being useful to someone who really likes terminators.

- Fifth, there's an artefact that lets you inflict d3 penetrating hits on vehicles within a blast template. This is pretty important, I used it to destroy a superheavy over the weekend and consequently won the game in the first turn (my opponent could not mathematically win based on the number of victory points I had amassed after blowing it up). It's very hard to miss with this weapon against gigantic imperial tanks.

- Sixth, and this is just me speaking, there's a surprise element to playing Black Legion. No one else understands the rules or how they differ from traditional CSM armies. In general, opponents spend rounds firing at a single model (my CL) while the rest of my army moves up the board. It's like playing with a flying DP minus vector strike, but with none of the drawbacks.

- Seventh, yeah, you could technically take 4 heldrakes with this Codex, but why would you want to? The one other Black Legion player I know does this and does not seem to lose any games. WAAC players would might see something interesting here.

So yeah, I believe this supplement is worth picking up, and is bordering on being OP and broken.