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Hey folks, on a bored day I've decided to write a review of the Traitor Legions supplement, (which I got for Christmas) My goal here isn't to say "does this make CSMs autowin an d uber powerful" but rather on if the book allows for a CSM army to feel approperate for the various legions. that said I will be drawing comparisons to Angels of death (as it's the closet point of comparison to the loyalists) traitor's hate, and the black legion supplement. I don't have wraith of Magnus, so I'll only breifly touch on it, and it'll be stuff that's pretty common knowledge.

So to begin with, Codex Supplement: Traitor Legions is a 135 page supplement for Codex: Chaos Space Marines, which actually makes it ten pages LONGER then Angels of Death, of these 135 pages, the vast majority are rules, rules and more rules, gone are the early days of a supplement being mostly fluff with a page or 3 of crunch, Each Legion gets a breif page of text describing it (it's stuff all but the newest of fans already know) and a art painting alongside it, in addition there is at the beginning a 2 page introductory bit at the very start of the book beyond that, there are a few pages of "hey lookit our awesome diaroama's" (which are nice but a lot are recycled images from past books) but the vast majority of the book is rules rules and more rules.
Traitor Legions consists of 8 units, Kharn the Betrayer (whose gotten since C:CSM a new rule added to him that makes his hits always hit on a 2+) Ahriman (whom may not take a disk of Tzeetch and has suddenly remembered he knows Divination) the Exaulted Sorcrer, Tzaangors a new troop option, improved rubric Marines, Scarb Occult Terminators (rurbic Termies) and Magnus the Red.
In addition, CSMs in this book receive a total of 26 new formartions, compared to angels of Death which gives the loyalists 3 new units and 12 new formations. (for compeltions sake codex Space Marines has 12 formations. so taking these books together CSMs actually come AHEAD in the formation game. )

In addition you now get special rules for each traitor legion, each getting VOTLW for free, VOTLW also providing other bonuses based on Legion chosen, each Legion also get's it's own decurion (and unlike Ultramarines, the generic Black Legion was not forgotten)

In addition, the book reprints the chaos marine psykic powers seen in traitor's hate, as well as, in the section for the relevent monogod legions, gives a new god based power table, for Tzeetch, Slaanish and Nurgle. each legion ALSO gets it's own artifacts (Black Legion gets the ones that where in their supplement, helpfully reprinted here)

This isn't to say the book is without issues, for one thing, despite Magnus having access to the Change Pskyic Disipline, GW choose NOT to reprint it here, which could be somewhat irriating.

But over all this really is the supplement CSM fans have been waiting for since the dawn of 6th edition. that said it is very specific to traitor legions, while you could certainly run Crimson Slaughter as Word Bearers easily eneugh, if you run a force with Hruon, you're eaither going to have to go without, or simply use him as a generic lord. in this case you may with to instead use the "Black crusade" decurion from Traitor's hate instead. (barring that pray for a chaos renegades supplement)