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So I'm always looking for more ways to build armies with a codex (Heretic Astartes), different styles of army etc. Right now I'm doing a Tyrant Legion type thing with some counts as models and such but I'm almost at 2k, so I'm thinking about my next project. I'm looking at a Fallen army, maybe just to satisfy my love for SM and have an excuse to collect more of that line.

Anyways, what are some ideas for Fallen? I'm kinda leaning towards Plasma spam, but I'm not averse to going with bikes and termies!

Thoughts?

Fallen do not have Bikes or Terminators.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Fallen do not have Bikes or Terminators.

Well yeah, I mean there is just the two entries for actual Fallen, but you could get creative and use DA models as the appropriate units in the CSM codex. Unless there is some sort of massive lore reason why the Fallen don't have any wargear beyond their power armour and guns...




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think it would be cool anyways.

Okay, just making sure you know.

And, technically, you can only include Cypher and the Fallen in Auxiliary detachments or a Vanguard of Cypher and Fallen. What with the battle brothers rule.

 darkcloak wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Fallen do not have Bikes or Terminators.

Well yeah, I mean there is just the two entries for actual Fallen, but you could get creative and use DA models as the appropriate units in the CSM codex. Unless there is some sort of massive lore reason why the Fallen don't have any wargear beyond their power armour and guns...




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think it would be cool anyways.

There is a fluff reason.

When Caliban exploded the Fallen were snatched up and cast through space and time by Chaos iirc. So yes, they would most likely only have the wargear which they had on them at the time.

Realistically though, you would have thought they could have acquired more gear over time.

Fallen lore is somewhat vague and perhaps a little contradictory for the present era fluff.

At least some Fallen (probably a lot of them) are explicitly FULL Chaos. We know this because they have a Daemon Prince, and that can only happen to the super devout. So first thing to decide is whether you Fallen army falls into this category. If they do, then there's no reason they wouldn't have access to anything Chaos gets.

Personally, I don't buy that ALL Fallen are Chaos though. There's no way Cypher could get away with galavanting about with Guilliman if there was a sniff of corruption about him! So my money is on Fallen not being a unified force who sit on the fence between Chaos and Humanity, but actually a lot more fractured than we used to think.

This opens up the window for the loyal Fallen. Now they not be loyal to the Imperium, after being hounded for millennia. But loyal to Humanity in a broader sense. These Fallen would not have had the support of either the AdMech or the DarkMech, so their gear would likely be limited. They would likely primarily use armour patterns, vehicles, and wargear from the Heresy era, supplement by anything they had been able to acquire by other means subsequently. They would have terminators and bikes, but certainly no Primaris!

During the Horus Heresy, most legions weren't 100% loyal or 100% heretics, but there were both camps in all legions, with some falling more to one side and others more to the other.

I'm sure that not everyone on Caliban was a heretic when it was blown up.

 Jidmah wrote:
During the Horus Heresy, most legions weren't 100% loyal or 100% heretics, but there were both camps in all legions, with some falling more to one side and others more to the other.

I'm sure that not everyone on Caliban was a heretic when it was blown up.

For sure. Most legions were probably 95% one way or the other, but there were turncoats both ways. Famously the Eisenstein was a ship full of Death Guard who remained loyal to the Imperium.

Dark Angels are a very different case though, because the Marines left on Caliban didn't join up with the heresy. Luther was certainly tainted by Chaos, but he wasn't in cahoots with Horus. It's suggested that from his perspective his motivations were purely to do with what he thought was best for Caliban and a reaction to what he felt was a personal slight from The Lion.

So they didn't go traitor in the same way that say the Sons of Horus did. So we really don't know how many Marines were corrupted along with Luther and how many were just sadly caught in the crossfire and were never themselves tainted by Chaos.

I think it's intentially left vague at the moment to allow players to forge their own narrative. But I would love GW to expand on this in the future. With all the hints (Luther escaping the Rock, the Fallen Daemon Prince amassing forces, and how active Cypher has been lately) I wouldn't be at all surprised if eventually we got much more fleshing out of 40k era Fallen. Likely in conjunction with a Lion release.

Also, even though I don't collect Chaos I would love a model of Marbas (the Fallen DP). He has a freaking lion head!

Well I think an appropriately styled Fallen army could be run out of the HA codex, and since it seems to be an even split lore-wise we just have to say that as long as the RoC commitment is fulfilled the concept is fair game!

Don't worry, RoC is my middle name.

Here is what I was thinking...

The Deathwing and Ravenwing probably won't make much of an appearance here, though it would be nice to have some models from those kits for the proper DA flavour. I think most of the army should be made from Space Marine units with plenty of conversions. It only makes sense to do this if we go the loyal Fallen route and really if you go traitor Fallen well, there isn't much point to that from a modelling standpoint! I've already got a CSM army! So I think a box of DA termies, Fallen, and Ravenwing Bikes would be a good start.

Now I realize there is some detachment shenanigans with Fallen in a Chaos army. How does one get around that and what does it really effect? Sure Fallen cannot benefit from LTs and they cannot use a lot of strats, but what is the problem with that? Can't I simply run the Fallen in a seperate detachment and use say, Renegades LT, on my other detachment?

 darkcloak wrote:
Well I think an appropriately styled Fallen army could be run out of the HA codex, and since it seems to be an even split lore-wise we just have to say that as long as the RoC commitment is fulfilled the concept is fair game!

Don't worry, RoC is my middle name.

Here is what I was thinking...

The Deathwing and Ravenwing probably won't make much of an appearance here, though it would be nice to have some models from those kits for the proper DA flavour. I think most of the army should be made from Space Marine units with plenty of conversions. It only makes sense to do this if we go the loyal Fallen route and really if you go traitor Fallen well, there isn't much point to that from a modelling standpoint! I've already got a CSM army! So I think a box of DA termies, Fallen, and Ravenwing Bikes would be a good start.

Now I realize there is some detachment shenanigans with Fallen in a Chaos army. How does one get around that and what does it really effect? Sure Fallen cannot benefit from LTs and they cannot use a lot of strats, but what is the problem with that? Can't I simply run the Fallen in a seperate detachment and use say, Renegades LT, on my other detachment?

Quite honestly, the best way to run loyalist Fallen is to ignore the Fallen datasheet and play Dark Angles counts as.

Because the Fallen datasheet is just Dangle Tacticals with a couple of different wargear choices and losing out on most of the synergy.

So I actually had a fallen detachment .. that worked with Primaris Dark Angels.

Fallen have the Imperium key word. They have a great melee output but are iffy in the ranged game. Primaris Dark Angels are good at shooting but not great at melee.

I loved dropping them and insisting that 'Lord Questor' was clearly a high-ranked imperial space marine with an impressive retinue of veterans. If he asked for our help against your imperial guard list, clearly you've committed some great heresy.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
So I actually had a fallen detachment .. that worked with Primaris Dark Angels.

Fallen have the Imperium key word. They have a great melee output but are iffy in the ranged game. Primaris Dark Angels are good at shooting but not great at melee.

I loved dropping them and insisting that 'Lord Questor' was clearly a high-ranked imperial space marine with an impressive retinue of veterans. If he asked for our help against your imperial guard list, clearly you've committed some great heresy.

This is a cool army idea!

But I have to ask: aren't Fallen just worse Vanguard Vets if you run them melee?

Stux wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
During the Horus Heresy, most legions weren't 100% loyal or 100% heretics, but there were both camps in all legions, with some falling more to one side and others more to the other.

I'm sure that not everyone on Caliban was a heretic when it was blown up.

For sure. Most legions were probably 95% one way or the other, but there were turncoats both ways. Famously the Eisenstein was a ship full of Death Guard who remained loyal to the Imperium.

At least for the World Eaters, Death Guard, Sons of Horus and Emperor's Children, Horus slaughtered a good third of those legions in the battle that was taking part when the Eisenstein left.

So even assuming that Horus was overly paranoid, a good fifth of those legions was loyal.

And even then he still missed a lot of loyalists. Though to be fair a fair bit of White Scars turned out to be pretty open to the whole murder the emperor idea.

 Jidmah wrote:

Stux wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
During the Horus Heresy, most legions weren't 100% loyal or 100% heretics, but there were both camps in all legions, with some falling more to one side and others more to the other.

I'm sure that not everyone on Caliban was a heretic when it was blown up.

For sure. Most legions were probably 95% one way or the other, but there were turncoats both ways. Famously the Eisenstein was a ship full of Death Guard who remained loyal to the Imperium.

At least for the World Eaters, Death Guard, Sons of Horus and Emperor's Children, Horus slaughtered a good third of those legions in the battle that was taking part when the Eisenstein left.

So even assuming that Horus was overly paranoid, a good fifth of those legions was loyal.

I stand corrected! Cheers

Stux wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:
So I actually had a fallen detachment .. that worked with Primaris Dark Angels.

Fallen have the Imperium key word. They have a great melee output but are iffy in the ranged game. Primaris Dark Angels are good at shooting but not great at melee.

I loved dropping them and insisting that 'Lord Questor' was clearly a high-ranked imperial space marine with an impressive retinue of veterans. If he asked for our help against your imperial guard list, clearly you've committed some great heresy.

This is a cool army idea!

But I have to ask: aren't Fallen just worse Vanguard Vets if you run them melee?

They have the tac marine problem twice over. You aren't paying for the jump packs, but you are paying for the ability to take ranged and melee weapons, when likely you'll only do one or the other.

If you wanted to run a Fallen army with the Heretic Astartes codex, obviously you're looking at two or more detachments because of the Battle Brothers beta rule - you tie a Vanguard Detachment together with the "Fallen" faction keyword, so you'd have Cypher and 3 units of Fallen. For support, I reckon you could take whatever felt right to fit in with the Dark Angels theme. As for choosing a legion trait, I'd consider Black Legion (because their unique stratagem seems to mimic what the Fallen special rule does) or Word Bearers (because the ability to re-roll morale tests mimics the Fallen morale special rule, although not as well).

I see the fallen as being able to play the chaos/IoM fence. Depending on the rest of your collection and whether you want to be for or against the Emperor for that particular game. The fluff and the models work fine if you want to play them as a Chaos Warband (either Renegade or maybe Alpha Legion) or as a successor Dark Angels (or even a generic Space Marine) chapter. Just build the list as you want and paint everything black. As mentioned Cypher and actual Fallen units have to be their own special detachment, but the rest can be whatever count as unit you need them to be.

I've been looking at how I can build a Fallen army, or rather a detachment of Fallen with Cypher and another army of Space Marines (Chaos or otherwise) who they can ally with that will be able to actually have a varied unit selection.

I'll build the actual Fallen as a fun, characterful, and potentially a far from optimised unit to hang out with Cypher, and the rest as either Chaos or Loyalist marines that can maybe use a selection of Chapter/Legion traits depending on situation. It'd be great for the Fallen to get an expanded list, but I worry that if they did that, it'd have to be as a fully Chaos force. One of the things I like is the ambiguity.

If they did flesh out Fallen and remove the Imperium keyword, there's very little to stop someone from simply using their Fallen models as Dark Angels from the Dark Angel codex - really, the only thing lost is the Cypher special rules. That way you could still have "Fallen" fighting alongside Imperial Guard, other Space Marines etc. I honestly don't think they'd do that, the ambiguity is what people like about them - making up your own story is such a big part of this game, I can't see anyone rushing to take it away. Heck, even if they did, if you showed up with an army composed of black Dark Angels and Imperial Guard, if it's obvious you're going by Rule of Cool and not "Look how many CPs I can farm from these guard for my totally unbeatable strategy", I really don't see anyone having an issue. They're your "Dark Angels", you can paint them how you like

Hmmm...

Yeah I think the only way this would be feasible and make any actual sense at all is to go full on loyalist.

So... Aside from Cypher and Fallen in a Vanguard Det, what else do I bring?

I could do a jump pack based list, but that's not really DA flavour so much as BA. Hmmm, wrong Chapter! Still, could provide a nice combo with the mostly static Fallen.

Or I could go a more traditional route with units of bikers and terminators.

I think either way, it's best to footslog since the Fallen are stuck without transports anyways and it would look silly for them to be walking while some other schmucks get carted about.