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I recently aquired some starter boxes of CSM (Battle Force, Dark Vengeance) and want to start CSM as adversaries to my Imperial Guard. I also have a lot of Fantasy Daemons from GW and various other companies lying around, so I want to build up a daemon-heavy force, because I like Daemons as an aspect that sets Heretic Astartes apart from loyalist ones. I therefore want to go CC-heavy, daemon heavy and monster/daemon prince heavy - not least so in order to have a radically different playstyle from my Guard. I'm not so keen on running a pure daemon force however, because both the rules and the looks of a mixed-God, purely daemon army feel odd and out of synch, at least to me.

The 2 legions I am drawn to the most are Black Legion and WB, because they are both undivided (hence open to daemons of all 4 powers). It is my understanding that Black Legion is the Jack-of-all-trades Legion, with which you can put any possible playstyle (CC, ranged, vehicle heavy, daemon heavy) to good use. WB on the other hand have using Daemons as their entire gimmick. I've also heard that WB are - or used to be - the weakest Legion rules-wise. From a purely flavor point ov view, I prefer them over the somewhat generic bad guys Black Legion.

Any advise? Are daemon-heavy CSM lists any good in this edition? Aside from that, is it generally preferable to summon Daemons in-game, or should they be fielded in a second detachment, even if that comes with a CP malus?

summoning heavy isn't all that great, (the only real reason to do it is to have some flexability in your force list) with that out of the way I'd take black legion, they have better legion specific traits and rules, and access to special characters (abaddon is a real beast)

With the rules in the state of flux that they are, honestly I'd put the special rules, strategems and such out of my mind when making that decision.

If you are using the 9E mission book, you can't use the Daemon Engine detachment from Vigilus (or any special detachment for that matter). And once a new Chaos codex comes out most the special rules from Vigilus and PA will likely also be faded. Likely we'll go back to one unique strat and a unique chapter tactic for each legion.

Daemons are still good, and the Daemon Engines themselves are considerably better than they were in 8th. I'd take another detachment rather than try to summon a bunch of them in.

I recommend choosing the army you like the looks of and story of over what may or may not be good ruleswise. GW has the tendency to swing rules to one extreme or another often and unless you want to chase tournament wins I'd go with what you like painting and looking at. Of the two Legions I prefer Black Legion. I like the Legion's story and their fall is more tragedy where I see the Word Bearers as being whiney brats that threw a tantrum and talked others into being upset with them. Color scheme wise, Black Legion is just that, black with gold trim and maybe yellow eye insignias. Word Bearers are a deep red or maroon with silver trim. Which do you prefer the look of or did you want to make your own scheme?

If you indeed want to get into Daemon summoning , ravening cult fanatics, dark prayers...

go WB..

not gonna lie though, you'd also need some possessed there

Also WB can become really annoying because they are walking talking bible verse toters, aka they have often written runes all over and parts of books and rolls etc..

There's also the debatable summoning of daemons turn 1 as they do not meet the criteria of reserves. A recent tournament winning slaaneshi list utilized t1 summoning as a key part of it's strategy. Probably not for this discussion but worth looking into because WB do summoning better. Almost best of all except death guard can move and summon off a strat.

Agree you will want possessed since they are actually really good in WB and pretty swingy anywhere else.

Another thought is to do both. I've only dabbled in WB myself. While they do have some strengths I feel they don't do a pure army as well but they have warlord trait to cancel out some or all of the cost with including another detachment.

As others have mentioned, rules-wise we have no idea. I'm guessing we will be getting a 9th codex sooner rather than later, but that's not based on anything substantial.
Thousand Sons are probably more likely to get a dex before CSM what with the new keywords they and DG got in the IA faq. Currently Black Legion would probably have better rules/better characters.

Lore-wise, Black legion is less focused on actual daemons imho. You'd see more possessed and daemon engines than daemons proper.
They have a whole warband focused around possession, but as a whole they interact with the daemonic for more practical reasons, like warpsight, powerful artefacts, insight and such.
It's more of a necessity than than a desire to them, but given the nature of the Black Legion you find motivations of all colours.

Word bearers would still be big on possessed but also focus more on summoning actual daemons and they would have a lot more cultists.
They are undivided too but for totally different reasons. It's all about worship and unification, these are the mortal followers of the gods and will act accordingly.
They're not so much trying to gain power via the warp. They drank deep of the chaos cool-aid.


Model-wise, forgeworld has some drop-dead gorgeous Word bearer sculpts, Black Legion has a lot less going for it in that sense.
So in short, go with whatever legion you gravitate to the most and roll with that.

Have the best of both worlds.

Paint them how you like, and rules-wise run them as whichever flavour is in favour.

I'd suggest Black Legion for rules... but you do you and paint them how you like!

I admit I'm somewhat influenced by the "incompetent Saturday cartoon villain" memes surrounding Abaddon and haven't followed the Black Legion lore too closely. It used to be that, among the undivided legions, Word Bearers had their Daemons and religious crazyness, Iron Warriors their siege engines and Imperial Fists hateboner, Night Lords had their psycho terror theme and Alpha Legion their infiltration/deception skills but Black Legion I always saw as Abaddon's generic gang of bad guys. Perhaps I should give the Black Library books about them a try.

What is the current situation with Cult Marines? Can all undivided legions field them or only the Black Legion?

All.

Emperor's Children all the way, just shut your sexy eyes and smear pink paint on your face. It's gonna make sense later.

Depends. If you're going Black Legion you're doing it for Abigail. Otherwise it doesn't matter since both Legion Traits aren't really good and don't offer anything good.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Depends. If you're going Black Legion you're doing it for Abigail. Otherwise it doesn't matter since both Legion Traits aren't really good and don't offer anything good.

there are some other neat things about black legion. IMHO they got some neat strats etc in vigilus (and before anyone tries to claim those aren't legal kindly remember only the special formations aren't)

BrianDavion wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Depends. If you're going Black Legion you're doing it for Abigail. Otherwise it doesn't matter since both Legion Traits aren't really good and don't offer anything good.

there are some other neat things about black legion. IMHO they got some neat strats etc in vigilus (and before anyone tries to claim those aren't legal kindly remember only the special formations aren't)

Strats only keep an army interesting when you still have CP to spend.

 Esmer wrote:
I admit I'm somewhat influenced by the "incompetent Saturday cartoon villain" memes surrounding Abaddon and haven't followed the Black Legion lore too closely. It used to be that, among the undivided legions, Word Bearers had their Daemons and religious crazyness, Iron Warriors their siege engines and Imperial Fists hateboner, Night Lords had their psycho terror theme and Alpha Legion their infiltration/deception skills but Black Legion I always saw as Abaddon's generic gang of bad guys. Perhaps I should give the Black Library books about them a try.

The Black Legion is the only legion to be favoured by all the gods. They make deals with each individual god instead of worshipping them as a unified mass. They're also the only ones that can safely switch which daemons possess them. If you want to mix daemons and marks wildly for tactical reasons then that is exactly the spirit with which the Black Legion approaches the gods.

They painted their armour pitch black and discarded their name to mark the shame of their defeat and the loss of Horus and have been out for revenge ever since. They might prefer short-ranged fighting but they'll do anything, use any weapon, any tactic, so you're never constrained in what vehicles or other units you want to model. There's no force compisition that is out of character for them. Wizards and daemons? Sure. Tanks and robots? Sure. Mass cultists and mutants? Sure. Buy alien mercenaries? Sure. You can lean into Saturday morning cartoon tropes and have your batch of Black Legion lead jointly by an alchemist who works to perfect all sorts of living weapons, a techmarine who's obsessed with AI and creating the perfect killing program, a wizard hired to do communications and warp navigation and an envoy sent by Abbadon to oversee them all and report any interesting finds. Their diversity means it's really easy to fit in fallen contemporary space marines so if you've got buddies who play marines you can have a couple of traitors painted in half chapter colours and half black. Great taunting opportunities.

Black is as quick and easy to paint as you want it to be. You can base with grey and layer washes for depth or you can just coat and highlight sparingly. You can have a gold trim, any other metal trim or not bother at all. For splashes of other colours you've got cult troops as well, black plague marines look pretty good for example.


They're a legion that's often portrayed as generic but that you can really make your own. They're like orks in a way.



Word Bearers are a respectable choice too, with their fanatic warriors, cultists and full range of daemons. But the Black Legion can broadly speaking do the same kinds of armies, and more beside.

Word Bearers are definitely chill with all the chaos gods too. Anyways, I like the color scheme of the black legion personally, but Word Bearers are the first "chaos space marine" as we know them and I think that's pretty cool. Just like they made the whole Horus Heresy happen because of some serious daddy issues. Personally, I like the depth and lore of the Word Bearers as a legion (pre and post heresy) more so than the Black Legion but I do like the motivation for the Black Legion following a grim determination to see the Imperium of Man fall.

I suggest going with Black Legion.



I might be a little bias as the spoiler photo above indicates.

***

I do have to mostly agree with Slayer-Fan123. Currently, the rules are for both legions are pretty garbage with Abbadon probably being the best thing of either legion. Bad legion traits, okay to poor legion specific relics, bad to fair stratagems. Nothing mechanically worth basing your decision to play them. Which is fine. I don't recommend starting an army based on rules. Although, I do enjoy going out of my way to show off having Assault 1 bolters, yea!

My Black Legion army was my first 40k army built in the latter part of 7th edition. I didn't even get Abbadon until the new sculpt. Which is awesome by the way. When I started myself, it was between Black Legion and Word Bearers too. I also like the idea of Chaos Undivided as a concept. Even if it sometimes feels like GW is doing everything to reduce its existence in the setting and rules. I went with Black Legion as I like the idea of being a little more open-ended my approach. I also liked the idea that Black Legion was more Chaos Terminator and Chosen and less Daemon summoning and Possessed (which I think regular possessed models are still too dated to add to my collection). Besides, there is no better color for heavy armor than black and gold.

So much so that when I started Age of Sigmar last year, my Slaves to Darkness army was painted in the same colors.