Black Legion book >< is it worth it?

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**buckero0**

Is there any reason to play the BL supplement? The Iyanden supplement is different and since I had a wraithguard heavy army already, it made more sense. I doubt I will play abaddon, I'm having a hard time justifying any chosen in a chaos army as it is, i haven't read the book, but I've heard the artifacts are lackluster, I won't even look at the fluff, this is just a gaming perspective, is the black legion book worth the price tag? Or should I stick with my Chaos basic book?

**ThePlaguedWarsmith**

The only big benefit is taking Chosen as troops without Failbaddon. Chosen can get damn expensive, and that's not counting the VOTLW tax, which, while small, adds up quickly. I've heard the relics are ok, but nothing to write home about, so I would take the basic codex if I were you.

**Veteran of The Long War**

The only reason to take it is for the extra slots allying and a couple of the artefacts. Besides that, it's a steaming pile of crap.

**Inquisitor Jex**

There's a few interesting missions in it as well, but it is mostly a fluff book.

**Chumbalaya**

The fluff is great, the art is great and a lot of the items in the list are really cool.

The only real problem with Black Legion is that it's based on the abortion that is the CSM Codex.

**Filch**

U really dont need the book. People ally black legion to get a 4th drake.

**kronk**

I like the descriptions of the 13 Black Crusades. This was either stuff I had never read or was all brand new.

The missions are interesting. Anytime you get new ways to play is a + in my book.

As for the list, as mentioned, it's a way to get chosen as troops without having to pay the Abaddon tax. If you really like chosen, then it's useful.

**WarOne**

kronk wrote:
I like the descriptions of the 13 Black Crusades. This was either stuff I had never read or was all brand new.

The missions are interesting. Anytime you get new ways to play is a + in my book.

As for the list, as mentioned, it's a way to get chosen as troops without having to pay the Abaddon tax. If you really like chosen, then it's useful.

Chosen give you more special weapons if you are having a hard time getting more plasma or melta or flamer options in a list. They also have decent CC stat lines but require expensive upgrades to make them worthwhile.

Unfortunately, getting them into combat requires a ride or slogging unless you consider Huron Blackheart who allows 1d3 infantry infiltrators.

But being able to get 1d3 chosen into double tap plasma range for a furious first round of firing could be worth it for this codex supplement.

**Homeskillet**

I don't play chaos, but I got a copy of the Black Legion book, and it was an awesome read. Lots of great fluff, and great artwork as well. I'd say it's worth it just for the story.

**reiner**

Definitely a fluff purchase. The background is definitely good in the book and the missions are neat, but if you're looking for rules, it's super light. The artifacts could be fun, but not entirely sure how useful. Chosen are meh. And I don't think I'd ever use Abaddon's Terminator retinue.

**ThatEdGuy**

As everyone has said, the fluff is great. There aren't very many rules, but I am considering using their rules for a small force of Fallen Angels.

**SRSFACE**

Like all the supplements, the extra rules are meh. You get it for fluff, and for extra missions. I've played one of the black legion ones playing against a guy who owns the book and we had a blast.

The relics you gain access to are also pretty silly. I don't know why people are saying they aren't much to write home about because they are pretty neat. You can essentially turn a chaos lord into a chaos chapter master with a relic that gives you a very chaos-style Orbital Bombardment-like attack once a game. There's also one that does -1 toughness to a model but essentially turns the guy into a Daemon of Tzeentch, allowing you to reroll failed saving throws of 1. Jam that on a Chaos Lord/Sorcerer on a Disc of Tzeentch/plain ol' bike to balance the hit to toughness, attach a sigil of corruption, and your guy is 3++ with that rerolls 1's.

My friend with the book is running a Sorcerer like that with a force axe. It's very nasty. It consistently insta-gibs my multi-wound models.

Better than a daemon prince, probably not. But it was a lot more fun to kitbash and model than a prince is, and is way more fluffy to how he runs his army, and it's just kind of a cool thing. End of the day, if you're playing Warhammer 40k to win especially now that Titans are a regular part of the game, you're not doing it right.

**Exalbaru**

fluff=amazing, but if youre not in it for that no point really, definately not in hard back at least, black library has it for 30 then you can just print and put it in a binder. The rules are kinda lame and such a small section--I had to get it because my stuff is already black legion though hahahaha

**the42up**

great fluff, fleshes out the crusades and makes abbadon seem pretty damn cool.

As for the rules, they are fluffy but wont be toppling elder any time soon. The artifacts are pretty good, especially given that you can give a daemon prince EW.

**deepstriker**

Mainly fluff on the crusades and what happens. As several posters mentioned above, able to take chosen as troops.

Otherwise nothing much that you'd miss.

**Mozzamanx**

This has come up several times in the last few months and my opinion has not changed at all. The fluff is nice and if you are into that sort of thing, worth buying. However you posted this in the Tactics section, and so tactically...

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.