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After looking through all the CSM supplements and the vanilla codex i was wondering if it is even worth running the Black Legion supplement. I Love Black legion fluff but from what i can see it does not look like it is worth running. What do you guys think?

It's not great. Generally you are going to be far better running the standard book or the Crimson Slaughter because the benefits of the army are few, hard to utilise, and come with some significant drawbacks.

The big one is Chosen-as-Troops. This was mediocre in 6th and has only been made worse in 7th as they can Score from the standard book.
Chosen are defined by their ability to spam special weapons; a 5-man unit of Plasma/Melta/Flamer with a bit of bite in close combat. Unfortunately, a small unit of expensive models that are no tougher than a standard Troop, with a giant 'I kill everything so get rid of me fast' warning label, do not make good units to hold an objective. The last thing you want to do is combine your hammers with your objective-holders, charge 30pts+ per head, and still have them as fragile as the grunts.

This comes with the lovely army-wide tax of VotLW, typically removing a good ~10% of your armies points with very little to show for it. There is a reason that you only see VotLW taken on a handful of units and that is because it quickly becomes very expensive for limited gain, so applying it across an entire army is a bit silly. Especially when that armies big selling point is that it can spam Plasma Guns and so Hatred is of limited application.

The Terminator upgrade is just silly. No, +1WS/BS and Hatred is not worth 10pts a model when you have to pay for both VotLW and the upgrade. Chaos Terminators are defined by being cheap, disposable Combi-platforms and they don't need to inflate that cost with upgrades because they are dropped in to die. You could have the dropsquad be BS5, or you could just buy a 4th member from a normal book.

Finally, the Artefacts. They are more of a sidegrade than an improvement; The Axe, Brand and Mace are really delicious items that are being sacrificed here. The Sorcerer-splosion is very nice to have, and the Orbital Strike is gimmicky but occasionally decent. Unfortunately the others are dross and absolutely not justification to pay for VotLW on everyone.


If you really like the Artefacts, Ally in a single HQ with his Cultist mates so that the tax isn't so bad. If you don't like the Artefacts, just take the stock book. Or even better, take the Slaughter. That way you get free Fear and only lose the option to take something that you probably won't want much of anyway.

The only thing I like about the black legion is the Last Memory of Yuranthos + Eye of Night + Spell Familiar on a Terminator Sorcerer placed in a unit of full MoN Oblits (this is the only time a MoN sorcerer is pretty decent as the nova power syncs well). Essentially you land right in the middle of a bunch of AV10 or T4 and lower targets, blast of your nova powers, and shoot the oblits and Eye of Night at the obligatory imperial knight your opponent brought. If you have a significant DSing component to your force this can be pretty effective as you can cause the knight shield to be out of position for another oblit squad and your opponent has to either take the nova on the chin by turtling up to counter the oblits DS, spread out and give better targets, or reserve and come in piece meal. If you have the points this can be greatly improved with icons (1d6 scatter) and grimoire on some allied Chaos Daemons.

Keep in mind with the new faction system (if used BRB style) you can select the sorcerer from black legion and the rest of the units from crimson slaughter for free fear.

Thanks for the info. The whole Black Legion supplement being worse than crimson slaughter is garbage. It hurts right in the fluff bone.

I see you guys mentioning allying combos of Black Legion, Crimson Slaughter, and CSM and I think I have bad news for you guys. This has recently come as news to me and messed up a lot of my lists, but on page 118 of the rulebook "In the case of codex supplements, the faction of all the units described in that publication is the same as the codex it is a supplement of." Which is important when you look at the rules for an allied detachment specifying "All units chosen must have a different faction to any of the units in your primary detachment".

I used to run a lot of lists that just allied one of the supplements with CSM or with each other, but that does not appear to be legal in 7th anymore.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I see you guys mentioning allying combos of Black Legion, Crimson Slaughter, and CSM and I think I have bad news for you guys. This has recently come as news to me and messed up a lot of my lists, but on page 118 of the rulebook "In the case of codex supplements, the faction of all the units described in that publication is the same as the codex it is a supplement of." Which is important when you look at the rules for an allied detachment specifying "All units chosen must have a different faction to any of the units in your primary detachment".

I used to run a lot of lists that just allied one of the supplements with CSM or with each other, but that does not appear to be legal in 7th anymore.

This is ignoring the fact that both CSM Supplements very explicitly allow you to ally their detachments with a vanilla CSM one as Battle Brothers. Fortunately, we have a FAQ to explain this mess... oh wait, we don't.

That's what I'd always assumed too, but from reading the rulebook that followed the release of the supplements I think they changed their mind with how they want allied detachments to work. The rulebook says that older releases should be treated under these new rules which seems to override the supplements by specifically mentioning these situations for allying purposes.

Edit: The supplements also only say that they work as battle brothers, not that they can be taken as an allied detachment. For games that allow multiple detachments this is still relevant because it permits running two full chaos armies that can work together. I think getting an easy 4th heavy, fast, or elite slot is gone though.

Well in all honestly self allying is not necessary in 7ed FOC. You can simply take units from any book within the faction (CSM, Black Legion, and Crimson Slaughter) and take as many CADs as you want. You just need to fulfill any minimum requirements (units from Black Legion must take VotLW and for every CAD you need 2 troops and 1 HQ). Theoretically you could take as many HS as you want within your points and still be battleforged.

TOs are partially part of the convoluted mess that this is becoming as many events are limiting the FOC to 1 CAD and some allow taking the same CAD and Ally. Not that this isn't a valid response by TO's to balance their tournaments but it has made people less cognizant of the rules.

I ran a Black Legion army in 6th edition and had a lot of success with it. Chosen squads with 5 plasma guns counting as troops are no joke, and it was great getting EW on my CL with a 3+ invulnerable save.

I don't play 7th edition, but imagine a BL CAD consisting solely of a CL and 2 Plasma Chosen squads would be a pretty nice thing to throw into vanilla chaos lists. Give the Chosen MoS and IoE to make them outstanding at holding points.

 ansacs wrote:
Well in all honestly self allying is not necessary in 7ed FOC. You can simply take units from any book within the faction (CSM, Black Legion, and Crimson Slaughter) and take as many CADs as you want. You just need to fulfill any minimum requirements (units from Black Legion must take VotLW and for every CAD you need 2 troops and 1 HQ). Theoretically you could take as many HS as you want within your points and still be battleforged.

TOs are partially part of the convoluted mess that this is becoming as many events are limiting the FOC to 1 CAD and some allow taking the same CAD and Ally. Not that this isn't a valid response by TO's to balance their tournaments but it has made people less cognizant of the rules.

This.

By the actual rules, the "Allied Detachment" has this restriction. But none of the other detachments do. So these are perfectly usable in a standard army setup outside of the "Allied Detachment" itself.

There is really no reason to use the Allied Detachment anymore, unless you don't want that second troops choice a CAD forces you to have by default. A lot of the ally confusion comes from NOVA/BAO crowd's language, and the proliferation of their setup as a preferred framework for a lot of smaller events.

"We decided to limit you to these Detachments...which now breaks all the Chaos supplements, so we are going to change the rules to allow these things in a way that pretty much is the same as it was before we limited them. Because MORE RULES = BETTER GAME. Right? Right?!"

Regardless, I don't think you have much reason to use the Black Legion book. It really should have given VotLW for free or something. As it stands Crimson Slaughter is much more effective.

My local store isn't even a very competitive environment, but they still limit running multiple detachments because they're afraid of people abusing 6 riptide lists and such. They're also not allowing unbound lists. Only being able to take an allied detachment it does limit me severely, but maybe I can get them to make some allowances in exchange as you describe.

I was running one plasma chosen and one melta chosen squad in 6th as black legion which I liked. I think doing a plasma squad with the crimson slaughter is better now though since you can take draznicht's ravagers for a 10 point preferred enemy and easy overheat protection upgrade though and having them score at all is enough for me even if it doesn't get objective secured. I am still a fan of the quicksilver blade. Giving it to a daemon prince or chaos lord gives your character a huge edge in mirror matchups and it's an easy to swallow price in my book.

So would it be better to run vanilla CSM or use Crimson Slaughter supplement?
Thank you for all the comments btw

I have a soft spot for the Hand of Darkness sucker punch, but generally prefer crimson slaughter. Mostly for the daemonheart as a 2+ save IWND is great. But also free fear and no veteran tax.

The other time I'll use black legion is if I'm maximising warp charge for a summoning list, then you can take a daemon prince with the last memory for WC4.

If you love the fluff for Black Legion you should definitely collect a Black Legion army! When your collection hits the table use the rules that gives you the best gaming experience.

It's not great on it's own due to VOTLW tax but you can pull some decent allies out of the book!
Things to consider:

Hand of darkness lord.
2+ IWND lord.
Last memory termie sorc deepstriking in with some termies or oblits.

 tehinchman wrote:
So would it be better to run vanilla CSM or use Crimson Slaughter supplement?
Thank you for all the comments btw

When I want a couple characters with daemon weapons to humble opponents in close combat I go regular csm (or for an awesome burninating flamethrower).

If you want a smaller force of elite units with lots of special weapons (and still one melee character able to do terrible things in cc), then I'd run Black Legion. A sorc on a bike with the nova power from the Last Memory is also pretty fun.

If you aren't really looking for the daemon weapons in close combat, then I'd recommend Crimson Slaughter. The divinity access is especially nice for a long range shooty army and the single units of draznicht's ravagers are very effective and can operate independently. More of the relics seem to boost toughness instead of offensive power for this supplement imo.

Play to what interests you. I like to rotate through all three and make different lists with each faction because I like to mix things up a lot personally and have had success with all 3 books.