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I just wanted to run by the community what they think about the concept of making an 11th Legion 40k Space Marine army. The idea being that the Horus Heresy box is too good of a value to pass up but I have no interest in actually playing 30k so I would use the box set to start a 40k Space Marine army. None of the Legions really appeal to me so I though to pull from the Lost Legions concept to make up my own Space Marine force. I wanted to know what the community thought about a lost legion origin chapter. I'm well aware its my own models and resources so I can ultimately do whatever I want but how do you feel about seeing somebody playing with this kind of fluff. Rules wise I am just going to use the standard Space Marine codex rules but I am unsure of which chapter tactics to borrow. They will be called the Space Krakens and have a kraken as their symbol. (I know 1d4chan has some star kraken chapter concept but I came up with the idea independently before seeing their concept work). The MK4 helmets in particular look quite fitting for a kraken theme army.

Fluff concept so far


Any input on the matter is appreciated especially in regards to how to avoid creating too many conflicts with fluff. People seem to get bent out of shape a bit more often about Space Marine fluff than other 40k factions and I don't want to stir the hornets nest too much but I also want to be able to make the army that I want to have.

The only point worth remembering is this - they're your plastic dudes, so paint them and give them backstory however you like! No-one can tell you what to do! Alot of 40k fluff is contradictory, ret-conned or just plain bad anyway so it'd be pretty hard to make truly bad fluff for your marines.

As for the fate of the II and XI legions in the actual fluff, I believe the original reason why there is nothing mentioned about them was to allow people to do exactly what you're doing. However more recent fluff might hint at the II and/or XI legions being terminated by the Emperor as a failed experiment and/or rolled into another Legion (which might explain why the XIII Legion suddenly jumped in numbers at the start of the Great Crusade).

If you're concerned about not being fluff accurate, perhaps you could instead make your marines an unknown chapter of unknown founding? It's a slight play on words, but avoids you stating equivocally that they are the XI Legion if you're worried about being fluff accurate.

The MK4 armour doesn't fit for the lost legions... At the close of the Great Crusade, most Legions were still in MkII or III, with MkIV coming in right before the Heresy and MkV during.

The Lost Legions were already long gone before then.

If you want to go the 'mysterious origins' route, you would be better off going with an unknown Founding or Cursed Founding Chapter. The outdated armour could be explained as a supply issue, or them being poorly equipped but being based/raiding some world that had a stockpile of that specific armour.

 GoonBandito wrote:
The only point worth remembering is this - they're your plastic dudes, so paint them and give them backstory however you like! No-one can tell you what to do! Alot of 40k fluff is contradictory, ret-conned or just plain bad anyway so it'd be pretty hard to make truly bad fluff for your marines.

As for the fate of the II and XI legions in the actual fluff, I believe the original reason why there is nothing mentioned about them was to allow people to do exactly what you're doing. However more recent fluff might hint at the II and/or XI legions being terminated by the Emperor as a failed experiment and/or rolled into another Legion (which might explain why the XIII Legion suddenly jumped in numbers at the start of the Great Crusade).

If you're concerned about not being fluff accurate, perhaps you could instead make your marines an unknown chapter of unknown founding? It's a slight play on words, but avoids you stating equivocally that they are the XI Legion if you're worried about being fluff accurate.

I remember hearing that II and XI Legions where GW's fluff wiggle room to allow for more homebrewed chapters of SMs and CSMs but theres so many books out there that I couldn't possibly dig through all the bits of info on them to get where they currently stand in the fluff. The wiki's don't really give a ton of detail on the timelines on events so its hard to evaluate where the purgings fit in.

Anyways I like the idea of having their existence in the present to be the result of some Tzeentch like manipulation to throw a group of marines into such a precarious position if for nothing else than to stir stuff up. What would actually happen if a group of Astartes entered into a future with no memory of their organization's past and the only clues they had where that of a chapter/legion that was purged from existence by the Imperium. Even if they aren't from the II or XI Legion how much of a mind zog would it be to manipulate them to think that they are. It brings up questions over chaos corruption, possibly faulty gene seeds, possibly being the enemy of what your sworn to protect, etc.

 insaniak wrote:
The MK4 armour doesn't fit for the lost legions... At the close of the Great Crusade, most Legions were still in MkII or III, with MkIV coming in right before the Heresy and MkV during.

The Lost Legions were already long gone before then.

If you want to go the 'mysterious origins' route, you would be better off going with an unknown Founding or Cursed Founding Chapter. The outdated armour could be explained as a supply issue, or them being poorly equipped but being based/raiding some world that had a stockpile of that specific armour.

Yeah I wondered if that was the case (wiki's lack good details on the matter). I figured it would be worth looking into to figure out how the fluff for the Lost Legions fit into the "practical" side of modeling and playing the game.

Thanks for the info. If anybody else has any more good info on the matter then please continue to share, it will help me greatly with fleshing out potential background concepts.

Space krakens... Does not sit well on the tongue.
I'd suggest to mix some other word with kraken, maybe a color or a metal.

As stated, MK4 is odd for lost legion, unknown founding, or simply unknown origin (as far as they know they might be ether loyalist or traitors of the heresy era) might serve you better.

Marking of the 11th will be odd, marking of the 13th while being clearly not ultras might be more on the subtle side, and easier to work with (as the common theory is that ultras absorbed 2th and 11th leftovers)

 BoomWolf wrote:
Marking of the 11th will be odd, marking of the 13th while being clearly not ultras might be more on the subtle side, and easier to work with (as the common theory is that ultras absorbed 2th and 11th leftovers)

I just wanted to point out that the entire basis for this is a single comment in one novel, a sort of joke made by a Word Bearer (who has every reason to be jealous of/hate the Ultramarines). Since 2nd edition the size of the Ultras has been well explained by the mini empire they were building and their careful management of logistics. This is a poorly supported fan theory but it's repeated so often I feel like newer players never bother learning the actual fluff.

That's why I said it's a theory rather than a fact.

Much like the 1ksons blood ravens theory.

Amusingly enough, glitches in Kerbal Space Program are often referred to as space krakens of various kinds.

As far as the name itself goes, it does feel a little clumsy to say out loud. Just 'Krakens' feels a little better to me, a bit firmer without the hard c following a soft c.