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I'm right now thinking of starting one of thouse legions. For start I'm going for a Pride of the Legion army with tac vets and some dreads. But not being sure about the legion, I have some questions:
1) what armour mark should be used? Mk III is my prefered one and it can easily be used for vets. But what marks did tjouse legions prefere?
2) both legions were rather small and elite forces, but would it fit bouth to go for footsloging with dreads?
3) apart from a praetor i would like to brint 2 librarians, which is ok for TS. But how often did SW use there rune priests?
I know that they don't have rules right now, so i want to bring a force that can be fielded for both legions.

Whichever legion you like the paint scheme/fluff of more. Really that is the key feature. SW are more stabby (and team killers), TS are traditionally more shooty (and psychic).

1) Any mark works. MK III was basically everywhere still since MKIV was super new come the HH. TS probably had more since that was Horus's way to try and convince BOTH Magnus and Sanguinius to join him. For my TS I'm currently using mostly Mk IV, though I would like to add in a full tactical squad of MkIII (my favorite mark )

2) Their legions, though smaller, still numbered at a minimum of 10,000 troops. They both function fine as infantry spam. though, if you wanna foot slog infantry, again, PotL will not work as well as you may think on the tabletop. Dreadnoughts were basically everywhere in every legion .

3) SW used their rune priests plenty..... hypocrites.

4) Why do you want to go pride of the legion? Fluff reasons or because the army would work as a 40k army?

Neither of them have rules, so you don't wanna go to specialized. A huge flaw with PotL is the fact that 10-man squads in power armor drop like flies, and having transports doesn't really fit the SW 'theme', and TS have been stated to have a low number of vehicles as they preferred to fight at range on foot.

I like PotL 'cos it allows to start an army quickly. 10man tac vets might not be as good as 20 man tacs, but some apothecaries can fix that to some extend. Plus vet rules like sniper or fearless also help. 20 man squats would be great, but right now I don't have enough money.

 hordrak wrote:
I like PotL 'cos it allows to start an army quickly. 10man tac vets might not be as good as 20 man tacs, but some apothecaries can fix that to some extend. Plus vet rules like sniper or fearless also help. 20 man squats would be great, but right now I don't have enough money.

Makes sense. Though if you're willing to put up with MK IV for now, you can probably horde a remarkable amount through Ebay if you wanted a cheap way to get started thanks to Calth.

I'm going to say TS, but I'm biased...

So, what your describing works well for the TS. They like to hit from a distance with infantry and dreads. Not a big fan of vehicles but they still fit in.
The 2 Librarians fit in perfectly into the TS. When they release the Scarab Occult models those will be good (Psychic Terminators basically)
If your also into lighter armor or infiltration (Kinda) they made use of solar auxilia known as the Hidden Ones.
It's up to you but IMO the TS have better iconography, color schemes, armor, etc.

In the end it comes down to what you want to field and what you like.

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:
I'm going to say TS, but I'm biased...

So, what your describing works well for the TS. They like to hit from a distance with infantry and dreads. Not a big fan of vehicles but they still fit in.
The 2 Librarians fit in perfectly into the TS. When they release the Scarab Occult models those will be good (Psychic Terminators basically)
If your also into lighter armor or infiltration (Kinda) they made use of solar auxilia known as the Hidden Ones.
It's up to you but IMO the TS have better iconography, color schemes, armor, etc.

In the end it comes down to what you want to field and what you like.

I know. Right now I'm leaning more into TS. What I need: 1) Tacticals - bread and butter unit. Vets for flexibility. Apothecarion Detachment for staying power. 2) Librarian HQs. Rollin on Biomancy of divination for utility. 3) Catafractii terminators to represent the Scarab Ocultus. Need some Power axes for that. 4) Shooty dreads. Contemptors and Contemptor Mortis dreads will do.

 hordrak wrote:

 Kharne the Befriender wrote:
I'm going to say TS, but I'm biased...

So, what your describing works well for the TS. They like to hit from a distance with infantry and dreads. Not a big fan of vehicles but they still fit in.
The 2 Librarians fit in perfectly into the TS. When they release the Scarab Occult models those will be good (Psychic Terminators basically)
If your also into lighter armor or infiltration (Kinda) they made use of solar auxilia known as the Hidden Ones.
It's up to you but IMO the TS have better iconography, color schemes, armor, etc.

In the end it comes down to what you want to field and what you like.

I know. Right now I'm leaning more into TS. What I need: 1) Tacticals - bread and butter unit. Vets for flexibility. Apothecarion Detachment for staying power. 2) Librarian HQs. Rollin on Biomancy of divination for utility. 3) Catafractii terminators to represent the Scarab Ocultus. Need some Power axes for that. 4) Shooty dreads. Contemptors and Contemptor Mortis dreads will do.

Yeah, I would also recommend some Heavy support squads but it seems like you've got it down

My Thousand Sons army is a mix of Mk 2, Mk 3 and Mk 4, with a little Mk 5 in there on one of my Vet squads. In the book A Thousand Sons the numbers were around 10,000 Marines, but I think the numbers will be boosted a lot. If not I have a third of the survivors of Prospero already!

When starting my army I went with 2x 10 Veterans, but I rarely use those these days. My core units these days are 2x 15 Tac Marines and 10 Breachers in a Phobos. I highly recommend you look through the pictures on the website and make an army list with things that make you say "wow", rather than reading the army book and going for ingame affect. 30k is balanced enough that you can take some of everything and still win games. If you're just switching to 30k can I also recommend you take some identifiably 30k units, like Breachers or Sicarans. This will help you personally to identify with your 30k army over your 40k ones, and help you keep them separate in your mind. This will make it easier for you to ditch 40k down the line.

IIRC All Legion numbers given in any of the HH books prior to "Deliverance Lost" were retconned.

Based on the forgeworld books I think it is more like this:

Large Legions 180-250,000 Marines (Ultramarines, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Dark Angels)

Average sized Legions 120-180,000 marines

Small Legions; 70-120,000 (EC,Thousand Sons, Space Wolves)

I don't have the books in front of me but I think that's correct.
I think it's because the original fluff was just; Prospero, Dropsite Massacre, Calth, Terra. When they started filling in the 7 year Age of Darkness, it must have become evident that legions of 10,000 would have been way too small to feasibly still be a fighting force by Terra, so they boosted them considerably.
Also worth noting is that 30k Company strength can be as big as a 40k Chapter, and 30k Chapters equivalents can be anywhere up to 10,000 marines.