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So I am doing alpha legion for my new army. And the theme behind them is they are pretending to be some other random astartes chapter nobody had heard of, that "found out" the emperor is actually OK but imprisoned on Terra by the high lords, so they are rounding up a huge army of conscripts to go save him. I will be using things only loyalist marines have, no demon engines ect. I want the chaos guys to be a mix of worlders in each squad. I think I will run fairly heavy on them, probably 60 in 1500+ point games. Looking for ideas of what gw models to use (unless 3rd party are significantly cheaper and fit the aesthetic )

So far I ordered 20 genestealer acolytes as a head swap with skitarii helmets makes a nice looking guy. Also using 10 skitarii and 10 of the old metal guard with the hotshot Lasguns. Any ideas.

Also lots of cheap leaders really play well with alpha legion. Should I rum 2 30 man blobs, 3 20 man, or 4 15 man?

Empire flagellants would work well for desperate pilgrim type cultists.

Yeah I was actually thinking about them just a bit ago.

Anyone think a fire raptor is not enough anti air? I don't want to use hell drakes, bit there are a crapton of flying monstrous creatures in my meta. Multiple hive tyrants, stupid 2+ jinking demon princes, Magus, it's pretty painful.

 Orock wrote:
Yeah I was actually thinking about them just a bit ago.

Anyone think a fire raptor is not enough anti air? I don't want to use hell drakes, bit there are a crapton of flying monstrous creatures in my meta. Multiple hive tyrants, stupid 2+ jinking demon princes, Magus, it's pretty painful.

You can run Havocs with ML and Flakk missiles for anti-air support. You can also run traitor versions of just about any flier out there, just run a 'Flyer detachment' from Death From the Skies.

My Alpha Legion cultist are tempestus models. Rather than cultists in regular sense I like to picture them as elite agents serving the legions cause.

The Empire Militia kit from WFB has a lot of options - though you might want to swap out some pistols for lasguns and autopistols to get the look right.

Ravingbantha wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Yeah I was actually thinking about them just a bit ago.

Anyone think a fire raptor is not enough anti air? I don't want to use hell drakes, bit there are a crapton of flying monstrous creatures in my meta. Multiple hive tyrants, stupid 2+ jinking demon princes, Magus, it's pretty painful.

You can run Havocs with ML and Flakk missiles for anti-air support. You can also run traitor versions of just about any flier out there, just run a 'Flyer detachment' from Death From the Skies.

I'm confused because my area basically ignores the terrible death from the skies rules. Are you saying in that book chaos has access to any imperial flyer thru come the apocalypse allies or just access in regular lists?

 Orock wrote:

Ravingbantha wrote:

 Orock wrote:
Yeah I was actually thinking about them just a bit ago.

Anyone think a fire raptor is not enough anti air? I don't want to use hell drakes, bit there are a crapton of flying monstrous creatures in my meta. Multiple hive tyrants, stupid 2+ jinking demon princes, Magus, it's pretty painful.

You can run Havocs with ML and Flakk missiles for anti-air support. You can also run traitor versions of just about any flier out there, just run a 'Flyer detachment' from Death From the Skies.

I'm confused because my area basically ignores the terrible death from the skies rules. Are you saying in that book chaos has access to any imperial flyer thru come the apocalypse allies or just access in regular lists?

Death From the Skies adds a new type of detachment, a flyer detachment called "Air Superiority Detachment". It's kinda like adding a Knight detachment to an army. It allows you to take 1-3 Flyer wings to an army, each wing consisting of 2-4 flyers. So you can ally flyers from other armies and not have to worry about adding other forces. You still have normal ally rules, but you could ally in whatever fliers you want.

If you use imperial flyers do you not suffer from the looking over your shoulder rule, or whichever it is when two apocalypse allies are too close?

I run Renegades of Vraks in an Unending Host detachment (as it's simply fluffier for the Alpha Legion and better than the Word Bearers-style Dark Apostle-led Lost and the Damned), but I've sourced my Renegades/Cultists through a mix of
Catachan, Marauder, and IG bitz
DV Cultists (eBay is your friend, 6-7£ for 10 is reasonable)

Alternatively, Mad Robot Miniatures do loads of cool (but slightly more expensive) Renegades/Cultists, and the Penal Soldiers from Victoria Miniatures are also pretty solid choices. I want to eventually get a platoon of both of them.

I've struggled to run Cultists "as is," as they get wiped out by everything that looks at them crossly. They are expensive GEQs with worse options and saves, so there's not much you can do. Regardless, I'd keep them fairly small, and for Alpharius' sake, never put a Dark Apostle in with them, even in a large squad. In the Alpha Legion Decurion, only the Cultists come back, not the Dark Apostle. You're begging for templates to murder your extremely expensive Dark Apostle at majority T3 and 150 points of Cultists. Heavy stubbers are a terrible choice, so go with flamers. You could have a squad or two with them, Infiltrate them onto an objective in ruins, and just go to ground for the entire game.

You may also want to check out the Serpent's Lair, the Alpha Legion forums.

Hydra dominatus, Frater.

Yeah I'll second Flagellants. They'd work perfectly as Cultists.

I've also got an idea for an Alpha Legion army which would be a bog-standard Ultramarines army...but the Chaplain has an Alpha Legion sigil hidden somewhere on his person (feeding false information to the loyalists and manipulating them!).

Cadians are always nice if painted/converted a little to have a chaos-y feel to them. I used a bunch as cultists back in the day. And I think they'd look stellar with an AL paint job and a few chaos undivided symbols here and there!

These plus suitable weapons from ones spares

 Orock wrote:
If you use imperial flyers do you not suffer from the looking over your shoulder rule, or whichever it is when two apocalypse allies are too close?

You do, and it can be a pain, but each game is different, thus one game it may be a huge pain to deal with, while in another game it may not even become an issue. Like I said, you could always use Havocs with ML and not worry about it at all. Some other options to consider are running a SM 'Anti Air Defense Force' Formation, deployment will still be an issue, but you won't have to worry about them moving too much. You could also also simply use DP's or Heldrakes, but remodeled to look like something more 'loyalist'. Think of a DP inside a 'unique' jump pack equipped contemptor Dreadnought. Since Heldrakes are possessed SM fliers, you could run a Heldrake in it's early stages of possession of a 'prototype' Imperial flyer. You could also run a Hellblade or HellTalon doing this same thing, use a StormHawk or Stormtalon, swap out the weapons to represent what the Hellbalde and HellTalon would have

Just re-read your OP and I've made some of the GS Cults/Skitarii head guys myself. You've got to trim off the rear of the Vanguard helmet and sometimes the little air vent on the torso to get them to fit, but they work really nicely as an aesthetic



Also used some of the shotguns and Flagellant bodies for my Pilgrims (although they'd do equally well as Cultists with some chaos iconography).

On the Flyer question there aren't many good answers to FMCs, especially Tzeentchian rerollable-invul ones. Imperial armies can toss Inquisitors with Shriek all over the place for some coverage, but annoyingly the rogue psyker coven from the IA13 Renegades list must roll on their own table and can't get Shriek.

Flyers don't usually have enough firepower to batter through save shenanigans, I don't know that you're going to get more cost-effective than the Fire Raptor. The only thing I can think of that would even come close is the Vulture, which foregoes AP entirely to just batter down saves with 23 S5 shots a turn, but with all the ways Daemon Princes can get higher Toughness these days I'd say take the 210pt vehicle with the seven S6 shots and eight S7 shots instead.

The only cost-effective ways I can think of to down a truly determined Daemon Prince all rely on Imperial-only psyker tricks. Or on having a Pylon (Necron D-strength anti-air) and rolling 6s.