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Is it decent or do some legions usually have the upper hand over others? Are there specific match ups between certain legions that are bad?

Trying to figure it out just for curiosity, as I already have an army of the IIIrd legion.

It depends on legion and RoW. But in general Primarch vs non primarch or phoz vs no phoz is unbalanced.

Pretty solid really, with wolves getting toned down slightly recently and Tsons, some units are straight better than others, compare Templar brethren to rampagers some time.

Some of the first book Legions are falling behind a little bit, but it's nothing like the imbalance between factions you see in 40k.

For example it's not like Emperor's Children are bad, but a more recently released Legion is probably going to be more efficient. Absolutely a playable game, but there is a difference (Particularly with Legion-specific units)

There are more... vanilla Legions then more recent Legions. The Emperor's Children were brought up, and compared to say, The Thousand Sons, they seem very lack luster and, well, boring? So much depends on the army list, the Rite of War selected, and how you play the game. I wouldn't say the most recent Legions are the best either. The Power Creep is more perceived then real, as the Space Wolves are a red hot mess, but the Thousand Sons are an easy button for WAAC players as there is no real answer to a heavy Psychic Army... yet. Forge World promises more tools in Book 9 to deal with such things, and so they didn't really rein in the Thousand Sons during the last FAQ/Errata update.

Some Legions are pretty one dimensional- as in, they specialize in shooting, or assault, or whatever, and so lists with those Legions tend to be monobuilds. Other Legions do everything well. And some you really, really have to think about list construction and how you are going to play them in order to do well.

You can do well with any Legion, and Rule of Cool should be the #1 rule for Horus Heresy: If its cool, take it and have fun.

Most of the fully released legions are fairly balanced. Outliers are Thousand Sons (psychic shenanigans), Iron Hand (hilariously durable in a shooting match) and Ultramarines (awesome units, gear, rules and rites)

SoH are kept in check by lacking any real legion specific wargear or units. WE by Angron being pretty awful, and the Salamanders by being slow. The rest are fairly generic. Most of ther others have a gimmick out two that can catch you off guard

Thousand Sons took a big power hit in the recent faq (No more 3+ harness warp charge). But still have two majorly OP units (Magnus and Sekhmet).
But thier other unique units are pretty average.

Still gak like quad mortars will make any legion OP.

StarHunter25 wrote:
SoH are kept in check by lacking any real legion specific wargear or units. WE by Angron being pretty awful, and the Salamanders by being slow. The rest are fairly generic. Most of ther others have a gimmick out two that can catch you off guard

We're really generic... as SoH. Without taking Horus or Pride of the Legion the army is almost a vanilla 40k marine army. Sure you have some choices but other legions have a lot MORE choices when constructing any army.


I've not played against the boys in purple - but every game I've had has been fairly even. I've been stomped by a Wolf player frequently but only because he knows what he's doing with his list and I bring the same two lists.

In terms of Legion rules:

Thousand Sons - Bonus invuln. This is a silly buff to give for free
World Eaters - Chain axes reroll galore, rage, furious charge if kill a squad.
Night Lords - Fear, then bonus to hit and wound if outnumber. This is broken when you consider assault marines count as two men.
Iron Hands - Bonus toughness yikes


Worst

Ultramarines- Take army wide pinning checks for two rules that require highly situational circumstances to occur for mediocre re-rolls of a 1. They were actually better when they could take stubborn.
Emperors Children - Absolutely need the charge for the advantage of going first. However this is irrelevant since anything without a Phoenix spear does not benefit (with spears getting this bonus anyway) as they don’t do the killing in melee that is done by I1 weapons. So they’re buffing a stat which does not get used. Crusader is neat for running because you decided against rhinos and storm eagles for some reason. Running people down is great, but that assumes you have won the fight in the first place.

Must admit I am not familiar with all of them.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
...Thousand Sons - Bonus invuln. This is a silly buff to give for free...

Not sure. Post Cult Arcana nerf you get to choose between having the Invul bonus and having any chance at all of ever getting a remotely useful psychic power.

Not...really?
Seks wanted raptora anyway for the invuls, and raptora gives TK powers-who conatin some good spells for them. given that in the past they could only take TK and pyro anyway, the ability to give up raptora bonus in favor of pavoni and biomancy powers is added flexibility. so its practically a wash.
Plus, implacable advance added in, so that's nice.

Anyways, with the cult arcana becoming a psyker limitation rather than a boon, TS is probably balanced (with magnus being a bit of a game-changer, but many primes are. the game is honestly better without them.)
After all, sitcking to mono-cult is outright harmful to your psyking now-you gotta diversify. and your psyking game is much weaker in general.