Legion of the Damned in Depth

An in-depth look at the Legion of the Damned
 
BoLS published this look at the new Legion of the Damned Dataslate and it is worth a read.

LEGION OF THE DAMNED
Army Rules
 
The book introduces yet another specialized Force Organizational Chart and special Allied Detachment, much like Codex: Inquisition. The FOC requires 1 Elites slot and allows you to take up to 3 more Elites. That's right, your single unit option is an Elites option. 
Much like the Inquisition the Legion of the Damned form their own specialized detachment that doesn't use a standard allies slot. They can also be fielded as the primary detachment for your army, with a second Legion of the Damned group in the Legion of the Damned detachment slot netting you up to 8 units of Legion to control. If you do make the Legion your Primary Detachment, all Legion units are also scoring. 
There is one problem with fielding a full Legion army though at the time of the release of the codex I'll go into a bit more under the unit specific rules, but it may change in the future. That said I did contact Games Workshop: Digital Editions about it via their Facebook so if anything changes I'll post an update to this article.
  Now the Legion of course brings an allies chart of it's own to the mix, so let's give it a quick rundown:
Battle Brothers: Adepta Sororitas, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, Imperial Guard, Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Space Marines, Space Wolves  Allies of Convenience: Eldar  Desperate Allies: Dark Eldar, Tau  Come the Apocalypse: Chaos Daemons, Chaos Marines, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids

Honestly not too many surprises considering the nature of the Legion. I'm just thankful for the inclusion of Sisters as Battle Brothers. Those poor nuns usually get left out in the cold on a lot of things so anything that gives them more options is always a plus in my book.
  Warlord Traits
 
No, you didn't read that wrong, even though the Legion has no HQs, they do have Warlord Traits. If you're fielding the Legion of the Damned as your Primary Detachment then you nominate one of the Legionnaire Sergeants in your unit to be your Warlord. He then gets to roll on the Warlord Traits tables in the book or on the Legion's table, which I've provided below:  Inferno of Vengeance: Warlord and his unit have the Soul Blaze special rule  Aura of Fear: When taking Fear tests units in base contact with the Warlord's unit suffer a cumulative -1 penality to their leadership value for each friendly Legion of the Damned squad on the battlefield beyond the first (translation: max of -7 penalty)  Ethereal Bolts: The Warlord and his unit, have the Armorbane rule when firing the following weapons: bolt pistol, boltgun, storm bolter, heavy bolter or any combi-weapon firing as a boltgun.  Spectral Bulwark: The Warlord and his unit have the Feel no Pain (5+) special rule  Never Too Late, Never Too Early: Instead of making a reserve rule for the Warlord and his unit at the start of Turn Two the controlling player can instead decide if they want the unit to arrive that turn. If kept in Reserve the player can then choose if they want them to arrive or not on Turn Three. If still in Reserve on Turn Four, however, the unit must be deployed. Retribution Made Manifest: The Warlord and his unit have the Preferred Enemy special rule.

Easily my favorite in this have to be Ethereal Bolts, just because of a unit being able to threaten any vehicle on the table with their Bolters (S4+2d6=Max 16, average being 11) is kind of hilarious. The only one I feel is a bit silly is the Never Too Late, Never Too Early, only because I don't see a lot of potential use for it. I could always be proven wrong though so I won't judge too hard, I'm just not able to think up a lot of uses for it right now.
  Army List
 
Just in case you missed it, or skipped it earlier to come down here and see what army options there are, there is only one unit to choose from. It's an Elites choice called the Legion of the Damned Squad.
Coming standard with 5 models (4 Legionnaires and one Legionnaire Sergeant (who has the distinction of being 1 point better in Weapon Skill than is normal for a Space Marine Sergeant)) and the ability to take up to 5 additional Legionnaires this unit has a pretty good swath of rules and options. So let's take a quick look.
Standard wargear is, well standard. Everyone starts off with Power Armour, Bolt Pistol, Boltgun, Frag and Krak Grenades, the same as you'd expect for Marines in pretty much any book at this point. The fun actually starts in the Special Rules: 
Aid Unlooked For: Legion of the Damned does not benefit from Chapter Tactics, and they can't be joined by Independent characters. They always start the game in Reserve and always arrive by Deep Strike. When they arrive by Deep Strike you may re-roll the scatter dice if you wish.  Fear: Yes, it's the USR.  Fearless: USR once again.  Flaming Projectiles: Ranged attacks made by the Legion of the Damned have the Ignores Cover special rule.  Slow and Purposeful: Once again, a USR.  Unyielding Spectres: The Legion of the Damned have a 3+ invulnerable save.
Not too bad, except for one big issue:  Aid Unlooked For. Because this rule was apparently lifted straight from the Space Marine codex it creates a major problem for anyone who wants to run a pure Legion army. As it stands at the time of writing this means you automatically lose at the end of Turn 1 because your army is not allowed on the table any sooner than Turn 2, as per the Deep Strike Rules. 


So that problem aside, how can you equip your Legion units (beyond adding more Legionnaires of course)? Let's take a look:
- One Legionnaire may replace his boltgun with: Flamer, Meltagun or Plasmagun.
- A different Legionnaire may replace his boltgun with: Heavy Bolter, Heavy flamer, Multi-melta, Missile Launcher (comes with frag and krak, may upgrade to have flakk), Plasma cannon or Lascannon.
- The Legionnaire Sergeant may replace his boltgun with: Chainsword, Power weapon or Powerfist.
- The Legionnaire Seargeant may replace his bolt pistol and or melee weapon with: Storm Bolter, Combi-flamer/-grav/-melta/-plasma, Grav-pistol, Plasma pistol.
- One Legionnaire Sergeant may take the Animus Malorum. 

And more to read on the Bell of Lost Souls Lounge.


Nykona