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40k Charted: The Mysterious Legion Of The Damned
August 22, 2016 by warzan
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@warzan i have a similar problem with invaders when looking at saga….
that and the entirity of necron fluff seems to be based on one gamma ray album http://www.gammaray.org/discography-albums/discography-1997-sois
Another great episode
As for foundings, one of the most interesting aspects I think is the training cadre. A chapter will be assigned to train a new chapter. Does not necessarily have to be the same chapter as the geneseed.
When building/designing your own chapter the sky is the limit, second founding of course comes with a little extra ‘restrictions’ to make it fit the fluff. I have attempted to write, and have seen written chapters founded from Blackshields (Rogue Legionaires), mine were Thousand Sons.
Some foundings have already been written that they were for specific reasons. Combat X, Protect Y etc. They have however left a lot of foundings completely free, some with dates, some without.
21st Founding is cool but writing a chapter founded then is difficult, you need a flaw that works. GW seem to have moved away from mutations (see:Black Dragons) (Legion of the Damned are an exception) and moved to things like serious bad luck, Lamentors.
I know you like your Mechanicus, there is one case of the Mechanicum founding their own chapter, the Steel Confessors. These events nearly led to another heresy sized event
It’s Founding 0’clock
One theory I have always loved was from way back when they first came out. During the age of the heresy, the Dark Angels rift sent the fallen through all times and space. The ones that believed the lie but were still loyal to their primarch and emperor had to pay a penance. So for the rest of eternity, they will help serve and die.. That’s why there is never any body. The emperor has pulled them off that field of battle to await the next time they are needed.
@warzan What you are looking for are Movie Marines. The rules are out in the aether from an old White Dwarf. They have some great rules and they are around 100+ points a piece.
This is another great video.
In what I suppose were my wilderness years between 1991/2 and 2013 I really didn’t think about the hobby at all. It was only when I opened a large red trunk that my mother had kept for me from my youth that I got pulled back in, and what did I find within? It was my collection of Legion of the Damned figs. Strange that those few metal marines got me back into the hobby (well that and my son at the Imperial War Museum who wanted me to buy him a model tank)
Got a soft spot for LoD I do
Another Theory for the Legon Of The Dammed is that they are a manifestation of the Emperors will, akin to the Demons of the Chaos gods, but rather than being extensions of His own power they are the souls of those Space Marines who have fallen in His service, given form and purpose to come to the aid of the armies of the God-Emperor in their darkest moments.
Funny how this video starts out being about all kinds of things but Legion of the Damned.
great video guys
the children of the damned is a great backing for 30K games & so is powerslave from the same album
I was reading a HH book playing Iron Maiden and these songs seemed to stand out bringing the story to life? @warzan
@warzan &@aj to get marines feeling closer to the fluff Me and my mates tested this;
Count each (non character) marine as 2 marines, so giving them +1 wound, +1 attack , letting them fire their weapons twice and allow heavy weapons to split their fire. (This was at an increased cost of 2 thirds the total units cost e.g your fully knitted out squad cost 300pts it would be increased to 500pts).
We would’t allow Scouts (except the sergeants), blood claws or “fresh” chaos marines to get this upgrade though as they are juniors/novices.
Characters could have additional wounds(3 extra max) & attacks (3 extra max)( the cost of this was found by dividing the characters points cost by their existing wounds and attacks total to find a base for 1 wound or attack and increasing the cost for each additional wound or attack added. E.g. A character costs 100pts and has 2 wounds and 2 attacks, this means each wound /attack would be worth 25 pts to add an extra wound and attack it would increase his cost to 150pts)
This actually worked out pretty well for us with marines coming across close to the fluff
Almost invincible- you couldn’t just hope for weight of fire to get your opponent to miss a save and you had to start thinking of using anti tank weapons on the marines (as is often needed in the fluff) to put them down with instant death. But One battle cannon hit in the middle of a squad or space marines is a massive amount of the opponents army lost.
Lethal – In close combat a tac marine is now getting 3 attacks on the charge (A terminator is getting 4) and a full squad of 10 bolter boys is unleashing 20 shots full range and 40 shots half range.
They are massively scary but still beatable, especially if you play guard and bring the pie plates 🙂
I really like the theory that the Leagion of the Damned are from an alternate future where things are so grim for the Imperium, that it sends the few remaining Maries left, back to an alternate reality, to aid the Imperiums in the most dire times. This also means the Legion is activly erasing themselves from history. The idea that things are so bad for this “future” imperium that the few remaining Maries are volunteering to be eraised from history is a bery moving idea to me.
Here is a link to something a person did about movie marines.
http://draxtargames.com/dgwp/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Movie-Marines-PDF.pdf
However if you really want to do it, you just up all of their stats by two, and add two to all of their weapon profiles. Bolter becomes range 24″ Rapid fire 3. A pretty easy conversion for them.
The game Inquisitor which I loved just loved had a true idea of what a space marine was. The thing is they weren’t insanely tough, but Artemis who has recently been re-released in 28 mini form. So in the Inquisitor game, the average stat line was 50, exceptional was 70 and with augmentation such as a power fist you could reach the lofty heights of 90 strength. Artemis had the mere inhuman toughness of 100, but had a strength of 150, this is without his equipment. Your average weapon did 2D6 damage, which means in injury terms, your average rate of fire wouldn’t even take him up an injury category. Additionally, you add power armour to the mix though… you need to do a least ten points of damage to actually hit so to even lightly injure him, you need to do twice the amount of normal damage…
He on the other hand could throw a lead pipe at someone with his strength score, and kill them. He crippled one of my follower, not by attacking him, shooting at him, or anything else, but by running through him on his way to someone else. His crippling of my Inquisitorial Henchmen was incidental!
So yeah actual marines their biggest constraint is time. They can only kill so many people in a given time, they will kill all of those orks, it is just will those orks kill the guardsmen before he stops them.
I also played inquisitor and made my own space marine based on the Artemis model.
I remember a game that I killed an opponent by throwing a rock. You could even spit somebody to death if you wanted to.
The Legion of the Damned are the remnants of the Fire Hawks theory just doesn’t hold up. The Fire Hawks participated in the Badab War in 912 M41 and didn’t vanish until 963 M41. The legion of the Damned have been around an awfully lot longer than that. Their CODEX mentions that Inquisitor Quixos who was eliminated by Gregor Eisenhorn had a theory on their existance as basically Daemonic entities vreated by the emperors will and he was killed way back in 312 M41. So they were known and discussed amongs certain circles at least 600 years before teh Fire Hawks vanished.
Thats a cool bit of Info @artyengineer
Certainly deserves further investigation. I love the suggestion that they are indeed a manifestation of the Emperors Will @firearchon. Daemons fighting for the Imperium!
Trying to dredge my memory for the details of the novel ‘Legion of the Damned’. Think that seemed to suggest they were re-incarnated Space marines from various chapters.
I got that from the Novel also. They also made an appearance in one of Graham McNeil Ultramarine Novels where it was mentioned that under the fire blackened layer on the Armor could been seen ancient and faded heraldry.
I`ve always loved the Legion of the Damned, and i`ve read every bit of back ground fluff i come across at least half a dozen times (if not more). The thing i`ve always found is, the back ground fluff made “Space Marines” look like it would take a whole tank company to take some of them down, but when applied to the table top forget tanks………all`s you needed was a “Grott with a gun bigger then he was”.
So going by what @Warren said, i`d like to see a battle report of say Imperial Guard V`s Ork`s with at least 2 Space marines (Legion of the Damned) deep striking in on turn 3. So we could have @AJ using I.G and @Warren using Ork`s, it would make for some interesting viewing.
As for designing your own “Chapter”, i started (not quite finished just yet) a few year`s back. So once i`ve got my new laptop up and running this weekend, i`ll get some picks sorted and posted up for you guy`s.
Yes, movie marines!
I think the old 40k said there was one marine per inhabited planet in the Imperium (?)
Ian Watson ‘Space Marine’ had the Hive citizens never seeing Astartes except in Holo-Vids and Stained Glass devotional shrines (?)
This White Dwarf had a big impact on me when I was a kid. The idea of a lone Marine Bat- Manning it about the place like Snake Plissken. I think these were Confrontation (Pre Necromunda) rules?
https://imgv2-2-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/260463968/original/630c341014/1464811841
Still got the Special Character from 2nd/3rd Ed of SGT Attica Centurius, Keeper of the Animus Malorum. the last time I dusted off my legion I did use the movie marines stats for the legion. They were truly terrifying on the battlefeild.
The Animus was originally a piece of wargear carried by Sgt Centurius, who was only available for 1 day sometime back in the early 90’s
It’s the skull he’s carrying in the above pic
I think that might be the first death company model ive seen without his helmet on.