Over the last few months I’ve been lucky enough to play a few games of Legions Imperialis, Games Workshop’s 2023 epic scale game set in the Horus Heresy (aka. that time all the chads and chuds in powered armour were slapping one another about). I actually picked up a copy last year, but it took me a good six months to build and paint everything in the starter box. Life is hard, ok.
My opponent for both games was the inestimable Michael Halila, and he’s written some great battle reports over on his blog, Freodom. I won’t attempt to recreate the wheel, but I will summarise a few of my own thoughts regarding both games.
Our first game (Michael’s batrep here) saw the entire official contents of the starter box against a more customised force. I write “official contents” because if you’re smart, liek mee, you will have stuck 4 rather than 5 infantry models to each base for your Terminators, Assault Marines and Missile Support. That gets you 3 bases rather than 2 for every pair of infantry sprues, an approach that will further pay off when you decide you want to field 8 bases of Assault Marines. You get 2 bases per Eur41 box of infantry, so that’s Eur164 for 8 bases or Eur123 for 9 bases. Yep.
I didn’t take a photo of my entire army ranked up in parade formation, so here they are deployed in my corner. I decisively lost this game, with 38 to 59 VP by the end of turn 3, at which point I officially conceded. We played a bit longer just so my last Warhound titan could try to do something (and it did! It shot at a tank, achieving little, and then got blown up). It certainly helped that my opponent had a wider pool of detachments to draw upon and could tailor it to my weaknesses, such as my total lack of anti-air, but I also made bad decisions like investing over a third of my points into two titans that I not only equipped poorly, I then under-utilised out of fear of losing them; I also marched a bunch of infantry across open ground toward enemy guns (thematic, but ineffective).
More importantly, we both had a great time playing Legions! Although it’s not a simple game by any means, it does have a quite accessible basic ruleset, with a lot of the sauce and seasoning sitting in various special rules. It’s also, for one of GW’s big games, unusual in that it utilises alternating activations. This is so much more engaging for both players, as it means you are rarely waiting a long time before you can do something. During play we forgot a lot of details, handled some of our mistakes with gentleman’s agreements, and for the most part the game flowed well.
We shared some conclusions from our experience: that weapons which deny cover are amazing for clearing out garrisons, that the building destruction mechanics are fun, that air power is not to be overlooked, that it’s a lethal game where a lot of stuff will die fast, and finally that melee just feels inferior to shooting. I do hope to figure out better opportunities for melee as thematically it’s so fun, but our experiences so far are that you’re better off just pointing guns at stuff than taking the time to get melee detachments where they need to be. Actually, I am jumping ahead a bit here, because my strategy for our second game had melee as one of its two pillars…
Once again I have no photo of my army pre-game, so here they are deployed. As you can see life was again hard and thus I have fielded some unpainted models, by which I mean our dear friends the White Scars loaned us some vehicles.
I had two desires for our rematch: firstly, to fly what I repeatedly referred to as a “Thunderhawk Funship” across the game board so it could “poop Assault Marines where they are least wanted”. I’m a classy guy. Secondly, to drive an armoured column into the enemy. Sorry, I mean THE armoured column. You think your column is armoured? I’d ask you to hold my beer, but my beer is actually two Mastodons, two Baneblades, four Leman Russ, two Malcadors, four Vindicators, four Kratos and three Predators. That is a lot of tanks and tank-adjacent things (let’s call them RFVs: Ridiculous Fighting Vehicles).
(Read Michael’s full batrep here.) Although the mission we rolled changed things somewhat – we each had an entire board half for deployment and could deploy almost next to one another – I broadly executed my strategy as envisioned. The Mastodons plodded up the centre and disgorged Terminators and Contemptors, which charged vulnerable opponents. The Auxilia armour focused on shooting at my opponent’s (terrifying!) Reaver Titan and any building containing the perfidious, cowardly enemy. The Thunderhawk ended up also deploying its infantry contingent in the centre to try and hobble the enemy advance, rather than dropping them on an isolated objective, as I didn’t fancy their chances against the titan, which was covering the most isolated enemy objective.
As mentioned earlier, we’ve found that melee… ain’t great. Success in melee means that you’re a big fat target in the shooting that follows. Congratulations! Now you are dead. It’s very 40k, but doesn’t really encourage use of melee. The Assault Marines died fast and achieved little; they killed some Predators which is a decent points trade, if you ignore the cost of their transport to get to the fight. Mind you, the ‘hawk is pretty well armed and mobile, so it did its fair share of shooting including bravely shooting the Reaver in the back. My Terminators and Contemptors did a little better, neutralising the enemy artillery and a command tank, but the melee highlight was probably the Reaver fighting the Mastodons – an engagement I described as akin to being bumped in the shin by a shoebox. It wasn’t sensible, but it was fun.
The armoured column did great. The Reaver soaked up a ton of Auxilia firepower, but despite the distraction the mortal armoured vehicles and Mastodons also did a great job levelling several buildings full of infantry, absorbing enemy fire, and battering the Kratos and Predators in the center. The Vindicators were supposed to handle the building-levelling, but it turns out that there are these Admech infantry with multi-meltas that can trivially kill four Vindicators if they are within 6 inches, so they didn’t get to do anything at all. Oops.
I had a very tough turn one with some truly abysmal dice rolling, and circa turn two I was unconvinced I could turn things around. I’d lost all my Vindicators, all my Deredeos, all my Predators, and a smattering of other models, plus my Thunderhawk was wounded, leaving it barely hanging on. My melee assault was already running on fumes, and I was threatened on one objective I was certain I’d lose. Between that and a gap of 13 victory points, I was convinced that defeat was inevitable.
With that said, I’ll remind myself of this battle whenever I am feeling despondent about how a game is going. Because after turn two I was still convinced of defeat, but my opponent and a guest felt otherwise. Come turn three, things were indeed swinging my way. My bad luck on the dice had ended (I recall it bit my opponent on turn three or four), and as we fought on I was able to hold on to all home field objectives, eliminate most of the other heavy hitters I was facing including the Reaver, and ultimately secure two more objectives.
It feels to me that titans are a bit overcosted for what they can actually achieve, but it’s plausible that we just aren’t playing them well. What is undeniable is that if you take one, you are passing on multiple other detachments. Air power stands out as a more obvious strength or must-have; my strategy of having multi-role AA with the Mastodons and Deredeos feels potentially inferior to just bringing more of my own planes, although losing the Deredeos to a single rocket strike meant they, like the Vindicators, never got to do anything. Next time I might drop a few tanks, maybe one superheavy, in order to bring at least one more Xiphon interceptor. We’ll see, though: I’m happy playing thematically. Did I need two Mastodons? No. But are they the most Imperial Fist thing I could have brought outside of “a wall”? Yes. Yes they are.
I’ve really enjoyed my time playing Legions thus far, and I think it’s likely to be my only big, army-based game for the foreseeable. The models are really fun to build, paint and admire, and seeing everything arrayed on the tabletop is great. I’m also very happy I bought a folding gaming table for the full 6’x4′ experience, as well as a playmat and lots of buildings to make things more visually and tactically interesting. Most importantly, I’m very happy to have a friend who is as excited about the game as I am! We also have one or two others who may be dipping toes into these civil war-stricken waters, which will hopefully lead to more fun games in future.
