12 replies to this topic

[shiwan8]

Because I can't figure it out, apparently: So, how do people utilize the legion specific tool kit successfully?

[Commissar K.]

Good question indeed, now first things first, I think that if you like the narrative design Word Bearers have your an awesome player. I also think that for whatever reason GW's design team could not think of something good as Word Bearer's Legion Trait and the general way how these have anti synergy for Legion Traits currently. Leading to me believing that your simply better of not bothering about or with the Legion Trait at all.

Luckily being a Word Bearer does not end there and the acces to Stratagems, Artefacts and Warlord Traits actually remains and I feel you should make good use of it. The beautiful thing is that Daemons have some great synergy with us and we do with them.

First things first, forget about CSM or Cultists Troops and just stack for the Daemons. With them now all being largely 7 points you can be certain that all flavours add a nice ammount of power. To me all flavours have a function so use them to your advantage. One of the few bonusses here is the guarantee the Word Bearer Stratagem gives to you and another is how well The Voice of Lorger works on your Daemon Prince for both Chaos Space Marines and Daemons. As a result I would strongly consider using at least two Daemon Princes, maby more. One for the Warlord entry, likely with the Slaanesh mark and Elixer, the other likely with the Slaanesh Mark aswell, being the fire support brute that can act if they are threated in melee.

In general my advice would be as a Word Bearer player to not really care about the mix of Chaos marks, mix of Daemons and as such pick the best out of the book without any restrictions. Using this to your advantage should open enough space to have a lot of CP and also have cheap Troop choices and focus the Word Bearer power in Elites and Heavies. There are many good Stratagems and because your not limited to any in particular I feel you should pick the best and profit from that.

Hope that helped a little. I think Slaanesh offers the most as a Mark in itself in Codex Chaos Space Marines, enough to make the Legion Trait 'bonus' largely irrelevant.

 

[shiwan8]

Thanks for the advice. That sounds a lot like "use a different legion trait for them" to be honest. You do not get to keep legion traits and have daemons as troops in the same detachment. As fluffy as it would be it does not work that way....unless they updated the FAQ yesterday to allow this. Which is a problem since the idea was to make specifically WB work. Then again, the trait is useless so maybe it's just more WB to not use it and to take something useful instead.

 

The tactics look solid though. I'll have to look into them.

[Commissar K.]

Well, to some extend this is true, in my opinion the Word Bearer Legion Trait is the worst of the CSM Legion Traits. Also in part because a Hellbrute doesn't benifit from it at all. I think Word Bearers have their uses however, but mainly for a Detachment and less so for a whole 1500+ point army. Not going "full Legion" has several advantages too. The Word Bearer Stratagem doesn't force you to have a full Detachment of Word Bearers to be used, all it needs is a Word Bearer. Likewise there are many Stratagems available to you the moment you purposefully do not create a full Legion Detachment, so again it's not only "downsides". 

In many cases I think it's easy to underestimate how good certain Stratagems are and in quite some cases certain Stratagems are better as Legion Traits. The use of Stratagems is offcourse restricted to your CP but it's also not difficult to obtain CP and Legion Traits only benifit Chaos Space Marine Daemon Princes, Infantry, Bikers and Hellbrutes, so the moment your not going to use much of any of those your really not missing out on too much. 

[shiwan8]

All true. My problem with that is that I'm an all in kind of a person. I don't feel comfortable with mixing legions even though there's nothing wrong with that. The feel I get from that is that at that moment I'm contributing to the problems of the game in a bad way by cherry picking my optimal stuff from who ever does it best.

So, for me it's WB or no army at all, as restrictive as that may sound. That's why I'm looking for answers to this "how to make use of a even more useless trait than soulblaze was" dilemma.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

=][= Tacticas don't belong in the army list sub-forum.  Thread moved to the Chaos Space Marines board. =][=

[Withershadow]

Sometimes you kind of have to mix Legions.  For example a friend of mine has a bunch of badass Nurgle Obliterators, but they can no longer take them as Death Guard.  So he's taking a separate detachment for all his Obliterators as a generic Chaos detachment.  If he wanted to be obnoxious, he could also just take them as Alpha Legion and say the -1 to hit is due to flies.

[Juggernut]

I played my army as Word Bearers during my first 2 games (only 3 total), and man their trait made no difference whatsoever. For MSU CSM, didn't matter. For big cultist blobs, didn't matter. As it happened I was running a Slaaneshi daemon prince with the elixir, and he is pretty damn good, but being from a WB list meant nothing. I ran them as Emperor's Children in game 3, and striking first didn't end up mattering in that game, but you can't tell me that isn't a good ability.

Haven't tried summoning yet, don't really see the point. If the WB stratagem for summoning was part of the Legion trait, I'd see a point. Since I only own/play daemons of Khorne, I feel I'm better off starting my thirster/hounds/crushers on the table, so summoning completely.

World Eaters are my preferred legion, but for a second I really wanted to give WB a go. It's just... pretty much every other choice has some sort of meaningful benefit, can't help but feel that I'd be intentionally gimping myself. I wish it wasn't the case. Maybe by the time the second Chapter Approved comes out, they'll come to their senses. I'll just stick with my instinct of playing World Eaters until/if that day comes.

[Panzer]

Mixing Legions is not a bad thing. It's what people are supposed to do. The reason why faction keywords exist. Either you mix and have to split your buffs etc. between the different detachments, or you go with only one Legion and everyone can benefit from everything.

 

However if you don't like it from a fluff-/narrative-perspective that's a whole different topic and of course a very valid point to consider.

[Commissar K.]

All true. My problem with that is that I'm an all in kind of a person. I don't feel comfortable with mixing legions even though there's nothing wrong with that. The feel I get from that is that at that moment I'm contributing to the problems of the game in a bad way by cherry picking my optimal stuff from who ever does it best.

So, for me it's WB or no army at all, as restrictive as that may sound. That's why I'm looking for answers to this "how to make use of a even more useless trait than soulblaze was" dilemma.

I don't see mixing things up as a problem to the game, as in many cases it has become the game and it has been part of many pieces of narrative too. However I do fully understand the wish for a mono-looking army that feels complete. At the same time for a gaming perspective you should also try to make as much use of Detachments and Stratagems aswell. Which is where Word Bearers do have a good set of tools for particular armies.

If it's all in Word Bearers CSM (no Daemons also) you are working with a less optimized list in general. What you could however go for is something that is very Cultist heavy (they still have some benifit from this Trait) to fill up Troop slots for a cheap cost and go heavy on the Elite and Heavy part, most Heavy units don't get Trait benifits anyway. 

This could still lead to an interesting army in my opinion. Where you basically try to outshoot your opponent and have a great grasp on objectives due to 3 units of 10 Cultists in the backfield. The real question then becomes what kind of army you'd envision.

[Lord Asvaldir]

Honestly I don't think Word Bearer's don't really have specific tactics or a specific army list build. It's basically just a legion where you play codex: CSM and get the standard space marine reroll moral rule, which is occasionally useful but often not so much. That being said, I don't think that means WB players need to go and mix their army with other legion detachments. I'm a dedicated WB fan and I have no interest in say adding an AL detachment just because their rules are better. If you're going to do that though you just have to accept our rules aren't great. Yeah, we get a small bonus to summoning if you want to use it, and our artifact is super solid for one of your melee focused characters, but that's about it. Far better than not having rules at all though.  

[Panzer]

Yeah Word Bearers and Black Legion both are more or less "generic" Chaos Marine armies without anything to really specialise in. Tho I'd take more Cultists and daemonic marine units in a Word Bearers army and more Elite non-daemonic marine units in a Black Legion army just for fluff reasons. ^^

[Lord Asvaldir]

Yeah I take cultists and daemon engines every time just for fluff reasons, been trying to experiment with possessed but still just not happy with them despite their buff considering how much better terminators are as an assault unit.