daveNYC

How much Just As Planned is there in this one? I liked the first two well enough, they just had twists towards the ends that came off as some Deus Ex actions since they hadn't even been hinted at earlier. I don't mind doing the 'what you thought was wrong' thing, but I don't like it when there's nothing the reader gets to notice that the twist is being setup. Makes the whole thing feel cheap.

I think the issue is that some of the cults don't have good representation outside of the troops slot. Specifically 1k Sons and Noise Marines. Noise weapons for anything with a Slaanesh mark and all units in the army being either Slaanesh or unmarked would have been nice. Something similar involving sorcerer covens for Elite and/or HS and Rubric Termis would have been nice too. For the legions HQ choices like this would be nice: Iron Warriors - Cover save debuff, something like the Master of Ordinance though, not the Techmarine stuff that the current Warpsmith gets. Alpha Legion - Cell Leader: Cultists get better gear, maybe some infiltrate mojo and redeploy shenanigans like Lady Malys? Word Bearers - Dark Apostle: Cultists are Fearless, leadership buff for you and leadership debuff for enemy? Night Lords - Fear, lots of Fear, and leadership debuffs. And can see in the dark too. And the above choices would be exclusive, so if you choose a legion HQ, no picking a second HQ from that list for mix and match. I dunno, the CSM codex is what it is, and it's going to be that way for years to come, so I guess I'll just have to deal. I just don't like that the cults feel incomplete, the HQs seem like very 'rough' matches for some legion traits, and there's a whole lot of 'counts-as' involving the marks for them to work out for all units (Slaaneshi Oblits taking the MoN which is counting-as Combat Drugs). I mean it works, but it doesn't work smoothly and involves paying no attention to the man behind the curtain, which makes me a sad panda.

Trotsky managed to make it to Mexico City before he got ice axed. What he didn't do was raise a major military force that could have challenged Stalin for leadership.

I dunno, I'm detecting some moving goalposts. This argument has gone from 'legions don't exist' to 'the pre-heresy command structure of the legions doesn't exist', and really, what legions are about for most people are the combat tactics, style of warfare, motivation, and personality of each legion. When people say that the IW exist as a legion, they mean that there is a big group of guys who are paranoid siege freaks who hate the Imperium but don't have any great love of Chaos. Same as when they say that the WB are a bunch of marines who are totally into the religious aspects of Chaos and are looking to spread the 'good word' to the entire galaxy. The fact that the IW on Medrengard spend half their time shooting at each other or that Erebus and Kor Phaeron are actively trying to backstab each other doesn't enter into it.

The only Primarchs that I know that have done anything in post-Heresy fluff are Angron, Fulgrim, and Magnus. Mortarion just shows up to be Worfed in the GK codex, so I'm not counting that. I wouldn't list any of them as having a tight reign over what remains of their legions. Of the three, Magnus is the only one who might be able to actually lead his guys on some mission. If Fulgrim or Angron rolled out, they'd be able to bring a lot of WE or EC with them, but I think that'd be more due to the nature of those cults than any loyalty to their Primarch. The 'legions no longer exist' argument always gets my goat. It states that all legions have fractured into warbands, while totally ignoring the fact that at least two of the legions (Iron Warriors and Word Bearers) have only splintered into smaller groups that still call themselves by their original legion name, and that their warband size is equal or larger than an entire loyalist chapter. The Iron Warriors have broken down into Grand Company sized uints that still call themselves Iron Warriors and are big fans of siegeworks and fortifications, but no legion rules for you.