“This Horde of Raiders and Thieves”: A Black Legion Civil War

For a long time, a few of my pals outside the Aaronorium group have been musing over getting into Kill Team by way of a narrative campaign.

It’s still a long way from happening (if ever…) but so far it’s been lurking in the back of my head by the working title This Horde of Raiders and Thieves. I noted the name down a while ago when I was going to use it as a title for a short story based around several Traitor Legion commanders sharing their revulsion about the rise of the Black Legion, which – not entirely unfairly – the Traitor Legions tend to regard with a mix of irritated jealousy, bitter awe, and absolute disgust.

“This horde of raiders and thieves… Spreading throughout the Empire of the Eye with tumorous inevitability. These plunderers and pirates… Turning the shame of their treachery into a chorus of celebrated sins; each virtue pitted, cracked, corroded. With every fibre of my being do I despise these bannerless renegades unworthy of the colours they cast aside…” 

But I digress.

I’m saving their names and backgrounds for the update when they’re painted. (When? If…?) For now, here are the survivors of the warship Infitior. 

Effectively, this would be a Kill Team campaign set around the advance scouts or last survivors of several Black Legion warbands, all sworn to different warlords, doing what Chaos Marines do best: kicking the unholy shit out of each other in the name of petty rivalries while pretending they’re oh-so-above such things. Where’s the Vengeful Spirit? Right… Time to start dicking over your rivals in the east while Abaddon is looking west.

We’d be loosening the rules to better represent the Black Legion as the overwhelmingly huge and insanely diverse host that it is in the lore. The rough thinking here is that you can take 125pts. of anything with the [CHAOS] keyword from the KT Rulebook or KT: Elites. We’re avoiding KT: Commanders.

Since it’s more of a modelling/gaming project than a tournament-balanced one, we’ve also talked about using slightly bigger bases for the sake of making them stand out a little more.

There’ll likely be some seriously inefficient synergies when you house-rule things that drastically, but since everyone’s bound to the same deal, that’s not much of a worry. I don’t really know many peeps that choose things based on perceived tournament effectiveness. Pretty much everyone I know chooses lists by a loose equation of Relevant Lore + Cool Models + Idea For An Army = “I’m doing this.”

My kill team is made up of the remnants of two nearly-destroyed squads, part of a crusade force that just had its arse kicked by a rival Black Legion army. These ragged survivors are reluctant to return without a serious win in their back pocket, so they’re staying behind enemy lines to inflict some pain and claw back a little glory.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

I’m hoping Ross does a painting guide for his Slaves to Darkness, because I’d quite like to try doing my kill team in the same colours.

As you can probably tell, there’s a bit of kitbashing going on. I wanted the Black Legion’s incarnations of classic units to look, well, a little different from their traditional appearances, less completely god-sworn, and more of a matching aesthetic with their frontline Chaos Marine brethren.

To that end, the Plague Marines are clearly Nurgle-dedicated, clearly a little more plagued than your average Marked follower, but less obscenely bloated like most Death Guard. Similarly, the Rubric Marines don’t have the slender ostentation of the new Thousand Son kits, and instead more resemble the ragged, Eye-warped mercenary vibe of Clint Langley’s Rubricae artwork, and the rest of the Black Legion.

Not vast changes or anything, but enough to make the Black Legion versions stand out and give a bit of a 2nd Edition-y feel, which is the goal.

So that’s the boys built. We’ll see how it goes in terms of finding time to paint them, though. I’ve got a few things ahead of them in the queue, as I’ve started trying to catch up with Col and Ross for our Path to Glory campaign, cased around Chaos warlords in the classic style. More on that next week.

Farewell, beloved peeps and creeps.