Codex: Alpha Legion Discussion, Help us make our very own codex

---Just an idea for organization---

as much as i love 33page threads with lots of information in them.. would it be possible for us to organize some threads into neat piles of information and options??
for instance, we could go with something like:
Special Rules
Wargear
HQ units and special characters
Troop Choices
Elite Choices
Fast Attack
Heavy Support

and of course we could have a space for Specialists and axillary units you can use alongside the Alpha legionaries.

so either their own threads, or their own subforums where we could post ideas as individual threads.
Just a thought!

Ranger_Slythe: Read the last few pages and you can pretty much see where we stand on everything. We just need a few more slots filled in the army list and we're ready to playtest. If you have any ideas for the things we're still missing please let us know.

This thread has just about outlived its usefulness though. I figured once we start playtesting we can start a new thread where we shoot around ideas and get the wrinkles ironed out.

Eetion: You can't judge a book by it's cover man! Spikey Marines this is definitely not. And you and I are thinking alike as far as your other ideas. Hey, you're a big Tzeentch guy... got any good ideas for the Sorcerer?

And Warp, thanks for the info. I'm sure whenever I get around to posting stuff I'll screw up something and will require your help until I get the swing of things.

Which brings me to the good news and the bad news... The good news is my wife is coming back from her trip early! The bad news is that I was going to type stuff out tonight and now I won't have time.

I'm working all weekend so... maybe Sunday night?

With regards to the Sorceror, id say, keep the basics the same... so all the Chaos powers minus the God Specific ones of Slanesh and Nurgle... I know it seems biased of me but Tzeentch is the God of manipulation... It makes sense, wreas Slannesh and Nurgle are a it more specialised.

How about a General Power...
Decieve... 40 points
The Sorceror extends his mind into the warp, confusing the senses and reactions of those who wish harm upon his Legion. Flanking Forces are ignored, and deceptions cloud the judgements of the foe,darkness allowing the Alpha Legion to move their pieces into play.

Any all friendly units within 18 inch, Anyone wishing to shoot or assault a Squad of AL CSM, Terminators, Havocs, Chosen, Bikes or Cultists (Operatives- insert Legion troop type here) must test to see if the deception is recognised.

Both players roll a D6 and add the Ld of the troops wishing to shoot/assault, while the Legion roll a D6 and add the target units Ld.

If the Alpha Legion roll is higher than the enemy roll, the deception is maintained and they are not noticed or recognised as friendly, they may not be shot or assaulted by that unit.

This spell ends immediately if any unit with decieve shoots or assaults an enemy.

Eetion made a comment and it's really been making me think:

I have long felt this way as well but thought if we could just finish out the army list then at least we would have something to start playing with. But that just leaves us with a bunch of units without a stable center to hold them all together.

So I'm putting the completion of the last few units on the backburner to focus on creating army-wide special rules. I don't think it's impossible to to make an Alpha Legion army play like an Alpha Legion army on the tabletop. There are a lot of good ideas in this thread that have never been properly developed or utilised and I'm going to find a way to tie a lot of that together to create something we can all be satisfied with.

On another note, creating some new missions has been mentioned and I think that's a great idea. But to help speed this process along I'm not going to work on new missions. They're not necessary for the completion of the Codex so if anybody wants to work on those have at it.

Thanks to undercover member Tekeino, I've just noticed this topic was lost in the warp; barring a serious investigation, I've pinned it here as a short term option.

furthermore, Tekeino came up with the following special character, with a view to adding it to the codex:

Lord of the Operation 190pts
WS 6 BS 5 S4 T4 W3 I5 A3 Ld10 Sv 2+

Wargear: Artificer Armour, Frag, Krak and Defensive Grenades, Meltabombs, Eye of the Operative and the Annihilator of Foes.

Eye of the Operative:
Range 24” Str 8 AP 1 Assault 1, Melta, The Eye of the Operative grants a bonus power weapon attack in Close Combat.

The Annihilator of Foes:
Range 36” Str 5 Ap3 Assault 3

Special Rules:

Master of the Ambush:
At the start of the Alpha Legion players deployment, he may select D3+1 units to deploy via the Outflank USR.
or
For all units rolling to enter table sides with the out flank ability, roll a d6, on a 3+ they come on whatever side you choose.
Tekeino came up with this second rule to replace the first, but I've put them both in here for comparisson.

Multi-Tasking:
Lord of the Operation may fire both The Eye of the Operative and the Annihilator of Foes at separate targets each shooting phase.


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What do you guys think about this character?

Lots of interesting ideas here. I've had a quick scan through the thread, though due to various medical complications I am an appaling reader and so am likely to have missed something, but in regards to Sorcerer's; how about, as opposed to actual psychic powers we did something along the lines of what the Tempus Fugitives did in their pre heresy rules pack with White Scar Stormseers and give them the ability to bestow one of numerous Universal special rules (furious charge, counter attack etcetera) on nearby squads?
Whilst I accept our Legion would use Sorcery, pragmatists that we are, it seems a bit too 'random' almost to gel with the careful plans the Alpha's are (in)famous for. I'm not sure how it could be explained background wise-someone wiser than I in terms of fluff would need to handle that-but it would make an interesting alternative to 'regular' Chaos Psykers. In the opinion of the operative anyway.

Just my $0.02. (or should that be 2p?)

I like what has been done a lot, and I would be very happy to lend a hand playtesting once the rest of the list has been finished. I have to say I am still a big fan of the mission HQs, they just seemed like an awesome dynamic to differentiate from othe Marine armies.

Also with that special character above, his second version of special rule affects ALL units outflanking? So that means being able to choose sides for enemy outflankers on a 3+. Seems quite cool whether intended or not.

I know that discussions are almost over on the codex, but one of the ideas I've toying with in my head, according to my own fluff, I essentially Whirlwinds with special smoke-producing missiles. Fire off the missile like you would any other large blast-marker weapon and suddenly you have a small patch of cover where ever you want, minus scatter of course. To me it seems to be a real games changer, and should be accounted for of course, but is exactly the kind of thing that opposing generals couldn't account for. Especially if we were to use the smoke launcher rules, you have both the defensive of giving a cover-less squad cover; along with the ability of forcing a enemy squad to not shoot, even if they have the 5+-4+ (can't remember which) for one turn.
I am of course completely open to suggestions here.
-X-

That sounds like a very cool idea

I like the idea of a special scenario where each turn you place a large template to count as smoke, then replace it with a smaller one the next turn as it starts to disappate (with random movement of course!) Would end up with a very smaky battlefield by the end of the game!

My only concern would be that it would ake up a lot of space on the battlefield; true LOS would mean that you should go with some cool 3 dimensional markers for such some, which would be easily done with cotton wool. the downside of this though is thtaht it would actually take up a lot of space on the table that should really be reserved for models/scenery, and as you wouldn't be able to have your own models moving into/through the smoke itself. You could go with flat (paper/card) templates, but taht takes out come of the true LOS rules with abstraction, and although I can'yt think of any conflicting exmaplkes right now, I bet there are some out there...

Still, makes me want to think about printing out some card templates.... if only I had a printer

my personal opinion of how an AL codex would function would to combine the vanilla SM codex with Imp Guards (cultists) with no daemons, icons, or any rule that supports the use of forces beyond the mortal realm (like the emperor's faith and the chaos gods) basically like ultra stealth space marines, with chaos marine stats

Behold my powers of threadomancy!

I'm not going to get into where I've been or why I've been gone so long...
Let's just say it was a deep cover mission to a place called real life and it sucked...
Had to put down the hobby for awhile, thought it might have been permanent. Then the Dark Gods decided to smile upon me...

But I wasn't about to rear my ugly head around here again without some sort of offering... a little something to bring me back into the fold proper...

WIP thread updated with new entries.

Okay, this Codex should be playable as is, but it still needs some work. I added in a section for Special Rules below the Wargear section. Something Warp posted about the rules for Lord of the Operation caught my eye:

I had thought about making this an army-wide rule but with a roll of 4+ instead of 3+.

I also thought of modifying the Deep Strike Scatter to a single D6 and changing the Deep Strike Mishap results to Misplaced on a roll of 1-3 and Delayed on a 4-6. All this of course is to represent the hallmark coordination of the Alpha Legion on the battlefield, but without being too over the top.

Infiltrate is also something that I think could be implemented a bit more throughout the list. I know we wanted to stay away from such a one-trick pony, but its exclusion in a few places just doesn't make sense. I changed the Legionnaires to have Infiltrate in their points cost, as the only reason they couldn't have it was because they might be carrying a heavy weapon. But the Suppression Squad could have heavies and still infiltrate, so I made the change. I'm also thinking of giving Infiltrate to the Raptors and Bikers.

Another immediate problem is where we've borrowed entries directly from C:CSM and denied them access to Icons without giving them anything else in return. They could gain from the above Special Rules in order to balance the points cost out.

Hey Aristeo, nice to see you back

And good to see you working on this too

I'm not sure that balancing out (pointswise) is needed; as C:CSM have to pay for their icons, maybe a base comparison is still the same? Not dismissing the idea of adding infiltrate, etc, but it may need a slight 1/2 points increase by itself, prbably more on Raptors/bikes because of their increased range as a result of infiltrating.

Not sure on teh decrease in deep strike scatter, but that's porbably from the point of view that I'd like to encourage the use of Cultists and their own icons to use in this regard. However the loss of a destroyed result I can understand, but am worried it could look cheesy from 'outside' the AL fanbase?

Armywide outflank increase I like

My internet has been out and I'm typing this from my phone (which I hate).

If the armywide outflank increase sounds good should it be 3+ or 4+?

And I was half asleep when I wrote my last post, you're right Warp those units pay for those abilities. I was thinking more along the lines of those units being denied options and having nothing to choose as an alternative. So if they get an outflank boost and infiltrate the points cost will have to go up.

Also we need to look at how we have the Legionnaire units we've created and how they differ from units we're borrowing from C:CSM. There's a discrepancy in Ld and upgrade options. Another problem is that in light of new background from The Serpent Beneath, now we know that the Alpha Legion did in fact have Sergeants leading their squads where we do not.

Any thoughts?

I haven't read this yet so am avoiding all reference to it here at the moment