This is a companion article to our larger Start Competing: Chaos Space Marines article. In this article, we’re looking specifically at the Alpha Legion traitor legion and how to manage their custom rules and strategies.

The Alpha Legion were the darlings of the Chaos Legions through most of 8th edition but their value waned in 9th, though they still had a few cool tricks and plenty of play. With the release of the 9th edition version of Codex: Chaos Space Marines they’ve received an updated set of rules that give them an improved legion trait (that affects vehicles!). Thematically they’re a legion that favors stealth, duplicity, and subterfuge, and their rules on the table reflect that.

Table of Contents

Legion Overview

The Alpha Legion are far from the strongest of the legions in the 9th edition codex but they still have a number of interesting tricks they can resort to and some unique abilities that do more than just make them melee monsters. They’re more challenging to play with, but can definitely be more rewarding as well.

Strengths

Defense. The Alpha Legion trait gives an army wide defensive buff (-1 to hit based on distance), and they have a few other ways to boost the defense of individual units, such as the Icon of the Hydra Cult, the Conceal Stratagem, the Drakescale Plate, and the Clandestine Warlord Trait. The ability to Fall Back and declare an action or charge also helps ensure you’re able to disengage without losing much functionality.
Movement. The Alpha Legion have access to several great tools for movement and positioning. In addition to being able to fall back and action/charge or shoot (via Stratagem), you have access to a pre-game move and the ability to go back into Strategic Reserves. They also have arguably the best re-deploy in the entire game.
Cultists. The Alpha Legion have a few neat tricks they can do with Cultiststo make them better, and some of their key stratagems key off INFANTRY rather than CORE.

Weaknesses

Offensive Buffs: The Alpha Legion don’t really have combat buffs the way other legions do – their stratagems don’t improve your damage output, and neither does their legion trait (at least directly). In terms of offensive power, this is the weakest of the legions.

CP Thirsty. A lot of the best Alpha Legion tricks are Stratagems, and half of their Stratagems cost 2+ CP. That means you’ll frequently find yourself unable to use all of them, forcing you to pick and choose your spots. You also are likely setting aside some pre-game CP for the re-deploy trait and pre-game moves, so you’re even more limited in pre-game CP expenditure than most Legions.

Rules

The Alpha Legion are masters of stealth and guerilla warfare, typically relying on covert ops to get the job done and sending forward operatives to lead cultist uprisings to destabilize planets ahead of their arrival. Their rules reflect this, giving them a variety of rules that affect movement and positioning and how units enter and leave the table.

Legion Trait: Masters of Duplicity

Each time a ranged attack targets a unit with this trait, if the attacker is more than 12” away, subtract 1 from that attack’s hit roll. If the target unit contains any models with a wounds characteristic of 10+, then the attacker must be more than 18” away for this rule to apply.
Units with this trait are eligible to perform an action or declare a charge in a turn in which they Fell Back. If a unit with this trait declares a charge when it is performing an action, that action is still failed.

This is a decent ability, helping improve the durability of your units with regard to shooting and reducing the odds you’ll get shot off the table on turn 1 by opponents with long range and on tables where obscuring terrain is scarce. The downside here is that -1 to hit isn’t a massive change and can’t go beyond -1. Some armies can just ignore modifiers to hit, or opponents can take advantage of the limits to modifier stacking for BS to just advance or move knowing their hit odds can’t get worse. Giving a unit -1 to hit works best when you’re affecting the odds on a lot of shots. The Legion trait not stacking with Dense Cover (except to cancel out an opponent’s +1 to Hit) also means that on maps that already provide lots of Dense Cover in the middle that part of the Legion trait is much less useful.

The other half of this trait is solid; being able to disengage and re-engage with other targets can help you get the drop on them by getting off a new charge, avoid being tarpitted, or just reset positioning, and being able to fall back and action can help with things like the faction secondary (although you’re probably taking Retrieve Data or For The Dark Gods instead–more on that later).

That said, this trait does nothing for you offensively and very little to buff a specific unit or group of units. It tends to push you toward a longer distance playstyle of sitting back and shooting, but that’s not really what Chaos does best these days and so the net result is that this trait just isn’t very good for the army. The big winners of the Legion trait are fast skirmishing units like Bikers, Venomcrawlers, and Warp Talons that can tie up opposing units and then fall back to re-engage somewhere else. It’s not a bad set of buffs but pretty much every other trait brings more to the table.

Warlord Traits

Alpha Legion have access to some very solid Warlord Traits. Clandestine and Master of Diversion are particularly useful, while I Am Alpharius just isn’t what it used to be.

I Am Alpharius. When you pick this, you randomly generate another trait from a table of your choice this model can pick from (re-roll duplicates). When this model dies, you can immediately pick another ALPHA LEGION CHARACTER model from your army that doesn’t have a Trait and pick a Warlord Trait for that unit to gain that isn’t this one or a duplicate. Until the end of the battle, that unit counts as your WARLORD for all rules purposes and your warlord only counts as being destroyed if that new unit is killed. This is fun but this only works on the model you’ve picked as your Warlord and getting a random trait is just not a recipe for a good time. Can be fun if you want to play aggressively with a lot of characters and punish an opponent who thinks they can score Assassination against you, though. D
Clandestine. Each time an attack is made against this WARLORD, an unmodified hit roll of 1-3 always fails, irrespective of the weapon or any rules the attacking model has. Each time an attack is allocated to this WARLORD while receiving the benefits of cover, add an additional 1 to any armour saving throw made against that attack. This is an extremely good defensive buff; the “transhuman against hit rolls” upgrade is money for avoiding attacks from elite units that hit on a 2+, and the extra +1 to saves while you have the benefit of cover is also great. This goes great on a Lord Discordant or Daemon Prince, who love the hit roll debuff. And while they can’t get light cover from area terrain, they can get the benefits of dense cover (and the Daemon prince can avoid any penalty to move via the FLY keyword if he does so), ensuring they’ll still get the save bonus. You can also get them the benefit of light cover by using the Benediction of Darkness prayer from a Dark Apostle. A Lord Discordant with a 2+ save, only hittable on a 4+, rocking Armour of Contempt, Light cover, and an extra +1 to save will shrug off AP-4 shots on a 3+. Absolutely filthy. Add the Gorget Of Eternal Hate for an extra level of armor save if you want to never die to melta. B+
Headhunter. Each time this Warlord makes an ranged attack with a Rapid Fire or Pistol weapon, they can ignore the Look Out, Sir rule, they can re-roll wound rolls, and on an unmodified wound roll of 6, the target suffers 1 mortal wound in addition to any normal damage. In a vacuum, this is a great rule, but it depends a whole lot on what weapon options you can actually get for a character with the trait. And you have two options here: Viper’s Spite or a Combi-weapon (bolter or plasma). This is really made with Viper’s Spite in mind, as getting 6 Pistol shots at 18” and AP-3 seems like the best deal you’re going to get in terms of number of shots. Which means you’re able to ignore Look Out, Sir to the tune of 6 shots, likely getting 6 hits, and potentially doing a pair of mortal wounds each time you shoot, plus a couple more. That’s not terrible but it requires you invest 2 CP into the character to get and there are other, better ways to get more mortal wounds, like just taking Flames of Spite. C+
Master of Diversion. After both sides have deployed, in the Resolve Pre-battle Abilities step of the mission you are playing, you can select up to three ALPHA LEGION units from your army that are wholly within your deployment zone. Remove those units from the battlefield, then set them up anywhere on the battlefield that is wholly within your deployment zone and more than 9” away from any enemy models. If the mission uses the Strategic Reserves rules, any of those units can be placed into Strategic Reserves without having to spend any additional CPs, regardless of how many units are already in reserves. A redeploy is always a solid ability, and the ability to dump units into reserves is a welcome bonus. There are all kinds of mind games you can pull with this, baiting your opponent into more aggressive or conservative deployments as you need, then switching things up after you’ve done the roll-off for first turn (resolving pre-battle abilities happens after the deployment roll). Or, you can just use this as a way to stick high PL units like Lords Of Skulls into Strategic Reserves for just 1CP. A+
Cult Leader. In your Command phase you can pick one friendly ALPHA LEGION CULTISTS unit within 9” of this Warlord. Until the start of your next Command phase, each time a model in that unit makes an attack, add 1 to the hit roll and improve the AP by 1. This is a very solid buff on a unit of Accursed Cultists, who get a lot of mileage out of suddenly hitting on 3 and having AP-2 attacks on the Mutants and AP-3 on the Torments. It can also work on Traitor Guardsmen and Cultists Mobs, though it only really has value on a 20-model Cultist Mob squad that can make real use of hitting on 3s, and even then that’s with S3 AP-1 shots. If you’re using this, it’s for Accursed Cultists. B-
Covert Control. In your Command phase, select one friendly ALPHA LEGION CORE unit within 6” of this Warlord. Until the start of your next Command phase, that unit can perform an action and shoot without it failing and it gains the Objective Secured ability. If it already had Objective Secured, its models count as double for the purposes of control. This is a very good trait, and is perfect for Terminator and Bike units you want to use to control a key objective when you have to worry about something like War Dogs or Troupes getting up in your face and stealing control away with a single model. The ability to action and shoot is a great bonus. A+

Stratagems

Alpha Legion have some great Stratagems for positioning and objective control, but many of the ones you’ll use in-game cost 2+ CP. Keep that in mind as you plan out your turn and ration out your CP appropriately.

Conceal (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP/3 CP). Use at the start of your opponent’s Shooting phase. Pick an Alpha Legion INFANTRY unit in your army. Until the end of the phase, each time an enemy model shoots, if that unit is not the closest eligible target or within 12” of that model, then until that shooting is resolved, that model cannot target that unit. If that unit has a power rating of 10 or more, this costs 3 CP. As any Death Guard player will tell you, this is a strong ability, but very situational. The ability to turn off early game shooting against key units is great, and you’ll typically know immediately in the shooting phase if you want to use this, but using it will be heavily contingent on making sure you’ve set up closer targets to avoid being the closest eligible target. This also loses a lot of its value after rounds 1-2, as you’re more likely to be in your opponent’s face and a target they can just close within 12” against. This’ll probably give you the best returns when used to protect a unit of Possessed (7 PR for 5 models) on an early turn before it’s had a chance to charge. B
Deadly Ambush (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP). Use at the end of the Reinforcements step of your opponent’s Movement phase. Pick an enemy unit that arrived on the battlefield as Reinforcements this phase. Until the end of your next turn, each time an ALPHA LEGION model from your army makes an attack against that unit, add 1 to that unit’s hit roll. This is a really interesting twist on the “attacking units arriving as reinforcements” ability, and can be a hell of a deterrent for a unit trying to make a charge out of deep strike. It immediately marks the arriving unit as a juicy target for the rest of your army, and combos well with the ability to fall back and charge if you do get charged by an enemy unit hoping to stay tied up in melee. That said, the big challenge here is the 2 CP cost – it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll never combine this with Warp-Born Foresight, since spending 4 CP to have a Tzeentch-marked unit fire at an arriving unit is just too high a bill to pay. It’s a neat trick, and one that’s more likely to be something you don’t actually use – tell an opponent about this before the game and watch them think twice about even putting units in reserves to begin with. If you are using this, the best targets are going to be planes and other big units that your opponent tried to hide for a turn by putting them into Strategic Reserves. B
Coils of Deception (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP). Use in your Movement phase when an ALPHA LEGION CORE unit Falls Back. That unit is still eligible to Shoot this turn. This is a fine ability and really helpful when you need to drop back and shoot your Terminator’s combi-meltas at one target before charging another. A
Forward Operatives. Use in the Resolve Pre-battle Abilities step of the mission you’re playing. Select one ALPHA LEGION INFANTRY unit from your army. That unit can make a Normal move as if it were your Movement phase, but most end that move more than 9” away from any enemy models. You can only use this Stratagem once, or twice in a Strike Force or Onslaught battle. You can only pick a single unit once for this Stratagem. This is straight fire. It’s a fantastic ability and you get to do it after the roll for the first turn. There are several key uses for it, such as setting up for a first-turn charge with Possessed if you’re going first, getting a unit onto an objective before the game starts to ensure you get your battleforged CP on something like Recover the Relics, or moving an exposed unit behind cover and into a better position. You should be using this every single game. A+
Renascent Infiltration (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP). Use in your Movement phase, when an ALPHA LEGION INFANTRY unit from your army that is more than 6” away from any enemy models is selected to move. If the mission you are playing uses the Strategic Reserves rule, place that unit into Strategic Reserves. That unit cannot arrive from Strategic Reserves the same turn it is placed into Strategic Reserves. This is a handy ability for repositioning units around the table and keeping an opponent on edge. It’s handy for scoring Behind Enemy Lines and Engage on All Fronts, and just as helpful for showing up later to pick up points for Retrieve Data secondaries. It’s also great on Obliterators and Warpflamer Rubrics. And at 1 CP, it’s priced to move. A
Sabotaged Armory (Strategic Ploy, 1-3 CP). Use when an enemy vehicle is destroyed. If you have any Alpha Legion units on the table, your opponent doesn’t roll to see if the model explodes; it does so automatically. If the model is affected by a rule that says it never explodes, ignore both that rule and this Stratagem and roll to see if it explodes as normal. If that unit has 9 or fewer wounds, this costs 1 CP, if it has 10-19 wounds, this costs 2, and if this has 20+ wounds this costs 3 CP. This is just fantastic for completely ruining an opponent’s day with a big explosion. It won’t be something you can pull off all the time, and in many games you won’t be able to catch an opponent out with it, but the ability to score free mortal wounds and really punish an enemy with a well-placed explosion is just huge. This is really great on Redemptors and other vehicles that rely on auras. A
Scrambled Coordinates (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP). Use at the start of the Reinforcements step of an opponent’s Movement phase. Pick up to two ALPHA LEGION CORE units from your army that are on the battlefield. Until the end of the phase, enemy units can’t be set up within 12” of those selected units. This is expensive, but extremely good to have in your back pocket. It can absolutely ruin an opponent’s plans by suddenly making it impossible to drop in and steal a charge against you, and may force them to delay a turn altogether. Just remember it doesn’t work on Cultists. B
Veiled Agenda (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP). Use after selecting secondary objectives or Agendas, if your army contains any units with the ALPHA LEGION keyword. Do not reveal one of your selections to your opponent. The first time you score VP or XP for that secondary objective or Agenda, reveal it to your opponent. Note that you must still make a record of your selection. This is a great trick and works best with endgame secondaries and secondaries that your opponent might otherwise try and protect themselves against. It’s particularly good for Assassination and Bring it Down, but some of the action secondaries will give you a bit of a chance to hide what you’re doing until you’re actually starting the action. That said, your opponent can probably guess what you’re picking if they’re smart, and there are only two or three secondaries that you can hide for more than a few phases. B

Relics

The Alpha Legion relics are a weird bunch, and substantially less exciting than their stratagems. The big challenge with most of it is that it can’t go on any of the characters you want to use, like a Lord Discordant or a Daemon Prince. There’s a sword that can only replace a chainsword, a bolt pistol and bolter upgrade that are basically designed to go with the Headhunter Warlord Trait, and a couple of general utility pieces. Alpha Legion players will generally draw their relics from the core CSM codex as a result.

Blade of the Hydra. Replaces an Astartes chainsword with one that’s S+1, AP-2, 1 damage and every time you fight you make D3+3 extra attacks unless there are 6+ enemy models within 3” of the bearer, in which case you make 6 additional attacks. This could have been useful on a Raptor champion, but unfortunately it isn’t one of the relics available to squad champions. As a result, it can only go on a bog-standard Chaos Lord and that’s just a very unappealing delivery platform. If you really want to take this, the play is to take it with Flames of Spite to maximize the amount of mortal wounds you can generate off the extra 4-6 hits you generate. C
Drakescale Plate. Infantry only. This model gets a 2+ save and each time an attack is made against the bearer, an unmodified wound roll of 1-3 for that attack always fails, irrespective of any abilities that weapon or the model making it may have. This is a great combo of abilities but that INFANTRY only requirement is killer; this would have been an auto-include on a Daemon Prince. As-is, it might have play on a Master of Executions, where the standard T4 3+ save profile he’s working with makes him pretty fragile. B
Hydra’s Wail. Once per battle, after your opponent uses a Stratagem (excluding Command Re-roll), the bearer can use this relic. If it does so, until the end of the battle, the CP cost your opponent must pay to use that Stratagem again is increased by 1. The Alpha Legion get their own version of Agents of Vect, though having this as a relic instead of a 0-CP Stratagem is much worse. Still, the ability is pretty strong and can be a great deterrent, if you know what to look for when using it. Focus on utility Stratagems your opponent is likely to use multiple times. Also very useful for making psychic deny stratagems cost more if you take a psychic secondary like Ritual or Interrogation. A
Viper’s Spite. Replaces a bolt pistol with one that’s 18” range, Pistol 6, S4 AP-3. Not too much to say about this pea shooter, which doesn’t do enough damage to justify it. It’s basically tailor made to give you a moderately useful gun option for the Headhunter Warlord trait. B
Hydra’s Teeth. Model with a bolt weapon only. Turns a bolt weapon the bearer has into a relic. Each time the bearer shoots that weapon they can opt to fire a single Hydra’s Teeth bolt instead of making their regular attacks. If they do, the attack automatically hits, gets +2 strength and damage, and invulnerable saves can’t be made against the attack. This kind of combos with Headhunter, in that re-rolling the wound roll on your beefed-up bolter round is a good deal and the targets you’ll pick will have invulns, but it drops your chances of scoring mortal wounds. It’s an interesting option but you can kill characters way more easily by just charging them. C
Icon of the Hydra Cult. This can be given to a CULTISTS model and gives the model the Icon of the Hydra Cult (Aura) – While a friendly ALPHA LEGION CULTISTS unit is within 6”, each time a ranged attack targets that unit, if the attacker is more than 12” away, the target is treated as having the benefit of Dense Cover against that attack. This is OK. The aura of Dense is solid, though not as good as just giving -1 to hit – the dense cover rider means you’re still vulnerable to enemies that ignore cover benefits. B
Mindveil. INFANTRY model only. Each time the bearer names a Normal Move, Advances, or Falls Back, until the end of the phase, add D6 to that model’s Move characteristic. Each time the bearer makes a Normal Move, Falls Back, Advances, or makes a Charge move, it can move through models and terrain features horizontally. This is basically as close as you’re going to get to a jump pack Chaos Lord in the 9th edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines. It’s not super reliable – adding D6” is going to occasionally leave you with a 7” move – and the ability to move through walls is something infantry already had more or less. But this can be a good way to get an extra mobile Terminator Lord or Master of Executions. B

Alpha Legion Leviathan Dreadnought. Credit: Lupe

Secondary Objective: Infiltrate and Subvert

Progressive Objective

This gives your army an action that one non-CHARACTER INFANTRY unit per turn can attempt, called Subvert (Action). You can attempt it at the end of your Movement phase with one unit that’s wholly within 6” of your opponent’s deployment zone. It completes at the end of your next Command phase, provided the unit performing it is still wholly within 6” of your opponent’s Deployment zone. Every time you complete this you score 3 VP, or 4 VP if you were wholly within your opponent’s deployment zone. If you do this within range of an objective, roll a D6 to see if the objective marker has been subverted. On a 3+ (or a 5+ if the unit is a CULTISTS unit), that objective is subverted and opponents can never control subverted objective markers nor perform actions while they’re in range of one.

The subversion clause on this is super spicy but overall the number of hoops you have to jump through to do this – being wholly within 6” of an enemy DZ and surviving until the start of the next Command phase and only being able to do it once with a non-Character – makes this too difficult to be viable, particularly when Raise the Banners and its 10 easy VP are right there. If this finished at the end of the turn it would be a much more interesting pick. D

Notable Units

Cultists

Alpha Legion Cultists can benefit from a few different tricks – most notably the Cult Leader Warlord trait (which is great for Accursed Cultists), the Icon of the Hydra Cult for durability, and the Renascent Infiltration Stratagem to dip out and show up somewhere else for an action. Remember that Accursed Cultists can’t perform actions but they can count for Behind Enemy Lines or Engage on All Fronts, and the ability to resurrect models in the command phase is a very Alpha Legion-esque trick.

Daemon Princes and Lords discordant

Alpha Legion Daemon Princes can stack the Clandestine Warlord Trait on top of the Mark of Nurgle to create a Daemon Prince that’s got some insane durability. Sit him in Dense cover or give him the Benediction of Darkness for an extra +1 to his save and he can tank surprising amounts of firepower. A Lord Discordant can also fit in this space but the reality is that you’re likely giving him Flames of Spite instead.

Warp Talons, Possessed, and Terminators

These three units are important targets for the Forward Operatives Stratagem, which gives you a pregame move after you’ve determined who will have the first turn. The Warp Talons and Possessed are units you’ll be moving into position for a turn 1 charge, since getting an extra move lets them close a huge distance, while the Terminators will be using it to make up for a slow movement speed and can use the extra move to get into position on a midtable objective turn 1.

Obliterators

As both an INFANTRY unit and one of the most powerful shooting units in the Chaos Space Marines arsenal, Obliterators benefit a bit more from the Alpha Legion trait than other units, and can also benefit from stratagems like Forward Operatives and Renascent Infiltration to reposition as needed. That said, just be mindful that without support from re-rolls or bonuses to hit, Obliterators are going to often underwhelm you with their output.

Volkite Contemptors and Other 9-Wound Vehicles

As a vehicle with fewer than 10 wounds but weapon options that give it a 45” range, the Volkite Contemptor can be effective ranged fire support for an Alpha Legion army, though the CP cost to include one definitely hurts. Likewise, Venomcrawlers are sitting pretty at 9 wounds each with a 12” move to easily close the gap with the opponent.

Playing Alpha Legion

The Alpha Legion are a weird bunch in that their legion trait tends to push you more toward a ranged strategy, or a strategy where you keep your distance to maintain a durability buff before closing quickly in a single turn. Pulling that off is easier said than done, but the faction does give you a few movement tricks to get there. Effective use of the Alpha Legion is going to involve effective use of the Forward Operatives Stratagem to set up your first turn and clever movement and repositioning throughout the game with Renascent Infiltration and Coils of Deception.

Renascent Infiltration opens up some interesting options for you, where you can much more easily look at secondary objectives like Engage on All Fronts, Behind Enemy Lines, and Retrieve Data, since you have reliable ways of picking up a backfield objective holder and pushing them forward late-game for extra scoring. This can open you up to a more diverse gameplan than Chaos Space Marines typically have access to with their secondary objectives, but remember that if you’re dumping cultists onto the far side of the table, they may not last more than a turn.

A List

The Alpha Legion haven’t seen much competitive success – in part because of stronger options in other legions – and so we have no top 4 lists to point to for them. That said, there’s enough power in the faction overall that if you wanted to build something that took advantage of their unique tricks, this is one way you might do that:

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Chaos – Chaos Space Marines) [109 PL, -4CP, 2,000pts] ++

Legion: Alpha Legion

+ HQ [24 PL, -3CP, 410pts] +

Daemon Prince with Wings [11 PL, -2CP, 180pts]: 2. Clandestine, Diabolic Strength, G’holl’ax, the Decayed, Hellforged sword [10pts], Mark of Nurgle [1 PL, 15pts], Stratagem: Relic [-1CP], Stratagem: Warlord Trait [-1CP], Warlord, Wings [2 PL, 35pts]

Dark Apostle [6 PL, -2CP, 110pts]: 6. Covert Control, Aspiring Lord [-1CP], Illusory Supplication, Mark of Slaanesh [1 PL, 15pts]
. 2x Dark Disciple: 2x Close combat weapon

Master of Possession [7 PL, 120pts]: Mark of Slaanesh [1 PL, 15pts], Pact of Flesh, Warp Marked

+ Troops [10 PL, 210pts] +

Cultists Mob [2 PL, 50pts]
. 9x Chaos Cultist w/ cultist firearm [45pts]: 9x Cultist firearm, 9x Frag & Krak grenades
. Cultist Champion [5pts]
. . Autopistol and brutal assault weapon

Legionaries [6 PL, 110pts]: Chaos Undivided
. Aspiring Champion [18pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Marine w/ balefire tome [38pts]: Balefire tome [20pts], Prescience
. 3x Marine w/ boltgun [54pts]: 3x Bolt pistol, 3x Boltgun, 3x Frag & Krak grenades

+ Elites [48 PL, -1CP, 900pts] +

Chaos Terminator Squad [19 PL, -1CP, 375pts]: Mark of Slaanesh [1 PL, 15pts]
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Chaos Terminator [38pts]: Combi-bolter, Power fist [5pts]
. Chaos Terminator [38pts]: Combi-bolter, Power fist [5pts]
. Chaos Terminator [43pts]: Chainfist [5pts], Combi-melta [5pts]
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Chaos Terminator [33pts]: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter
. Terminator Champion [-1CP, 43pts]: Black Rune of Damnation, Chainfist [5pts], Combi-melta [5pts], Trophies of the Long War [-1CP]

Chosen [15 PL, 245pts]: Chaos Icon [5pts], Mark of Slaanesh [1 PL, 15pts]
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun
. Chosen Champion [25pts]: Bolt pistol, Boltgun

Possessed [7 PL, 140pts]: Possessed Champion [28pts]
. 4x Possessed [112pts]: 4x Hideous mutations

+ Fast Attack [12 PL, 210pts] +

Venomcrawler [6 PL, 105pts]

+ Heavy Support [15 PL, 270pts] +

Obliterators [15 PL, 270pts]
. 3x Obliterator [15 PL, 270pts]: 3x Crushing fists, 3x Fleshmetal guns

Standout Features

A Nurgle Daemon Prince with the Clandestine Warlord Trait
A Dark Apostle with Covert Control gives nearby units ObSec
A Pair of Venomcrawlers
A unit of 10 Chosen to hold midtable objectives

This list opts for a very difficult to kill Daemon Prince with G’holl’ax and aims to control the middle of the table using a big unit of Black Rune Terminators and Chosen, either of which can be supported by a Dark Apostle and the Master of Possession and given ObSec as needed with the Apostle’s Covert Control Warlord Trait. The Venomcrawlers can also help the DP and the MoP with casts early on.

The list also packs two units of Possessed, and I’ve taken care to save 2 CP to do pregame moves with both using Forward Operatives if needed. Along with the Venomcrawlers they provide early pressure while other units in the army get into position. The Obliterators provide ranged support and can move around or teleport in as needed. There’s likely a stronger version of this list that uses Abaddon instead of the Obliterators, but I prefer to make monofaction armies when I write lists for these articles – feel free to experiment with him instead of the Obliterators and swapping out the legionaries for a third unit of Cultists.

Where to Read More

Click here to return to our larger guide on Chaos Space Marines. If you have any questions or feedback, shoot us an email at contact@goonhammer.com.

Start Competing: Alpha Legion Tactics (Updated 12/23/2022)