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40K Tales: IG Penal Legions

4 Minute Read
Aug 31 2010

Last week, tpm: blood angel wrote an interesting article about ‘Super Units’. Those units that cost a zillion points and beat everything into the ground. I’m going to tell you a little story about my exploits with my Imperial Guard army and a unit at the other end of the scale.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin…

Five years or so ago, I built a Lost and the Damned force based on the Fallen Dark Angels. They weren’t chaotic, but represented a handful of loyalist Fallen (four to be exact) leading a small band of human soldiers. This basically required me to paint up around 100 guardsmen with a variety of weapons and a handful of tanks. Ok, job done, I used them for a campaign weekend, and had a really enjoyable time using them.

Since that time, the Lost and the Damned list has lived up to its name and has been erased from all knowledge. So I was left with a fairly useless Imperial Guard force that only ever really saw the light of day as inducted troops for my Daemonhunters (and even that’s been scuppered now!). Recently, I’ve become tired of playing with power-armoured troops and decided to try and resurrect them using the new edition. I got the army out, played about with some lists and found I was still a couple of hundred points under my target. With a game looming, I got thinking about what I could add in to ‘count-as’ more guardsmen, when I remembered the dusty Necromunda box I had in the attic. My old Orlock and Ratskin gangs were there, looking lost, forlorn and longing for some gaming table action. Flicking through the codex, it seemed obvious what I should use them as … Penal Legions. I laughed at first, thinking these units would just die and that would be the end of it, but twice in four games, they actually saved me the game.

These are the last Troops choice that anyone really looks at. They get no special weapon options, in fact they get no options at all! But they have three special rules that mean they are useful, especially when you consider that they only cost 80pts per squad:

  1. Scouts – Forget the free move after deployment, this is most useful for the ability to outflank. Being able to outflank a scoring unit later on in the game is fantastic
  2. Stubborn – More about this later, but the main thing is that Penal Legions don’t run away that easily (only about 1/3 of the time!)
  3. Desperadoes – A dice roll determines which of three upgrades you get. Again, a little more on this later. For reference, they get either:
    • Gunslingers – Assault 2 Lasguns
    • Psychopaths – Counter-Attack, Furious Charge and Fleet
    • Knife Fighters – Two close-combat weapons and Rending

So, on with the story …

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I had a recent game against my friend Gavin’s Ultramarine army. We rolled for mission and ended up with Capture and Control with Spearhead deployment. Looking at my non-mechanised infantry, two Leman Russ tanks and a Basilisk, Gavin’s mechanised marines decided to rush my lines while holding onto his objective with a 10-man tactical squad. Probably a sound idea considering that I was never going to get across the board with my infantry, and with Meltaguns a plenty, he fancied his chances against the tanks if they closed the gap.

To cut a long story short, whether he had ignored, forgotten about or just underestimated the power of my Penal Legionairres is unknown (he won’t say), but on turn 3, both squads appeared about 15″ from his objective, which was guarded only by a tactical squad, moved to within around 9″. First roll on the desperadoes table gave the Orlock squad Gunslingers, not a great boon here, but they managed to kill 2 marines with shooting. The second squad rolled a 3 and got Psychopaths, they managed to roll 4″ for their run, and got into combat.

The resulting combat was hard for the Penal Legion, but they did quite well. Because of Furious Charge, they were striking simultaneously with the marines and at S4, and managed to bring down a further 3 marines. They then lost 6 legionairres in return, but they managed to pass their leadership test since they are stubborn. In the marine player’s turn, he killed the rest of the squad, and consolidated 3″.

In my next turn the assault 2 lasguns came into play. I moved up, fired 19 las shots into his marines, another 2 down. Only 3 left now. I then charged. He killed 3 legionnaires, I killed 2 marines, leaving only the sergeant. By the end of turn 5, I had 5 Penal Legionnaires left on his objective, and he was unable to get back to deal with them as the rest of his force was engaged with my main battle line. It ended with a 1-0 win to me, all due to the Penal Legions.

In another game, this time Seize Ground, my outflanking Penal Legion squads managed to grab an outlying objective between them to give me a 2-1 victory.

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From talking to others around Nottingham, there are tales of Knife Fighters killing Leman Russ tanks in close-combat and of Gunslingers laying down a withering amount of lasfire while moving away from an advancing enemy. They may not have three meltaguns like Veterans, they may not have the options of an Infantry Platoon, but for 80pts, they are a great little troops choice!

That’s it for now, sorry I’ve been absent for a little while – life sometimes takes over! September is back to the action though. The Tempus Fugitives event ‘The Great Scouring’ is on the 11-12th (tickets still available!) and I’ll be at Games Day UK, updating BoLS live from the floor with all the latest releases, rumours and news. I’ll have a nice BoLS hoody on, so if you see me at either of these events please feel free to come and say hello!

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