The Adeptus Astartes fight as the few, the dear, and the superhuman. A Chapter commits no horde to the field but a small strike force of transhuman warriors, each the equal of a squad of mortal soldiers. Their endurance is written into the flesh — the wide chest, the fused ribcage, the doubled hearts — so that a battle-brother weathers wounds that would fell any lesser fighter and never breaks under fire. Where other warhosts drown a foe in numbers, a Chapter answers with discipline: a gang-wide doctrine, declared afresh each round, that shifts the whole force from massed fire to swift advance to the closing charge as the battle demands. Every Chapter shares this spine — the transhuman body, the unbending nerve, the shifting doctrine — and expresses its own character through which end of that discipline it leans into and the relics its heroes carry. They are a strike force of demigods waging war across the galaxy, and each brother lost is a grievous loss to the Chapter.
Composition4
Identity2
The Legion of the Damned are loyalist Astartes who fell in battle and refused to let death end their duty. They take the same chassis, bolt pool and armour marks every Chapter fields, but where a living Chapter drills its warriors through the measured stances of Combat Doctrines, the Damned have traded that discipline away entirely for The Relentless Dead. They materialise out of nowhere onto the battlefield, wreathed in cold spectral fire; an ethereal field no armour can grant turns the killing blow aside; and Warp-Madness leaves them fearless, terrible to face, and prone to burn toward the foe whether their sergeants will it or not. They do not recruit, they do not swell, and they rarely stay dead.
A Legion of the Damned force is few, costly and unbreakable — a handful of revenant Marines who cannot be kept out, cannot be easily faced and cannot be out-lasted. They are the mirror of the disciplined Codex Chapters: apex control set against sanity-scoured devotion. The horror of them is loyalty, not malice — duty carried past the grave.
Gang Composition2
- Starting credits: 1500
- Exactly 1 Leader (Captain / named Chapter Master)
- 0-2 Champions (Lieutenant); 0-1 each specialist (Librarian / Chaplain / Apothecary / Techmarine)
- Marines are the bulk; Scouts cheap and plentiful; backbone (Marines + Scouts) >= Leaders + Champions
- 0-X Cavalry (0 for foot-only chapters) - 0-1(-2) Centurion - 0-1 Brute
- Champion / specialist / Brute slots unlock with Reputation
- Combat Doctrines is declared as a stance each round; it is never stored or carried between rounds
A Chapter strike force musters on 1500 credits. It is led by a single commanding officer — a Captain, or a named Chapter Master fielded on that body — and no gang may field more than one. Beneath the Leader stand up to two Champions of Lieutenant rank, and one apiece of the specialist brethren: Librarian, Chaplain, Apothecary and Techmarine, as the Chapter's needs demand. The bulk of the force is its battle-brother Marines, stiffened by cheap and plentiful Scout neophytes; together these gangers and juves must always at least match the officers set above them in number. A Chapter may also field its mounted brethren, a lone Centurion in his warsuit, and a single interred Brute. Further Champion, specialist and Brute slots open as the Chapter's Reputation grows. The gang's Combat Doctrines stance is declared anew each round and never carried between them.
- Starting credits: 1500 (converter-wide default)
- Every Damned carries the supernatural package - the ethereal field-save, Unwavering, Fearsome, the Deathless return and the Apparition - in place of the Combat Doctrines a living Chapter fields; the Damned swap Doctrines out entirely for The Relentless Dead
- Exactly 1 Leader (Legionnaire Sergeant - no command above the Sergeant); 0-2 Champions (Special / Heavy Legionnaire); 0-1 Brute (Relic Damned Dreadnought)
- Backbone: Legionnaires >= Leader + Champions (a single damned unit, not a hierarchy)
- No Juve tier and no recruitment pipeline - no Scouts, no recruits, no cheap bodies; the roster is a leaderless all-veteran apparition of ~4-5 bodies at 1500
- The Relentless Dead: the whole gang sets up in reserve and Deep Strikes in; Combat Doctrines is set aside entirely and replaced by the signature. Cavalry and Centurion tiers are 0 - foot-borne ghostly avengers ride no mounts and pilot no warsuits
Fifteen hundred credits raise a starting Legion of the Damned, and every one of them answers to a single Legionnaire Sergeant. There is no command above him. The dead keep no hierarchy, so the gang fields exactly one Leader, up to two Champions drawn from the Special and Heavy Legionnaires, and — should it wish — one Relic Damned Dreadnought as its sole Brute. The rank and file are Damned Legionnaires. They must always number at least as many as the Leader and Champions combined, for this is one damned unit and not a chain of command.
No Juve tier exists here, and no recruitment of any kind. No scouts. No fresh bodies, no cheap fillers to pad the ranks. What stands at the end of the reckoning is a lean apparition of some four or five warriors, each a veteran of the grave. The whole gang deploys in reserve and materialises onto the field rather than advancing across it — The Relentless Dead stands in place of the Combat Doctrines a living Chapter would drill. No mounts run with them and no piloted warsuits march at their side. The Damned come on foot, or they do not come at all.