After Issue #32’s paints, we’re set for a run of model issues for the Chaos Space Marines. Issue #33 is our first Multi-Chaos Marine pack, with the first half of the stock Legionaries kit. It’s a ten Marine unit from 2019, so there’s a lot of options and a lot of details to go through. As always, thank you to Goonhammer and Hachette for the opportunity to review these models, materials, and magazines.
Narrative Materials
The narrative materials this week concern the Black Legion and Abaddon the Despoiler. We are told how the Black Legion is the biggest Chaos Space Marine army in the galaxy, based around a corps of the original Sons of Horus but reinforced by various renegades and heretics who have been drawn in over the past ten thousand years. The Black Legion can do a little bit of everything: shooting, melee, tanks, tanky troops, flying troops, and so forth.
The main Black Legion heroes, Horus, Abaddon the Despoiler and Haarken Worldclaimer are all name-checked. We get pictures of the Black Legionaries using Legionaries but also all four cult troops: Plague Marines, Khorne Berzerkers, Rubric Marines, and Noise Marines. This narrative call-out is pretty cool, because it gives us an alternate color scheme for one of the Combat Patrols coming down the bike (the World Eaters Combat Patrol) and a lore reason to do it that way.
We then have a two page spread given to Abaddon the Despoiler, Warmaster of Chaos. We’re given his history as First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon, and now he is the chosen of all four of the Chaos Gods and the big bad of modern 40K. We are shown four of his big relics: his Power Claw the Talon of Horus, Drach’nyen (with a quiet shout-out to Drach’nyen’s history from “Master of Mankind”), and Abaddon’s left paldroun symbol the Mark of Chaos Ascendant. The final relic is Abaddon’s other starship, the Planet Killer. I’m not sure this is the ship I would have highlighted in this issue, but it’s still a cool spaceship.
The last narrative article is a short story from the perspective of a Black Legion Space Marine Aspiring Champion, formerly of the Sons of Horus and a veteran of the Great Crusade. As he is mulching his way through Guardsmen, he muses on his half-remembered childhood. His squad’s apprentice sorcerer then points the way to their objective, and they continued to rampage through a cathedral. He then muses on how he and the Luna Wolves fought daemons that were sufficient to smash battle tanks prior to the Heresy (what I *think* is the Battle of Davin’s Moon). Then he’s brought back to the present because the Aeldari are shooting at him.
Hobby Materials
Issue #33 gives us the first half of the Chaos Space Marines Legionaries sprue and the instructions for building the kit. The issue sets out how to build the Legionaries consistent with the loadout for the Combat Patrol, which has us build: 1) An Aspiring Champion with Plasma Pistol and Accursed Weapon, 2) 1 Chaos Space Marine with Bolt Pistol, Chainsword, and Chaos Icon 3) 2 Chaos Space Marines with Bolt Pistols and Chainswords 4) 4 Chaos Space Marines with Bolters 5) 1 Chaos Space Marine with Meltagun and 6) 1 Chaos Space Marine with Heavy Bolter. It’s a bit of a schizophrenic loadout, but you can split the Chaos Marines into two 5 Marine Squads. I’d probably split one into a melee unit and another into a more shooting focused unit, but there’s 6 shooting Marines and 4 melee Marines and accordingly, it’s going to be somewhat awkward to focus them.
One point of concern is that the part numbers listed in the instructions do not line up with the part numbers on the sprue. That is a significant problem, as it’s pretty clear that certain arm/weapon combinations are supposed to go to certain bodies, and the magazine’s errors with the instructions make it harder to determine which limbs go with which bodies. I think my Marines were assembled correctly, but your views may vary.
For the next week, I’ll be painting these guys and we’ll go into my Red Corsairs painting scheme.
Gaming Materials
The gaming materials this time around are how to resolve attacks: We go through the hit rolls, wound rolls, saving throws, and various other damage mitigation measures. I believe that these rules have been covered in previous issues (back through the first issue of the magazine!), but it does complete missing pages from the core rules.
The Final Verdict
This gets you half of the Legionaries kit, for under a fourth of the cost of GW’s MSRP. For a bread and butter kit for the CSM army, getting Issue #33 and #34 together for $30 is an absolute steal. You also get a name generator for the Legionaries, which is (again) a welcome bonus. The narrative materials in this issue are also pretty nice for starting out a CSM collection: you get the story of Horus and Abaddon, as well as a helpful narrative bit that suggests painting the main troop units of four other armies as the Black Legion. That’s pretty clever on Hachette’s part.
That said, I do not believe you can actually build a full Chaos Space Marine from just the bits included with Issue #33. You’ll need to get both this and Issue #34 in order to build them all. So Issue #33 on its own isn’t helpful, you’ll need Issue #34.
Until next time Combat Patrolers!
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