It’s been nearly two years since Legions Imperialis was released, and slightly longer than that since its intended release date. It’s fair to say that the launch didn’t go entirely smoothly, with a long delay followed by some big stock issues.
The models are almost all fantastic but on release the core rules had a lot of problems, many of which remain. We also had pretty wild levels of imbalance between the units available and the eighteen Astartes Legions had vastly different power levels. Who knew the Alpha Legion were so keen on massive battles?
We’ve had a major FAQ recently that attempted to fix some of the problems with the core rules of the game, with some success. Now, the Liber Strategia attempts to fix the imbalances between the game’s units. This review will look at how well they’ve succeeded.
Thanks to Games Workshop for giving us access to the Liber Strategia to review.
Table of Contents
What’s in the Book?
The Liber Strategia is a book of army lists and not a lot else. Inside you’ll find all the Formations and Detachment rules for every unit released so far. There are full lists for the Legiones Astartes, Solar Auxilia, Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicum, Titans and Knights. All the units from the campaign books released so far are in here, though not the narrative content.
We’ve written full reviews of the changes to the Legiones Astartes, Solar Auxilia and Questoris Knights. These have all changed significantly for the better in terms of internal balance, though not quite everything has been fixed. The Questoris Knights in particular will be far more effective now, thanks to major price cuts and much improved durability.
Astartes have the only new Detachments in the book. There are Vindicators, two types of Whirlwind, Cerberus, Typhons and the Mastodon. We’ve painted up a few of these for a review.
That leaves the Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicum and Titan Legions to cover here, which is what most of this article will cover.
There’s a bit of other stuff in the book beyond the core army lists. We have a new section for Iconic Formations, which combines existing Formations of Legend, which are restricted to particular Legions and Allegiances, with new Formations available to anyone. We also get the Bonded Cybernetica Support Formations in print.
The Mechanicum Taghmata
As a fairly new faction, the Mechanicum haven’t been changed all that much. The Formations haven’t been changed at all, though there’s a new Myrmidax Conclave. This comprises an HQ and three Support choices, plus an optional HQ, two more Support choices and one Transport. All the Support choices have to be Myrmidons of either type. If you really want a lot of Myrmidons and don’t want to paint Tech Thralls to unlock a Taghma Sub-covenant, this is the Formation for you.
Looking at the Datasheets there aren’t all that many changes, though changes from the FAQ, like Thalaxii having Multi-meltas, are now printed in the army list. Unfortunately quite a lot of the changes that have happened are nerfs, which doesn’t seem justified.
Adsecularis Tech-thrall Covenants now come as a unit of five bases, reflecting the contents of the sprue, for 40 points. You can only enlarge the unit by adding another five or ten more bases, potentially creating a huge Detachment of 15 bases. The price per model has gone up though, with five costing 35 and ten costing 70. Thralls remain almost entirely useless except that they have a Morale of “-”, meaning they can be relied upon to stay in place till they’re all dead… so probably not all that long.
Myrmidons of both types still cost 30 for the first two and 25 to add two more bases. It’s a bit more to enlarge the unit further: 50 for four bases and 75 for six. This is fair enough considering the buff to their firepower that came in the FAQ.
The robots are unchanged except that the Domitar has lost a shot from its frag missiles. I’m not sure why that is, as lots of other platforms can fire way more missiles than Domitars, for their cost. I think the Automata all need some hefty price cuts. It’s great that they have two wounds but each one costs roughly as much as two Dreadnoughts. Two Dreadnoughts provide two wounds as well between them, and about twice the firepower of an Automata.
Ursurax Cohorts get a 50% price hike, going from 20 up to 30 points for two, then 25, 50 and 75 for two, four or six more bases. They’re pretty great assault troops to be fair, with +3 CAF, Rend and a decent gun too. The new price reflects their real value a bit better.
Karacnos are almost identical, though adding a second to the unit will now cost 35 points instead of 40. They’re extremely nasty artillery units against infantry in cover with pretty respectable Lightning Locks on sponsons for fighting vehicles, or anything else they don’t like the look of.
Krios and Krios Venators are the same, except adding two Krios Venators to a squadron now costs 55 points instead of 60.
The Triaros Armoured Conveyor is the same as before but now costs 22 instead of 15, which was always unreasonably cheap. As of the FAQ of course it isn’t a Large Transport any more, just a Transport. You’re actually still allowed to buy these as Dedicated Transports for Walkers in a Taghma Sub-covenant, which is odd as they aren’t allowed inside.
Overall the effect here is pretty minor. The nerfs that have landed, with the exception of the hit to the Domitar, feel justified. You might not notice the difference here at all once you get to the table.
Dark Mechanicum
The Dark Mechanicum are hardly changed at all. The Terror Protocol’s Titan Detachment now has to be a Warhound and adding a second Errax “Butcher” Assault Stalker to your Cohort will cost 40 points instead of 45. If you were having a good time with these scuttling spiders you should feel free to continue as before.
Collegia Titanica
The Titan Legions get a well-deserved a glow-up in the Liber Strategia. Some of them are cheaper and they’ve received buffs both in durability and offensive power.
The Collegia have all the same formations as in Rise of the Dark Mechanicum and they’re still just various random-seeming collections of Titans with no special rules. Warlord Titans remain weirdly hard to get hold of, as they are only present in a couple of these Formations and only ever singly.
Warhound Hunting Packs go down to 300 points for each Titan, with one to start with and up to two more for an extra 300 or 600 points. This is great as it lets you take one Warhound per thousand points of the game if you want to, or perhaps a Warhound and a Warlord at 3000. They also gained a wound. Plasma blastguns gained a shot and have three now, so they aren’t totally outclassed by Turbo-laser destructors and Conversion beam dissolutors.
Dire Wolves have a slight price cut, down from 385 to 350, and gain a 5th Wound. Otherwise they’re unchanged. Reavers also had a slight price cut, down to 400 from 415, and gain a 6th wound. So do Warbringers, though they stay the same price at 525. Warlords and Warlord-Sinisters gain a 7th wound, have 8 Void Shields now and stay the same price at 600 and 675 points
Warmasters and Iconoclasts are the only Titans to see their price go up, from 750 to 850. They do get 8 wounds now to compensate. This means you won’t be able to take a Warmaster in 2500 point games any more.
The effect of all this is to leave Titans in an okay state, but still not one that really represents how they function in the stories. They ought to work fairly well as long-ranged support, by out-ranging the things that threaten them, but will die pretty soon if they advance. It looks like melee weapons are completely pointless for them. We might see more Titans on tables but mostly at the back edges of them.
Iconic Formations
The campaign books released so far have included Formations of Legend, representing the forces that were present to fight particular engagements throughout the heresy. They can only be used by the specific Alignment and Legion, in the case of the Astartes Formations.
These Formations are all reprinted here, renamed as Iconic Formations. Added to these are six new generic Formations for the Astartes and Auxilia, representing typical Formations fielded during the Great Crusade and Heresy.
The idea is that you take exactly the models specified in the Detachment, which are fixed down to weapons on every tank. In exchange you get a bit of a discount in the points you pay for the Formation and some special rules.
Each formation has a set of Standard Detachments, which you have to take, plus a set of Expanded Detachments that you can add if you like. You pay a set price for all the Detachments in each set and can’t purchase any individually.
For example the Ultima Pattern Sub-cohort is a Solar Auxilia Iconic Formation. The Standard Detachments cost 300 points. You get a Legate Commander, a Tactical Commander and three infantry Detachments, each comprising twelve Lasrifle and four flamer bases. That’s fifty bases in total, worth 332 points at RRP. You can expand the formation for another 300 points, buying another Tactical command and three units of eight rapier laser destroyers, worth 340. The special rule for the Formation is that all the lasrifles get Rapid Fire, which is a pretty substantial upgrade in their firepower.
There are some downsides. Having completely fixed Formations means no slots for things like transports or air support. Some of them also require loads of a particular type of model, like the twenty four laser Rapiers in the Ultima Pattern Sub-cohort. This can make it expensive to buy them, though you’ll have loads of other stuff to make other Formations from if you do.
Bonded Cybernetica Support Formations
These are a collection of Formations that are already available online. You can have one of these for each of your own Formations you have already and they can’t be taken as allies. They let you bring Automata from the Mechanicum list in other armies, generally by giving a Cortex controller to an HQ of some sort and then mixing in a few robots.
The Formations have various special rules. For example in the Astartes Brethren of Iron Formation the Automata don’t get their Legion’s special rule but they do get Line while they’re within 8” of any Astartes from their Formation.
Some of these Formations allow you a bit more freedom than you’d get in your army’s usual Formations. For example the Knight Households Retainer Cohorts have any Knight you want as one of the compulsory slots, along with two Vanguard slots for Automata. There are also two more optional slots for Knights and some Armigers too. In a Questoris Formation you’d usually be told whether you could take Questoris, Cerastus or Acastus Kinghts but not for this. You also get either Forward Deployment or Outflank for all these Knights, depending on whether you took Vorax or Vulturax in the compulsory Vanguard slots.
You get similar freedom with the Collegia Titanica Support Cohorts Formation. It has a slot for any Titan you like, plus two Support Detachments of Automata. Again there are two open slots for any kind of Titan. It’s difficult to bring Warlord Titans in numbers in the normal Collegia Maniples but here you can have three if you want, so long as you bring a couple of Domitars or something.
Final Thoughts
I have fairly mixed feelings about the Liber Strategia and I’ve rewritten this conclusion a couple of times. It’s having to fix problems that never should have existed. The imbalance between units like Vanquishers and normal Leman Russ, or Astartes Missile squads and anything, was obvious on a first read-through of the rules. It should have been seen when the game was originally designed and shouldn’t have taken two years to fix.
But the Liber Strategia can’t go back in time and solve those problems. It does mostly succeed at bringing more balance to Legions Imperialis, which will make it better from now on. The Astartes and Auxilia lists in particular are much improved and it’s nice that Knights finally look like they’ll be truly an army in their own right. I’m not so sure about Mechanicum, but they aren’t terrible.
Compilations like this are kind of inevitable for games like Legions Imperialis, where GW publishes a lot of campaign books. There comes a point where you’d prefer not to have to carry them all around with you, especially if you’re just using one or two units from any particular book. Having everything in one volume is certainly helpful, at least until the next campaign book comes out. The barrier for entry for new players is also lower when they only have to buy one book instead of three.
With the big FAQ and the Liber Strategia, Legions Imperialis is now in a reasonably good state. It isn’t Games Workshop’s best game but it’s got an awesome model range and I know people who enjoy playing it a lot. Not many people, but some. If you are one of those people, if you’ve got a starter set stored somewhere that you bought a couple of years ago, or if you’re curious about getting into the game, the Liber Strategia is a good purchase.
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