Hey all, today I'm doing a little retrospective on how my army got to where it is. I honestly don't think I chose to become an operative of the Alpha Legion. I was chosen. Here's how I became a heretic...
I always liked the ideas behind the Twentieth Legion, and some part of me really gelled with their sneakiness and subterfuge, for example: stealth games have always been among my favourite video games; spy movies and shows appeal to me; moving around super quietly so I can get a jump-scare on members of my household is more than a passing interest and; I find getting a sneaky advantage without anyone knowing about it is basically one of the most satisfying experiences possible. You get the idea, I'm real sneaky beaky like.
However, even then I wasn't ready to compromise my loyalties or the stoic adherence to duty which makes me so admire the Fists. Until one day, at a Horus Heresy Weekender about three years ago, I saw this in the flesh:
And yes, you've heard this story before; boy meets dreadnought, boy buys dreadnought as a side painting project, boy falls in love and starts a Legion. Classic stuff. Even the part where Hydra symbols started appearing in my life in the most unlikely of places. My heart was infiltrated and I had started whispering "Hydra Dominatus" in my sleep. Were my cries of "For The Emperor" occasionally filled with a hint of irony from that day on? I can't even tell anymore, I'm too far down this rabbit hole now.
So then, after I had acquired my dreadnought and made up my mind, the next decision was theme. It should be important for everyone playing Horus Heresy. Theme is important for me doubly so, as I live and die by it when it comes to army building. I know a lot of people like to list bash in their army building app of choice. Not me, I only think about points when the form of the force has built itself in my mind. I go away and I dream for a week or two. Then I wait and see if the picture I've built has changed. With my Alpha Legion the core theme didn't change, but the ideas within that theme evolved. Only now, three years later, am I starting to change focus (but that is a story for later). My original vision for this force was shaped by a little bit of Deliverance Lost, a little bit of The Serpent Beneath and a little bit of Scars. My force is ultimately an infiltration force which specialises in ambush strategies, backed by light artillery and fast response units to provide the hammerblow strike. Here's how I imagine it:
I can taste the arid, dusty air on my tongue and have to squint my eyes against the glare of the sun reflecting on the red dunes when I think about world on which my Alpha Legion company have infiltrated themselves in the alabaster armour of the White Scars. The Chogorian Brotherhood of the Keening Gale is almost two hundred marching astartes strong, and is accompanied by gleaming white rhinos and main battle tanks. The sub-commander of the force, my vigilator, is wearing the face of a dead Khan as he leads the armoured column on foot into a narrow defile, funneling them through a blood coloured gulch towards the sunlight beyond. Above and all around, elite forces united under the banner of the unbroken chain move in silent coordination, directed by a master of signal.
The vigilator leads the White Scars out into the heart of a wide, high sided crater-basin ordering a full-stop. In a seemingly casual gesture, he turns, raising his rifle to shoot the head of the man next to him. Down the line this process repeats, bolters barking upwards of thirty more times before the noble warriors of the Fifth Legion understand what is happening. In the confusion the revealed infiltrators roll out of the ranks of the White Scars, scrambling to escape the basin and find cover at full speed. The White Scars, ever quick, regroup into a circle, firing outwards at the exposed traitors, gunning fleeing astastes down as they tighten their formation and consolidate their position in a textbook manoeuvre.
This is what the signals master was waiting for. He observes the pre-arranged kill box from a location he has calculated as the optimal retreat vector for the beleaguered White Scars. Standing on the hull of his rhino transport, azure plate shimmering in the sun, he drops his raised hand.
The perfect blue sky saturates with light as pin-point orbital barrages ignite the atmosphere. Mines explode in a cloud of churned rock, sealing the passage back into the ravine. Rocket barrages are launched from behind a snaking rise. The lips of the crater burst as fast tanks roar over them, spilling sand in their wake. Rapier teams accelerate into firing range, sun baked shells auto-loading as skimmers and jetbikes churn up a fine wash of dust from their activating grav plates. Contemptor dreadnoughts, hidden within the dunes rise up like mythical beasts to shed skins of sand and unload salvos of heavy munitions from their cycling cannons. The tranquil dessert awakens with the cacophony of war. All of this happens within the space of a twinned heartbeat.
The White Scars never stood a chance. The coordinated firepower stamps out any hope of resistance. All that is left in the basin are the ruined shells of tanks, blasted pieces of armour and chunks of burned meat on a floor of smoldering, blackened glass. The few unlucky souls which managed to crawl out of the killzone are met by the uncompromising master of signal and his merciless plasma support team. There are no survivors. Within an hour the Alpha Legion have cleared the area of conspicuous signs of combat. Within a day the desert has reclaimed the basin and no trace of the Brotherhood of the Keening Gale remains.
Phew, that was fun to get out. I'll talk about my force organisation next time!
Syra Out.
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