Legions Imperialis are one of Games Workshop’s many upcoming miniatures game set in the Warhammer universe. Together with The Old World, they are some of the most broadly anticipated installments in the rich universe of war, with Legions Imperialis now fleshed out in a recent update by the company.
Set in the Age of Darkness and played on a truly epic scale, Legions Imperialis uses smaller miniatures and seeks to fit them on a 5’ by 4’ terrain. The new game asks of players to complete armies that are worth 3,000 points per side and declare an Allegiance. Players can be either Loyalists or Traitors, and then choose the player’s Primary Army List.
This is a force that consist of at least 70% of your units. Presently, this boils down to either Legiones Astartes or the Solar Auxilia, but Games Workshop has hinted at introducing more factions, which are probably being manufactured as we speak. Players will then have to choose their units based on Formations and Detachments.
Detachments are the bread-and-butter of your army, the very backbone consisting of platoons of infantry, squadrons of tanks, batteries of artilleries, and so on with Formations comprising a larger grouping of Detachments. Each 1,500 points of army will have to be integrated into a Formation, so that means you would need two Formations at 3,000 points.
Once you are done with trashing out these details, you can assign about 30% of your points on Allied Contingents, which will vary depending on your Allegiance. The turn structure is actually quite streamlined, and you will go through five distinct stages, including Orders, Initiative, Movement, Combat, and End.
The game starts with you assigning a secret order and revealing it, catching each other by surprise. The orders are fairly familiar – First Fire, Advance, March, Charge, and Fall Back. You will then roll for initiative and get to it. This part of the gameplay will be very familiar to anyone who has a few Warhammer 40,000 games under their belt, with the phases following the logic of the core gameplay.
Don’t think that you are just paying for a smaller-sized Warhammer 40,000 with a few extra models, though as the new game seems to be a little more satisfyingly chaotic just like a real carnage. Your models are paired off and you can pair off one very strong model against many others, but this could lead to a bonus for your opponent – for example they can get an extra dice for each time you already fought in the round, making for an interesting dynamic, and also leveraging weaker units to overrun a stronger unit.
A fun part of Legions Imperialis is that the game allows you to overrun pretty much anything on the battlefield and yes, that includes the tanks. More updates about the gameplay in Legions Imperialis will be forthcoming. In the meantime, you can pick a Combat Patrol and try 10th edition out.