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Friday, August 16, 2019

Traditionalist Radicals - Blackstone Fortress Black Legion

I've painted lots of red & gold & black, and I'm personally a fan of jade, so I decided to do my own take on Black Legion, that heralds back to their Sons of Horus days, which I just find so much more stylish.


I considered holding back on my rant, but:

Obsidius Mallex might be my least-favorite chaos character, ever. He's just... so lame. His backstory is that he's one of Abbadon's lackeys, then he got thrown a curve ball, got stuck in the Blackstone Fortress, and is mad now. He wants to capture the station/ship, to bring back to his boss, but is probably kind of a pawn of the ship, if you read between the lines. Like, what sort of weak-ass motivation is that?

Arguably the most interesting part of all CSMs (and what's interesting to me) are their motivations: How did they fall from grace? What were they like before they did? What changed their beliefs? What do they think of the gods? How do they go about making a name for themselves? Maybe they're natural born CSMs (is that still part of the setting? I forget) and they were from some tribe or cult or whatever and never fell, and are just true believers in their way of life: what culture was that from?

For that matter, how did Mallex become the warlord of his band? Was he picked? Did he rise through the ranks? Was he blessed or did he form some pact that will come back? What and why? Or, at least what?

Nope, just some random chaos lord with a thunder hammer (you've got to wonder: did the loser get a new name after he got his hammer, or did he get his hammer after he had his name?), a boring old plasma pistol, a top-knot like his boss, and an ugly chin since GW didn't feel like modeling his gorget or head as a separate piece. Like, I swear I'd have been able to come up with a better character when I started playing 40k in middle school.

OTOH, I like his striding pose, and "The Servants of the Abyss" is an above-average warband name.


His goon marines are goon marines. I'd have liked to get a full mini-squad of 5 with a champ and special weapon, but, eh. They look nice, and were presumably a test run for the new CSM line update.

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