Just a reference to the fact that some Penal Legions use explosive collars to keep troops in line. Actually, it would make sense for Penal Legions to have an Heirloom or Stratagem allowing you to apply Summary Execution through vox systems, just like an Order.
Yeah, and it's almost always better to use Fix Bayonets! So the logic goes: 1 If you're in melee, you want to use Fix Bayonets! Note also that flamers are the best Overwatch weapons by a long shot. As a result, Penal Legion are also trading that harder hit on the charge for much harder targets. Hell, even their Regimental Stratagems are opposites: the Penal Legion lets you shoot when you Advance and charge , while the Catachans punish chargers.
So for Catachans it goes: 1 Burn Them Out! You have S4 and 1A, enemy fights first. No shooting except Assault. You have S4 and 2A, you fight first. You have S3 and 2A. If we assume a Catachan Squad and a Penal Legion Squad, both with a flamer and an Officer nearby, are targeting each other, it plays out like this: Catachans get in range first: Catachans deal 5 wounds with Burn Them Out or 7 wounds with First Rank Fire, so pick the former if the Penal Legion are in cover.
Penal Legion lose one or two more models to Morale, kill two Catachan in their Shoot phase, lose two more models to Overwatch, then die in the Fight or Morale phase. Total Catachan losses: two. Penal Legion get in range first: Penal Legion deal 4 wounds with regular Shooting, charge and lose 3 models to Overwatch.
In the Fight phase, they inflict 3 wounds and take one in turn. Catachan lose two or three models to Morale and Penal Legion lose one. Total Penal Legion losses: five. Astra Militarum just aren't built for charging, and the Penal Legion's order only massages that, it doesn't really change it. Their main advantage, thanks to doctrine-transports, rerolls, the order, and the stratagem, is mobility, and they have to eat mortal wounds and Elite slots and lose ranged firepower to get the most out of that.
Hell, looking at the results above I'm tempted to add "Fall Back and Charge" to the list of things Combat Drugs can do, just to keep the Penal Legion charging. It's a bit mono-focused, and that's something that does concern me Transport capacity being prison-grade and all other vehicles being unimproved makes sense, but this is a Regiment that already gets to reroll its advance rolls and potentially advance-and-charge.
Half the time you won't even NEED transports; the only "unique" reason to double transport capacity is so you can actually jam a squad of Conscripts or more than four Ogryn inside a Chimera. The poor Leadership also bothers me, though it's currently somewhat addressed by the Commissar getting enough "buffs" that you'd definitely be expected to take one or two.
I'll have to think about what to do for both of these. My instinct for Penal Legion vehicles is either that they're gakky prison transports which might not be a good choice, see above , or that they'd fire on their own troops without hesitation, which feels like it's treading on the Valhallan toes.
I suppose it could be an indirect close-range buff; some kind of re-roll on shooting rolls if you're shooting at an enemy unit within 6" of a Penal Legion Infantry unit, to represent heavy bombardment very close to your own troops? Just to clarify; you don't feel that the Savlar Chem-Dogs, the Last Chancers, or the Merov Indentured would play any differently than normal vanilla Astra Militarum, and in fact shouldn't be recognized as Regiments at all, despite a wealth of background material detailing the specialist formations and tactics employed by the various Regiments of the Penal Legions, including multiple different army lists, unit entries, and special characters across the game's history?
Another thing that sets the "Last Chancers" and other, similar units apart from their common Penal Legion counterparts is the special training regimen they are put through to fulfil their clandestine missions. Some of these groups are subjected to a gruelling, months-long training regimens to enhance the natural skills and talents for which they were chosen.
If their missions call for it, these recruits might also receive training in close combat techniques, sabotage, infiltration, different insertion and extraction methods such as Grav-Chutes and underwater infiltration, and survival in all manner of hostile environments. Those who survive the training and safety is hardly a priority, given the condemned status of these dishonoured soldiers gain the skills needed to be some of the most vicious and lethal warriors in the Astra Militarum.
Colonel Schaeffer leading the 13 th Penal Legion in combat. The missions that such condemned soldiers take part in are nothing less than sheer suicidal madness. They are tasked with missions so clandestine, so dangerous, and so cold-blooded that they would give any commander pause. Assassinations, mass killings, gathering intelligence, infiltration of heavily guarded and fortified enemy facilities, and the sabotage, theft, and destruction of untold thrones' worth of property and war materiel are all in a day's work for the 13 th Penal Legion and other regiments of their uncouth ilk.
Unlike the majority of Penal Legions , men and women belonging to groups like Colonel Schaeffer 's 13 th Penal Legion and other, similar organisations are remarkably well-equipped for groups of incorrigible Imperial criminals. Given that such groups are frequently used by their commanders to carry out deadly covert strikes, assassinations, and other underhanded tactics that more conventional regiments would never even attempt, the weapons they carry often pack an incredible punch in a small package, and are well suited to their stealthy and clandestine assignments.
Even their standard weapons, such as the run-of-the-mill lasguns they are issued, are heavily modified. For protection on certain kinds of missions that demand that they pay their debt to the Emperor before perishing in His name, they are even assigned light armour that still allows them the freedom of movement to execute their savage stealth raids upon enemy positions. Warhammer 40k Wiki Explore.
Imperium of Man. Adepta Sororitas Important Links. Drukhari Kabals Drukhari Important Links. Posted 20 April - PM. I'd say use them as veterans Well I had two squads of penal legion, so I am thinking of doing a 25 man platoon and having the PCS and sergeants as Penal custodians.
Flamers and grenade launchers for such suicide troops? My regiment, like yours WarriorFish, don't have Penal Legion but my legionnaires are the leftover Catachans who got tainted fighting chaos for years in the jungles and attacked Sisters of Battle under Inquisitor Soulis.
Instead of burning or otherwise executing them all he gave them a chance at redemption through death in battle. Posted 21 April - AM. There, I said it. Time to make a penal company or traitor guard army? The possibilities are endless. There are no D ea mons in 40k. Posted 21 April - PM. My Penal Legion has become my new Conscripts. Helped out my fluff since my regiment doesn't take White Shields.
Posted 23 April - PM. I'll be using mine as veterans, converting the lasguns of three into sniper rifles, and choosing two to fit onto a HWT base with round slots for their bases Posted 24 April - AM. I like the lost and damned suggestion! A very good point. As veterans they'd get more use, and be harder hitting Gives Father William more to do, too. Many thanks, Nicodemus. Now I need another two or three packs of ungors and a whole lot of lasguns Thankfully I love the ungor kit and the lovely bitz in it.
Though I was planning to get more for my Psychopomps Reply to quoted posts Clear. New troops have their heads shaved and tattooed with the unit insignia, and explosive slave-collars are put around their necks. The collars are a disciplinary device rather than a means of turning the troops into Human bombs -- the blast is directed inwards, and will have little effect on anyone standing a few Terran feet away.
The collars are controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus personnel accompanying the force, and are detonated sparingly, when discipline needs to be enforced without destroying the troops' morale. The Penal Legions provide a massive expendable source of manpower for the Imperial armies. Thrown into desperate battles to hold back surprise offensives, or cast against fortifications to test the enemy's strength, the Penal troops are disposable and they know it.
Most die in their first battle, driven like cattle into the heart of the fighting. The toughest, the most dangerous, the born killers, somehow survive. For every hundred pathetic miscreants that die whimpering under the enemy guns one mad killer emerges triumphant, screaming his insane anger. Penal Legions are a part of the regular fighting force of the Imperial Guard , and a commander who regards Penal Battalion troops merely as cannon-fodder and uses them wastefully is liable to end up in a Penal Legion battalion himself.
But they should consider this: should a man who has wronged the Emperor be allowed to wrong him further? For each man executed is a man who can no longer serve, and to fail in service to the Emperor is the greatest of sins. The Penal Legions are filled with scum of the worst kind. These murderers, rogues, deserters, cowards, madmen, seditionists, and drunkards fight for the Emperor in the bloodiest warzones -- whether willing or not.
The penal units in which these villains serve are the product of the harsh discipline enforced in the Imperial Guard. With millions of men and women under arms, all armed and trained to kill for the God-Emperor, there can be no leniency if order and combat effectiveness are to be maintained.
The breaking of any number of tenets of military law and the inexhaustive wealth of Departmento Munitorum regulations up to and including murder are all punishable by death -- or service in a penal battalion.
The will of condemned criminals is not easily bound to the Emperor's service, and so many methods may be applied to get these forlorn wretches into battle. These methods may include the generous application of lashes by electro scourges, or fitting the penal legionnaires with auto-injectors to flood their bloodstreams with frenzon, slaught, or other combat drugs and turn them into raving berserkers.
Decimation of a Penal Legion that fails to advance is also a common motivational tool. In some cases legionnaires may be fitted with explosive collars which can be detonated remotely to reinforce an order or give instant punishment.
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