Legions Imperialis is a game of monumental battles in the Age of Darkness, played out at an epic scale. Where many Warhammer games might be seen as a snapshot of a larger battle, this game shows the whole struggle in all its glory, as tank companies take on infantry battalions, and Titans walk in droves. But how does it actually play?
Mustering an Army
We begin by choosing an Army. The recommended size is 3,000 points per side, played on a 5’ x 4’ battlefield.
The first step is to declare your Allegiance – whether you’re a Loyalist or a Traitor, which will constrain some of your choices for obvious reasons. Then, pick your Primary Army List – the force from which you’ll pick a minimum of 70% of your units. At present, this means either the Legiones Astartes or the Solar Auxilia, but other factions may join the fray in future...
You’re now ready to pick your units, using two distinct components: Formations and Detachments. Detachments are the main building blocks of an army, similar to individual units in larger-scale games – platoons of infantry, squadrons of tanks, batteries of artillery, banners of Knights, and so forth.
Formations are larger strategic groupings of Detachments, selected according to the Formation Organisation Chart. You must select at least one Formation from your Primary Army List for every 1,500 points of the agreed limit – so that’s (at least) two Formations at 3,000 points.
The Legion Demi-Company is the most flexible Formation available to the Legiones Astartes, though there are many Formations to choose from, including the specialised Legion Armoured Company and Legion Aerial Assault.
Once your Formations from your Primary Army List have been selected, up to 30% of your points may be spent on Allied Contingents – representatives of other forces, including Knight Households and Titans. We’ll talk about how these work in another article.
Turn Structure
Each round is divided into five phases. The most important thing to know here is that both players act within each of these phases, taking it in turns to activate their Detachments in Initiative order, according to hidden Orders that have been pre-assigned.
Using tokens placed face down next to their Detachments, players assign Orders simultaneously and in secret. Both players reveal their Orders once they’ve all been placed. There are four main Orders: First Fire, Advance, March, and Charge, plus Fall Back, which a unit can be assigned when they take heavy losses.
You then determine Initiative by rolling off. This governs who gets to activate their Detachments first.
Movement and Combat
These two phases work in the same way: players take it in turns to resolve the relevant Order tokens by activating Detachments one by one.
Orders affect how your Detachments can behave during both phases. Advance is the most flexible, allowing both regular movement and shooting, while March lets a Detachment move double its Movement characteristic – treble if it’s an entirely infantry Detachment – but not shoot. Charge allows either for a single movement, or a double movement if it gets a Detachment into base contact with an enemy Detachment. Detachments with First Fire cannot move, but they do get to shoot first. Finally, a Fall Back Order prevents a Detachment from moving – instead, they’ll have to retreat during the End phase.
Combat is divided into three subphases: First Fire, Engagement, and Advancing Fire – which is to say, Detachments with a First Fire Order get to shoot, then you resolve close combat, then everyone else gets to shoot.
Shooting works pretty much the same as it does in most Warhammer games. Weapons have a range, an amount of dice to roll, a target number for the Hit roll, an Armour Penetration value, and Traits. Select a target in range, roll the right number of dice, and apply any modifiers to the roll. For each one that hits, the model gets a Save that can be modified. Traits are where extra variety happens – guns with the Light trait cannot hurt heavy tanks, for instance, while Assault weapons are more powerful up close – ensuring everything has a niche.
Combat, however, is a little different. The system harks back to the epic scale games of yore, in which individual models are paired off against each other. Then they make Fight rolls, rolling off with 2D6 and adding their Close Assault Factor (CAF) to the roll. Models get a bonus if they charged, and the loser takes a Wound, no Saves allowed – melee is seriously deadly, and even tanks can be overrun.
When faced with uneven numbers, you’ll have to “pair off” your models with more than one enemy each. Your outnumbered models will still fight each of their foes individually, but your opponent gets to roll an extra D6 for every time you’ve already fought. This means that the most elite fighters can still be worn down if you’re not careful to support them…
As you’d expect, there are also plenty of rules about maintaining Detachment coherency, moving through terrain, firing Overwatch, Morale, and so on, which we don’t have time to cover here.
Check back later in the week for more dispatches from Legions Imperialis.