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Armageddon Steel Legion 40k

This race is based on the 40k Background and features the imperial guard troops of Armageddon called Steel Legion. The idea behind the mod is to bring in a new strategie game play where units are more specialist and more units can enter the battlefield. You can play the race on your own or face it as enemy in multiplayer games. After numerous updates, the Armageddon Steel Legion is nearing its completion to becoming a fully playable army. Krain Train Oct 5, 2017 @ 5:00am Awesome! Formerly known as Ullanor, Armageddon has been subjected to several invasions throughout its history. Since it finally re-entered Imperial control, it has be.

This is my first post on this forum so I thought I would share my Steel Legion army with you. She sits at over 6000 points of painted models. Since I took these pics I have added a few.

Dusting off the Legion
If someone would have told me a couple of months ago that I would be planning a huge campaign with my Guard this year I would think them crazy. The last time I played my Guard army was in October 2013 at The Redstone Rumble. At that time the Guard was getting long in the tooth and I wasn't winning games with them anymore. In fact, that was around the time I was starting to discover assault and experimenting with melee armies for Chaos and Space Wolves. I was hooked, I was tired of shooting, it had gotten stale, assault was bringing the fun back for me.
Fast forward to 2014 and it was my year for the assault army. I had my ups and downs, mastering melee isn't easy (and I'm still far from a master) and there are some armies that will always own you when you bring a knife to a gun fight, at least that is how it went with my Chaos army. Anyway, I was having fun and I didn't want to run a shooting army anymore, melee was the way forward for me. As a consequence my Steel Legion got neglected, not even touched. I think I might have played it once in early 2014 - maybe. When the new Astra Militarium codex hit I was excited, bought the new codex and liked it a lot. I made some plans to upgrade my Guard but it was all for naught. Soon, thereafter, I was using all my time and money to upgrade my Chaos army and continue my path of assault play style, so thus, my excitement for Guard was short lived in 2014. My Steel Legion collected dust, lonely and forgotten.

A very nice Steel Legion army, not mine.

I hate to admit it, but so low had the Guard sank on my excitement list that I had traitorous thoughts about sell them. This did not come to pass thankfully, I've always known I could never sell my Steel Legion. They are my first army and every piece painted by me, lots of hard work and nostalgia are invested in them. I bought them when 4th Edition was brand new and The Steel Legion had just been released as the new Guard army. I bought my Legion all at once in a big order from The Warstore (I think it was kinda new then). I saved up and spent around $800 to purchase a dozen vehicles, about six squad boxes and some blisters of heavy, stormtroopers and special weapon teams. I could never do an order like that today with today's prices, these days in the hobby I have to buy everything a little at a time to spare my budget (and mind) from exploding into chunky salsa.
Now onto 2015 we go, I survived a mini-40K burnout in January and now it's time to start the South Mississippi Gamers year long Armageddon Campaign. Yeah, sounds difficult to pull off but we are motivated. Hinkel has an ork (stoopid xenos) army and I have a Steel Legion army so things are off to a good start. I am planning on writing up about a dozen campaign battles to play out. The only thing holding us up is real life and terrain; the battles of Armageddon were fought across orbital stations, ash wastes, jungles, arctic wastelands and inside hive cities. We have our terrain making work cut-out for us.

My 909th Steel Legion.

The State of my Steel Legion
So my Legion has grown through the decade and especially in the past few years since I got back into Warhammer 40K full time. Over those years I've added a plethora of models from a full squadron of Vendettas to more Legion infantry and a lot in between including various Forge World vehicle turrets. Just this week I purchased a Punisher on Ebay because we all know that Pask in a Punisher is pure gold. Not everything that was added is put together or painted but a fair majority of it is.
Paint
This was my first army so it was my test bed for learning how to paint. That being said, it doesn't look bad, about tabletop quality, and it gets compliments but it will never win any painting contests. Only a tiny handful of my Legion models have any hint of wash being used, something I loathe to see since I'm a hardcore wash user now. I may go back and touch up some models, especially the faces, at the very least they need some wash to bring out the details. All and all, I can't complain, especially knowing this was my first attempt at painting an army. Heck, I actually have some pride in my first painted army - it could have been a total disaster instead!
Updating for Armageddon Campaign
First and foremost, The Steel Legion fights as a mechanized force. This is great because I dislike running blob squads and infantry are very squishy outside their APCs. Unfortunately I only have four Chimeras, I could have five by swapping my Hellhound's turret for a Chimera turret. However, this is Armageddon, which means I'm fighting hordes of orks and having a S 6 template that can shoot 12' is amazing against orks, so the Hellhound stays. This means I will have to run some infantry on foot, which is fine, I will need some speed bumps for when the orks hit my front lines.
Flyboys
With the new codex the Vendetta has become more costly and I'm not liking it, especially with the reduction in transport capacity. Against orks all those lascannons aren't going to help as much as blast weapons so I am digging the idea of Valkyries with Multiple Rocket Pods. I already have two Vendettas magnetized so I can swap out the weapons but the Valkyrie loadouts need more work and need to be painted. These Valkyries are going to be workhorses shooting out pie-plates and dropping off specialized Infantry where they are needed.
Special Guns
Flamers. I am going to need more flamers. One can never have enough template and blast weapons to throw at orks! I think I have about 5 flamer conversions completed and another in need of paint but I'd ideally like to get a couple more conversions done at the very least. Speaking of blasts, I might try and get together some more Missile Launcher teams, they will be perfect against ork infantry and their vehicles. But I have a problem, I can't find my spare Missile teams. I figured I must have at least three more teams in a bits box but they have gone MIA from my collection at some point along the way. I think they might have been traded to pay off a 40K debt a couple of years ago.
Armored Vets
Carapace armor is affordable now, have you noticed? Veterans can get it for 10 points, that's 1 point per model to get a 4+! I have one Stormtrooper squad (old models) completed to represent carapace veterans and I have one Cadian Kasrkin squad ready to be painted. That will give me two carapace veteran squads in total, can't wait!

Carapace vets rock'n tiger stripes and four plasma weapons.

Boom
Remember Mortar Heavy Weapon teams? Yeah, they exist but you probably forgot about them like I did. They are super cheap and can actually be useful against orks so I am dusting off my old Cadian mortar team. It needs a little TLC, a mortar is missing the bi-pod so I'll mount it on a base and flock it, simple fix. I also need to finish two Autocannon team conversions, finish one Heavy Bolter team and fix one Lascannon team. When all my Heavy Weapon teams are all finished I will have three of each: Mortars, Lascannon, Autocannon, Missile Launcher and Heavy Bolter.
The Big Guns
On the tank front I'm golden. I have the following finished and ready for action: five Leman Russ tank bodies, one Hellhound, one Manticore, four Chimeras and one Basilisk. For the Leman Russ bodies I have various turrets to chose from including three Battle Cannons, Executioner, Vanquisher, Punisher and Demolisher. The Punisher needs a Heavy Bolter placed in the front sponson, easy thing to do.
Sadly, I don't have any Wyverns. A pair of those would shred some orks like nobodies business, but for now I will rely on my Manticore to take up the slack on that end. This is a conscious decision on my part to try and keep down costs. Maybe one day I'll have those Wyverns .... one day.
Last, and not least, I've got two Armored Sentinels to put together and paint. The Heavy Flamer option seems to jump out at me as the best choice for horde control but I will magnetize to keep my options open.
Most Wanted
Most wanted on my wish list is a Vulture Gunship with twin-linked Punisher Cannons. Boom! To bad Forge World wants $100 bucks for it, but it has been on top of my bucket list for over year now. With luck the Pound will continue to drop against the dollar and FW products will get cheaper for us here across the pond. Sorry, Brits, but Europe's economy stinks worse than ours right now.
Anyone have any advice for my updating? Am I missing some tricks to throw at orks? Feel free to leave me a comment and enlighten me.

Armageddon Steel Legionnaires outside of their natural habitat of MEHTAL BAWKSES.

'If the tanks succeed, then victory follows.'-Heinz Guderian

Take the Death Korps of Krieg, replace the doom and gloom with slightly less doom and gloom, throw them into the largest land war in modern Imperial history, and give each man his own ~~Chimera~~BEEEIIHHHNNBLLAAAAIIDDDEE. What you get is the Armageddon Steel Legion, one of the most heavily mechanized Imperial Guard units in the galaxy, with a penchant for fighting Orks. They're basically a mixed bag of the myriad forces that fought for the Axis in World War Two, probably primarily the mechanized/motorized encirclements attempted by the Germans that are known as Blitzkrieg. They wear bitchin' trench coats and gas masks, they fight Orks on a regular basis, and they have access to a metric fuckton of armored vehicles. They probably use Chimeras as condo[m]s.

The Steel Legion are not the only regiment on Armageddon however; there's the Armageddon Ork Hunters. Basically, they're a regiment of mini-Marbos, so good at fighting the Orks they can use Ork weapons; a damn-near impossible (or stupid depending on who you ask) feat considering that most Ork weapons either fall apart or backfire when used by a non-Ork. So they're all so badass they've become Orky in their own right, or they're, in fact, all Orks in disguise trolling other Orks and waiting for the opportune moment to krump the humies.

Armageddon is covered in ash, skulls, and skeletons. The ash is what used to be the flesh attached to those skulls and skeletons. The Steel Legion keeps fighting anyway. FUCK YEAH!

The First War for Armageddon[edit]

So, minor bit of history. Armageddon is pretty much a big ass factory, that on three occasions has been trashed. The first time, Angron decided it would make for a nice summer home, and decided to party for a while with a couple thousand Bloodletters and fifty thousand KhorneBerserkers of the World Eaters. Much partying was to be had before someone called the cops with a noise complaint, and the Grey Knights, Space Wolves and whoever hadn't been killed managed to take back the planet, with ninety Grey Knights dying to banish Angron.

When the party was over, the Inquisition decided to take out the trash, meaning that they forced the entire population of Armageddon into labor camps and worked them to death on suspicion of HERESY, before repopulating the planet and pissing off Logan Grimnar and his altruistic Space Wolves to no end. This escalated into a catastrophically wasteful standoff between the Inquisition and the Space Wolves that ended with the Lord Inquisitor being chopped into an idiot salad. Baba Booey.

Armageddon 2: Electric Boogaloo[edit]

Jump ahead a few hundred years, and we get the real origins of the Steel Legion. Warboss Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka thought that Armageddon would be a nice place for a WAAAGH and so there was a big ass fight. Commissar Yarrick led the defense of Hades Hive, holding out for months without support against a gigantic Ork offensive. This is where Yarrick first earned Ghazghkull's respect; countering every attack plan the warboss had, and sending crackheads on suicidal charges into ork camps with explosives strapped to them.

With the Guardsmen stretched thin, the Blood Angels arrived to pull their asses out of the fire (See Deux Ex Machina), doing what Indrick Boreale couldn't and performing a successful STEHL REIN attack. The entire company dropped into the Ork Horde and fought nonstop until the Orks fled. Ghazghkull said he'd be back, so the Guardsmen began prepping for war.

Armageddon Steel Legion Models

Having lost the majority of its PDF and most of the off-world regiments, all that was left was charred corpses and scorched metal. As the spess mahreen apothecaries solemnly collected their fallen brothers' gene-seed, thousands of medicae could be seen retrieving countless standard issue adamantium balls, as well as the odd pair of power balls. Manly tears were shed on both sides and the repariation of the planets defences would begin.

Armageddon 3: Revenge of the Ork[edit]

Preparing for his return, the Steel Legion became insanely fortified, with the Munitorium granting them a lessened tithe to keep local forces numerous enough to defend the planet. Millions of tanks, transports, and any other vehicle they could build were used in a gigantic buildup for the Orks return.

When they finally did, the Third War quickly escalated into the largest Ork WAAAAGH in history, drawing in dozens of Space Marine chapters, Imperial Guard regiments and even Titan Legions. After a mostly successful initial defense, the Steel Legion was slowly pushed back into heavy street fighting, turning the war from the Africa Campaign into Stalingrad, with tanks rolling off the factory floor directly into combat zones. The war mostly stopped, when Armageddon entered its 'Season of Fire' (a major period of volcanic activity), so while the Orks managed to successfully capture almost half of hive-cities, the cities in which they were defeated became unreachable. Orks got bored, and withdrew most of their forces to space, though still a lot of them remained on Armageddon and continued to fight. Both sides declared this as their victory. Steel Legion units now use the permanent Ork infestation for training purposes, keeping them away from the remaining major hives. What happened to the others or if they were retaken is unknown. The peoples there likely were liberated. Unlike most aliens in 40k, orks generally don’t care about non-combatants and will usually not bother with them. Enslave them, yes, but that’s about it (unless you were nearby when their battlelust was raging). Which ironically makes them among the most humane aliens of 40k.

When the Great Rift opened, the war started back up again with the return of Chaos to the planet. Currently, the Steel Legion is now stuck fighting not only the Orks, but also the forces of Khorne and Tzeentch. Moreover, the Legionnaires are actually teaming up with the Orks (Albeit in the extremely short term) for the defense of the planet that's THEIRS to destroy

Alternative Modeling Options[edit]

Essentially, if you want to play a regiment that looks as bitchin' as the Death Korps but with the ability to have some personality and tanks, the Steel Legion are for you. Unfortunately, despite being from a major warzone, they're only in metal. At least, from GW. Both Anvil Industry and Mad Robot Miniatures make affordable conversion bits that can be used to represent Steel Legion. Of course, if you are willing, painting Krieg minis mustard yellow is more likely to be allowed in official games (unless your Local Game Storewon’t allowForge World). Another solid option is the plastic Raumjäger Infantry from Wargames Atlantic.