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Warriors, it’s been a while since we updated you on how Battlesector is proceeding, so now is the time.
Firstly, a reminder that Battlesector was featured in December’s Slitherine Next presentation where we gave the first sight of the upcoming Black Legion faction and we also revealed our roadmap for 2026:
The Battlesector team is hard at work bringing all of these plans to fruition and we’ll have more news on each of them throughout the year ahead. For today, however, we return to the subject of Abaddon's forces, the Black Legion.
The ways of the warp are unpredictable at best, and whilst we had ambitions to release the faction to your beclawed hands in December last year, our machinations did not play out as we’d hoped. I can tell you that the Faction is now feature complete however, and it is in closed beta testing to ensure that we have a fantastic new force to add to Battlesector. We’ll have a release date for you very soon!
The Black Legion store page gives some details on the units that we have selected for the faction, but we thought that you might be interested to know a little bit more about how these were decided upon.
There are many potential units for the Black Legion. Their codex is not small, and it shifts and grows as Games Workshop finds new fantastic units to bring to us all.
Our first long-list was 37 units from the latest codex, each of which also had a physical version available. This is important for our model making processes (see our previous dev logs on the Astra Militarum Primaris Psyker) and also so that we can agree our interpretation of that unit with Games Workshop.
This list was then much debated, voted upon and finally squeezed into an agreed list which featured some important elements that we want our initial faction releases to have.
On the tabletop you have access to some amazing name characters and epic heroes. In Battlesector we aim to give each faction 3 to 4 “HQ” units, which can lead your forces with distinction, and also gain access to the potentially game changing CP abilities.
We knew from the start that we needed a Chaos Lord and a Sorcerer as iconic leaders and wielders of the powers of the warp. We then took a look at the other warlords and dark powers available and decided on two that would stand apart as distinct and unique in their own right. The Master of Executions provides something unique, a melee-focused whirlwind of death that can pose a very immediate threat to any opposition leader. And the Cultist Firebrand gave us a Chaos Cultist HQ to let players engage with their merely human side (and also gain access to a flamer!).
The core of the Black Legion is well settled. Chaos Terminators, Legionaries, Raptors, Chosen and Havocs each lend a very different element to a Black Legion army, but they are all recognised as the heart-beat of their infantry. We had to have them all.
Something that might cause discussion is that the Legionaries and Chosen have been given their own distinct roles in Battlesector, with the Legionaries wielding Bolters and grenades whilst the Chosen bring Accursed Chain Weapons and Power Weapons. Many of you will prefer to take these in different guises on the tabletop (maybe all melee, or swapping their ranged and melee specialities), but we always try to give Battlesector units a unique identity and we agreed as a team that the Chosen needed to be the ones getting stuck into the hand to hand combat.
Add to this the Cultist Mob and Warband, and there is a fantastic battleline that can take on any challenge.
I’m sure there are some of your favourites that aren’t here (Possessed? Chaos Spawn? Warp Talons?), but we only had so many spots and there’s always a chance for these units to arrive at a later date!
The last group are the great Daemonic Engines of war that add epic power and impact to the forces of Chaos. The Helbrute was one of the first names on our teamsheet, closely followed by the Heldrake to be our aerial support unit.
We chose to take only one of the Maulerfiend and Forgefiend, and with the Helbrute already getting up close and uncomfortably personal with the enemy, we selected the Forgefield with Hades Autocannon and Ectoplasma Cannon loadouts to add some extremely durable long range support.
Our final selections were the Chaos Rhino (absolutely selected because we loved the idea of some Power Weapon wielding Chosen and a Master of Executions being unloaded onto an exposed enemy flank!) and then the Obliterators and the Venomcrawlers. These last two not only added a great swiss army knife of fleshmetal guns and a horrifically quick skirmisher, but they are two of our favourite kits from the tabletop in recent years!
