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| My well read copy of Dark Disciple. |
The Word Bearers are one of my favourite Legions (just behind my Thousand Sons and Iron Warriors). Their unwavering loyalty to chaos and sense of purpose is admirable. Today, I’m sharing my interpretation of the 32ndhost from the Dark Disciple novel, led by the aspiring Dark Apostle, Marduk. This list represents the detachment send to Perdus Skylla, to unlock the secrets of the Nexus Arrangement, a mysterious Necron artifact. This example list comes in at bang-on 2000 points.
HQ
Dark Apostle, mutation, murder sword melta bombs
warpsmith, mutation, sigil of corruption, mark of tzeentch
Elites
5 terminators, reaper Autocannon, chainfist, combi-plasmagun, veterans of the long war, champion with lightning claw and combi melta
Land Raider, daemonic possession
Troops
8 chaos marines, mark of khorne, veterans of the long war, champion with chainaxe and mutation
10 chaos marines, missile launcher, plasma gun, veterans of the long war, power axe, meltabmbs
7 chaos marines, icon of vengeance, veterans of the long war, champion with power sword and gift of mutation, meltabombs
Heavy Support
Land Raider
Land Raider
Land Raider
The major issue I had was including all the characters. As you all know, there are only two Hq slots, but in Dark Apostle there are four main characters, not including minor champions. To combat this, I made the two most distinct characters (position wise), Marduk and Darioq, HQ choices, a dark apostle and warpsmith respectively. Kol Badar is the leader of the Annointed, so it made sense to make him the terminator champion. Burias is represented by the icon bearer in the third chaos marine unit. Not ideal, but it works. To finish off, Khalaxis, Sabtec and Namir-Sin are the unit champions.
Markuk has the murder sword to represent his daemonic chainsword. This replaces the power maul, as he does not use the hallowed weapon in Dark Disciple. Darioq has an Aura of Dark Glory and mark of tzeentch to represent his powerful force field. The mutation gift mimics his wildly mutating body. Khalaxis and Sabtec also have mutations: Khalaxis’ represents his stim-injectors, whilst Sabtec is described as being blessed by the chaos gods, and is thus rewarded.
The list numbers 32 models exactly, excluding tanks. This number was explicably referenced in the book, so I kept to it. The squad sizes (or allocations) aren't identical, but they had to be adjusted to make accommodations in terms of weapon access and FOC slots. For example, the chosen and havocs are normal marine squads. The bonus is that it makes them scoring
The force travelled across the frozen wasteland in four land raiders. I had to do this by maxing out the heavy support slots and giving the terminators a dedicated transport. This is one of the reasons why the 'havoc' squad in the book is represented by ordinary marines. The land raiders have no extra gear, since none is mentioned in the book. The only exception is Kol Badar's tank, which was mentioned to be daemonically possessed in the novel.
I plan to do more of these list articles. If there’s any particular them you’d like to see, from a book or just a cool them idea, let me know of the Facebook page.