Legions Imperialis Buying Guide

Updated 2025/11/30

Introduction

This guide will cover buying into Legions Imperialis (LI), the 8mm epic scale game from GW. The game currently has three-ish factions and a large number of options for getting started. I want to try and break down what has the best value, and the best starting units. This is not intended as a complete guide to the game.

I intend to keep this up to date but see the heading on the top right to confirm when this was last updated. Currently this covers GW kits but I’ll add info on 3d prints and 3rd party models in the future. Part of the reason for writing this guide is GW’s announcement of 3 new boxed sets coming for the game meaning there will be 9 boxed sets you can find on store shelves, so I want to offer some guidance on your best bets.

If you want to explore what army building looks like you can use the Legion Builder app, and I’ll provide some guidance on starting list building later on. I do want to lay out a few things related to list building. First is game size. GW recommends 3000 points which will be a suitably epic game, but quite long. Many events are closer to the 2000 point level to more comfortably allow more than one game in a day. The second point I’ll make is that LI rules as written has no activation cap on army lists. This means that in that environment one of the strongest things to do is spam minimum sized units. However that vastly slows down the game and also is extremely unbalanced if one player has a large activation advantage. For this reason most events add an activation cap.

And in a world where activations are capped LI rewards larger units. Larger units are less likely to break and flee. And larger units want a lot of the same weapon. So another question you’ll need to answer is how important What You See Is What You Get to you, and your local scene. So some of this advice is contradictory. You’ll want a lot of activations, or you’ll want large units? Unfortunately that’s the life of playing GW’s Specialist Games. The community often steps in when GW does not and how you want to play will depend on local players, seek them out and ask them about this.

The way this guide is going to work is I’ll go through the boxed sets for each faction, then talk about some key other things to consider, and lastly some general buying advice and building your first lists. This first page covers some overall notes and LI accessories and rules, links to the individual buying guides are on the right.

One last note on list building to keep in mind. You can take allies in this game, typically one detachment which can make up to 30% of your list’s points. I’m not going to talk about that too much but keep it in mind when thinking about lists and purchases.

Legions Imperialis Buying Guide Index

Overview
Legiones Astartes
Solar Auxilia (Coming soon)
Mechanicum (Coming eventually)

Note on points and prices:

All points given are approximate, they can vary a bit depending on unit options and how you split models up. It’s a pretty small band in LI but consider the points list below as +/-5%.

For prices I’m sticking to USD and GW’s MSRP. You can get these cheaper in the states, and other countries obviously have their own pricing, but the savings from a box set should be consistent across all of this.

Choosing a Faction

You can count the number of factions in LI in a few ways. The core factions are Legiones Astartes (Space Marines), Solar Auxilia (Imperial Guard), and the Mechanicum. Each of these have a range of vehicles, walkers, and infantry. Knights and Titans also exist in the game and can be taken as allied assets, or as their own unit army lists.

Generally speaking you will want to start with a core faction. Knights are very bad at holding objectives, and Titans can not hold them. This means if you’re playing one of those you’ll want to ally in a core faction for infantry support. You could start with Titans and allied Mechanicum, but I’d recommend the reverse as it will give you a more complete collection and understanding of the game.

The largest and most flexible army list belongs of course to the space marines. However the Solar Aux list is arguably more powerful and still has a lot of options. Mechanicum has a smaller roster and is a bit more limited, but it does have easier access to Knights and Titans, as well as being able to take spider-like Dark Mechanicum walkers.

Rules and Gubbins

In the second half of 2025 GW greatly simplified what you need to play Legions Imperialis. There is now a core rule book ($65) and the Liber Strategia ($65) contains all army lists. Prior to this there were a series of small hardbacks adding new units to the game. Playing the game does really require a physical or digital copy of the core rules. The Liber Strategia is only offered in print but you can get buy with Legion Builder or New Recruit.

The rulebook is included in the starter set so let’s talk a bit more about it now.

Warhammer: The Horus Heresy – Legions Imperialis

Price: $215
Value: $359
Points: 1708
Marine points: 502
Solar Auxilia points: 606
Warhound points: 600
50:50 split value: $179.50

Starting with the most complicated box to talk about, we have the Legions Imperialis starter set. So there are a lot of numbers above, but the core ones are the price, what that comes to if you bought everything separately, and then what you’d be looking at if you split this. And splitting this gets complicated when there is one rule book.

So, where does that leave us? I think the starting set is a fine set. Warhounds are okay, very cool, not bad, but expensive for the firepower they bring and not as mobile as you might think. The Solar Aux and Marine parts of the box are both fine but quite limited. For reasons outside the scope of this document they’re not great as allied forces.

If you’re looking at the box I strongly recommend someone who’d like to split it and get 2 copies. That way you both get a rule book and a more complete start to your faction. You do both end with 2 Warhounds which might be overkill but it’s still a good deal. On the subject of splitting there are more marine players out there, but I think the Solar Aux get the better deal here in terms of units and points so that should make it a little easier to find someone interested.

What’s This About Gubbins?

You may have noticed some other stuff in the starter set. I’m not going to explain d6s to you but let’s touch on the other stuff. First you’ve got templates. These are the standard GW set and if you know people who play GW games I’m sure someone has a spare set they could give you. They don’t get used often in the game but some weapons do need them. The red sticks are for measuring or whipping your friends. In one of those regards they’re useless and best replaced with a tape measure.

But let’s talk about that sheet of tokens hiding behind the rules. Imperialis relies on face-down order tokens. When first playing you can use the ones included in the starter set. But if you don’t have the starter set and have not yet given up on life you’ll want some other ones. These are not printed on nice thick card-stock but just thin almost-paper. You’ve got a lot of options. You can upgrade the ones coming in this box. You can buy nice plastic ones from GW. You can 3d print some. You can buy some acrylic ones. You can buy some 3d printed ones. Whatever you do, upgrade what the starter box comes with. Do note if you’re printing these or otherwise making your own you’ll need by far the most Advance orders. And having 6 40mm round objectives is nice too.

What About Army Lists?

All current army lists, unit stats, and points had been in the Liber Strategia book. If you’re playing the game you’ll want to pick up a copy. You can get by with the core rule book and the Legion Builder site if you want, but browsing the book is nice and things will be a little more complete.

With the upcoming release of Legions Imperialis: Journal Strategia – The Ruin of the Salamanders you’ll find some units will need that book for their stats.

Do note that the unit stats and points in the core rule book are slightly out of date, likewise a series of hardback campaign books have unit rules which are no longer valid. These books are going out of print so only pick them up if you want the campaign rules and/or background material.

GW Sells Cards, What’s the Deal with Those?

GW offers decks of cards, one per faction for Imperialis. These cards cover unit stats and list building formations. You don’t need them. They are kind of nice as an at-table reference but there are two things about them that makes it hard to recommend. First, they list special rules your units and weapons have. But not what they do. Second, they’re kinda annoying to store and transport. They’ve used several card sizes based on how much rules text there is. Which is kinda nice, but also means rather than one deck of cards you’ve got 2 and they don’t come in a great box for that.

If you’re interested, I’d say get them, but they’re certainly not a must-buy.

Terrain and the Battlefield

Legions Imperialis departs from most GW games in a few ways. The most obvious is scale. We’re at 8mm rather than 32mm. That means terrain sized for 40k may look a bit odd here. That said, don’t let that stop you. A 40k ruined building is going to look better than a pile of books. And some things like hills or even some of the industrial terrain GW has made can look right at home.

However if you want to go beyond that you’ve got a few options. GW makes a line of terrain for LI, it’s very nice looking, but pretty fiddly to assemble and gets expensive quick. That said, if you want a great looking battlefield and don’t mind the cost it’s a great place to start. They also make a ruined version of their buildings and if you wanted to really go all the way you could make ruined versions of buildings to put down if the originals are destroyed.

For retail options you’ve got a few other choices. The first I’ll mention is Battlefield in a Box, particularly their Gothic Sector epic terrain. This is practically made for Imperialis and looks great. Another Battlefield in a Box thing to keep an eye out for are the various things designed for Battletech. Not all of these will fit but it’s a good option for things like forests.

Additionally Warcradle Games makes a line of terrain for their Armoured Clash game which fits well in terms of scale and aesthetic, however it’s price is pretty comparable to the GW kits.

Going outside of retail war gaming terrain you’ve got a lot of options. Keep in mind that Imperalis wants buildings more than most games, garrisoning them is pretty key to infantry’s role in the game. But there are countless options in the 3d printing field. And if you’re looking to craft hills or similar that works great at this scale. For forests you can look into model railroad trees, N or maybe even HO scale for those.

The last note on the battlefield is that Imperalis is played on a 5x4. By far the easiest way to set this up is take a 6x4 gaming mat and put a line of painter’s tape down. You could trim a mat down if desired, or permanently mark it, but those would mostly consign it to only being used for Imperialis so I don’t recommend it.