There is a small but dedicated Legions Imperialis community in the Washington, DC area. In addition to events at some larger cons there is an ongoing series of events called Malice. I attended the last one held in 2025 and had a great time. For this event I wanted to get a Space Marine army ready and painted.

Event Packet

The event had a lot of things to consider for your list. There were some explicit changes to list construction:

A limit of 8 wounds of flyer models, that is - 4 Marauder Bombers, or 8 Xiphon Interceptors, or some combination of other flyers

2300 points, max 16 activation (attached HQ choices don’t count as an activation, dedicated transports add 1 activation to the unit they’re attached to)

I think these are good changes and don’t have a ton to say about them. Marauders are OP, and overloading your opponents with activations is very powerful while also slowing the game down.

There is a special rule for all missions that also impacts things:

Deadly Fog of War (Devastation of Tallarn) - in short, this causes infantry outside of undamaged buildings or transports, or wounded multi-wound models to take a save at end of turn or suffer a wound. This is brutal! You get +1 to the save but it really means that infantry need to stay inside something. This also makes dealing 1 wound to a structure very relevant where normally it doesn’t do much.

Another special rule is being used for the first two of the three games:

Staggered Arrival - On turn one you only deploy a single detachment. Your others arrive on turn 2 & 3. No objective scoring on turn 1. Infiltrators must arrive on turn 1 to use that rule.

Now this is interesting. It really rewards certain things, and hurts others. Let’s break some of this down:

If you’re going to infiltrate you need to put that detachment down first, this is typically going to be Solar Auxilia Pioneer Companies, Alpha Legion, and Raven Guard.
You don’t need to hold objectives on turn 1.
For turn 1 activation counts may vary a lot. The list activation cap is 16 but on turn 1 it depends on your starting detachment.
Points may be mismatched on turn 1, again this depends on the starting detachment. This won’t mean much if it’s two short range detachments but if you can bring a detachment that can interact with the opponent on turn 1 you may be able to deal a lot of damage.
On turn 1 players will likely lack flexibility, one detachment rarely covers all your bases.
Units with deep strike arriving from turn 2 are even better than usual, as they’re not missing much turn 1.
Units arriving on turn 2 need some speed, you don’t want footslogging dreadnoughts on your board edge on turn 2.

Lastly, let’s talk missions. The first one, Forward Push is pretty typical, hold objectives, get more points the further they are from your deployment zone. However the next two are entirely based on kill points. This is unusual in LI and worth noting. Infantry typically dominate in this game because of their objective holding power. However here we’re seeing a mission packet where 2/3rds of the time that won’t matter as much. Add in the deadly gas from the mission packet and infantry are looking like a liability.

One final small note, ally cap was set to 750 rather than the 690 it would be rules as written. I like this change, feels like a rounder number and having a few more allied points is fun.

List Building

I came up with a few general ideas. I started with a space marine list heavy on super heavies that had some Saturnine Terminators deep striking on turn 2. But outside of the first mission I don’t actually care about that. I then considered a points-denial list, this would have been very few activations (8) but all my units would be very hard to kill. I kinda think this would have been unbeatable in missions 2 & 3, while struggling in the first. I decided to skip it for this reason, I’m looking to take a good list, but not too good. I briefly considered bringing a titan list, I think it will be very strong for this event packet and very, very hard to beat in games 2/3. But I didn’t really feel like painting titans and I don’t have a good set of titans painted to run a primary detachment of them.

Where I ended up first was a list built around space marine armour.

Legion Armoured Company (Blood Angels) 1195pts
    1 Legion Sicaran Commander  70pts (Punisher, heavy bolters)
    2 Legion Sicaran Punisher 90pts (Heavy bolters)
    3 Legion Sicaran Arcus 140pts (Lascannons)
    3 Legion Sicaran Arcus 140pts (Lascannons)
    2 Legion Sicaran Arcus 95pts (Lascannons)
    3 Legion Fellblade 340pts (Lascannons)
    2 Legion Cerberus 165pts (Lascannons)
    1 Legion Typhon 80pts (Heavy bolters)

Legion Super-heavy Spearhead (Blood Angels) 355pts
    2 Legion Typhon 155pts (Heavy bolters)
    1 Legion Typhon 80pts (Heavy bolters)
    1 Legion Glaive 110pts (Laser destroyers)
    1 Legion Cerberus 85pts (Lascannons)

Solar Auxilia Armoured Company (Blood Angels) 750pts
    Tank Commander 10pts
    3 Auxilia Stormhammer Squadron 280pts (Multi-lasers)
    3 Auxilia Stormhammer Squadron 280pts (Multi-lasers)
    1 Auxilia Malcador Infernus Squadron 60pts (Autocannons)
    1 Auxilia Malcador Infernus Squadron 60pts (Autocannons)
    1 Auxilia Malcador Infernus Squadron 60pts (Autocannons)

I’m not going to talk too much about this list because I didn’t run it. A week and a half before the event I got a game in against my friend’s Solar Aux, we were looking at these rules so he also took all tanks (and some planes). However his tanks were Solar Aux, and I got tabled. The issue was three fold:

Leman Russ Vanquishers are amazing and their range is king in tank v tank battles.
Shadowswords eat super heavies for breakfast.
Planes are better than AA.

So with that crushing defeat I went back to the drawing board and came up with:

Solar Auxilia Armoured Company 1255pts
    4 Leman Russ Vanquisher - Tank Commander 185pts (Lascannon)
    4 Leman Russ Vanquisher 175pts (Lascannon)
    4 Leman Russ Vanquisher 175pts (Lascannon)
    4 Leman Russ Vanquisher 175pts (Lascannon)
    1 Shadowsword 120Pts
    1 Shadowsword 120Pts
    4 Lightning Fighter 305Pts (Lascannon, 2x Hellstrike Missiles)

Solar Auxilia Armoured Company 320pts
    1 Stormhammer - Tank Commander 115pts (Lascannons)
    1 Malcador Infernus 60pts (Autocannon)
    1 Malcador Infernus 60pts (Autocannon)
    1 Marauder Colossus Bomber 85pts (2x Skystrike Missiles)

Blood Angels Legion Super-Heavy Spearhead 725pts
    4 Typhon 280pts (Heavy Bolters)
    1 Cerberus 85pts (Lascannons)
    1 Cerberus 85pts (Lascannons)
    1 Cerberus 85pts (Lascannons)
    2 Fire Raptor 190pts (Lascannons)

After the drubbing I got I switched to Solar Auxilia and loaded up for tanks. On reflection this was an overreaction and I ended up having some issues with infantry which were more numerous than I expected. The idea of the list is I can get over half my force down on turn 1, and it has range to start picking off targets on turn one. And that worked throughout the event. Typically the marines would come on turn 2, and the smaller Solar Aux formation on turn 3.

The list worked very well, I maxed out the activation count at 16 which is just so important in this game. Being able to run away from infantry with your tanks is hugely important and if you have activation advantage you can. My models were very expensive with only 35 models across the list, so I had to take a lot of single model squads to make that happen. And I think they worked really well. The single model squads were all legitimate threats on their own, the Shadowswords did great work this event killing a lot of 2 or 3 wound models, and even putting some wounds on a titan. The Malcadors were able to threaten infantry, and while they didn’t do a ton of damage over the event having the threat of them and the cheaper activations was very useful. Then the standout single models were really the Cerberuses. I don’t think I missed a shock pulse all event and being able to really hand those out was great.

I knew with this list that the first game, the objective game would be pretty difficult and that was borne out by the game, but more on that later.

I have two regrets with this list, first I did over-index into killing tanks. I think based on the event packet the best lists would have very few infantry, but when it comes down to it people build based on their collection, and not everyone is going to be willing to deviate so heavily from generally accepted list building principles. The other regret is this list went a little too hard. The 4 Lightnings and 16 Vanquishers were a bit much, and while I think my opponents had fun, I felt a little bad at points during games that this list was overbearing. That’s a struggle with a game like LI. You don’t want to build a Win At All Costs list, but you also don’t want to take a weak list to an event.

Painting

As I changed lists I ended up going way overboard on painting for this event. I painted 5 Stormhammers from the first list that I didn’t need, and I started painting a ton of Blood Angel tanks that are currently half-finished.

In the end, I finished: 8 Leman Russ Vanquishers 6 Stormhammers 6 Malcador Infernus 4 Lightning 4 Typhon 4 Cerberus 2 Shadowsword

And I’m really happy with that. I’m bad with finishing projects so having event deadlines to get me to finish stuff is great. Legions Imperialis tanks paint up so fast. These were also the first 8mm Blood Angels I’d finished. I ended up using a variant of my 32mm Blood Angels scheme which relies on black primer, then stippling up brighter and brighter reds. I wasn’t sure how it’d read at 8mm but I’m very happy with the result.

Game Day

The event was held at Your Hobby Place in Alexandria. This is a great store, it’s pretty close to my work but pretty far from home so I left for the metro around 7:30am to make sure I’d be there for the 9am start time. YHP is a great store, it’s a little small because it’s in an urban area but it’s clean, welcoming, and has a great selection.

The TO had brought donuts which was nice, I ended up having time to walk across the street to grab a matcha.

Round One - Luke’s Iron Warriors

Round one was the round I was most concerned with. A game about objectives is not going to favor my tanks. Luke brought a list that was pretty good into my list on this. He couldn’t keep up with my shooting but had 2 units of Terminators in Spartans, and 2 tactical detachments deep striking in Termites.

The points in this game played out sort of in reverse. Early turns he was beating me by 10-20 points, but I was wiping out huge chunks of his army each turn. He didn’t have any AA units so my planes had pretty free reign and they spent most turns targeting units on objectives.

His infantry got to my side of the table which was a big problem and I spent turns 3-4 running away from them with my tanks. This game did turn up a situation that proved very strong due to this event’s death cloud rules. I had a Marauder Colossus and his infantry couldn’t get into a building because I’d blow it up, so they had to stay outside weathering the gas.

Luke was in the lead until turn 5. On Turn 5 he was down to only 2 units and I was well behind but was able to capture 5/6 objectives, this gave me a small lead on points, which was cemented with my secondary objective (blowing up all his tanks).

Luke was a great opponent and I had fun, it was a strange matchup due to our lists and the mission but while I ended up tabling him it felt close on points down to the last turn.

Round Two - Max’s Solar Auxilia & Salamanders

Max had brought Solar Auxilia as his main force and a detachment of Salamanders in Land Raiders as allies. We were now on the kill stuff missions and the first turn went my way in that regard, but then things slowed down in the mid game. Turns 2 & 3 were most notable for very bad offensive die rolls from both of us.

I think the most notable thing is how long Max’s Salamanders held on. It was a formation of 5 units and at one point 4 of them were still alive, all on a single model. This partly was down to dice rolls but I also needed to do a better job focusing things.

We only finished 4 rounds in this but again my secondary points were to kill tanks and carried the day.

Round Three - Chris’ Mechanicum & Mechs

I have a huge amount of respect for Chris bringing a Warmaster Iconoclast Heavy Battle Titan. If you’re familiar with the term Distraction Carnifex, this is the Distraction Carnifex to end all Carnifexes. It’s got a 1+ save, 8 wounds, 12 void shields, and it’s utterly terrible. At movement speed 6 it is going to need several turns to get into combat and most units can just run away. When you consider how tall it is it’s also easy to just shred it with your whole army. I think Chris has taken one to two events in a row and I really hope it gets into combat one of these days.

The rest of his list was a shooty Warlord Titan, a smattering of infantry, and a good number of tanks. Turn one went much as you might expect, my army full of anti-tank weapons exploded his 850 point titan. I also managed to take out a central building with a unit in it and those combined really left the center of the board, between our two armies wide open.

Chris was doing some serious damage while this happened. His Warlord was taking out my Shadowswords, and he also focused down my Typhons and Cerberuses. My Typhons were able to take out some buildings but were dead while he still had infantry left. However the weight of my tanks bore out and despite my heavier tanks going down my planes were still mostly untouched and my Leman Russ Vanquishers helped them clean up.

Wrap-Up

I had a lot of fun at this event, having a different rules setup to build to is very fun. I think I leaned into this more than most and it did lead to some things being a little lopsided in some games. The event had a good mix of armies. I’ve not done well in previous Imperialis events but won all three games this time which felt good though I do fear my list was too strong and led to some less than fun moments.

I didn’t win best loyalist because I think we had another 3-0 who probably ran up a much higher score in round one, and on the day it seems like traitors were well and truly thrashed. I do think packets should try and aim for games where points scored are relatively consistent across missions, if points are being used for this type of ranking. Here there were more points on offer in round one than the next two missions combined.

None of my opponents brought aircraft or AA. I think aircraft are much better than AA but skipping both really did let my planes do exactly what they wanted to, whenever they wanted to.

Imperialis is a really fun game and I just love the hobby side of it. No events for me for quite a while but I want to keep getting in some games of it and have one lined up for tomorrow.