The Ghost Legion: Building Alpha Legion Headhunters

I am Alpharius. 

It has been a little while since my first post about starting an Alpha Legion strike force for Zone Mortalis. I have been making steady progress on the force and can now finally show the results of my efforts! As I hinted at in my previous post, I have been hard at work on converting a Headhunter squad. The idea of a small cell of Space Marines that excel in infiltrating and sowing dissent and confusion in the enemy ranks is fascinating to me.  Particularly because, although always described as remarkably skilled and determined warriors, Space Marines are rarely likened to assassins (with the exception of the Alpha Legion’s Headhunters). Building a squad of these espionage agents presented an interesting challenge in trying to implement those unlikely themes into a unit of Space Marines.

The Ghost Legion: Starting an Alpha Legion Force for Zone Mortalis

"Where truth walks, everywhere she should be shepherded always by a bodyguard of lies."

Since Forge World began releasing models for the Horus Heresy, the urge to build an entire pre-heresy army has been strong, but I have been able to restrain myself.  Afterall, do I really need another army?  And even if I did, do I really need more Space Marines?  Finally, the exorbitant price of Forge World’s models, coupled with the fact that they are all resin has firmly kept this desire at bay.  Recently, however, two elements have conspired to make me reconsider this notion.  The first was when I discovered that Forge World updated their rules for playing space hulk boarding actions that were first published in their Imperial Armour Volume 9: the Badab War Part One.  The updated rules, called Zone Mortalis, are designed to play small (sub 1000pts) games of 40k in confined spaces like hive cities, space hulks, and ancient labyrinths, and even including rules for fighting in the cold void of space.  The second element was the release of the third book in the Isstvan Trilogy: Extermination, and with it rules for one of the most interesting Legions, the enigmatic Alpha Legion.  This more intimate way of playing Warhammer 40k seemed ideal to reenact the knife-edge espionage missions a cell of Alpha Legion Astartes would engage in. And just like that I decided that I needed to start assembling an Alpha Legion army!