Packed with tanks, infantry, and dreadnoughts, the new Legion Imperialis Combat Forces look wild, but is this game worth investing in right now, for players or GW?
Through some arcane act of Mechanicum math, Games Workshop is rolling out new Legions Imperialis Combat Forces (right after Horus Heresy got theirs). On paper, these boxes are massive, stuffed with Epic Scale miniatures, tanks, dreadnoughts, and more plastic than your backlog can handle.
But let’s be real: the question hanging in the air is less “what’s inside?” and more “Does anyone really care anymore?”
Let’s break down why this move feels a little strange, given where the game stands right now.
Legions Imperialis Combat Forces
Each of these Combat Forces packs enough firepower to flatten a city block, but they all bring it to the table in very different ways. The Legiones Astartes box screams combined-arms brutality with everything from Terminators to tanks.
The Mechanicum arrives with robots, exotic tech, and enough plasma to light up half a sector. And the Solar Auxilia show up in overwhelming numbers, backed by some of the heaviest armor mankind ever built.
No matter which force you pick, you’re getting a bundled taste of the Horus Heresy’s most iconic armies with some sort of savings over buying each box separately.
The Big Issue: Who’s Playing?
Now, here’s the sticking point: Legions Imperialis isn’t exactly thriving. We’ve covered the decline of the system before in our article here, and these new boxes don’t change the fact that it’s tough to find regular players.
We showed the costs to play an average game of LI, and since day one, each model rule has had its rules paywalled in an expansion book. Not even the core rules contain all the rules for the units in the game.
Simply put, Legion Imperialis is just bad value.
Some groups keep it alive, but most hobbyists never clicked with the Horus Heresy small-scale pitch. They wanted small-scale Warhammer 40k, but GW gave them a niche spin-off instead.
From a business perspective, it’s obvious. The more Combat Forces GW can sell, the more they keep hobbyists in their product ecosystem instead of wandering off to alternatives.
But for players, the value looks less clear. Why push massive Combat Forces into a game that feels more like a side project than a core system?
Resource Allocation and Priorities
The release timing doesn’t help. These Combat Forces were revealed alongside (on the same day) the new Space Marine Terminator Battleforce, a box we already know will be allocated, with Assault Terminators and the new Ancient locked behind it.
When 40k players can’t even reliably get their hands on the mainline products, seeing production capacity pumped into Legions Imperialis feels odd.
The models themselves are impressive. No one’s denying that. But when you compare the hype versus the actual community engagement, the mismatch is hard to ignore.
Final Thoughts: GW, Stop Making Such Bad Calls
The new Legions Imperialis Combat Forces are massive boxes that showcase everything great about the setting’s model range, but they highlight the system’s shaky position too.
For Games Workshop, game systems like this seem to be a stubborn drive to keep customers inside the ecosystem when the mainline game, Warhammer 40k, already demands so much attention and cash to produce already inadequate amounts of stock.
Sure, if you want an army in a box, they’re here. Just don’t expect them to solve the biggest problem Legions Imperialis still faces: finding someone else to play against.
See What’s Happening With Legions Imperialis Here!
