Editing Children of Armok (section)

=Legion Combat Doctrine=

Strategically, the Children are generalists, able to operate under any normal circumstances like any other legion can. But the Children's strength and main means of operating comes from their use of stealthy and rapid tactical assaults mixed with their long term strategic insurgencies and counter-insurgencies to weaken and manipulate their foes.
They also make extensive use of espionage and political intrigue to cause confusion, and remove their enemies ability and will to fight, with the added benefit of often turning the enemy on itself with mutinies and rebellions.  

Atypically to many legions, the Children always look for ways to minimize the fighting needed, by exploiting local politics, blackmailing targets, and using diplomacy to make their foes surrender or fall into line with the Imperial way. 
With xenos the Children often force them to leave through violence and coercion, or more commonly lull them into thinking they are at peace with the Imperials, before mounting a mass of attacks to prevent any concentrated retaliation from occurring, then mopping up the remnants.

They also are very skilled at manipulating friends and foes alike into achieving the Childrens aims for them, without the Children having had to fire a shot, or be directly involved. 
In the Great Crusade, the Children, using their dispersed operational breakdown, would often work in conjunction with other legions, playing the 'good cop', willing to talk and peacefully bring the non-imperial worlds into line, leveraging themselves against the violent and unforgiving 'bad cop' of the other legions. 

Of course, the Children were actually using their diplomatic position to spy on the worlds and empires in question, and undertook clandestine raids and attacks on the worlds in question, weakening their means of detection, communication and defense, allowing the space marine legion they were working with at the time to attack with the minimum of resistance.
Just prior to the 'Bad Cops' assault, the Children would launch widespread tactical operations on key locations and routes, so that the other legion could land and go about the fighting with a minimum of fuss. 

Most notably, the Core Worlds were brought into line with this 'good cop/bad cop' strategy, with the Children working closely with the Void Angels - the terror tactics playing perfectly into the bad cop role, and allowing the Children to seem all the more reasonable and welcoming to deal with. In fact most of the Children's covert raids and insurgency tactics in the Core Worlds were blamed on the Void Angels by the victims, even though the Imperium itself knew better.



As for tactics, the Children are urban specialists. No other legion understands how to fight in cities as the Children do, having honed their skills over the centuries to incredibly scary levels. 
Its easy to contain situations the terrain does it for you. 
Cities are also closely linked with espionage, on account of most political and economic centers being located in cities.

The Children excel at contained tactical assaults - small, fast and very technical raids on well investigated targets, with a very specific goal. They get in fast, always using the element of surprise, and hit hard, grab/shoot/destroy the target, and get out before any response can be mounted.
These raids always have a secure perimeter established, to contain any enemies/witnesses trying to escape, and reinforcements from getting in.
(They operate like Swat or Counter-terrorists would do in a urban environment)

The Children also regularly make use of insurgency and counter insurgency tactics. Long, long campaigns aimed at destabilising the local status-quo through eroding their enemies public support, and using local media, and hearts-and-minds campaigns to win over the locals, and get them to provide assistance to the Children's operations. Then establishing pro-imperial (pro-Children) leaders in the chaos.
They also excel at dealing with insurgencies, using their expertise, espionage skills and establish intelligence networks to root out cultists and insurgents and deal with them as the Children see fit.



The Group 13 branch of the Children of Armok undertake missions that cannot ever be linked back to the Children. They undertake assassinations, black flag operations (even sometimes against the Children themselves), kidnappings and capturing, and long term infiltration based raids, where the marines have to remain isolated behind enemy lines for incredibly long periods of time while still operating. As such, Group 13 is trained in all Imperial weapons, and many common non-imperial weapons, so as to keep them fighting when they run out of ammo for conventional space marine weaponry.