Editing Alpha Legion (section)

==Tactics==
{{topquote|Hail Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb and two more shall take its place! We serve the Master, as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!|Alpha Legi-wait a minute!}}

During the Great Crusade the Ultramarines had a proverb: "Information is victory." What they meant to say is, "If you know an opponent, you can defeat them." The Alpha Legion took this doctrine and turned it up to eleven: why focus only on the intel '''you''' have? An enemy that doesn't know '''you''' (or better has nothing but carefully crafted disinformation about you) is doomed. That's pretty much what their strategy revolves around: ''fucking with their opponent's mind''. Since then no one knows anything for certain about them. If you think you know more, start worrying: this means Alpha Legion is messing with your mind right now. That's why the [[Ultramarines]] and Alpha Legion absolutely ''despised'' each other during the Horus Heresy, as their battle doctrines antagonized each other.

Notable examples (allegedly) include:
* Making everyone believe their primarch was killed by [[Roboute_Guilliman|Rowboat Girlyman]], despite even the [[Ultramarines]] having no records about such a thing ever happening.
* Leaking their attack plans to a subsector governor, so he strips nearby planets of garrisons to reinforce his defense, and then attacking those weakened nearby planets.
* Hypno-indoctrinating natives of a Space Marine recruiting world with a trigger switch, and then turning the unwittingly brainwashed Marines on their brothers when the Alpha Legion attacked their fortress-monastery after arranging for the Chapter in question to suffer a series of "accidents" that left them badly undermanned. And they did that twice.
* Conquering hundreds of planets during the [[Horus_Heresy|Horus Heresy]] with a ''single agent'' planting rumors of the Warmaster's advance, and causing civil wars and rebellions of people trying to plead their allegiance to Horus only to make sure he doesn't nuke their homes upon arriving. Did I mention all these were made by a single fucking person who wasn't even a full-fledged Marine?
* Plotting and executing the Night of a Thousand Rebellions, that effectively severed the Segmentum Pacificus away from the Imperium, leaving it at the mercy of Chaos. Yeah, you heard it right - the entire ''segmentum,'' and while it ''is'' the smallest one, it's still like 15% of the Imperium.
* Adopting the battle cries of their enemies. Yelling "For The Emperor!" before you charge will cause any true loyalist opponent to hesitate - usually fatally.

{{BLAM}}
{{BLAM|These stories are obvious and self-contradictory falsehoods, trash that pollutes the minds of the faithful. We apologize for any discomfort this wiki article may have caused you -- speak to your local [[Chaplain]] or [[Commissar]] if you require counseling. If you witness anyone spreading these harmful lies about a 20th Legion, immediately report the heretic to your local representative of the Inquisition or to your unit's commissar. If you happen to be the commissar and you witness yourself spreading these rumors, please report yourself to your bolt pistol.}}

So to sum it up, they are in the top league of the Warhammer 40k universe, fighting when and where they want to achieve great goals with very limited forces, much like the [[Eldar]] and [[Thousand Sons]] except with less smugness and arrogance. Also, while the Eldar and TS rely on extremely complicated plans that either excel brilliantly or fail horribly, Alpha Legion plans, on the other hand, are mostly simple at their core, but are extremely well thought-out, with multiple backup plans, and are executed as stellarly, so even if they are not successful (which happened multiple times, especially when they fought against equally smart or unpredictable opponents) they rarely suffer much from their defeats. It helps that they often excel at feeding completely inaccurate intel to their opponents. For example, their grand operation against the Raven Guard during the Heresy failed at the final stage with their undercover agents being compromised, and their backup plan of direct assault with their Mechanicum allies also failed, but due to extensive planning and a second fallback plan they still managed to steal the gene-codex and clear all the loose ends that could bite them in their asses later.

The Alpha Legion is basically an army of James Bond clones, like some unholy combination of the Mossad, CIA, and American MACV-SOG. No, really, that is how they fought. They were known for popping out of freaking nowhere and curbstomping the shit out of the enemy at the best possible moment (or worst, depending on whose side you were on). The Alpha Legion was also known to have a training doctrine that actually matches the idea of a super-soldier. That is, they trained ''all'' their Marines in how to use all their equipment and weapons in addition to picking out individuals to be trained as specialists. Every Alpha Legionnaire was at least capable of, in the short term, replacing or deploying as an Assault Marine, Devastator, Fast Attack (like speeders and bikes, etc.), with flexible plans and adaptable soldiers (hence the Hydra, because in the short term you couldn't decapitate their command structure and, being Space Marines, soon someone similarly competent would take over). They were also masters of stealth (though to a lesser degree than, say, the Night Lords or Raven Guard) and knowledgable of psychology, making them the best among the Legions of infiltrating and suborning enemy organisations and governments. All this while keeping their elites fully capable of matching a specialist from another Legion. This meant that the Alpha Legion was capable of fielding as many specialists as the mission required and their equipment allowed. They also had specialized [[Kill_Team|kill-teams]] used to sow chaos among the enemy during the Heresy and the late Crusade. These so-called [[Effrit Headhunter|Headhunters]] had these awesome combi-bolters with two barrels. Omegon supposedly led the Alpha Legion's black-ops division, no one really knows who is who though, so just consider "Alpharius" and "Omegon" to basically be titles.

Another interesting bit of their tactics is heavy focus on team play. Alpha legion squads move, fight and think as one, and are trained to quickly adapt to new squads. There is no "battle brotherhood" bullshit in this - just a simple extensive training and lack of typical Chaos Space Marine hubris, jealousy and occasional backstabbing. It goes so far that Alpha Legion initiation trials are passed by squads rather than individual aspirants like in other loyalist chapters or chaos warbands, so you either get to play as a team or do not play at all (likely being killed if your squad fails the trial).

Their devotion to Chaos is not entirely concrete, either. Alpharius himself never turned to Chaos, only following Horus into the Heresy as he saw it as the best outcome. Of course some Alpha Legion members like [[Sindri Myr]] are balls-to-the-wall Chaos worshippers but they are a radical minority. Most may see Chaos as a means to an end, using it simply to advance whatever goals they have. Their devotion can depend entirely on the place and the time. Some may [[Night Lords|loathe it]] while others are [[Word Bearers|zealous in their belief]]. In terms of Chaos worship the Alpha Legion is one of the more diverse, some theories even claiming that some operatives within the Legion are in fact closet loyalists seeking to protect humanity and stop Chaos. It should also be noted that their devotion being in question doesn't make them less corrupted; they ''do'' after all field the full gamut of Chaos goods available to the other Legions and ''are'' represented on the tabletop using "generic" Chaos Space Marine models, player and modeller's choice aside.

To make it even more interesting/confusing, what is considered a Legion of [[Space Marines]], was in reality more of a combined effort. More than any other Legion, they recruited outside the Legion for roles besides Astartes, or even agents. They were really, more accurately, a moving society. This trend only seems to have accelerated since the Heresy. [[Operative|No one knows how many regular human soldiers they have,]] but if their Cultist numbers are anything to go by, the Alpha Legion likely has whole Imperial Guard regiment-strength armies integrated within. That and the fact they don't even hang out in the [[Eye of Terror]] or have a recruiting planet and yet seem to only grow indicates that they have a normally functioning society. At this rate, they'll start looking like the Twilight's Hammer Clan from [[Warcraft]], but it doesn't matter. The GOAL remains!...what that goal is, no one knows.

We wish their [[HMKids]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcpR4IutUMk theme] had had quotes from [[Sindri Myr]], [[Lord Bale]] or [[Carron]]... Hey, maybe they could do a remake?

Despite their rivalry with the Ultramarines and their similarities with the Raven Guard, their closest comparison among the loyalists might just be with the Dark Angels, the first of the Space Marines just as they are the last. The Alpha Legion mirrors the Dark Angels' uncertain and often confusing loyalties from the other side of the fence. Both have unusual and enigmatic ties to xenos artifacts or beings. Both are heavily involved in "shadow warfare", which goes beyond simply being stealthy like the Raven Guard but also involves seeking advantages in war outside of the battlefield and inside the realm of information, production, communication and subterfuge. Both are completely cloistered in secrecy to the point that virtually none of their allies really ''know'' them. Both of their Primarchs were noted to be especially ingenious in the field of military planning.

But they're a mirror, not a clone. The Dark Angels' loyalties are born of an unplanned for (we think) schism that is actually rather more complicated than "the Fallen all embraced Chaos", while the Alpha Legion's mysterious loyalties at least generally seem to be something they planned for. The Dark Angels seem to willingly embrace their ties to the Watchers while the Alpha Legion outlived the Cabal and thought very little of their eventual destruction. The Lion favoured using his intellect to arrive at the plan that would offer the most direct route to triumph with the least chance of complication while still delivering maximum results while Alpharius liked to show off and made his schemes as elaborate as possible to whip his intellectual dick out and invite everyone to gaze upon it in awe.