Editing Emperor's Dragoons (section)

==Pre-Primarch History & Reunion==

The Lion Lancers were really good at cavalry and that's about it. The whole Legion was a bunch of cavalier asshats that charged into whatever conflict they could with gusto. They were essentially just a Hellfire missle in marine form. In general, few people wanted to work with them, as they would general eschew other tactical recommendations for just throwing grav bikes at the issue until it went away.

He didn't. Linares did. Linares was found pretty shortly after JFA, and JFA was already instituting good order and discipline into the ranks, probably issuing the most amount of Courts Marshal ever in the entirety of military history before or since. He wasn't exactly unpopular, but there was growing pains, and general grumbling from the literal Grognards.  But things, slowly, and reluctantly, got reeled in of only to make JFA stop bitching at them.
Then they met the newly christened Silver Blades
The Silver Blades were everything the Lancers were and more, and a lot of the old guard fucking loved working with them. On their first campaign together though, JFA and Linares, initially very friendly, began to butt heads over tactics. This came to a head when they had the enemy more or less corralled in a city situated in a valley.
The problem, was that the city was an extremely soft target, filled to the brim with civilians. The enemy knew the gig was up, and was essentially forcing the Imperials hands in slaughter to make a point about their tyranny. JFA, of course, saw right through this and devised a plan to use the Dragoons to flush the enemy out into open terrain, then the Blades come through and wipe them out. Enemy: dead, civilians: unharmed
The idea was for the blades to wait for a signal, then they would come through
JFA let them sit there for a whole day, making the enemy nervous, antsy, more willing to break. After all, dying in service of sending a message is good and all at first glance, but after a good bit of sitting and being surrounded by an insurmountable force, death becomes much less attractive
Dawn of the second day, Linares couldn't wait anymore, and they rushed down into the city
JFA hoped that the plan would work anyway, and he would just use the Blades advance as the flushing out then clear them out himself
Instead the Blades got bogged down in city fighting, unable to swiftly irrigate the enemy from their positions. His hand was forced, and the Dragoons piled in
They were victorious, but his hesitations brought on unnecessary losses for the Blades, and the city and its non combatant population was utterly destroyed
Linares never forgave Fred for imposing losses on hin he couldn't recoup given the gene seed flaw, and Fred never forgave Linares for his tactical indiscretion. At the end of the day, the Dragoons for the first time were forced to be the competent guys watching mavericks and hooligans ruin their plans. War is fun and games until you have to watch children float down a river of blood.