Space Marines are the showcases of Warhammer 40,000. However, in the story, many years ago, half of the existing chapters fell to Chaos. MeinMMO editor and Warhammer expert Benedict Grothaus ranks the traitors and explains which legion is the strongest.
Who is being ranked here? This concerns only the chapters that rebelled against the Emperor during the Great Brother War, the “Horus Heresy.” They have since been considered traitors.
Most of them have openly engaged with the destructive forces of Chaos and serve one of the Chaos gods or Chaos itself as a whole. Through their pact with the demons, many of the Chaos Space Marines have gained new powers.
More on this here: What blessings do the Chaos gods actually grant in Warhammer?
This is how the ranking was created: To find out which legion is the strongest, I started from a theoretical scenario. If there were a power struggle between the legions, which one could assert itself against all others and unite the forces of Chaos? Accordingly, the following factors are included in the evaluation:
- how many Chaos Space Marines the legion officially has
- what means the legion fights with and what it specializes in
- whether there is an organized structure, or whether the legion only consists of marauding gangs
The underlying data refers to “as of now” and only includes facts that are currently available. Possible future events are not considered.
Rank ???: Alpha Legion
Let’s start directly with the legion that cannot be classified. The Alpha Legion is the legion nobody really knows how many members it has and whether they even serve Chaos or are still loyal to the Emperor – not even the members themselves.
Secrecy and infiltration are the specialty of the Alpha Legion; therefore, there is almost no reliable information about this legion. It could be larger than any power in the galaxy, but it could also be just 20 guys somewhere in a spaceship playing cards and reminiscing about the “good old days”.
Moreover, Space Marines of the Alpha Legion all look almost identical, just like their Primarch Alpharius Omegon. There are even stories that everyone in the legion claims to be the Primarch. And it is possible that many members of other legions are actually secretly agents of the Alpha Legion. Accordingly, the Alpha Legion cannot be classified at all.
