Flak

During the landings at Isstvan V, the Salamanders legion was almost entirely destroyed; at least 80% of their forces were killed on the surface.

While the Salamanders suffered almost total losses, their primarch survived, so they could be rebuilt from basically nothing. The primarch, Vulkan, later went missing before any legion strength reinforcement could be accomplished, however.

The Salamanders are the only loyalist legion to not have any known successor chapters. Not only were they the smallest founding legion of all, of less than 10,000 (legion strength) original marines at full strength, under 1,000 survived Isstvan V and their full strength afterwards was never greater than 1,000 (meaning the conversion to a chapter was a simple formality, there weren't enough salamanders to actually break up the legion). The salamanders are still reinforced by new recruits, they simply do not have the gene seeds to enhance dozens of recruits like other chapters. They sustain enough casualties to make keeping 1,000 marines a daunting goal.

As for the Imperial Fists, their primarch was killed long after the Horus Heresy ended in an unrelated battle. They didn't take part in the famous Isstvan V massacre, but they were there at the siege of the Emporer's palace on earth.

There is some various stuff about the Imperial Fists in White Dwarf, but essentially enough survived as to not hinder reinforcement, the primarch survived and the legion was reinforced, so many successor chapters were created... fairly standard for the horus heresy. Since they have no extraordinary mutations or curses / hideous unforgiven events in the chapters past, they just exist as part of the by story for the more unlucky or active chapters.

As for the successor chapters like the Iron Fists, not much is ever written about them. Mostly, they follow similar doctrines to their progenitor legion and until otherwise mentioned in WD or rule books they are simply codex following chapters.


Tyranids: run of the mill destroy all life aliens. They run off synapse creatures which create a sort of central collective to order tyranids around.

The most unordinary facet of the tyranids is the genestealers. Essentially, they inject purestrain genes into a host. The host retains most of its original attributes, except bowing to the will of the synapse creatures. They are filled with an insatiable urge to reproduce, and thuse the second generation genestealers are born. The cycle continues with the proceeding generations getting more and more genestealer traits until the fourth generation when they are born purestrain and so the cycle begins again.

Since tyranids do not have proper spacecraft or the ability to use technology, they rely on randomly catching rides through spacehulks (large debris hulks from hundreds of random ships) or through the assistance of fist/second gen genestealers. Since the first/second gen can operate technology, they often use normal weapons and can operate spacecraft enabling the tyranids to expand in this way too.


Chaos: Chaos are still in legion form, they follow different gods, they summon different daemons and have different skills... not much to say they're pretty chaotic. Chaos marines use old imperial technology, and their only increase in strength is if they capture or manage to convert some present-day marines.

Just about the only thing you will find in a chaos arsenal that the imperials no longer use is the older (though more reliable and devastating) reaper autocannon. Its a twin barrel autocannon chaos terminators use. This model was replaced with the assault cannon you see in DoW, which while firing faster, jams frequently and shoots a lighter projectile. If the weapon jams a lucky person will experience a few second delay in firing while the automatic unjamming mechanism attempts to clear the breach (terminators can't very well field strip their guns!). An unlucky person will experience an explosion, most likely sending parts of the assault cannon through fellow soldiers or themselves. Lovely weapon, you don't get to see its more sinister side in DoW or the newer editions of WH 40k though