Penal Legion Troopers

The possessed chaos space marine sucks because his table is a random D6 and you can only get 3.

The Penal Legion sucks slightly less, because his table is a random D3 but you can get 6.

Then you look at the Veteran squad, and you see the tanks on the other side of the board, and you wake up.

Penal Legion get: Scouts, Stubborn (LD8).

Gunslingers: Lasguns are assault 2.
Pyschopath: Suckass guard suck slightly less in CC. Feel bad when you roll this.
Knife Fighters: See above.

Since you can scout, you somehow want the 3-6 results.

Since you are stubborn, you don't mind CC.

Since you give up shooting to assault (except for 1-2), you lose a fair deal of firepower (however weaksauce it might be), making a crappy assault unit even worse.

This unit is for fluffy people, and for IG armies that want to tie up the enemy in CC until everyone is dead (or 3 rounds pass and you statistically fail your LD roll). Probably dead first.

Stubborn does NOT make this unit good for holding your objective, only for tying up the other guys. As with many 'new' units, this one is a solid miss from GW.

Leave them at home unless you are doing some crazy scout shit.