Was a bit tired of looking through the BA wishlist thread only to see a massive debate over rolling it into the nillamarine dex. Figured id help the thread get back on topic by making a new one for said debate.
Blacksails wrote: But once again, I do support improving them. I do understand they're not ideal as they are now, but I also don't think a separate codex would fix that.
And Rolling them into the Space Marine Codex does.
What is wrong with a separate codex, no one is going to hold a bolt gun to your head and make you buy it unless you are a Blood Angels Player. Even if you are and you find you don’t like it you can just not buy it and use a “Count-As” with something from Codex: Space Marine.
Iknowright?
It's like hearing guys who like chicken sandwiches wanting hamburgers removed from the menu. It's weird.
A lot of those posts miss several things. Some missed their psychic powers, some didn't bother to address their EIGHT (and a half...tycho...) special characters, some missed unique BA units, some missed unique wargear selection, some apparently want to give us fast vehicles for free over other marines, not knowing our wheels cost more (tempting!)...Turns out some of the people saying "BA are just red marines!" don't actually know them very well.
If they were rolled in, a lot of the units in C:SM would have little footnotes that had "only available to chapter tactics: Blood Angels" written at the bottom of the page, like infernus pistols, more melta availability, special dread weapons... It's also a founding chapter, and has many known descendant chapters, so the painting section of the new combined C:SM would have to show those off too.
Tellin ya, if they had all their options they had now, but were already in the general SM codex, you'd constantly hear people saying how the BA take up too much room and necessitate too many little footnotes and rules alterations and need their own book. Some people might even go so far as to nickname the codex "codex BA and friends."
I can agree with that (minus the separate Codex part). It's not that I think it's undoable, it's just I've not seen it done in a convincing way yet. The issue, in my opinion, is that Vanilla marines has more of a shooting slant whereas BA, BT, and SW have an assault slant. Trying to cram in melee armies in a shooting Codex and only changing some CTs isn't going to be enough.
Well in my perfect world of rainbows and unicorns, the vanilla codex would have a balanced melee/shooting options. Things like Vanguard and Assault squads should be as viable as Sternguard and devs. Now, part of that lies in the overarching edition, but even in the book, there isn't a whole lot that a few point changes and a rules tweak won't fix. Hell, JustDave's 5th ed fandex did a pretty good job at that.
Then again, as they are currently, BA and SW are played with shooty heavy, so they need fixing anyways. I just don't buy the idea that they need a codex to be balanced, and that rolling them in would be just as viable a fix.
But the details of that are best served for the proposed rules section anyways.
Anyways, no need to bite people's heads off for wanting the codex to be rolled in. GW just has a habit of good ideas but awful implementation. BTs are no exception to this, and its unfortunate, but nothing a dedicated mind or two couldn't fix in the proposed area.
P.S. I think your Land Raider proposal was fairly balanced.
Personally i think the BA have too much unique wargear and options (more so than DA and on par with wolves) and should therefor have their own rules. Rolling us into the basic dex would slam us in the face with a nerfbat or just drop what it is thet makes the Blood Angels unique. Debate on!
The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
And you can get all those special units/wargear/rules/characters/whatever in a nice Blood Angels Supplement. IMHO, even the Space Wolves (and the Dark Angerls too) should be rolled into the SM codex and after that everyone could have his very own Supplement to bring a full BA/BT/DA/SW army with all the special Chapter-specific shenanigans. This way, everyone wins: we get rid the "Codex: Special Snowflake Marines" effect and BA/BT/DA/SW players will have a core army selection that won't degrade after each SM release.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
Except the blood angels have a plethora of extra things that would need to be added (a new predator variant, 3 dread variants, sanguinary guard, sanguinary priests, the ton of special characters, all the upgrade options like infernus pistols, death company, red thirst, all of their vehicles costing more to become fast vehicles etc.) And it would clutter the whole book with BA and it would be like last eds SM dex where it was just ultramarines everywhere and very little support for other chapters. BA are just far too unique to be rolled into the SM dex, same with SW and DA (although DA could have been rolled in before their 6th dex but now not so much since they got a lot of unique units with the update)
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hearing the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
I counted 13 special units and characters. While this may be a lot it really should be only an additional page or two at the most. As for special rules and wargear that's also an additional page or two. I understand that Blood Angels do not like the idea of having their army being demoted to the regular codex but, if done properly, there should be no real difference. And, as above, you can roll some of the wargear and special characters into a supplement called "Angels of Death" or something.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
And you can get all those special units/wargear/rules/characters/whatever in a nice Blood Angels Supplement. IMHO, even the Space Wolves (and the Dark Angerls too) should be rolled into the SM codex and after that everyone could have his very own Supplement to bring a full BA/BT/DA/SW army with all the special Chapter-specific shenanigans. This way, everyone wins: we get rid the "Codex: Special Snowflake Marines" effect and BA/BT/DA/SW players will have a core army selection that won't degrade after each SM release.
Except then people would have to pay roughly $150 since they would need to raise the price of the current SM dex and then have to buy their supplement so its the same as having their own dex except far cheaper and more efficient since they dont have to pay for an extra hundred pages in rules and unit entries that they wont be using
I think BA should have their own dex and their current dex is a pretty good balance of having enough unique stuff to warrant it being separate but at the same time still being recognizable as loyalist marines. Any less different and they could be rolled together, anymore different then it wouldn't make much sense thematically.
If the Ultramarines can get away with having seven special characters in the book, so can the Blood Angels. Maybe it would even encourage some extra characters for the other chapters, or... who knows? Drop the Smurfs down to 2 characters in C:SM as well then do Supplements for them.
As it is, the Supplements system is being wasted.
Of course, the real reason not to do it is that the Black Templars players will be even more insufferable afterwards. Not only will they gloat about how it happening to them first somehow makes them superior, they'll also whine about how Blood Angels do the Templars job but better.
As for the special rules and units, you just strip out inferno pistols and give everyone the hand flamer option. Inferno pistols are supposed to be insanely rare, it's madness that the Blood Angels can spam them. Make the Bhaal Predator, Death Company and FuriLibby unique units, Crusader style, and then make Lucius-pattern Engines a purchasable upgrade for BA tactics only.
Thus opening the door to the other chapters having the potential for unique upgrades as well!
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hearing the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
I counted 13 special units and characters. While this may be a lot it really should be only an additional page or two at the most. As for special rules and wargear that's also an additional page or two. I understand that Blood Angels do not like the idea of having their army being demoted to the regular codex but, if done properly, there should be no real difference. And, as above, you can roll some of the wargear and special characters into a supplement called "Angels of Death" or something.
how is a supplement different than its own dex aside from the fact we have to pay for both to use our army?
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
And you can get all those special units/wargear/rules/characters/whatever in a nice Blood Angels Supplement. IMHO, even the Space Wolves (and the Dark Angerls too) should be rolled into the SM codex and after that everyone could have his very own Supplement to bring a full BA/BT/DA/SW army with all the special Chapter-specific shenanigans. This way, everyone wins: we get rid the "Codex: Special Snowflake Marines" effect and BA/BT/DA/SW players will have a core army selection that won't degrade after each SM release.
Except then people would have to pay roughly $150 since they would need to raise the price of the current SM dex and then have to buy their supplement so its the same as having their own dex except far cheaper and more efficient since they dont have to pay for an extra hundred pages in rules and unit entries that they wont be using
2-3 pages won't double the price of a book. I don't think Games Workshop is really that stupid to do such a thing especially since Space Marines are the "Little Timmy" army. The other issue with your argument is that it could apply to any army with a variant army supplement like Farsight Enclaves. Why do Farsight Enclaves player have to pay $100 to get his army? Why can't they just get their own codex?
Furyou Miko wrote: If the Ultramarines can get away with having seven special characters in the book, so can the Blood Angels. Maybe it would even encourage some extra characters for the other chapters, or... who knows? Drop the Smurfs down to 2 characters in C:SM as well then do Supplements for them.
As it is, the Supplements system is being wasted.
Of course, the real reason not to do it is that the Black Templars players will be even more insufferable afterwards. Not only will they gloat about how it happening to them first somehow makes them superior, they'll also whine about how Blood Angels do the Templars job but better.
As for the special rules and units, you just strip out inferno pistols and give everyone the hand flamer option. Inferno pistols are supposed to be insanely rare, it's madness that the Blood Angels can spam them. Make the Bhaal Predator, Death Company and FuriLibby unique units, Crusader style, and then make Lucius-pattern Engines a purchasable upgrade for BA tactics only.
Thus opening the door to the other chapters having the potential for unique upgrades as well!
Now i normally find myself agreeing with you miko but not here. Infernus pistols yes i could see being limited. Not dropped alltogether however. The dispersing of all of our gear throughout the codex as well? that seems a bit OTT. Giving what makes BA their own army to any other army while unlocking them is like giving any army access to 4 meltas in a single squad. Thats the sisters niche and should be respected. It would take too much effort to roll the BA into the marine dex and we'd likely end up with something like the BT faced, but worse as we have many more unique options than the templars.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I'll try and make a list right quick for you.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units.
Fluff: BA have a slightly different career path for their marines, so the "shared" units need to mention how BA does theirs differently, then each unique unit needs its own fluff page.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
And you can get all those special units/wargear/rules/characters/whatever in a nice Blood Angels Supplement. IMHO, even the Space Wolves (and the Dark Angerls too) should be rolled into the SM codex and after that everyone could have his very own Supplement to bring a full BA/BT/DA/SW army with all the special Chapter-specific shenanigans. This way, everyone wins: we get rid the "Codex: Special Snowflake Marines" effect and BA/BT/DA/SW players will have a core army selection that won't degrade after each SM release.
Except then people would have to pay roughly $150 since they would need to raise the price of the current SM dex and then have to buy their supplement so its the same as having their own dex except far cheaper and more efficient since they dont have to pay for an extra hundred pages in rules and unit entries that they wont be using
2-3 pages won't double the price of a book. I don't think Games Workshop is really that stupid to do such a thing especially since Space Marines are the "Little Timmy" army. The other issue with your argument is that it could apply to any army with a variant army supplement like Farsight Enclaves. Why do Farsight Enclaves player have to pay $100 to get his army? Why can't they just get their own codex?
the difference is Farsight Enclaves never had their own dex or vastly expanded background. Say you take it and just roll it into the Tau dex, It just wouldnt ever play the same. The BA have been their own people with more special rules, units and wargear than any other marine dex apart from the wolves and chaos.
It will be far more than just 2-3 pages for the book since they will have to include all the unit entries and fluff for the army and since you included SW and DA in your post there would be a tonof fluff and unit entries etc. to add. And yes if you are just going to create a $50 expansion to play an army a different way why not include all the unit entries needed to play the army and basically make it codex farsight enclave? Its basically the same thing except just with vaguely different rules and different fluff. The only reason not to flesh out the farsight enclave and make it more like its own codex is because GW doesnt want to since they would rather you spend $100 to play different tau instead of normal tau.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hering the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
And you can get all those special units/wargear/rules/characters/whatever in a nice Blood Angels Supplement. IMHO, even the Space Wolves (and the Dark Angerls too) should be rolled into the SM codex and after that everyone could have his very own Supplement to bring a full BA/BT/DA/SW army with all the special Chapter-specific shenanigans. This way, everyone wins: we get rid the "Codex: Special Snowflake Marines" effect and BA/BT/DA/SW players will have a core army selection that won't degrade after each SM release.
Except then people would have to pay roughly $150 since they would need to raise the price of the current SM dex and then have to buy their supplement so its the same as having their own dex except far cheaper and more efficient since they dont have to pay for an extra hundred pages in rules and unit entries that they wont be using
2-3 pages won't double the price of a book. I don't think Games Workshop is really that stupid to do such a thing especially since Space Marines are the "Little Timmy" army. The other issue with your argument is that it could apply to any army with a variant army supplement like Farsight Enclaves. Why do Farsight Enclaves player have to pay $100 to get his army? Why can't they just get their own codex?
Pretty much this. With the addition that with the existence of Free Market on the Internet, you don't have to buy those books to have them. IfyouknowwhatImean .
Now i normally find myself agreeing with you miko but not here. Infernus pistols yes i could see being limited. Not dropped alltogether however. The dispersing of all of our gear throughout the codex as well? that seems a bit OTT. Giving what makes BA their own army to any other army while unlocking them is like giving any army access to 4 meltas in a single squad. Thats the sisters niche and should be respected. It would take too much effort to roll the BA into the marine dex and we'd likely end up with something like the BT faced, but worse as we have many more unique options than the templars.
Except that Hand Flamers aren't the Blood Angels' niche. They're a piece of extremely common, generic wargear that has fallen out of favour with codex design for three editions and is only just being brought back into common usage. Inferno Pistols and Hand Flamers are the only two widely-available pieces of wargear that are semi-unique to Blood Angels. Everything else (Glaives Encarmine, Blood Chalice, etc) are unique to their specialist models. It's not like I suggested giving everyone access to Lucius Engines.
BT for example have Crusader squads that are different, CT and 2 spec characters.
We have:
-Multiple spec characters.
-Reclusiarch
-Libbys with access to different powers
-Different spec war gear/standards
-Priests
-Honour guard with different equipment options (jump pack but lack of relic blades comes to mind) with a 3+
-Sanguinary Guard
-Furioso dreads
-Libby dreads
-Death company
-Death company dreads
-Baal Predators
-Dedicated transport Land raiders
-Dreads in Heavy Support without a techmarine to unlock
-Red thirst
-Fast tanks
-Decent of Angels
-Deep striking land raiders
-Different rules for Vanguard Veterans
-Different missiles for Storm Ravens
-Chaplains as Elites
-Assault marines as troops
We don't have:
-CTs -Thunderfire cannons
-Hunters
-Stalkers
-Ironclads
-Master of the forge
-Legion of the damned
-Honour guard with a 2+ and relic blades
-Centurion assault squads
-Centurion Devestator squad.
NO! We cannot be rolled into the vanilla dex with a CT and a couple of extra units. We are an army in its own right, totally seperate from C:SM for good reason.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I'll try and make a list right quick for you.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units.
Fluff: BA have a slightly different career path for their marines, so the "shared" units need to mention how BA does theirs differently, then each unique unit needs its own fluff page.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
Well, I will address your points in reverse order. Fluff: There are 6 founding legions with their own way of doing things. What makes Blood Angels so special that each generic units needs their own little footnote for them? Just put it in a supplement or something.
Paint: One page or two should be enough.
Vehicle rules: Chapter tactics cover this nicely. Just add a blurb that says "All non land raider tanks gain fast".
Special wargear: As Furyou said.
Special units: The baal predator can just be a predator variant that you can only take if you use BACT. Same for the other units and BACT can allow you to take AM as troops. As for the SC I would remove a lot of them and throw them in a supplement. Same for the special powers.
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I'll try and make a list right quick for you.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units.
Fluff: BA have a slightly different career path for their marines, so the "shared" units need to mention how BA does theirs differently, then each unique unit needs its own fluff page.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
Well, I will address your points in reverse order. Fluff: There are 6 founding legions with their own way of doing things. What makes Blood Angels so special that each generic units needs their own little footnote for them? Just put it in a supplement or something.
Paint: One page or two should be enough.
Vehicle rules: Chapter tactics cover this nicely. Just add a blurb that says "All non land raider tanks gain fast".
Special wargear: As Furyou said.
Special units: The baal predator can just be a predator variant that you can only take if you use BACT. Same for the other units and BACT can allow you to take AM as troops. As for the SC I would remove a lot of them and throw them in a supplement. Same for the special powers.
What about Death Company, Death Company dreads, Sanguinary guard, jp honour guard, furioso dreads, libby dreads, red thirst, decent of angels, dedicated transport land raiders, Priests, Reclisiarch's, divination librarians, elite slot chaplains and scout on the baals?
What about have a supplement to codex marines which includes some unique bits and units.
Then give chapter tactics and FOC changes and done.
I think this should also be done for DA and SW too.
Although doing this could lead to codex marines.
Supplements required:
Dark Angels
Blood Angels
Ultramarines
Space wolves
Salamanders
Iron hands
Imperial fists
Raven guard
White scars
Black Templar
Etc.
DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
With regards to psychic powers it is of note that of all the 6th edition dexes: DA have 1 unique power and thats on a SC, SM have none, Chaos has a bunch, and tyranids have their own table. So far no loyalist marines have had any special powers outside the BRB why do BA NEED to have unique powers?
The thing is DA, SW and BA are massively different from the c:sm compared to those other ex legions. They play completely differently on the table top. That variety adds much to the game. To roll them all in to one takes so much away. BA would need FAR more different rules and unit entries compared to the smurfs.
Apart from the baseline stats of the basic troops they are completely different armies. They just happen to share the name 'space marine'.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
FirePainter wrote: With regards to psychic powers it is of note that of all the 6th edition dexes: DA have 1 unique power and thats on a SC, SM have none, Chaos has a bunch, and tyranids have their own table. So far no loyalist marines have had any special powers outside the BRB why do BA NEED to have unique powers?
Wings of sanguinius is essential for mephiston and libby dreads.
Shield of sanguinius is a staple power in many lists and is often essential to survivability when trying to get across the board.
Sword of sanguinius adds a lot to the options of a librarian, being able to go st10 is massive.
Fear of darkness laced around an army is a strategy all of its own.
Blood rage is a power that really helps BA in assault.
Access to Divination is a huge advantage for BA too.
I wish BA had been rolled into C:SM. They're still rather codex adherent in chapter structure and operation. Most of their stuff would have been very easy to integrate. Descent of Angels could have been their Chapter Tactics, Baal Preds could have just been a BA chapter tactics specific weapon swap for a Predator, the Furioso dread at this point is a needless differentiation on an Ironclad and originally was just a 2x DCCW dread. Only a couple units would have needed their own unit entry, plus the characters.
They already share 80% of the same weapons, wargear, stats, units, etc. and most of the rest is simple weapon or USR swaps and are nowhere near as different as some are making them out to be.
Seriously, it would have been turbo simple.
The primary reason they have their own book is tradition/inertia and to have another MEQ release to keep those kits selling throughout and edition cycle.
Furyou Miko wrote: DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
So CTBA includes:
-Red Thirst
-DOA -Access to priests with wargear options (3 for 1 in elites)
-Honour guard with jps -Access to blood talons or frag cannons on ironclad (furios dreads)
-Fast tanks
-Assault marines as troops
-Divination on librarians
-Special uniys inc;
-Death co
-Reclusiarch
-Baal Preds with scout
I can see other vanilla players getting annoyed at our extensive list of CT...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh and death co dreads...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Believe me I have tried to take my BA as a 'counts as' Raven guard.
1.) I cant yake half the uniys I own as they don't even exist in c:sm
2.) My tactics totally change as assault marines are no longer scoring and I have no fast tanks any more.
3.) My assault squads do not have furious charge, 5+ fnp and a 5+ cover save in the open so are therefore pants.
4.) I cannot take special characters.
I want to play BA like BA play and with C:SM this is impossible UNLESS you put in extensive amounts of CT, Spec characters and extra units that would just make other chapter players jealous.
It just doesnt work!
2-3 pages won't double the price of a book. I don't think Games Workshop is really that stupid to do such a thing especially since Space Marines are the "Little Timmy" army. The other issue with your argument is that it could apply to any army with a variant army supplement like Farsight Enclaves. Why do Farsight Enclaves player have to pay $100 to get his army? Why can't they just get their own codex?
Why did the Farsight Enclaves even need a supplement (or why would they need a stand alone codex)? Would it have been that hard to roll them into Codex: Tau Empire and call it a day? Not really, but it wouldn't have made GW that much more money. Basically one paragraph of rules, a few bits of special wargear, and some special characters.
Could have easily been done without the supplement given you could already field a special Farsight squad with the codex as is.
If the supplement system wasn't the complete waste that it is (and the lack of releases in quite some time is telling), BA would be a perfect choice for a "proper" supplement.
Their core units and doctrine is shared with C:SM, and while they have a fair number of special units, these are a byproduct of a questionable decision by GW, in my opinion, to make various marines more divergent to sell more MEQ kits. However, with a supplement you could keep all your diversity, and set a model for what a supplement *should* look like; lots of special characters you can convert or use from existant models, a fair number of unique units, and restricted access to some units in the core book.
However, this is based on an important premise; supplements which were actually worth it. The reality of GW is, however, BA would lose a lot by any of GW's methods of "consolidation," they are more, kit wise, divergent than BT, and until GW learns how to behave like an intelligent company, they ought to have their own book until GW is ready to take supplements seriously.
I think they should be rolled in, most of what is different about them has been shoehorned in over the years to justify what special snowflakes they are to justify their own codex when the Marine population was booming. Why does a codex adherant chapter not use Thunderfire or Stormtalons or any of the other things they are missing?
They are codex adherent, they should follow the exact same rules with the standard chapter tactics IMO.
Most of their dreads are Ironclad variants, their vehicles have fast (part of chapter tactics) they have honour guard with jump packs and death company who could easily be their "Crusader Squad"
GW wouldn't junk models so roll the Baal, Librarian dreads (though I hate the concept) and the few other special units into the core dex. Frankly I'd love to see a Marine core dex and then some appropriately named supplement for all the additional chapters (BA,DA, SW etc), give each one a couple of pages of rules, a few special characters and a chapter tactic.
Then a marine is a marine, there really is no reason for marines to have more than 1 book. In a 1-10 stat system there is no reason to differentiate between a Blood Angel and an Imperial Griffon/Ultramarine/Mentor Legion or any other different paint coloured marine by anything more than their chapter tactic.
A BA and DA are practically identical yet they have different dexes while the Chaos legions, Ork tribes, Eldar Craftworlds, Guard divisions etc all have very different ways of fighting yet are rolled into one dex each.
Dunklezahn wrote: I think they should be rolled in, most of what is different about them has been shoehorned in over the years to justify what special snowflakes they are to justify their own codex when the Marine population was booming. Why does a codex adherant chapter not use Thunderfire or Stormtalons or any of the other things they are missing?
They are codex adherent, they should follow the exact same rules with the standard chapter tactics IMO.
Most of their dreads are Ironclad variants, their vehicles have fast (part of chapter tactics) they have honour guard with jump packs and death company who could easily be their "Crusader Squad"
GW wouldn't junk models so roll the Baal, Librarian dreads (though I hate the concept) and the few other special units into the core dex. Frankly I'd love to see a Marine core dex and then some appropriately named supplement for all the additional chapters (BA,DA, SW etc), give each one a couple of pages of rules, a few special characters and a chapter tactic.
Then a marine is a marine, there really is no reason for marines to have more than 1 book. In a 1-10 stat system there is no reason to differentiate between a Blood Angel and an Imperial Griffon/Ultramarine/Mentor Legion or any other different paint coloured marine by anything more than their chapter tactic.
A BA and DA are practically identical yet they have different dexes while the Chaos legions, Ork tribes, Eldar Craftworlds, Guard divisions etc all have very different ways of fighting yet are rolled into one dex each.
Praytell how the BA and DA fight the same? Also id like for someone to explain to me how being in the codex with a supplement is any different from being its own dex?
Poly Ranger wrote: The thing is DA, SW and BA are massively different from the c:sm compared to those other ex legions. They play completely differently on the table top. That variety adds much to the game. To roll them all in to one takes so much away. BA would need FAR more different rules and unit entries compared to the smurfs.
Apart from the baseline stats of the basic troops they are completely different armies. They just happen to share the name 'space marine'.
With exception to the SW, who do not share any units with the SM at all, that is nonsense. The Iron Hands for example are just as different, if not more so from the C:SM as the Blood and Dark Angels. The White Scars even more so.
If the Iron Hands, White Scars and Black Templars (who are all much more divergent than the BA or DA) can be in the C:SM than so can the BA and DA. All Space Marine chapters except for the SW (the only chapter to 100% disregard the Codex Astartes) should be rolled into the C:SM It makes things more clear and saves people from having to buy an extra codex, while extra special rules etc. could be introduced in supplements.
Furyou Miko wrote: DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
So CTBA includes:
-Red Thirst
-DOA -Access to priests with wargear options (3 for 1 in elites)
-Honour guard with jps -Access to blood talons or frag cannons on ironclad (furios dreads)
-Fast tanks
-Assault marines as troops
-Divination on librarians
-Special uniys inc;
-Death co
-Reclusiarch
-Baal Preds with scout
I can see other vanilla players getting annoyed at our extensive list of CT...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh and death co dreads...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Believe me I have tried to take my BA as a 'counts as' Raven guard.
1.) I cant yake half the uniys I own as they don't even exist in c:sm
2.) My tactics totally change as assault marines are no longer scoring and I have no fast tanks any more.
3.) My assault squads do not have furious charge, 5+ fnp and a 5+ cover save in the open so are therefore pants.
4.) I cannot take special characters.
I want to play BA like BA play and with C:SM this is impossible UNLESS you put in extensive amounts of CT, Spec characters and extra units that would just make other chapter players jealous.
It just doesnt work!
When you put it that way it seems unwieldy but there is a way of doing it.
Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels.
At the start of the game roll a d6 for each unit. That unit gets furious charge (Or whatever red thirst does).
Rapid Assault:
All non Land Raider tanks gain fast. In addition, Assault squads may be taken as troops and can do whatever DoA does.
Death company:
You may spend 20 points per assault squad and Dreadnought to upgrade them to Death Company. This gives them +1 A, rage and access to the melee weapons list. Just an example modify it to properly represent DC.
Give Librarians access to divination and dreadnought armor since they should have that anyway.
In regards to the poll... we 'deserve' to stand alone makes it sound like im selecting that because I believe BA to be better than other space marine lists... I do not. I just do not think it could possibly work. This is why I selected that option, despite not particularly liking its biased wording.
Poly Ranger wrote: In regards to the poll... we 'deserve' to stand alone makes it sound like im selecting that because I believe BA to be better than other space marine lists... I do not. I just do not think it could possibly work. This is why I selected that option, despite not particularly liking its biased wording.
I'm still a little butthurt that Black Templar were rolled in when they could have been expanded like Blood Angels. So while I feel they should have both been made separate, I now think they will both be rolled and supplemented
TheCustomLime wrote: The problem with having separate Marine codices is that there is flimsy justification for doing so when they share a good portion of their units with each other. You are basically buying a different book just to get more wargear and a couple of different rules. If Blood Angels was rolled into Codex: Space Marines what would they lose? Being on the front cover? They would be updated every time C:SM was so that is a nice boon to the Blood Angel players.
To represent a Blood Angels force accurately all you'd need is a Chapter Tactic that unlocks assault marines as troops, the unique Blood Angel units and a special rule or two.
I take it you dont play BA? i keep hearing the "CT and some special rules" but in reality it would take much, much more than that. Special units, special characters (much as the UM, maybe more) multiple special wargear options and special vehicle rules. We share the basic units with C:SM like scouts tac's ASM's and devs, but we have as many special units as we do marine units. Its like saying you could wrap up the wolves into the nilla dex honestly.
I counted 13 special units and characters. While this may be a lot it really should be only an additional page or two at the most. As for special rules and wargear that's also an additional page or two. I understand that Blood Angels do not like the idea of having their army being demoted to the regular codex but, if done properly, there should be no real difference. And, as above, you can roll some of the wargear and special characters into a supplement called "Angels of Death" or something.
I disagree with the statement that it would only be a page or two of additional info..... First idk if you have noticed but each character gets his own page just like every other named character so that is a page for Dante, Mephiston, Gabriel Seth, Astorath, The Sanguinor, Tycho, and possibly the Reclusiarch. Then we have to include character pages for Corbulo, and Lemartes. After the 9 pages for just named characters we then have to add pages for Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary Priests, Death Company, and Baal Predators.... So after 13 pages of character and unit fluff then you have to add sections for infernus pistols, DoA, hand flamers, Red Thrist, BA psychic powers, Death Company Dreads, Furioso Dreads, Furioso Librarian Dreads, Blood Chalice, Glaive excrimine, angelus bolters, put assault marines in the troop selection, then a tab for points upgrades for vehicles to make them fast vehicles, General BA Fluff just like they did for all of the other chapters including 4 pages worth of different paint schemes and probably another 3 pages worth of previous battles and general fluff regarding the chapter, oh and then we have all of the units added to the back of the book in the points section as well as the weapons and units in the reference pages in the back of the book. Can't forget about the nice shiny pictures they post so everyone can see what the modesl look like so lets add another 2 pages. I'm sure there are a few things I am forgetting but that's probably approaching 30 pages if not more and that's if they write bare minimum but I digress. Point is the new C:SM dex would be for the most part a Blood Angel Dex.
Of course, the real reason not to do it is that the Black Templars players will be even more insufferable afterwards. Not only will they gloat about how it happening to them first somehow makes them superior, they'll also whine about how Blood Angels do the Templars job but better.
BT players aren't insufferable at all. The playerbase of a certain other "imperial" faction however...
Boniface wrote:What about have a supplement to codex marines which includes some unique bits and units.
Then give chapter tactics and FOC changes and done.
I think this should also be done for DA and SW too.
The main disadvantage being that codex SM is available everywhere in multiple forms and the supplements are not.
Plus we see currently the weirdness of GW supplements:
- Eldar = 4+ Craftworlds. Supplements = 1 ?
- chaos = traitor Legions plus some more heretics . Supplements ?
- Tyranids?
And we are expected to buy 3rd company of chapter x supplements. I don't think every BA player wants to be 3rd co of BA....
I'd rather have 2 complete books: 1x "astartes" ( basic rules and general fluff ) and 1x "chapters" ( specific rules and fluff of 9 Legions plus successors ),
available in Brick&Mortar stores and online than a single codex plus digital supplements.
Furyou Miko wrote: DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
So CTBA includes:
-Red Thirst
-DOA -Access to priests with wargear options (3 for 1 in elites)
-Honour guard with jps -Access to blood talons or frag cannons on ironclad (furios dreads)
-Fast tanks
-Assault marines as troops
-Divination on librarians
-Special uniys inc;
-Death co
-Reclusiarch
-Baal Preds with scout
I can see other vanilla players getting annoyed at our extensive list of CT...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh and death co dreads...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Believe me I have tried to take my BA as a 'counts as' Raven guard.
1.) I cant yake half the uniys I own as they don't even exist in c:sm
2.) My tactics totally change as assault marines are no longer scoring and I have no fast tanks any more.
3.) My assault squads do not have furious charge, 5+ fnp and a 5+ cover save in the open so are therefore pants.
4.) I cannot take special characters.
I want to play BA like BA play and with C:SM this is impossible UNLESS you put in extensive amounts of CT, Spec characters and extra units that would just make other chapter players jealous.
It just doesnt work!
When you put it that way it seems unwieldy but there is a way of doing it.
Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels.
At the start of the game roll a d6 for each unit. That unit gets furious charge (Or whatever red thirst does).
Rapid Assault:
All non Land Raider tanks gain fast. In addition, Assault squads may be taken as troops and can do whatever DoA does.
Death company:
You may spend 20 points per assault squad and Dreadnought to upgrade them to Death Company. This gives them +1 A, rage and access to the melee weapons list. Just an example modify it to properly represent DC.
Give Librarians access to divination and dreadnought armor since they should have that anyway.
That is the best CT to represent BA I have yet encountered and you have definitely put some good thought into it. It still lacks certain specific things though, such as jps for hon guard (sang guard) or command squad (hon guard), weapon options for furiosos, scout on baals, spec characters, infernus pistols and hand flamers, priests (3 for 1) in elites and option to upgrade dreads to libbys. Other jp units also need DoA. If you can work these in I do not mind losing DS on LRs, Reclusiarch's, chaplains in elites, Vanguard Vets special rules, Glaive encarmines (as they would count as relic blades), weapon options for Sang guard, BA banners or even BA psychic powers (at a push with the last one :-p).
Poly Ranger wrote: The thing is DA, SW and BA are massively different from the c:sm compared to those other ex legions. They play completely differently on the table top. That variety adds much to the game. To roll them all in to one takes so much away. BA would need FAR more different rules and unit entries compared to the smurfs.
Apart from the baseline stats of the basic troops they are completely different armies. They just happen to share the name 'space marine'.
With exception to the SW, who do not share any units with the SM at all, that is nonsense. The Iron Hands for example are just as different, if not more so from the C:SM as the Blood and Dark Angels. The White Scars even more so.
If the Iron Hands, White Scars and Black Templars (who are all much more divergent than the BA or DA) can be in the C:SM than so can the BA and DA. All Space Marine chapters except for the SW (the only chapter to 100% disregard the Codex Astartes) should be rolled into the C:SM It makes things more clear and saves people from having to buy an extra codex, while extra special rules etc. could be introduced in supplements.
Im not talkimg about fluff. Im talking about rules and different units and models. I know all are massively different fluff wise. But they are NOT massively different unit unit choice wise as they all have the same options avaliable.
The sarcasms, they pierce my heart like a lightsaber through aluminum foil.
Okay, well, how about this. Baal Predator is a variant Predator with the scout special rule. Just give honor guard squads access to Jump Packs and amend the CT to say that all jump pack equipped units have DoA. Furioso Dreadnought could be a Ironclad Dreadnought variant with blood talons
As for the other items you could simply put them into a supplement. The 3 in 1 priest unit seems perfect for one.
TheCustomLime wrote: The sarcasms, they pierce my heart like a lightsaber through aluminum foil.
Okay, well, how about this. Baal Predator is a variant Predator with the scout special rule. Just give honor guard squads access to Jump Packs and amend the CT to say that all jump pack equipped units have DoA. Furioso Dreadnought could be a Ironclad Dreadnought variant with blood talons
As for the other items you could simply put them into a supplement. The 3 in 1 priest unit seems perfect for one.
Im still not convinced theres a difference between supplement and standalone aside from needing both.
For example. You could run an ironclad heavy WS list if you wanted or a bike heavy ultramarine list. A devestator heavy salamanders list or a drop and melta heavy IF list. You cannot however run a IF, Salamanders, Ultramarine, IH or any other vanilla dex list with scoring assault marines, backed up by fast scouting tanks, sprinkled with rage enduced and 2+ save jp models, running fnp and furious charge giving characters, jumping alongside librarian dreads whilst rending flaming AT dreads drop from the sky.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
TheCustomLime wrote: The sarcasms, they pierce my heart like a lightsaber through aluminum foil.
Okay, well, how about this. Baal Predator is a variant Predator with the scout special rule. Just give honor guard squads access to Jump Packs and amend the CT to say that all jump pack equipped units have DoA. Furioso Dreadnought could be a Ironclad Dreadnought variant with blood talons
As for the other items you could simply put them into a supplement. The 3 in 1 priest unit seems perfect for one.
Sorry I wasn't meaning to sound sarcastic. I was actually trying to compliment your attempt. I apologise if it came across otherwise.
I am fine with having our own Dex. To me it makes sense as bot the Space Wolves and the Blood Angels are only "Semi" Codex Compliant. I can't speak as to the other factions, but as far as fluff goes I know that The SW kinda said $#%&#$$%!!!!!! to the Codex Astartes, and the Blood Angels had to restructure their company progression due to the Red Thirst. Both are not heretical (though some Blood Angels successor chapters have been branded as such) but both deviate from Robot Girlyman's Codex Astartes.
Of course this is just my view from fluff interpretation...which might also explain why the current BA dex has such bogus prices for their units - they are in a dire time where they have take tithe in the form of aspirants from successor chapters to replenish their ranks.
BA have their unique stuff, but personally (as a BA player) I think that having four different codices for Space Marines is stupid.
Therefore, I voted for supplement.
Blood Angels would be on line with the rest of Marines (equal points).
Their chapter tactics would propably be similar to DoA and allowing ASM as troops.
Red Thirst would be eliminated but similar effects could still be gained by having a Sanguinary Priest around.
Baal Predator would either be eliminated or made avaivable to everyone.
Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinior and Corbulo would be the only named characters for us.
Our Vanguard Veterans might have some nice special rule, but that's it.
Just my suggestion. I know a lot of this seems harsh and we would lose a lot of our unique stuff.
But to be honest, I would be ready swap our 'dex into this.
(I hardly ever anything that C:SM don't have apart from ASM as troops, Priests and Furiosos).
Furyou Miko wrote: DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
So CTBA includes:
-Red Thirst
-DOA -Access to priests with wargear options (3 for 1 in elites)
-Honour guard with jps -Access to blood talons or frag cannons on ironclad (furios dreads)
-Fast tanks
-Assault marines as troops
-Divination on librarians
-Special uniys inc;
-Death co
-Reclusiarch
-Baal Preds with scout
I can see other vanilla players getting annoyed at our extensive list of CT...
Yeah, vanilla players are already pretty annoyed with the extensive Black Templar CT with its Vows, move-towards-the-enemy-when-shot special rule and so on. Oh, wait...
All the Blood Angles need is the Red Thirst/Descend of Angels as a CT. Everything else is either good as an option for everyone (Reclusiarch, JP Honor Guard/Command Squad, Assault Squad as Troops, Fast vehicles) or can have a BT style CT dependent unit entry (Priests, Black Company, Baal Predators).
BT players aren't insufferable at all. The playerbase of a certain other "imperial" faction however...
Pull the other one. Every time someone gets something nice, there's a Black Templar there to point out that it's not fair because they got rolled into Codex: Space Marines. Just look at the Legion of the Damned and Knight threads!
None of the things that have been brought to bear against my comments sounds like a good case for Blood Angels to be standalone.
They just sound like reasons to give the other chapters extra stuff to bring them up to the level of the Blood Angels, because the Blood Angels are not that special.
soomemafia wrote: BA have their unique stuff, but personally (as a BA player) I think that having four different codices for Space Marines is stupid.
Therefore, I voted for supplement.
Blood Angels would be on line with the rest of Marines (equal points).
Their chapter tactics would propably be similar to DoA and allowing ASM as troops.
Red Thirst would be eliminated but similar effects could still be gained by having a Sanguinary Priest around.
Baal Predator would either be eliminated or made avaivable to everyone.
Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinior and Corbulo would be the only named characters for us.
Our Vanguard Veterans might have some nice special rule, but that's it.
Just my suggestion. I know a lot of this seems harsh and we would lose a lot of our unique stuff.
But to be honest, I would be ready swap our 'dex into this.
(I hardly ever anything that C:SM don't have apart from ASM as troops, Priests and Furiosos).
And immediately hundreds of pounds of my models become unusable. And nid players got annoyed when parasite was axed!
Furyou Miko wrote: DT Land Raiders are not iconic, Red Thirst and DoA are Chapter Tactics fodder, as are Divination Librarians (SFR: Mantis Warriors), Sanguinary Guard are just Honour Guard who come with relic blades, Furioso Dreadnoughts are already part of the main codex as they were originally conceptualised, Librarian Dreadnoughts should be available to everyone anyway, Priests are just variant Apothecaries and don't need special rules, Reclusiarchs - the Black Templars had them, too! - and the other two have precedent as being included as "Only this Chapter may take these" units.
Could easily have Death Company and Bhaal Predators as "Only armies with CT: Blood Angels may take this unit", just like Crusaders and Black Templars.
So CTBA includes:
-Red Thirst
-DOA -Access to priests with wargear options (3 for 1 in elites)
-Honour guard with jps -Access to blood talons or frag cannons on ironclad (furios dreads)
-Fast tanks
-Assault marines as troops
-Divination on librarians
-Special uniys inc;
-Death co
-Reclusiarch
-Baal Preds with scout
I can see other vanilla players getting annoyed at our extensive list of CT...
Yeah, vanilla players are already pretty annoyed with the extensive Black Templar CT with its Vows, move-towards-the-enemy-when-shot special rule and so on. Oh, wait...
All the Blood Angles need is the Red Thirst/Descend of Angels as a CT. Everything else is either good as an option for everyone (Reclusiarch, JP Honor Guard/Command Squad, Assault Squad as Troops, Fast vehicles) or can have a BT style CT dependent unit entry (Priests, Black Company, Baal Predators).
That is my point exactly. BT DONT have excessive chapter tactics. So all other space marine armies get what you've suggested? I can guarantee that we would be seeing far more assault marine armies if thats the case. What about all the other things I mentioned in the earlier list? Do all other marines get them too? Im pretty confident that if SM tanks ALL became fast there would be serious rage from non SM players.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok I own 6 Baals, 20 sanguinary guard, 10jp honour guard, 2 furiosos, 2 death co dreads, 20jp death co, 20 foot death co, 5 sang priests. Not including spec characters these are the models I own that are unique to BA. A few people have suggested that these be got rid of. Im sorry but if you personally made an official rule if you were a GW writer stopping me using all those models, I would probably hire a real life vindicare... :-p
Why not take and roll Chaos Marines into C:SM as well they are just marines with spikey bits? They only have a few different units and all of their special rules could be covered with a quick blurb. One could roll them into Chaos Deamons book too ...this could be justified by them hanging out with bad things.
The thing that most people who do not play BA armies fail to realize is that if they were put into C:SM then the BA would lose all of its identity. I was personally not happy with the BT being rolled into SM codex and I do not even play that army. The little research that I have done on them tells me that prior to being rolled, they friggin HATED psykers ... and only tolerated astropaths to get them around. Now? They can be bff's with Tigerious like they have been old pals. If this is an example of how things would change for the BA if they were rolled in ... count me out.
That is my point exactly. BT DON'T have excessive chapter tactics.
Yeah, I just quickly established that a Special Snowflake Marine chapter can be compressed into a simple CT plus some CT units.
Poly Ranger wrote: So all other space marine armies get what you've suggested? I can guarantee that we would be seeing far more assault marine armies if thats the case. What about all the other things I mentioned in the earlier list? Do all other marines get them too? Im pretty confident that if SM tanks ALL became fast there would be serious rage from non SM players.
It would be something like:
- Captains/Chapter Masters with Jump Packs unlock Assault Squads as Troops
- Jump Packs are an option for Honor Guard and Command Squad
- Vehicles can be upgraded with something like Grimdark Nitro Boosters, so they gain Fast for +15/20 points
That is my point exactly. BT DON'T have excessive chapter tactics.
Yeah, I just quickly established that a Special Snowflake Marine chapter can be compressed into a simple CT plus some CT units.
Poly Ranger wrote: So all other space marine armies get what you've suggested? I can guarantee that we would be seeing far more assault marine armies if thats the case. What about all the other things I mentioned in the earlier list? Do all other marines get them too? Im pretty confident that if SM tanks ALL became fast there would be serious rage from non SM players.
It would be something like:
- Captains/Chapter Masters with Jump Packs unlock Assault Squads as Troops
- Jump Packs are an option for Honor Guard and Command Squad
- Vehicles can be upgraded with something like Grimdark Nitro Boosters, so they gain Fast for +15/20 points
No you established that BT could be rolled into c:sm. There is far more variation in the BA dex then BT ever had!
What you suggest are not bad ideas admittedly. What about:
-Divination
-Fragiosos
-Priests
-Baals
-Death co
-Death co dreads
All of which are not units that are found in other SM armies.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Then we jave the problem of BA having excessive CT in comparison again.
That is my point exactly. BT DON'T have excessive chapter tactics.
Yeah, I just quickly established that a Special Snowflake Marine chapter can be compressed into a simple CT plus some CT units.
Poly Ranger wrote: So all other space marine armies get what you've suggested? I can guarantee that we would be seeing far more assault marine armies if thats the case. What about all the other things I mentioned in the earlier list? Do all other marines get them too? Im pretty confident that if SM tanks ALL became fast there would be serious rage from non SM players.
It would be something like:
- Captains/Chapter Masters with Jump Packs unlock Assault Squads as Troops
- Jump Packs are an option for Honor Guard and Command Squad
- Vehicles can be upgraded with something like Grimdark Nitro Boosters, so they gain Fast for +15/20 points
No you established that BT could be rolled into c:sm. There is far more variation in the BA dex then BT ever had!
What you suggest are not bad ideas admittedly. What about:
-Divination
-Fragiosos
-Priests
-Baals
-Death co
-Death co dreads
- Divination needs to go or be an option for every SM Librarian
- Frag cannon would be an option for the Ironclad and/or the normal Dread, same for (renamed) Blood Talons
- Priests, Baals and the Death Company are CT (BA) units just like the Emperor's Champion and the Crusader Squads are CT (BT) units
Blood Angels need Assault squads as troops and moar weapon options for those squads.. why? They didn't need them in the Hallowed Tome that was Codex: Angels of Death. Hand Flamers? Standard issue to marines prior to 3rd edition. Inferno pistols? PistolS? WHAT? The whole reason IT was called the Inferno pistol was because it was DANTE'S Inferno. Death Company? Go read the Rites of Initiation Index Astartes article, pay attention to the bit about the dangers of implantation, keywords: suicide assault squads psychopathic marines.
Since 3rd edition 40k has become a lot like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
In AD&D Thief skills used a completely and utterly different system to non-thief skills, and with a handful of exceptions (Rangers, Ninjas) nobody else could even access them. A thief in shiny full-plate armour with bellydancer bells on had a better chance of tiptoeing past a guard than a wizard in a ninja outfit, because sneaky was what thieves did so nobody else was allowed to. 40k is now like that, in 2nd edition if you wanted to field a pure Assault force you could do it with any marine army. Now only Blood Angels are allowed to do it, but it doesn't originate from the fluff: BA have only had assault troops since the 4th edition White Dwarf Codex and the fluff to justify this as their tabletop 'thing' wasn't retconned in until 5th edition.
BT Variances off the top of my head... Green is still there, Red is long gone. - Sword brethren as a unit - Land Raider Crusaders (they had them before C: SM got them) as dedicated transports for EVERYONE. - Vows (Pick 1 of 4) - Emperor's Champion - Holy Orb of Antioch - Crusader Squads - Reclusiarch Grimaldus - High Marshal Helbrecht - Any Chaplain could take Cenobyte Servators, not just Grimaldus. - Any Independent Character could purchase Bionics - 2-wound techmarines in the Elite slot
As a long time BT player, I'm not complaining mind you. We also got access to all of the new units plus some I always wanted (Devastators and Whirlwinds). But we were rolled into the Space Marine codex and allowed to keep a fair amount of our character.
I hope that BA players can keep theirs separate, but to say they can't be lumped in is silly. It can be done.
For feth sakes, NO! This is such a stupid subject. It's never going to happen, for anyone thinking it can, you clearly no nothing about the Blood Angels if you think they can just "roll them into C:SM nicely".
I can't find a legitimate reason for BA to maintain an entirely different codex when everything 'unique' they have is either a variant of an existing unit, or a piece of wargear every other chapter should reasonably have access to as well.
Their dread options (bar death co) can be easily made into options on existing dreads for all chapters to have. Their reclusiarchs are fundamentally chaplains, and their sanguinary priests are basically apothecaries. One of these options already exists, and the other one should be an option for all marines anyways.
They already lost their unique claim to the Stormraven, so I don't see much of a reason for them to hang on to the concept of the Baal Pred. Those pred variants almost exist through FW anyways, and having a true tank option would be great for all marine chapters. BA would be the only ones with 'Fast', but the tank could have scout to fill the FA role a little better. Now everyone gets a little extra variety.
Special wargear like hand flamers and infernus pistols should be options available to anyone anyways. Things like Glaive Encarmines could be special to them, or just add an option to MC every power weapon in an honour guard squad. Then give honour guard a jet pack option, and they can act as a budget Sang Guard. I'm not opposed to Sang Guard being one of BA's exclusive units in a roll in, but I'd like to keep it to one, which I think should go to Death Company.
Death company would be their unique troops choice, like BTs Crusader squads.
Then you give them a CT, three SCs, maybe an upgrade SC, and call it a day.
Captures their feel, cuts the bloat, adds variety for all marine chapters, saves money buying multiple codices for largely redundant armies, and reduces the number of armies needed to balance the game.
I don't think BA need to hang on to the whole gamut of SCs they currently have, nor do they need a special psyker table. Every other marine book lost their special powers and rolls on BRB powers, so I think that's what BA should do as well.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MephistonLoD wrote: For feth sakes, NO! This is such a stupid subject. It's never going to happen, for anyone thinking it can, you clearly no nothing about the Blood Angels if you think they can just "roll them into C:SM nicely".
Care to elaborate with a little more reasoning? Telling people they're wrong without stating why in a sensible manner isn't going to convince anyone.
Fragile wrote: Pretty much all the Space Marine variants can be rolled into CSM with a Supplement.
Yeah, or just made into the base book. A chapter's identity isn't base solely on the rules for them. A paint scheme and modeling will do far more for a chapter's feel than one or two special characters or units.
I can't find a legitimate reason for BA to maintain an entirely different codex when everything 'unique' they have is either a variant of an existing unit, or a piece of wargear every other chapter should reasonably have access to as well.
Their dread options (bar death co) can be easily made into options on existing dreads for all chapters to have. Their reclusiarchs are fundamentally chaplains, and their sanguinary priests are basically apothecaries. One of these options already exists, and the other one should be an option for all marines anyways.
They already lost their unique claim to the Stormraven, so I don't see much of a reason for them to hang on to the concept of the Baal Pred. Those pred variants almost exist through FW anyways, and having a true tank option would be great for all marine chapters. BA would be the only ones with 'Fast', but the tank could have scout to fill the FA role a little better. Now everyone gets a little extra variety.
Special wargear like hand flamers and infernus pistols should be options available to anyone anyways. Things like Glaive Encarmines could be special to them, or just add an option to MC every power weapon in an honour guard squad. Then give honour guard a jet pack option, and they can act as a budget Sang Guard. I'm not opposed to Sang Guard being one of BA's exclusive units in a roll in, but I'd like to keep it to one, which I think should go to Death Company.
Death company would be their unique troops choice, like BTs Crusader squads.
Then you give them a CT, three SCs, maybe an upgrade SC, and call it a day.
Captures their feel, cuts the bloat, adds variety for all marine chapters, saves money buying multiple codices for largely redundant armies, and reduces the number of armies needed to balance the game.
I don't think BA need to hang on to the whole gamut of SCs they currently have, nor do they need a special psyker table. Every other marine book lost their special powers and rolls on BRB powers, so I think that's what BA should do as well.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MephistonLoD wrote: For feth sakes, NO! This is such a stupid subject. It's never going to happen, for anyone thinking it can, you clearly no nothing about the Blood Angels if you think they can just "roll them into C:SM nicely".
Care to elaborate with a little more reasoning? Telling people they're wrong without stating why in a sensible manner isn't going to convince anyone.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
Fragile wrote: Pretty much all the Space Marine variants can be rolled into CSM with a Supplement.
Yeah, or just made into the base book. A chapter's identity isn't base solely on the rules for them. A paint scheme and modeling will do far more for a chapter's feel than one or two special characters or units.
Now I will admit to not being an expert on BA but aren't most of the "unique" units from the 5th edition codex and their previous codices did not have things like Baal preds, the sanguinor, sang guard? Honestly curious what has been unique about BA since their first codex back in 2nd?
Fragile wrote: Pretty much all the Space Marine variants can be rolled into CSM with a Supplement.
I don't disagree with this line of thought at all.
Of course, the entire problem is that the rumored BT supplement is nowhere to be seen, whereas the Imperial Fists 3rd Company got one...
As a BT player, a BT supplement is a nice-to-have, but not needed. I'm actually glad that the Imperial Fists got some love with a supplement. They were long overdue.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
Yeah I did, you said the look/how they're painted is what gives the feel of a Chapter, more so than their rules and the way they play? So... if I painted my BA blue, I would feel more like I was playing Ultramarines?
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
Yeah I did, you said the look/how they're painted is what gives the feel of a Chapter, more so than their rules and the way they play? So... if I painted my BA blue, I would feel more like I was playing Ultramarines?
Dude... There are players out there who use the BA codex, paint their models dark blue and play them as Night Lords (and I'm 5000% serious here)! Yeah, the Chaos Space Marine Night Lords. You can't go lower than that!
Yeah I did, you said the look/how they're painted is what gives the feel of a Chapter, more so than their rules and the way they play? So... if I painted my BA blue, I would feel more like I was playing Ultramarines?
If they were blue and looked like Ultras and you ran them as one of the assault companies using BA rules, yes.
Likewise, if you used C: SW, or C: CSM as examples, and used Berserker rules for death company/assault marines, but painted red with BA iconography, they'll still play and feel like BA.
The point is, the rules are a means to an end, and not the just the end. Rules are important, but they aren't the defining feature of the army. Case in point, the current BA codex back in 5th was a shooty book through and through, which is supposedly against how BA are supposed to play. So even with their actual book, they didn't play like their fluff. Rolling them in (implemented properly) wouldn't kill them or take away their feel; it would streamline and put some of the burden on the player building a force that played in a style according to the fluff.
The paint and models are the icing on top. Because an unpainted marine army kind of looks like every other unpainted marine army, regardless of what codex is being used.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
it is well established fluff the BA dont want to share the Baal pred nor the Lucius engines.. causes much friction between them and the mechanicus, dante actually sent a long-lost Emperor(?) titan to try to make up for it. They would not simply go around distributing it to all chapters.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
Yeah I did, you said the look/how they're painted is what gives the feel of a Chapter, more so than their rules and the way they play? So... if I painted my BA blue, I would feel more like I was playing Ultramarines?
Dude... There are players out there who use the BA codex, paint their models dark blue and play them as Night Lords (and I'm 5000% serious here)! Yeah, the Chaos Space Marine Night Lords. You can't go lower than that!
Right, but given the rules he's using they'd still feel like Blood Angels. I can take a Ferrari chassis, but replace everything inside with that of a Honda Civic... I'll still feel like i'm driving a Honda Civic.
it is well established fluff the BA dont want to share the Baal pred nor the Lucius engines.. causes much friction between them and the mechanicus, dante actually sent a long-lost Emperor(?) titan to try to make up for it. They would not simply go around distributing it to all chapters.
Is this the same fluff that was also pertinent to the Stormraven?
Anyways, I'd still give BA vehicles all fast as part of their CT, but the Baal pred aspect can be fluffed in, just like the Stormraven.
Right, but given the rules he's using they'd still feel like Blood Angels. I put a take a Ferrari chassis, but replace everything inside with that of a Honda Civic... I'll still feel like i'm driving a Honda Civic.
Except removing the codex and streamlining it with the vanilla codex would not remove the feel of BA.
They'd still have their army wide special rules via a well written CT. They'd have access to nearly everything they currently with the redundancy cut out. It would feel almost identical. Instead of a Sanguinary Priest, you'd have an Apothecary, which you can go ahead and just call 'Sanguinary Priest' anyways.
My Mordian Iron Guard aren't any less Mordian Iron Guard because I don't have a special codex that tells me they're special.
it is well established fluff the BA dont want to share the Baal pred nor the Lucius engines.. causes much friction between them and the mechanicus, dante actually sent a long-lost Emperor(?) titan to try to make up for it. They would not simply go around distributing it to all chapters.
Is this the same fluff that was also pertinent to the Stormraven?
Anyways, I'd still give BA vehicles all fast as part of their CT, but the Baal pred aspect can be fluffed in, just like the Stormraven.
The raven was a martian STC, the Baal pred is a unique BA one. Mars shares. BA do not
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
This is a joke right?
I never said to eliminate the Baal pred, I said to make it available to everyone when its rolled in. I also said I wasn't opposed to including Sang Guard wholesale.
Please read what I'm writing and respond appropriately.
And no, its not a joke. Did you read what I wrote?
Yeah I did, you said the look/how they're painted is what gives the feel of a Chapter, more so than their rules and the way they play? So... if I painted my BA blue, I would feel more like I was playing Ultramarines?
Dude... There are players out there who use the BA codex, paint their models dark blue and play them as Night Lords (and I'm 5000% serious here)! Yeah, the Chaos Space Marine Night Lords. You can't go lower than that!
Right, but given the rules he's using they'd still feel like Blood Angels. I can take a Ferrari chassis, but replace everything inside with that of a Honda Civic... I'll still feel like i'm driving a Honda Civic.
I'm pretty sure that they use the codex because it feels like a Night Lords codex. Otherwise, they would play the CSM book, right?
Right, but given the rules he's using they'd still feel like Blood Angels. I put a take a Ferrari chassis, but replace everything inside with that of a Honda Civic... I'll still feel like i'm driving a Honda Civic.
Except removing the codex and streamlining it with the vanilla codex would not remove the feel of BA.
They'd still have their army wide special rules via a well writtenCT. They'd have access to nearly everything they currently with the redundancy cut out. It would feel almost identical. Instead of a Sanguinary Priest, you'd have an Apothecary, which you can go ahead and just call 'Sanguinary Priest' anyways.
My Mordian Iron Guard aren't any less Mordian Iron Guard because I don't have a special codex that tells me they're special.
See that part? yeah since was GW good with that part of the codex?
The raven was a martian STC, the Baal pred is a unique BA one. Mars shares. BA do not
Hmmm, been a while since I read through the dex.
It can be fluffed around to fit. Wouldn't be worse than BA working with Necrons, eh?
I think it'd be a good move for all marines anyways, if not for fluff reasons but purely for gameplay/mechanical reasons.
That and I enjoy tanks.
*Edit* I see your post above (the quote block is kind of messed up), and I agree, but then again if that's an argument against rolling them in, it should also be an argument for them keeping a distinct codex, because when has GW been adept at writing balanced books that play according to the fluff?
Hm. Unique things about Blood Angels from 3rd Edition onwards would be... Bhaal Predators, an urge to get to grips with the enemy (even their Whirlwinds used to have to test to see if they charged forwards!) and the Death Company.
I'm not counting Special Characters, because everyone gets Special Characters.
So. Charging forwards is a chapter tactic. Bhaal Predators and Death Company. Two units. Seems sane enough.
Later on, they got Furioso Dreadnoughts. Around the same time that Dark Angels got Mortis Dreadnoughts, I believe. Since DAngels haven't complained about losing their Mortis Dreads, I guess BAngels can't really whine too much about losing their Furiosos. After all, you can easily make a Rifleman or a 2xDCCW dreadnought using the vanilla codex, and those are the same thing.
Previous to the most recent codices, anyway.
As for Dante's Inferno Pistol, actually, it always used to be called the "Perdition Pistol" (because Dante's Inferno was too obvious), and was a Meltagun with the Pistol type - Range 12" and all. Inferno Pistols were introduced as an upgrade for characters only (and Seraphim) in Codex: Witch Hunters. So really, you can't even claim them as a unique Blood Angel thing.
You should have heard the wailing amongst the Sororitas players when BAngels could suddenly spam Infernus pistols on everything!
The raven was a martian STC, the Baal pred is a unique BA one. Mars shares. BA do not
Hmmm, been a while since I read through the dex.
It can be fluffed around to fit. Wouldn't be worse than BA working with Necrons, eh?
I think it'd be a good move for all marines anyways, if not for fluff reasons but purely for gameplay/mechanical reasons.
That and I enjoy tanks.
*Edit* I see your post above (the quote block is kind of messed up), and I agree, but then again if that's an argument against rolling them in, it should also be an argument for them keeping a distinct codex, because when has GW been adept at writing balanced books that play according to the fluff?
Thats my bad i tried to short it now cant fix it Its more an arguement for rolling them in than keeping them standalone however. Nobody is too upset and saying that ultras cant be well represented, yet BT got the short end of the barrel in that bundle did they not?
Its more an arguement for rolling them in than keeping them standalone however. Nobody is too upset and saying that ultras cant be well represented, yet BT got the short end of the barrel in that bundle did they not?
And I admit that BT were worked in poorly. Again, GW has a great track record of good ideas and awful execution. Now, BT are definitely salvageable with one or two dedicated minds working on it, but its far from the worst thing that could happen to them.
Don't forget that plenty of other marine players are playing 1st founding chapters with no distinct codex and a single SC (or none at all for IH before the supplement...did they even get one there?).
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
Language much?
Funnily enough, I remember when blood angels was a dozen-or so page supplement to a two-dozen or so page space marine codex. Third edition.
Blood angels fed off the main codex, with their extra stuff (overcharged rhinos, death co. And death co. Chaplains, priests. The 'on a 1 I go faster' rule, and furious charge). All of it fit into a bare handful of pages. I'm sure you can still find it places.
No mention of blood fists, blood missiles, blood this, blood that, dozen psychic powers, etcetera. And yet, they were still blood angels. The rest of the rot is fifth edition bloat.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
Language much?
Funnily enough, I remember when blood angels was a dozen-or so page supplement to a two-dozen or so page space marine codex. Third edition.
Blood angels fed off the main codex, with their extra stuff (overcharged rhinos, death co. And death co. Chaplains, priests. The 'on a 1 I go faster' rule, and furious charge). All of it fit into a bare handful of pages. I'm sure you can still find it places.
No mention of blood fists, blood missiles, blood this, blood that, dozen psychic powers, etcetera. And yet, they were still blood angels. The rest of the rot is fifth edition bloat.
This, seriously this. A lot of it was made just to justify the continued existence of a distinct book.
Even with most of the extra stuff, you could fit it all in with just 2-4 pages (assuming you're not slapping in big pictures) fairly easily as C:SM addendum and still not lose anything, the book shares 80% of the same units/weapons/wargear with C:SM already.
A Blood Angels supplement would literally be 5 times or more as much content as any other supplement so far.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
They would have done it already.
They are not going to pass up the profit of a new Hardback plus limited editions, plus a new unit or 2 plus sales spikes on older units new to Blood Angels.
MephistonLoD wrote: For feth sakes, NO! This is such a stupid subject. It's never going to happen, for anyone thinking it can, you clearly no nothing about the Blood Angels if you think they can just "roll them into C:SM nicely".
Care to elaborate with a little more reasoning? Telling people they're wrong without stating why in a sensible manner isn't going to convince anyone.
I couldn't care less if I convince anyone why putting Blood Angels into a Codex half assed, throwing away everything that made them unique, disregarding all of their fluff, is an idiotic idea. Yeah let's just toss out Baal Preds! Toss out Sang Guard too! I mean other's can use Storm Ravens so lets delete a few more unique models, feth it.
Fragile wrote: Pretty much all the Space Marine variants can be rolled into CSM with a Supplement.
Yeah, or just made into the base book. A chapter's identity isn't base solely on the rules for them. A paint scheme and modeling will do far more for a chapter's feel than one or two special characters or units.
This is a joke right?
Aaaaaaalrighty. What in the world is this?
First of all, no-one ever talked about "disregarding all of their fluff". You clearly aren't on the same page here.
And second, are you truly claiming that (using your example the other way around here) you would feel like playing Blood Angels when every single model in your army has blue colour scheme and toilet seat in their shoulder pads?
The identity you give to your army by modelling, painting and personalizing them can make a huge difference to me at least.
It matters not how little I use Aspect Warriors and how much I adore Wraithguard. When someone asks which craftworld I play the answer will always be Biel-tan, because that's how I've painted them and that's what I've made them.
I know it's not the best kind of comparison since not many armies beyond SM have several codices/rules for basically one army. And why should they? Even as a BA player I understand how unfair it is for other races as GW puts half of their time/recourses towards what is basically a single army with few specialities.
Not only that, but some of the BA specific wargear (hand flamers and infernus pistols) would be great additions to the vanilla book. I'm sure Salamander players everywhere salivate at the thought, and opens up more options for DIY chapters to capture their fluff in a single book.
A Blood Angels supplement would literally be 5 times or more as much content as any other supplement so far.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
They would have done it already.
They are not going to pass up the profit of a new Hardback plus limited editions, plus a new unit or 2 plus sales spikes on older units new to Blood Angels.
How so? How would it have 5 times the content? Can you justify that? Anything to back that claim up?
Also, discussing the business practice of GW is not going to get this discussion very far; I'm sure most of us are in agreement the reason they won't is precisely because its incredibly easy to recycle ~90% of an existing book and call it a day.
Personally, I think that a supplement is the way to go, not only for Blood Angels, but Black Templars, Dark Angels and Space Wolves.
For those who don't have one of the supplements, they are fantastic books, full of tons of fluff devoted to that faction in particular. The one downside to them is that up until now, they have been very light on introducing things like new units and rules beyond a few codex tweaks. However, I don't think this would have to be the case. A supplement with a larger rule section, say on par to what's in the Inquisition or Imperial Knights books (I don't think we can call a book without a full slate of FOC options a Codex) could easily cover the variant rules, characters and units for these alternate Marines while the mainMarine codex has the baseline common rules and units. I don't think it would take a lot of space either, maybe 8 to 12 pages of rules instead of the 4 to 6 the existing supplements have.
I think this option would provide all the uniqueness that the players of BA, BT, DA or SW want, while giving them a core set of rules that is balanced well with the standard Codex Marines.
I suggest players look in detail at the supplements for Imperial Fists and Iron Hands, imagine them with 2-3x the rules content and then decide if hat would or wouldn't be an awesome way to present what makes their preferred chapter different from all the others, but still definitely Astartes at their core.
Jefffar wrote: Personally, I think that a supplement is the way to go, not only for Blood Angels, but Black Templars, Dark Angels and Space Wolves.
For those who don't have one of the supplements, they are fantastic books, full of tons of fluff devoted to that faction in particular. The one downside to them is that up until now, they have been very light on introducing things like new units and rules beyond a few codex tweaks. However, I don't think this would have to be the case. A supplement with a larger rule section, say on par to what's in the Inquisition or Imperial Knights books (I don't think we can call a book without a full slate of FOC options a Codex) could easily cover the variant rules, characters and units for these alternate Marines while the mainMarine codex has the baseline common rules and units. I don't think it would take a lot of space either, maybe 8 to 12 pages of rules instead of the 4 to 6 the existing supplements have.
I think this option would provide all the uniqueness that the players of BA, BT, DA or SW want, while giving them a core set of rules that is balanced well with the standard Codex Marines.
I suggest players look in detail at the supplements for Imperial Fists and Iron Hands, imagine them with 2-3x the rules content and then decide if hat would or wouldn't be an awesome way to present what makes their preferred chapter different from all the others, but still definitely Astartes at their core.
now, i keep asking. whatd be the difference between a supplement and a codex? if its done right a supplement may as well be a standalone codex.
Honestly, I'm going to bite my tongue saying this, but I would like to see BA, SW, BT, and DA all rolled into the SM codex. From there, supplement! My biggest grievance with supplements is that most of them just really don't seem to do much. Well, that and they cost arguably too much and 2 of them are a single company in a chapter.
Thatguyhsagun wrote: now, i keep asking. whatd be the difference between a supplement and a codex? if its done right a supplement may as well be a standalone codex.
What is unique in the codex? That would go into the supplement. For BA's. Named HQs, Death Company, Baal Preds, etc.. There is no reason to list Rhinos, Razorbacks, Land Raiders, over and over in every SM variant codex.
Thatguyhsagun wrote: now, i keep asking. whatd be the difference between a supplement and a codex? if its done right a supplement may as well be a standalone codex.
What is unique in the codex? That would go into the supplement. For BA's. Named HQs, Death Company, Baal Preds, etc.. There is no reason to list Rhinos, Razorbacks, Land Raiders, over and over in every SM variant codex.
So wait.. itll be a codex but just of unique things so we have to pay twice to use it? Now how in any rational world is this better than a standalone dex?
Dude... There are players out there who use the BA codex, paint their models dark blue and play them as Night Lords (and I'm 5000% serious here)! Yeah, the Chaos Space Marine Night Lords. You can't go lower than that!
I have often considered using the BA list for a Ravenguard army, assault marines as troops, Storm Ravens (no longer necessary), fast/scouty vehicles...
All of which could be done in a standard codex with some special rules, chapter tactics, and fiddly bits as already noted by others.
The Tau, as an example, should have always had the ability to field an all crisis suit all the time army, or in the same vein, a stealth armor cadre. No reason that couldn't have been done in the codex itself.
Sang priest is a CTBA unit, honor guard can take Termi armor or jump packs (as can command squads), some way to unlock Assault Marines and Termis as troops, some vehicle upgrades as needed (that could even be CT specific), a few special characters, and bam DA and BA rolled into one codex.
SW, which I don't play, is a bit harder, but even they could be done, and they're more unique than the BAs.
So wait.. itll be a codex but just of unique things so we have to pay twice to use it? Now how in any rational world is this better than a standalone dex?
Well in my perfect world of eternal sunshine where unicorns frolic on rainbows, GW would charge far less for supplements (dare I say, free for a no fluff version), which would only be a very small monetary increase over the codex alone and would keep the base codex at a reasonable size while allowing BA to keep more of their SCs which would only waste space in a rolled in book.
So wait.. itll be a codex but just of unique things so we have to pay twice to use it? Now how in any rational world is this better than a standalone dex?
Well in my perfect world of eternal sunshine where unicorns frolic on rainbows, GW would charge far less for supplements (dare I say, free for a no fluff version), which would only be a very small monetary increase over the codex alone and would keep the base codex at a reasonable size while allowing BA to keep more of their SCs which would only waste space in a rolled in book.
well we seem to be out of unicorns and rainbows. Ill get the horses and party hats if you paint the sidewalks rainbow?
soomemafia wrote: BA have their unique stuff, but personally (as a BA player) I think that having four different codices for Space Marines is stupid.
Therefore, I voted for supplement.
Blood Angels would be on line with the rest of Marines (equal points).
Their chapter tactics would propably be similar to DoA and allowing ASM as troops.
Red Thirst would be eliminated but similar effects could still be gained by having a Sanguinary Priest around.
Baal Predator would either be eliminated or made avaivable to everyone.
Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinior and Corbulo would be the only named characters for us.
Our Vanguard Veterans might have some nice special rule, but that's it.
Just my suggestion. I know a lot of this seems harsh and we would lose a lot of our unique stuff.
But to be honest, I would be ready swap our 'dex into this.
(I hardly ever anything that C:SM don't have apart from ASM as troops, Priests and Furiosos).
Ow. Think I'd switch armies if it went down like this. I love a lot of options and a bunch of the unique stuff. Even if a sanguinary guard/Dante army is bad, I still have the models for it, because it's awesome that I CAN do that, even if it's effectiveness is...questionable at best. Even if a black tide death company is a HILARIOUSLY bad idea, I like having the option.
So to the raping and pillaging of my main army's codex, I say "oh god pls no" with a horror in my eyes.
Ow. Think I'd switch armies if it went down like this. I love a lot of options and a bunch of the unique stuff. Even if a sanguinary guard/Dante army is bad, I still have the models for it, because it's awesome that I CAN do that, even if it's effectiveness is...questionable at best. Even if a black tide death company is a HILARIOUSLY bad idea, I like having the option.
So to the raping and pillaging of my main army's codex, I say "oh god pls no" with a horror in my eyes.
And there's a compromise. A rolled in BA codex could still have DC and Sanguinary Guard with Dante and such. You just don't need another several dozen pages outlining the same tac/assault/devs/rhinos/razors/so on ad nauseum that every marine has.
Alternatively, a small supplement would work well too.
I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I personally don't mind the whole folding into the Vanilla part, what I mind is the Chapter Tactics that don't do anything to make the army actually work the way it's intended. Then they go off and dedicate Supplements to Imperial Fist 3rd Companies, Iron Hands Clans and now Legion of the Damned. I wouldn't want them to do the same to other armies before they've figured out how to fix the mess they made with BT.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I personally don't mind the whole folding into the Vanilla part, what I mind is the Chapter Tactics that don't do anything to make the army actually work the way it's intended. Then they go off and dedicate Supplements to Imperial Fist 3rd Companies, Iron Hands Clans and now Legion of the Damned. I wouldn't want them to do the same to other armies before they've figured out how to fix the mess they made with BT.
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
Actualy I would love to see every Faction get thier own Codex for every army.
I do not think though any current Codex should not be removed. We are not talking about adding a New Army like the Knights, but an Army that has had their own Codex since 3rd Edition, Space Wolves Since 2nd.
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
the same could be said for every regiment, every ork warband, every chaos legion. The point is to go further than the minimum to make them unique. BA have developed to contain as many unique units as core units over the editions and to have it rolled in with only afraction of those units would be no less than an outrage (and would invalidate models and GW products)
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
the same could be said for every regiment, every ork warband, every chaos legion. The point is to go further than the minimum to make them unique. BA have developed to contain as many unique units as core units over the editions and to have it rolled in with only afraction of those units would be no less than an outrage (and would invalidate models and GW products)
Alright, to demonstrate the issue I have with this argument, let's try to take another first founding chapter and giving them the Blood Angels treatment. How about... Ultramarines? Yeah, Ultramarines, the poster boys of GW. Let's take three units and one vehicle and modify them to make unique units.
So, what is cool and is related to what Ultramarines do? Sternguard are pretty cool and Ultras have some veterans because of the Tyrannic war. So, this new unit will be called Tyrannic War Veterans. They will redo the current Tyrannic War Veterans box to a full fledged plastic sprue. Their main weapon will not be a bolter but a thing called a Macragge pattern Boltgun. This boltgun is S: 4 AP 5 24" Rapid Fire and poisoned. In addition, once per game their shots can count as twin linked to represent their skill at arms. In addition, they have Hatred: Tyranids.
What else is ultramariney? Honor Guard. Honor Guard are pretty cool and Marneus Calgar is pretty cool. So why don't we have a unit called Calgar Guard? These are the elite badasses who protect Marneus with their lives and occasionally go out and perform tasks in his name. Calgar Guard come equipped with Thunder Hammers and Artificer armor by default. They will have their own models which are Marines wearing Mk. 8 and with "U"s all over it.
Champions are awesome too. We'll call them "Champions of Ultramar" and have them come in groups of three. They will be pretty much the same as regular champions except they have their own models and have relic blades by default. Again, Mk. 8 and covered in "U"s.
Actually, I want a new unit that you can make an army out of since people really like that sort of thing. You know what's really popular? 2nd company. So, how about we make our own model line out of them called 2nd Company Astartes which are the same as the regular tactical box except with more Mk. 8 pieces and "U"s. You can give them more Combi weapons and special weapons than regular marines.
As for the vehicles, let's not make too many different plastic kits since we can't hire too many sculptors. How about a special Land Raider called the Macragge pattern Land Raider which is similiar to the regular Land Raider except it can transport 18 models and has Plasma Cannon sponsons.
Oh, wait, we need war gear too. So... let's have a Plasma Pistol that doesn't get hot, a Thunder Hammer with AP 1 and Fleshbane, a Boltgun that's salvo 4/5 and a Grenade that prevents overwatch. Give them special names and you are good to go.
But, people want them back in the regular Codex! How can you?! There are so many new and exciting units that will suddenly become invalidated. A supplement, they cry? No, that will be unwieldy. Just leave them with their own codex.
TL;DR, the units that make C: BA special aren't all that special and can be represented with regular marine rules and some CT thrown in for flavor. As said previously, the rules don't make the army the people who play them do.
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
the same could be said for every regiment, every ork warband, every chaos legion. The point is to go further than the minimum to make them unique. BA have developed to contain as many unique units as core units over the editions and to have it rolled in with only afraction of those units would be no less than an outrage (and would invalidate models and GW products)
Alright, to demonstrate the issue I have with this argument, let's try to take another first founding chapter and giving them the Blood Angels treatment. How about... Ultramarines? Yeah, Ultramarines, the poster boys of GW. Let's take three units and one vehicle and modify them to make unique units.
So, what is cool and is related to what Ultramarines do? Sternguard are pretty cool and Ultras have some veterans because of the Tyrannic war. So, this new unit will be called Tyrannic War Veterans. They will redo the current Tyrannic War Veterans box to a full fledged plastic sprue. Their main weapon will not be a bolter but a thing called a Macragge pattern Boltgun. This boltgun is S: 4 AP 5 24" Rapid Fire and poisoned. In addition, once per game their shots can count as twin linked to represent their skill at arms. In addition, they have Hatred: Tyranids.
What else is ultramariney? Honor Guard. Honor Guard are pretty cool and Marneus Calgar is pretty cool. So why don't we have a unit called Calgar Guard? These are the elite badasses who protect Marneus with their lives and occasionally go out and perform tasks in his name. Calgar Guard come equipped with Thunder Hammers and Artificer armor by default. They will have their own models which are Marines wearing Mk. 8 and with "U"s all over it.
Champions are awesome too. We'll call them "Champions of Ultramar" and have them come in groups of three. They will be pretty much the same as regular champions except they have their own models and have relic blades by default. Again, Mk. 8 and covered in "U"s.
Actually, I want a new unit that you can make an army out of since people really like that sort of thing. You know what's really popular? 2nd company. So, how about we make our own model line out of them called 2nd Company Astartes which are the same as the regular tactical box except with more Mk. 8 pieces and "U"s. You can give them more Combi weapons and special weapons than regular marines.
As for the vehicles, let's not make too many different plastic kits since we can't hire too many sculptors. How about a special Land Raider called the Macragge pattern Land Raider which is similiar to the regular Land Raider except it can transport 18 models and has Plasma Cannon sponsons.
Oh, wait, we need war gear too. So... let's have a Plasma Pistol that doesn't get hot, a Thunder Hammer with AP 1 and Fleshbane, a Boltgun that's salvo 4/5 and a Grenade that prevents overwatch. Give them special names and you are good to go.
But, people want them back in the regular Codex! How can you?! There are so many new and exciting units that will suddenly become invalidated. A supplement, they cry? No, that will be unwieldy. Just leave them with their own codex.
TL;DR, the units that make C: BA special aren't all that special and can be represented with regular marine rules and some CT thrown in for flavor. As said previously, the rules don't make the army the people who play them do.
I would see nothing wrong with having a Codex: Ultra Marines for playing my Ultra Marines.
Becouse now I am playing Ultra Marines, not Codex: Space Marines with Ultra Marines Chapter Tactics.
A few things I love about the Codex, then supplement idea......
First- is if it were to happen watching EVERYONE rage about how greedy GW is and how everyone is going to point at them taking codexs that were 50 to start with putting them into one big C:SM book that's going to cost even more than its already inflated price because you just folded DA, SW and BA all back in and THEN charge them the extra $50.00 on top and just say SEE SEE GW are the holes we thought they were and they are greedy.
Second- well if you streamlined there where does it stop? why not fold chaos into one big happy Codex and just throw out extra supplements for Chaos SM's and each God of Chaos Daemons. Of course I already hear the cries of "you're just taking it to the extreme" and "they're too different" and or "there's too much content for that to happen" . well is there!?!? I mean if you can fit every single chapter of marines in one book why can't you put their biggest rival who supposed to work hand and hand together?
Lets go a little farther , how bout Making Codex inquisition what it should be and roll in Grey Knights and SOB in. There now they get regular updates and a supplement too. so in other words GW now gets to charge everyone for a codex and a matching supplement so it now goes too $100.00 (just for your rules in a company that makes models not rules remember? that next part is key to stage 3)
Third- Cool now everyone is getting rolled in and we can get to regular updates...... just one minor issue...... you now have one team writing the regular book and another team writing digital supplements (oh yea btw hope you wanted digital cause that's how its going to be) and these two teams , now what do YOU think the odds are that they are working together and coming up with a balanced plan? lol aw come on you have to know the answer to that one? so this leaves the door open for even more lose rules than we have now and potential for and even farther gap between some books and their supplement.
But hey I'm going to be told I'm just taking it to the extreme..... too bad everyone of you knows that if GW figures out they can double tap you like that then they will. So in all honesty we better be careful what we say because GW will read threads like this and think..... hell THEY said they would pay us TWICE why aren't we doing this!?!?!
Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
And? that's great, we will get all those in with CT and a supplement. also we are only putting two groups together and they are two groups who work together not apart. on the other hand we are putting how many chapters with chapter tactics for each one and a supplement to make them work together in one book?
**EDIT** I feel I should make clear when I say roll Chaos SM in I mean into the Chaos Daemon codex... not into C:SM - that would in fact just be pure stupid.
tell me whats to stop GW for doing just that and getting you twice? You see I accept the argument that it can be done however I feel if you accept that then you must also accept it can be done with several books and in the process make GW more money ( boy they hate that don't they)
So wait.. itll be a codex but just of unique things so we have to pay twice to use it? Now how in any rational world is this better than a standalone dex?
Well in my perfect world of eternal sunshine where unicorns frolic on rainbows, GW would charge far less for supplements (dare I say, free for a no fluff version), which would only be a very small monetary increase over the codex alone and would keep the base codex at a reasonable size while allowing BA to keep more of their SCs which would only waste space in a rolled in book.
also Blacksails , though I argued with you I want to point out that IF and I do mean IF this part was true and each of those codex supplements were in fact worth a snot ( I hold Farsight Enclaves as a standard) that I would in fact be on board. However I feel that my concerns of price and balance still remain very much valid. two things GW doesn't have a great rep for at all.
There should be 2 SM Codices: Codex: Codex-Adherent and Codex: Not-Codex-Adherent.
In one book, you get the UM and all their Successors, and every other Chapter that is, by their fluff, adherent to the in-universe Codex Astartes.
In the other book, you get Space Wolves and Grey Knights and all the other Chapters that don't follow at least half the Codex Astartes strictures. This would also include Renegade Chapters that are not Chaos Space Marines.
For Chaos... you have Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and you use things similar to Chapter Tactics to replicate being aligned to one Dark Power or another... and maybe that opens up a few different units based on whatever god you want to follow, and then one for being aligned to Chaos Undivided.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
And? that's great, we will get all those in with CT and a supplement. also we are only putting two groups together and they are two groups who work together not apart. on the other hand we are putting how many chapters with chapter tactics for each one and a supplement to make them work together in one book?
tell me whats to stop GW for doing just that and getting you twice? You see I accept the argument that it can be done however I feel if you accept that then you must also accept it can be done with several books and in the process make GW more money ( boy they hate that don't they)
You don't have to buy the supplement if it's done right. All they have to do is include a couple of unique units like the Baal Predator and the Furioso Dreadnought while making the CT to represent the Blood Angels right. That way you can make a flavorful army that plays like the Blood Angels should without having to buy a supplement. You'd only have to get it if you really like Blood Angels and want the really specialized rules and wargear.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
They have Some units in common with Codex: Space Marines. The only unit I can think of that is not affected by a Blood Angel Rule it Land Speeders.
Here are something else to think about. To make Blood Angels work in Codex: Space Marines you would have to add Chapter Tactics to Dreads and something Special to All of the Vehicles exept Land Speeders.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
They have Some units in common with Codex: Space Marines. The only unit I can think of that is not affected by a Blood Angel Rule it Land Speeders.
Here are something else to think about. To make Blood Angels work in Codex: Space Marines you would have to add Chapter Tactics to Dreads and something Special to All of the Vehicles exept Land Speeders.
Captains, Command Squads, Librarians, Sternguard Veterans, Terminator Squads, Terminator Assault Squads, Chaplains, Apothecaries, Land Raidesr, Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer, Drop Pods, Rhinos, Land Speeders Bikes, Vanguard Veterans, Stormravens, Dreadnoughts, Whirlwinds, Vindicators, Predators and Devastator Squads. I think Chapter Masters too. Yeah, I think that's more than some.
Really, all you have to do is add Fast as a CT for Vehicles.
I dont have a problem with the BA having their own codex as long as it doesn't read like the current SM codex.
The Fifth edition BA codex was a 90% cut and paste from the SM codex and then had a bunch of unique stuff added on top. That is the BS part of the design decision.
If you want to be worthy of a stand a lone divergent codex, then be divergent. You can't/shouldn't have everything the other guy has and then just more. What are you willing to give up? You want Baal Preds, fine, but you dont get the classic pred load-outs. You want Librarian dreads, fine, you loose Ironclads. You want Sanguinary Guard, fine, but you loose honor guard/retinue type units.
That is what I see from most BA players when this topic comes up. You want your cake, and that guys cake, and something from that desert table over there.
Jayden63 wrote: I dont have a problem with the BA having their own codex as long as it doesn't read like the current SM codex.
The Fifth edition BA codex was a 90% cut and paste from the SM codex and then had a bunch of unique stuff added on top. That is the BS part of the design decision.
If you want to be worthy of a stand a lone divergent codex, then be divergent. You can't/shouldn't have everything the other guy has and then just more. What are you willing to give up? You want Baal Preds, fine, but you dont get the classic pred load-outs. You want Librarian dreads, fine, you loose Ironclads. You want Sanguinary Guard, fine, but you loose honor guard/retinue type units.
That is what I see from most BA players when this topic comes up. You want your cake, and that guys cake, and something from that desert table over there.
by all means I follow your logic and agree 100% if these codexs get pulled out they need to go even farther to distance them selves from the pack, hell I'm not even opposed to BA basic troops losing a BS skill point in the name of getting better close combat abilities , they train with JP's and Close Combat weapons they should be better at it and worse by default at shooting since they train less at it.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
They have Some units in common with Codex: Space Marines. The only unit I can think of that is not affected by a Blood Angel Rule it Land Speeders.
Here are something else to think about. To make Blood Angels work in Codex: Space Marines you would have to add Chapter Tactics to Dreads and something Special to All of the Vehicles exept Land Speeders.
Captains, Command Squads, Librarians, Sternguard Veterans, Terminator Squads, Terminator Assault Squads, Chaplains, Apothecaries, Land Raidesr, Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer, Drop Pods, Rhinos, Land Speeders Bikes, Vanguard Veterans, Stormravens, Dreadnoughts, Whirlwinds, Vindicators, Predators and Devastator Squads. I think Chapter Masters too. Yeah, I think that's more than some.
Really, all you have to do is add Fast as a CT for Vehicles.
And each of them needs to have Special Equipment/Rules added to them, except for Terminator Squads, Drop Pods. Land Speeders and Stormravens
Captains: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Command Squads [Apothecaries]: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols, Jump Packs
Librarians: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Sternguard Veterans: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Chaplains: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Land Raiders [All]: Deep Strike
Rhinos: Fast
Bikes: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Vanguard Veterans: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Dreadnoughts: Do not Have
Whirlwinds: Fast
Vindicators: Fast
Predators: Fast
Devastator Squads: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Assault Squads: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols and make a Troop Choice
Each one of those would require a “Special Entry” to cover them.
[Apologies to the Black Templars for this]
It only took 4 Entries and Combat Tactics to roll in the Black Templars, but ask any Black Templar player if they are now playing Black Templars, you will probably get one of two reposnses.
1] Yes, but they do not feel right
2] No I play White Scars that happen to look like Black Templars and it still does not feel right.
This last part should be enough a reason not to roll them into Codex: Space Marines. All Rolling them into Codex: Space Marines will do is alienate players.
Ask Martel about it, even though he is getting hammered constantly and has even been told to create a “Count As” Blood Angels army has shown his loyalty to a now bottom tier book to the point of he would rather loose than go to another Codex.
No, it wouldn't. Infernus Pistols, even if they aren't available to any marine chapter, are something that only require one entry either in the special weapons or ranged weapons list. The "Red Thirst" entry can be covered by Chapter Tactics as can Fast.
TheCustomLime wrote: No, it wouldn't. Infernus Pistols, even if they aren't available to any marine chapter, are something that only require one entry either in the special weapons or ranged weapons list. The "Red Thirst" entry can be covered by Chapter Tactics as can Fast.
That sound fair
"I took Chapeter Tactics: Blood Angels, Now I can take a Weapon no one else in the book can."
Looking at the Iron Hands supplement, BA would totally work
Make Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinor, Astorath. Then make relics that give you items that'd let you approximate the others.
Chapter Tactics, DoA and Red thirst, Vanguards gain rage, Assault as Troops.
Special Euipment: Flamestorm for Predators, and a couple weapons for Iron Clads. For 5 points per model Honour Guard get Jpacks and are allowed to buy PF and PPistols.
I really don't think infernus needs to stay, but maybe just a line letting Assault Marines pack 1 special weapon too.
Add a new unit (I'd think Apothecaries that can Wolf Guard out)
Done. Very close, very simple, missing little (if anything) that matters. Before you ask, yes I've played BA and I think this gets everything needed and none of the silly Marines +1 stuff that made us all rage the last BA codex (you're not keeping fast vehicles anyway).
And why would we lose fast vehicles? Luscius engines eminatefrom the fluff. They don't go faster because of the color scheme or because Ward wanted a vindicator to shoot further...
BaalSNAFU wrote: And why would we lose fast vehicles? Luscius engines eminatefrom the fluff. They don't go faster because of the color scheme or because Ward wanted a vindicator to shoot further...
I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
BaalSNAFU wrote: And why would we lose fast vehicles? Luscius engines eminatefrom the fluff. They don't go faster because of the color scheme or because Ward wanted a vindicator to shoot further...
But.... da red ones go faster!
well maybe this time around matt ward can make BAs and Orks pals and they can high five each other while painting everything red.
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Sounds good to me. Heck, drop the Thunderwolves for Fenrisian Wolves. Far fluffier.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
The cost is the overhead of keeping everything up to date. Having 4 marines codices means 4 separate books must be updated each edition to keep everything current. Furthermore, updating the space marine variant chapters means other books that badly need to be updated have to wait to while GW is essentially just adding additional options and playstyles to the already perfectly playable Space Marine army. This was particularly bad in 5e, when codices were updated slowly and every other update was a Space Marine book of some kind. Both Dark Eldar and Necrons, who badly needed an update just to remain playable had to wait while GW updated Space Marines, and then Space Wolves, and then Blood Angels, and then (for Necrons) Grey Knights. Had Blood Angels and Space Wolves been consolidated into the Space Marine book, both those armies could have been updated early on in 5e, rather than languishing for years in a nearly unplayable state.
Outside of Grey Knights (and even they are borderline), I have never really understood the need for so many separate space marine books. They all share essentially the same models, with a great many of the differences being either rules that aren't even reflected on the models themselves (DoA, Red Thirst) or just a different bit on an otherwise identical chasis (Bhaal predators are just predators with a different turret). There are a few exceptions, such as the SW wolf riders or the oversized DA landraider, and of course the special characters, but otherwise its essentially all the same models running a couple of variant rules, which could easily be included under the unit purchasing options with minimal increase in book space. Having separate books creates a massive amount of unnecessary redundancy that seems to only interfere with the codex update cycle.
All you would really need to roll the armies together is let the player choose between various chapter tactics. You could choose Standard Chapter Tactics, Blood Angel Chapter Tactics, Space Wolf Chapter Tactics, etc. Assault Marines with Standard Chapter Tactics would benefit from Tactics, while those with Blood Angel Chapter Tactics would have DoA and Red Thirst and be purchasable as troops. For units like Bhaal Predators, they could be rolled into the parent models entry with only a couple of lines. For example, a hypothetical predator entry that included the Blood Angel Options could read as follows:
A Predator Must Take One of the Following Weapon Turrets:
A Predator Can Also Purchase the Following Sponsons
Heavy Bolters: +10 pts
Lascannons: +20 pts
Heavy Flamers: +10 pts - Blood Angel Chapter Tactics Only
Give Vehicle Fast and Scout +25 pts - Blood Angel Chapter Tactics Only
There you go. Three lines, and a Bhaal predator has been added to the main codex. The same approach can be used to the likes of Librarian Dreadnoughts, Death Company, etc. and to incorporate special wargear like infernus pistols. You would only need a couple of full page entries for things like the Wolf Riders. Special characters would need a full page as well, but I think a lot of those were added to the specialist codices just to pad them out. Choose one or two from each of BA, DA and SW to give full entries and either leave the rest out, or just provide condensed entries. Perhaps a "Heroes of the Blood Angels" page that list all of the minor special characters. Heck, condense some of the Codex Space Marine special characters in the same manner and you could probably recover a look of space used to incorporated those from the variant chapters.
I am that if GW really wanted to put their mind to it, they could roll the Space Marine armies into one codex no problem. They obviously won't, but the task is far from impossible.
TheCustomLime wrote: Okay, sir, here is the problem with that argument. Chaos Space Marines have appreciably different units than the Space Marines do. Things like Dinbots, Bezerkers, Noise Marines and Defilers don't have direct equivalents within the loyalist marines.
What Blood Angels have are just units from Codex: Space Marines with a couple of special rules on top. In addition, you have a lot of common units between Codex: Space Marines and Codex: Blood Angels.
They have Some units in common with Codex: Space Marines. The only unit I can think of that is not affected by a Blood Angel Rule it Land Speeders.
Here are something else to think about. To make Blood Angels work in Codex: Space Marines you would have to add Chapter Tactics to Dreads and something Special to All of the Vehicles exept Land Speeders.
Captains, Command Squads, Librarians, Sternguard Veterans, Terminator Squads, Terminator Assault Squads, Chaplains, Apothecaries, Land Raidesr, Land Raider Crusader/Redeemer, Drop Pods, Rhinos, Land Speeders Bikes, Vanguard Veterans, Stormravens, Dreadnoughts, Whirlwinds, Vindicators, Predators and Devastator Squads. I think Chapter Masters too. Yeah, I think that's more than some.
Really, all you have to do is add Fast as a CT for Vehicles.
And each of them needs to have Special Equipment/Rules added to them, except for Terminator Squads, Drop Pods. Land Speeders and Stormravens
Captains: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Command Squads [Apothecaries]: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols, Jump Packs
Librarians: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Sternguard Veterans: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Chaplains: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Land Raiders [All]: Deep Strike
Rhinos: Fast
Bikes: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Vanguard Veterans: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Dreadnoughts: Do not Have
Whirlwinds: Fast
Vindicators: Fast
Predators: Fast
Devastator Squads: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols
Assault Squads: Red Thirst, Infernus Pistols and make a Troop Choice
Each one of those would require a “Special Entry” to cover them.
[Apologies to the Black Templars for this]
It only took 4 Entries and Combat Tactics to roll in the Black Templars, but ask any Black Templar player if they are now playing Black Templars, you will probably get one of two reposnses.
1] Yes, but they do not feel right
2] No I play White Scars that happen to look like Black Templars and it still does not feel right.
This last part should be enough a reason not to roll them into Codex: Space Marines. All Rolling them into Codex: Space Marines will do is alienate players.
Ask Martel about it, even though he is getting hammered constantly and has even been told to create a “Count As” Blood Angels army has shown his loyalty to a now bottom tier book to the point of he would rather loose than go to another Codex.
Honestly I'm kinda sorta mad that they didn't just bring out a supplement for BT. Rather than having a single company of SM, why not a supplement for crusaders to flesh them out? Maybe even give them some extra benefits to allow them to be more CC oriented? But no we got to make companies of marines a thing. Really though, in an ideal world. I would love to see all loyalist marines rolled into a single codex. From there, develop supplements to give more choices to every army. Some unique items, a few characters, stuff to swap it around. Ultramarines could get some stuff to represent their anti-nid theming, Salamanders could get a lot of relics and artifice to tinker around with, etc. Of course, they wouldn't be as expensive as supplements are by GW to make up for that. Alas, GW does not function like that. At all.
The Predator Destructor, Predator Annihilator and Baal Predator all have different loadouts. A Baal Pred can only take AC or a Flamestorm Cannon. It can take heavy flamers or heavy bolters as sponsons. It is a Fast choice. You could take 3 of these if you want. You could also take 3 of the other Predators as heavy choices.
Putting the BA into Codex Space Marines and utterly destroy how they are played and the fluff about them, it is not really very easily possible. You would have so many special rules and extras that half of the book would be about regular SM rules and the other half would be about the BA rules.
On a side note, has anyone else wondered if GW rules guys actually had this discussion and came to the conclusion that it was really not viable for the BA codex to be Rick Rolled? I am thinking that they did, but about ALL of the current line and found that the easiest one to Roll in would be the BT codex. Sorry BT players.
why thank you Phanixis, now we're going to get to the meat and potatoes of why people really want to see these codexs rolled into one , its because of the belief that their codex will be updated sooner. while this may have been an issue in the past the new way of doing things makes this argument obsolete, you see codexs are now updated at a very fast rate. Actually who would stand to benefit from a single codex would be more of the zenos dexs, yet funny enough the most powerful dexs in the game are now
Eldar,Tau, Chaos Daemons, Necrons, arguably Nids and or reg SM. likely in that order I might add and DA and Chaos SM have been updated this edition. SoB had a band aid thrown on them so that doesn't really count.
That leaves DE and Grey Knights , who are playable , IG who are coming out very very soon and orks are supposed to follow soon after that leaves SW,BA, DE,GN needing a 6th update and of those last 4 two arent in Dire straights.
Also like I said if we are stream lining just for the sake of quicker updates lets roll Chaos all into one book and make Inquisition include Grey Knights and SoB. a few supplements and there you have it
The problem with that is that shoving the two Chaos books doesn't work. If we go by that logic, we have to roll IG with SM. Simply put, Chaos Daemons don't function at all like SM. Not a single unit really is all that similar (discounting Daemon Princes of course )
StarTrotter wrote: The problem with that is that shoving the two Chaos books doesn't work. If we go by that logic, we have to roll IG with SM. Simply put, Chaos Daemons don't function at all like SM. Not a single unit really is all that similar (discounting Daemon Princes of course )
and? keep separate units, the book will be bigger and cost you more out right sure but if they can shove all those chapters into one book then they can put two teams that work together in one book and the units that don't fit well guess what? you get to make supplements for just like all of the SW,DA, BA players get ...... BAM charge you 75 for the basic codex and 50 for a supplement. GW will wet their pants with joy
Except they hardly work together. That's what I'm getting at really. Chaos Daemons don't even have the same base rules as CSM. They function on entirely different levels and can't even be grouped up.
CSM is already basically all traitor armies (despite having dramatic differences from Berzerkers, to Ksons, to Emperor's Children, to Plague Marines, to zombie hordes, to culstists). It's already gotten to that point. But chaos daemons can't just be shoved in as readily. This isn't like where two codices have tactical marines and tactical marines and have assault marines as troops. This is a codex where literally Plaguebearers, Nurgling, Pink HOrrors, and more have all dramatically different capabilities than SM. Although, maybe then GW would finally let there be some synergy where I can have daemonic sacrifices to summon my scary monsters (admittedly not the most tactical but gosh darn it it's just so delicious!)
StarTrotter wrote: Except they hardly work together. That's what I'm getting at really. Chaos Daemons don't even have the same base rules as CSM. They function on entirely different levels and can't even be grouped up.
except they don't need to overlap or share they can each keep units and btw if they wanted to make them work together they could re-write it so that they could, the units that are cut from each book to trim the fat if you will, just end up in supplements. Just like everyone is suggesting for the BA, DA and SW would work.
The initial codex is bigger but so what the C:SM is already bigger than all the rest and if you fold in SW,BA and DA it only gets bigger, so why can't you make a big Chaos book if you wanted.
Yes... just as planned. Although HERESY! What happened to Tyranids and Orks?
Book 4: Hordes (aka flamer bait)
I will miss my traitor guardsman though
To respond to another statement, my only complaint with supplements is that there is already a laundry list of supplements for Chaos. Every traitor legion is a possibility sense there is basically no means to truly represent them, then there is the iconic renegade warband that is quickly growing (Huron).
Automatically Appended Next Post:
OIIIIIIO wrote: Rick Roll them all. 3 books. One for the Imperium, one for all things Chaos, and one for Xenos.
Book 1: IG, all Space Marines, and the new Knights as well as all supplements
Book 2: Chaos Deamons and Chaos Space Marines, 'Nids
Book 3: Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks.
How happy would people be with this?
Forgot 3 factions in my rage filled moment.
No no no! Come now good sir! Obviously Nids and Orks should be a fourth book. The horde book. Necrons would probably work with book 3. Although, being tossed in with book 2 would be humorous trip down nostalgia lane. Ah chaos droids...
StarTrotter wrote: Yes... just as planned. Although HERESY! What happened to Tyranids and Orks?
Book 4: Hordes (aka flamer bait)
I will miss my traitor guardsman though
To respond to another statement, my only complaint with supplements is that there is already a laundry list of supplements for Chaos. Every traitor legion is a possibility sense there is basically no means to truly represent them, then there is the iconic renegade warband that is quickly growing (Huron).
I hope you know startrotter I don't want the two books to come together ( although I do believe they should have far more synergy between the two books) I'm just pointing out that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Also I'm trying to prove what a slippery slope that is because if GW were to figure out that works then I don't think anything would stop them from putting books together and double tapping you for a supplement.
The only books I think should be brought together is to make Codex Inquisition include Grey Knights and SoB - and I say that cause its the only way I see SoB getting an honest update.
The Predator Destructor, Predator Annihilator and Baal Predator all have different loadouts. A Baal Pred can only take AC or a Flamestorm Cannon. It can take heavy flamers or heavy bolters as sponsons. It is a Fast choice. You could take 3 of these if you want. You could also take 3 of the other Predators as heavy choices.
Yes, they have different loadouts, but this isn't a big deal. The vast majority of units in this game have different loadouts, be they tactical squads, predators, leman russ or hammerheads, but you don't require separate codex entries for each loadout. For instance, when it comes to a Tau hammerhead, you don't have separate entries for the ion cannon and the railgun even though the weapons are radically different, because the tank's stats are otherwise the same. All you have to do is say the hammerhead can take either a railgun or an ion cannon and you are done.
Admittedly the modular example I provided for the Predator allowed to combinations that weren't permitted, such as a tank with TL assault cannons and lascannon sponsons. I didn't consider this critical to the way these tanks worked, but it you wanted the unit to run exactly as it is now, you could still run text like this:
Upgrade to a Bhaal Predator: +30 pts - Blood Angel Tactics Only
Replace the turret with a TL assault cannon
Replace the sponsons with either heavy bolters or heavy flamers
Vehicle Gains Fast and Scout
Vehicle becomes a Fast Attack Choice
Up to five lines now and it is a bit more cumbersome, but still quite a way away from a page long entry.
Putting the BA into Codex Space Marines and utterly destroy how they are played and the fluff about them, it is not really very easily possible. You would have so many special rules and extras that half of the book would be about regular SM rules and the other half would be about the BA rules.
As long as the rules are identical between the BA codex and the consolidated version, the army will play exactly the same on the table top. The ideas I discussed above, which exploit the vast redundancies between Space Marine books to consolidate Blood Angel special units with their parent units, as often they are just an alternate loadout as you pointed above, are a means by which these two books can be consolidated while retaining the BA playstyle without doubling the length of the book. In the case of the Bhaal predator, you are already using the predator stats, which are listed in the SM codex, all you are doing is swapping its weapons out for another set of weapons which are also listed in the SM codex, and giving it a couple of special rules already defined in the main rulebook. Essentially, every rule and piece of equipment for the Bhaal predator can already be found in the main rulebook and the SM codex, so the unit doesn't actually require a separate book. All you have to do is just declare BA can take the unit in the aforementioned configuration and you are done, with no need for a separate book or even a separate entry.
Rick Roll them all. 3 books. One for the Imperium, one for all things Chaos, and one for Xenos.
Book 1: IG, all Space Marines, and the new Knights as well as all supplements
Book 2: Chaos Deamons and Chaos Space Marines, 'Nids
Book 3: Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Orks.
How happy would people be with this?
This wouldn't work. The reason Space Marine books can be consolidated is that they share the vast majority of equipment between them. Same model stats, same weapon stats, same vehicle stats, etc, so the tactical marine squad entry in one book is the same as in the next. So why have four books, all with the same standard marine stat line, all with the bolter stat line, all with the same stats for missile launcher, flamers, meltaguns, heavy bolters, lascannon, and sergeants, when you can just put a single tactical marine squad entry in one book? Yes, each chapter does get a unique special rule for their tactical squad, but it makes far more sense to grant SM get tactics, BA get red thirst, SW get counterattack under a single unit entry than repeat four separate unit entries across for separate books along with all the associated upgrade options just to change one or two special rules. Contrast this with say, consolidating Orks with Tau, where virtually nothing is identical. No shared statlines, no shared vehicle stats, no shared weapon stats, no shared equipment, no shared separate rules. The result would be exactly what you claimed would happen if SM and BA were consolidated, it would just be a book twice as long. It is the enormous redundancies between the Space Marine books that make consolidation possible, and those redundances don't exist at all with xenos and are limited when it comes to non-space marine factions.
also Blacksails , though I argued with you I want to point out that IF and I do mean IF this part was true and each of those codex supplements were in fact worth a snot ( I hold Farsight Enclaves as a standard) that I would in fact be on board. However I feel that my concerns of price and balance still remain very much valid. two things GW doesn't have a great rep for at all.
I know you argued with me, and I won't hold it against you.
And I would be on board supplements as well if they were priced appropriately and balanced. And yes, I agree GW hasn't had the best track record for this sort of thing.
We're on the same page here.
But that goes back to the whole BT aspect of this argument.
also Blacksails , though I argued with you I want to point out that IF and I do mean IF this part was true and each of those codex supplements were in fact worth a snot ( I hold Farsight Enclaves as a standard) that I would in fact be on board. However I feel that my concerns of price and balance still remain very much valid. two things GW doesn't have a great rep for at all.
I know you argued with me, and I won't hold it against you.
And I would be on board supplements as well if they were priced appropriately and balanced. And yes, I agree GW hasn't had the best track record for this sort of thing.
We're on the same page here.
But that goes back to the whole BT aspect of this argument.
If only they'd go back to 3rd ed style supplements with fairly meaty rule and wargear changes. Unfortunately they abandoned those in 4th ed and that's why we've got this whole codex debate in the first place...
If only they'd go back to 3rd ed style supplements with fairly meaty rule and wargear changes. Unfortunately they abandoned those in 4th ed and that's why we've got this whole codex debate in the first place...
Now, I didn't play before 5th, but from what I hear and read, it sounds like GW priced their supplements within the realm of reasonable once upon a time. I'd be all over supplements if they were worth their price, which they are very clearly not.
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Personaly I would not like it at all.
And no it would not be easy at all, we have to many unique units and it would clutter up the Codex: Space Marines jutst like Blood Angles, Dark Anges would and Black Templars did.
If only they'd go back to 3rd ed style supplements with fairly meaty rule and wargear changes. Unfortunately they abandoned those in 4th ed and that's why we've got this whole codex debate in the first place...
Now, I didn't play before 5th, but from what I hear and read, it sounds like GW priced their supplements within the realm of reasonable once upon a time. I'd be all over supplements if they were worth their price, which they are very clearly not.
Yeah, they were only $20 back then if I remember correctly. Only about 30-40 pages to be fair, but at least that was 1/3 fluff, 1/3 rules and 1/3 really cool army showcases/conversions. It was probably a little too much back then, especially considering that you HAD to have a Space Marine Dex to know the rules for most of your units, but it was chump change compared to modern supplements... not to mention that the actual game content in them is heinously tiny.
Still got my Space Wolves supplement and 5th ed FAQs kicking about though, always cool to look through it.
Oh, I've got to say though - as much as BA/SW/DA/etc could and probably should be folded into C:SM, having their own standalone codices is so much handier for us players...
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Personaly I would not like it at all.
And no it would not be easy at all, we have to many unique units and it would clutter up the Codex: Space Marines jutst like Blood Angles, Dark Anges would and Black Templars did.
Chapter Tactics: Space Wolves
Non Special Character HQ units may take up to two items from the Space Wolves Wargear list. Tactical Squads may take a Veteran Sergeant equipped with Terminator armor for 25 points.
The Emperor's Executioners:
All Space Wolf non vehicle units are counted as having a CCW if they do not already have a melee weapon. In addition, Bike Squads may be counted as Calvary for 5 points per model and may equip items from the melee weapons lists, Storm Shields (See entry for relevant costs) but lose access to Attack Bikes.
Too be honest, Blood Angels have a bigger claim to a unique codex than Space Wolves do.
But, people want them back in the regular Codex! How can you?! There are so many new and exciting units that will suddenly become invalidated. A supplement, they cry? No, that will be unwieldy. Just leave them with their own codex.
TL;DR, the units that make C: BA special aren't all that special and can be represented with regular marine rules and some CT thrown in for flavor. As said previously, the rules don't make the army the people who play them do.
Completely agreed.
I think that having all Marines equal in points and the basic stuff they share is more important than every single Wolfwolfwolfgun or Bloody Bloodblade.
Supplement: BA for C:SM
Will have dedicated pages for fluff
Will allow every single wargear and trick from C:SM.
Will make Assault Marines troops.
Will give Red Thirst to your army (rage and Fearless on a roll of 1 or 2 for every unit).
Will allow following units:
- Death Company
- Sanguinary Guard
- Sanguinary Priest
- Baal Predator
As well as following characters:
- Dante
- Mephiston
- Brother Corbulo
- Sanguinior
You'll have the ability to:
- Upgrade chaplain to reclusiarches
- Upgrade Dreadnoughts to Furiosos (basicly renamed Venerables with new wargear)
We'll get couple of artifacts and following weapons:
- Infernus pistols
- Hand flamers
The only problem I truly see here is that you must now buy two books.
The fact that you can now play them as any SM army and that BA are now equal and don't lack stuff like Gravy guns make up for it IMO
Absolutely. Theyre not any more divergent than BT was or DA pre 6th. Roll em all in. Wouldnt want GW to look like they were only picking on certain paying Marine customers would we?
d3m01iti0n wrote: Absolutely. Theyre not any more divergent than BT was or DA pre 6th. Roll em all in. Wouldnt want GW to look like they were only picking on certain paying Marine customers would we?
Blood Angels really ought to be rolled in. Give them some Chapter Tactics, their heroes and a Death Company and Golden Boys entry (similar to the Crusaders squads). Red Space Marines that get a bit ragey and like to use jump packs more than others do not warrant their own codex. The same could be said with Dark Angels. Just give them their heroes and Chapter Tactics, then let you unlock DW/RW if you take Belial/Sammael respectively, or Azrael to get both.
But, people want them back in the regular Codex! How can you?! There are so many new and exciting units that will suddenly become invalidated. A supplement, they cry? No, that will be unwieldy. Just leave them with their own codex.
TL;DR, the units that make C: BA special aren't all that special and can be represented with regular marine rules and some CT thrown in for flavor. As said previously, the rules don't make the army the people who play them do.
Completely agreed.
I think that having all Marines equal in points and the basic stuff they share is more important than every single Wolfwolfwolfgun or Bloody Bloodblade.
Supplement: BA for C:SM
Will have dedicated pages for fluff
Will allow every single wargear and trick from C:SM.
Will make Assault Marines troops.
Will give Red Thirst to your army (rage and Fearless on a roll of 1 or 2 for every unit).
Will allow following units:
- Death Company
- Sanguinary Guard
- Sanguinary Priest
- Baal Predator
As well as following characters:
- Dante
- Mephiston
- Brother Corbulo
- Sanguinior
You'll have the ability to:
- Upgrade chaplain to reclusiarches
- Upgrade Dreadnoughts to Furiosos (basicly renamed Venerables with new wargear)
We'll get couple of artifacts and following weapons:
- Infernus pistols
- Hand flamers
The only problem I truly see here is that you must now buy two books.
The fact that you can now play them as any SM army and that BA are now equal and don't lack stuff like Gravy guns make up for it IMO
I don't think you have to go that far. I will repost a CT I made up earlier with some additions that should cover what makes BABA.
Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels
At the start of the game, roll a D6 for every unit of the detachment using this Chapter Tactic. On a 1 or a 2, they gain Rage and Fearless.
Rapid Assault:
Assault Marines may be taken as Troops choices and Vanguard Veterans may be taken as Fast Attack (I think that's how it works for BA. If not it should). In addition all Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds and Vindicators in this detachment gain the Fast special rule.
Death Company:
For 5 points per model any Assault Squad, Dreadnought or Captain may upgrade to Death Company. They gain the rage, fearless and furious charge special rules in addition to +1 A and +1WS. They also may take items from the melee and special weapons list.
There, now you have Fast tanks, Jet Packs out the wazoo and you get Death Company without need a ton of additional pages. Just throw in a page or two of fluff, take out some Ultras SC, throw in Dante and Mephiston and you're good to go. I believe the main codex should give you rules so that you can get a flavorful army with the supplement being entirely optional. I am up in the air about throwing in the Baal Predator as a tank any marine chapter can take but for now I think we should leave it BA only.
Wargear- Add Inferno pistols and hand flamers as weapon options for all.
HQ:
Add Bike and Jump pack options to Honor Guard. Honor guard with JP, bolt pistol, and relic blade is basically Sanguinary guard. And Bike Honor Guard would be good for White Scars
Add jump pack options to command squad- covers Blood Angels and Raven Guard. Give apothecaries weapon options as well, and absorb Sang Priests into base Apothecaries.
Allow Chapter Master and Captain with jump pack to unlock 10 man assault marines with jump packs as troops, similar to how they do bikes now.
Chaplain, Librarian- allow to buy an additional wound and attack for say 35 points. Would cover Reclusiarchs.
Elites:
Allow base dreadnoughts to upgrade into venerable, librarian, or chaplain dreads.
Add weapon options from Furioso dread to Ironclad dread.
Death Company- chapter locked unit, like Crusader squad for Templars.
Fast:
Baal Predator- chapter locked unit.
Chapter Tactics-
Descent of Angels- units with jump packs scatter d6 when using deep strike rules rather than 2d6 Red Thirst- roll a d6 for each unit and dreadnought. On a 6, they replace ATSKNF with Rage and Fearless.
Wargear- add Overcharged engines to the vehicle armory- rhino hull vehicles for 10 points, makes them a fast vehicle. Baal Pred comes with it built in.
Anpu42 wrote: I did not want to get involved, but I feel responsible for the creation of this thread and I should chime in.
Ignoring the fact that we are talking about Blood Angels.
What if the fundamental reason for being against another “Codex: Marine of a Different Color” if you don’t plan on buying it?
It won’t cost you a dime and the guy on the other side of the table his happy with his “Codex: Marine of a Different Color”.
Addressing the whole Black Templar issue: I was one of the first to when I heard you got rolled into Codex: Space Marine to decry it as Bull and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
I suppose there a couple of different reasons for it. If Codex: Blood Angels was rolled into the regular Space Marine dex the army would receive an update so it keeps the army up to date with the current 40k environment. I want to see Blood Angels on the table top and have them put up a fight.
Another reason is that it seems silly for them to have their own Codex when other variant armies don't even get a supplement. There is no Codex for Cadia or Vostroya so what makes the Marines so special? Why don't we have Codex: Imperial Fists or Codex: White Scars? Games Workshop could make up marines+1 units for them if they wanted. It's the principle of it all. Besides that, it seems wholly unecessary since there are few actually unique units to the Blood Angels. Space Wolves have thunder wolf cavalry at the very least. What Blood Angels have could be covered by a CT and a few unique options.
Yet again I've seen several people just say "oh sure you can roll them in, they only have like, what, two special things and fast vehicles right?"
Tossing out over a dozen unique options is NOT acceptable. Having people end up with a bunch of GW models they can't even set on the table legally is NOT acceptable. 1 or 2 for reasons like doom of malan'tai and spore pods? Maybe, but those didn't even have models, so that's a non-issue here.
So for everyone who comes in just skimming that doesn't know the BA codex or play against them, and thinks they're just marines with a couple extra options, here's your mandatory educational post:
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units.
Fluff: BA have a slightly different career path for their marines, so the "shared" units need to mention how BA does theirs differently, then each unique unit needs its own fluff page.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
And when I made that list, I also forgot the deep striking land raiders! I have to state again, that properly inserting all the options so that the BA at LEAST get a lateral move, instead of being gutted, when moving them into a combined codex, would require a huge section of the codex. More than any other chapter by far. The C:SM would become "C:BA and some other marines' special characters, + a crusader unit." Not exactly a thrilling title.
Just going through what I posted, you need at least a couple lines of fluff nodding at the BA for all the shared units (like a quick mention that Blood Angels go to assault squads first instead of devastators, etc.) So let's just call that an extra page of text necessary. Now you need a page for each unique unit. Ok that's 11 pages. Now we need 8 more for the unique special characters. Then we go over to the points section, and at an average of 3 units a page, the BA ONLY units will take up over 6 pages in the points section. Then we need about half a page to do a paragraph blurb about each of the unique wargears, and a few lines in the wargear section for the point costs, plus the little asterisk that denotes them as BA ONLY options. And the couple lines about lucifer pattern engines in all the rhino chassis vehicles in the fluff, and the same asterisk in their points section next to a fast vehicle option. So all told that's about another page of text right there. Then you need paint sections. All the SC's can fit on one, and the other units can share at 2 a page, so about 5 and a half, then at least a picture for the BA paintjob on the shared units, combining up to another page and a half, and then a page just showing the BA successor color schemes. AND LASTLY, there's about 16 pages of fluff in the BA codex about homeworld, major battles and the like, so let's assume that they GUT half of that to put in a shoddy 8 pages of army/battle fluff here and there. Oh, and two more pages for psychic powers descriptions and random table.
All told, that's around FOURTY THREE FULL PAGES of content. That means that anyone who DID NOT buy the book with the intent of playing, painting, modeling, or reading about Blood Angels can rip out FOURTY THREE PAGES and be totally unaffected.
I'm pretty damn sure most people would read that new book and start complaining that they keep running into "* denotes Blood Angels only" items and pages waaaaaaaay more than they want to. "God why not just give them their own book at this point." would probably come up a lot.
To which I would have to respond: "Ya don't say..."
Yet again I've seen several people just say "oh sure you can roll them in, they only have like, what, two special things and fast vehicles right?"
Tossing out over a dozen unique options is NOT acceptable. Having people end up with a bunch of GW models they can't even set on the table legally is NOT acceptable. 1 or 2 for reasons like doom of malan'tai and spore pods? Maybe, but those didn't even have models, so that's a non-issue here.
So for everyone who comes in just skimming that doesn't know the BA codex or play against them, and thinks they're just marines with a couple extra options, here's your mandatory educational post:
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units.
Fluff: BA have a slightly different career path for their marines, so the "shared" units need to mention how BA does theirs differently, then each unique unit needs its own fluff page.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
And when I made that list, I also forgot the deep striking land raiders! I have to state again, that properly inserting all the options so that the BA at LEAST get a lateral move, instead of being gutted, when moving them into a combined codex, would require a huge section of the codex. More than any other chapter by far. The C:SM would become "C:BA and some other marines' special characters, + a crusader unit." Not exactly a thrilling title.
Just going through what I posted, you need at least a couple lines of fluff nodding at the BA for all the shared units (like a quick mention that Blood Angels go to assault squads first instead of devastators, etc.) So let's just call that an extra page of text necessary. Now you need a page for each unique unit. Ok that's 11 pages. Now we need 8 more for the unique special characters. Then we go over to the points section, and at an average of 3 units a page, the BA ONLY units will take up over 6 pages in the points section. Then we need about half a page to do a paragraph blurb about each of the unique wargears, and a few lines in the wargear section for the point costs, plus the little asterisk that denotes them as BA ONLY options. And the couple lines about lucifer pattern engines in all the rhino chassis vehicles in the fluff, and the same asterisk in their points section next to a fast vehicle option. So all told that's about another page of text right there. Then you need paint sections. All the SC's can fit on one, and the other units can share at 2 a page, so about 5 and a half, then at least a picture for the BA paintjob on the shared units, combining up to another page and a half, and then a page just showing the BA successor color schemes. AND LASTLY, there's about 16 pages of fluff in the BA codex about homeworld, major battles and the like, so let's assume that they GUT half of that to put in a shoddy 8 pages of army/battle fluff here and there. Oh, and two more pages for psychic powers descriptions and random table.
All told, that's around FOURTY THREE FULL PAGES of content. That means that anyone who DID NOT buy the book with the intent of playing, painting, modeling, or reading about Blood Angels can rip out FOURTY THREE PAGES and be totally unaffected.
I'm pretty damn sure most people would read that new book and start complaining that they keep running into "* denotes Blood Angels only" items and pages waaaaaaaay more than they want to. "God why not just give them their own book at this point." would probably come up a lot.
To which I would have to respond: "Ya don't say..."
One thing that has never been brought up was this:
What chapter of Space Marines had another stand alone game that revolved around them?
Blood Angels. Space Hulk. Now there were expansions for it that involved the DA Deathwing. Every edition of Space Hulk started with the Blood Angels. They are Iconic to GW and will not be rolled into the SM codex ... ever.
Another amusing tidbit with figures: The 6th edition C:SM, after removing table of contents/index and a few section-split art pages and some of those latin things, is around 160 pages. Toss in the Blood Angels, and you make it 200.
This means that if you open the book to any given point, and read FIVE sentences, odds dictate that at least one was SPECIFICALLY about the Blood Angels, whether it was in the painting, fluff, or crunch sections.
FirePainter wrote: Now I will admit to not being an expert on BA but aren't most of the "unique" units from the 5th edition codex and their previous codices did not have things like Baal preds, the sanguinor, sang guard? Honestly curious what has been unique about BA since their first codex back in 2nd?
I am going to bring this up again. As it is my understanding most of the unique things are from the 5th edition codex. Prior to that there was no such thing as sanguinor, sang guard. Baal preds have been around since 4th? 3rd? In addition, Sang guard are basically honour guard with jump packs. Sang priests are apothecaries with weapon/wargear options. DC are a truely unique unit and would remain. The models used currently would not be invalidated, they would simply be repurposed.
Going from scouts to assault marines instead of devestators and explaining other chapter differences would take the same amount of space that it took to say that salamanders have companies of 120 and their terminatos are called firedrakes. Or that due to having limited numbers crimison fist sternguards are scoring. Really its not that tough.
*DA player that would support a giant all-in-one C:SM that has every marine chapter from UM to SW and everthing in-between*
Was I sad when DA lost mortis dreads? Was I sad when white scars can do biker armies as good or better than ravenwing? really the unique things in DA/BT/BA/SW could all be done in a large book. Would it cost more sure but think of the content that could be in there if it was done right not that I think GW would ever get it right but I still dream.
They could put them all into one book and charge an armload... but Uhhh, I'd prefer not to spend that money on a bunch of stuff for SW, DA, UM, etc.... I'm perfectly happy not paying 2x as much for my codex to have the information relevant to my Blood Angels.
If done right they do not have to. All the variant codices are are a bunch of C:SM units with extra gubbins and a few FOC modifications. I don't think it would double the book if they rolled it all together.
@BrotherWeasel
Why not? Well, because I don't think the actual difference between a Blood Angel army and an Ultramarine army justifies a unique codex. The difference between a Necron and Imperial Guard army is huuge in terms of gameplay, stats, wargear and models. Then you look at Dark Angels and Space Wolves and.. what? They get some Wolves and... yeah, they still have powered armored guys with almost the exact same statlines and wargear. In fact, the codices are so similar that it's considered okay to use the same models for every marine variant codex as long as you account for the few unique wargear options.These books read like the rules portion of C:SM with a supplement stapled on.
Now, speaking in the world of reality I understand the issues people take with having to buy a Codex+supplement to get their Space Wolves fix. You are paying double for the same rules and a lot you don't even need like the rules of Marneus Calgar. To be honest, I think the Codices should be rolled together but I hope they aren't. Games Workshop is a money grubbing bunch and are, most of all, bad at rules writing.
OIIIIIIO wrote: One thing that has never been brought up was this:
What chapter of Space Marines had another stand alone game that revolved around them?
Blood Angels. Space Hulk. Now there were expansions for it that involved the DA Deathwing. Every edition of Space Hulk started with the Blood Angels. They are Iconic to GW and will not be rolled into the SM codex ... ever.
Well UM has the space marine game and the Blood Ravens have 2 games plus multiple expansions with them as the center of attention.
Lobukia wrote: Looking at the Iron Hands supplement, BA would totally work
Make Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinor, Astorath. Then make relics that give you items that'd let you approximate the others.
Chapter Tactics, DoA and Red thirst, Vanguards gain rage, Assault as Troops.
Special Euipment: Flamestorm for Predators, and a couple weapons for Iron Clads. For 5 points per model Honour Guard get Jpacks and are allowed to buy PF and PPistols.
I really don't think infernus needs to stay, but maybe just a line letting Assault Marines pack 1 special weapon too.
Add a new unit (I'd think Apothecaries that can Wolf Guard out)
Done. Very close, very simple, missing little (if anything) that matters. Before you ask, yes I've played BA and I think this gets everything needed and none of the silly Marines +1 stuff that made us all rage the last BA codex (you're not keeping fast vehicles anyway).
5 pages for the units not in the Codex, and 1 page to explain above changes... that's supplement length right there
Why not? Well, because I don't think the actual difference between a Blood Angel army and an Ultramarine army justifies a unique codex. The difference between a Necron and Imperial Guard army is huuge in terms of gameplay, stats, wargear and models. Then you look at Dark Angels and Space Wolves and.. what? They get some Wolves and... yeah, they still have powered armored guys with almost the exact same statlines and wargear. In fact, the codices are so similar that it's considered okay to use the same models for every marine variant codex as long as you account for the few unique wargear options.These books read like the rules portion of C:SM with a supplement stapled on.
But that doesn't explain why not yes they could make the BA parts smaller, toss em into the sm dex, they could make a suppliment (like 3rd) they could expand them farther and make a huge BA book...
But it doesn't benefit anyone to roll it into the SM dex. and it doesn't hurt anyone to leave it as it's own dex (as it has been since 3rd, and a dual dex in second)
I just don't see a reason to do it...
Don't get me wrong either, I'd probably prefer a suppliment when it all comes down to it, only to keep the things that are the same, the same (IE tac squad, as per codex SM) like 3rd was... but with more fluff and whatnot... (so a bigger then normal suppliment, or a full codex that just happens to have the entries say "per codex SM' where relevent.
Why not? Well, because I don't think the actual difference between a Blood Angel army and an Ultramarine army justifies a unique codex. The difference between a Necron and Imperial Guard army is huuge in terms of gameplay, stats, wargear and models. Then you look at Dark Angels and Space Wolves and.. what? They get some Wolves and... yeah, they still have powered armored guys with almost the exact same statlines and wargear. In fact, the codices are so similar that it's considered okay to use the same models for every marine variant codex as long as you account for the few unique wargear options.These books read like the rules portion of C:SM with a supplement stapled on.
But that doesn't explain why not yes they could make the BA parts smaller, toss em into the sm dex, they could make a suppliment (like 3rd) they could expand them farther and make a huge BA book...
But it doesn't benefit anyone to roll it into the SM dex. and it doesn't hurt anyone to leave it as it's own dex (as it has been since 3rd, and a dual dex in second)
I just don't see a reason to do it...
Don't get me wrong either, I'd probably prefer a suppliment when it all comes down to it, only to keep the things that are the same, the same (IE tac squad, as per codex SM) like 3rd was... but with more fluff and whatnot... (so a bigger then normal suppliment, or a full codex that just happens to have the entries say "per codex SM' where relevent.
I suppose the fact that them being too similar to an already established army is enough for some, including me. I don't think there is anything objective to show any reason why they shouldn't besides a slower update schedule. In my opinion, variants of an army should be kept to a $20 supplement to a codex.
To be even more honest I am starting to lean towards the "Keep their own Codex" camp. Really, what Blood Angels have right now is basically a supplement with the pertinent part of the SM codex there for them gratis. Why make them pay more for what they already have?
Why not? Well, because I don't think the actual difference between a Blood Angel army and an Ultramarine army justifies a unique codex. The difference between a Necron and Imperial Guard army is huuge in terms of gameplay, stats, wargear and models. Then you look at Dark Angels and Space Wolves and.. what? They get some Wolves and... yeah, they still have powered armored guys with almost the exact same statlines and wargear. In fact, the codices are so similar that it's considered okay to use the same models for every marine variant codex as long as you account for the few unique wargear options.These books read like the rules portion of C:SM with a supplement stapled on.
But that doesn't explain why not yes they could make the BA parts smaller, toss em into the sm dex, they could make a suppliment (like 3rd) they could expand them farther and make a huge BA book...
But it doesn't benefit anyone to roll it into the SM dex. and it doesn't hurt anyone to leave it as it's own dex (as it has been since 3rd, and a dual dex in second)
I just don't see a reason to do it...
Don't get me wrong either, I'd probably prefer a suppliment when it all comes down to it, only to keep the things that are the same, the same (IE tac squad, as per codex SM) like 3rd was... but with more fluff and whatnot... (so a bigger then normal suppliment, or a full codex that just happens to have the entries say "per codex SM' where relevent.
I suppose the fact that them being too similar to an already established army is enough for some, including me. I don't think there is anything objective to show any reason why they shouldn't besides a slower update schedule. In my opinion, variants of an army should be kept to a $20 supplement to a codex.
To be even more honest I am starting to lean towards the "Keep their own Codex" camp. Really, what Blood Angels have right now is basically a supplement with the pertinent part of the SM codex there for them gratis. Why make them pay more for what they already have?
Indeed.. the only part i don't like is the time between codex SM and codex BA having such a huge diffrence in our shared people... But i do like that i don't have to buy codex SM and a suppliment...
But, people want them back in the regular Codex! How can you?! There are so many new and exciting units that will suddenly become invalidated. A supplement, they cry? No, that will be unwieldy. Just leave them with their own codex.
TL;DR, the units that make C: BA special aren't all that special and can be represented with regular marine rules and some CT thrown in for flavor. As said previously, the rules don't make the army the people who play them do.
Completely agreed.
I think that having all Marines equal in points and the basic stuff they share is more important than every single Wolfwolfwolfgun or Bloody Bloodblade.
Supplement: BA for C:SM
Will have dedicated pages for fluff
Will allow every single wargear and trick from C:SM.
Will make Assault Marines troops.
Will give Red Thirst to your army (rage and Fearless on a roll of 1 or 2 for every unit).
Will allow following units:
- Death Company
- Sanguinary Guard
- Sanguinary Priest
- Baal Predator
As well as following characters:
- Dante
- Mephiston
- Brother Corbulo
- Sanguinior
You'll have the ability to:
- Upgrade chaplain to reclusiarches
- Upgrade Dreadnoughts to Furiosos (basicly renamed Venerables with new wargear)
We'll get couple of artifacts and following weapons:
- Infernus pistols
- Hand flamers
The only problem I truly see here is that you must now buy two books.
The fact that you can now play them as any SM army and that BA are now equal and don't lack stuff like Gravy guns make up for it IMO
I don't think you have to go that far. I will repost a CT I made up earlier with some additions that should cover what makes BABA.
Chapter Tactics: Blood Angels
At the start of the game, roll a D6 for every unit of the detachment using this Chapter Tactic. On a 1 or a 2, they gain Rage and Fearless.
Rapid Assault:
Assault Marines may be taken as Troops choices and Vanguard Veterans may be taken as Fast Attack (I think that's how it works for BA. If not it should). In addition all Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds and Vindicators in this detachment gain the Fast special rule.
Death Company:
For 5 points per model any Assault Squad, Dreadnought or Captain may upgrade to Death Company. They gain the rage, fearless and furious charge special rules in addition to +1 A and +1WS. They also may take items from the melee and special weapons list.
There, now you have Fast tanks, Jet Packs out the wazoo and you get Death Company without need a ton of additional pages. Just throw in a page or two of fluff, take out some Ultras SC, throw in Dante and Mephiston and you're good to go. I believe the main codex should give you rules so that you can get a flavorful army with the supplement being entirely optional. I am up in the air about throwing in the Baal Predator as a tank any marine chapter can take but for now I think we should leave it BA only.
As I maybe mentioned before, I like this solution. Simple.
But I will not accept the removal of Sang Guard, Priests or Corbulo. Never. And many other BA players have similar issues with several different units or models.
"Oh, I've spent 200 bucks and countless hours into this awesome Sanguinary Guard army. Now at least they make beautiful objective markers".
Truth is that I would be willing to go with supplement, but GW will never do that. Well never is a strong word, but not in this edition at least. Maybe in the distant future, but at the moment they would need to remove several boxes from sale and that doesn't sound like the GW I know.
EVeryone keeps saying you'll lose Sanguinary Guard, but... you won't. They're just Honour Guard with jump packs and relic blades built into their base cost.
I think the main problem with the Codex+Supplement solution is Games Workshop's pants on head slowed pricing structure. You are basically turning one Codex into two with one being full of useless rules. In a better universe, Blood Angels would be rolled into the main codex with a $10-20 supplement being available for purchase if you want the more specialized units like San Guard. As it stands, I pray, for the BA player's wallet sake, that they keep the boys in red as a separate army.
TheCustomLime wrote: I think the main problem with the Codex+Supplement solution is Games Workshop's pants on head slowed pricing structure. You are basically turning one Codex into two with one being full of useless rules. In a better universe, Blood Angels would be rolled into the main codex with a $10-20 supplement being available for purchase if you want the more specialized units like San Guard. As it stands, I pray, for the BA player's wallet sake, that they keep the boys in red as a separate army.
I doubt they are doing anything but making a codex witch is fine by me... I was just getting ready to redo my BA force anyways, no matter what they do... (i'll hold off on my angels sanguine all DC force till i get a new codex though)
I wonder how many of the posters adamant that nothing be removed from the codex played before 5th?
Lets be real here. There is a lot of garbage in the current book. Deep Striking Land Raiders is a stupid idea. Why would you want to keep it? If you want to throw away 250 pts. save yourself the trouble of putting the model together and just play short points.
Anyway, to get my credentials out of the way. I have played Blood Angels since the dawn of third edition. Back when we really were just red space marines. With each codex we gain a unit or two, although this last one was bloated. A lot of the new stuff's purpose is to justify a separate codex. That's all. It isn't iconic or even necessary. So I have no problem with the BAs being folded into the CSM book. We are a slightly divergent codex chapter. Our rules and models should reflect that.
So the question is: "What makes an army; Blood Angels?" For me the answer is simple: Is your Primarch Sanguinius? Do you have a Death Company? If you answered yes to both then welcome aboard. Our own book with fancy, and often useless rules, doesn't make us any more or any less Blood Angels.
Lets look at the unique models in our army list:
Dante: Keep
Seth: Drop, put him in the Flesh Tearer Supplement. Their going to get one.
Astorath: Drop, doesn't add much. I have seen him played twice since the model came out. I played him once and my friend played him once. meh both times.
Sanguinor: Drop, should have just given us LotD.
Mephiston: Keep, his rules are going to change with the new codex. Get use to the idea.
Tycho: Drop, he is my boy, but he should be in the Armageddon campaign book.
Jump Pack Honor Guard: Fluffy, but not just for us. Raven Guard should have them too.
Sanguinary Guard: Blinged out Vanguard Veterans
Furioso: Fun, but silly no one else's big robot can have two arms.
Sanguinary Priests: Over priced and near useless. I get more use out of the power weapon he carries than any special rules he has. Leave him in the Command Squad.
Corbulo: Colorful, but unnecessary.
Death Company: Defining Unit.
Lemartes: Make him the special character that unlocks the DC.
Death Dread: fun, but unnecessary.
Scoring Assault Squad: I played a long time without scoring AS, and in 6th they are just pigs with lipstick. I run two of these and one tact squad. The Tacticals always pull their weight. the AS not so much.
Baal: Ours since third, so we keep it. I find it odd the AM would give us the stormraven, since they're still mad we didn't share the Baal with them. I really like my Baal Preds, but I'm willing to share.
So to sum up all we really need is Dante, Mephiston, & Death Company.
For BA Chapter Tactics I would do these:
Shadow of the Primarch: All models in this detachment have Furious Charge.
Descent of Angels Any model/Unit performing a deep strike get a +1 to reserve rolls and only scatter d6.
Of course it won't happen, but I think 40k would be healthier if GW dropped some of the armies. Since they have proven they can't support this many armies properly.
what is so wrong about them adding or expanding units in the divergent dexs to make them more unique? I actually want them to go farther to make the separate dexs play different.
the idea that its not ok because they do it to justify having a separate dex is a little odd to me , the game makes the fluff not the other way around. this isn't some historical game where they re-wrote history just to add stuff into a game.
BlackArmour wrote: what is so wrong about them adding or expanding units in the divergent dexs to make them more unique? I actually want them to go farther to make the separate dexs play different.
the idea that its not ok because they do it to justify having a separate dex is a little odd to me , the game makes the fluff not the other way around. this isn't some historical game where they re-wrote history just to add stuff into a game.
Because then we have a dozen codices that are all fundamentally the same thing; guys in power armour with bolters who have ATSKNF. They all use rhinos, and razorbacks, and all the same vehicles and general infantry units and support stuff. Why produce the same thing over and over again when it doesn't really add any real variety to the game and completely ignores every other faction.
As much as it'd be great if every single sub faction from every race had a book, it'd be so ridiculously over the top that balancing and remembering what does what that no one would play it. To that end, from a gameplay perspective, it makes sense to have all the marines (who are all virtually the same thing) in one book and let the players excercise a little imagination in developing a unique army.
You don't need a dozen special rules and every single piece of wargear represented to a 't' to have a unique, flavourful army. IG players get by just fine, as do Eldar and Orks. Every single marine chapter you can ever think of is easily represented by a well done CT, a small handful of SCs, and a unique unit. It cuts down on bloat, is easier to keep balanced and updated, and still retains the same playstyle and feel. It just means that instead of being able to take a unit called 'Sanguinary Priests', you have to buy a unit called 'Apothecary' and give him a red paint job with blood drops everywhere and simply refer to it by its fluffy name for your chapter. The same way Salamander players can call ordinary terminators 'Firedrakes' instead. They don't need a unit with that exact name and a slight change to represent a fluffy unit.
Now, I understand marines sell, and that's why we're stuck with half a dozen of them, but in a purely hypothetical world, it would make for a better game to have marines represented by a loyalist book and a traitor book. Which would also conveniently handle the old legions better too, cause they got kind of shafted this time around...and the last time too.
BlackArmour wrote: what is so wrong about them adding or expanding units in the divergent dexs to make them more unique? I actually want them to go farther to make the separate dexs play different.
the idea that its not ok because they do it to justify having a separate dex is a little odd to me , the game makes the fluff not the other way around. this isn't some historical game where they re-wrote history just to add stuff into a game.
I have no problem expanding an armies choices if it improves the story of the army. But I hold that most if not all of the additions in the last codex could be removed without impact to the feel and theme of the Blood Angels. 5th and particularly 6th edition is the GONZO edition. Just keep adding stuff to sell stuff. This is how you end up with marines riding wolves or games where two enemy fortifications happen to be next door to each other.
OIIIIIIO wrote: Why not take and roll Chaos Marines into C:SM as well they are just marines with spikey bits? They only have a few different units and all of their special rules could be covered with a quick blurb. One could roll them into Chaos Deamons book too ...this could be justified by them hanging out with bad things.
You know what, I would love that. Then maybe we would actually see some supplements.
OIIIIIIO wrote: Why not take and roll Chaos Marines into C:SM as well they are just marines with spikey bits? They only have a few different units and all of their special rules could be covered with a quick blurb. One could roll them into Chaos Deamons book too ...this could be justified by them hanging out with bad things.
You know what, I would love that. Then maybe we would actually see some supplements.
We'd actually have chapter tactics and points costs! Hell as it is CSM are vastly worse to their SM brethren, and several times worse then GH, our 'tactics' is VOTLW, which we pay for, and is specific.
As depressing as it sounds, we could actually run legion/warband tactics...!
Of course it won't happen, but I think 40k would be healthier if GW dropped some of the armies. Since they have proven they can't support this many armies properly.
The thing is, they've also proven that they can't properly support armies that they fold. If the choice is between satisfying people who don't like Marines and people who don't want their army to be neutered, I'm going to argue that until such a time as GW has shown that they can fold variant Codices in properly no more experiments of the kind should be done.
That's not getting into the differentiation aspect; if Marines of various sorts are the most played, it makes sense that they'd get additional books to increase diversity. This is the thing that gets me; people are arguing in favour of folding Marine books into the Vanilla Codex because it would somehow "increase diversity". All it'd do is make all Space Marine players play the same book, which means that if there's one combo or one set of units in that book that's better than the others, more people than currently are going to jump to that. If you thought the number of Space Wolf players or Grey Knights players in 5th was bad, imagine if this theoretical "Codex: Astartes (pun intended)" existed and every Space Marine player effortlessly and without extra cost for a new Codex could Codex-jump in-Codex to Space Wolves or Grey Knights. As such, I argue that the diversity argument is wrong.
OIIIIIIO wrote: Why not take and roll Chaos Marines into C:SM as well they are just marines with spikey bits? They only have a few different units and all of their special rules could be covered with a quick blurb. One could roll them into Chaos Deamons book too ...this could be justified by them hanging out with bad things.
You know what, I would love that. Then maybe we would actually see some supplements.
We'd actually have chapter tactics and points costs! Hell as it is CSM are vastly worse to their SM brethren, and several times worse then GH, our 'tactics' is VOTLW, which we pay for, and is specific.
As depressing as it sounds, we could actually run legion/warband tactics...!
Depends, double special weapons are really good, as are the various Marks. I'd argue that CSM are better than Tacticals.
I think I'll vote no on that. Two reasons for that. Firstly, GW is releasing things quicker now, and has even divorced model releases from codex releases just recently. So any impact that the BA might have had on other releases has been minimised.
Secondly, well, I just can't help but empathise with BA fans a little. They'd probably be upset if they got rolled. And they seem fairly divergent from the vanilla Marines, from what I've seen, so any rolling might not go too smoothly anyway.
BlackArmour wrote: The only books I think should be brought together is to make Codex Inquisition include Grey Knights and SoB - and I say that cause its the only way I see SoB getting an honest update.
But the SoB aren't a part of the Inquisition. That makes about as little sense as rolling the IG into into the Space Marines.
Besides, only reason SoB didn't get a "proper" update is because their models aren't ready yet. But GW has tried make plastic Sisters, and the release of the digital codex implies that they still want to do a full SoB update somewhere down the road.
Depends, double special weapons are really good, as are the various Marks. I'd argue that CSM are better than Tacticals.
Double special weapons are good, but the lack of ATSKNF, the fact that most marks are very costly, or outright worthless, along with the expense of banners means that they'll suddenly shoot up to a higher cost very fast at an inefficient rate.
Depends, double special weapons are really good, as are the various Marks. I'd argue that CSM are better than Tacticals.
Double special weapons are good, but the lack of ATSKNF, the fact that most marks are very costly, or outright worthless, along with the expense of banners means that they'll suddenly shoot up to a higher cost very fast at an inefficient rate.
ATSKNF doesn't matter when you're dead. Having double specials means you could actually hurt things, whereas Tactical Squads are a horrible mash of trying to do everything at once and failing.
3rd Edition did the Marine variants in the best way. A supplement Codex costing a third of the price detailing the units that differed from the main Codex only. It meant you needed both books yet the cut price made it viable.
Over the years so much has been added to BA that a Codex of their own is required unless GW decide to go back to rules supplements instead of fluff supplements.
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Personaly I would not like it at all.
And no it would not be easy at all, we have to many unique units and it would clutter up the Codex: Space Marines jutst like Blood Angles, Dark Anges would and Black Templars did.
Chapter Tactics: Space Wolves
Non Special Character HQ units may take up to two items from the Space Wolves Wargear list. Tactical Squads may take a Veteran Sergeant equipped with Terminator armor for 25 points.
The Emperor's Executioners:
All Space Wolf non vehicle units are counted as having a CCW if they do not already have a melee weapon. In addition, Bike Squads may be counted as Calvary for 5 points per model and may equip items from the melee weapons lists, Storm Shields (See entry for relevant costs) but lose access to Attack Bikes.
Too be honest, Blood Angels have a bigger claim to a unique codex than Space Wolves do.
You didn't actually read the SW codex did you?
The BA codex is just the vanilla marine codex with a few special rules, characters and one unique unit (Death Company) added in. All their other 'special' stuff is just a variation of vanilla SM stuff (predator, dreadnought, honour guard)
The SW codex has apart from a few vehicles, nothing in common with C:SM.
SW don't even have tactical squads. Apart from all their special characters, they would need to have Blood Claws, Wolf Guard, Lone Wolfs, Thunderwolf Cavalry and Fenrisian Wolves as special units. Not to mention that the SW have far more special rules than the BA, and even their units that could their units that could be seen as having codex equivalents (Grey Hunters as tact. squad etc.) are a lot more different from codex marines than their BA counterparts.
The BA are not any more unique than other 1st founding chapters. They and the DA could be rolled into C:SM in the same way as the BT without problems. The SW could also be rolled into C:SM, but it would require a whole lot more work.
SW don't even have tactical squads. Apart from all their special characters, they would need to have Blood Claws, Wolf Guard, Lone Wolfs, Thunderwolf Cavalry and Fenrisian Wolves as special units. Not to mention that the SW have far more special rules than the BA, and even their units that could their units that could be seen as having codex equivalents (Grey Hunters as tact. squad etc.) are a lot more different from codex marines than their BA counterparts.
Grey hunters:
Tactical squad to GH
+CCW Chapter Tactics: Space Wolf
May take 'Wolf Guard' squad leader
May take two special weapons, one of which is a power weapon.
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Personaly I would not like it at all.
And no it would not be easy at all, we have to many unique units and it would clutter up the Codex: Space Marines jutst like Blood Angles, Dark Anges would and Black Templars did.
Chapter Tactics: Space Wolves
Non Special Character HQ units may take up to two items from the Space Wolves Wargear list. Tactical Squads may take a Veteran Sergeant equipped with Terminator armor for 25 points.
The Emperor's Executioners:
All Space Wolf non vehicle units are counted as having a CCW if they do not already have a melee weapon. In addition, Bike Squads may be counted as Calvary for 5 points per model and may equip items from the melee weapons lists, Storm Shields (See entry for relevant costs) but lose access to Attack Bikes.
Too be honest, Blood Angels have a bigger claim to a unique codex than Space Wolves do.
You didn't actually read the SW codex did you?
The BA codex is just the vanilla marine codex with a few special rules, characters and one unique unit (Death Company) added in. All their other 'special' stuff is just a variation of vanilla SM stuff (predator, dreadnought, honour guard)
The SW codex has apart from a few vehicles, nothing in common with C:SM.
SW don't even have tactical squads. Apart from all their special characters, they would need to have Blood Claws, Wolf Guard, Lone Wolfs, Thunderwolf Cavalry and Fenrisian Wolves as special units. Not to mention that the SW have far more special rules than the BA, and even their units that could their units that could be seen as having codex equivalents (Grey Hunters as tact. squad etc.) are a lot more different from codex marines than their BA counterparts.
The BA are not any more unique than other 1st founding chapters. They and the DA could be rolled into C:SM in the same way as the BT without problems. The SW could also be rolled into C:SM, but it would require a whole lot more work.
Oh man, the irony in this post. Okay, I'll bite.
Blood Claws: Assault marines with no jetpacks. These are available in C:SM.
Wolf Guard: Terminator Squads/VV/SG. Just add a special rule saying Tac squads can take one as a leader.
Lone Wolf: Make a Champion from the Command Squad a IC? I don't get why this unit needs to exist.
Thunderwolf Cavalry: Bike Squads with wolves instead of bikes.
Grey Hunters: Tac squad with CCWs and can take another special weapon.
The only really unique entry you'd need is one for is the Wolf and Lone Wolf unit but that's it. However, my sentiment about Blood Angels extends to Space Wolves. I hope they don't roll in the SW codex and add a supplement because it's just making SW players pay twice as much for the same amount of info. You guys already basically have a supplement for C:SM so why make you pay for the main book too?
Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
As a CSM player who never understood why slightly divergent chapters got entire codex's, but chaos which diverges wildly from warband to warband, to world to world. Still is stuck all in one codex. A book of Khorne would FAR be more divergent then a Book of Tzeentch, but hey you don't follow the codex astartes 100% so you get a special snowflake book! Have that special Imperium Star Sticker.
At this point, I'd say it's spite on my end. Why exactly do you deserve a codex to yourself?
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
Well you're also in a thread asking people's opinion on the matter, so you'll likely see more people than you'd expect advocating a combined book.
I just think it makes sense. Its not like BA and SW are so different they couldn't be combined, so why bother with a different codex when more time could be spent on either releasing/updating/balancing all the other books, or working on entirely new factions, or maybe working on expanding Sisters, who could really use some love.
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
As a CSM player who never understood why slightly divergent chapters got entire codex's, but chaos which diverges wildly from warband to warband, to world to world. Still is stuck all in one codex. A book of Khorne would FAR be more divergent then a Book of Tzeentch, but hey you don't follow the codex astartes 100% so you get a special snowflake book! Have that special Imperium Star Sticker.
,
At this point, I'd say it's spite on my end. Why exactly do you deserve a codex to yourself?
Well, you've just answered my question. Spite. Just spite. If you aren't getting your word bearers codex, we can't have our BA and SW books. Nice. Mature. And I like how you think I don't "deserve" my Codex : Blood Angels.
I agree with you on the CSM codex, I'm starting a Nurgle army myself and would love to see a separate codex for each god. Hopefully the rumours of these supplements to come to fruition.
I'd also like a separate Black Templars codex.
If BA were rolled into C:SM I'd be disappointed, but would I start campaigning for Dark Eldar to be rolled into the Eldar codex, or Grey Knights into the SM codex? Or a retraction of other supplements because we didn't get one? No, because I'm not spiteful.
So, thanks for the sticker. I really hope this doesn't keep you up at night.
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
Well you're also in a thread asking people's opinion on the matter, so you'll likely see more people than you'd expect advocating a combined book.
I just think it makes sense. Its not like BA and SW are so different they couldn't be combined, so why bother with a different codex when more time could be spent on either releasing/updating/balancing all the other books, or working on entirely new factions, or maybe working on expanding Sisters, who could really use some love.
True, and people are entitled to their opinions. Just don't know why people feel it affects them so much. A fair point about time and resources though. But since the BA codex already exists. It shouldn't really take too much time and effort to update it for future editions. In fact, it could be argued that it would take more time and effort to try shoehorn them into C:SM.
You're definitely right about the sisters, though.
True, and people are entitled to their opinions. Just don't know why people feel it affects them so much. A fair point about time and resources though. But since the BA codex already exists. It shouldn't really take too much time and effort to update it for future editions. In fact, it could be argued that it would take more time and effort to try shoehorn them into C:SM.
You're definitely right about the sisters, though.
It doesn't affect everyone, but when asked, I'll state what I'd like to happen, hypothetically speaking. I don't walk around stores parading about with large cardboard signs bemoaning the state of how my Mordian guard don't have their own book but BA do. While I know that keeping the BA updated isn't some monumental task, in a hypothetical world, cutting it would free up time to update other factions or develop new ones.
On a very minor side note for my reasoning, I've always had a bit of a raised eyebrow why three marine chapters have their own books, when dozens of other equally important ones don't. But that's far from any primary reason why I support a combined C:SM.
I hold no ill will to BA players, but there isn't a whole lot of reasons gameplay wise to keep them in a distinct book.
Well, you've just answered my question. Spite. Just spite. If you aren't getting your word bearers codex, we can't have our BA and SW books. Nice. Mature. And I like how you think I don't "deserve" my Codex : Blood Angels.
There are several other reasons, namely to avoid clogging the pipeline with very similar releases for example, not to mention the annoying releases of something very similar in style that could all become 'supplements' or stuffed into the main book. Just do like third edition, the SM codex is the main book, with supplemental releases for the others.
You don't, why exactly do you deserve it? I don't deserve my CSM, but people are talking like they 'deserve' it, because they have X or Y and it can't be represented by Z despite being the near exact same.
I agree with you on the CSM codex, I'm starting a Nurgle army myself and would love to see a separate codex for each god. Hopefully the rumours of these supplements to come to fruition.
True, and people are entitled to their opinions. Just don't know why people feel it affects them so much. A fair point about time and resources though. But since the BA codex already exists. It shouldn't really take too much time and effort to update it for future editions. In fact, it could be argued that it would take more time and effort to try shoehorn them into C:SM.
You're definitely right about the sisters, though.
It doesn't affect everyone, but when asked, I'll state what I'd like to happen, hypothetically speaking. I don't walk around stores parading about with large cardboard signs bemoaning the state of how my Mordian guard don't have their own book but BA do. While I know that keeping the BA updated isn't some monumental task, in a hypothetical world, cutting it would free up time to update other factions or develop new ones.
On a very minor side note for my reasoning, I've always had a bit of a raised eyebrow why three marine chapters have their own books, when dozens of other equally important ones don't. But that's far from any primary reason why I support a combined C:SM.
I hold no ill will to BA players, but there isn't a whole lot of reasons gameplay wise to keep them in a distinct book.
I know it doesn't affect everyone, and I'm sure people who feel very strongly about it are very much in the minority. I also wasn't suggesting that you were zealous campaigner for one loyalist SM book. I realise you (and others) are only offering your opinion, and I appreciate that. I just wondered why some people do feel so strongly about it.
ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Well, you've just answered my question. Spite. Just spite. If you aren't getting your word bearers codex, we can't have our BA and SW books. Nice. Mature. And I like how you think I don't "deserve" my Codex : Blood Angels.
There are several other reasons, namely to avoid clogging the pipeline with very similar releases for example, not to mention the annoying releases of something very similar in style that could all become 'supplements' or stuffed into the main book. Just do like third edition, the SM codex is the main book, with supplemental releases for the others.
You don't, why exactly do you deserve it? I don't deserve my CSM, but people are talking like they 'deserve' it, because they have X or Y and it can't be represented by Z despite being the near exact same.
I agree with you on the CSM codex, I'm starting a Nurgle army myself and would love to see a separate codex for each god. Hopefully the rumours of these supplements to come to fruition.
We've seen the Black Legion supplement.
Yeah, hopefully there'll be more (death guard, death guard, death guard).
With regards to "deserving", I don't see why that, or entitlement, need be a factor. Codex BA exists, why can't it go on existing? As I've said, I understand the time, effort, argument, but, again, not sure how much of an argument it is. Why can't we ask for more books rather than less?
One main Loyalist SM book with supplements would be ok. My only problem with that is that BA, SW, players would have to buy two books. And while those two codices still exist, updating them isn't going to take much more effort than writing a supplement for them.
I know it doesn't affect everyone, and I'm sure people who feel very strongly about it are very much in the minority. I also wasn't suggesting that you were zealous campaigner for one loyalist SM book. I realise you (and others) are only offering your opinion, and I appreciate that. I just wondered why some people do feel so strongly about it.
Ah, gotcha. We're on the same page then. Then again, some people take this whole thing a little seriously.
Its like the people who use 'We' when describing their army, like its an extension of their being. Weirds me out.
Yes, do this. Separate Marine Codexes make the release schedule longer, and dilute it with 'more-of-the-same' armies. Either as part of the normal 'dex or as a supplement, Blood Angels are probably the closest chapter to codex marines. I would have rolled them in before Black Templars, honestly.
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
For me its quite simple. I don't like the direction the army is headed and I think having a separate codex is the reason. I strongly believe the next codex is going to be borderline parody of itself. The current book is blood this, blood that with bolt on wings, and it is unnecessary. GW will reinforce that theme and we will get some silly new units and lazy writing to justify it.
What I want is some new character sculpts of Dante and Mephiston. What GW will give us is all new Bloody McBlood the badass who can donkey punch a Blood Thirster and who can beat Slaanesh thumb wrestling with bolt on wings.
alanmckenzie wrote: Why do people, other than BA players care so much about this? Why are some people so keen to see BA rolled into the vanilla codex?
Seems like the general consensus between BA players (and SW players for that matter) is that we like our own separate codex. So what's the issue here? Honestly, why are people so against us having our own codices?
For me its quite simple. I don't like the direction the army is headed and I think having a separate codex is the reason. I strongly believe the next codex is going to be borderline parody of itself. The current book is blood this, blood that with bolt on wings, and it is unnecessary. GW will reinforce that theme and we will get some silly new units and lazy writing to justify it.
What I want is some new character sculpts of Dante and Mephiston. What GW will give us is all new Bloody McBlood the badass who can donkey punch a Blood Thirster and who can beat Slaanesh thumb wrestling with bolt on wings.
OIIIIIIO wrote: I am curious how Space wolf players would feel about their codex being rolled into SM codex. It could be done easier than the BA Codex. CT could read something like: CT:SW grants the ability to take 4 HQ choices. Scouts gain BS and WS +1. Assault Marines lose 1 to WS and BS while gaining FC. This detachment has access to Thunderwolf Calvary while losing all access to any and all fliers.
Couple of SC that grant armywide buffs and you are done.
Personaly I would not like it at all.
And no it would not be easy at all, we have to many unique units and it would clutter up the Codex: Space Marines jutst like Blood Angles, Dark Anges would and Black Templars did.
Chapter Tactics: Space Wolves
Non Special Character HQ units may take up to two items from the Space Wolves Wargear list. Tactical Squads may take a Veteran Sergeant equipped with Terminator armor for 25 points.
The Emperor's Executioners:
All Space Wolf non vehicle units are counted as having a CCW if they do not already have a melee weapon. In addition, Bike Squads may be counted as Calvary for 5 points per model and may equip items from the melee weapons lists, Storm Shields (See entry for relevant costs) but lose access to Attack Bikes.
Too be honest, Blood Angels have a bigger claim to a unique codex than Space Wolves do.
You didn't actually read the SW codex did you?
The BA codex is just the vanilla marine codex with a few special rules, characters and one unique unit (Death Company) added in. All their other 'special' stuff is just a variation of vanilla SM stuff (predator, dreadnought, honour guard)
The SW codex has apart from a few vehicles, nothing in common with C:SM.
SW don't even have tactical squads. Apart from all their special characters, they would need to have Blood Claws, Wolf Guard, Lone Wolfs, Thunderwolf Cavalry and Fenrisian Wolves as special units. Not to mention that the SW have far more special rules than the BA, and even their units that could their units that could be seen as having codex equivalents (Grey Hunters as tact. squad etc.) are a lot more different from codex marines than their BA counterparts.
The BA are not any more unique than other 1st founding chapters. They and the DA could be rolled into C:SM in the same way as the BT without problems. The SW could also be rolled into C:SM, but it would require a whole lot more work.
Oh man, the irony in this post. Okay, I'll bite.
Blood Claws: Assault marines with no jetpacks. These are available in C:SM.
Wolf Guard: Terminator Squads/VV/SG. Just add a special rule saying Tac squads can take one as a leader.
Lone Wolf: Make a Champion from the Command Squad a IC? I don't get why this unit needs to exist.
Thunderwolf Cavalry: Bike Squads with wolves instead of bikes.
Grey Hunters: Tac squad with CCWs and can take another special weapon.
The only really unique entry you'd need is one for is the Wolf and Lone Wolf unit but that's it. However, my sentiment about Blood Angels extends to Space Wolves. I hope they don't roll in the SW codex and add a supplement because it's just making SW players pay twice as much for the same amount of info. You guys already basically have a supplement for C:SM so why make you pay for the main book too?
Congratulations! You just turned SW into C:SM thereby illustrating my point that it would be possible but that it would be a lot more work than the BA. You have not yet found a good solution for the Wolf Guard (They would really need to be unique unit since they have no SM equivalent) and Thunderwolf cavalry (there are no Thunderwolf mounts in the C:SM therefore making them Bike Squads wouldn't work without making a special entry anyways) yet, nor all the special rules.
BA would be far simpler to roll into C:SM as it would need only one entry to describe their one truly special unit (Death Company) and a few entries for some of their special rules.
As to the question why I would care about this; I happen to like the BA, but I don't see why every chapter needs its own codex, especially since the BA and DA are not anymore unique than other 1st founding chapters.
Congratulations! You just turned SW into C:SM thereby illustrating my point that it would be possible but that it would be a lot more work than the BA. You have not yet found a good solution for the Wolf Guard (They would really need to be unique unit since they have no SM equivalent) and Thunderwolf cavalry (there are no Thunderwolf mounts in the C:SM therefore making them Bike Squads wouldn't work without making a special entry anyways) yet, nor all the special rules.
BA would be far simpler to roll into C:SM as it would need only one entry to describe their one truly special unit (Death Company) and a few entries for some of their special rules.
As to the question why I would care about this; I happen to like the BA, but I don't see why every chapter needs its own codex, especially since the BA and DA are not anymore unique than other 1st founding chapters.
You don't need to have every single piece of wargear, every single unit, and every single SC to be represented to retain the overall theme/feel/play style of the chapter.
You don't need to have a specific unit entry for guys riding wolves (silly idea IMO anyways) when you could just use the bike entry and model them riding wolves. Same goes for most other supposedly unique and must have options.
A lot of the options in 5th ed Wolves and Angel codices were added simply to create stuff to justify having a codex; it'd be like giving the Sallies their own codex. All of the sudden we'd have green marines riding dragons and using Drake weapons with Drake patten rhinos and whatever other dragon related paraphenalia. None of that stuff is needed to represent a Salamanders force though; the same goes for the wolves and BA.
What is the difference between Wolf Guard and regular Terminators? From what I can tell they are just a Tac Terminator Squad that can equip members for assault.
They're more like the old Veteran squad, from before the Stern/Van split. Every Wolf Guard can be equipped individually, although there is a limit on how many heavy weapons they can carry. You can even mix and match power and terminator armour within the squad.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
Back in 2nd before Hurricane Ward dumped inches of special snowflakes all over the faction the BA worked just fine with 1-2 special units and a shared codex with DA.
Huh, I didn't know that about Wolfguard. I suppose then, if you rolled them into the main codex, you could just have a CT rule stating that Tactical Terminator squads that allows you to take items from the melee weapons and Vanguard vets to take combi weapons. Then all you'd be losing is the ability to mix PA and TDA.
Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
Back in 2nd before Hurricane Ward dumped inches of special snowflakes all over the faction the BA worked just fine with 1-2 special units and a shared codex with DA.
Not like anyone else would've been better, considering all those kits needed a representation in the codex they would've been shoved in anyways.
Remember, the modelers are the ones who make things, then the codex writers have to shove them in somehow (like the dinobots).
TheCustomLime wrote: Huh, I didn't know that about Wolfguard. I suppose then, if you rolled them into the main codex, you could just have a CT rule stating that Tactical Terminator squads that allows you to take items from the melee weapons and Vanguard vets to take combi weapons. Then all you'd be losing is the ability to mix PA and TDA.
Probably would be easier to say that our sergeants are unit upgrades can buy TDA and a crapload of weapon options.
But I'll throw in my hat here and say that rolling SW into the C:SM book would be more trouble than it's worth.
TheCustomLime wrote: Huh, I didn't know that about Wolfguard. I suppose then, if you rolled them into the main codex, you could just have a CT rule stating that Tactical Terminator squads that allows you to take items from the melee weapons and Vanguard vets to take combi weapons. Then all you'd be losing is the ability to mix PA and TDA.
Probably would be easier to say that our sergeants are unit upgrades can buy TDA and a crapload of weapon options.
But I'll throw in my hat here and say that rolling SW into the C:SM book would be more trouble than it's worth.
Actually you could just have them say
Upgrade to Wolf Guard Sargent: Gain Access to main wargear table here here and here. (Melee, ranged, and terminator)
I think BA/DA/SW could be rolled into the main C:SM codex but only if the current format were changed to allow for unique units and wargear to be better represented, and not just on BA but across all of the internal factions in C:SM.
A format change for unit selection to something like this could work:
-Generic Wargear list
Generic Unit List
-HQ -Troops
-Elite
-Fast Attack
-Heavy Support
Also when you look at the current wargear selection that a unit has it's written as "Unit may take a weapon from Special Weapons list", the special weapons list in the Chapter armory would be named the same and be additional to the generic one, so you would then have access Generic Special Weapon list + BA Special Seapon list if your chapter tactics were BA for example, this would work the same for any other section, troops would be Generic Tactical Squads/Scout Squads + Assault Squads since they would be listed as troops under the BA in the Chapter Armory.
Keep in mind that this is just a first pass at the idea from me and could be made much much better if iterated upon enough.
A format like that would allow for each separate Chapter to have its own space in the codex for any unique units, weapons and points costs beyond the basics that are shared across all of the chapters.
This would probably be a good format change for every other codex as well, since as far as I know they all have some form of "internal factions" that could be given unique wargear and units, Ork players could get unique special rules and units for "Evil Sunz" and CSM players could get their legion specific special rules and wargear for legions like the "Night Lords" heck even the different hive fleets could be given unique special rules and units.
Without changing the format in some way I don't personally think it's worth rolling any codex together.
niv-mizzet wrote: Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
And when I made that list, I also forgot the deep striking land raiders! I have to state again, that properly inserting all the options so that the BA at LEAST get a lateral move, instead of being gutted, when moving them into a combined codex, would require a huge section of the codex. More than any other chapter by far. The C:SM would become "C:BA and some other marines' special characters, + a crusader unit." Not exactly a thrilling title.
Just going through what I posted, you need at least a couple lines of fluff nodding at the BA for all the shared units (like a quick mention that Blood Angels go to assault squads first instead of devastators, etc.) So let's just call that an extra page of text necessary. Now you need a page for each unique unit. Ok that's 11 pages. Now we need 8 more for the unique special characters. Then we go over to the points section, and at an average of 3 units a page, the BA ONLY units will take up over 6 pages in the points section. Then we need about half a page to do a paragraph blurb about each of the unique wargears, and a few lines in the wargear section for the point costs, plus the little asterisk that denotes them as BA ONLY options. And the couple lines about lucifer pattern engines in all the rhino chassis vehicles in the fluff, and the same asterisk in their points section next to a fast vehicle option. So all told that's about another page of text right there. Then you need paint sections. All the SC's can fit on one, and the other units can share at 2 a page, so about 5 and a half, then at least a picture for the BA paintjob on the shared units, combining up to another page and a half, and then a page just showing the BA successor color schemes. AND LASTLY, there's about 16 pages of fluff in the BA codex about homeworld, major battles and the like, so let's assume that they GUT half of that to put in a shoddy 8 pages of army/battle fluff here and there. Oh, and two more pages for psychic powers descriptions and random table.
You can reduce all that down by a lot and still keep the essentials. And quite a few of the BA "Exclusive options" would wok just fine if they were expanded to general Codex: SM issue.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
Make Red thirst and Descent of Angels the chapter traits, and let Red thirst affect dreadnoughts as well. Jump assault squads as troops could be unlocked by a chapter master or captain with jump pack, like how bikes work now.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done. Mopst the Blood Angels powers have been made into BRB powers:
Blood Boil- Spontaneous Combustion is better in every way.
Fear of the Darkness: altered version of Terrify
Might of Heroes: Warp seppd can't target another model, but gives an I boost and flee as well
Shackle Soul: Dominate does the same thing with twice the range.
Shield of Sanguinus: Telekine Dome targets a unit vs a 6" bubble, but is an Inv save instead of cover, and can bounce shots back.
Smite: is Smite.
Blood lance: Molten Beam is a weaker version.
Sanguine Sword: Iron Arm gives a tough boost and EW as well, but only only +d3 str instead of flat S10
Unleash Rage: Precognition is so much better in every way.
Wings of Sanguinous: The only one without a real counterpart. And if keeping it is the only thing making Mepheston work, just give it to him as a unique power. Or redesign Mepheston a tad.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes. This is the only real sticking point. Ultramarines have 6 SCs (two are unit upgrades). Seth is a Flesh Tearer character, so similar to how Pedro works. Lemartes and Corbulo are both upgrade characters, like Telion and Chronus. Outside them, you have 2 chapter master, a captain, a librarian, Astorath, and Sanguinor. You could add them, and then add a few more characters for other chapters to balance things out a bit- Add Stronos for Iron Hands, bring back Chaplain Xavier for Salamanders, and add a couple new characters to cover White Scars and Raven guard. It would be character heavy, but chapter locking characters helps with that a lot.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ. Sanguinary guard- Give Honor Guard jump pack options (and bikes to cover White Scars). Glaive vs normal power weapon is minor- a reroll but two handed, so no extra attack. A wash, can just drop the glaive. Angelus boltgun into bolt pistol would be a more major change, but you would be trading a bit of close range shooting for an extra power weapon attack. Add Death Mask as a chapter locked wargear for honor guard, captains, and chapter masters.
Death Company- Chapter locked unit, like Crusader squads. Lemartes as an upgrade character.
Sanguinary Priests- I would say remove them as a separate model, and give the normal apothecary the ability to take weapons/wargear upgrades to not invalidate any models. Give command squads access to jump packs at the same time. Make Corbulo an apothecary upgrade character that gives a FNP and Furious charge bubble.
Baal Predator- Chapter locked unit.
Reclusiarch- Let Chaplains (and Librarians) purchase an extra wound and attack for say 35 points. Like in 4th edition.
DC dreadnought:- potentially drop?
Furioso Dreadnought- Add frag cannon, combat talons (rename blood talons) and magnagrapple options to base Ironclad entry.
Librarian Dread- add as upgrade to basic dread (similar to Venerable) also add Chaplain dread option.
BA Honor guard- is the same as a base command squad.
Elite Chaplain- nice, but could be dropped without major impact.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's. Angelus boltgun could go away without much difficulty. Infernius Pistols (and hand lamers) could be added to the normal armory. Blood Talons on dreadnoughts- rename combat talons and give to the Ironclad. Bloodstrike missiles- are kind of fun, but could go away in favor of the stormstrike missiles of the SM version of the Stormraven. Melta availability on assault squads- give it to them. Would make them more useful, and be nice for raven guard.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions. Remove fast and the changed point cost, and then add a chapter locked piece of wargear called lucifer pattern engines for rhino hulled vehicles that costs 5-10 points that makes them fast.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units. Give BA 4-5 pages for fluff, a 1-2 page timeline, and a page with say 4 main successors like how other chapters in the main book work. Maybe give Flesh Tearers their own 2 page mini section like Crimson fists. Add the Baal Predator to the SM tanks lineup. Mix in BA and BA sucessor paintjobs among various pictures like all the other chapters in the SM codex. Unique fluff page for Death company, Baal predator can be done in a paragraph.
End result-
Fluff, 7-9 pages. Characters 8 pages. Death company 1-2 pages. Wargear- add Infernius pistols, hand flamers, Death mask, Lucifer pattern engine to the wargear lists. Bestiary- 8 characters (2 pages total, going by Codex SM entries). Librarian (and chaplain dread) 1/3 of a page or so. Death company- 1/2 page. In fact, put them on the same page as the crusader squad. Baal Predator 1/4 of a page.
Call it around 28 pages. If you add say Xavier, Stronos, and 1 more character, you could bump it to about 32 pages, which is 2x 16 page blocks.
niv-mizzet wrote: Think that's roughly it. Have fun with all those little footnotes you have to add to C:SM's options to get BA to work.
And when I made that list, I also forgot the deep striking land raiders! I have to state again, that properly inserting all the options so that the BA at LEAST get a lateral move, instead of being gutted, when moving them into a combined codex, would require a huge section of the codex. More than any other chapter by far. The C:SM would become "C:BA and some other marines' special characters, + a crusader unit." Not exactly a thrilling title.
Just going through what I posted, you need at least a couple lines of fluff nodding at the BA for all the shared units (like a quick mention that Blood Angels go to assault squads first instead of devastators, etc.) So let's just call that an extra page of text necessary. Now you need a page for each unique unit. Ok that's 11 pages. Now we need 8 more for the unique special characters. Then we go over to the points section, and at an average of 3 units a page, the BA ONLY units will take up over 6 pages in the points section. Then we need about half a page to do a paragraph blurb about each of the unique wargears, and a few lines in the wargear section for the point costs, plus the little asterisk that denotes them as BA ONLY options. And the couple lines about lucifer pattern engines in all the rhino chassis vehicles in the fluff, and the same asterisk in their points section next to a fast vehicle option. So all told that's about another page of text right there. Then you need paint sections. All the SC's can fit on one, and the other units can share at 2 a page, so about 5 and a half, then at least a picture for the BA paintjob on the shared units, combining up to another page and a half, and then a page just showing the BA successor color schemes. AND LASTLY, there's about 16 pages of fluff in the BA codex about homeworld, major battles and the like, so let's assume that they GUT half of that to put in a shoddy 8 pages of army/battle fluff here and there. Oh, and two more pages for psychic powers descriptions and random table.
You can reduce all that down by a lot and still keep the essentials. And quite a few of the BA "Exclusive options" would wok just fine if they were expanded to general Codex: SM issue.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
Make Red thirst and Descent of Angels the chapter traits, and let Red thirst affect dreadnoughts as well. Jump assault squads as troops could be unlocked by a chapter master or captain with jump pack, like how bikes work now.
A full set of Blood Angel theme psychic powers need to be addressed, and yes, we do need them. If Mephiston can't take wings of sanguinius, he's done. Mopst the Blood Angels powers have been made into BRB powers:
Blood Boil- Spontaneous Combustion is better in every way.
Fear of the Darkness: altered version of Terrify
Might of Heroes: Warp seppd can't target another model, but gives an I boost and flee as well
Shackle Soul: Dominate does the same thing with twice the range.
Shield of Sanguinus: Telekine Dome targets a unit vs a 6" bubble, but is an Inv save instead of cover, and can bounce shots back.
Smite: is Smite.
Blood lance: Molten Beam is a weaker version.
Sanguine Sword: Iron Arm gives a tough boost and EW as well, but only only +d3 str instead of flat S10
Unleash Rage: Precognition is so much better in every way.
Wings of Sanguinous: The only one without a real counterpart. And if keeping it is the only thing making Mepheston work, just give it to him as a unique power. Or redesign Mepheston a tad.
8.5 special characters: Dante (includes make sanguinary guard troops rule,) Tycho/DC Tycho, Mephiston, Astorath (includes multiple death companies rule,) Seth, Corbulo, Sanguinor, Lemartes. This is the only real sticking point. Ultramarines have 6 SCs (two are unit upgrades). Seth is a Flesh Tearer character, so similar to how Pedro works. Lemartes and Corbulo are both upgrade characters, like Telion and Chronus. Outside them, you have 2 chapter master, a captain, a librarian, Astorath, and Sanguinor. You could add them, and then add a few more characters for other chapters to balance things out a bit- Add Stronos for Iron Hands, bring back Chaplain Xavier for Salamanders, and add a couple new characters to cover White Scars and Raven guard. It would be character heavy, but chapter locking characters helps with that a lot.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ. Sanguinary guard- Give Honor Guard jump pack options (and bikes to cover White Scars). Glaive vs normal power weapon is minor- a reroll but two handed, so no extra attack. A wash, can just drop the glaive. Angelus boltgun into bolt pistol would be a more major change, but you would be trading a bit of close range shooting for an extra power weapon attack. Add Death Mask as a chapter locked wargear for honor guard, captains, and chapter masters.
Death Company- Chapter locked unit, like Crusader squads. Lemartes as an upgrade character.
Sanguinary Priests- I would say remove them as a separate model, and give the normal apothecary the ability to take weapons/wargear upgrades to not invalidate any models. Give command squads access to jump packs at the same time. Make Corbulo an apothecary upgrade character that gives a FNP and Furious charge bubble.
Baal Predator- Chapter locked unit.
Reclusiarch- Let Chaplains (and Librarians) purchase an extra wound and attack for say 35 points. Like in 4th edition.
DC dreadnought:- potentially drop?
Furioso Dreadnought- Add frag cannon, combat talons (rename blood talons) and magnagrapple options to base Ironclad entry.
Librarian Dread- add as upgrade to basic dread (similar to Venerable) also add Chaplain dread option.
BA Honor guard- is the same as a base command squad.
Elite Chaplain- nice, but could be dropped without major impact.
Wargear: Angelus boltguns, infernus pistols, blood talons for dreadnoughts, bloodstrike missiles, melta availability on ASM's. Angelus boltgun could go away without much difficulty. Infernius Pistols (and hand lamers) could be added to the normal armory. Blood Talons on dreadnoughts- rename combat talons and give to the Ironclad. Bloodstrike missiles- are kind of fun, but could go away in favor of the stormstrike missiles of the SM version of the Stormraven. Melta availability on assault squads- give it to them. Would make them more useful, and be nice for raven guard.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions. Remove fast and the changed point cost, and then add a chapter locked piece of wargear called lucifer pattern engines for rhino hulled vehicles that costs 5-10 points that makes them fast.
Painting: BA and their successor chapters' paint schemes. Well-known ones that at least need a picture are Angels Sanguine, Flesh Tearers, Lamenters, Angels Encarmine, Knights of Blood, Blood Drinkers, and Angels Vermilion. Oh and of course all those unique units above need pictures, as well as the BA version of many of the other "shared" units. Give BA 4-5 pages for fluff, a 1-2 page timeline, and a page with say 4 main successors like how other chapters in the main book work. Maybe give Flesh Tearers their own 2 page mini section like Crimson fists. Add the Baal Predator to the SM tanks lineup. Mix in BA and BA sucessor paintjobs among various pictures like all the other chapters in the SM codex. Unique fluff page for Death company, Baal predator can be done in a paragraph.
End result-
Fluff, 7-9 pages. Characters 8 pages. Death company 1-2 pages. Wargear- add Infernius pistols, hand flamers, Death mask, Lucifer pattern engine to the wargear lists. Bestiary- 8 characters (2 pages total, going by Codex SM entries). Librarian (and chaplain dread) 1/3 of a page or so. Death company- 1/2 page. In fact, put them on the same page as the crusader squad. Baal Predator 1/4 of a page.
Call it around 28 pages. If you add say Xavier, Stronos, and 1 more character, you could bump it to about 32 pages, which is 2x 16 page blocks.
I agree with a lot of what you've said here. But you have said a lot. You don't think it'd be better/quicker/easier/nicer/less obtrusive/generally more pleasant to keep things as they are and gently update codex BA to 6th ed?
I agree with a lot of what you've said here. But you have said a lot. You don't think it'd be better/quicker/easier/nicer/less obtrusive/generally more pleasant to keep things as they are and gently update codex BA to 6th ed?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Why?
Because the overwhelming majority of the BA codex is identical to the vanilla codex.
Personally, I find MajorWes' points valid if not even more stretched/bloated than what I'd do. BA could be rolled in with significantly less at minimal loss to theme/playstyle.
I agree with a lot of what you've said here. But you have said a lot. You don't think it'd be better/quicker/easier/nicer/less obtrusive/generally more pleasant to keep things as they are and gently update codex BA to 6th ed?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Why?
Because the overwhelming majority of the BA codex is identical to the vanilla codex.
Personally, I find MajorWes' points valid if not even more stretched/bloated than what I'd do. BA could be rolled in with significantly less at minimal loss to theme/playstyle.
For one thing, Sanguinor needs to go because he's just such a
I think BA have too many differences to be rolled into the SM Codex. Multiple SCs, Red Thirst, Death Company, different Vehicles and Vehicle Special Rules, extra wargear etc
Rolling them into the SM Codex would either remove many of their options or make the SM Codex clunky with all these extra BA units that only a few people using the codex are actually going to use.
I agree with a lot of what you've said here. But you have said a lot. You don't think it'd be better/quicker/easier/nicer/less obtrusive/generally more pleasant to keep things as they are and gently update codex BA to 6th ed?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Why?
Because the overwhelming majority of the BA codex is identical to the vanilla codex.
Personally, I find MajorWes' points valid if not even more stretched/bloated than what I'd do. BA could be rolled in with significantly less at minimal loss to theme/playstyle.
For one thing, Sanguinor needs to go because he's just such a
Or, or... They could fix him. You know, as the new codices usually do, right?
Little less cost and AP2 weapon. Maybe rewrite his Sgt-buff/enemy-HQ-rape rules. I'd be using him all day long.
You can reduce all that down by a lot and still keep the essentials. And quite a few of the BA "Exclusive options" would wok just fine if they were expanded to general Codex: SM issue.
Red thirst, descent of angels, and assault squads as troops needs to be addressed.
Make Red thirst and Descent of Angels the chapter traits, and let Red thirst affect dreadnoughts as well. Jump assault squads as troops could be unlocked by a chapter master or captain with jump pack, like how bikes work now.
Then how do I take non-jump pack assault squads as troops? And even if the jump-captain lets me, now I'm stuck with a jump IC in a non-jump army.
Special units: Sanguinary guard, Death Company, Sanguinary priests, Baal Predator, Reclusiarch, DC dreadnought, Furioso Dreadnought (they do have different loadout selections than ironclads,) Furioso Librarian, Honour guard with packs instead of arty armor, and a Sanguinary Novitiate. Chaplain as an elite choice instead of HQ. Sanguinary guard- Give Honor Guard jump pack options (and bikes to cover White Scars). Glaive vs normal power weapon is minor- a reroll but two handed, so no extra attack. A wash, can just drop the glaive. Angelus boltgun into bolt pistol would be a more major change, but you would be trading a bit of close range shooting for an extra power weapon attack. Add Death Mask as a chapter locked wargear for honor guard, captains, and chapter masters.
But we ALSO have honor guard, who ALSO function different, and Sanguinary guard are elites that can be unlocked to be troops! So you want a paragraph in the honor guard points sections that says "you can give them this this this this and this and call them an elite choice" and then on Dante put his "make them troops" line. Yeah I see 1 out of 3 LGS people scratching their heads in confusion at the horrible design choice there.
Death Company- Chapter locked unit, like Crusader squads. Lemartes as an upgrade character.
DC dreadnought:- potentially drop?
People who play a DC dread as Moriar the Chosen are now hiring assassins to end you
Elite Chaplain- nice, but could be dropped without major impact.
Except for the fluff. Chaplains are supposed to communicate orders to DC, so it makes sense that you'd be able to take non-HQ ones who had DC babysitting as their job instead of leading the strike force.
Angelus boltgun could go away without much difficulty.
Come re-model my Sanguinary Guard then.
Vehicle rules: Rhinos, Razorbacks, Predators, Whirlwinds, Baal Predators, and Vindicators are all fast, and have different costs than normal SM versions. Remove fast and the changed point cost, and then add a chapter locked piece of wargear called lucifer pattern engines for rhino hulled vehicles that costs 5-10 points that makes them fast.
This is one that I could get behind. Now I could take non-fast whirlwinds without an ally and not get jewed on the points, and the fast ability being cheaper would make me happy.
Give BA 4-5 pages for fluff, a 1-2 page timeline
MUH FLUFF. Seriously that's cutting a LOT. I would actually like to see MORE, not LESS, in later books.
End result-
Fluff, 7-9 pages. Characters 8 pages. Death company 1-2 pages. Wargear- add Infernius pistols, hand flamers, Death mask, Lucifer pattern engine to the wargear lists. Bestiary- 8 characters (2 pages total, going by Codex SM entries). Librarian (and chaplain dread) 1/3 of a page or so. Death company- 1/2 page. In fact, put them on the same page as the crusader squad. Baal Predator 1/4 of a page.
Call it around 28 pages. If you add say Xavier, Stronos, and 1 more character, you could bump it to about 32 pages, which is 2x 16 page blocks.
God that is SO much change just to fit them into a book where they don't belong.
28 pages would STILL make it "codex blood angels and friends," as they'd have the biggest share of space in the book amongst all the chapters dedicated to them only.
If it was already like this, and they never had their own book, I'd be one of the people scratching my head and commenting "why's GW so dumb that they can't realize these guys need to stop dominating a shared book that they need 4000 asterisk-options to fit in and just get their own?"
For what it's worth. I believe Blood Angels SHOULD retain their own Codex. I should also note that I, likewise, believe that Space Wolves, Black Templars, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, should have theirs. As should (at least in supplement form) Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Salamanders, Iron Warriors, Night Lords, World Eaters, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Black Legion, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Tallarn, Valhalla, Kult of Speed, Genestealer Cult, Biel Tan, etc, etc, etc.
The following is my reasoning;
The list of currently unique facets of Codex: Blood Angels. I may well have missed some. Spoilered because it's quite long.
Spoiler:
The Fluff Dante Tycho DC Tycho Mephiston Corbulo Lemartes Astorath The Sanguinor Gabriel Seth (All respective special wargear) Reclusiarch Chaplains as Elites Sanguinary Priests (3 in 1) (+ Jump Packs) Blood Chalices Sanguinary Guard Honour Guard with Jump Packs Furioso Dreadnoughts (+the Frag Cannon) Furioso Librarians Death Company Death Company Dreadnoughts Assault Squads as troops Assault Squad wargear options Assault Squad discounted transports Land Raiders as Transports Deep Striking Land Raiders Fast Tanks Baal Predators (Fast, Scout) Angelus Boltgun Glaive Encarmine Hand Flamer Infernus Pistol Frag Cannon Descent of Angels Red Thirst Psychic Powers Divination
To attempt to roll all of this into C:SM would, undoubtedly, lead to the loss of some of it (and subsequently the invalidation of models, units, armies, collections). It would also further dilute the current C:SM to it's detriment. Do C:SM players really want all these pages of BA and successor rules, fluff, wargear, exceptions/exemptions clogging up their already bloated Codex? There'd have to be BA chapter icons through much of the codex. The alternative to this is to allow BA specific units no longer specific to BA. Which would give Space Marines a lot more options, and would no doubt upset non SM players further. Would C:SM become more bloated and convoluted (likely)? Or will this be mitigated by the removal of existing C:SM fluff/rules/art/showcases (sadly, also likely)? Would BA sacrifice units/rules/individuality (certainly)? As well as losing a book (Codex: BA), you'd be weakening another (C:SM).
There are a few people here saying “give BA a supplement”, or words to that effect. Sure, a supplement would work, but, honestly, what would be the point in this? What are the benefits? Having to buy (and carry around/flick through) two books instead of one?
The roll in and supplement production will consume at least as much, if not more, time/effort (even take up more shelf space) on GW's part than producing Codex: Blood Angels 6th ed will.
To me, there is no discernible reason to get rid of Codex: Blood Angels. To say that it could be done (easily or otherwise) is not a reason. It is an observation. I acknowledge that it could be done. Although not easily. It would not be a case of simply adding a chapter tactic, a couple of special rules and Baal Predators. To suggest it would be is rather silly. In my opinion, of course.
Irrelevant, however. Again, the fact that it could be done, is not a reason to do it. Although the vast majority of this thread does seem to be a discussion of how?, and not why?
The only real reasons that I've seen posted here are as follows;
-Putting BA into C:SM with a supplement would give BA access to SM units.
A fair reason, but, again, worth the extra expense? And worth the ceding of individuality of both the BA and C:SM chapters? A bit of an assumption here perhaps, but I think if you were to ask players of both Codices, they'd tell you that they appreciate the differences despite the fact that they are missing out on certain things (Furioso's for Thuderfire Cannons, for example). C:SM players like that Thunderfires and Telion and things are theirs. Similarly BA players don't mind missing out on these things in favour of Furioso's and assault troops. Demonstrated by the fact that they've made the decision to play BA in the first place. Obviously, more options are a good thing. But at the expense of individuality, play style and theme? Not sure.
-Putting BA into C:SM with a supplement would give BA updates at the same time/pace as C:SM.
Again, fair enough, but how big a deal is it that BA are currently looking to be around 12 months behind C:SM? Maybe for the competitive players it could be an issue. But for many (possibly most?) BA players, who picked BA for their fluff/style/theme/look, I'm not sure they'd swap that individuality simply for updates at the same time time as Codex: Space Marines. In terms of balance, I honestly don't think that it's too much of an ask of GW to produce externally balanced codices over the course of a few years.
-Quicker updates for all Codices. I.e, Updating 4 separate SM codices means waiting longer for that Dark Eldar update.
To an extent, yes. But surely this has been mitigated by the vastly increased release rate of the last couple of years? By Christmas this year, it's likely that we'll have seen around ten or eleven new books in a little over two years. Plus supplements, of course.
All other reasons offered seem to be variations of “they're marines”, “they're Codex adherent”, “BT got rolled in”, “Chaos/Ork warbands”, “Craftworlds”, “Special Snowflake”, “We don't have our own Codex”. In short, not good reasons for removing a book (which does no harm to anyone) from the shelves.
What we should be asking of GW is more Codices, more supplements, more variety. Not less. Maybe a little wishful I'll admit.
TL-DR? Books are good. More books is better. Less books is worse.
As a dark angels player and long defender of the split codex for space marines I have to say that the supplements have changed my mind, they contain enough space to have all the fluff and rules you need for the unique units and not need to repeat themselves with captains and all the other things they share, it can be done quite easily and will never happen
Formosa wrote: As a dark angels player and long defender of the split codex for space marines I have to say that the supplements have changed my mind, they contain enough space to have all the fluff and rules you need for the unique units and not need to repeat themselves with captains and all the other things they share, it can be done quite easily and will never happen
But they would still need to update the supplement, and on top of that you would pay twice just to have the base models and a bunch of rules you wouldnt neeed.
For what it's worth. I believe Blood Angels SHOULD retain their own Codex. I should also note that I, likewise, believe that Space Wolves, Black Templars, Dark Angels, Grey Knights, should have theirs. As should (at least in supplement form) Imperial Fists, Ultramarines, White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands, Salamanders, Iron Warriors, Night Lords, World Eaters, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Black Legion, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Tallarn, Valhalla, Kult of Speed, Genestealer Cult, Biel Tan, etc, etc, etc.
While the pace of codex updates have certainly increased, they sure as heck haven't increased that much. As it is, Sisters of Battle still don't have a real codex, Orkz are still badly in need of an update, and Tyranids are a mess despite their recent update and it looks like all three are going to have to wait for Imperial guard to update first. Certainly these books need to be updated and brought into working condition before we start adding a bunch of additional supplementary options, especially options to armies that already work fine including Space Marines, Eldar and Imperial Guard. And to be honest, what can we really expect to get from these supplements that you couldn't obtain by adding a few options to the main book? I purchased the Farsight Enclave and all I really use from the book is Crisis Suits counting as troops and two pieces of wargear, and the only thing almost any Tau player seems to use beyond that is O'vesa, either to build O'vesa star or just cram another Riptide into the force org. I don't think these supplements are justified at all, I much prefer they get the main rulebooks correct instead and ensure that the options that should be there are there, rather than tacking them on after the fact in some bloated supplement.
People keep insisting combining SM codices is an intractable problem, allow me to take a crack at the list:
The Fluff - Give each specialist faction half a page, which should enable the fluff associated with BA, SW, BT and DA to fit on 2 pages. This is far more generous than most faction specific fluff given in other army books.
Dante
Tycho
DC Tycho
Mephiston
Corbulo
Lemartes
Astorath
The Sanguinor
Gabriel Seth
(All respective special wargear)
Pick two SC to represent BA and give them a full page each. Incorporate the rest onto a heroes of the Blood Angels summary. A short blurb on each plus rules should only require 1-2 pages for the whole of them. They were able to do it with "The Eight" from the Farsight enclave, so there should be not problem doing that here.
Reclusiarch - Ok, no idea what these are
Chaplains as Elites - Just add a line to the chaplain entry saying they count as elites for BA.
Sanguinary Priests (3 in 1) (+ Jump Packs) - Upgrade option for apothecaries
Blood Chalices - Wargear restricted to blood angels
Sanguinary Guard - Upgrade option for veterans
Honour Guard with Jump Packs - Just another upgrade option
Furioso Dreadnoughts (+the Frag Cannon) - Upgrade for the dreadnought
Furioso Librarians - Another upgrade for the dreadnought
Death Company - Upgrade for assault squads
Death Company Dreadnoughts - A third upgrade for the dreadnought
Assault Squads as troops - Add a line under the assault squad entry saying they count as troops for BA Assault Squad wargear options - Just list the additional options
Assault Squad discounted transports - Just drop, Rhinos are cheap as is
Land Raiders as Transports -
Deep Striking Land Raiders - Add a line in the relevant troops entries saying they may take Lander Raiders as a dedicated transport if running BA, a said Landraiders gain deepstrike
Fast Tanks - Vehicle upgrade available to BA Baal Predators (Fast, Scout) - Another vehicle upgrade available to BA
Angelus Boltgun
Glaive Encarmine
Hand Flamer
Infernus Pistol
Frag Cannon
5 pieces of assorted wargear, should take less than a page
Descent of Angels
Red Thirst
Chapter tactics substitution
Psychic Powers - Add a few pages as needed for the specialized psychic powers found in BA and SW. It is not like other books (see Eldar) don't have a couple of pages of psychic powers.
Divination - Librarians can choose from Divination if running BA.
So that is 1/2 page to fluff, 3-4 pages to SC, 15 or so (depending on how you count them) upgrade options, 6 pieces of wargear, a chapters tactics substitution, 2 pages of psychic powers, and adding divination as a power available to librarians. This has got to be 8 pages tops, and that is assuming you retain everything. Certain entries, like the large number of special characters which account for nearly half of the extra pages needed, were probably introduced as padding and could be cut done. In any case, you are not doubling the size of C:SM by doing this. It is quite practical.
It is good to see that GW is finally getting codices updated in a decent period of time. But I would vastly prefer they spend there time getting the core armies right, keeping them up to date, making all the options in a given codex function, and ensuring a single codex enables numerous play styles, rather than fleshing out arbitrarily chosen subfactions. Every last core army in 40k needs to be updated and updated correctly, then, and only then, should time be devoted to specialist space marine chapters.
Chaos and DA are also messes to add to that. Even with the faster pace, it still takes a while and worst yet, the supplements are shoddy practice and there is no real sense of balance.
I must ask though, why not just permit all armies that have psykers to just generally be able to opt for any psyker table? I just never got the point of arbitrarily restricting it. Especially sense it then requires exceptions to rules and can break fluff (Ahriman a master diviner can't divine)
Of course they COULD roll it into codex:SM... they could roll SW in too... It wouldn't be hard, just remove the fluff, change the units around slightly, remove anything that can be something else...
But i'd prefer they didn't. Being a BA player and not a Vanilla SM player, I like having my own codex. I like the subtle and not so subtle differences in my army. I like the pages of Fluff, I like having all my Special Characters, I'd like them to put a few more in (Moriar!). I like the ease of how my army is laid out.. Assault as troops, perfect there it is in my troop choice. I don't have to dance around and find what wargear I have as a BA, it's in our wargear, done...
Could it be done, yea... do i think it would Mke the BA feel less special, Of course, i've been playing with some semblnce of my own codex for the last 15+ years...
I don't think rolling them into codex SM would benefit anyone... minus what one month of releases over a span of what 5 years? and i don't think leaving them as their own codex hurts anyone either, minus the one release slot...
I wouldn't mind a supplement, but I'd want one a far cry better then the ones they have out there now
Formosa wrote: As a dark angels player and long defender of the split codex for space marines I have to say that the supplements have changed my mind, they contain enough space to have all the fluff and rules you need for the unique units and not need to repeat themselves with captains and all the other things they share, it can be done quite easily and will never happen
But they would still need to update the supplement, and on top of that you would pay twice just to have the base models and a bunch of rules you wouldnt neeed.
Wasn't arguing that they should do it,just that they could do it and it would work, like hell do I want it to happen and have to pay for 2 books (again) and I even said they will never do it anyway :-)
People keep insisting combining SM codices is an intractable problem, allow me to take a crack at the list:
The Fluff - Give each specialist faction half a page, which should enable the fluff associated with BA, SW, BT and DA to fit on 2 pages. This is far more generous than most faction specific fluff given in other army books.
So like, almost no fluff whatsoever? No thanks. Going from a popular fleshed-out chapter in terms of fluff to almost non-existent would be one of the silliest things they could do.
Dante
Tycho
DC Tycho
Mephiston
Corbulo
Lemartes
Astorath
The Sanguinor
Gabriel Seth
(All respective special wargear)
Pick two SC to represent BA and give them a full page each. Incorporate the rest onto a heroes of the Blood Angels summary. A short blurb on each plus rules should only require 1-2 pages for the whole of them. They were able to do it with "The Eight" from the Farsight enclave, so there should be not problem doing that here.
If you mean a supplement, ok, I could see doing that, but it seems like a LOT of work just to fold these guys into another book when it's probably flat-out easier to just keep them in their own. Especially when said book is already made and updating to a new edition will mostly involve some copy/paste with a few edits.
Reclusiarch - Ok, no idea what these are
Promoted Chaplains. Chaps are important to BA because they babysit death company, which is why you could take 2 of these and 3 more chaps as elites if you wanted.
Chaplains as Elites - Just add a line to the chaplain entry saying they count as elites for BA.
Sanguinary Priests (3 in 1) (+ Jump Packs) - Upgrade option for apothecaries
Blood Chalices - Wargear restricted to blood angels
Lots of little foot notes that say "only for BA" that all the other marine players have to ignore.
Sanguinary Guard - Upgrade option for veterans
Assuming that includes giving them artificer armor, angelus guns and glaives, now you have to tell the prospective player that they're fearless, have Ld 10, can only be taken in sets of 5, have no sarge/character, and have different wargear options than veterans. I'd like to see how that looks on the points page. Probably a damn jumbled mess that would make the other marine players even more annoyed that the BA have invaded their book.
Honour Guard with Jump Packs - Just another upgrade option
Furioso Dreadnoughts (+the Frag Cannon) - Upgrade for the dreadnought
Furioso Librarians - Another upgrade for the dreadnought
more footnotes! footnotes and asterisks everywhere! BA can become known as the Footnote Marines! Or maybe asterisk marines.
Death Company - Upgrade for assault squads
Like sanguinary guard above, you have to tell the player that he no longer has a sergeant, the unit has a different unit size, the unit is 0-1 per detachment, and list the special rules and stat changes, as well as outlay the DC wargear selection, which is quite large and any DC member can snag things. Again, I'd love to see someone take the assault marine page from C:SM, and adapt it with all this in mind, and put up a picture of it without it looking like a complete catastrophe.
Death Company Dreadnoughts - A third upgrade for the dreadnought
So the dreadnought page is footnotes on footnotes on footnotes?
Assault Squads as troops - Add a line under the assault squad entry saying they count as troops for BA
CT works better, and that would be one of the easy things to do.
Assault Squad wargear options - Just list the additional options
footnote for BA only #2475025025720578
Assault Squad discounted transports - Just drop, Rhinos are cheap as is
Whaaat? Why would we ever drop the jump packs then? Also the assault squads from the normal codex gets this. Why change that? It's one of the few things that DOESN'T need to change to accommodate the BA coming in.
Land Raiders as Transports -
Deep Striking Land Raiders - Add a line in the relevant troops entries saying they may take Lander Raiders as a dedicated transport if running BA, a said Landraiders gain deepstrike
Fast Tanks - Vehicle upgrade available to BA Baal Predators (Fast, Scout) - Another vehicle upgrade available to BA
More footnotes that would EASILY confuse the hell out of most people trying to read the codex and figure out what the hell they can or can't take. Anyone familiar with the previous codex might be able to hash it out, but someone new wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of this footnote maze you've created.
So that is 1/2 page to fluff, 3-4 pages to SC, 15 or so (depending on how you count them) upgrade options, 6 pieces of wargear, a chapters tactics substitution, 2 pages of psychic powers, and adding divination as a power available to librarians. This has got to be 8 pages tops, and that is assuming you retain everything. Certain entries, like the large number of special characters which account for nearly half of the extra pages needed, were probably introduced as padding and could be cut done. In any case, you are not doubling the size of C:SM by doing this. It is quite practical.
Not believable in the slightest. You're not even counting all the lines of text making other things longer by adding footnotes everywhere. Some of the units are still going to need their own fluff entry, or do you plan on putting a footnote in the book that says "go buy BA 5th edition book for explanation" on a bunch of the units?
It is good to see that GW is finally getting codices updated in a decent period of time. But I would vastly prefer they spend there time getting the core armies right, keeping them up to date, making all the options in a given codex function, and ensuring a single codex enables numerous play styles, rather than fleshing out arbitrarily chosen subfactions. Every last core army in 40k needs to be updated and updated correctly, then, and only then, should time be devoted to specialist space marine chapters.
No game with a larger playerbase than ONE is ever going to be balanced. Ever. At any point in its creation. Even tic-tac-toe is unbalanced. If GW waited until they had 100/100 satisfied civilian playtesters for every release, the game wouldn't exist. 100 of anyone, even from the same demographic, can't agree on anything more complex than "it's dinner time." And sometimes not even that. You can go sit in the corner waiting for your holy grail perfect books, I'd rather just get more and more content. More fluff to read, more models to play with, more new game states that occur... Don't strawman this though, I like SOME balance, but not enough that they need to go over the damn books with microscopes before I get to play with it.
So like, almost no fluff whatsoever? No thanks. Going from a popular fleshed-out chapter in terms of fluff to almost non-existent would be one of the silliest things they could do.
And it would have no impact on how the army plays on the tabletop. Leave the fluff for a supplement, let the codex concern itself with insuring all the Space Marine variants are functional.
If you mean a supplement, ok, I could see doing that, but it seems like a LOT of work just to fold these guys into another book when it's probably flat-out easier to just keep them in their own. Especially when said book is already made and updating to a new edition will mostly involve some copy/paste with a few edits.
I would hold that it is far more work to maintain two (or four if we roll in everyone) separate books than just merge some special character entries.
Reclusiarch - Ok, no idea what these are
Promoted Chaplains. Chaps are important to BA because they babysit death company, which is why you could take 2 of these and 3 more chaps as elites if you wanted.
Assault Squads as troops - Add a line under the assault squad entry saying they count as troops for BA CT works better, and that would be one of the easy things to do.
Good point. It is probably easier to incorporate all the force org modifications in a summary including the BA chapter tactics. Merge chapter tactics, the force org mods and the fluff into a single page to introduce the chapter background and summarize the BA force.
Chaplains as Elites - Just add a line to the chaplain entry saying they count as elites for BA.
Sanguinary Priests (3 in 1) (+ Jump Packs) - Upgrade option for apothecaries
Blood Chalices - Wargear restricted to blood angels
Lots of little foot notes that say "only for BA" that all the other marine players have to ignore.
Sanguinary Guard - Upgrade option for veterans
Assuming that includes giving them artificer armor, angelus guns and glaives, now you have to tell the prospective player that they're fearless, have Ld 10, can only be taken in sets of 5, have no sarge/character, and have different wargear options than veterans. I'd like to see how that looks on the points page. Probably a damn jumbled mess that would make the other marine players even more annoyed that the BA have invaded their book.
Honour Guard with Jump Packs - Just another upgrade option
Furioso Dreadnoughts (+the Frag Cannon) - Upgrade for the dreadnought
Furioso Librarians - Another upgrade for the dreadnought
more footnotes! footnotes and asterisks everywhere! BA can become known as the Footnote Marines! Or maybe asterisk marines.
Death Company - Upgrade for assault squads
Like sanguinary guard above, you have to tell the player that he no longer has a sergeant, the unit has a different unit size, the unit is 0-1 per detachment, and list the special rules and stat changes, as well as outlay the DC wargear selection, which is quite large and any DC member can snag things. Again, I'd love to see someone take the assault marine page from C:SM, and adapt it with all this in mind, and put up a picture of it without it looking like a complete catastrophe.
Death Company Dreadnoughts - A third upgrade for the dreadnought
So the dreadnought page is footnotes on footnotes on footnotes?
Assault Squad wargear options - Just list the additional options
footnote for BA only #2475025025720578
Land Raiders as Transports -
Deep Striking Land Raiders - Add a line in the relevant troops entries saying they may take Lander Raiders as a dedicated transport if running BA, a said Landraiders gain deepstrike
Fast Tanks - Vehicle upgrade available to BA Baal Predators (Fast, Scout) - Another vehicle upgrade available to BA More footnotes that would EASILY confuse the hell out of most people trying to read the codex and figure out what the hell they can or can't take. Anyone familiar with the previous codex might be able to hash it out, but someone new wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of this footnote maze you've created.
Not footnotes, upgrades. Look, virtually every codex is based around present the player with a based unit and then listing associated upgrades. You take a tactical squad, and then can buy it special weapons, heavy weapons, cc weapons, transports, etc. All you need to do is make it so some of the upgrades are contingent on your choice of chapter tactics. Also, you need not copy every last detail associated with a BA unit. For example, Death Company lacks a sergeant even though its parent unit, assault marines, has one. Why not just leave a sergeant in Death Company then, it is not like it will change anything. Death company just becomes a FNP/Fearless upgrade with a additional wargear option or two.
Also, these entries are not dead weight for non BA users. It would be perfectly reasonably that players running other SM list would choose to vary the list from week to week, and would experiment with other Chapter Tactics, including BA chapter tactics. As a great many of the models are shared, and many are just bit swaps, this would be seamless and effortless, especially because all the required rules are contained in one book.
Assault Squad discounted transports - Just drop, Rhinos are cheap as is
Whaaat? Why would we ever drop the jump packs then? Also the assault squads from the normal codex gets this. Why change that? It's one of the few things that DOESN'T need to change to accommodate the BA coming in.
Good point. We get this automatically so no modifications required .
So that is 1/2 page to fluff, 3-4 pages to SC, 15 or so (depending on how you count them) upgrade options, 6 pieces of wargear, a chapters tactics substitution, 2 pages of psychic powers, and adding divination as a power available to librarians. This has got to be 8 pages tops, and that is assuming you retain everything. Certain entries, like the large number of special characters which account for nearly half of the extra pages needed, were probably introduced as padding and could be cut done. In any case, you are not doubling the size of C:SM by doing this. It is quite practical.
Not believable in the slightest. You're not even counting all the lines of text making other things longer by adding footnotes everywhere. Some of the units are still going to need their own fluff entry, or do you plan on putting a footnote in the book that says "go buy BA 5th edition book for explanation" on a bunch of the units?
Last time I checked, upgrades really don't take much space, just a couple of lines for each. As most BA units appear to be modified versions of C:SM, I don't think much elaboration would be required to justify their existence. You could probably just modify the parent units fluff to achieve this end. For example, in the dreadnought entry, you can mentioned that if a librarian is entombed in the dreadnought, he can still use his psychic powers, and then the in universe explanation for a Furioso Librarian becomes immediately apparent.
It is good to see that GW is finally getting codices updated in a decent period of time. But I would vastly prefer they spend there time getting the core armies right, keeping them up to date, making all the options in a given codex function, and ensuring a single codex enables numerous play styles, rather than fleshing out arbitrarily chosen subfactions. Every last core army in 40k needs to be updated and updated correctly, then, and only then, should time be devoted to specialist space marine chapters.
No game with a larger playerbase than ONE is ever going to be balanced. Ever. At any point in its creation. Even tic-tac-toe is unbalanced. If GW waited until they had 100/100 satisfied civilian playtesters for every release, the game wouldn't exist. 100 of anyone, even from the same demographic, can't agree on anything more complex than "it's dinner time." And sometimes not even that. You can go sit in the corner waiting for your holy grail perfect books, I'd rather just get more and more content. More fluff to read, more models to play with, more new game states that occur... Don't strawman this though, I like SOME balance, but not enough that they need to go over the damn books with microscopes before I get to play with it.
I am not looking for perfection, but I do think all core armies should be in a workable state before messing around with specialist factions. Having 2/3 of the units in each codex playable would be a reasonable objective. After all, if only around 1/3 of a given codex works, why would you fuss around with specialist codices and supplements? Certainly fixing the defunct units from such a codex would add just as much, if not more variety to the game than maintaining a supplement/specialist codex, with the additional benefit of ensuring all the books currently in play were usable and all armies are playable. Sisters shouldn't have to deal with a half functional pdf codex just because marines need a different set of rules for each of their painting schemes. Fix the core armies first, then go back to embellishing subfactions.
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and would never wish that on anyone. If I had my way you would have gotten your Full Codex: Black Templar before I got me new Codex: Space Wolves
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