Have been waiting to ask this question. Now that Traitor Legions has been out for a while, why does everyone seem to like it so much?

Admittedly, I play Chaos and the book has captured my imagination. Am starting a new Death Guard army that may take the place of my "Unlucky Thirteenth" Black Legion force I have been playing since 5th edition.

But I wonder if the book actually lives up to the hype it's experienced post-release. A lot of people felt the book was putting CSMs on a new competitive tier, not as far up as Space Marine chapters, but close.

Has it lived up to expectations? Here are my criticisms of the book a month out. None of these should be considered damning, they are all offered in the spirit of coming back to reality.

- Most Legion command benefits only benefit infantry. There's really nothing there to buff war machines or other big guns.

- Legion rules do not act as force multipliers as they do with other armies, they are simple buffs. While it's nice to get VotLW for free, it's not as nice as free transports, free heavy weapons, tactics that let you repeat combat phases, or other mechanics that significantly alter the effectiveness of an army throughout the game. The Chaos Boon table requires that you destroy something to receive a force multiplier, and it only applies to a single character.

- The unique legion formations are too expensive. In most cases, taking full advantage means spending more than 70% of your points on troops. It does not leave enough room for other units.

- The HQ taxes on most formations exceed the usefulness of the special rules. I realize this is more a complaint about traitor's hate but - seriously - is it worth it to take 3 Heldrakes in a formation for a -2 leadership buff? Or a warpsmith to run Daemonforge twice in a game?

- The Legion specific rules ignore the most challenging aspects to each army. TS are still overcosted. Noise Marines still don't have relentless and their awesome guns still have salvo. Khorne Berzerkers still don't have enough punch to justify taking them over normal CSMs. Nurgle Marines are almost as good as Plague Marines for the points (but, admittedly, they have improved.)

- Many of the Legion command benefits are hobbled by a lack of tactics that could maximize their effectiveness. The Black Legion Speartip deepstrike rules are just good enough to get units on the board, but not to control where they land. The World Eaters movement buffs are just good enough to get units close to a first turn assault, but not quite enough to get there. The Kakophoni special rules would be great if only there was a way to shoot without moving. The Word Bearers rules around manifesting on summoning would be awesome if they had more psykers.

My take is that this book benefits people who play 1500+ point armies consisting mostly of infantry against opponents who mostly do the same. It's too one dimensional to really elevate the effectiveness of CSMs overall and taking full advantage of the new formations comes at the expense of other important parts of the army.

I got smashed by a necron decurion on the weekend, in a purge the alien with my death guard. It wasn't even close. Fun game though.

That being said, I think the hype just came over the fact that you could:

- Play more Legions playable

- Added fluffy rules

- Gave bonus rules to what we were using anyway (in a lot of cases).


It is far from top tier, but it has gone a long way to give Chaos players what they desire.

Chaos Marines are a Worf Effect army?

Because it's SOMETHING. Something good! Not that good... But definitely not bad.

For one of the worst factions in the game it was a small mercy.

Sadly I have a feeling codex CSM, the next version, will, like the last codex release, tie in to the release of 8th edition and yet again be surpassed by every other codex in the ongoing arms race.

Honestly, if Word Bearers had Crusader standard and Iron Warriors had Intractable Brotherhood standard, it would be almost THE perfect supplement.
Alpha Legion need just one more rule like MTC for their Veterans and we would be golden. Oh and Thousand Sons having Fearless standard along with their other brothers of the Gods.

It was quite a boon if you used the codex standard. Now obviously there's some power imbalance from Legion to Legion, but they at least make sense, get bonuses that make sense, and they actually function like intended. You want to feel like Alpha Legion? You can actually make it happen for the first time in a while!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Chaos Marines are a Worf Effect army?

More like one that suffers from Badass Decay.

In second edition, CSMs were the little darlings that could field a Chaos Lord who would eat one tactical squad a round without taking a wound. They could summon enough stuff that the army would double in size as the game went on.

In fourth point five edition, we saw them at their most enjoyable: less overpowered, but filled with fluffy options that made the army less one dimensional than all others.

Then came fifth edition. Berzerker spam seemed to be the only viable playlist, at least for me. They could take on just about anything unless it had too many tanks. Possessed, Thousand Sons, Noise Marines started getting blacklisted. Spawn were considered awful because of the mindless rule.

Then came sixth edition. The Codex promised some kind of renaissance in GW rulesmaking, but we found out CSMs were the only 'balanced' Codex. Every other Codex got stronger while cultists became CSM's only viable troop choice.

Then came seventh edition, new rules for flying creatures, new models for flyers, D weapons, grav, free transports, Eldar shennanigans, etc. CSMs actively compete with Orks and IG for the status of worst Codex.

Traitor's Hate and Traitor Legions bring CSMs in line with 7th edition, but I wonder how much people enjoy the new rules now that they have been out for a while.

I had high expectations for my Black Legion Speartip before I remembered Abaddon's 600 point melee Terminator squad can be destroyed by rolling a one on a deep strike mishap and there's nothing I can do to stop it. While I had a few games where things mostly went right, I realized there's only about a 30% chance of them landing within 6 inches of where they should. Not to mention a couple squads of gretchin can actually outshoot that same 600 point squad.

This is not a complaint, I will definitely keep playing around with my Black Legion list. It's more the realization that there was a lot of hype surrounding the release, and a desire to put the books in their proper place.

The short answer.

Read at least the first 5 HH books and then you will know why

You just listed a bunch or rules critiques.

In my opinion the book was so well received because it gave Chaos players a way to play a list that didn't actively punish the player who was trying to play a fluffy/themed list. As much as some people like to believe that the reason CSM players pine for the 3.5 dex is because we are all a bunch of WAAC players who just want an OP army, the real reason is that we missed being able to play a fun list that didn't end in an auto-loss. This new book provided that to some extent, at least a lot more than the base codex did. Some legions ended up being much better than others rules-wise, but at least there is an actual difference between the legions besides what color you had painted them.

That or you'll lose respect for GW's writing staff.

I jumped ship from KDK to World Eaters because I wanted to play angry marines not angry deamons. My current list has 3 units of havocs, 3 units of CSM, and 3 units of bikes, and it scares the gak out of my opponent when all of that is halfway across the board turn one. Could it have been more competitive? Sure. Does it make fluffy armies playable? It sure does!

Why did everybody like it?
Almost everybody with a even a passing interest in chaos space marines is interested in at least one of the great nine traitor legions.
They are all a part of the core 40k setting, the horus heresy and its consequences. Always have been.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that everybody wants to play as their favourite legion.
Something that hasn't been possible since 3.5. sure you can dress them up and pretend and build the army in a way that fits your head canon, but it still feels hollow.
Then couple that with the fact that our codex has become increasingly bland and generic over time as we watched everybody else get new toys.

Legions gave us back a some identity. It gave us actual rules for the various legions and not just that, but formations as well as objectives and relics. Hell even some legion specific units.
For csm players that's almost on the level of plastic sisters kind of good news.

Has it lived up to expectations?
I for one wasn't expecting a whole lot (though ever hopeful). Honestly though? As far as GW goes it's probably about the best we could have gotten short of an actual codex.
It actually makes you think about army composition again. All Legions are now interesting and fun to play again. So yes, I'd say it matches and exceeds expectations in that sense.
Of course it wouldn't be GW if it didn't disappoint in equal measure, but overall it's close enough to a good book to keep me content.

because it's "chapter tactics" for chaos space marines. it's something that they WANTED.

While not even close to fixing many of the problems CSM has I managed to get back a few older things for Emperors Children that's just cool to use.

Go read imperial agents, when you're done vomiting and can get back to the safety of traitor legions you'll get just how awesome that book actually is.

 Roknar wrote:
Why did everybody like it?
Almost everybody with a even a passing interest in chaos space marines is interested in at least one of the great nine traitor legions.
They are all a part of the core 40k setting, the horus heresy and its consequences. Always have been.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that everybody wants to play as their favourite legion.
Something that hasn't been possible since 3.5. sure you can dress them up and pretend and build the army in a way that fits your head canon, but it still feels hollow.
Then couple that with the fact that our codex has become increasingly bland and generic over time as we watched everybody else get new toys.

Legions gave us back a some identity. It gave us actual rules for the various legions and not just that, but formations as well as objectives and relics. Hell even some legion specific units.
For csm players that's almost on the level of plastic sisters kind of good news.

Why people think snowflake rules are required to have fluffy legion armies? Didn't need those in 2nd ed either.

Hopefully at least legion tactics works out better for chaos than loyals to make fluffy armies then. All chapter tactics have resulted for loyals is very UNFLUFFY armies that goes against fluff of the chapters.

I think a part of it is that it does, as you say, allow people to actually use their infantry - Most armies, especially MEQs, you can't actually use regular squads, because they're AWFUL. Regular Space Marines? Awful. CSM without legion rules? Awful. You can run a blue tide, but that's not actually a good army, it's just hard to kill and able to hold objectives all day, every day.

I play against a CSM guy regularly, and he's thrilled to be able to actually field havocs and regular CSM squads in a regular army without it being so weak as to be entirely useless.

It's been said already, but I'll echo it again: Flavour. There's actually a difference between a Night Lords army and a Word Bearers army other than they're different colours. Yes, the sucky units still suck and a very large portion of the book is still overpriced trash and the traditional favourites (yes, I'm looking at you Nurgle) easily got some of the best rules in the book, there's a reason to take chosen in an alpha legion force, you can summon daemons more easily with word bearers, black legion are better at deep striking than other legions and more than anything else I think, "normal" CSM (the unit) aren't so thoroughly overshadowed by cutists now that they're Ld10 and have a bunch of rules (for most legions) tacked on.

I'm reasonably sure that nobody ever claimed that legions made us top tier, but we're no longer an auto-lose for having the audacity to put chaos models on the table like we used to be, while certain build can be a massive pain for some armies to deal with - WE rush, DG decurion and the TS War Coven have all claimed scalps that they would have had not lasted 3 turns against before TL came out. Can you imagine an eldar army suddenly scared of a world eater infantry army 6 months ago? It's not about being OP cheese, it's about running the legion the way you want, the way it's intended to be run, and having the rules generally work for you instead of against you.

To a man dying of thirst, tapwater will taste sweeter than wine.

I agree with most of the above posts, it took a terrible and turned it playable. Compare how much special rules ordinary SM get vs CSM with and without the supplement.

Geronimo509 wrote:
You just listed a bunch or rules critiques.

In my opinion the book was so well received because it gave Chaos players a way to play a list that didn't actively punish the player who was trying to play a fluffy/themed list. As much as some people like to believe that the reason CSM players pine for the 3.5 dex is because we are all a bunch of WAAC players who just want an OP army, the real reason is that we missed being able to play a fun list that didn't end in an auto-loss. This new book provided that to some extent, at least a lot more than the base codex did. Some legions ended up being much better than others rules-wise, but at least there is an actual difference between the legions besides what color you had painted them.

Yes, this is exactly it.

I feel like Death Guard got the best rules. Getting stealth, FNP re-roll 1's and relentless is good no matter what army you are facing.

Thousand Sons are kinda meh. They should have gotten something to buff them in the psychic phase (like, ALOT), but just instead have to waste at least one charge per unit to get the ward save buff, can cast an extra spell(whoopdey do) and can re-roll the perils (ok that's pretty good). I would have like something to give us more warp dice, or something to lower casting costs (besides the dumb formations).

Looking at the rules for the TS I thought they got the better end of the stick. Ok their psychic powers were kinda cr*ppy but, hey, every other model's rules weren't bad, even the nice TS marines (although, yes, they are quite pricey)

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:
Looking at the rules for the TS I thought they got the better end of the stick. Ok their psychic powers were kinda cr*ppy but, hey, every other model's rules weren't bad, even the nice TS marines (although, yes, they are quite pricey)

I think that's kinda the big issue. Our lore sucks and rubrics cost a fortune and accomplish nothing. Every now and then you get them to rapid fire on a group of marines and it feels good to see them roasted.

It didn't come close to 'fixing' every grievance I had with the CSM book, but it had a good crack at it. Certainly went much further than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise.
I would still consider the book in severe need of improvement, but at least it is now playable in a competitive format. It's been given a good shot of steroids, which is appreciated. However there are still some issues I'd like to fix. However, these go far beyond what I would ever expect from a supplement and would need a total rewrite to fix properly.

A for effort, though,

 Whitebeard wrote:

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:
Looking at the rules for the TS I thought they got the better end of the stick. Ok their psychic powers were kinda cr*ppy but, hey, every other model's rules weren't bad, even the nice TS marines (although, yes, they are quite pricey)

I think that's kinda the big issue. Our lore sucks and rubrics cost a fortune and accomplish nothing. Every now and then you get them to rapid fire on a group of marines and it feels good to see them roasted.

IMO, the TS codex would be ace if they just reduced the points of the units slightly as it's, what? 300 points for a unit of 10 Rubric Marines? From what I've read, everything else in the codex is also pricey too, meaning you get few models actually on the table in games. However, that being said, I still love the army and think the models and the rules are great

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:

 Whitebeard wrote:

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:
Looking at the rules for the TS I thought they got the better end of the stick. Ok their psychic powers were kinda cr*ppy but, hey, every other model's rules weren't bad, even the nice TS marines (although, yes, they are quite pricey)

I think that's kinda the big issue. Our lore sucks and rubrics cost a fortune and accomplish nothing. Every now and then you get them to rapid fire on a group of marines and it feels good to see them roasted.

IMO, the TS codex would be ace if they just reduced the points of the units slightly as it's, what? 300 points for a unit of 10 Rubric Marines? From what I've read, everything else in the codex is also pricey too, meaning you get few models actually on the table in games. However, that being said, I still love the army and think the models and the rules are great

it's a low model count, and the models you do have aren't that good. If your psychic phase doesn't work out, the results are pretty comical.

 Whitebeard wrote:

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:

 Whitebeard wrote:

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:
Looking at the rules for the TS I thought they got the better end of the stick. Ok their psychic powers were kinda cr*ppy but, hey, every other model's rules weren't bad, even the nice TS marines (although, yes, they are quite pricey)

I think that's kinda the big issue. Our lore sucks and rubrics cost a fortune and accomplish nothing. Every now and then you get them to rapid fire on a group of marines and it feels good to see them roasted.

IMO, the TS codex would be ace if they just reduced the points of the units slightly as it's, what? 300 points for a unit of 10 Rubric Marines? From what I've read, everything else in the codex is also pricey too, meaning you get few models actually on the table in games. However, that being said, I still love the army and think the models and the rules are great

it's a low model count, and the models you do have aren't that good. If your psychic phase doesn't work out, the results are pretty comical.

The models are lovely in themselves, aesthetic wise though and not too bad in the rules area either, and as for Psychic phase, if you do fail then you're doing something wrong OR it was a one off (although I can imagine it being very funny if it doesn't work )

Personally I wasn't extremely happy: my favourite legion is Night Lords, and what did we get? Fear! And if you already have fear? Fear test at -1Ld! Stealth isn't bad but night fighting? The only things in my army shooting can't even benefit from it.

It gave me a reason to pull out my plans for a full NL army again but will I be able to play comp? No. Will it be fun trying to beat top tier armies with a cc army that has no tricks to be able to get into cc and their only bonus doesn't even effect top tier armies? Probably not. The fact that I can't even remmedy any of this with any kind of marks is a bit rubbish.

Then again CSM have been humbled (quite alot) after the 3.5ed high so to be quite honest anything that gives us a taste of the good old days (even if it doesn't really help that much) will go down well in the realms of chaos.

 Loremaster Of Awesomeness wrote:
... not too bad in the rules area either, and as for Psychic phase, if you do fail then you're doing something wrong OR it was a one off (although I can imagine it being very funny if it doesn't work )

Do you you actually play thousand sons or are you just wildly speculating? You don't really need to answer, because I know you can't actually play them if you think that their rules aren't comically bad (excet for the maxed War cabal, which can be pretty neat). As for psychic phase, do you understand that you can only cast so many powers with the ~25 dice you have, yes? You can't buff, debuff, move and mind dakka all at once with such a limited pool of dice for ~10 psychers with any sort of reliability, since at 2-3 dice per power, you're only casting about 10 spells which really isn't that much when it's pretty much the only thing your army can do and unlike other armies, people can just deny your special snowflake abilities. Why can't I just roll 2-3 dice and deny a riptide the use of its nova reactor or negate some markerlights? Perhaps deny Eldar the ability to run and shoot? Maybe other armies should be forced to take units simply so they can hold the ammo allowing other models to shoot? Or maybe other armies should have to randomly roll to see what special weapons they're taking today? Rolled flamers against mech? Too bad, suck it up!

The very fact that you think that Rubricae aren't one of the worst units in the codex is also laughable. 23 points for a marine? 58! points for a sarge? Yes, they get some OK toys (that aren't really worth their points on MEQ), but they still die like flies to bolters and small arms fire. People complain about GK strike squads being terrible value and they have non-trash fixed powers, can actually assault stuff since they're a full unit of force weapons and STILL cost less than rubricae. 300 points for 10 MEQ in a rhino is a terrible deal, as is trading an AP3 bolter for an AP4 flamer for 7 points on a slow and purposeful model. Hell, that could be a free trade and I doubt that I'd bother. Yeah, they got some new units, 250 points for 5 termies, what a deal! Only 75! POINTS over a vanilla marine tactical terminator squad and you have to give up your powerfists for power swords and your specials are worse and/or more points to boot. Awesome /sarcasm. And that's comparing them to tactical terminators, which are already absolutely terrible.

Oh yes, our cup truely runneth over with quality rules and units...

And yet I still think that Traitor Legions was a decent effort due to the flavour it brought, even if DG, WE and AL clearly got the better end of the deal with other legions ending up out in the cold. If we ever get a new dex to bring the basline units into line with the rest of 40k, then as long as much of the TL buffs remain, we could actually be a competative force.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Personally I wasn't extremely happy: my favourite legion is Night Lords, and what did we get? Fear! And if you already have fear? Fear test at -1Ld! Stealth isn't bad but night fighting? The only things in my army shooting can't even benefit from it.
.

I find that people underrate the effectiveness of Fear.. normally because people tend to forget about it.. But -1ld fear is Awesome imo granted it doesn't do much against spacemarines..

Fear mostly affects units that are already WS:Bad, so you go from hitting on 3s... To hitting on 3s. Woo-hoo.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Personally I wasn't extremely happy: my favourite legion is Night Lords, and what did we get? Fear! And if you already have fear? Fear test at -1Ld! Stealth isn't bad but night fighting? The only things in my army shooting can't even benefit from it.

It gave me a reason to pull out my plans for a full NL army again but will I be able to play comp? No. Will it be fun trying to beat top tier armies with a cc army that has no tricks to be able to get into cc and their only bonus doesn't even effect top tier armies? Probably not. The fact that I can't even remmedy any of this with any kind of marks is a bit rubbish.

Then again CSM have been humbled (quite alot) after the 3.5ed high so to be quite honest anything that gives us a taste of the good old days (even if it doesn't really help that much) will go down well in the realms of chaos.

sadly the nightlords have always been "we use a lot of raptors and use fear" there was really only so much that could be done for them with that being one of their big aspects as a legion within the rules.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Fear mostly affects units that are already WS:Bad, so you go from hitting on 3s... To hitting on 3s. Woo-hoo.

Yes but it generally means you are only getting hit on 5's which makes a big difference

Right, let's see.

Against Guardsmen, a single Guardsman averages (1 attack times .5 hits times .33 wounds times .33 armour save) .05 wounds.

With Fear up, it becomes (1 attack times .33 hits times .33 wounds times .33 armour save) .04 wounds.

Big difference, that is.

Traitor Legions had me hyped and still is a big buff from my previous lists that used Crimson Slaughter rules... but nurgley, which never quite sat right with me.

It allowed me to dig from the unused dresser and rethink about models I stopped bringing to the table. Plague Marines, CSM Joes, Terminators, Helbrutes.

So all my unused units are now Tax units. (including all of my Night Lord models amusingly) Which is all fun and fluffy, but I am quickly reminded why they were shelved in the first place. Chaos have very few Star units in the codex, and none are in the Warband...

The Obj Secured is the real seller in the deal. (and solo Spawn aux since I've always spammed Spawn anyway). I play Nurgle so tge Command bonuses are good, but very situational anyways.

Lately Ive been playing my old CAD List with cheap cultist tax, Lords, Heldrakes, Princes, Spawn, and Oblits, and it works better than it did before due to fearless and FNP being handed out.

GodDamUser wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Fear mostly affects units that are already WS:Bad, so you go from hitting on 3s... To hitting on 3s. Woo-hoo.

Yes but it generally means you are only getting hit on 5's which makes a big difference

Are you actually trying to defend Fear?

Are you actually trying to defend Fear?

I have literally seen it work once in all my games.

And oh boy, did it make one hell of a difference. Them WS 2 Tau sure as hell felt the sting of failing a Fear test against a Hive Tyrant! They went from hitting me on 5s to hitting me on 5s!

Sorry, JNA has it spot on.

Fear is worthless. The prevalence of ATSKNF, Fearless or Ld 9-10 Stubborn/Rerolls on the High WS armies (i.e. the ones you WANT to fail fear tests) makes it worthless.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Right, let's see.

Against Guardsmen, a single Guardsman averages (1 attack times .5 hits times .33 wounds times .33 armour save) .05 wounds.

With Fear up, it becomes (1 attack times .33 hits times .33 wounds times .33 armour save) .04 wounds.

Big difference, that is.

Ok. But when do we ever get into cc with just one guardsman?
Think of the big picture.

My Ork army HATES fear tests. I'm constantly reminding my opponents about fear, and suddenly my overpriced Orks that are merely okay in CC just dipped into their bad shooting levels.

Orks are the one army it actually does well against. They're CC oriented, don't have the best Leadership stat, their Leadership ignoring mechanic isn't very good, and they normally have a decent WS.

But Guardsmen? Oh boy, the 10 Guardsmen went from half a wound to FOUR TENTHS OF A WOUND! Except it's not even that big, because you killed half of them at the I4 step, so the difference is more like a 20th of a wound.

In before Conscripts-they have Priests.

Also works well against Eldar

GodDamUser wrote:
Also works well against Eldar

Unless they have an Avatar providing a 12 inch Fearless bubble. They're also high Ld by default.

And generally like to AVOID close combat, rather than participate in it.

Edit: Hell, my guardsmen math from earlier still works on Eldar. They're normally WS 4 (hitting on 4s) and S 3.

It does make you hit slightly better, so there's that. But they come in smaller quantities, so it's usually not needed.

Fear is right up there with soul blaze for the most useless piece of crap reason to roll dice.

A quick rundown of the factions will show us why fear really, really, really doesn't matter:
- Marines: Immune
- BA: Immune
- DA: Immune
- Fallen: Immune
- Deathwatch: Immune
- GK: Immune
- SW: Immune
- IG: Priests and Commisars are Immune and you're often going to struggle to remove them without barrage weapons. Vehicles are Immune. anyone affected was already WS3 anyway, so benefits fromt he various squads that DO get affected are minimal.
- Tempestus: Not a "real" Codex, but succeptable to fear. Not exactly a combat powerhouse and will struggle to damage anything tougher than a blue horror with punching anyway.
- Sisters: Suceptable, though priests are available, they're not as common as in IG and Celestine's WL trait allows everyone to use her Ld (or at least, it did, not sure about now) meaning anything midfield is probably ld10. Same old story, WS3 str3 means that the only thing you're really scared of in assault is repentia and if you can't kill a handful of T3, I1, no save models with no assault transport then you deserve everything you get and just for lulz, they're fearless anyway.
- Cult Mech: Breachers aren't fearless, everything else is pretty trash at CC, though I guess electropriests aren't terrible (only for their points), but again, they're fearless (technically zealot), so who cares. Also, there's a fearless/stubborn canticle, so, yeah, have fun with that.
- Skitarii: Ruststalkers and Infiltrators aren't fearless. They're pretty trash for their points, but they're geared for combat and aren't fearless. That's 1/12 factions so far.
- Inquisition: Priests give Zealot, Inquisitors are stubborn Ld 10.
- Imperial Knights: Immune
- Assassins: Immune
- CSM: Lords are fearless, cult units are fearless, deathguard and EC are fearless, word bearers test on 3d6 take the lowest and their DA's emit a zealot bubble, IW are stubborn (fearless on battlements) almost everyone with VotLW is now Ld 10, so while technically suceptable, effectively they're about as close to not caring as you're likely to get for a combat army who isn't immune.
- KDK: Fearless daemons, fearless cult units, fearless lords, again, effectively fearless.
- Daemons: Immune
- Orks: W!:G has the big bosspole which effectively makes your entire army immune if you're running green tide, Bully Boyz are fearless, Mad Dok is fearless, Running Ghazzy in his formation lets him Waaaugh every turn for fearless but outside of those, yes, orks have relatively poor Ld and aren't fearless. 2/19
- Eldar: Avatar hands out a bubble, Wraith units are fearless, Warpspiders exarch lets them autopass, all the Phoenix lords are fearless. Of the handfull of combat units, there are a couple that you probably can't just shrug off with anything that causes Fear. Arguably 3/20, but still effective either ranged or immune to fear, but I'm feeling generous, so we'll count it as in.
- Dark Eldar: Ultraboned. 4/21
- Harlies: Also Ultraboned. 5/22
- Necrons: Almost immortal and Ld10 across the board to boot when they're not fearless like Canoptek units or hiding Zahndrek in there.
- Tau: If you're in CC you're already winning hard. Technically suceptable, but really, if you're anything more CC focused than pick horrors, you shouldn't need the help. 6/24
- 'Nids: Synapse.
- GSC: Weirdly Suceptable beyond select formations and the patriarch. 7/26

So, around 75% of the armies in the game are immune or effectively immune and we're left with Skitarii (no-one cares about their CC untis), Ork (trash tier), Eldar (what even are Melee units that aren't WK's?), DE (trash tier), Harlies (trash tier), Tau (yeah, they suck in CC, shame you'll never get there.jpg) and GSC. So out of the remaining races who actually are suceptable to fear, there's really only Orks, DE Harlies and GSC who actually give a crap and 3/4 of them are bottom of the barrel armies anyway who need a new dex. Try again and tell us how fear isn't completely worthless?

 Drasius wrote:

- GSC: Weirdly Suceptable beyond select formations and the patriarch. 7/26

Might want to drop that back down to 6/26.

The Patriarch gives a Fearless bubble ala the Avatar, the Sacred Icon relic turns the Iconward into a 12" reroll bubble for a mostly LD 9 across the board army and the actual scary combat unit that has high WS (Genestealers) is Ld 10.

Yes, fear sucks, but it's not like that's the only command benefit Legions get or special rule formations get. Night Lords also get stealth and night fighting, which are both useful. Plague Colony also has the Pestilential Aura.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Yes, fear sucks, but it's not like that's the only command benefit Legions get or special rule formations get. Night Lords also get stealth and night fighting, which are both useful. Plague Colony also has the Pestilential Aura.

I'll be perfectly honest here and state that I don't use the Plague Colony.

Hell, I've stopped using Plague Marines.

Simply put, normal CSM with ccw are cheaper and the Chaos Warband is a far better Core choice. Sure, it's not a Demi-Company but ObSec on units like Chaos Terminators and Havocs and the boon double-rolls combined with the Death Guard legion rules makes it a far better option. Sure, the Colony has that debuff aura going for it...but in a game where 2/3rds of games are determined by objective control things like ObSec T5 Fearless FNP Terminators are star performers.

 Drasius wrote:
word bearers test on 3d6 take the lowest

This would be pretty nice but it is HH only rule
Also Stubborn has nothing to do with Fear so commissars and Iron warriors aren't immune

Sonic Keyboard wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
word bearers test on 3d6 take the lowest

This would be pretty nice but it is HH only rule
Also Stubborn has nothing to do with Fear so commissars and Iron warriors aren't immune

Actually, Stubborn has a lot to do with Fear. It means the unit tests on its unmodified Leadership - so no stacking debuffs on the unit to force them to fail. As Most IW units and Commissars are Ld 10 the odds of them failing are very, very slim indeed. Add to that the fact a Commissar can execute for a reroll....well....yeah.

The unique legion formations are too expensive. In most cases, taking full advantage means spending more than 70% of your points on troops. It does not leave enough room for other units.

The unique Legion formations are very nearly unplayable. Too many weird taxes and too many units that don't support one another. It's the typical CSM problem of being too expensive while also having almost no synergy. With the exception of Death Guard, all of our CSM folks are running CADs. A few of untried to make the Black Legion alpha strike thing work, but there's just too many things in the way so that seems to be abandoned for the time being.

The Legion specific rules ignore the most challenging aspects to each army. TS are still overcosted. Noise Marines still don't have relentless and their awesome guns still have salvo. Khorne Berzerkers still don't have enough punch to justify taking them over normal CSMs. Nurgle Marines are almost as good as Plague Marines for the points (but, admittedly, they have improved.)

- Many of the Legion command benefits are hobbled by a lack of tactics that could maximize their effectiveness. The Black Legion Speartip deepstrike rules are just good enough to get units on the board, but not to control where they land. The World Eaters movement buffs are just good enough to get units close to a first turn assault, but not quite enough to get there. The Kakophoni special rules would be great if only there was a way to shoot without moving. The Word Bearers rules around manifesting on summoning would be awesome if they had more psykers.

This is really the crux of the issues the book faces. While Traitor Legions itself is (IMO) a great book, it is built upon the broken and terrible foundation that is the current CSM codex. Most of the problems w/Traitor Legions actually come from the CSM book itself. For example, if the CSM book is costed appropriately, those Legion Decurions suddenly become more viable (although there are still a few tax units that don't necessarily make sense). I think this supplement will be crazy powerful if they actually fix the codex next edition. I'm talking 3.5 powerful. For now it's a good supplement hampered by a codex that was either written for an earlier edition but released in a different one, or written from a standpoint of %100 incompetence.


Personally, the reasons I like the supplement are that I literally got almost everything I wanted and have been asking for since 4th ed. I can play a fluffy army now that is actually still fairly powerful, I have some awesome new conversion ideas for my Iron Warriors, there are some strong rules interactions, and there's so darn much in that book that it could take years of playing to really see everything. I really think they hit it out of the ballpark.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:


I'll be perfectly honest here and state that I don't use the Plague Colony.

Hell, I've stopped using Plague Marines.

This is what I mean about the hype.

When Traitor Legions came out, for a lot of people it meant we could now run fluffy armies that have a chance to win.

The reality is the formations don't actually give us a way to use iconic units for each Legion. Either cult troops like Berzerkers and Plague Marines are being outclassed by normal CSMs, or the cost crowds out any other option you might want to take.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Simply put, normal CSM with ccw are cheaper and the Chaos Warband is a far better Core choice. Sure, it's not a Demi-Company but ObSec on units like Chaos Terminators and Havocs and the boon double-rolls combined with the Death Guard legion rules makes it a far better option. Sure, the Colony has that debuff aura going for it...but in a game where 2/3rds of games are determined by objective control things like ObSec T5 Fearless FNP Terminators are star performers.

I know just as many people reverting to a CAD to get ObSec. Another situation where ObSec outclasses the formation benefits is the Kakophoni. Even with Shred, Noise Marines still can't gain enough of an advantage to make taking the formation worth it.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Sonic Keyboard wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
word bearers test on 3d6 take the lowest

This would be pretty nice but it is HH only rule
Also Stubborn has nothing to do with Fear so commissars and Iron warriors aren't immune

Actually, Stubborn has a lot to do with Fear. It means the unit tests on its unmodified Leadership - so no stacking debuffs on the unit to force them to fail. As Most IW units and Commissars are Ld 10 the odds of them failing are very, very slim indeed. Add to that the fact a Commissar can execute for a reroll....well....yeah.

So I opened the rulebook and in special rules section, Stubborn specifically only affects Morale and Pinning. Fear special rule doesn't contin anything about Stubborn either.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
Also works well against Eldar

Unless they have an Avatar providing a 12 inch Fearless bubble. They're also high Ld by default.

How does an Avatar survive long enough to provide a Fearless bubble?

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
Also works well against Eldar

Unless they have an Avatar providing a 12 inch Fearless bubble. They're also high Ld by default.

How does an Avatar survive long enough to provide a Fearless bubble?

Do you people not know how to position things to ensure they have cover and that LoS is blocked? What tables are you playing on?

Completely Empty tables where you deploy the Avatar the opposite end of the rest of your army?

 techsoldaten wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:


I'll be perfectly honest here and state that I don't use the Plague Colony.

Hell, I've stopped using Plague Marines.

This is what I mean about the hype.

When Traitor Legions came out, for a lot of people it meant we could now run fluffy armies that have a chance to win.

The reality is the formations don't actually give us a way to use iconic units for each Legion. Either cult troops like Berzerkers and Plague Marines are being outclassed by normal CSMs, or the cost crowds out any other option you might want to take.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

Simply put, normal CSM with ccw are cheaper and the Chaos Warband is a far better Core choice. Sure, it's not a Demi-Company but ObSec on units like Chaos Terminators and Havocs and the boon double-rolls combined with the Death Guard legion rules makes it a far better option. Sure, the Colony has that debuff aura going for it...but in a game where 2/3rds of games are determined by objective control things like ObSec T5 Fearless FNP Terminators are star performers.

I know just as many people reverting to a CAD to get ObSec. Another situation where ObSec outclasses the formation benefits is the Kakophoni. Even with Shred, Noise Marines still can't gain enough of an advantage to make taking the formation worth it.

That's why I said it manages to disappoint as much as it succeeds. The parts that disappoint don't make our armies worse though, while at the same time all legions came out stronger than before while also matching their fluff closer. That's a win.
Even legion CADs for the various legions will look different.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Chaos Marines are a Worf Effect army?

More like one that suffers from Badass Decay.

In second edition, CSMs were the little darlings that could field a Chaos Lord who would eat one tactical squad a round without taking a wound. They could summon enough stuff that the army would double in size as the game went on.

In fourth point five edition, we saw them at their most enjoyable: less overpowered, but filled with fluffy options that made the army less one dimensional than all others.

Then came fifth edition. Berzerker spam seemed to be the only viable playlist, at least for me. They could take on just about anything unless it had too many tanks. Possessed, Thousand Sons, Noise Marines started getting blacklisted. Spawn were considered awful because of the mindless rule.

Then came sixth edition. The Codex promised some kind of renaissance in GW rulesmaking, but we found out CSMs were the only 'balanced' Codex. Every other Codex got stronger while cultists became CSM's only viable troop choice.

Then came seventh edition, new rules for flying creatures, new models for flyers, D weapons, grav, free transports, Eldar shennanigans, etc. CSMs actively compete with Orks and IG for the status of worst Codex.

Traitor's Hate and Traitor Legions bring CSMs in line with 7th edition, but I wonder how much people enjoy the new rules now that they have been out for a while.

I had high expectations for my Black Legion Speartip before I remembered Abaddon's 600 point melee Terminator squad can be destroyed by rolling a one on a deep strike mishap and there's nothing I can do to stop it. While I had a few games where things mostly went right, I realized there's only about a 30% chance of them landing within 6 inches of where they should. Not to mention a couple squads of gretchin can actually outshoot that same 600 point squad.

This is not a complaint, I will definitely keep playing around with my Black Legion list. It's more the realization that there was a lot of hype surrounding the release, and a desire to put the books in their proper place.

I understand this is your opinion but you have missed some very important things.

2ND: chaos was fun, it had a lot of character and a ton of options.

3RD: chaos was the most bland you could imagine, they lost almost every option and were likely the worst they have ever been.

3.5: this book more than made up for the pamphlet chaos dex in 3rd, it oozed character, options, and could produce all kinds of insanity, the best chaos has ever been.

4TH: they ripped the guts out of the chaos codex here, they made it as bland as they could, it was a horrible joke, still not as bland as the 3rd chaos dex, but worse on every level compared to the other books of its day.

5: there was no chaos dex in 5th worth mentioning.

6th: and 4th 2.0 strikes again, GW has not learned from its mistake and continues to make a dog crap army based on bland, outdated and frankly obsolete rules and costs, shocked I know.

and so we continue on with the total crap that is the 4th 2.0 chaos dex.

"Character" apparently == intricate chrome that needlessly complicates gameplay. The only good Chaos Codices were the 3E and 4E ones. 3.5 was fething stupid, with it's childish imagination-destroying special rules, and the current books are much the same. No imagination. Pure gak.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
"Character" apparently == intricate chrome that needlessly complicates gameplay. The only good Chaos Codices were the 3E and 4E ones. 3.5 was fething stupid, with it's childish imagination-destroying special rules, and the current books are much the same. No imagination. Pure gak.

Only responding to say it's not worth responding to.

3.5 Had options the same way that many codexes of its day had options. Chapter Traits for Space Marines, Regimental Doctrines for Imperial Guard, Mutations for Tyranids, Auxiliary armies such as Orks: Speed Freaks and Kroot Mercenaries. 4th Ed was the last edition of "rules without models". If you feel your imagination is being destroyed by more options, I think you're doing it wrong.

ERJAK wrote:
Go read imperial agents, when you're done vomiting and can get back to the safety of traitor legions you'll get just how awesome that book actually is.

Ha.

Yeah seriously. Sometimes you gotta be glad for what you get... otherwise you might essentially get nothing.

3.5 had false options which is why I only saw 4 Heavy Iron Warriors on the tabletop. Ohh... "character". Pure crap.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
"Character" apparently == intricate chrome that needlessly complicates gameplay. The only good Chaos Codices were the 3E and 4E ones. 3.5 was fething stupid, with it's childish imagination-destroying special rules, and the current books are much the same. No imagination. Pure gak.

3.5 had false options which is why I only saw 4 Heavy Iron Warriors on the tabletop. Ohh... "character". Pure crap.

Cute.

3.5 Had options the same way that many codexes of its day had options. Chapter Traits for Space Marines, Regimental Doctrines for Imperial Guard, Mutations for Tyranids, Auxiliary armies such as Orks: Speed Freaks and Kroot Mercenaries. 4th Ed was the last edition of "rules without models". If you feel your imagination is being destroyed by more options, I think you're doing it wrong.

Man the Tyranid Mutations were cool back in the day too.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Man the Tyranid Mutations were cool back in the day too.

Winged Hormagaunts were so OP

12" move 12" charge =D

 andysonic1 wrote:
I jumped ship from KDK to World Eaters because I wanted to play angry marines not angry deamons. My current list has 3 units of havocs, 3 units of CSM, and 3 units of bikes, and it scares the gak out of my opponent when all of that is halfway across the board turn one. Could it have been more competitive? Sure. Does it make fluffy armies playable? It sure does!

This. Almost verbatim, except I run a Demon Prince with the glaive. IMO it's gave each of the legions their own unique playstyle. Instead of running maroon spikey marines and calling them word bearers or something such nonsense we actually got rules that reflect the type of army/legion the player wants to field. Sure some of the auxiliaries could have been more open, but it's got to be the best thing to happen to chaos in a LONG time. And for me, personally the ability to play Alpha Legion kind of hit me out of nowhere. But in a very, very cool way. The ability to actually reflect the potency of abbas onset BL with the kabal and Speartip is really cool.as well (although some black legion marines need to find a way to mitigate mishaps. I mean steal the locator beacons off of a wrecked drop pod FFS.).


And as much criticism as I'm going to get for thos, I think it actually brought us up to participate (or very close to) the SM dex. The bonuses and command traits beat the hell out of CT. Take away skyhammer, smashfucker and gladius and I'd say we're on even ground.

Dantes_Baals wrote:
And as much criticism as I'm going to get for thos, I think it actually brought us up to participate (or very close to) the SM dex. The bonuses and command traits beat the hell out of CT. Take away skyhammer, smashfucker and gladius and I'd say we're on even ground.

Grav. Take Grav away from marines and suddenly they'd be back down at the bottom of T1/top of T2.

 Drasius wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
And as much criticism as I'm going to get for thos, I think it actually brought us up to participate (or very close to) the SM dex. The bonuses and command traits beat the hell out of CT. Take away skyhammer, smashfucker and gladius and I'd say we're on even ground.

Grav. Take Grav away from marines and suddenly they'd be back down at the bottom of T1/top of T2.

Take Grav away and suddenly Ad-Mech fall down too.

Grav is a problem. It's just too good an all rounder. It's the starcannon of 6th ed. onwards.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
And as much criticism as I'm going to get for thos, I think it actually brought us up to participate (or very close to) the SM dex. The bonuses and command traits beat the hell out of CT. Take away skyhammer, smashfucker and gladius and I'd say we're on even ground.

Grav. Take Grav away from marines and suddenly they'd be back down at the bottom of T1/top of T2.

Take Grav away and suddenly Ad-Mech fall down too.

Grav is a problem. It's just too good an all rounder. It's the starcannon of 6th ed. onwards.

Grav on Ad-Mec makes sense..

The sudden inclusion of Grav to marines when they really didn't need a new weapon, didn't really make sense fluff wise, and just overly buffed some units especially when combined with some formations.

Playing Tyranids and losing all of your MC's due to a few bike squads packing grav is never fun

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
3.5 had false options which is why I only saw 4 Heavy Iron Warriors on the tabletop. Ohh... "character". Pure crap.

Sorry your local meta sucked ass?

My local meta had...

2 World Eaters armies (though one player grumbled about the fact they were prone to disembarking from Rhinos to run off on foot - really, I would've paid 15 points for Child Locks too), 1 Emperor's Children Sonic-army (even with Sonic bikes), a Thousand Sons army, a Word Bearers daemon bomb army, my Death Guard (which at the time was being run as Plaguewing) and a single Iron Warriors army.

We can hate on 3.5 all day long. End of the day CSM 3.5 was on par with its environment in late 3rd/early 4th. It existed in the same period as Craftworld Eldar, SM Traits, IG Doctrines, 4th ed EW Tyranids and Tau Fish of Fury. I love how everyone forgets that.

Pretty easy to hate on a book for a single list option (OMG IW CHEESE) when you had SM Traits that were obvious freebies (Oh no, I can't take allies. Boo hoo) and a doctrine that granted rerolls on 1s to hit across a damn horde army.

GodDamUser wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Dantes_Baals wrote:
And as much criticism as I'm going to get for thos, I think it actually brought us up to participate (or very close to) the SM dex. The bonuses and command traits beat the hell out of CT. Take away skyhammer, smashfucker and gladius and I'd say we're on even ground.

Grav. Take Grav away from marines and suddenly they'd be back down at the bottom of T1/top of T2.

Take Grav away and suddenly Ad-Mech fall down too.
Yea grav sucks for the likes of Nids, but it's the loyalists only real way to deal with all the absurdly OP MCs. Whereas chaos has things like strength boosting demon weapons to throw on a prince, in addition to psychic shenanigans (shreik, lowering Toughness, summoning more M
Grav is a problem. It's just too good an all rounder. It's the starcannon of 6th ed. onwards.

Grav on Ad-Mec makes sense..

The sudden inclusion of Grav to marines when they really didn't need a new weapon, didn't really make sense fluff wise, and just overly buffed some units especially when combined with some formations.

Playing Tyranids and losing all of your MC's due to a few bike squads packing grav is never fun

Grav is the loyalists only real way of dealing with the absurdly OP MCs. Yea it sucks for nids, but really these days, what doesn't? Chaos has strength boosting demon weapons, the ever popular rapid fire plasma on cheap termicide units and even the ordinary marine squad. and the best psykers in the game (with the ability to summon more MCs, reduce toughness etc).

I agree, grav spammed is ridiculous, but that is why the cannons cost as much as a damn terminator. If the roll to hot misses, you just lost an entire LOS worth of points. As I said, the problem lies in certain formations. A CAD or even double CAD will usually have grav cannons kept in check because they cost so much.

I do believe grav would of been less of a issue if it wasn't Salvo.. that is also what makes them really annoying

I would like to take the time to remind the OP that we came SOOOOO close to having a top tier option in the Black Legion Speartip. If they allowed us to take a Chaos Warband inside the Speartip decurion instead of the crapluster Black Legion Warband we could have an option on par with SM gladius. But alas. Chaos.

But to answer your question I think at this point almost every chaos player expects to be a bottom tier force and looks at any slight buff as a godsend. Which honestly it is. Between TH and TL we got pushed up to solid mid tier. But of alot of your critiques about TL are SPOT ON. This book only fixxed a fraction of issues and still left the crap as crap. For instance, you have even LESS reason to take zerkers now that world eater marines pretty much get buffed to be zerkers without the chain axes (those mighty chain axes!). Helbrutes, maulerfiends and forgefiends are still paper thin and overcosted.And our tanks are still bland vanilla affairs with the worst LR variant in the game as our only option. But one must remember that fully half of our codex is infantry of some sort and things like DP's benefit from many of the legion rules.

I just wish the TS were playable outside of sorc spam with demon allies and Magnus lists. Many problems still exist at the end of the day (zerkers being cabbage, Rubrics being double costed, Noise Marines salvo fire weapons ect ect.) And honestly im not sure those will ever be fixed. They had a perfect opportunity with WoM to fix rubrics but did nothing.

But at the end of the day we do have some of the most awesome mini's avail with some solid fluff (outside of the recent saturday morning cartoon affairs with failbaddon).

It gave DG, WE, and EC a massive leg-up, boosting them to mid-tier. Though SMs pay 1 more point per model for pseudo-Fearless, these spikey boyz just got Fearless baked into VotLW. And while they lack the free transports, doctrines, grav, drop pods/null deployment etc, they did get other bonuses in the form of FnPs etc.

The rest got fluffy rules (though I'm not entirely convinced by the Alpha Legion rules, just giving everything Infiltrate is fething lazy), which is better than nothing. Thousand Sons became a lot more viable due to improved Invulnerable saves, and Iron Warriors have a reason to take fortifications.

 techsoldaten wrote:
In second edition, CSMs were the little darlings that could field a Chaos Lord who would eat one tactical squad a round without taking a wound.

How did that work? You could only kill what was in b2b contact and obviously only idiot would put voluntarily more models than you were able to move into contact unless it gave them advantage.

You charge in. Struggle to get more than 1 into b2b as obviously enemy has spread up. You kill 1, maybe 2. Consolidiate into next 1-2. Next turn kill those. 4 turn game, 8 combat phase max. Since you weren't likely to get 1st turn charge you would struggle to kill full tac squad in a game!

Also pretty sure summoned daemons you still had to pay points and you still had to summon them up. So it was actually generally worse than just having since to get bloodthirster you either had to get into combat ASAP(remember 4 turn games) or sacrifice character.

Tycho wrote:

The unique legion formations are too expensive. In most cases, taking full advantage means spending more than 70% of your points on troops. It does not leave enough room for other units.

The unique Legion formations are very nearly unplayable. Too many weird taxes and too many units that don't support one another. It's the typical CSM problem of being too expensive while also having almost no synergy. With the exception of Death Guard, all of our CSM folks are running CADs. A few of untried to make the Black Legion alpha strike thing work, but there's just too many things in the way so that seems to be abandoned for the time being.

belive it or not this is something they share with space Marines, once you remove the "free rhinos gimmic" the basic gladius has very similer problems of large expensive aux formations I don't nesscarily mind that but woulda prefered some other options that way. I'm debating how to build a new UM force for gulliman, and as useal the auxillery is kind of a pain. I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

BrianDavion wrote:
I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

One could say that's disadvantage(ie cost) to have all the benefits you get over CAD. That's theory at least though whether that's enough to compensate for all the free transports...

tneva82 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

One could say that's disadvantage(ie cost) to have all the benefits you get over CAD. That's theory at least though whether that's enough to compensate for all the free transports...

except the free transports aren't part of the base gladius, you ONLY get those if you take a BATTLE COMPANY. also I was talking about the new ultramarines formation which doesn't give any free rhinos.

it does however give OS to everything that isn't a vehicle, and the ability to take a strike force ultra as a core choice (which would be awesome... if terminators where, ya know, any good

tneva82 wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
In second edition, CSMs were the little darlings that could field a Chaos Lord who would eat one tactical squad a round without taking a wound.

How did that work? You could only kill what was in b2b contact and obviously only idiot would put voluntarily more models than you were able to move into contact unless it gave them advantage.

You charge in. Struggle to get more than 1 into b2b as obviously enemy has spread up. You kill 1, maybe 2. Consolidiate into next 1-2. Next turn kill those. 4 turn game, 8 combat phase max. Since you weren't likely to get 1st turn charge you would struggle to kill full tac squad in a game!

Also pretty sure summoned daemons you still had to pay points and you still had to summon them up. So it was actually generally worse than just having since to get bloodthirster you either had to get into combat ASAP(remember 4 turn games) or sacrifice character.

Originally, I did not want to respond to this obvious attempt to highjack a thread with a discussion about 2nd edition mechanics. Then I noticed you called someone an idiot.

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

If you have ever deep striked you know it's not that hard to get 4 to 5 to squeeze in around a model. Sometimes, it did take more than a single round to kill a tactical squad. Sometimes the Chaos Lord would also kill things that were not tactical squads, like assault squads.

2nd Edition Daemons arrived via summoning. Yes, they replaced characters when they arrived, it was cool. Much more reliable than Deep Strike Mishaps, Perils, Daemonic Instability, etc.

Again, if it helps to know this, sometimes your sorcerer would die and a Greater Daemon could not be summoned. It was always sad when that happened. But it happened a lot less frequently than the stuff listed above.

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

Somehow this just sounds like a really bad idea rather then just.. Going into overwatch and shooting him when he attempts to move, or just shooting him normally. Why would you charge a Tactical Squad to someone dedicated to Melee in 2nd?

I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

Still better then the Warp Smith tax on nearly all Vehicle types.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

Somehow this just sounds like a really bad idea rather then just.. Going into overwatch and shooting him when he attempts to move, or just shooting him normally. Why would you charge a Tactical Squad to someone dedicated to Melee in 2nd?

I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

Still better then the Warp Smith tax on nearly all Vehicle types.

only by virtue of the tech marine being cheaper. it's still annoying for both CSMs and C:SMs. partiuclarly as I don't feel personally fielding THAT many tanks is terriably normal for space marines (chaos OR loyalist) to accompany a demi-company sized force.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Originally, I did not want to respond to this obvious attempt to highjack a thread with a discussion about 2nd edition mechanics. Then I noticed you called someone an idiot.

Not really calling anybody since I don't know anybody who would send more troops in who can't kill him. Since I presume nobody is as stupid I presume there's some wargear combo I have missed that allows chaos lord to kill more than what's in b2b.

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

So if squad has odds to kill the chaos lord then chaos lord wasn't that unfair now was it? After all TACTICAL marines have now fighting chance.

If they don't(and you can calculate it easily) then what happens is tactical marines keep just feeding 1-2 models to the close combat.

If opponent doesn't WANT your character to kill more than 1-2 he does not kill him. Simple as that. You cannot kill what you aren't in base to base contact and you were in no obligation to move into b2b contact.

Only reason tactical marines are piling in is if that means they have chance to kill him. Which means chaos lord isn't unkillable broken model if tactical squad can overcome him.

Characters in 2nd ed are good at killing characters, tanks etc single models. Poor at killing entire units.

2nd Edition Daemons arrived via summoning. Yes, they replaced characters when they arrived, it was cool. Much more reliable than Deep Strike Mishaps, Perils, Daemonic Instability, etc.

Again, if it helps to know this, sometimes your sorcerer would die and a Greater Daemon could not be summoned. It was always sad when that happened. But it happened a lot less frequently than the stuff listed above.

Yes but that means you have paid a) cost of daemon b) cost of character. This does not result in army size INCREASING midgame. Okay model wise if you summon by summon points it could but that's just because you started with only part of your army on board. No different than deep strikers in 7th ed.

I like the new rules. It did take about 3 months for me to get my hands on a book but overall I think it gave Chaos players what they were looking for without letting us forget it was GW 'giving' us these boons... :(

My only gripe is that they don't function at lower points levels. I'm not a great player and I'm not a fast player, yet. I prefer to play around 1k - 1250 pts and that really hobbles your ability to work with some of those formations. Noise Marine benefits don't really kick in until you field the max squads (and if you're looking to play fluffy they're all 6 man squads, can we PLEASE GET RAZORBACKS?!?). Rhinos for survivability (decked with dirge casters) weighs in around 1250 pts with a decent HQ.

Why do Eldar Aspect Hosts get the same level benefits with half the required squads? It just makes it difficult to see any changes when you're not going tournament level points for your game. And more, it makes your army REALLY one-dimensional if you have no flexibility in designating inclusions because the requirements eat so many points.

Also, what's up with the Auxiliary formations? Same deal PLUS an extra HQ for some.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

Somehow this just sounds like a really bad idea rather then just.. Going into overwatch and shooting him when he attempts to move, or just shooting him normally. Why would you charge a Tactical Squad to someone dedicated to Melee in 2nd?

Don't ask me to explain why people do what they do. Hindsight is 20/20, you are talking about pre-Internet second edition tactics.

The original point is Chaos Lords were beasts. Running one solo meant you could destroy entire units regardless of who charged who.

Dantes_Baals wrote:
Grav is the loyalists only real way of dealing with the absurdly OP MCs. Yea it sucks for nids, but really these days, what doesn't? Chaos has strength boosting demon weapons, the ever popular rapid fire plasma on cheap termicide units and even the ordinary marine squad. and the best psykers in the game (with the ability to summon more MCs, reduce toughness etc).

I agree, grav spammed is ridiculous, but that is why the cannons cost as much as a damn terminator. If the roll to hot misses, you just lost an entire LOS worth of points. As I said, the problem lies in certain formations. A CAD or even double CAD will usually have grav cannons kept in check because they cost so much.

How do you figure that grav is your only answer when you can have combi-plas sternguard in pods delete any MC on landing and still have the option of just spamming 2+ rapidifre poison ammo at any non-GMC with spectalar odds of dropping it. As for chaos getting str boosting daemon weapons, that requires being in CC which is laughably sub-par compared to shooting and our psychers are about even with conclave psychers who're casting on 2's and have drop pods to come down safely wherever they like. I'm also not sure how you're getting cheap combi plas termies when it's 184 for 5 termies with combi plas who won't come down until T2 at the earliest and can easily scatter into terrain while it's 195 for 5 combi-plas sternguard in a pod who will always come down T1 (unless you want to save them for later) and the odds of them mishapping off the board are infinitesimally small along with the fact that they've got a second unit in a pod that is annoying to take care of for many armies. No, please don't cry that SM desperatly need grav to deal with MC's - you've already got plenty of options, more than almost anyone else whose not Eldar.

Cannons cost as much as a terminator because they're insanly good. Even at 35ppm they're still undercosted. 2x plasma guns is 30 points and puts out 4 shots at 12" and Gets Hot! while a grav cannon is 35 points, puts out 5 shots at 24", doesn't get hot and re-rolls to wound/pen. Against anything with a 2+ save, a single grav cannon is the equivalent of 5 half range lascannons. That's 100 points worth of shots for 35 points! On average, a single grav cannon will immobilise anything it's pointed at. For something designed to counter MC's, it does a pretty incredible job at countering everything else that's not bolter-bait as well. It takes 3 lascannons to do a single HP to AV13 while a single grav cannon will immobilise it (and do a hull point). Again, that's 60 points of dedicated anti tank getting outperformed by a 35 point gun that's meant to be used on MC's and heavy infantry.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

2nd Edition Chaos Lords got to eat tactical squads in a single turn when that squad charges him in the hand-to-hand phase. It was this old tactic people used to use, where they would throw a lot of attacks at a model to try to kill it.

Somehow this just sounds like a really bad idea rather then just.. Going into overwatch and shooting him when he attempts to move, or just shooting him normally. Why would you charge a Tactical Squad to someone dedicated to Melee in 2nd?

Don't ask me to explain why people do what they do. Hindsight is 20/20, you are talking about pre-Internet second edition tactics.

The original point is Chaos Lords were beasts. Running one solo meant you could destroy entire units regardless of who charged who.

And cheap Eldar Guardians with Shurikens ignored practically all armour saves in the game, Tyranids could kill all psykers on the board with Screaming, and Space Wolves could originally take entire squads of terminators with assault cannons and cyclones on everyone.

2nd certainly wasn't the most balanced edition to say the least. .

Table wrote:
I would like to take the time to remind the OP that we came SOOOOO close to having a top tier option in the Black Legion Speartip. If they allowed us to take a Chaos Warband inside the Speartip decurion instead of the crapluster Black Legion Warband we could have an option on par with SM gladius. But alas. Chaos.

The Black Legion Speartip does not secure objectives. The Black Legion Speartip murders it's way across the table with Hounds of Abbadon, featuring basic CSMs with:

Endless Hatred
Veterans of the Long War
Rage (Mark of Khorne for free)
Crusader
charge rolls of 8+ give them a bonus Strength
once per game can Charge after Running

Icon of Wrath for
Furious Charge
Re-roll Charge distances

When you get 10 guys throwing 40 attacks, re-rolling to hit at S 6. . . fun times!


I always found the Deep Striking thing for BL a bit of a red herring.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Table wrote:
I would like to take the time to remind the OP that we came SOOOOO close to having a top tier option in the Black Legion Speartip. If they allowed us to take a Chaos Warband inside the Speartip decurion instead of the crapluster Black Legion Warband we could have an option on par with SM gladius. But alas. Chaos.

The Black Legion Speartip does not secure objectives. The Black Legion Speartip murders it's way across the table with Hounds of Abbadon, featuring basic CSMs with:

Endless Hatred
Veterans of the Long War
Rage (Mark of Khorne for free)
Crusader
charge rolls of 8+ give them a bonus Strength
once per game can Charge after Running

Icon of Wrath for
Furious Charge
Re-roll Charge distances

When you get 10 guys throwing 40 attacks, re-rolling to hit at S 6. . . fun times!


I always found the Deep Striking thing for BL a bit of a red herring.

While im glad (honestly, no snark) that this works for your meta, it certainly does not in mine. Just as with gladius, sometimes you get in games with Tau and Eldar where you die before you make CC. When facing a superior foe the best thing to do is to take objectives and kill what you can after. For me, in my meta, the stats you listed are nothing special and in reality those squads in the hounds wont make CC 75% of the time. The age old problem of chaos is now in play. Competent CC troops with no way to get them into CC (well any decent way). Which, the speartip tries to fix in a round about way. The hounds also do not make use of the speartips buff.

Taking 2-3 objectives on turn 1 with obsec is nothing to sneeze at and can stack up the points in your favor. I cant remember a time where I wanted to throw a squad of marines into close combat with the CHANCE of them getting str 6 with ap - weapons. Let alone I cant remember a time when my opponent would have allowed it. Regardless meta's tend to swing wildly and there are ones where your tactic would be decent. The Speartip is all about deepstriking on turn 1. Its the entire reason for taking it. The hounds dont do anything to help you achieve that.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Table wrote:
I would like to take the time to remind the OP that we came SOOOOO close to having a top tier option in the Black Legion Speartip. If they allowed us to take a Chaos Warband inside the Speartip decurion instead of the crapluster Black Legion Warband we could have an option on par with SM gladius. But alas. Chaos.

The Black Legion Speartip does not secure objectives. The Black Legion Speartip murders it's way across the table with Hounds of Abbadon, featuring basic CSMs with:

Endless Hatred
Veterans of the Long War
Rage (Mark of Khorne for free)
Crusader
charge rolls of 8+ give them a bonus Strength
once per game can Charge after Running

Icon of Wrath for
Furious Charge
Re-roll Charge distances

When you get 10 guys throwing 40 attacks, re-rolling to hit at S 6. . . fun times!


I always found the Deep Striking thing for BL a bit of a red herring.

What's the catch?

Table wrote:

While im glad (honestly, no snark) that this works for your meta, it certainly does not in mine. Just as with gladius, sometimes you get in games with Tau and Eldar where you die before you make CC. When facing a superior foe the best thing to do is to take objectives and kill what you can after. For me, in my meta, the stats you listed are nothing special and in reality those squads in the hounds wont make CC 75% of the time. The age old problem of chaos is now in play. Competent CC troops with no way to get them into CC (well any decent way). Which, the speartip tries to fix in a round about way. The hounds also do not make use of the speartips buff.

Taking 2-3 objectives on turn 1 with obsec is nothing to sneeze at and can stack up the points in your favor. I cant remember a time where I wanted to throw a squad of marines into close combat with the CHANCE of them getting str 6 with ap - weapons. Let alone I cant remember a time when my opponent would have allowed it. Regardless meta's tend to swing wildly and there are ones where your tactic would be decent. The Speartip is all about deepstriking on turn 1. Its the entire reason for taking it. The hounds dont do anything to help you achieve that.

I feel ya, but I just really disagree about the Deep Striking turn 1 bit when Deep Striking can be so unreliable. I think it's a neat option to have, but because I'm not guaranteed to stick the landing I'm not that keen on it. Because I'm traditionally a Loyalist (with incredible Drop Pod capability), Deep Striking without the reliability, especially with expensive squads and your Warlord, seems like a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. (The Hounds can take advantage of it with Raptors, for what it's worth) For me the Speartip bonus of Crusader is the big boon, as the Hounds can charge after the2d6-take-the-highest Run, and everybody else gets across the table quicker. I didn't think much of it either, until my first game where I assaulted with five units at once in the second turn (three of them getting the Strength bonus, too).

It's a completely different type of army though. It's not a finesse landing with special weapons type of thing, it's more like Chaos Orks, where mobs of guys are crossing the table extremely fast.

Speaking of which, I've been landing some first turn charges through Psychic powers. Soulswitch and Worldwrithe have done me well. Not to mention you can't Interceptor them like you could against the Deep Strikers.

Playing with lot's of basic CSMs is totally not to everyone's taste, but its giving me results and I'll keep finessing the list and my play with it. I'm still making mistakes and there are some adjustments I can make (I'm trying to only play with painted models too, which slows me down a bit), but I remain excited about the potential.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:

What's the catch?

You have to paint a lot of basic CSMs? I'd like to finish 40 of them, and . . .ugh. Right now I have more Berzerkes painted, and point for point they're not as good as the "Hounded" basic guys, so my build isn't as efficient as it could be.


But oh man, when that Lord with the Axe of Blind fury rolls +5 or 6 attacks for the Daemon Weapon, is re-rolling to hit and swings at S 10, it feels great.

Did you get around to trying a blob or two?

 Insectum7 wrote:
You have to paint a lot of basic CSMs? I'd like to finish 40 of them, and . . .ugh.

Only forty? Sir, let me introduce you to Orks and Imperial Guard!

 Roknar wrote:
Did you get around to trying a blob or two?

Yeah I did! Took me a game to get over and solve the Chaos lack of ATSKNF though Now the Lord usually hangs with my big blob and my Sorcerers hang with the Spawn to not get run down if I lose a combat (I got hit hard by daemons in my second game). My third game saw the 20 man blob finish off a Dreadknight with sheer weight of attacks, then carry on to kill or chase off everything else on that flank. The Hatred coupled with Rage and either S 5 or 6 drowns a lot of units in wounds.

Right now I just have the one big blob, but I'm aiming for either two blobs or one of 20 and two of 10. I love the idea of 60, but I want to get a better handle on the army before I commit to it. The psyker reinforced blitz on foot is still something I'm figuring out.

 Melissia wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
You have to paint a lot of basic CSMs? I'd like to finish 40 of them, and . . .ugh.

Only forty? Sir, let me introduce you to Orks and Imperial Guard!

Heh, back when I was painting commissions I did a Sisters army in batches of 40 for 120 "troops of the line". I like big armies, my SM army tended towards 80 infantry in 1850. IG and Orks arent my thing, but if I ever get into Tyranids again it's going to get stupid. The issue is more that all models I paint these days are for "forever", so they get more attention than they might otherwise, plus all the damn trim everywhere on the CSMs.

Insectum7 wrote:

Table wrote:
I would like to take the time to remind the OP that we came SOOOOO close to having a top tier option in the Black Legion Speartip. If they allowed us to take a Chaos Warband inside the Speartip decurion instead of the crapluster Black Legion Warband we could have an option on par with SM gladius. But alas. Chaos.

The Black Legion Speartip does not secure objectives. The Black Legion Speartip murders it's way across the table with Hounds of Abbadon, featuring basic CSMs with:

Endless Hatred
Veterans of the Long War
Rage (Mark of Khorne for free)
Crusader
charge rolls of 8+ give them a bonus Strength
once per game can Charge after Running

Icon of Wrath for
Furious Charge
Re-roll Charge distances

When you get 10 guys throwing 40 attacks, re-rolling to hit at S 6. . . fun times!


I always found the Deep Striking thing for BL a bit of a red herring.

Why not just play WE then?

gnome_idea_what wrote:
What's the catch?

All of the buffs he listed only work in CC, so unless you actually make combat, you're not really achieving anything.

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.
2: Mixing and matching marks in the army
3: Endless Hatred
3: Cyclopea Cabal
4: Paint job.

IMO the Hounds basic CSM is cheaper and better than the basic WE guy. Havocs in a WE army have to take the MoK, and I'd rather my eventual Havocs not pay the extra 2 ppm, and that the army be more or less unified in color scheme. I can have MoN Bikers, MoN Obliterators, and MoN Spawn, if I like.

 Drasius wrote:

gnome_idea_what wrote:
What's the catch?

All of the buffs he listed only work in CC, so unless you actually make combat, you're not really achieving anything.

So far the Sorcerers and Massed Assault (Charge after Run) have worked pretty well for that.

(whoah, weird formatting issues)

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

It's a good point about the Re-rollable Assault and Furious Charge, but do they have Hatred? Endless Hatred for me has been incredible as a 10 man Squad hits 30 times instead of 20 on the Charge, the re-rolls smooth out otherwise dangerous swings of the dice gods, and re-rolliing with a powered up Lord has been amazing.

There's a minor aside to be said about economy, as a 20 man Hounds Squad with an Icon costs 20 points less than a 20 man WE Squad, but at 10 it's a wash, and there's always the risk that the Icon gets killed off anyways for some reason. (I also had to learn Icon management after my first couple games, bad placement just got it killed). But those differences are minor to me when compared to overall army flexibility and Hatred.

Agree on rule of cool though. My loyalists are painted white, so having the traitors painted black pleases me.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Did you get around to trying a blob or two?

Yeah I did! Took me a game to get over and solve the Chaos lack of ATSKNF though Now the Lord usually hangs with my big blob and my Sorcerers hang with the Spawn to not get run down if I lose a combat (I got hit hard by daemons in my second game). My third game saw the 20 man blob finish off a Dreadknight with sheer weight of attacks, then carry on to kill or chase off everything else on that flank. The Hatred coupled with Rage and either S 5 or 6 drowns a lot of units in wounds.

Right now I just have the one big blob, but I'm aiming for either two blobs or one of 20 and two of 10. I love the idea of 60, but I want to get a better handle on the army before I commit to it. The psyker reinforced blitz on foot is still something I'm figuring out.

I was playing around with a similar idea. Three of the BL objectives are about killing units, one of which requires units with VotLW. Two more trigger on morale checks (and fear), which triggers on shooting as well as melee and one on malefic. So you'd need lots of VotLW units and some psykers. The warband fits the bill for this, since they plan on killing anyway and get better at it when they do, plus they can take an optional sorcerer.

Chosen and/or termies are shooty as well as decent in assaults so work on both fronts. Ectomancy has shooty as well as choppy spells.
Should you roll ghost storm you could teleport chosen into rapid fire range or maybe rhinos for dirge casters.
Soulswitch to charge said chosen or anything really and this would work with summoned daemons too if there isn't a unit in range to switch or TAF termies for T1 assaults.
Three witchfires help you soften up units to activate preferred enemy in the shooting phase. Yuranthos also helps with that and you really only need a single roll on malefic.

Mix in a few bikes and you should have a fairly mobile army that plays to its objective and has good mix of melee and shooting despite being mostly footslogging. In theory anyway.
Would be nice to mix in a CAD for an exalted sorcerer too, divination is excellent for this. Problem, as so often, are points though. The more special weapons you bring and psykers, the less points you have for bodies and to make the warband work you really need a lot of units from one warband.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 andysonic1 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

Why not just play WE then?

1: Because WE pay for their MoK. The Hounds don't.

Yeah, but you have to pay for your reroll to charge and Furious Charge. They're also fearless in WE and get a free pre-game 2D6 free move per unit AFTER the seize roll. The Hounds basic CSM with MoK may be cheaper, but it isn't better unless it somehow gains fearless from something I don't know about. I concede the point about MoK Havocs, however you could always run them with melta guns alongside the charging madmen.

But if you want to make Black Legion then by all means, it's your army and rule of cool is absolute.

Depends on how you look at it. (from the black legion tactica)
Hounds of Abandon
rage, counter-attack, furious charge (sorta)
1 turn of run+charge
fearless (mandatory lord)
hatred everybody + extra hatred imperium
crusader
fear ( nobody cares)

World Eaters warband
rage, counter-attack. furious charge.
1 turn of free 2d6 move
fearless
re-roll charge
OB-sec
adamantium will (nobody cares)

Fearless can be gained by sticking a lord into the unit. You save more by bringing more marines so a fearless ,fairly fast, blob isn't THAT bad of an escort.
Though spawn are cheaper yet and actually a little bit faster than other legions, since they too get crusader.
The free moves aren't that different really. Over two turns you will move 6 inch twice in both cases. WE also move 2d6 in the first turn, while BL move 2d6 by running in the first two turns.The only difference is a potential additional 1d6 run in the first turn for WE, but without crusader, so it kind of evens out. Although obviously hounds can't use it re-deploy and it's only the basic csm that can keep up, rather than being an armywide thing, but yea.

So that one unit you let the lord join is pretty much identical to WE, except it has hatred with potential S6, crusader helps it sweep better and you do get a combat result bonus from the banner.I'll have to admit that it's a flawed comparison due to the lord still being better off with spawn.
Without the lord though you could still opt for the fearless banner for a worse version of furious charge. On the plus side, that allows for fnp via the auloth legacy I guess.
I suppose you could also treat the lord as a 30 point champion and just skimp on the icon altogether with a pretty naked lord, but meh.

Ultimately though, they're both very similar. If you don't care about objectives, BL will be just that little bit more killy and fearless or not, a blob isn't that likely to break especially with ld10. Although the difference isn't always going to matter. WE on the other hand have Objective secured, which is obviously good. Still, they're going to take objectives in combat, and a blob of hounds has a pretty good shot at killing or sweeping a unit off of an objective too. I'd give ObSec the edge , but it's not like hounds can't take objectives.

I'd say BL has the advantage of taking a cabal to buff them further, but as a stand alone formation that's really not saying much unless you insist on sticking to one legion or don't want any filthy psykers lol.

WE can charge turn 1, hounds can't. WE also have hatred: Marines from VotLW, so that's something (sometimes, depending on how often you play against marines). WE move 2d6+6 and then charge or run (plus 3" for move,run & charge for the unit with the talisman lord, but that's going to be something killy, not regular marines), BL moves 6+d6.

The hounds also need to take at least 1 unit of 'zerks and 1 unit of MoK marines (even though the mark is free), while a WE warband is only required to take 2 units of MoK marines, saving you 10 points (though the free mark on the lord and mandatory FA choice will mean the warband costs more eventually even only considering the equivalent units).

Overall, I think I'd rather have the WE, but if the Hounds are getting the job done for you, awesome!

I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

 koooaei wrote:
I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

Of course min squad MoK marines are going to do nothing they are most likely getting shot off the table before they get halfway up the board. We aren't talking about min squads because everyone has realized min squad marines are useless. We're talking about 10 man and 20 man squads, which actually do work since they are more difficult to remove and can lay down some serious pain. Their survivability is only in numbers and their damage output is again only in numbers. They aren't like other units where you can rely on multi wounds, 2+ save, and awesome artifacts.

BrianDavion wrote:

Tycho wrote:

The unique legion formations are too expensive. In most cases, taking full advantage means spending more than 70% of your points on troops. It does not leave enough room for other units.

The unique Legion formations are very nearly unplayable. Too many weird taxes and too many units that don't support one another. It's the typical CSM problem of being too expensive while also having almost no synergy. With the exception of Death Guard, all of our CSM folks are running CADs. A few of untried to make the Black Legion alpha strike thing work, but there's just too many things in the way so that seems to be abandoned for the time being.

belive it or not this is something they share with space Marines, once you remove the "free rhinos gimmic" the basic gladius has very similer problems of large expensive aux formations I don't nesscarily mind that but woulda prefered some other options that way. I'm debating how to build a new UM force for gulliman, and as useal the auxillery is kind of a pain. I don't have the option to take 1 or two predators, I have to take 3. unsquadroned, with a tech marine

3 scout squads is not expensive.

 koooaei wrote:
I've played world eaters decurion 4 or 5 times and regular marines (i took 2 min squads with bp+ccw) have done close to nothing. The job's done by ic, spawns and termies.
What's the point of arguing weather WE or HoA marines are better if marines rarely even matter anywayz?

They'd be amazing if they had trukks. But as is, there's just not much you can do with a bunch of relatively slow mellee dudes without much durability or killing power vs real mellee units. All they did for me was sit on a point around the midfield, score and prevent opponent from getting the point with chaff units. But most meq units can do that.

Andysonic1 already mentioned it, but you're not killing by virtue of quality attacks. Consider a blob of hounds, if even only half of those make it, that's still 40 S6 (more often than not) attacks with hatred.
That's enough to kill 4 TEQ without considering any attached IC's, special weapons or shooting first. And then there's still 20 bolt pistol shots in this case to consider.
It gets the job done. You don't really want to take min sized squads because, as you say, they tend to do nothing unless they can sit on an objective which hounds in particular have no reason to do at all. At least no longer than it takes to bully a unit off of an objective.

@ Drasius: Yea WE can potentially charge turn 1 without psychic support. That's definitely an advantage they have over hounds, but it's also not going to happen every time. Just like hounds won't be S6 every time.
Both have a very good chance of assaulting turn 2 though and in that case move at almost the same speed. Assuming hounds can get enough models into base contact, ObSec vs S6/hatred/icon/crusader should also about even out on taking objectives
I'd be interesting to see some statistics on the tabletop performance for the two. I'd say on average they'd performance roughly the same. Even against other marines because while WE gain hatred too, BL gain even better hatred in that case.
Although I think say hounds want to take more marines per unit compared to WE to get the most out of their attacks. Which means more units for WE to take more objectives at the same time. That might skew stats in favour of WE.

That isn't saying anything on the rest of the army mind you. Hounds are cheaper as a formation than a warband is without even considering marks, so that leaves you with more options and as a legion they have more options yet by virtue of having access to all marks and more formations. Personally, I prefer not to mix legions so that's an advantage to me. And BL isn't quite as shoehorned into assaults as WE are even when taking hounds. But yea, I think a hound based assault army and you're average WE army are going to be similar enough to point it becomes personal preference as to which is better. And meta of course.

The barrier was set so low to 'improving' Chaos Space Marines that anything was an improvement, even Traitor's Hate.

You are in a desert, have been for weeks. You ran out of water 2 days ago and all the other travelers are on camels with casks of water to drink from, except for maybe that weird green guy with the odd british accent you saw a ways back. Suddenly, you find a canteen filled with cold, sweet iced water. It isn't much, but after a few days in the desert getting spit on by other travelers and dying of thirst it is a god send.