Referring to them having their own codex. I recently brushed off the dust from my old chaos, and found that I had a lot of Khorne stuff. Out of curiosity, I had a look at the World Eater's codex, and found myself severely unenthused.

One Battleline unit (Berzerkers)

Five infantry units, one of which is a direct repeat from CSM (Terminators) and 2 of which are basically the same (Eightbound / Exalted Eightbound)

One Beast

9 vehicles, 8 of which are just CSM staples.

5 characters.

And that's it. I made a 1k list and ended up 40 points short because of the lack of options.

It really seems to me like they are just unnecessary bloat which could all have fit into a detachment rule for Chaos Space Marines. Am I the only one who feels this?

It's all rather one-dimensional. You can have berzerk melee cultists, berzerk melee marines, berzerk melee marines +1, or berzerk melee marines +2... I got quite excited when I first heard the name Jakhals, I was hoping they were dog-faced beastmen of Khorne, but nope. Would like GW to rediscover things like Red Butchers and Teeth Of Khorne, and give them dedicated sets.

I was collecting World Eaters before the dedicated codex, and so far I'm still running them as CSMs as about half of my collection aren't in the WE codex and I think Eightbound are silly.

They deserve their own codex and it should be one dimensional. Adding more unique units could take away from the distinctiveness of the Berzerkers themselves.

Would be fine if they added in some of the Forgeworld Daemon Engines and Juggernaut mounted infantry. 2nd edition lists had Teeth of Khorne units, who were Havocs. See them as the outer edge of what could round out the army.

Honestly, if the Berzerkers themselves had better stat lines, I'd be happy with a Codex of just them, Kharn, Angron, Terminators, Rhinos and maybe a generic lord.

Honestly I’m fine with either, but GW needs to pick a lane.

If you want a stand alone codex, you need enough in there to justify it.

If you want to wrap it back up in the main book, be sure to have enough options to make theme armies for distinct subfactions.

This limbo where they are on thier own, but not enough meat to stand solo is a horrible place to be.

Crispy78 wrote:
It's all rather one-dimensional. You can have berzerk melee cultists, berzerk melee marines, berzerk melee marines +1, or berzerk melee marines +2...

I have the same view on EC.

I'm not sure I'd call either "unnecessary bloat" - but for some reason I think Death Guard and even Thousand Sons have a lot more dimensions to potential lists (ignoring competitiveness).

It perhaps doesn't help that some of the detachments are just... Tabletop Simulator bait? I'd like to give Cult of Blood a try for instance. But I can't believe anyone sane would own the models.
(This being the internet, someone below me is going to say "but I play Cult of Blood, here's my army...")

The current state is definitely worst of both worlds.

Emperor's Children are even worse. They don't get Predator tanks for arbitrary reasons (even WE get those), leaving the army critically lacking fire support. In theory they could be balanced around this, and sort of were, but that then meant that when they got Defilers, they shot up to become immensely powerful (exacerbated by Defilers being so strong even in a vacuum).

I still think the cult legions should be part of the main book. They should be like armies of infamy in TOW, getting certain restrictions in exchange for additional units and altered mechanics.

Can't see why there isn't two sets of marines - the renegades with the mark of that god and then the legionnaires (khorne berserkers). Works for each of the 4 legions really.

Roll them all into one book and while your at it roll the snowflake marine chapters into one book too!

 Da Boss wrote:
Roll them all into one book and while your at it roll the snowflake marine chapters into one book too!

To be honest, with detachments being what they are, I wouldn't be surprised if they did that.

If you balanced the detachments and say "Each army must have 1 detachment which defines their chapter", make those 1-2DP depending on their power, then give them a range of 1-2DP secondary detachment rules, the whole lot could go into one codex. Same for Chaos.

You could even have a simple statement for some more extreme units - saying that a Khorne Lord on Juggernaut has the "World Eaters" keyword, and having the World Eaters detachment allow you to have the World Eaters units, would be really effective to de-bloat it all into one book again.

Then Abaddon could have a rule for Chaos Undivided which allows you to take 1 additional detachment from the chaos ones for free (costed into his points) so your army can combine 2 of them.

I think the purpose of creating bespoke dexes is to create a more viable way to support the development of new models.

With everything crammed into one book, the temptation is to design for inclusivity: you want any new model to be generic enough to play a role across subfactions so that it's more likely to be taken by people using the dex. In a one book system, a WE model that can only be used if armies are built a certain way won't get used as much as a model that can be used in a greater number of potential builds.

But if WE have their own dex, they've got their own market- releasing a model for a faction that has its own dex is less of a risk than releasing a WE model that only works for a few pieces in the giant jigsaw puzzle that a big book of chaos would be. Whether true or not, that perception would stymie development.

The difficulty is we get the book NOW and we think "What a waste of a book" - what we're not seeing is that having the book now facilitates 14th ed being an awesome ed for WE. Kind of a Field of Dreams "If you build it, they will come" philosopy.

 some bloke wrote:
Referring to them having their own codex. I recently brushed off the dust from my old chaos, and found that I had a lot of Khorne stuff. Out of curiosity, I had a look at the World Eater's codex, and found myself severely unenthused.

One Battleline unit (Berzerkers)

Five infantry units, one of which is a direct repeat from CSM (Terminators) and 2 of which are basically the same (Eightbound / Exalted Eightbound)

One Beast

9 vehicles, 8 of which are just CSM staples.

5 characters.

And that's it. I made a 1k list and ended up 40 points short because of the lack of options.

It really seems to me like they are just unnecessary bloat which could all have fit into a detachment rule for Chaos Space Marines. Am I the only one who feels this?

To be fair, all chaos units/factions should be combined into 1 mega codex, if you want melee, you have some options but maybe go with khorne units, want shooting? use some slaanesh or tzeentch or undivided stuff, want a tough unit to kill? use nurgle. Chaos chilli/salad is the way to go.

I voted "they should have their own codex," but there's a big asterisk on that for me.

What I think would work well is to not have a Codex: World Eaters, but instead to have a Codex: Forces of Khorne. Have one book contain all the WE units, all the khorne daemons, all the Khorne-friendly generic CSM units, rules for khorne knights, even rules for khorne guard if GW wants to give people some real value for their purchase.

With all the Khorne stuff under one roof, you can design detachments and datasheets that assume you want a Khornate bent to your army. You can give havocs in that book that emphasizes their role in being supporting fire or can openers for the aggressive melee elements of your army. Your cultists can have rules representing them being froth-mouthed berzerkers. Your army rules can lean into something like blood tithe points. Your detachments can lean into the idea of your characters seeking worthy challenges or whatever.

Personally, I think Khorne struggles to not be boring, but a book that draws upon a variety of units and then explores a bunch of different corners of how you can represent Khornate stuff could add a lot of fertile ground for making him less boring.

And I think this approach would work even better for the other chaos gods. Basically, we shouldn't have Legion books; we should have god books where the focus is less on exclusive units and more on giving generic units a thematic twist and letting them work alongside those exclusive units.

Spiky Marines, Red Spiky Marines, Blue Spiky Marines, Pink Spiky Marines, and Green Spiky Marines should all be in one book.

BanjoJohn wrote:
To be fair, all chaos units/factions should be combined into 1 mega codex, if you want melee, you have some options but maybe go with khorne units, want shooting? use some slaanesh or tzeentch or undivided stuff, want a tough unit to kill? use nurgle. Chaos chilli/salad is the way to go.

Lord Damocles wrote:Spiky Marines, Red Spiky Marines, Blue Spiky Marines, Pink Spiky Marines, and Green Spiky Marines should all be in one book.

See, you *could* put them all into a single codex, but it does feel like you'd lock CSM in general into being a bit more vanilla at that point. Like, you probably don't end up with stuff like the Death Guard diseases or the Emperor's Children fall back and charge gimmick or the Thousand Sons rituals. Or if you *do* get those mechanics, you get them as detachment rules, and you ditch all the other rules that are currently detachment rules.

So my Thousand Sons list I've been working on that uses the vehicle detachment would go from being Thousand Sons with mechanics for exploring how wizard marines do weird stuff with machines to just being Thousand Sons that happen to also have some tanks around.

Basically, I don't want CSM to end up with the Chaos Daemons issue where you're expected to get all of a given god's flavor from a single detachment. I think creating space for more variety of rules is fine. I just also think that World Eaters demonstrate how some subfactions aren't necessarily deep enough to carry a book on their own. Making Codex: Khorne would allow you to consolidate rules into a smaller number of books, but it would also expand the themes you could explore significantly. You could have mortals lead by/serving as fodder for astartes. You could have demon getting empowered when mortals die. You could have Khornate machine armies. You could have a detachment that's all about head hunting the most prized skulls. And you could have all of those things utilizing some sort of blood tithe mechanic.

Whereas the "khorne detachment" ina generic CSM megabook would probably be something like,
"Units in this detachment add +1 to the Attacks characteristics of their melee weapons if they charged this turn."

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I voted "they should have their own codex," but there's a big asterisk on that for me.

What I think would work well is to not have a Codex: World Eaters, but instead to have a Codex: Forces of Khorne. Have one book contain all the WE units, all the khorne daemons, all the Khorne-friendly generic CSM units, rules for khorne knights, even rules for khorne guard if GW wants to give people some real value for their purchase.

This is what AOS did and it works pretty well. They also got rid of the dedicated Chaos Daemons book and divided the daemons into their dedicated god battletomes. This allows Khorne players to run mortals, daemons, or any mixture without having to rely on awkward souping detachments.

"Bloat" remains code for "choices I don't like".

 RaptorusRex wrote:
"Bloat" remains code for "choices I don't like".

Ehh. Kinda. I tend to think of "bloat" as meaning, "Stuff that was already represented by something else and doesn't carve out a significantly distinct niche for itself." Which is obviously very subjective. But as some bloke broke down in the opening post, a significant portion of their roster is just stuff that already exists for generic CSM. And Some of the unique units could reasonably have been other existing units.

Like, jakhals are cool, but their unit concept definitely could have been represented by the generic cultist kit. That the kit comes with different weapons than the generic cultist kit feels more like an attempt at justifying the distinction rather than an intuitive distinction that was begging for a kit and bespoke rules. I'm far from an expert, but my understanding is that, conceptually, 8-bound are basically just possessed? And even berzerkers, iconic as they are, are kind of just legionaires with melee weapons who get to stab harder because they're just soooooo angry! (As opposed to how chill and emotionally well-adjusted your average legionaire is.)

So while I do, as I said above, support the idea of a book for Khorne units, the way World Eaters was implemented feels like it failed to do much that the generic CSM book didn't already allow. Like, if you put Angron in the generic CSM book, there aren't a lot of playstyles the WE book offers that the CSM book couldn't offer some version of. All you'd really be missing is the casino of Khorne mechanic.

So on the whole, I think reasonable people could argue that the WE book and unit line is largely "already represented by something else" and for the most part "doesn't carve out a significantly distinct niche for itself." If the slots in the release cycle that went towards WE books were used for something else, we could have fleshed out Votan some more or avoided sending some drukhari units to legends or we could have given harlequins their own codex again or any number of other things.

But maybe the WE rules feel meaningfully unique and distinctive to WE fans out there? I'm on the outside looking in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the Signless wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I voted "they should have their own codex," but there's a big asterisk on that for me.

What I think would work well is to not have a Codex: World Eaters, but instead to have a Codex: Forces of Khorne. Have one book contain all the WE units, all the khorne daemons, all the Khorne-friendly generic CSM units, rules for khorne knights, even rules for khorne guard if GW wants to give people some real value for their purchase.

This is what AOS did and it works pretty well. They also got rid of the dedicated Chaos Daemons book and divided the daemons into their dedicated god battletomes. This allows Khorne players to run mortals, daemons, or any mixture without having to rely on awkward souping detachments.

Nice! Yeah, that sounds exactly like what I was picturing.

 the Signless wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I voted "they should have their own codex," but there's a big asterisk on that for me.

What I think would work well is to not have a Codex: World Eaters, but instead to have a Codex: Forces of Khorne. Have one book contain all the WE units, all the khorne daemons, all the Khorne-friendly generic CSM units, rules for khorne knights, even rules for khorne guard if GW wants to give people some real value for their purchase.

This is what AOS did and it works pretty well. They also got rid of the dedicated Chaos Daemons book and divided the daemons into their dedicated god battletomes. This allows Khorne players to run mortals, daemons, or any mixture without having to rely on awkward souping detachments.

And if they had actually done that for the four relevant Legions, it might not all feel as bad. Codex: Tzeentch would feel a lot different with ALL the daemons and the ability to use them in more than just a single half-assed detachment than Codex: Thousand Sons currently does.

If you were to fold all or most of the options of the World Eaters into Chaos Space Marines you would get a monster codex that's probably too bloated. What they need is a bit more of unique units to make them worthwhile like a cavalry unit, a flamethrower unit and maybe a unique transport.

Echoing the “Gimme the Big Book Of Khorne” and the same for the other three gods.
I’d love to better integrate my Death Guard and Daemons, and have a mechanical reason to snag some humans.

 some bloke wrote:
Referring to them having their own codex. I recently brushed off the dust from my old chaos, and found that I had a lot of Khorne stuff. Out of curiosity, I had a look at the World Eater's codex, and found myself severely unenthused.

One Battleline unit (Berzerkers)

Five infantry units, one of which is a direct repeat from CSM (Terminators) and 2 of which are basically the same (Eightbound / Exalted Eightbound)

One Beast

9 vehicles, 8 of which are just CSM staples.

5 characters.

And that's it. I made a 1k list and ended up 40 points short because of the lack of options.

It really seems to me like they are just unnecessary bloat which could all have fit into a detachment rule for Chaos Space Marines. Am I the only one who feels this?

They are "new" and need more passes from the Model Kit Fairy. Sadly GW has been adding new faster than they've been filling out new.

epronovost wrote:
If you were to fold all or most of the options of the World Eaters into Chaos Space Marines you would get a monster codex that's probably too bloated.

No you wouldn't.
Besides Big Angry Possessed Man, all of the World Eaters units either already have generic versions (Possessed, Cultists, Legends Jugger Lord), or are just generic Spiky Marine or Daemon units copy-pasted across.

Meanwhile they're locked out of options like Berkerkers with bolters, foot Lords, bikes, Teeth of Khorne, Mutilators, beastmen, cultists with guns, Terminator Lords...

Give them more.

Blood Slaughterer Daemon Engine. A Scout level equivalent of Cultists part way through the conversion process.

Red Butcher Terminators updated some in styling.

An open topped transport with a fighting deck. Mount a unit, and they add their collective attacks to those of the vehicle.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

epronovost wrote:
If you were to fold all or most of the options of the World Eaters into Chaos Space Marines you would get a monster codex that's probably too bloated.

No you wouldn't.
Besides Big Angry Possessed Man, all of the World Eaters units either already have generic versions (Possessed, Cultists, Legends Jugger Lord), or are just generic Spiky Marine or Daemon units copy-pasted across.

Meanwhile they're locked out of options like Berkerkers with bolters, foot Lords, bikes, Teeth of Khorne, Mutilators, beastmen, cultists with guns, Terminator Lords...

Echoing this. You could put all the actually unique units from both the WE book and the EC book into the generic CSM book and it would barely increase the page count. (But again, my vote is for Codex: Khorne.)

Anything worth a bespoke codex needs substantial amount of unique units and stuff to go with it. Forcing factions into specific lanes is the main reason for eventual Flanderization.

My particular pet peeve are the followers of Tzeentch. I hate almost everything about the Thousand Sons (GTFO with that Egyptian lover aesthetic LMAO), yet, if I am to make a Tzeentch aligned Chaos warband, I have little choice these days. I absolutely hate that *spits*

 Wyldhunt wrote:

See, you *could* put them all into a single codex, but it does feel like you'd lock CSM in general into being a bit more vanilla at that point. Like, you probably don't end up with stuff like the Death Guard diseases or the Emperor's Children fall back and charge gimmick or the Thousand Sons rituals. Or if you *do* get those mechanics, you get them as detachment rules, and you ditch all the other rules that are currently detachment rules.

Any book merging is extremely unlikely to happen before 12th at earliest, at which point detachment rules as a mechanic may be as totally obsolete as 7e Formations were in 8e.

So I don't see a problem.

With that said, the CSM can do what they want. The important thing is they leave Daemons alone. I am a Daemons player, I don't play CSM. I would be more than miffed if Daemons were reduced to cheerleaders in mixed mortal-Daemon monogod books like what happened in AoS. I have loved mixed Daemons ever since they got the book proper back in 2007. It's what I am here for. If Adeptus Mechanicus are established enough to remain their own faction then so are we (we've been our own faction for much longer than they have, in fact).

World Eaters, like the other mono-god CSM factions, have a very strong identity and deserve their own Codex.

The problem is that GW chose to heavily flanderize them while also arbitrarily preventing them from taking CSM units that would logically fit the army even in its flanderized state (jetpacks, bikes).

I guess that in 10 years they'll have enough units to support a variety of playstyles (while still being a melee-focused army) and truly feel like a complete Codex. But as things stand, they're not in a great spot.

Death Guard just got lucky because as the 8th edition new playable army, they got a very sizeable release.

EDIT : World Eaters always were my favorite renegade legion and I absolutely HATE the release they got.

Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

See, you *could* put them all into a single codex, but it does feel like you'd lock CSM in general into being a bit more vanilla at that point. Like, you probably don't end up with stuff like the Death Guard diseases or the Emperor's Children fall back and charge gimmick or the Thousand Sons rituals. Or if you *do* get those mechanics, you get them as detachment rules, and you ditch all the other rules that are currently detachment rules.

Any book merging is extremely unlikely to happen before 12th at earliest, at which point detachment rules as a mechanic may be as totally obsolete as 7e Formations were in 8e.

For context, I'm just talking in terms of what I'd ideally like to see. Wishlisting, basically. I'm not approaching the topic as though GW will see my post here and do what I want if and only if it happens to fit the production pipeline.

With that said, the CSM can do what they want. The important thing is they leave Daemons alone. I am a Daemons player, I don't play CSM. I would be more than miffed if Daemons were reduced to cheerleaders in mixed mortal-Daemon monogod books like what happened in AoS. I have loved mixed Daemons ever since they got the book proper back in 2007. It's what I am here for. If Adeptus Mechanicus are established enough to remain their own faction then so are we (we've been our own faction for much longer than they have, in fact).

Ideally, I'd like mixed daemons to always remain an option. That said, I'm always a little surprised when people feel strongly about wanting to specifically play mixed daemons moreso than making monogod lists work. To my mind, monogod lists make way more sense as a coherent, thematic force that can tell stories related to specific gods and their designs. Whereas mixed god armies usually read like you're playing some random warp warp incursion with no particular god behind the wheel. But to each their own. I'd absolutely love to be able to field my slaaneshi daemons with noise marines without having to take a specific detachment or worry about point ratios.

Selfcontrol wrote:World Eaters, like the other mono-god CSM factions, have a very strong identity and deserve their own Codex.

The problem is that GW chose to heavily flanderize them while also arbitrarily preventing them from taking CSM units that would logically fit the army even in its flanderized state (jetpacks, bikes).

Out of genuine curiosity: what are the strong bits of identity that you think warrant their own codex? As I said earlier, I support there being a Khorne book, but a big part of that is essentially just the idea of putting a Khorne-y twist on existing units or making room for some Khorne-themed detachment rules. When I think about the differences between a Khorne-themed vanilla CSM list and a Codex: WE list, there isn't really a huge difference in terms of aesthetic or (form an outsider's perspective) playstyle. They can both field a bunch of dudes with chainsaws that stagger waves of melee dudes. The biggest difference seems to just be the blood tithe thing.

Whereas Thousand Sons with their rituals, Tzaangor units, rubric units, abundance of various psyker types, and detachments that emphasize psykers doing psyker things feel like they'd be harder to make space for in a vanilla CSM book. Ditto Death Guard with their heartier unit profiles and somewhat extensive plague mechanics. EC are maybe a little more borderline, but a better version of EC than what we got would have more noise marine datasheets to deal with, drug mechanics, probably still something like their current army rule, and their various gimmicky detachments. I'm probably just being reductive, but I think I have an easier time picturing WE being rolled in with vanilla CSM because it seems like most of their units are just generic CSM units but angrier. Like, if you don't feel the need to mechanically distinguish between a chainsword and a chain axe, berserkers are almost just chainsword legionaires. Maybe I just have trouble treating anger as a super power on par with plague zombie durability or being a magical dust automaton. Cue Mr. Furious from Mystery Men joke here.

Out of genuine curiosity: what are the strong bits of identity that you think warrant their own codex? As I said earlier, I support there being a Khorne book, but a big part of that is essentially just the idea of putting a Khorne-y twist on existing units or making room for some Khorne-themed detachment rules. When I think about the differences between a Khorne-themed vanilla CSM list and a Codex: WE list, there isn't really a huge difference in terms of aesthetic or (form an outsider's perspective) playstyle. They can both field a bunch of dudes with chainsaws that stagger waves of melee dudes. The biggest difference seems to just be the blood tithe thing.

Your view of the World Eaters is understandable and helps explain why you feel a Codex : Khorne would be more appropriate.

Personally, what I've always liked about Khorne is that he isn't just the god of mindless close-combat brutality. In the older lore, Khorne was also a Chaos God who had a particular appreciation for technology in many forms : not just daemon engines, but even ranged weaponry (although at shorter range of course). Moreover, he isn't simply the patron of psychopathic killers : he is also a god to whom the weak may turn in the hope of gaining the strength needed to overthrow their oppressors.

I also appreciated that Khorne wasn't merely a one-dimensional brute. He had a theme of corrupted or perverted honor that suited him particularly well. His followers could be psychopathic butchers or freedom fighters who genuinely believe in honor and seek his aid. Khorne would be willing to help either, because he knows that war only leads to more war, honor leads to tyranny, tyranny leads to savagery, and in the end, the only thing that truly matters is that blood flows.

These aspects, combined with the somewhat tragic lore of the World Eaters and their gladiatorial culture, are why they have always been my favorite Legion. They have tremendous potential to embody Khorne's many facets : corrupted gladiators who still cling to notions of honor, psychotic berserkers utterly lost to the nails, dedicated melee warriors supported by firepower, and so on.

The problem is that GW decided that its monotheistic armies needed strong, simple, and easily recognizable identities, with little room for nuance. Hence the flanderization I deeply dislike.

This is, of course, a very personal interpretation of the World Eaters. Even within the limited release we received, however, I think the Codex could have been far more interesting. Instead of giving us two nearly identical variants of corrupted gladiators, we could have had the Teeth of Khorne, for example : a sort of medium/short-range Havoc unit with access to plasma cannons (because Khorne is rage and rage is hot and hot is fire blablabla, there's even a concept art by Jes Goodwin !). Likewise, the army could have included cultists modeled more after militaristic troops (imperial guards style or blood pact style) to represent the "warfare" aspect of Khorne rather than simply weaker Berserkers (with such followers would have to prove themselves through competent warfare before they could hope to become World Eaters, get the "honour" of receiving the butcher nails and gain the strength required to truly excel in close combat, etc).

Don't get me wrong, they would have still be a melee-focused army (the ranged part would have only been support). But adding a bit of nuance (both in gameplay and in visual identity) would have been great.

I'm generally in favor of moving the daemons in more with their associated chapters. I think there's branding reasons why they stay as World Eaters over something more Khorne labeled but generally in favor of the overall direction.

I do get why people that play daemons are attached to mixed daemons though. GW has traditionally designed the army in such a way that their unit variety comes from different gods providing a specific type of unit to the army. People do play mono-god but its always felt constrictive without crossover.

Selfcontrol wrote:

Out of genuine curiosity: what are the strong bits of identity that you think warrant their own codex? As I said earlier, I support there being a Khorne book, but a big part of that is essentially just the idea of putting a Khorne-y twist on existing units or making room for some Khorne-themed detachment rules. When I think about the differences between a Khorne-themed vanilla CSM list and a Codex: WE list, there isn't really a huge difference in terms of aesthetic or (form an outsider's perspective) playstyle. They can both field a bunch of dudes with chainsaws that stagger waves of melee dudes. The biggest difference seems to just be the blood tithe thing.

Your view of the World Eaters is understandable and helps explain why you feel a Codex : Khorne would be more appropriate.

Personally, what I've always liked about Khorne is that he isn't just the god of mindless close-combat brutality. In the older lore, Khorne was also a Chaos God who had a particular appreciation for technology in many forms : not just daemon engines, but even ranged weaponry (although at shorter range of course). Moreover, he isn't simply the patron of psychopathic killers : he is also a god to whom the weak may turn in the hope of gaining the strength needed to overthrow their oppressors.

I also appreciated that Khorne wasn't merely a one-dimensional brute. He had a theme of corrupted or perverted honor that suited him particularly well. His followers could be psychopathic butchers or freedom fighters who genuinely believe in honor and seek his aid. Khorne would be willing to help either, because he knows that war only leads to more war, honor leads to tyranny, tyranny leads to savagery, and in the end, the only thing that truly matters is that blood flows.

These aspects, combined with the somewhat tragic lore of the World Eaters and their gladiatorial culture, are why they have always been my favorite Legion. They have tremendous potential to embody Khorne's many facets : corrupted gladiators who still cling to notions of honor, psychotic berserkers utterly lost to the nails, dedicated melee warriors supported by firepower, and so on.

The problem is that GW decided that its monotheistic armies needed strong, simple, and easily recognizable identities, with little room for nuance. Hence the flanderization I deeply dislike.

This is, of course, a very personal interpretation of the World Eaters. Even within the limited release we received, however, I think the Codex could have been far more interesting. Instead of giving us two nearly identical variants of corrupted gladiators, we could have had the Teeth of Khorne, for example : a sort of medium/short-range Havoc unit with access to plasma cannons (because Khorne is rage and rage is hot and hot is fire blablabla, there's even a concept art by Jes Goodwin !). Likewise, the army could have included cultists modeled more after militaristic troops (imperial guards style or blood pact style) to represent the "warfare" aspect of Khorne rather than simply weaker Berserkers (with such followers would have to prove themselves through competent warfare before they could hope to become World Eaters, get the "honour" of receiving the butcher nails and gain the strength required to truly excel in close combat, etc).

Don't get me wrong, they would have still be a melee-focused army (the ranged part would have only been support). But adding a bit of nuance (both in gameplay and in visual identity) would have been great.

Thanks! I appreciate the the thorough answer. You may have helped me gain a little more appreciation for all things Khorne.

 LunarSol wrote:


I do get why people that play daemons are attached to mixed daemons though. GW has traditionally designed the army in such a way that their unit variety comes from different gods providing a specific type of unit to the army. People do play mono-god but its always felt constrictive without crossover.

Well, my mono Nurgle & mono Khorne also double as AoS forces.
In Sigmar I cant mix them.
So each has its own carry case.

I dont mix them in 40k simply out of laziness.
I dont want to swap things between cases.

My Nurgle works really well here in 40k.
Honestly I have no need to mix it with anything else.
The Khorne? Its really only ever been an excuse to put as many Juggernaughts (one of my favorite models) on the table as the rules allow. Fill remaing pts with other Khorne demons.
This one works better in AoS, but there's still fun to be had with it 40k wise.
It wouldn't be the worst idea in the world (mechanics) to mix in some Tzeentch someday.
But the case is full, so....

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Ideally, I'd like mixed daemons to always remain an option. That said, I'm always a little surprised when people feel strongly about wanting to specifically play mixed daemons moreso than making monogod lists work. To my mind, monogod lists make way more sense as a coherent, thematic force that can tell stories related to specific gods and their designs. Whereas mixed god armies usually read like you're playing some random warp warp incursion with no particular god behind the wheel.

I am not sure what you mean by this. They're like Drukhari. The Covens, the Wych Cults and the Kabals infight all the time, so much so that Commorragh is justifiably called the most dangerous city in the galaxy. They have truly Skaven levels of infighting going on, held back only by the fact that they're not inherently a comic relief faction, not even in part.

That doesn't change that it's pretty iconic to have all three Drukhari subfactions be fielded together, heavily lore-supported, and absolutely should not be restricted. Daemons aren't really that different.

The idea that people think you can't tell a functional story with a mixed army feels fundamentally tragic to me. We've had decades of mixed Daemon armies appearing in White Dwarf narrative battle reports and the like, to say nothing of the representation undivided gets through various mortals across the various Warhammer settings. It works perfectly fine. When N'kari in WHFB invaded Ulthuan in narratives written like twenty years ago, he had a bunch of Khornate Daemons with him, because of course he did, mortal souls were on the menu which is all the reason they'd need to bury the hatchet for a while.

The idea that a newer generation of Warhammer players seem to think mixed Daemon armies are "lorebreaking" for some reason (?????) is beyond heartbreaking, and yet it's increasingly cropping up on social media. I don't know where this came from (my theory is Age of Sigmar, where crucially Chaos is currently winning and controls the majority of the setting, meaning they infight a LOT more) because mixed Daemons are Chaos in its truest form, a kaleidoscopic carnival of multicoloured creatures come to visit unpredictable horrors on the foe. Strictly segregated, neatly colour-coded cheerleader bands just isn't all that chaotic, you know?

But to each their own. I'd absolutely love to be able to field my slaaneshi daemons with noise marines without having to take a specific detachment or worry about point ratios.

And I'd still like to be able to field my 5 man Bladeguard squad, my 5 man Eradicator squad, my 3 man Ravener and Stealth Suit units, and so on, but we can't always get what we want.

Skittles demons has had a bad wrap for a long time now. There was a time when that wasn't the case but you are where you are.

Arguably it's much like the issues flagged for DE when GW was trying to build them up as factions not just thematic elements of a wider DE list. It leads to the idea that if we want to expand DE we need shooty Wyches and stabby Kabalites and idk fast Wracks. But this is just duplication of what already exists.

"Skittles demons" is a fantastic term.

 Ashiraya wrote:

I am not sure what you mean by this.

I just mean that when a demonic force is made up of a single god, my brain tends to go to more elaborate and (to me) thematic stories. Like, if you end up with a specifically slaaneshi invasion of a planet, you might be telling the story of how some mortals' greed or hubris snowballed out of hand and lead to a satisfying comeuppance. If you have a purely Nurgle force, you can tell the story of some exotic or even mystical disease that has some cool, symbolic resonance with whatever world it is infecting. Heck, you can even have a pair of gods in a single force, and then my brain starts wondering what symbolism has brought them to the same location. Is it a Fracture of Biel-Tan style wager between Slaanesh and Khorne? Are Nurgle and Tzeentch waging a war of stagnation vs change? Are war and death flooding through a pre-existing battlefield causing Nurgle and Khorne forces to slip free of the warp?

Whereas when it's a mix of 3+ gods, my first thought is. "Oh. So is it just a random patch of the warp being puked into reality, or are we doing yet another four-way god contest?" Obviously there are tons of better stories than that that you can tell with a skittles army, but that's just where my head goes. YMMV.

It's kind of like when people are trying to come up with fluff for their campaign and they end up having this convoluted Armageddon style narrative where everyone and their mother is showing up to fight over this one planet all at once. Vs a story that's just two factions duking it out and leaving space to showcase their individual strengths and weaknesses and how they play off of eachother. The ork vs nids planet (Octarius?) vs Armageddon, basically.

But I'm not here to yuck your yum. If you're forging cool narratives with every flavor of demon, more power to you. You're clearly just better at coming up with quad-god storylines than I am.

... because mixed Daemons are Chaos in its truest form, a kaleidoscopic carnival of multicoloured creatures come to visit unpredictable horrors on the foe. Strictly segregated, neatly colour-coded cheerleader bands just isn't all that chaotic, you know?

Sure. I guess part of it is that I feel like the "chaotic" part of chaos is kind of overstated. I like it when the gods and their servants are engaging in cohesive, thematic plots with coherent goals rather than just... being soup together. Quad god armies make me think that the army is like, the result of a random tear in reality or what have you, making the demons present essentially a sample platter of random encounters that someone ladled up out of the soup of the warp. Whereas monogod armies make me go, "Okay cool. Clearly something about this world or the people on it resonated with this one specific god. What's the story there?"

FWIW, I think this edition has decent potential to at least make the design of restricting the daemons to a single detachment in their codex at least something that's a 1 DP design intended to mix with most everything else.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Heck, you can even have a pair of gods in a single force, and then my brain starts wondering what symbolism has brought them to the same location. Is it a Fracture of Biel-Tan style wager between Slaanesh and Khorne? Are Nurgle and Tzeentch waging a war of stagnation vs change? Are war and death flooding through a pre-existing battlefield causing Nurgle and Khorne forces to slip free of the warp?

Whereas when it's a mix of 3+ gods, my first thought is. "Oh. So is it just a random patch of the warp being puked into reality, or are we doing yet another four-way god contest?" Obviously there are tons of better stories than that that you can tell with a skittles army, but that's just where my head goes. YMMV.

You can indeed have 2 gods in a single force (and the Codex shows this off plentifully) so I don't necessarily see why it's any different with 3+. Though the way the codex presents it is different from the way you do. You speak of it as the forces being rivals in the same army, whereas the Codex shows examples where they simply have common cause. When the Sanctuary of Gethsemane's wards collapsed, both Tzeentch and Khorne had evidently plenty of reason to ensure they would not rise again, and when Phaedox XIII was invaded, their "both indolence and unclean practices" ensured both Slaanesh and Nurgle Daemons intermingled in the manifesting assault. (Both are from the 9e Daemons codex.) In both cases, the forces don't really have much reason to have any internal friction, they're there for the same objective and are as cohesive as any other faction (which is how the faction works).

In either of these cases you could very easily see 3 or 4 gods attack together, especially the former.

 Ashiraya wrote:


You can indeed have 2 gods in a single force (and the Codex shows this off plentifully) so I don't necessarily see why it's any different with 3+. Though the way the codex presents it is different from the way you do. You speak of it as the forces being rivals in the same army, whereas the Codex shows examples where they simply have common cause.

Totally! I didn't mean to suggest it was always a rivalry. The point I'm more getting at is that each god you add to a given force makes the nature of the teamup that much more complicated and steers you that much further away from the sort of symbolic "vibes-based" daemon invasion that I tend to like.

I really dislike the flanderisation of chaos marines. Splitting the monogod legions from the main CSM book has made both worse. Monogod legions have poor unit selection and lack access to a ton of units they should have. On the other hand main CSM are very plain, and they would benefit from being able to mix with the weirder units monolegions have.

Chaos has become boring and non-chaotic. I don't like that.

 tauist wrote:
Anything worth a bespoke codex needs substantial amount of unique units and stuff to go with it. Forcing factions into specific lanes is the main reason for eventual Flanderization.

My particular pet peeve are the followers of Tzeentch. I hate almost everything about the Thousand Sons (GTFO with that Egyptian lover aesthetic LMAO), yet, if I am to make a Tzeentch aligned Chaos warband, I have little choice these days. I absolutely hate that *spits*

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/The_Scourged

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:


You can indeed have 2 gods in a single force (and the Codex shows this off plentifully) so I don't necessarily see why it's any different with 3+. Though the way the codex presents it is different from the way you do. You speak of it as the forces being rivals in the same army, whereas the Codex shows examples where they simply have common cause.

Totally! I didn't mean to suggest it was always a rivalry. The point I'm more getting at is that each god you add to a given force makes the nature of the teamup that much more complicated and steers you that much further away from the sort of symbolic "vibes-based" daemon invasion that I tend to like.

Don't you think it's overly simplistic if it's just monogod though? Like, okay, it's Nurgle again, time for more Nurgle stuff just doing Nurgle things. If you've played Vermintide you know what I mean. It's like if no Ork invasion ever had mixed subcultures. Goffs, Beast Snaggas, Speed Freekz etc all in one Waaagh is just more fun for the whole family. The increased variety is a perk, not a detractor. Much like said varied Ork clans, the Daemons have the same ultimate purpose and therefore plenty of unifying motive (kill 'em all, as it were).

Now, of course, if Tzeentch wants to spend a century plotting the downfall of a governor through increasingly overcomplicated Machiavellian scheme after scheme in a Rube Goldberg machine of gambits and trickery, that can make for a nice story too, and Khorne's presence probably wouldn't be much help. But that sort of scheme isn't really what we're depicting on the tabletop anyway. We're depicting the apex of violence, a meeting engagement of some kind between two prepared forces, something all Gods engage in a lot. I don't think we need to overcomplicate it beyond that.

It's sort of like how the Orders Hospitaller are actually an extremely large and diverse organisation, but much of its work is civilian in nature and irrelevant to gameplay, so we only really see them represented by the Sister Hospitaller. Even more extreme, the Orders Famulous are a significant non-militant wing of the Sororitas, but again, their work isn't immediately pertinent in game play, so we tend to set them aside when discussing codex design.

Idk, for me this nano codices are just money making. We have all sm in sm codex and some irregulars in supplements but they could take from sm codex.

And it's strange khornates couldn't. And Abaddon couldn't take slaughterbounds. Why? He is warmaster of chaos and chosen of the four.
It's just don't fit gw's own logic.

In all cases I desire equal representation.

So, if marines and chaos get all these sub codexes, everyone else should too. If not, then they should be streamlined.

Any army can be as expansive or limited as you choose to invest in.



I'm not a fan of the chaos daemons being wrapped into the cult legions. Daemons invade realspace by themselves and alongside cultists, traitor guard et al far in excess of the times they are hanging with cult marines.

It sets a skewed image, just as the amount of marine codexes make it look like they're the main fighting force of the imperium.

 kabaakaba wrote:
Idk, for me this nano codices are just money making. We have all sm in sm codex and some irregulars in supplements but they could take from sm codex.

And it's strange khornates couldn't. And Abaddon couldn't take slaughterbounds. Why? He is warmaster of chaos and chosen of the four.
It's just don't fit gw's own logic.

Everything GW does is just to rake in more cash, even if it means destroying their own lore.
Take SW for example. In one edition all initiates go through trials, any that failed are mind-wiped and become thralls. Those that succeed become blood claws, who then either become scouts or grey hunters. From their they become Long fangs. When a unit of long fangs is all but wiped out, those left become wolf guard.

Servitors/thralls and long fangs no longer exist in SW

Another edition it was blood claws to grey hunters to wolf guard to long fangs

Haven't gone through the other editions yet to see what else has suddenly changed lore-wise except that now blood claws seem to have forgotten how to ride bikes or use jump packs.

Anyways, I agree. Chaos should be set up just like SM I think. A main chaos book with common troops across all 4 types, then a suppliment for each god to add unique and additional troops for that god.

 Hellebore wrote:
In all cases I desire equal representation.

So, if marines and chaos get all these sub codexes, everyone else should too. If not, then they should be streamlined.

Any army can be as expansive or limited as you choose to invest in.



I'm not a fan of the chaos daemons being wrapped into the cult legions. Daemons invade realspace by themselves and alongside cultists, traitor guard et al far in excess of the times they are hanging with cult marines.

It sets a skewed image, just as the amount of marine codexes make it look like they're the main fighting force of the imperium.

Although it kind of reads them as wrapping them into cult legions, it might be a way of getting out a Codex: Khorne, and should have list options where you can eschew the Marine element altogether..

Ironically, the Legions system is a problem for the 'mixed marine' list because unlike in Fantasy, they aren't small warbands/renegades united under one chaos lord, but have their superstructure, at least in spirit. The renegade chapters function more like Fantasy chaos warriors in this regard, and work better for that concept. For it to work for the main legions, you basically need to have an Everchosen level leader, because a regular aspiring Chaos Lord being un-ascended won't have the gravitas of the legion primarchs, so spiritually separate allied detachments works better for that model.

I think people are getting a bit hung up on the names of things.

Having all Khorne Daemons in the World Eaters Codex would be fine, it makes them 40k Blades of Khorne. Given that Daemons aren't even getting Codexes anymore, it's clear the plan is to ape AoS with the way Chaos is implemented.

All GW would need to do is change the name from World Eaters to Khorne Bloodbound or whatever and shazam the problem is gone.

Then it's just a case of yknow, actually giving the armies that aren't Nurgle some units.

I agree with those saying the solution is to put the Daemons into the respective god-dedicated Codices and change them to be Khorne/Slaanesh, etc rather than World Eaters or EC. While they're at it, they could also remove the stupid restriction that prevents you using Daemons in those Codices unless you take a specific detachment.

WE and EC definitely need more stuff, and arguably TS too. I'd prefer to see those armies get more divergent, as has happened with DG. Give them their own Terminators, their own vehicles (and possibly remove Predators and Helbrutes at the same time) and really flesh them out. That could also allow GW to explore more of the background of these armies because it's definitely true that WE in particular are too heavily Flanderized right now.

Khorne isn't just about bloodlust and insane butchery. Where are the honourable duellists? Where's the weird and wonderful technology of war Khorne used to be known for? EC seemed to move a bit more towards different types of excess/obsession in their Codex with Noise Marines being the sensationalists and Flawless Blades being all about the perfection of their swordsmanship and I think all the god-dedicated legions could do with that.

 Crimson wrote:
I really dislike the flanderisation of chaos marines. Splitting the monogod legions from the main CSM book has made both worse. Monogod legions have poor unit selection and lack access to a ton of units they should have. On the other hand main CSM are very plain, and they would benefit from being able to mix with the weirder units monolegions have.

Chaos has become boring and non-chaotic. I don't like that.

I wholeheartedly agree. Chaos should be random and all over the place

 Ashiraya wrote:

Don't you think it's overly simplistic if it's just monogod though? Like, okay, it's Nurgle again, time for more Nurgle stuff just doing Nurgle things. If you've played Vermintide you know what I mean. It's like if no Ork invasion ever had mixed subcultures. Goffs, Beast Snaggas, Speed Freekz etc all in one Waaagh is just more fun for the whole family. The increased variety is a perk, not a detractor. Much like said varied Ork clans, the Daemons have the same ultimate purpose and therefore plenty of unifying motive (kill 'em all, as it were).

I see your point, but my personal preference still skews monogod. For me, adding more gods into the mix and giving them a "unifying motive" kind of implies that their goals have to be something more generic. "Kill 'em all" instead of "bring about a poetic demise that resonates with the themes that caused this specific flavor of incursion to happen in the first place. But YMMV.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hellebore wrote:
I'm not a fan of the chaos daemons being wrapped into the cult legions. Daemons invade realspace by themselves and alongside cultists, traitor guard et al far in excess of the times they are hanging with cult marines.

Gert wrote:I think people are getting a bit hung up on the names of things.

Having all Khorne Daemons in the World Eaters Codex would be fine, it makes them 40k Blades of Khorne. Given that Daemons aren't even getting Codexes anymore, it's clear the plan is to ape AoS with the way Chaos is implemented.

All GW would need to do is change the name from World Eaters to Khorne Bloodbound or whatever and shazam the problem is gone.

Then it's just a case of yknow, actually giving the armies that aren't Nurgle some units.

Gert gets it. I'm basically advocating for making Codex: Khorne which would support the option to field daemons by themselves or as part of a mixed force of daemons and non-daemons (with fewer hoops to jump through than what we have now.)

Slipspace wrote:
WE and EC definitely need more stuff, and arguably TS too. I'd prefer to see those armies get more divergent, as has happened with DG. Give them their own Terminators, their own vehicles (and possibly remove Predators and Helbrutes at the same time) and really flesh them out. That could also allow GW to explore more of the background of these armies because it's definitely true that WE in particular are too heavily Flanderized right now.

Khorne isn't just about bloodlust and insane butchery. Where are the honourable duellists? Where's the weird and wonderful technology of war Khorne used to be known for? EC seemed to move a bit more towards different types of excess/obsession in their Codex with Noise Marines being the sensationalists and Flawless Blades being all about the perfection of their swordsmanship and I think all the god-dedicated legions could do with that.

Idk. I feel like part of the appeal of rolling WE, Khorne daemons, vanilla CSM options, and maybe even some guard together into a single book is that you get so much variety you don't necessarily need new kits. You instantly give the faction a pile of new units to choose from with the option to do a Khorne-specific version of their datasheets (something like giving havocs a different special rule to better represent the ranged fire support unit someone mentioned earlier), and you can use detachments to flesh out some of those other concepts. Your honorable duelists might be represented by a "Worthy Warriors" detachment that is geared for sending characters to fight characters and monsters/vehicles, for instance.

If you've got all that, I'm not sure you necessarily need bespoke Khorne terminators that are just melee terminators with a slightly different weapon, you know? (Of course, shiny new kits do always hold a certain appeal...)

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I see your point, but my personal preference still skews monogod. For me, adding more gods into the mix and giving them a "unifying motive" kind of implies that their goals have to be something more generic. "Kill 'em all" instead of "bring about a poetic demise that resonates with the themes that caused this specific flavor of incursion to happen in the first place. But YMMV.

Why do Daemons have to have this? No other faction is held to that standard. This seems a bit unfair. Every other faction does "generic" things all the time.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I see your point, but my personal preference still skews monogod. For me, adding more gods into the mix and giving them a "unifying motive" kind of implies that their goals have to be something more generic. "Kill 'em all" instead of "bring about a poetic demise that resonates with the themes that caused this specific flavor of incursion to happen in the first place. But YMMV.

Why do Daemons have to have this? No other faction is held to that standard. This seems a bit unfair. Every other faction does "generic" things all the time.

They don't have to go monogod (if it wasn't clear, my ideal scenario would still support multi-god armies), and they're welcome to do the more generic missions. To my personal sensibilities, daemons of various gods working together just saps away some of the extra flavor you get with a monogod army in a way that you don't necessarily get with most other armies.

If Slaanesh alone is invading a planet, that means there's something very Slaanesh-specific going on, and exploring those narratives can be evocative. Once you've got all four gods involved, you're probably switching away from something like, "The planet that prizes its famed artists has suddenly found all its paintings shift to scenes of perverse excess, and rumors say that some of the creatures within the paintings have begun to step out of them," and replacing that with, "The chaos gods felt like eating some souls today" or "the chaos gods decided to have a bet on who could eat the shiniest soul today."

If I play my drukhari, I do get some bonus flavor if I zoom in and focus purely on my wych cult's specific culture. However, if I field my wych cult alongside my kabal and coven, whichever faction is the most powerful can still essentially be leading the action, have the driving, quirky motivation, and basically be treating the others as pawns.

If I play my marines, having, idk, terminators and phobos units working together doesn't really water things down at all because they're just marines doing marine things. My 'nids are all part of the same swarm. My 'crons are all part of the same dynasty with any destroyer cult units still generally being controlled/directed by the non-destroyers.

A multi-god chaos army is made up of guys who each ultimately work for their respective gods. So they don't have the overall unity the way 'nids or marines do, and the daemons of one god don't generally "work under" the daemons of another god just because the lead daemon is more powerful.

But again, if you're enjoying quad god armies, more power to you.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
If I play my drukhari, I do get some bonus flavor if I zoom in and focus purely on my wych cult's specific culture. However, if I field my wych cult alongside my kabal and coven, whichever faction is the most powerful can still essentially be leading the action, have the driving, quirky motivation, and basically be treating the others as pawns.

This applies to Chaos too, yes? Like, N'kari's invasion of Ulthuan in WHFB was clearly a personal vendetta, and him bringing all manner of Daemons with him (including notable onscreen examples of Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers) didn't mean he was making any kind of compromises for them.

Or, to use a 40k example, this. This seems good to me: https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Murderval

Murderval is an especially good example imo, because you can see how the army retains cohesion even after its initial objective is abandoned and its initial commander is overthrown by another, and the army continues to wreak havoc elsewhere. The pre-war bargains are very reminiscent of how the Drukhari work, too.

But yeah, I don't think this is getting anywhere. If you don't see the appeal in multi-god Daemons, then I don't imagine I can convince you further at this point. I just hope the army will retain support.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Gert wrote:I think people are getting a bit hung up on the names of things.

Having all Khorne Daemons in the World Eaters Codex would be fine, it makes them 40k Blades of Khorne. Given that Daemons aren't even getting Codexes anymore, it's clear the plan is to ape AoS with the way Chaos is implemented.

All GW would need to do is change the name from World Eaters to Khorne Bloodbound or whatever and shazam the problem is gone.

Then it's just a case of yknow, actually giving the armies that aren't Nurgle some units.

Gert gets it. I'm basically advocating for making Codex: Khorne which would support the option to field daemons by themselves or as part of a mixed force of daemons and non-daemons (with fewer hoops to jump through than what we have now.)

That's fine conceptually if that's actually what gw had done. But it's clear these are cult legions, not codex.xhaos gods.

My problem is with what gw has actually done. Which is make a chaos legion codex

Considering Tsons came from the age of mini-codexes and Death Guard were an edition starter, we're now actually at the point where all four Gods have a Codex in 40k.

Daemons also don't have a generic Codex anymore.

Now unless there's a 180 and the Daemon Codex comes back, it doesn't take a genius to see the 40k Chaos roundup is going the same way AoS did.

And all I said was I don't like it and listed why.

Repeating what they have done doesn't change that.

How does AOS handle an Undivided All-Four army?

In other words, if they do copy it, How does a Black Legion with a little of everything "mortal" and daemonic work?

Breton wrote:
How does AOS handle an Undivided All-Four army?

In other words, if they do copy it, How does a Black Legion with a little of everything "mortal" and daemonic work?

AoS has Slaves to Darkness to represent generic mortal followers of Chaos in both the heavily armoured chaos warrior and barbarian flavours. If they copied that into 40k, it would work pretty well as the black legion, though I would prefer them keep some of the god specific marines like berserkers or plague marines.

The way AoS currently represents armies working together is through regiments of renown, where fixed sets of units can be taken by armies that would be appropriate. For example, any chaos army can choose to ally in Skarbrand.

 the Signless wrote:

Breton wrote:
How does AOS handle an Undivided All-Four army?

In other words, if they do copy it, How does a Black Legion with a little of everything "mortal" and daemonic work?

AoS has Slaves to Darkness to represent generic mortal followers of Chaos in both the heavily armoured chaos warrior and barbarian flavours. If they copied that into 40k, it would work pretty well as the black legion, though I would prefer them keep some of the god specific marines like berserkers or plague marines.

The way AoS currently represents armies working together is through regiments of renown, where fixed sets of units can be taken by armies that would be appropriate. For example, any chaos army can choose to ally in Skarbrand.

That doesn't sound like a good end result for Black Legion. I mean Black Legion should be able to take Skarbrand, but in a more freeform manner than that.

Slaves to Darkness also has an Army of Renown themed for Be'lakor that allows for a curated selection of daemons from the four gods.

It's really not very fun. The selection is very restrictive, it doesn't compare very well to the pre-2022 version.

I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

I'm definitely not a fan of some armies getting books for subfactions and even sub-subfactions, while others are lucky if their book hasn't lost units since the previous iteration.

And World Eaters seem especially egregious, given how much of their stuff is just generic, while their roster of actually unique units is paper-thin.

I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

I would just do one big Chaos codex that includes marines, daemons, and cultists. That wouldn't fit with GW's design philosophy though.

If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the Signless wrote:
If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

I'm not sure this makes sense. They clearly want the Agents to function as allies, but not on their own. And Corsairs and Harlequins can still be taken in Drukhari armies (indeed, the most popular Drukhari detachment use Harlequins), and a selection of Drukhari units are in the Craftworld codex for an Ynnari list.

Crimson wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

It does feel strange. I kind of wonder if it's because they started with DG and TS instead of EC and WE? Like, I can understand not giving Thousand Sons access to things like raptors, some of the more fleshy units, etc. due to the whole rubric thing. We arguably shouldn't have gotten hellbrutes (or should have gotten a variant hellbrute instead). And while DG could probably reasonably have access to most CSM units, I can understand GW being more iffy about jump pack units, maybe bike units (despite how popular nurgle bikers were back in the day), or even obliterators (not as overtly plague-y as other stuff.

So if you can talk yourself into making the first two god-specific books eschew big chunks of Codex: CSM, I can see there being a temptation to try and do the same thing for WE and EC. Except that WE and EC both (to my mind) have an easier time using all the generic CSM stuff, and the bespoke kits/units they got are generally less well-rounded. Like, TS and DG both have a mix of melee and ranged units. WE and EC are almost entirely just melee units (plus noise marines). But yeah, an approach closer to what they did with loyalists probably would have made more sense.

BorderCountess wrote:

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?

Well, there is that. Which is part of why I think a big-book-of-Khorne would maybe be a better approach. You can give their version of havoks, predators, etc. Khorne-y rules if you want to differentiate between how they're used by Khorne marines as opposed to other marines, or you can just give them reprints of the vanilla CSM datasheets to help round out the army a bit. Being able to team up with some traitor guard types would also provide some more gun to a largely melee army while also giving you a giant pile of bullet catchers to help your Khorne games feel sufficiently bloody.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?

Blades of Khorne plays as an interesting army where they rely on finesse to control the opponent's movements and have a lot of combat tricks to be able to do things like slide into combats during your opponent's turn. They retain the melee first feel while gaining a lot of tricks that a good player can exploit and create a unique feeling army as opposed to more heavily armoured and slower chaos warriors. The problem with World Eaters isn't that GW can't make a unique Khorne army, it is that it is limited by a limited model range and some boring rules.

 the Signless wrote:
If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

I'm not sure this makes sense. They clearly want the Agents to function as allies, but not on their own. And Corsairs and Harlequins can still be taken in Drukhari armies (indeed, the most popular Drukhari detachment use Harlequins), and a selection of Drukhari units are in the Craftworld codex for an Ynnari list.

I am advocating for GW to make these work as standalone books which can be played solo as well as working as an allied force. This way daemons players can keep their fun while the units are available to all of the books that would need them. A bloodthirster makes sense in CSM, World Eaters, and in daemons so it would be a convenient place to put it. Same with some generic support like cultists which are in all of the CSM variants anyways (except EC because GW hates them).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Crimson wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

It does feel strange. I kind of wonder if it's because they started with DG and TS instead of EC and WE? Like, I can understand not giving Thousand Sons access to things like raptors, some of the more fleshy units, etc. due to the whole rubric thing. We arguably shouldn't have gotten hellbrutes (or should have gotten a variant hellbrute instead). And while DG could probably reasonably have access to most CSM units, I can understand GW being more iffy about jump pack units, maybe bike units (despite how popular nurgle bikers were back in the day), or even obliterators (not as overtly plague-y as other stuff.

So if you can talk yourself into making the first two god-specific books eschew big chunks of Codex: CSM, I can see there being a temptation to try and do the same thing for WE and EC. Except that WE and EC both (to my mind) have an easier time using all the generic CSM stuff, and the bespoke kits/units they got are generally less well-rounded. Like, TS and DG both have a mix of melee and ranged units. WE and EC are almost entirely just melee units (plus noise marines). But yeah, an approach closer to what they did with loyalists probably would have made more sense.

DG and TS are several release waves deep at this point. On launch, with only a few specific marines and the terminators, they were in a much more similar position to where WE are now. Now with DG's unique vehicles and TS unique goat-birds it is a harder argument to say that they should just be rolled back into CSM. I think we should give WE time to come up with some more stuff to fill their gaps.

There's no reason that lesser Daemon engines should be unique to Death Guard. They could easily be rolled back into generic Spiky Marines with only a negligible loss of options (while regaining all of the units which they arbitrarily lost when they were split off).

They give DG a unique identity as opposed to the generic CSM vehicles. All of the imperium could be rolled into a single book but we don't because we understand that guard, SoB, and SM are different branches of a united front despite often fighting side by side.

It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

DG and TS are several release waves deep at this point. On launch, with only a few specific marines and the terminators, they were in a much more similar position to where WE are now. Now with DG's unique vehicles and TS unique goat-birds it is a harder argument to say that they should just be rolled back into CSM. I think we should give WE time to come up with some more stuff to fill their gaps.

Lord Damocles wrote:It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

the Signless wrote:Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

I think I agree with Signless more than I disagree here. Hypothetically, if you keep adding units to make WE more unique, then eventually they will feel more unique. I do, however, feel like WE are off to a rougher start in terms of "justifying their existence". (Ignore the dramatic phrasing; it's late and I'm struggling to think of a better way to word the sentiment.)

Even in the early days of Death Guard, between plague marines being usually durable and all the crawlers and drones and whatnot that (iirc) they got pretty early on, they definitely felt like they occupied a somewhat different niche than the rest of vanilla CSM. And then Thousand Sons had their rubricae who had similarly decent defensive profiles, sometimes had slow & purposeful or similar rules, had their psykers all over the place, etc.

In comparison to those, I think WE units struggle to feel like they're as different or like they're doing as much "weird stuff" that warrants its own faction. Like, a baked-in psyker, invuln save, s&p, inferno bolters, etc. all make rubric marines feel like a very different unit than your typical legionaires. Whereas berzerkers kiiiiinda just feel like they're legionaires with a melee boost. And as spelled out in the opening post, a lot of the "unique" WE units are (at least conceptually) kind of the same as some vanilla CSM units. Jakhals are cultists. Eight-bound (as far as I'm aware) are conceptually just greater possessed. Berzerkers are pretty close to legionaires, etc.

So while DG and TS both felt like they were going in their own weird direction, WE so far kind of feel like they just deleted half the CSM codex and gave the survivors a melee buff.

Finding a way to make the army feel more nuanced would probably help with that. I'm here for the sort of Blades of Khorne style finesse you mentioned earlier, but I'm not sure WE have really set themselves up for that sort of thing so far? And it feels like it would be less challenging for the designers to just incorporate a wider variety of existing units (the Codex: Khorne approach) rather than figuring out a million ways to do "run forward and charge" in an attempt to make run forward and charge rewardingly interesting. But I'm here for it if they can do it.

I don't feel the issue is that WE are too close to CSM. Its that WE is too close to WE.

Which is I guess the same position expressed differently. Berzerkers are fine and have been in 40k forever. But Jackals feel like "little berzerkers" and Eight-bound feel like "big berzerkers".

I think DG had more themes to build around more or less from the get-go.

You could take:
Mortarion & Daemon Prince herohammer.
Typhus and lots of Poxwalkers.
Go wide with Plague Marines - stabby or shooty or a mix of both.
Terminators
Daemon Engines
Regular Tanks
Or some mix thereof.
Only the tanks are really moved over from CSM.

I guess you can say "isn't a blightlord just two plague marines in a trenchcoat" - and to some degree it is. But I think its different enough - and Deathshroud are clearly different.

What have WE got?
Herohammer - sure.
Loads of Jackals? They have a detachment for it, but not much other support.
Lots of Berzerkers? Yes, but there's no options here so its narrower than Plague Marines.
Stuck with regular terminators (boring). Does "lots of Eight-bound" have the same feeling? Not really convinced.
CSM Daemon Engines (boring).
CSM Tanks (boring).

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Yeah let's just do away with CSM altogether, I mean they're just reskinned SM. Why bother even having Drukhari or Mechanicus cos they're just reskinned Aeldari and Guard.
God I'm so glad we got rid of all these snowflake bloat factions.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

I think it's definitely reasonable to ask which units really need to be unique. As opposed to, for example, differentiating terminators by giving them the Mark of Nurgle or the Mark of Slaanesh or such (which could even come with some unique wargear if it really needed to).

It would also just allow for more varied lists - especially with factions like World Eaters. e.g. you could run things like Havocs with Plasma Cannons as the Teeth of Khorne for more ranged support - rather than having to rely on four marginally different Berserker variants.

 vipoid wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

I think it's definitely reasonable to ask which units really need to be unique. As opposed to, for example, differentiating terminators by giving them the Mark of Nurgle or the Mark of Slaanesh or such (which could even come with some unique wargear if it really needed to).

It would also just allow for more varied lists - especially with factions like World Eaters. e.g. you could run things like Havocs with Plasma Cannons as the Teeth of Khorne for more ranged support - rather than having to rely on four marginally different Berserker variants.

A nice thing about this is that it can represent the fact that "turning cultist" isn't a binary switch, but a blended progression. You got your base CSMs, you got your CSMs who are leaning towards Khorne, you get your Berzerkers who are fully dedicated, and then you get your adherents that are mutating and becoming posessed. The better Chaos books let you do the whole spectrum.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Ironically, your argument is also circular. This subfaction is 'reskinned', so we don't need it -> this faction is reskinned SM, so we don't need it.

Instead of the Big Book of Khorne book that many of you have requested, I think they should bundle that together with the Big Book of Slaanesh. They could make it suitable for their Sci-Fi and Fantasy games. And put in many, many random tables. And they could give it a name that echoes with nostalgia. Something like Realm of Chaos. Or maybe Slaves to Darkness.

And then they could do it for Nurgle and Tzeentch in another book. Call it, say, The Damned and The Lost.

 Fifty wrote:
Instead of the Big Book of Khorne book that many of you have requested, I think they should bundle that together with the Big Book of Slaanesh. They could make it suitable for their Sci-Fi and Fantasy games. And put in many, many random tables. And they could give it a name that echoes with nostalgia. Something like Realm of Chaos. Or maybe Slaves to Darkness.

And then they could do it for Nurgle and Tzeentch in another book. Call it, say, The Damned and The Lost.

I see what you did there and I love it.

 the Signless wrote:
Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

..

What does a debuff rule have to do with miniatures?

You can roll all that back into csm and provide detachments for debuffs all you want.


I'm not sure I see the point of this whole thread given some of these comments. Death guard are justified because they've been out for a decade but we need to examine world eaters? Why aren't we waiting 10 years to have this conversation so we can say that it s too late to roll them back?

In which case I can't wait for my 10 ork codexs which we'll debate the merits of in 2067 when there are too many units to roll them back.

Jokes on you the only armies making it to 2067 are Kroot and Squats.

I realise some of these points are a little late and scattershot, but reading through the thread left me with some thoughts and rather than quoting half a dozen people... I think this is better:

Penitent Jake is correct, I think, in highlighting the model/release advantage of the Cult Legions being in their own books. WE are anemic (heh) right now, but will hopefully be properly fleshed out.

Personally, I think that the World Eaters are the worst realised of the four Cult Legions; but I don't think that's an inherent fault. The Death Guard are the best done, but had the advantage of a big Edition Launch wave (and an extremely passionate sculptor/long time Nurglite, Maxime Pastourel). The Emperor's Children I'd place next as far as having a diverse and interesting range (though they lack a bunch of bafflingly easy CSM ads), then the Thousand Sons (as I begrudge the AoS hand-me-downs). The World Eaters suffer both from few models (like EC & TS) as well as little inspiration. For example, when the Jakhals name was being rumoured I imagined that WE Cultists would be units of scavengers who picked over the dead in the wake of the Berzerkers - syphoning blood from corpses and removing skulls. (There's a scene like this in The First Wall, where the World Eaters themselves focus on killing while leaving the menial aspects of Khorne worship to their followers.) Or their could be "professional soldiery" (like the Blood Pact) who handle all the logistics for the Legion and are the ones who actually keep things functioning. Etc, etc - I'm sure people can come up with tons of interesting things. Instead, their Cultists turned out to just be also-Berzerkers. And the Eightbound! Another name that leaked (alongside lore), and left me imagining what a Marine with eight Bloodletters hammered into him would look like... only for the answer to be a big-Berzerker. It's not that there's nothing interesting to do with the World Eaters; GW just didn't do anything interesting with them.

A bunch of people have brought up a pan-Khornate book. A reminder that Codex: Khorne Daemonkin existed in 7th edition, and was such a book. (It's a bit of a pity that they then went with Codex: Death Guard instead of Codex: Nurgle Daemonkin, but arguably "what's in a name?")

A bunch of people have mentioned "The Teeth of Khorne" as being an old World Eater unit that could be brought back. I wanted to clarify that this was never actually a unit - in Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988), there were lists for World Eaters, Emperor's Children, and Black Legion. (Plus the Ordo Malleus.) The Chaos units were very basic - Assault, Tactical, and Devastator - and then they all had lots of options. (Including Jump Packs; yes, even the Devastator squads). In the little lore blurb for World Eater Devastators, it says "As the teeth of the World Eaters, Devastator Squads rarely limit themselves to providing tactical support. They are often found in the thick of any fight, taking blood with as much abandon as their comrades-in-arms." Somehow this has turned into a myth that their was a "Teeth of Khorne" unit.

Having said that, I'd love to see a Teeth of Khorne unit. (Afterall, GW adopted the fanon connection between the Saturnine Terminator name and the "egg man" TDA design.) Give them Heavy Bolters/Ectoplasma Cannons/Ectoplasma-Burners as options, and don't forget that they still have the 'Nails biting.

Other WE units I'd like to see off the top of my head: more Khornate Daemon Engines (Blood Slaughterer, smaller Brass Scorpions, etc), proper WE Terminators (not necessarily Red Butchers - let HH stuff stay in HH, the Cults can develop over ten thousand years), Berzerker Surgeons (as a 3-model kit like TS Exalted Sorcerers; a mishmash of Berzerker + Apothecary + Warpsmith + Master of Possession), Jugger Riders, a Cult Vehicle Upgrade sprue (ditto for the other Cult Legions), and proper integration of Khornate Daemons (ditto for the other Cult Legions).

 ElEssEm wrote:

Penitent Jake is correct, I think, in highlighting the model/release advantage of the Cult Legions being in their own books. WE are anemic (heh) right now, but will hopefully be properly fleshed out.

Personally, I think that the World Eaters are the worst realised of the four Cult Legions; but I don't think that's an inherent fault.... The World Eaters suffer both from few models (like EC & TS) as well as little inspiration. For example, when the Jakhals name was being rumoured I imagined that WE Cultists would be units of scavengers who picked over the dead... Or their could be "professional soldiery" (like the Blood Pact) who handle all the logistics for the Legion and are the ones who actually keep things functioning. Etc, etc - I'm sure people can come up with tons of interesting things. Instead, their Cultists turned out to just be also-Berzerkers. And the Eightbound! Another name that leaked (alongside lore), and left me imagining what a Marine with eight Bloodletters hammered into him would look like... only for the answer to be a big-Berzerker. It's not that there's nothing interesting to do with the World Eaters; GW just didn't do anything interesting with them.

Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree that there isn't necessarily a problem with the concept of having World Eaters as their own book/faction, but that the lack of variety in practice has been kind of underwhelming. As people have said during this thread, WE don't have to basically just be an entire army of "run forward and charge," but that's kind of what they are at the moment. Like, jackals and 8-bound both sort of feel like GW basically just wanted to make cultists and possessed with a Khorne reskin and then gave them new datasheets with a melee lean to justify it.

In other words, I think the same people who like TS and DG being their own factions are open to WE being their own faction. But personally, I think WE have made worse use of the "space" being their own faction provides than TS and DG did even in their early days. And combined with their currently one-note playstyle, it feels like GW essentially charged WE players money and used up slots in the release cycle to reskin some existing units and give you a more boring playstyle.

A bunch of people have brought up a pan-Khornate book. A reminder that Codex: Khorne Daemonkin existed in 7th edition, and was such a book. (It's a bit of a pity that they then went with Codex: Death Guard instead of Codex: Nurgle Daemonkin, but arguably "what's in a name?")

Yeah, Daemonkin seems to have been extremely well-received by those who played it and those who didn't. Giving people a way to reunite their CSM and daemon units while also providing a thematic army rule to let them play differently is exactly the sort of thing I want to see from Codex: Khorne as well as from other monogod books. I'd just take it a step further and add even more units to the roster than the daemonkin book did.

Other WE units I'd like to see off the top of my head: more Khornate Daemon Engines (Blood Slaughterer, smaller Brass Scorpions, etc), proper WE Terminators (not necessarily Red Butchers - let HH stuff stay in HH, the Cults can develop over ten thousand years), Berzerker Surgeons (as a 3-model kit like TS Exalted Sorcerers; a mishmash of Berzerker + Apothecary + Warpsmith + Master of Possession), Jugger Riders, a Cult Vehicle Upgrade sprue (ditto for the other Cult Legions), and proper integration of Khornate Daemons (ditto for the other Cult Legions).

Love most of these! The only one I'd be a bit iffy on is WE termies. Are termies-but-angry really so different from standard terminators that they need their own kit/datasheet? Like, I get wanting unique aesthetics, but the existing kit and CSM rules would probably suffice.

Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

Nurgle Terminators aren't tougher because they're just mentally tougher soldiers who were otherwise slacking off before they became followers of Nurgle. They're tougher because having gone down the path of corruption they've become infused with power from their chosen god. Likewise, Berzerkers aren't just "angry marines", they are instead given a supernatural prowess and ferocity because of their allegience and sacrifice. They should be a cut or two or three above their non-aligned bretheren.

Your argument is a bit like Death Guard shouldn't get a bonus for being fat. There's a little more going on with a Death Guard marine than a bit of chunk.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Nurgle Terminators aren't tougher because they're just mentally tougher soldiers who were otherwise slacking off before they became followers of Nurgle. They're tougher because having gone down the path of corruption they've become infused with power from their chosen god. Likewise, Berzerkers aren't just "angry marines", they are instead given a supernatural prowess and ferocity because of their allegience and sacrifice. They should be a cut or two or three above their non-aligned bretheren.

Nurgle (Death Guard) terminators are tougher because they're mutated and half their body is just puss/rottingflesh that isn't essential to their ability to keep fighting. As far as I'm aware, berzerkers don't have a similar mutation or a supernatural boost that makes them (literally) magically stronger or faster or anything like that. My understanding is that they're just angry (due to the nails) and hopped up on the adrenaline that comes with that anger. And I don't mean to discount how useful adrenaline is, but I tend to think that marines are generally working with some amount of adrenaline in their systems if not straight up dosing on combat stimms.

Thus what I mean about the existence of berzerkers kind of implying that other marines are half-assing it. If the only difference between a berzerker and a night lord with a chain weapon is that the berzerker gets angry automatically, then it sort of suggests that a night lord who gets angry would have berzerker style buffs. And if he doesn't have those buffs, well, clearly he doesn't actually feel very strongly one way or the other about this whole long war thing.

Why do you think their supernatural embellishments need to be visible in the way the Death Guards are?

Death Guard are portly and mutated. Tsons are dust filled animated armor. Slaanesh and Khorne Marines aren't so outwardly different, but that doesn't mean they aren't also imbued with unnatural "gifts".

In the old lore (2nd ed) The Mark of Khorne was said to make the armor of the wearer and the body into one, and they had an increased armor save as part of that. (2+ rather than 3+). I don't know if that's still part of the description of Berzerkers or not.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Nurgle Terminators aren't tougher because they're just mentally tougher soldiers who were otherwise slacking off before they became followers of Nurgle. They're tougher because having gone down the path of corruption they've become infused with power from their chosen god. Likewise, Berzerkers aren't just "angry marines", they are instead given a supernatural prowess and ferocity because of their allegience and sacrifice. They should be a cut or two or three above their non-aligned bretheren.

Your argument is a bit like Death Guard shouldn't get a bonus for being fat. There's a little more going on with a Death Guard marine than a bit of chunk.

I think the more important question is not whether or not they should get a bonus but whether they need to be a unique unit (rather than regular Terminators but with bonuses from the relevant Mark and possibly some alternate wargear options).

 vipoid wrote:
I think the more important question is not whether or not they should get a bonus but whether they need to be a unique unit (rather than regular Terminators but with bonuses from the relevant Mark and possibly some alternate wargear options).

Since GW's in the business of selling miniatures... probably?

I feel this is the key point:

 ElEssEm wrote:
The Death Guard are the best done, but had the advantage of a big Edition Launch wave (and an extremely passionate sculptor/long time Nurglite, Maxime Pastourel).

I think GW sold far more Death Guard because they were unique than they'd have sold "CSM but painted in pea green soup". Much like "World Eaters Terminators" that are unique and cool models are probably more interesting to a certain audience than buying CSM terminators and painting them red. (Not you World Eaters, or Red Corsairs, or Crimson Slaughter.)

You can I guess argue that GW could just have CSM as a faction and 5 (6 with Deathshroud?) boxes of "Chaos Terminators" - for "normal", and wearing the mark of the four gods.
But I'm not sure the sales would be as good.

Tyel wrote:
You can I guess argue that GW could just have CSM as a faction and 5 (6 with Deathshroud?) boxes of "Chaos Terminators" - for "normal", and wearing the mark of the four gods.
But I'm not sure the sales would be as good.

Then you could just have Space Marines as a faction with 1000 different Terminator kits. There's apparently enough call for Snowflake Chapters to need their own models, after all.

 Hellebore wrote:

 the Signless wrote:
Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

..

What does a debuff rule have to do with miniatures?

You can roll all that back into csm and provide detachments for debuffs all you want.

Death Guard units currently have multiple units and abilities that interact with these auras. Rolling them back into CSM would result in either losing the unique play style of these units of making a section of the army that only has rules in a few siloed off detachments that are all explicitly themed DG and having to rewrite the aura rules in each of these detachments. It would be like rolling GSC into tyranids and then having to rewrite cult ambush into each of their detachments.

Debuff rules have to do with miniatures in so far as we are using them to play a wargame. The fact that these miniatures have a different play style and set of combat tactics justifies their separate existence in the rules while a modelling team works to differentiate them on the table.

I'm not sure I see the point of this whole thread given some of these comments. Death guard are justified because they've been out for a decade but we need to examine world eaters? Why aren't we waiting 10 years to have this conversation so we can say that it s too late to roll them back?

In which case I can't wait for my 10 ork codexs which we'll debate the merits of in 2067 when there are too many units to roll them back.

DG are justified because they have models and rules. WE are currently in a tighter spot because they are a younger range as an independent force and they received a lackluster codex in 10th. I posit that they do have a unique aesthetic that they have shown in past models and the range is adopting and that GW have shown that Khorne can have a unique play style. Khorne is a prominent faction in the fluff and, with examples such as DG and TS showing that they can be spun off into stand alone forces successfully, should be given time to develop their own range. Having a single bad codex should not be enough to consign the army to instant deletion, otherwise we would be sitting here discussing the need to flush DE after the travesty that was their 10th edition showing.

If GW had spun off nine more ork codices and provided unique rules niches and model ranges for them such that they were too large to be cleanly rolled back, I would also support these new factions. I can think of an independent speed waaagh, a gretchin force, and maybe some kind of savage ork range expansion?

 Insectum7 wrote:
Why do you think their supernatural embellishments need to be visible in the way the Death Guards are?

They don't have to be visible, but they do have to be established. I'm genuinely asking as someone who doesn't know a ton about WE lore: are the berzerkers stated to be supernaturally powerful? Everything I've read with them in it just made them out to basically just be normal marines who were rendered constantly aggressive because the nails steadily made them more and more angry/pained until they performed enough violence to ease the effects of the nails. I don't think I've ever read a story that made it clear that berzerkers could like, beat a smurf in an arm wrestling contest or a race. I was under the impression that they were functionally just cranky guys whose legion happened to prioritize extra melee practice.

And if we're talking about furious charge, +1 Attacks or the other differences between berzerkers and legionaires, that type of rule was given to a lot of units to represent them simply being hyped-up. And such benefits were weird in those scenarios too for the same reason. Like, the determining factor in whether or not a kabalite warrior could peel the plates off of a tank in 5th edition was whether or not he was invigorated by pain. Which was weird enough but at least I could assume that vampire rules (get more supernaturally strong the more you "drink" ) were in effect. The drukhari literally changed appearance, etc. as they drank, for instnace. And to my knowledge there isn't any indication that something similar is going on for berzerkers. If they're low-key time-warpers speeding themselves up to attack more or biomancers infusing their muscles with magical levels of strength, then fair enough!

Slaanesh and Khorne Marines aren't so outwardly different, but that doesn't mean they aren't also imbued with unnatural "gifts".

Slaaneshi marines are frequently described as having some combination of hyper-effective sensory organs to make them more aware of their surroundings or making use of exotic combat drugs (to up their physical speed), so rolling some combination of factors such as those into +1 initiative sort of made sense to me.

In the old lore (2nd ed) The Mark of Khorne was said to make the armor of the wearer and the body into one, and they had an increased armor save as part of that. (2+ rather than 3+). I don't know if that's still part of the description of Berzerkers or not.

I'd say being fused to your armor is enough of a sign of some sort of warp-y transformation that I'd be willing to chalk up some super strength/speed to that transformation, sure. Fair enough if that lore is still current.

Tyel wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I think the more important question is not whether or not they should get a bonus but whether they need to be a unique unit (rather than regular Terminators but with bonuses from the relevant Mark and possibly some alternate wargear options).

Since GW's in the business of selling miniatures... probably?

I feel this is the key point:

 ElEssEm wrote:
The Death Guard are the best done, but had the advantage of a big Edition Launch wave (and an extremely passionate sculptor/long time Nurglite, Maxime Pastourel).

I think GW sold far more Death Guard because they were unique than they'd have sold "CSM but painted in pea green soup". Much like "World Eaters Terminators" that are unique and cool models are probably more interesting to a certain audience than buying CSM terminators and painting them red. (Not you World Eaters, or Red Corsairs, or Crimson Slaughter.)

You can I guess argue that GW could just have CSM as a faction and 5 (6 with Deathshroud?) boxes of "Chaos Terminators" - for "normal", and wearing the mark of the four gods.
But I'm not sure the sales would be as good.

I dunno. I always think back to the Chaos 3.5 book and feel like it did a great job of putting all the Chaos options into one book, with rules for subfaction armies as well. All in a paperback that might be half the page count of the current hardbacks.

It's a valid question though, of whether having your own "subfaction" book sells more models or not. Maybe it does by making the faction feel more "established." But as a gamer I feel like I'm missing out on the flexibility awarded by the combined format.

Tyel wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I think the more important question is not whether or not they should get a bonus but whether they need to be a unique unit (rather than regular Terminators but with bonuses from the relevant Mark and possibly some alternate wargear options).

Since GW's in the business of selling miniatures... probably?

I guess this depends on whether you're approaching the question as someone whose goal is to make GW more money or as someone chiming in on what kind of releases they want to see in a release cycle with finite "slots."

Personally, a squad of terminators with melee weapons reads as pretty Khorne-friendly even if you don't give them some overtly Khornate special rule or build a kit that forbids them from taking guns and allows them to take "Skull Taker Axes" or what have you. Especially if there's an option to give the existing unit/kit a mark of Khorne and some nifty "blessings".

As a rough comparison, presumably there are some eldar rangers out there who opt to wield "Kurnothi Long Rifles" that are just slightly different sniper rifles than the ones the existing kit comes with. As much as I like seeing new elf plastic, I don't think it's particularly necessary for GW to add "Kurnothi Rangers" to release cycle that sell you slightly more mobile rangers. And changing up the aesthetics of kurnothi rangers to have, idk, antlers on their helmets or something would just be obscuring the lack of justification for that new kit being put on the release schedule.

Tyel wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
I think the more important question is not whether or not they should get a bonus but whether they need to be a unique unit (rather than regular Terminators but with bonuses from the relevant Mark and possibly some alternate wargear options).

Since GW's in the business of selling miniatures... probably?

Weird how GW is "in the business of selling miniatures" when it comes to making slightly-different-Terminators, yet they're apparently not in the business of selling miniatures when it comes to even maintaining the existing models for Dark Eldar. Or doing literally anything with Ynnari.

That's cos they're not Space Marines, duh.

Who wants evil space elves when you can have evil super space humans.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

I definitely agree a lot with all this. Which is why I like that in 30k, characters generally don't give that kind of vague TCG-like buff like lethal hits auras just for existing. And the juiced up World Eaters have high offensive stats, but also have the Ravening Madmen rule (count as a significantly lower WS when being attacked, because they don't care when they're hit, but also weapons are -1S against them, because they don't care when they're hit). World Eaters generally get +1A on the charge but it's instead of other specialities that other Legions who are less obsessed with melee have rather than a random bonus.

If only Terminators could take Marks like they used to be able to, you could have Khorne Marked Terminators have rules and options to make Berzerker Terminators...

But Marks were effectively removed so that the variant books could be more different!

 Wyldhunt wrote:
As a rough comparison, presumably there are some eldar rangers out there who opt to wield "Kurnothi Long Rifles" that are just slightly different sniper rifles than the ones the existing kit comes with. As much as I like seeing new elf plastic, I don't think it's particularly necessary for GW to add "Kurnothi Rangers" to release cycle that sell you slightly more mobile rangers. And changing up the aesthetics of kurnothi rangers to have, idk, antlers on their helmets or something would just be obscuring the lack of justification for that new kit being put on the release schedule.

I'm not really sure GW's meaningfully constrained by release windows. There are certain limits perhaps - but they can roll out a lot of stuff.
Its unfortunate they've not had imagination regarding "new" Dark Eldar releases for nearly 30 years - but there's not much I can do about that. (Kind of feel there has to be a big wave at some point - because what else is there to do? Even Exodites are getting models.)
We could have had various things released via Kill Team had they been so inclined. They were not.

But this is arguably the point. Lets say your "Kurnothi Long Rifles" aren't released as CWE - but are instead released for the (inevitable?) new Exodite Faction which comes out with 5-6 kits some time in say 2030.
You can I guess say "its essentially just some reskinned rangers, can't you just play rangers and paint them up a bit differently?" And I guess you could. But I'm not sure that's the same. I think more people will want to buy an "Exodite" army as opposed to painting up a CWE army in beige and calling it a day.

Ashiraya wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

I definitely agree a lot with all this. Which is why I like that in 30k, characters generally don't give that kind of vague TCG-like buff like lethal hits auras just for existing. And the juiced up World Eaters have high offensive stats, but also have the Ravening Madmen rule (count as a significantly lower WS when being attacked, because they don't care when they're hit, but also weapons are -1S against them, because they don't care when they're hit). World Eaters generally get +1A on the charge but it's instead of other specialities that other Legions who are less obsessed with melee have rather than a random bonus.

Love that! That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that having a Codex: Khorne could create space to treat vanilla units in a different way.

Tyel wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
As a rough comparison, presumably there are some eldar rangers out there who opt to wield "Kurnothi Long Rifles" that are just slightly different sniper rifles than the ones the existing kit comes with. As much as I like seeing new elf plastic, I don't think it's particularly necessary for GW to add "Kurnothi Rangers" to release cycle that sell you slightly more mobile rangers. And changing up the aesthetics of kurnothi rangers to have, idk, antlers on their helmets or something would just be obscuring the lack of justification for that new kit being put on the release schedule.

I'm not really sure GW's meaningfully constrained by release windows. There are certain limits perhaps - but they can roll out a lot of stuff.

I'm using "release schedule" as more of a vague nod to their production/shipping/storage/product design budget. If we get "Blood Terminators," we presumably could have gotten a "more needed" (depending on who you ask) new kit, be that a more original Khorne unit that fills a more distinct niche, a grotesque box so they can come out of legends, a votann box to expand that faction, etc.

But this is arguably the point. Lets say your "Kurnothi Long Rifles" aren't released as CWE - but are instead released for the (inevitable?) new Exodite Faction which comes out with 5-6 kits some time in say 2030.
You can I guess say "its essentially just some reskinned rangers, can't you just play rangers and paint them up a bit differently?" And I guess you could. But I'm not sure that's the same. I think more people will want to buy an "Exodite" army as opposed to painting up a CWE army in beige and calling it a day.

I'm nitpicking the example, but bog standard rangers actually make a ton of sense being a shared unit between craftworlders and exodites. It would probably be a hard sell to get me excited about a redundant kit when the existing kit, rules, and fluff would all work perfectly well with exodites.

This might be a consequence of me starting with a xenos army instead of a marine army? If you told me I ought to buy an entirely different box of warlocks when I'm pretending my army is Ulthwe instead of Iybraesil, I'd find the notion silly and probably just proxy my Iybraesil banshees as Ulthwe banshees when I felt like using that statblock. The only upside would be that I'd have a bit of variety in sculpts to choose from, but I'd be mildly annoyed that they made two types of banshees instead of keeping the court of the archon around. Wanting Khorne-specific termies is like wanting a second kind of banshee.

EDIT: Actually, we sort of had this briefly at the tail end of 7th when "black guardians" had rules again. I was glad to have some nifty alternative rules for my guardians. I wasn't hoping that GW would release a bunch of "black guardian" kits that were just slightly different sculpts of the existing guardian units.