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They still don't get obsec in this formation, right?

 koooaei wrote:
They still don't get obsec in this formation, right?

I wish. It'll be mostly for screening the Spawnstar as well as creating little room for the opponent.

Well, the new stuff looks interesting, but does anyone know if there is anything in there for Noise Marines?
I have my old ones and Lucius sat upstairs somewhere and if they turn out to be actually worth it I may just crack them out again.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Well, the new stuff looks interesting, but does anyone know if there is anything in there for Noise Marines?
I have my old ones and Lucius sat upstairs somewhere and if they turn out to be actually worth it I may just crack them out again.

there seems to be something about cult troops but i'm afraid it's just an extra slot without benefits.

 koooaei wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Well, the new stuff looks interesting, but does anyone know if there is anything in there for Noise Marines?
I have my old ones and Lucius sat upstairs somewhere and if they turn out to be actually worth it I may just crack them out again.

there seems to be something about cult troops but i'm afraid it's just an extra slot without benefits.

Bugger. Ah well, ill just stick the hedonists back on ice.

 master of ordinance wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Well, the new stuff looks interesting, but does anyone know if there is anything in there for Noise Marines?
I have my old ones and Lucius sat upstairs somewhere and if they turn out to be actually worth it I may just crack them out again.

there seems to be something about cult troops but i'm afraid it's just an extra slot without benefits.

Bugger. Ah well, ill just stick the hedonists back on ice.

Im also wanting to use my freshly painted noise marines but unless somewhere in the book it allows you to sub normal marines I don't think any god specific marine gets any love

Interesting. I might actually return to my long-shelved Chaos Marines depending on the Psychic Powers.

I guess the Heldrake and Raptor formations are pretty cool for Night Lords, but do they even get Night Vision as a result of anything?

 Draco wrote:

Play against Blood Angels or Orks

Just finished losing against Orks, despite me playing a top-tier book. I don't really think they're that bad in the hands of a skilled player.

In the News and Rumors thread they are saying that the psychic powers are exact copies of the new loyalist ones.
This from someone who supposedly has the 'book in hand.'

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
In the News and Rumors thread they are saying that the psychic powers are exact copies of the new loyalist ones.
This from someone who supposedly has the 'book in hand.'

They are.

While the formations are average to ok the problem still lies with the codex. No amount of formations will fix the codex

I like the new book as i like to play fluffy and tournament style. Formations to me are what others have said, around a B+ overall, but not SM level formations. Now imagine if they did update the chaos codex, the right way, with these new formations, we would most likely be right there in the top tier. Not complaining as I'll take anything chaos has to offer, but we are so close just need that new dex.

Ok, guyz. LEGAL CSM tourney-winning list.

Chaosurion:
Core: Cultist formation (Apostol, 4 squads of cultists)
Auxilaries: 42 solo Nurgle Spawns.

I'd call it: "The answer to life, universe and everything: 42 spawns".

I'm going to be honest here...I keep seeing people refer to how awesome and OP and amazing the 3.5 codex was everywhere and how GW needs to do that.......but all I remember from when the 3.5 codex was out was chaos players complaining how god damn awful the whole book was and how only certain parts of it were any good. Is this rose colored glasses here? Cause again all I remember is comments of how badly it sucked.

Orktavius wrote:
I'm going to be honest here...I keep seeing people refer to how awesome and OP and amazing the 3.5 codex was everywhere and how GW needs to do that.......but all I remember from when the 3.5 codex was out was chaos players complaining how god damn awful the whole book was and how only certain parts of it were any good. Is this rose colored glasses here? Cause again all I remember is comments of how badly it sucked.

I don't think its rose coloured glasses I just think everyone complains about their current codex and say only parts are good, its almost like a tradition. Except eldar, everything is good in the eldar codex.

Orktavius wrote:
I'm going to be honest here...I keep seeing people refer to how awesome and OP and amazing the 3.5 codex was everywhere and how GW needs to do that.......but all I remember from when the 3.5 codex was out was chaos players complaining how god damn awful the whole book was and how only certain parts of it were any good. Is this rose colored glasses here? Cause again all I remember is comments of how badly it sucked.

Back then a 4th Heavy was a big deal.

Right now, GW doesn't care, so go ahead and let people play that 3.5 book. It'd get murdered by IKTs, Decurion, Gladius, etc.
____

Reavas wrote:
I don't think its rose coloured glasses I just think everyone complains about their current codex and say only parts are good, its almost like a tradition. Except eldar, everything is good in the eldar codex.

OK, now you go pilot that Storm Guardian & Howling Banshee army to the top tables! Do it!

"bad" doesn't mean "not top tables." Bad means bottom tables.

The "issue" with 3.5 CSM I think is that while it gave a bunch of options and gave each legion a distinct flavour, many of those options were false choices, certain legions were just flat out better than others and a bunch of people complained because 3.5 actually had restrictions on which legion could take what in their army, so there were a bunch of people who played [insert any legion other than IW here] who wanted their own benefits, but also wanted more than 1 squad of Obliterators, and so there was endless complaining.

Personally I think that the restrictions were fairly accurate to the fluff and would love to see something similar return not only for CSM, but for every army. Ie. If you're running a Night Lords army, then a restriction/limit on heavy armour and Daemon units is reasonable, if you're running an Ulthwe force, then jetbikes aren't troops and you're limited in the number of wraith units you can take, if you run a Speed Freaks Klan, then you should expect to have a minimal, if any, amount of Meganobz available to you.

Yes, certain armies would always be better / worse than others, but a) ideally writing a decent codex that has some form of internal balance would sort that, and b) at the very least, it would limit the ridiculous combinations that we see now.

Unfortunately, people would complain that they can't just run anything that they want and we'd end up with what we have now again with rare, limited, experimental units making up the vast majority of armies that traditionally have no or limited access to said units, and as we all know, stopping little Timmy from buying 7 Wraithknights / Riptides / Warhounds just because he paints his models a certain colour is bad for sales.

I think I figured out what bugs me about the current design choices with Chaos, and even these new formations:

1) I dislike taking Marks in what should be an unmarked army just because it's better. I mean, in 2nd and 3rd I had that mixed bag chaos force with some CSM, a unit of Plague Marines, a unit of Berserkers, a unit of Noise Marines, etc but nowadays I hate seeing an "Iron Warriors" army and then see Mark of Nurgle everywhere; no matter how you try to justify it (e.g. bionics, Obliterator virus) to me it's basically picking an unfluffy choice because it's better; that's not an "Iron Warriors" force to me, that's a Nurgle army painted in gunmetal with hazard stripes.

2) RE: The actual formations, I don't like that some of them require taking multiple Chaos Lords (e.g. Raptor formation, which looks cool I admit) because I always liked the fluff of one Chaos Lord and subordinates (it really makes me wish they never got rid of the secondary HQ choices e.g. the Chaos Lieutenant from 3.5), and it doesn't sit well with me to have Lord Doombringer the Badass as my chaos lord, and then Lord Talonclaws over here with his Raptors because my view is there's only one "Lord" in a warband.

I don't know, I have very weird viewpoints of 40k and how armies should be built. I like to stick entirely to the theme and tone and feel of the forces and it really really bugs me to see excuses given on how to still take the "better" choices and make up something to justify taking it, instead of just not taking it.

What Drasius said. Right now FW rules are so much better for the chaos legions because they reflect the fluff of each legion. Special units aside, the rules are just better. I play Night Lords and the chaos codex rules frikkin suck and FW and Imperial marine rules reflect them and their fluff better. Now with the new rules I might be able to do a better Atramentar and Raptor cult, which I will probably try but the whole boon thing and any of the daemon and dino-bot crap is unusable and an eyesore for the most point for me.

3.5 at least gave nods to the actual legions and not just generic warbands. If anything the main chaos codex should be called Black Legion(which really is Legion Generica) and supplements should be the other legions. Hell, you could easily fit the other unaligned legions into one single supplement and it would sell like hot cakes. Really unsure why GW hasn't tapped into that market. I didn't think the original was OP in the slightest. They even felt apparently that Night Lords were kind of weak and came up with better rules for them in a white dwarf which included a table similar to the old Pathfinder disruption table, and that was cool and fluffy.

When does the new book come out BTW? Its just one book right?

Orktavius wrote:
I'm going to be honest here...I keep seeing people refer to how awesome and OP and amazing the 3.5 codex was everywhere and how GW needs to do that.......but all I remember from when the 3.5 codex was out was chaos players complaining how god damn awful the whole book was and how only certain parts of it were any good. Is this rose colored glasses here? Cause again all I remember is comments of how badly it sucked.

This was the book which gave you, from memory:

1. Master crafted spikey bits, 2 rerolls to hit for 10 pts on any "character"/SGT
2. Alpha Legion had army wide infiltrators, when you could charge from infiltrate
3. Manually upgraded Chosen/Possesssed, when furious charge was +1 I +1 S and you could consolidate into other units and lock them in combat.

With power weapons/lightning claws all being effectively AP2, SM fell over at the sight of this, never mind anything else. You could sink 60~ points into a chaos SGT and he would sweep entire squads quite happily, while his meat shields (who could be 4 point cultists) took all the wounds. Chaos Lords and so forth were a class of their own.

On top of that as people said, it was the only way to bring 4 heavy support class items in the game when Lascannons were relevant.Vindicators/Basilisks for example, or pile on havocs who would take assault weapons (Pguns,MGuns) if you went IW.

Basically chaos 3.5, while being no good for CERTAIN army builds was optimised for the game as it stood then, and both shooty and assaulty could be put together in such a way that your opponent would have to be built around hard countering it. As for style, pass - Chaos was the go-to competition army, personality was optional.

To be fair, not a single legion is well represented. Not even Black Legion or word bearers. Word bearers shouldn't be dieing to perils from summoning daemons. They do that all day long every day. Sure that might involve more sacrifing cultists than summoning themselves, but where is that formation then?
And Black Legion has a supplement but it's pretty half baked. They need some kind of defiler formation and having to buy veterans of the long war doesn't mean much if everybody else can get that too. The vanilla dex isn't much of BL dex either, at least the supplement adds a coven of sorcerers and a half decent possessed formation.

None of the legions have actual character in either the dex or supplements. By that I mean that taking a lot of plague marines still is a far cry from an army actually backed by appropriate rules for a death guard warband.

Roknar wrote:
To be fair, not a single legion is well represented. Not even Black Legion or word bearers. Word bearers shouldn't be dieing to perils from summoning daemons. They do that all day long every day. Sure that might involve more sacrifing cultists than summoning themselves, but where is that formation then?
And Black Legion has a supplement but it's pretty half baked. They need some kind of defiler formation and having to buy veterans of the long war doesn't mean much if everybody else can get that too. The vanilla dex isn't much of BL dex either, at least the supplement adds a coven of sorcerers and a half decent possessed formation.

None of the legions have actual character in either the dex or supplements. By that I mean that taking a lot of plague marines still is a far cry from an army actually backed by appropriate rules for a death guard warband.

You'd think the Black Legion supplement would gain a decurion that would represent the Black Legions full on unique capability to buffer out each and every marked unit as the Black Legion, while the 'generic' is one of the few factions that could reliably pull together people who want to murder each other more then most.

Heck, half the decurion formations would write themselves! Hounds of Abbadon (Khorne Marked/Berzerkers), Children of Torment (Slaanesh Marked/Noise), Sons of the Cyclops (Tzeentch Marked/Rubric Marines), The Tormented (Either Possessed Marines or CSM with strange benefits), Bringers of Decay (Nurgle Marked/Plague Marines), then you'd have room for the Cabal of Sorcerers, some Elite unit stuff, some stuff representing new Black Legion recruits...

The 3.5 dex gets a lot of reference for the mentality it represents; it's what Chaos players deserve. Trying to lump all that is Chaos into a single book, and saying that four marks will easily and effectively distinguish each legion just doesn't cut it. Certain legions should have access to certain perks, with appropriate restrictions in place to balance the benefits. Having the catch-all "just paint them like <insert legion> and viola!" is insulting if it means you could have 8 armies with the same units representing different legions and they would all play the exact same, just in different colors.

At minimum, there should be 5 chaos books (or one main black legion book, and one much larger legion compendium; or even just one big ass book with details for each individual legion...because, you know, they've never done that before for anyone else...). Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Undivided. That is just how Chaos is, it's how it has always been, and trying to shoehorn the four gods into simple marks and basically ignoring undivided entirely is just rubbish.

/endrant

 Aipoch wrote:


At minimum, there should be 5 chaos books (or one main black legion book, and one much larger legion compendium; or even just one big ass book with details for each individual legion...because, you know, they've never done that before for anyone else...). Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Undivided. That is just how Chaos is, it's how it has always been, and trying to shoehorn the four gods into simple marks and basically ignoring undivided entirely is just rubbish.

/endrant

I think multiple books I not unreasonable considering how many Space Marine books there are.

 Aipoch wrote:
At minimum, there should be 5 chaos books (or one main black legion book, and one much larger legion compendium; or even just one big ass book with details for each individual legion

No, there's no need for 5 books, that's just stupid. The 3.5 book managed to cram flavour and strong rules into 1 book that was roughly the same page count or less than the current CSM dex and definitely less page count than the current Vanilla Marines book. It's really not that hard, and I wish people would stop asking for a book for each legion or a book for each god or whatever other slowed thing they feels justifies having multiple books.

1 book is all it would take, think about the amount of times you'd be reprinting the same statline for common units (rhino, csm, cultists, Terminators, Defiler, Vindicators, Predator, Havocs, chosen, lords, Sorcerers, dark Apostles etc) if you wanted 2+ books? It'd be 50%+ the same damn book for nothing.

 Drasius wrote:
1 book is all it would take, think about the amount of times you'd be reprinting the same statline for common units (rhino, csm, cultists, Terminators, Defiler, Vindicators, Predator, Havocs, chosen, lords, Sorcerers, dark Apostles etc) if you wanted 2+ books? It'd be 50%+ the same damn book for nothing.

No, it wouldn't be 50% the same.

It'd be more like 80% the same.

 Drasius wrote:

 Aipoch wrote:
At minimum, there should be 5 chaos books (or one main black legion book, and one much larger legion compendium; or even just one big ass book with details for each individual legion

No, there's no need for 5 books, that's just stupid. The 3.5 book managed to cram flavour and strong rules into 1 book that was roughly the same page count or less than the current CSM dex and definitely less page count than the current Vanilla Marines book. It's really not that hard, and I wish people would stop asking for a book for each legion or a book for each god or whatever other slowed thing they feels justifies having multiple books.

1 book is all it would take, think about the amount of times you'd be reprinting the same statline for common units (rhino, csm, cultists, Terminators, Defiler, Vindicators, Predator, Havocs, chosen, lords, Sorcerers, dark Apostles etc) if you wanted 2+ books? It'd be 50%+ the same damn book for nothing.

I do think that Chaos needs to be split, similar to how you have one codex for Space Marines (Ultras and ones that follow close), Dark Angels, Blood Angels and Wolves.

You'd need:

1) Traitor Legions
2) Renegades (more recent Chapters that have turned, this would essentially be like a Space Marine army that gives up some stuff for some Chaos-influenced things)
3) Daemons
4) Lost & The Damned (Cultists/Traitor Guard)
and I'd go so far as to also add 5) Dark Mechanicus

There is no need for 5 books. Just a single 200 page book like SM get would be great.

Played against a new chaosurion with sob (sister rules on orkses - regular sister list otherwise). CSM had a warband with a lord with fist, marines in rhinos with plazma, chosen in rhinos with plazma, havoks with autocannons, bikes and a formation of possessed with a ml3 mace flying dp just to test them out.

Some results so far:
He got an infiltrate warlord trait and infiltrated 2 havok squads that wrecked an exorcist and killed another one in 2 turns - they payed off from the 1-st turn with this infiltrate-av11-side-shooting.
2 boons per turn came in handy. 1-st turn he got a spawn out of infiltrating havok's champin that, if we played it right, managed to pull off the charge 1-st turn and wrecked the immolator, than 2-d turn made a squad with 4 meltas flee, 3-d turn almost wrecked a rhino. Other boons were useless 2-d turn but 3-d turn he turned his half-dead lord into a daemon prince, charging in and killing St Celestine with s6 ID. She got up later on.
all 3 squads of possessed were pretty useless. DP took 2 wounds from contemptor bolters and had to fly away from the mid board, so they ended up as...regular crappy possessed. Once again, too slow and withot nades. We haven't finished the game yet but they might have seen combat 4-th turn...as predicted - not worth it as is. All they achieved was being ignored turn 1, than 1 squad got wiped with heavy bolter dominions, others were too slow to matter.

Obsec on everything in warband played a big role. He denied 3 VP just by being there with some chosen and rhinos. Free LD10 also made the day as he would have failed 2 vital ld checks - with csm and havoks - otherwise.
2 boons per turn with choosing 1 or 2 can be huge. It's a nice booster for a chaos lord or sorc if you invest in them. Or even a "I feel lucky" button as you can choose who gets it. By 4-th turn it was SOB 6 - CSM 4, so pretty even. He still has around 60-70% of his list and i went to around 50%, so it's all pretty even. Will mostly depend on missions, i guess.

 koooaei wrote:
.1-st turn he got a spawn out of infiltrating havok's champin that, if we played it right, managed to pull off the charge 1-st turn and wrecked the immolator,

You didn't, since if the unit infiltrated, it can't Charge.

 Drasius wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
.1-st turn he got a spawn out of infiltrating havok's champin that, if we played it right, managed to pull off the charge 1-st turn and wrecked the immolator,

You didn't, since if the unit infiltrated, it can't Charge.

Oddly enough, the spawn didn't infiltrate, though the model it was created from did.