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I think his thrust was that, in general, 40k has a shoddy set of rules and the rich universe© holds it all together as one good experience - not specifically anything wrong with the GK rules.

Ouze wrote:That seems like a rather self-serving summation, in it's rather conspicuous omission of certain elements of the codex.

Sorcery, psychic powers, emperor-lazers, they're all the same thing on a basic level. Sure, it may be a bit crazy to imaging GK killing SoB, but you have to remember. Grey Knights aren't shining knights in armor that come save that day and give all the children candy after they save the planet from daemons. They kill the daemons, and then they kill the witnesses, and are so thorough that they are essentially unknown to 99.99999% of the Imperium. If the blood of the faithful is a component in some ritual that staves off a dark age of technology super-daemon-virus, they will use it.


And Draigo's fluff? It is some of the most 40k appropriate fluff out there. He's an immensely strong guy, but cursed to forever walk the warp. Nothing he does in there is of any permanent value, everything that he destroys is rebuilt every day by the nightmarish laws of warp space. He never accomplishes anything in the end. Every once in a while he is spat out in the middle of a daemonic incursion, fights for a while, and then gets sucked right back into the warp. It's a real parallel with the Imperium's fight against chaos, malevolent aliens, and itself. Full of heroic deeds, doomed to stagnation and slowly failing.

H.B.M.C. wrote:And, apropos, the 1d4Chan article has been updated with this:

1d4chan is a good source for getting the pulse of general Internet opinions. That said, the writers really missed the mark on a lot of that analysis. The bit in the Grey Knights codex about Draigo is actually one of the best, most "40k" pieces of fluff in any modern book, despite the rather silly impression it might give at first glance. You see, despite all of Draigo's might, purity, and skill, nothing he does ever matters. He achieves massive feats of arms, toppling entire cities of dæmons and monsters, but none of this means anything at all, since they just come back. Thus, Draigo's eternal struggle is doomed to meaninglessness in the long run, and his actions are actually less significant than those of most ordinary Grey Knights, since when they banish a Dæmon they at least remove it from the physical world for a time.. Draigo, in short, embodies one of the most central principles of 40k-- despite all the stalwart heroism of the Space Marines and other Imperial forces, the harsh forces of the galaxy press in from all sides, and the best the "good guys" can hope to do is to stem back the tide for a little while longer.

EDIT: I wrote this before I saw ph34r's above post. Guess we both "get it."

H.B.M.C. wrote:And, apropos, the 1d4Chan article has been updated with this:

4chan is very good at hating on things. /tg/, while much more sane than the majority of the boards there, really likes to hate on Matt Ward. You get more good jokes out of making fun of him than saying "eh, he's actually not that bad".

1D4Chan wrote:Matt Ward takes those elements away from the player. The biggest rage-inducing codex he has made thus far is the Ultramarines codex, which explicitly stated that all chapters, excluding a few "abhorrent" (Black Templars, Space Wolves...etc), behave and think in exactly the same manner as his army – Ultramarines, his chosen faction. He spelled out the organization patterns, the ideologies, who they revere and why, and then proceeded to tell the community at large that if they don't do it that way, then they're making their army wrong.

I was curious, so I checked, and I was right. The word used was abberant, not abhorrent.

Codex: Space Marines 5th Edition wrote:The third and final group are aberrants; Chapters who,through quirk of gene-seed, mutation or stubbornness, eschew the Codex Astartes in favour of other structural and combat doctrines. Some, such as the Blood Angels and their successors, strive to be worthy of Guilliman's legacy, but their recalcitrant gene-seed drives them ever further from it. Others, such as the Space Wolves and the Black Templars, remain stubbornly independent, looking to their own founder's ways of war and caring little of how they fare in the eyes of others. These aberrant Chapters were always few in number and their presence diminishes further with each passing decade, for their gene-seed is no longer the source of fresh Chapters. Such divergent Chapters play little part in this volume, for this is the tale of the Ultramarines, and all those who follow their example.

Those words are not interchangeable, and, if the vast majority of Space Marine chapters are Codex chapters, that would indeed make the Space Wolves, Templars, et al, aberrant - but not abhorrent. The fact that they put the wrong word in quotes as if that was what Matt Ward had said, but wasn't what he said, is sloppy at best and lying at worst.

Side note, that last sentence must feel pretty good to read for all non-Ultramarines players, huh?

Codex:SM 5th edition did have that little fiasco with Matt Ward blatantly inserting his favorite army as super-best-awesome-time. Other than that though, it's a good book.

ph34r wrote:Codex:SM 5th edition did have that little fiasco with Matt Ward blatantly inserting his favorite army as super-best-awesome-time. Other than that though, it's a good book.

Hey, better Matt Ward making his pet army the best in fluff than Pete Haines making his pet army the best in rules...

Haines was quite balanced. Think about it:

1. He wanted to make his personal army, the Iron Warriors, into total awesomesauce.
2. He understood that awesomesauce is a finite resource.
3. Understanding this, he took all the awesomesauce the 1Ksons had, and gave it to the Iron Warriors.

So technically speaking, there's still the same amount of awesomesauce that had always been there, just that the Iron Warriors have twice their share, and the 1KSons were left with nothing.

Now that's balance!

H.B.M.C. wrote:Haines was quite balanced. Think about it:

1. He wanted to make his personal army, the Iron Warriors, into total awesomesauce.
2. He understood that awesomesauce is a finite resource.
3. Understanding this, he took all the awesomesauce the 1Ksons had, and gave it to the Iron Warriors.

So technically speaking, there's still the same amount of awesomesauce that had always been there, just that the Iron Warriors have twice their share, and the 1KSons were left with nothing.

Now that's balance!

Eh, any army that has troops with two wounds has a lot going for it.

nosferatu1001 wrote:I rarely agree with HBMC about anything, but the current chaos dex is....beyond dull.

Part of the issue is it was rushed out ahead of schedule to make up for delayed orks (modelling issue) so they chopped anything out of it that didnt meet the new deadline.

The other part is that they deliberately sought to remove restrictions on army building found in the old codex. Gav and Alessio have both commented publicly about how they wanted to give players the freedom to build their armies however they wanted. They succeeded in that and reduced the cherished legions to paintschemes in the process. What they didn't count on was how many disciples of chaos craved the order and structure of the old book. People wanted a set of standards to conform to in order to validate their armies as legitimate and make them something more substantial than a paint scheme.

I look forward to a Legions codex because I think GW have figured out what went wrong with the current codex and they've rediscovered the Horus Heresy as the defining element in the 40k background. The Horus Heresy novels have been selling well, some of them getting on the NY Times bestsellers lists. I think it will be good to give the Great Enemy another book to work from.

The flexibility in Codexes and Army books is more to do with shifting plastic than it is with giving us "freedom" to what we want.

It reminds me of that moment in the Simpsons when Homer is put in charge of designing a new model for his brother's car company. "You know those ping pong balls they put on aerials so you can find your car again? ALL cars should have one of those!".

To paraphrase therefore... "You know those cool Vindicator tanks (RRP £31.00) that Iron Warriors have? ALL Chaos Legions should have one of those!"

lord_blackfang wrote:
Eh, any army that has troops with two wounds has a lot going for it.

Well, that's not really the case when 2 wound rubics are literally all the army had going for it, and that didn't really matter because you'd have half the model count of your opponent anyways. Pure Thousand sons in the 3.5 codex were the most restricted and weakest of any of the chaos variant lists, because you couldn't take any of the options that were good. No veteran skills for anybody and no unit that couldn't take the mark of Tzeetch or was associated with Tzeentch, which was pretty much everything. Pretty much the only good thing unique to Thousand sons back then was the rhino-rush-double-wind-of-chaos-with-a-thrall-wizard-and-rapid-fire-bolters move.

Quick, someone call Pete Haines a Nazi!!!

Arschbombe wrote:The other part is that they deliberately sought to remove restrictions on army building found in the old codex.

And what restrictions did they remove exactly? I can see a lot of armies I can't play now... I can see very few things that I couldn't do previously. Yay... I can field a leader with the MoK and still take an army full of Slaaneshi units.

And this was worth losing all the Legions and all Daemonic Gifts and all the God-specific Daemons???

Alpharius wrote:Quick, someone call Pete Haines a Nazi!!!

If you go into a dark room with a mirror, say "Iron Warriors are broken, Iron Warriors are broken, Iron Warriors are broken" that Pete Haines appears and brains you with a hammer.

True story. It happened to me once.

Alpharius wrote:Quick, someone call Pete Haines a Nazi!!!

Pete Haines is a Nazi.

If this does get released I would do a little happy dance. My death guard have been inactive for too long. (As long as they don't screw it up)

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Arschbombe wrote:The other part is that they deliberately sought to remove restrictions on army building found in the old codex.

And what restrictions did they remove exactly? I can see a lot of armies I can't play now... I can see very few things that I couldn't do previously. Yay... I can field a leader with the MoK and still take an army full of Slaaneshi units.

And this was worth losing all the Legions and all Daemonic Gifts and all the God-specific Daemons???

Fully agree H.B.M.C, and not only that, but this glorious thing they apparently gave us was poor anyways, instead of doing the wise thing and granting marks, they go with Icons with some half bogus excuse so folks could tell which unit is which during a battle.

Well if a person needs an icon so folks can figure out which Chaos power their unit follows, they are doing their models wrong.

Cadaver wrote:...
The main thing for me that I think they need to do to set it apart from CSMs is bring a heavy daemonic elements, both the daemons currently available from the Daemons codex, as well as new daemon engines and those from Forgeworld. Make daemonic possession for standard CSM vehicles something tangible, with weapons not available to other Chaos forces. This, however, presents the problem eating into both the CSMs and Chaos Daemons sales, so I don't see it happening...

Agreed, from a visual, rules, and fluff perspective daemons and daemon based technology are what sets chaos apart from any loyalists. Visually, it gives them a more organic and textured look than any loyalists. Rules, it gives unique units and weapons that aren't just borrowed from Loyalists. Fluffwise, it shows that the half of the Adeptus Mechanicus who fled into the Eye of Terror are doing more than sitting on their hands; Loyal AdMech in the last 10 millenia came up with how many different weapons?-a lot... untethered from Imperial dogma and free to desecrate rituals their chaos counterparts have created only a single unique design.

Even if greater and lesser daemons were left out, the daemonic influences can and should take many more forms throughout the codex. Everything from the daemonic weapons to daemon engines to Obliterators should show what these Chaos Marines have gained in sacrificing to their gods.

Platuan4th wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Quick, someone call Pete Haines a Nazi!!!

Pete Haines is a Communist.

All fixed now.

Honestly, I thought IW were a bit overrated. IIRC, they seemed to do better in UK tournaments than in the US, perhaps because of the typical points levels involved.

Regarding the 4th ed book, I think GW's "macro" approach to the existing CSM book wouldn't have been too bad if the Legions book would have happened. Mind you, I still think there's quite a few issues with its execution. But strictly speaking, a three-book breakdown of Renegades/Legions/Daemons is solid enough. Obviously, problems resulted when one book never happened, one book was a bit uninspired and IMO lacked an actual "renegade" feel, and the third book was focused but kinda limited.

I'd still love to see a proper LatD book. But if we had a Renegades book that felt more ragtag and motley, a Daemons book with more Daemonic Engines and Mutants, and a really badazz Legions book...well, I think that'd be a pretty good treatment of Chaos for 40K. And I think it's well within the studio's reach if they want to do it.

Noisy_Marine wrote:

MadCowCrazy wrote:Hmm, so what happened to the Tau we have been hearing about? What of a proper release for the Sisters?

Silly Tau, new books are for marines.

YOU SHARE!!

H.B.M.C. wrote:
And what restrictions did they remove exactly? I can see a lot of armies I can't play now... I can see very few things that I couldn't do previously. Yay... I can field a leader with the MoK and still take an army full of Slaaneshi units.

And this was worth losing all the Legions and all Daemonic Gifts and all the God-specific Daemons???

"Alpha Legionaries can only bear the Mark of Chaos Undivided.."

"Iron Warriors armies may not include any Daemons apart from Daemon Princes and Possessed Chaos Space Marines..."

"The only Mark that may be assigned to a model in a Word Bearers army is the mark of Chaos Undivided. "

"If you want to use a pure World Eaters army you must adhere to the following limitations.
- All characters and units must have the Mark of Khorne. Characters and units that cannot have the Mark cannot be used..."

"If you want to use a pure Death Guard army you must adhere to the following limitations.
- All characters and units must have the Mark of Nurgle. Characters or units that cannot have the Mark cannot be used...."


That's the kind of stuff that Gav and Alessio took out as being too restrictive. I never said that it was worth it. Clearly for many chaos players it wasn't. Like I posted above, Gav and Alessio completely failed to understand that it was precisely those restrictions (and attendant bonuses) that set the armies apart and gave them flavor. They thought they were freeing the chaos players from conforming to those rules. Now anyone could have as many daemons as they wanted in their Iron Warriors armies. They never thought no one would want Iron Warriors that way in the first place.

All of these rumors and suppostitions are very exciting and all, but in light of the recent lockdown on the part of GW on ANY rumors or hints or anything at all, how reliable can we really believe that this information is? I'd love to believe it, but it seems like so much wishful thinking when we haven't even seen the tiniest, blurry pic of anything from even the next codex in the pipeline (supposedly).

Though, on the other hand, this new policy of GW's is so recent that we haven't seen enough releases under it to be sure how effective it is in restricting information, and how reliable rumors and leaks about upcoming stuff might be...

What we will end up with--

LORD VOLDEMAT!!!!!!

Arschbombe wrote:"Alpha Legionaries can only bear the Mark of Chaos Undivided.."

"Iron Warriors armies may not include any Daemons apart from Daemon Princes and Possessed Chaos Space Marines..."

"The only Mark that may be assigned to a model in a Word Bearers army is the mark of Chaos Undivided. "

"If you want to use a pure World Eaters army you must adhere to the following limitations.
- All characters and units must have the Mark of Khorne. Characters and units that cannot have the Mark cannot be used..."

"If you want to use a pure Death Guard army you must adhere to the following limitations.
- All characters and units must have the Mark of Nurgle. Characters or units that cannot have the Mark cannot be used...."

The current trend is rather than insisting on restrictions this edition the game developers instead have opted to promote the use of particular units by paticular sub-factions. For this book this might translate as Thousand Sons, Plague Marines, Bezerkers, and Noise Marines being elite choices for all legions but those known for the unit... while say lesser daemons or a hypothetical unit like cultists are only scoring for Word Bearers and Alpha Legion respectively... all those promote particular combinations without being to inhibitive. At the same time these subfactions are character driven and while that might not be best it works better than the previous attempts at representing subfactions. If GW stick with existing special characters for the big 4 and black legion its fairly straight forward to tie such characters to promoting those legions' modus operandi. That only leaves Iron Warriors, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, and Word Bearers to be characterized... something I'm far more interested in than the "big 4" who constantly get the limelight. And while I want to see those four undivided legions get special characters, I wouldn't be surprise if chaos finally got generic versions of the Warsmith and Dark Apostle as HQ choices to act as counter points to techmarines and chaplains.

ph34r wrote:

KingmanHighborn wrote:6th edition *eyetwitch eyetwitch eyetwitch*

Seriously WTF D&D since it's incarnation has had 4 versions.

40K went through 3 in 10 years....by the gods I miss the rulebook that had the awesome Black Templars artwork on it...best 40K rule book..ever...

3rd edition had some problems. Like rhino rush.

I for one am happy with the rate that 40k is progressing through editions.

Yeah rushes were one issue. but it was still better balanced on the overall.

I've got mixed feelings about this actually.

Of course I'm happy Chaos will be put back into the face of things and their current Codex updated, but...

Chiefly, for me it would render my fandex (signature) useless, particularly as it's now really starting to pick up; although there's still several months yet...
Also, I'm pessimistic about 6th edition as I feel 5th still has a lot of life in it, I'm also pessimistic about how the 'dex itself will turn out; partially because I don't think they need 2 'dexs and partially because they may do a pretty poor job of it.
I'll wait and see I guess...

H.B.M.C. wrote:Haines was quite balanced. Think about it:

1. He wanted to make his personal army, the Iron Warriors, into total awesomesauce.
2. He understood that awesomesauce is a finite resource.
3. Understanding this, he took all the awesomesauce the 1Ksons had, and gave it to the Iron Warriors.

So technically speaking, there's still the same amount of awesomesauce that had always been there, just that the Iron Warriors have twice their share, and the 1KSons were left with nothing.

Now that's balance!

I always looked at it as gaming karma for 2nd edition Tzeentch terminators with power fields, graviton guns and vortex grenades flying around on disk of Tzeetch.

Tau of slaanesh YAHOO!!

Anyways, i dont think orks would follow chaos i mean they have gork and mork.

And theres some suspicion of chaos in this my FLGS, it is getting really..khorny (<--get it) with chaos in the display cases as well as some sob although they were all covered in some dust.