Are World Eaters just unnecessary bloat?

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**Wyldhunt**

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.

**ccs**

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....

**Ashiraya**

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.

**Tyel**

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.

**Wyldhunt**

"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?"

**LunarSol**

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.

**Ashiraya**

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.

**Wyldhunt**

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.

**Crimson**

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.