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I've just about had it with my ugly CSM codex. I feel like my word Bearers need something else... Something cooler.

I've been considering basically every marine variety for different reasons, so here's the pro-cons of each
Black Templars- Unique 'veterans' choices, neat special characters for a dark apostle. The emperor's chosen, or whatever seems cool.
cons- Not sure if they have Venerable Dreadnoughts, which I wanted to use. Not too much selection of terminators, as far as I've been told. Old wargear options

Dark Angels- Lots of Terminators, something I wanted to do. Unique special characters. Veterans all over the place
Cons- Still not sure about venerable Dreads, old wargear options, faster than word bearers

Blood Angels- Excellent Dreadnoughts, enhanced tanks, sanguinary guard (proxies for terminators, I guess), storm raven (stormbird gunship, maybe). Really cool army-wide rules. Could be great to represent Zealous Worship and dedication
Cons- Maybe more jump packs than I'd prefer... Not sure about terminators.

Space Wolves- Good terminators, with land raiders applenty. Thunderwolves could be guys on Juggernauts. Long fangs match the word bearer's theme, I suppose.
Cons- Eh.

Vanilla Marines- Nothing the above can't do


I'd like to do something cool, like Dreadnought spam, or Terminator spam. Even an assaulty list is fine. Dark Angels really speak to me, especially veterans, who represent the elite nature of the word bearers anyway, plus, terminators as troops, which is something cool.


Thank you

I think Dark angels would be the best choice. The hoods and what not could go very well with a WB themed army. Plus it's sort of a big slap in the face against them, considering DA are the most obsessed with protecting chapter 'honor' and secrets. I think defaming and defacing the first company would be a great thing in this case!

You can definately make terminator spam work with templars. Remember you can run 2 special weapons in a squad of 5, so you can have a unit of 5 tank hunters with 2 assault cannons for 240 points (ish). The assault terminators are nothing to be sneered at either.

You can run one Ven Dreadnought per BT detatchment - but the only benefit you get is the damage re-roll, not higher armour or BS or anything.

BA can work for Heresy era Word Bearers. In several of the books they were shown to have a large assault company equipped with jump packs.

Wait for the next codex maybe? lol

I'm going to have to agree with Gorgarak DA is best, one for the robes as he said but another reason being that they are Chaplin heavy. Not to mention the Interrogator-Chaplin's as well. The Word Bearer's are known for there 'Dark Apostle' which could fit an Interrogator-Chaplin on some level. So I think DA would work best as well. I would say go over all the fluff in word bearer's and pull out the crowning points of the information and find the contrasts in marine armies and build from there. Though you might add spiky bits and all that stuff to there Armour a bit just to give them the feel of being chaos.
If anything run around http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Word_Bearers it should help in your search for the right twist but you never know when some other chapter will fill the roll too but I agree with DA for the better part of this.

-Viri

I vote for Black Templars or Space Wolves. While the look of DA suits Word Bearers more, bottom line is, despite their names and appearance, they're still just normal Chaplains and marines. You're no more better off using the CSM codex than them (especially since Word Bearers are not suppose to have up-to-date weaponry anyways). Now the other two:

Black Templars: These thematically are perfect for Word Bearers. Crusader squads can represent units of CSM intermixed with Daemons and/or mutants, or even really strong cultists clad in Carapace armor. Their Zeal move is self explanatory and again is perfect. Finally For a leader, nothing says Dark Apostle more than an Emp Champ (ironic indeed) as he can bestow Prefered Enemy on the entire army, effectively being a chaplain with an Army-wide ability (which seems befitting for these individuals).

The problem with this is, there is zero way of representing Daemonbomb, which is a halmark of Word Bearer forces. You can get away with it by running Daemons counting as Crusader Squads (with varying Daemons for the Neophytes and Initiates) but it's still not really Daemonbomb. You can represent actual Wordbearers well, but not their signature move.

Space Wolves: These guys are pretty solid as a list, and Logan Grimnar can be quite an effective Dark Apostle, given that he gives out buffs. The main perk of this army is that there is a wide range of units you can use as Daemons, such as TWC and Fenrisian Wolves. Blood Claws fit the idea of generic foot daemons pretty well, while Skyclaws can be things like extra-armored Furies. Still not a true Daemonbomb, but you can get pretty close with this one. Not to mention the basic Grey Hunter is very close to that of the CSM.

The problem with this is almost the opposite of the BT book: there's really no thematic ties to the Word Bearers, at least no mroe than any other book (besides BTs, who have alot of parallels), so if your going with a thematic outlook, this one is going to suck. The units themselves are closer to CSM, but it's because they're so close that I dont think this is a good idea, since you can do a proper Daemonbomb with the CSM codex (although not an effective one, nor a varied one).

Wait, I thought word bearers were most known for the number of demons that they summon.

Since no codex outside of chaos can summon demons...

Word Bearers are one of the few armies I think that are still well represented by the current CSM book. There's a good case for Nightlords to be portrayed with Blood Angels or Iron Warriors with the Smurf book, but I think Word Bearers still work rather well with C:CSM, strictly thematically speaking of course. And this is coming from a huge hater on that book.

Word Bearers as a legion is known for the fanaticism and their Chaplains, along with their tendancy to Daemonbomb. They also have a considerable amount of Cultists. It's also described that they tend to march towards battle chanting blasphemous hymns and such, and never giving an inch to the enemy. They're also hyper-religious to the extreme. BT seems to fit two out of four very well (Dark Apostle and the whole fanatical religious part) while Space Wolves fit about 1.5 (they have some good leaders and can bring some frightening Daemon count-as to the board, but lack the fanatical fearlessness of the Black Templars).

Just to throw something way out of left field here, but how about a guard army? Regular troopers count as cultists, while you have lots of deepstriking and outflanking options that can count as demons. You don't get any power armor outside of techpriests and straken (or, with a stretch, eviscerator priests), but it would be able to do what you're talking about.

Ailaros wrote:Just to throw something way out of left field here, but how about a guard army? Regular troopers count as cultists, while you have lots of deepstriking and outflanking options that can count as demons. You don't get any power armor outside of techpriests and straken (or, with a stretch, eviscerator priests), but it would be able to do what you're talking about.

I was gonna offer up a guard army as a joke, but decided against it.

Great minds think alike as they say

Ironically, GKs might be the best right now come to think of it. Henchmen can form some of the best cultists around (especially given their customization) and you got alot of power armor running around. Coteaz can even be a Apostate preacher leading the cultists, Jokaero can be micro-oblits, and Daemonhosts speaks for themselves. You can also use the Dreadknight as a daemonspawn or something, and say all your vehicles are possessed, to represent the Fortitude Psychic Power. Their Leader, especially The Brotherhood Champion and Crowe, are good for apostles. The only thing you'll be hard press to explain is how everyone in your warband is running around with Force Weapons (Psychic Powers, on the other hand, can be explained away as blessings of the various Chaos Gods, similar to Acts of Faith for Sisters).

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:Ironically, GKs might be the best right now come to think of it. Henchmen can form some of the best cultists around (especially given their customization) and you got alot of power armor running around. Coteaz can even be a Apostate preacher leading the cultists, Jokaero can be micro-oblits, and Daemonhosts speaks for themselves. You can also use the Dreadknight as a daemonspawn or something, and say all your vehicles are possessed, to represent the Fortitude Psychic Power. Their Leader, especially The Brotherhood Champion and Crowe, are good for apostles. The only thing you'll be hard press to explain is how everyone in your warband is running around with Force Weapons (Psychic Powers, on the other hand, can be explained away as blessings of the various Chaos Gods, similar to Acts of Faith for Sisters).

Hmm, how about everyone has a less awesome but still demonic demon weapon?

Or the same things as Possessed (one of the Daemonkin powers is Power Weapons, and write off the Force Weapon as another "act of Gods" ability)?

Actually, hell, just say they're all possessed. Wouldnt put it past the daemon-lover Word Bearers.

Another case for templars,is that you could.use lesser daemons as neophytes in crusader squads. Then you can have mixed squads of word bearers and lesser daemons.

or you know, you could always play tried and true C:CSM.


just saying. I still win with them.


just start a non WB army for a while

Samus_aran115 wrote:
I'd like to do something cool, like Dreadnought spam, or Terminator spam.

What do either of those things have to do with Word Bearers?

I'll go ahead and give you the answer: nothing.

If you want to play a different army, go right ahead. Don't pretend it's a better representation of Word Bearers than CSM already provides though.

Mecha, you've really made this thread for me. Thank you very much

Darkness eternal....

I absolutely love dreadnoughts, and the CSM codex doesn't offer anything even close to what I'd want, not to mention the only way our terminators work is by using them as suicide melta guys

Given the facts, I'll probably end up trying both DE and BT, since both of them provide aspects that I like. BT seem like the best fit, especially with the emperor's champion, plus they have cool assaulty units to count as possessed, etc.

I love chaos in all of its glory, but our codex is positively awful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

IronfrontAlex wrote:or you know, you could always play tried and true C:CSM.


just saying. I still win with them.


just start a non WB army for a while

It has nothing to do with winning. I just want to have fun with an army I love everything about


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vaktathi wrote:Word Bearers are one of the few armies I think that are still well represented by the current CSM book. There's a good case for Nightlords to be portrayed with Blood Angels or Iron Warriors with the Smurf book, but I think Word Bearers still work rather well with C:CSM, strictly thematically speaking of course. And this is coming from a huge hater on that book.

I agree, for sure. There would be quite a few things I'd miss out on by playing them as another MEQ army (daemons, marks, reaper autocannons ), but yeah, I more or less agree. I'm just sick of C:CSM

I was actually considering GK for a couple seconds, since henchmen would make nice traitors, and Brother Captains could make pretty good Apostles... Except for the fact that they don't have any power fists, combi meltas or anything else that distinguishes them as traditional Meq

Try Running chaoszilla, I have fun running chaoszilla.

or convert and make IA book models! i'm making 2 dreadclaws and i'm going to use them in fun games!

I'm ashamed to have no idea what Chaoszilla is

I'm guessing... Daemon princes, and a Greater daemon?

Princes, GD, mass standard CSM, 3 Dreds, 3 Defilers

Sometimes i throw down termi's in a LR too, or 2 dreds, another LR, 2 defilers, a termi lord and a DP, sometimes.


chaoszilla=all the big units of the army, making the enemy not know what to shoot at and spreads the firepower around lightly.... unless it's leafblower.

Corteaz makes henchmen troop right?
And daemonhosts are henchmen right?
(havent looked through the book much yet)

So, you have corteaz as a dark apostle leading units of twisted daemons.

Other henchmen units can be cultists.

PAGK's can be basic CSM's.

Dreadknight - Possessed daemon engine.





Lots of possibilities.

Brotherhood champion or Crowe is a better Apostle imo. They actually have SM stats and they basically are chaplain equivallents. Coteaz is better represented with a Apostate Preacher or Arch Heretic.

Samus_aran115 wrote:
Darkness eternal.... [spoiler]In 'dark apostle', the novel by anthony reynolds, there are several mentions of gigantic dreadnought charges, where about thirty of them charge down a hill into a bunch of mechanicum dudes, led by one of their oldest members encased in dreadnought armour.

Sure, when they were the second largest legion and operating on legion scale warfare.

They ain't that anymore and haven't been for some time.

No.... it takes place in the 41st millenium. Go read it, seriously. It's a great book.

They don't really use daemons at all in that book. There's various mentions of fluries and a greater daemon of khorne, but they don't exactly summon them.. They just kind of show up when the elysians get close to the main city.