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Do the CSM use Landspeeders? And if they don't, then why?

No.

CSM hate the FA - slot.

In other news, Landspeeder are one of the newer pieces of wargear when the Heresy came and the Traitors were too busy to adapt to their new found belief to add such unproven concepts like speeders, assaultannons, etc to their arsenal.

Well, I think the common arguments are about Chaos not being able to maintain the high technology used in a landspeeder, along with heavy plasma weaponry and other wargear items which loyalists get to use and traitors don't. But, that has never made any sense to me. The traitors can manage to maintain the likes of titans and space cruisers/battleships, and even if they couldn't they would either steal them from the Imperium or make slaves of the technicians who maintain them.

So, I think the real reason is related more to issues of game balance, and also differentiating between loyalists and traitors beyond colour scheme and number of skulls on the miniature, rather than there being a specific background reason for that kind of wargear not being available to the traitors.

And what's about the Red Corsairs who detached from the Imperium long after the Heresy?

1hadhq wrote:
In other news, Landspeeder are one of the newer pieces of wargear when the Heresy came and the Traitors were too busy to adapt to their new found belief to add such unproven concepts like speeders, assaultannons, etc to their arsenal.

Although there are plenty of example of traitor legions using that kind of wargear (even more advanced stuff, such as jetbikes) in the HH artbook 1hadhq

Farseer Petriel wrote:And what's about the Red Corsairs who detached from the Imperium long after the Heresy?

They are part of the CSM dex and have to stick with the rest of the gang.
Maybe if the split into Legionnaires and renegades comes, the red corsairs and others may use some "loyalist" equipment instead of typical chaos related stuff.

Pacific wrote:

Although there are plenty of example of traitor legions using that kind of wargear (even more advanced stuff, such as jetbikes) in the HH artbook 1hadhq

Nice pics.

But codex space marines page 74 , 1st paragraph, places the landspeeder at the end of the heresy.
Usually codices win against art books.

The outdated design of the speeders in the pics was no longer available when I started 40k in 3rd ed. ( except bitz service ).

Ah, usually I would agree with you, but! *puts on nerd hat*

Alan Merrett and the other Black Library authors were quizzed on this issue at Gencon a couple of years ago, just as the Horus Heresy series was getting under way.
Merrett (who is basically the 'godfather' of the 40k universe, and gives or refuses permission on what can be written) said that, for issues surrounding the heresy and the Heresy series only, the books could be considered canon. Which replaced the comment made by himself previously that the codecies only should be considered canon for 40k, which was made on the back of irate fans complaining about some of the stuff that was coming out of BL and the Inferno comics (Primarch Rubinek etc.)

Certainly, at the various Pre-heresy events I have been to over the years, as well as pics of people's armies the Landspeeder is a common component of pre-heresy armies (although that is perhaps more 'rule of cool' that you should never deny a cool model a place in your army, and that a lot of pre-heresy armies use the far more versatile loyalist books!)

Its a really nice model.

But, merett didn't do such a great job. Let me point at the psyker edict.....

So I'd prefer to follow the codices and not some 'artistic license' .
Say no to traitor legion chaos landspeeders.


OtoH, chaos could get the old metal speeeder in finecost.

I disagree with the aforementioned view that development of land speers commencing at the end of the heresy, as ADB describes Ultramarine land speeders at Monarchia in the First Heretic, fifty years before the heresy. Perhaps in the 40k universe fifty years would be considered a small amount of time, but it must be remembered that the Great Crusade began only two or three hundred years before the Heresy.

C:SM 2008
first heretic 2010

Still imperial space marine legion speeders.

1hadhq wrote:Its a really nice model.

But, merett didn't do such a great job. Let me point at the psyker edict.....

So I'd prefer to follow the codices and not some 'artistic license' .
Say no to traitor legion chaos landspeeders.

Haha, I can see there can be no convincing you 1hadhq

I do agree, the psyker edict has been confusingly written, with books contradicting each other, to the point now where I wonder if it is on purpose..

You must acknowledge though that there is a fairly sizeable pre-heresy community out there, and nearly all use the HH books as their source of inspiration. A few paragraphs in the SM codex isn't a lot to go on when you're making an army! So landspeeders, jet bikes, plasma weaponry, even scouts in power armour, garrison and artillery marines (heck, even a Legion Valkyrie! ) - all of these are fair game to someone making a pre-heresy army

So by extension, it would make sense that even in the 41st millenium traitor marines would have these things. I think their exclusion from the Chaos codex is purely for balance purposes. Which leads me to - if you are making a chaos army, why the hell use the current Chaos Codex in it's current form when it is so restrictive and unimaginative? Use one of the marine codecies!

Pacific wrote:

You must acknowledge though that there is a fairly sizeable pre-heresy community out there, and nearly all use the HH books as their source of inspiration. A few paragraphs in the SM codex isn't a lot to go on when you're making an army! So landspeeders, jet bikes, plasma weaponry, even scouts in power armour, garrison and artillery marines (heck, even a Legion Valkyrie! ) - all of these are fair game to someone making a pre-heresy army

So by extension, it would make sense that even in the 41st millenium traitor marines would have these things. I think their exclusion from the Chaos codex is purely for balance purposes. Which leads me to - if you are making a chaos army, why the hell use the current Chaos Codex in it's current form when it is so restrictive and unimaginative? Use one of the marine codecies!

Once they all were Imperial Space Marines. Their chance at all the good stuff was then.
Did they pledge allegiance to someone else?

Seems they gave up on things like speeders, thunderfire, razorback, stormraven, LRC, etc etc ...
Always a price to pay.

The idea of using loyalist codices...sounds like they ask for their return into the fold...

1hadhq wrote:

Seems they gave up on things like speeders, thunderfire, razorback, stormraven, LRC, etc etc ...
Always a price to pay.

The idea of using loyalist codices...sounds like they ask for their return into the fold...

Haha right

I can totally understand though, having read the Chaos Codex, why traitors would want to return to the Emperor !

Many probably do, Heresy-era CSM warbands capture whatever they can from loyalist forces (and this would include landspeeders) while the post-Heresy Chaos chapters would retain them.

Though since the CSM don't seem to have Techmarines maintaining them would be difficult as the Dark Mechanicus sort of does its own gak in the Eye of Terror.

Perhaps all the traitor legions' techmarines and apothecaries stole all their landspeeders and flew away to... oh, I don't know... join the Tau.

Really, that's as good an explanation as we're going to get.

IIRC the explaination was that they required high maintenance to keep running and since they couldn't provide it at the time whatever LS they had left were abandoned...
That said i could have imagined that.

English Assassin wrote:Perhaps all the traitor legions' techmarines and apothecaries stole all their landspeeders and flew away to... oh, I don't know... join the Tau.

Really, that's as good an explanation as we're going to get.

Although we know from the ADB Night Lord books that a lot of the Apothecaries are still there, but were subsumed into the legion perhaps just as normal troops. We could probably assume as well that they would need some Apothecaries to carry out the development of new marines, harvesting gene-seed and the like.

You would have to guess that the same thing goes on with the Techmarines - they are already having to maintain the likes of dreadnoughts, terminator armour, thunderhawks, teleporters, even space craft, someone must be responsible for that. Again the Night Lord books have pointed at a member of the mechanicum (or perhaps dark mechanicum, the mechanicum member in Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver doesn't appear especially chaotic), but there is no reason that they would have got rid of such an important resource when they turned traitor.

So, I think the rules and background writers (who was it - Alessio Calvatore and Gav Thorpe for the last Chaos dex?) have tried to come up with a reason why Chaos don't have those things, but really I think if you apply any logical thought to it, the whole thing doesn't hold water. I think it was simply done for game balance and for differentiation between loyalist and traitor forces.

Pacific wrote: (although that is perhaps more 'rule of cool' that you should never deny a cool model a place in your army

I like your 'rule of cool' much better than the standard internet version, Pacific. It's a lot like my 'no excuse' rule which states that no entertainment medium needs to have an excuse or justification to insert a sword fight, the sword fight is in fact its own justification. (I cite the TV show Frasier as my prime example.)

On that note, maybe the internal gubbins of the Speeders are extra-vulnerable to Warp energies (which is why they stopped working after the first few thousand years). And on that note, perhaps the fuel cells for all the Chaos plasma weapons contained some really sweet hallucinogens, and once the Slaaneshi Marines got into them, it was all over...