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Discussion or news & rumor thread... I'm not sure where to discuss this (hence why it's here), but...

Considering all the loyal SM codexes have their own 'codex' why don't the chaos versions follow suit? It seems it's been swapped and switched over the various editions of the game between just chaos marines, combined marine and cultists, daemons etc...

Why wouldn't GW make it so we have...

- Vanilla Chaos Codex with the various mix of characters to run certain armies (Iron Warriors and other rogue chapters 'ala' vanilla marine codex with Crimson Fists, Imperial Fists, White Scars etc)
- Codex Death Guard
- Codex Thousand Sons
- Codex World Eaters
- and Codex Emperors Children

Point being, there is a codex per army for the 'light side' but a weird mash-up/all-in-one style codex for the 'dark-side'?

Is it just not good business sense for GW to do it? Or some other reason? (Too hard/Not enough customers?)

General 40k topics go in the 40K discussion forum (which I've moved it to now), not in Dakka Discussions.


The reason that we have the situation we have now is because GW developed the loyalist fluff for Marines much more thoroughly then it ever did for the traitor legions early on in the game. That led to the very first round of codexes in 2nd edition including Space Wolves, Blood/Dark Angels combo codex and an Ultramarines (generic) codex.

While Chaos had big giant meaty tomes in Rogue Trader, it was much more of a general scary force predicated around the 4 gods rather than anything legion specific...so when it came time to make the first CSM codex, it was just a general CSM codex because clearly the idea of trying to cover Chaos in general as well as the more popular legions was too daunting a task (and loyalist marines probably do outsell chaos a bit just based on fluff alone).

So going into third edition they then made a generic SM codex (which covered the Ultras) and then they made mini-dexes to plug into that for the Dark Angels, Blood Angels & Space Wolves. And then the really big error came. They made the Codex Armageddon, which featured a bunch of different mini lists, which in hindsight were clearly never meant to be permanent lists for all eternity, but one of them was the Black Templars. And unfortunately, the list they game them was incredibly, incredibly strong.

This, combined with the ease of painting black and white SMs (and a pretty cool background, I'll admit) meant that all of a sudden EVERYBODY was playing Templars. So naturally GW decided this means that Templars should get their own codex due to 'popular demand'!

So now we're stuck with 5 loyalist codexes (not even including Grey Knights) and GW have generally corrected their mistake and have said they will try to support all their existing codexes for eternity. Unfortunately that means none of the 5 loyalist books are going away. And frankly with GW's speed of updates they cannot handle adding 4 more chaos legion codexes into the mix to 'balance' things out.

The best we can really hope for is that they just come out with a new CSM codex that has a bunch of rules for modifying the force to represent all the different legions (the way the SM codex does a pretty good job of it).

Because they aren't going to release a stand-alone legion book without an actual army to support it and they literally do not have the space in their miniature line to have a World Eaters army, a Thousand Sons army, a Deathguard army and an Emperor's Children army on top of a generic CSM army.


I know it will never happen, but IMHO, the best thing GW could do at this point is, when the next edition comes out figure out a way to shoehorn all the loyalist books into a single giant tome. It will never, ever, ever, ever, ever happen. But that is the only real way we could hope that 40K would end up becoming slightly less marine-centric IMHO.

This response doesn't surprise me at all. Thanks for the well thought-out post. I'm not a chaos player at all but with the rumors flying about chaos being a near-release it did get me thinking how they could really flesh out the character/essence of the chaos forces (which imho are such a rich, diverse and important part of the fluff).

A shame but understandable with the way GW handles production and releases (god help the impatient with another 5-6 codex books coming out on top of their already 'sands of time' schedule)

And then the really big error came. They made the Codex Armageddon, which featured a bunch of different mini lists, which in hindsight were clearly never meant to be permanent lists for all eternity, but one of them was the Black Templars. And unfortunately, the list they game them was incredibly, incredibly strong.

I didn't know that. That's awesome and sad at the same time... never was a fan of the templars

I do remember, at some point, when you could not mix your gods when playing Chaos. So no Khorn if you were going to take anyone with warp powers, and stuff. It would be nice to see something like that again.
But the nature of Chaos, where there do not follow set rules, and have countless warbands does cut into having clear cut chain of command a lot of the time.

You can never out-do Yakface in a post. It's just not possible.
But I'll give the tl;dr version that everyone's heard of at some point or another: Because GW believes loyalist marines sell. And therefore they get more attention. And therefore they sell better.

Neverending Cycle is a cycle.

We'd also end up drowning in an even larger sea of power armour, if more CSM codexes came out of the woodwork.

We need less codexes (SM), not more. The only reason they should add more is if they come up with new xeno armies, or completely different human armies.

Everything you need to play any single faction should be in a single codex - C:SM should have all the SM colours with basic troops common to most colours, "unique" units listed appropriately, special characters and army rules, etc... C:CSM should contain everything you need to play CSM - basic common troops, special cult/god/legion units and characters and rules, etc... C:E should have all the Eldar stuff - craftworld rules, Exodite rules, etc...

To split things up further would be like having Codex: Football (soccer) split into 4 different codexes for strikers, midfielders, defenders and goalkeepers. Yeah, you could technically do it but it doesn't really make any sense.