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Space marines have there multiple codex's Why not IG?
They used to have a catachan codex, Why not bring it back?
Just want to see other people's opinion on this.

Because Space Marines sell more. That and, I guess the GW figureheads thought that having another army with multiples of itself was just plain silly.

I guess it was also a concious design descision so they could make Guard more competitive and less creative so they looked more attractive to tournament players...

KplKeegan wrote:Because Space Marines sell more. That and, I guess the GW figureheads thought that having another army with multiples of itself was just plain silly.

I guess it was also a concious design descision so they could make Guard more competitive and less creative so they looked more attractive to tournament players...

Good Point, plus then you run the risk of getting a not so good codex for a IG type you like...

Catachan did, in fact, have its own codex for awhile. Then GW realised that catachans were insufficiently different ruleswise to justify a different codex, deciding instead to make what was unique to catachans either not unique (all sentinels became able to take heavy flamers, for example), or to become doctrines. They didn't even bother with their current codex.

Ailaros wrote:Catachan did, in fact, have its own codex for awhile. Then GW realised that catachans were insufficiently different ruleswise to justify a different codex, deciding instead to make what was unique to catachans either not unique (all sentinels became able to take heavy flamers, for example), or to become doctrines. They didn't even bother with their current codex.

This. Not to mention that Catachans sucked outside of the jungles because of their own Codex. Seriously, they're better off the way they are now.

Catachan's offer nothing.

There needs to be an Imperial Fist, Crimson Fist, and Sons of Dorn codex, though. I just made up Sons of Dorn as a Chapter. As chapters spawned from Dorn's Geneseed, they each need their own codex. At least 200 pages. Single spaced.

Andilus Greatsword wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Catachan did, in fact, have its own codex for awhile. Then GW realised that catachans were insufficiently different ruleswise to justify a different codex, deciding instead to make what was unique to catachans either not unique (all sentinels became able to take heavy flamers, for example), or to become doctrines. They didn't even bother with their current codex.

This. Not to mention that Catachans sucked outside of the jungles because of their own Codex. Seriously, they're better off the way they are now.

It's also worth mentioning that the majority of Codex Catachan were rules for jungle fighting for any army, not Catachan specific. It was basically a jungle fighting book with a Catachan mini army list in it.

IG got a lot of love in the past. There were also lists in a couple other books if I remember correctly, Steel legion and maybe Cadians in one of the Eye of terror campaign books.

Actually Space Marines sales are down....

GK and SW sales however are WAYYYYYYYYYY UP =]

I go pew pew and you all die... Game over. Thanks Mat.....

Milisim wrote:Actually Space Marines sales are down....

GK and SW sales however are WAYYYYYYYYYY UP =]

I go pew pew and you all die... Game over. Thanks Mat.....

Mat Ward wrote Codex: Space Marines. Mat Ward also did not write Codex: Space Wolves. "I go pew pew and you all die" is more of an IG/Dark Eldar thing, and, welp, whaddaya know, neither of those are written by Mat Ward. Keep the Ward trashtalking out of threads they don't belong in, which frankly is almost all of them.

As someone who dearly loves Catachans and fields them often, I don't think we need a separate codex. The old codex was a gimmick that only worked if you were playing on jungle tables, and was a liability almost everywhere else. Just use your own discipline and take a fluffy Catachan force that doesn't have much heavy armor, uses things like scout sentinels and hellhounds, and lots of infantry platoons.

Insurgency Walker wrote:IG got a lot of love in the past. There were also lists in a couple other books if I remember correctly, Steel legion and maybe Cadians in one of the Eye of terror campaign books.

Yeah there's a 3rd war for armegeddon codex with a steel legion mini codex in it, and it's kind of neat. The big thing is the way the chimera worked. six scrubs could fire their lasguns using the hull mounted ones, and only one special/heavy weapon could be fired through the hatch per turn. However, if you did this, the vehicle counted as open topped until your next turn. AKA how chimeras should technically work. I won't lie though, I'm very glad that rule didn't stick around.

I just don't see much in the IG codex that you can't already do for most armies. The only exceptions are the forgeworld DKoK and Elysians. Both use a very different playstyle than regular IG (little to no tanks, relying on heavy artillery and airborne firepower respectively) and would have enough different to warrant a different book. However, I don't think we really need more IG codexes. We already have enough imperial codexes already, why would we need more?

Honestly, you can do Elysians or Death Korps pretty easily with the standard IG codex, just with a little less flavor. Elysians can be vets with carapace armor riding in Valks/Vendettas, and Death Korps can be powerblobs with mortar teams and Basilisks/Colossi. Not quite the same, but in the right neighborhood.

Only if they have no armor saves, but give em an invulnerable to boot. Come on! They don't even wear full shirts!!!

They had 6+ armor saves but a bonus in jungles. Not exactly a good tradeoff, even with the prevalence of plastic jungle trees in 3rd thanks to the starter box.

Catachan abs are harder than Kevlar. Veterans have moderately harder abs that can deflect bolter rounds.

Insurgency Walker wrote:IG got a lot of love in the past. There were also lists in a couple other books if I remember correctly, Steel legion and maybe Cadians in one of the Eye of terror campaign books.

Meh, I agree that things were more flavorful, if for no other reason than the sheer amount of pages that they had at their disposal for things like fluff when they were spread across a couple of codices and several white dwarfs.

It's better overall now, though, that you can build any major type of guard army with just a single codex. Something which I'd like to hope GW does better with SM in the future...

No, I don't think they should have their own codex. IG players generally like to stylize their forces A LOT, I know I do with my Catachan 1st Airmobile. That's why the guard codex is the way it is, full of options to be mixed and matched endlessly.

Brother SRM wrote:Honestly, you can do Elysians pretty easily with the standard IG codex, just with a little less flavor. Elysians can be vets with carapace armor riding in Valks/Vendettas. Not quite the same, but in the right neighborhood.

Not at all the same. Not at all...

No, just bring back something like the doctrine system with the next codex that comes out in a few years.

Buttons wrote:No, just bring back something like the doctrine system with the next codex that comes out in a few years.

I did like the doctrin options, but I think the 5th Ed codex is better overall. Lots of armor variation. Orders. I have a hard time believing they will bring that 4th Ed flexibility back. The future is streamlined rules, I believe. I think they could do a regimental theme though. The codex could support fully mechanized lists that way ( that will get a lot of raised eye brows ), or aircav, or siege regiments ect.

I believe that 7 different Guardsmen codexes would be more fun to have than 7 different Space Marine codexes, it would fit the background better also since there are far more Guardsmen than Space Marines.

rockerbikie wrote:I believe that 7 different Guardsmen codexes would be more fun to have than 7 different Space Marine codexes, it would fit the background better also since there are far more Guardsmen than Space Marines.

True, but I can feel the hate of all the chaos players just thinking about it. They could do the same with the different Eldar craft worlds. Not to mention the exodites.
Before we have codex CSM there could be Regiments of the IG! Followed by Codex lost worlds of the Eldar, then maybe a Black Templar update. That would make me a happy army builder, but not a happy player. I want some new alien/chaos codex just to shoot up. ( or get shot up by )

I used to have the Catachan Codex.
Off the top of my head, the only vehicles were Sentinals (this was when they could still get chainswords), all the men had +1 WS, they could essentially move through woodland like normal terrain, they could see twice as far through area terrain as normal (back in the day you could only see iirc 4" through area terrain), and there was a "Woops, look out sir!" rule whereby you rolled a dice for each commissar you took, on a roll of 1 they had an "accident" (fragged) before the battle and were removed as casualty before the game start.

I seem to recall they had awesome special charectors as well, possibly Marbo made an appearence but I can't remember much else.

The future is streamlined rules

Yes because that worked so Wonderfully with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Orks.

I think there's plenty that could be done with a Catachan Codex. You could easily flesh out a unqiue foot list filled with ambushes, booby traps, and a reliance on cover saves. The tactics could differ with an emphasis on close quarter fire fights, hand to hand combat, and terrain usage rather then heavy weapons, vehicles, and orders. I'd love to see elite catachan devil units using similar rules to Ymgarl Genestealers popping out of cover with multiple meltas, plasmas, or flamers. Also it would be fun to explore using some beasts from their home world, I think it'd be to see actual Catachan Devils and other deathworld abominations on the table.

With a little creativity I could see catachans being a unique offshoot of IG. Maybe not as different as Grey Knights are to Space Marines but different enough to justify its own codex. Now would this would appeal to enough people to make it a worthwhile endeavor for GW? I'm not sure.

Helbig wrote:I think there's plenty that could be done with a Catachan Codex. You could easily flesh out a unqiue foot list filled with ambushes, booby traps, and a reliance on cover saves. The tactics could differ with an emphasis on close quarter fire fights, hand to hand combat, and terrain usage rather then heavy weapons, vehicles, and orders. I'd love to see elite catachan devil units using similar rules to Ymgarl Genestealers popping out of cover with multiple meltas, plasmas, or flamers. Also it would be fun to explore using some beasts from their home world, I think it'd be to see actual Catachan Devils and other deathworld abominations on the table.

With a little creativity I could see catachans being a unique offshoot of IG. Maybe not as different as Grey Knights are to Space Marines but different enough to justify its own codex. Now would this would appeal to enough people to make it a worthwhile endeavor for GW? I'm not sure.

There's easily far more difference between Catachan and "standard" IG and BA/SW and "standard" SM.
That said, Catachan are easily played with the IG codex - just don't take any vehicles and give everyone a camo cloak.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The future is streamlined rules

Yes because that worked so Wonderfully with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Orks.

Actually... it did work with orks

Joey wrote:I used to have the Catachan Codex.
Off the top of my head, the only vehicles were Sentinals (this was when they could still get chainswords), all the men had +1 WS, they could essentially move through woodland like normal terrain, they could see twice as far through area terrain as normal (back in the day you could only see iirc 4" through area terrain), and there was a "Woops, look out sir!" rule whereby you rolled a dice for each commissar you took, on a roll of 1 they had an "accident" (fragged) before the battle and were removed as casualty before the game start.

I seem to recall they had awesome special charectors as well, possibly Marbo made an appearence but I can't remember much else.

I have it still lying around. Marbo, Straken and Harker were in it, I can't remember if anyone else was though. I loved the silliness of running Commissars in the army too. There was a 1/6 chance that the Commissars would be met with an "accident" by pissed off Death World corps.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The future is streamlined rules

Yes because that worked so Wonderfully with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Orks.

The Ork codex rules, and the Eldar codex just has too high points values. CSM, DA, and the WD BA codex were the only books subjected to that awful period of oversimplification. The "streamlined rules" refer to 5th edition and pretty much every codex written since they did away with armories, barring the few oversimplified ones I referred to.

Brother SRM wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The future is streamlined rules

Yes because that worked so Wonderfully with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Orks.

The Ork codex rules, and the Eldar codex just has too high points values. CSM, DA, and the WD BA codex were the only books subjected to that awful period of oversimplification. The "streamlined rules" refer to 5th edition and pretty much every codex written since they did away with armories, barring the few oversimplified ones I referred to.

I'd agree with this. People whine about the 5th ed Guard being over-simplified, what with doctrines etc. In reality the implimentation is pretty smooth, just the options that suck.

Brother SRM wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:

The future is streamlined rules

Yes because that worked so Wonderfully with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Chaos Daemons, and Orks.

The Ork codex rules, and the Eldar codex just has too high points values. CSM, DA, and the WD BA codex were the only books subjected to that awful period of oversimplification. The "streamlined rules" refer to 5th edition and pretty much every codex written since they did away with armories, barring the few oversimplified ones I referred to.

It also does include Chaos Daemons as well, considering the person who wrote it was the one who introduced the simplification project (Alessio) to begin with, not to mention the fact that while daemons are interesting, they gained nothing but one unit (soul grinder), actually lost out against CSM in some area's (How does a Great unclean one have a WEAKER NURGLES ROT!? HOW! And it wasn't even good to begin with!). Not to mention has no real options beyond "Take X troop, have said option", no reason to take heralds in most cases (with the exception of the near necessary Tzeentch bolt heralds), and alot of the units are very situational.

However Eldars codex is a simplified bandaid from it's third edition codex, though not as bad as tau's "update", as it actually updated things to begin with, but despite that the weaponry needs to be expanded out further, as alot of things are very close to Imperium still. (Scatter lasers = Multi Laser, Eldar Missle launchers)

Though I wouldn't mind some points costs adjustments, as it is most aspects wouldn't even be worth taking at a lower cost.