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Hello.

So basically, I've been wondering lately what was the best codex ever written for 40k?

I've searched around on the internet a bit and on other forums (haven't seen any on Dakka, apologies if this topic has risen before) and the general consensus is Dark Eldar/Orks and a few rogue trader publications.

Anyway I've come up with a list of things to think about...

Fluff - how good is the fluff, how easy is it to write your own out of the fluff included in the book

Internal balance - how good is the balance in the codex, how well different units work in harmony

Longevity - how this codex has survived through updates and editions

representation - how well does it represent it's faction on the tabletop/does it do justice to the fluff?

those are my big 4, if anyone would like to add to this list feel free

WARNING!! no Ward rants!!

My Candidates (I joined in 4th, so I don't know before then.)

Necrons 5th: Good models, great fluff, a little broken at times but overall they've lasted well and still compete with ease.

DEldar 5th: Gorgeous models and a good competitive book that's not quite as good now, but still competes.

Space Marines 6th: A huge, fluffy book. No Longevity yet, too early, but they do represent the various chapters well and have tons of good lists.

CSM 3.5: Decent fluff, and models meh, but strong strong rules and represented the different legions.

Nids 4th edition: Very competitive at its time and lots of options. Good fluff and rebooted Fex/Tyrants ushered in the new Nids aesthetic, which is so much better.

CSM 3.5 codex.

It allowed you to make the army you wanted. You could create an effective army with any of the lists. Even thousand sons. Yes, given the general rule set at the time there were some very powerful options. Some would say broken.

However, I played Emperors Children. I never once took a siren prince. I never once had anyone complain about my army or refuse to play against it. I might be because I built it the way I wanted to play. Fluffy, challenging, but no tricks or ponys. Just a solid army. One I greatly enjoyed playing.

The book was fun to read too and I felt made Chaos so much more than just spiky marines. Something that I feel they have downgraded to, to even worse levels with every CSM codex release since 3.5.

My favorite codex is what was until recently the current space marine codex. Ironically enough, the one written by Mat Ward.

With only one exception, the fluff is actually pretty good (once again, surprising, given its writer), and there is a TON of fluff. Plus tons of pictures. I mean, it was a huge codex, and there was just a lot in it. And because it was written towards the end of the old style of codex layout, it's actually possible to find your way around in it.

Meanwhile, it's internal balance seemed pretty decent, but what I really liked about it was its subtlety. It had all of these neat things that all fit together in kind of clever ways, like having combat tactics and an Ap5 small arm, or having combat squads with a sergeant that can take both combi-weapons and close combat gear. There were no big superstar units, and there were no glaring weaknesses and trade-offs. You won by playing like the space marines are supposed to be played - with versatile units practicing combined arms and by being flexible on the table top.

I feel kind of bad that I never got a chance to actually play space marines with that codex, but had to watch from the sidelines at the few players who actually played marines while the codex was out (as everyone else was too busy picking up guard or grey knights or blood angels or necron...)

Orks.

Three editions, and it's still playable.

Not that it couldn't use a few tweaks, of course....

5th Edition Space Marines. It was hilarious how bent out of shape people got over the way some of the fluff was worded.

So for sheer entertainment value, nothing beats the 5E C:SM.

5th C : SM alongside the old Daemon hunter codex has to rank amongst my top list, although the last choice is more out of a personal taste than sheer love for Daemon hunters in general. That and it felt a lot more grimdark than the current one

The current Orks codex. (4th?) Still competitive. I also think the current 'nid codex is still very competitive, but the community doesn't generally seem to agree with that.

5th ed Codex Marines. I was winning tournies with them right up until the new 'dex dropped. I was kind of surprised to see point reductions, truth be told.

5th ed Dark Eldar. Just started using it. Great balance, well written rules. Everything I want in a 'dex.

Until a few months ago, I would have said 5th Ed C:SM. Almost perfect internal balance, the army felt great to play, the fluff (and tons of it) was great, and it was nicely presented. It was always my go-to for reliable armies, and even in its final days I was still winning games more often than not with it. Nothing OP, but everything good.

And then, 6th Ed C:SM descended, and my god was I impressed. It took everything that was great about the 5th Ed one (balance, versatility, reliability) and added to that some stunning artwork, even more great fluff, amazing production values and even more in-game versatility and variety with Chapter Tactics.

A close runner up would be 5th Ed IG. Yes, it had some very broken lists at various points, but the feel of the army, the ability to make it your own, and the nice mechanics for platoons and orders make it something truly unique. Most of the broken (good or bad) stuff was through a change of editions, (vendettas getting better, RR getting worse) but as a codex, the sheer variety of what you can do is just amazing.

As others have said, Orks standing up for 3 editions and still doing alright has to count for something.

 Ascalam wrote:
Orks.

Three editions, and it's still playable.

Not that it couldn't use a few tweaks, of course....

This... one thousand times this. Never broken and never broke. Character and fun with good balance and all types of variety. Give them back the old furious charge and spot them 10% ish points and the Ork Codex is still great. Easily the most durable codex I've ever owned (and I'm sure ever will)... and this comes from the die-hard UM player

3rd Edition Chaos Codex, 1st edition

CSM 3.5, by far one of the most well written books. Great fluff, enormous amount of rules, with which you could do whatever you liked. I don't think that we will see something like that again.. The only meh as already mentioned were the models, though most armies due to these days in the past suffered from bad scults. But I fear that this comes out of comparing those OOP with newer ones. Gimme Night Lords rules back!

CSM 3.5 was OP not awesome... OP to me =/= a good codex, in fact its the mark of a poor one

5th edition DE. It was awesome.

 Ascalam wrote:
Orks.

Three editions, and it's still playable.

Not that it couldn't use a few tweaks, of course....

I thought its been 3 editions?

orks, First army and probably the best fluff in the game and the rules arent too shabby

 Jayden63 wrote:
CSM 3.5 codex.

It allowed you to make the army you wanted. You could create an effective army with any of the lists. Even thousand sons. Yes, given the general rule set at the time there were some very powerful options. Some would say broken.

However, I played Emperors Children. I never once took a siren prince. I never once had anyone complain about my army or refuse to play against it. I might be because I built it the way I wanted to play. Fluffy, challenging, but no tricks or ponys. Just a solid army. One I greatly enjoyed playing.

The book was fun to read too and I felt made Chaos so much more than just spiky marines. Something that I feel they have downgraded to, to even worse levels with every CSM codex release since 3.5.

This.

Once I played Emperors Children with 2 siren Lieutenants on bikes (9 minor powers each to get siren), 30 Daemonettes, 6 Daemonettes on steeds, 3 Oblits, and 1 Defiler.
Haha. This was fun to play. The other participants almost killed me. At the end, I won the RTT in the final vs. a Genestealer heavy army.

This may be coming out of left field, but I think that the most recent (5th edition?) Space Wolves codex is great, and that's saying something coming from a Dark Angels player. I feel that it really captures the essence of Space Wolves perfectly. There are a few silly units, like the wolf riders, but it sort of still works. They have some pretty cool looking models and feel very different compared to a lot of other marine armies still. Now, they are a bit lackluster at times, but I still think that even if they were a little OP they were a good representation of the army as a whole in every aspect.

I also think that the Ork codex is great as it too captures the essence of the army. Over the editions it has been in use I think that there have always been decent compositions to yse in the book and all make sense with the fluff. Speakign of which, the Ork fluff is easily one of the best in the game, if not the best. Rarely has a codex made me chuckle as much. Orks are just really damn fun!

- VardenV2

Another vote for 3.5 CSM. Yes, it was probably broken (I didn't know enough to be able to judge that, and it's been too long now), but it had a really nice feel and it really felt like you could make whatever you wanted... which is probably why it was broken (flexibility, not feel).

The mini-lists all felt just right, and it was nice that they gave each a couple pages; the organization was intuitive; I felt there wasn't much dead weight.


Eye of Terror gets a runner up slot, since I thought the execution was great; liked all of the lists which all used very little space to substantially alter their armies; and it coincided with some of the best minis released around that time. Also, it encouraged conversions with some IIRC pretty reasonably affordable kits.

 Ascalam wrote:
Orks.

Three editions, and it's still playable.

Not that it couldn't use a few tweaks, of course....

I hate Orks with a passion (because I face them so often on the table) but even I have to admit the truth of your statement. They have a book that is 3 editions out of date. And it is STILL a solidly playable codex. Frankly, I think we can end the thread right there. People may like other books more, but check back with them 3 editions from now and see if they can still be played.

The Ork codex was just the best.

Gray Knights. So awesome. I mean, trapped in the warp killing thousands, yes THOUSANDS of demons....that's just awesome!


And I just threw up on myself just for writing that. It was written by a 12 year old...no, I mean a 5 year old.

CSM 3.5, of course.

Special mention to 5th edition Codex: Dark Eldar. I really enjoyed it, to the point of nearly begin a new army of a faction that, before reading the Codex, didn´t interest me at all.

3rd ed Orks... because choppas!

The old Guard Codex that had 2 pages of just showing you pictures and names of tonnes of different guard worlds. The Codex before the last one. Simply from a fluff/inspiring perspective. The new one has cool units but i look at that and see nothing to inspire me to make a cool guard army like the old old one did.

3.5 CSM with 3.5 IG codex

Both Codices allowed you to make the army that you wanted.

Doomfisting everyone with a Demon prince of slaanesh

or slaming a 9 man sorc squad into Conscript horde.. and having 20-30 chaos spawns by the end.

IG is up there because of Doctrines.
I want my god dam stormtroopers as troops.

Orks were the Necrons of 4th edition, in that they were better in the next edition because they came out at the end of 4th. And now that 6th has hit, Orks are kinda weak. Good fluff/models, but the Ork codex doesn't really have good longevity.

I beg to differ.

I was kicking butt with the current codex in 4th, all through 5th and into 6th.

That would be good longevity right there

Sure, they aren't at the top tables for competitive play these days, if that's the only yardstick you're using, but they can still muster several usable builds, and are still decent for regular non-uber-optimised play. I play mine casually as a rule, but they can still hold up reasonably well to most other decent lists at the semi-competitive level, despite being the oldest codex still in production.

They were good in 4th, great in early 5th, not bad in late 5th, and IMO just as good in 6th. Being decent + for three editions of the game is a better record than any other codex i can think of out there.

YMMV of course, but the ladz have always done me proud.

The 3.5 Chaos Space Marines. I wish I was more original but that's the one that immediately came to mind, simply by the amount and quality of the rules (minor psychic powers weren't in the codex) and just how much of an improvement they were to the last codex (and I heard the following codex was awful).

The Night Lords army with 4 units of infiltrating Raptors for a possible first turn assault was a dream of mine I never got around to making. The chaos codex was the one that had the best options for assault, that is, fastest. Infiltrating multi-legged chaos lords were always fun, first turn assault with something like 5+D6 S6 attacks with Manreaper. Khorne bikers with 5 S5 attacks on charge (could they get chain-axes too?), pretty nice for a T5 3++ save unit. Demons could assault straight from being summoned, and Bloodletters were pretty beefy in combat.

I played Death Guard, myself. Having something little extra for using units in multiples of 7 was nice, and even while it wasn't the best army I had okay success with it. Of course it would have been easy to just play the normal list and add firepower to the army but it felt right to play the DG rules.

My only complaints are that having the Defiler share a slot with the chaos dreadnought basically made the dread obsolete, that Thousand Sons were way too expensive and some of the chaos special characters should have had immunity to instant death, such as Typhus.

And it was overpowered only compared to the really gak armies.

Honorable mentions :

The fifth edition Dark Eldar codex, as DE was the army I started out with and seeing how much improved stuff got for them made me pretty happy. Like sure, people are gonna play Venom spam or something but I got excited about seeing Scourges, Hellions and such improved and there was cool new units and wargear, fluff and so on.


The fifth edition Necron codex, pretty much the same thing as the DE dex, only WHY DOES MONOLITH NO LONGER HAVE ANY SPECIAL RULES.

3.5 Chaos Codex. I had options for multiple daemon weapons, I could buy mutations, I could have a Sorcerer Chaos Lord because he WASN'T a captain or Chapter Master who didn't have Psyker abilities. The Daemon Prince was based on beneficial mutations gained rather then a separate unit. You could buy mutations for possessed such as wings.

Chaos was shown to be veterans because EACH unit could take veteran skills. Chaos Lords could take Chosen Retinue, who could be upgraded to terminators. (not a separate unit choice) Marked units WERE cult units, there was no difference.

So many things right..

The Grey Knights
3e Necrons
5e Space Wolves
5e Sisters of Battle