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So, let's say that you're working on a new edition of 40K. In a nod to the playerbase and a new rollout, the upper brass has decide dto remake the classic Black Codex and stick it in every starter set. This means that, day 1, every army* will be able to be played. A goodly number of units won't be introduced until the individual codexes are released of course, but a solid core for each will be there, ready to go on day one.

So, each force gets a page for special rules, a page for wargear, a page for HQ, a page for Elite, a page for Troops, and a page each for Fast Attack and Heavy Support. We'll give one more page for super-short fluff, meaning that you have eight pages per force.

Here's the question:

With room for twelve armies, which do you slot in for space? Do you drop any armies or just use "counts as" for now until their own codex says dufferently?

For each army, how do you fill those eight pages? Some forces will shrug at how much space they have while others are going to wince at being so scrunched. You can shuffle stuff around a bit (Like an extra half-page for troops for Tyranid at the cost of a half page of elite or fast attack), but not too much: Every army needs to have a selection for each slot. You also have very limited room for special rules, so simpler units probably get priority over complex ones until the individual codexi are released.

Final note: You want to create a GW-like "This is what armies should look like" vibe, more than a "This is what a hard-nosed tourney army should look like" vibe.

I'm curious to see what everybody'll come up with. (Mind you, you don't need to drop point costs or rules here, just assemble the codex. Which armies go in? What do you fill your 8 pages with?

Start by making all Marine armies one book (yes, even Grey Knights, do it like the Horus Heresy books where faction specific stuff is under that faction's section and everything else is shared).

From there throw in Orks, Nids, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, CSM, Daemons, IG, Sisters and you've got 10 armies down and room to put in an "Imperial" faction (Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Storm Troopers, Imperial Knights all as ally-able armies) and we're sitting at 11.

So the real question is who gets the last slot?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So the real question is who gets the last slot?

Squats.

They were in the original black codex, after all.

 ashcroft wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So the real question is who gets the last slot?

Squats.

They were in the original black codex, after all.

I wonder if Jes Goodwin could make them seem cool. Or at least less silly.

Failing that there would be room for another Xenos race. Perhaps something that basically runs the small, elite sized armies of larger models. Like all their guys are Terminator bases or bigger.

I'd start with giving marines a larger than usual list with options to handle the basics of both Loyalist and Chaos forces.

Then another big list for human and abhuman forces, covering most of the Astra Militarum, PDF, cultists (chaos and genestealer), etc. Includes a flexible veteran unit suitable for creating tempestus scions, inquisitorial acolytes, skitarri, etc.

Then separate short army lists for Eldar, Dark Eldar, Orks, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons and Chaos Daemons (including Daemon engines). Sisters of Battle and Imperial Knights get extra short lists.

Imperial priests, servitors, assassins and inquisitors each get a separate dataslate so that they can be updated in a modular fashion and avoiding different rules for the same unit in different armies. Harlequins get the same treatment.

I will skip some sections here and there, I find it quite restrictive. And I will get a couple units in the same page occasionally
Common pages: 1: fluff; 2: gear; 3: special rules. So 5 pages are left. Unles specified otherwise, they are HQ/Troop/Elite/Fast/Heavy.

1: Empire. Includes Inquisition, GK, Sisters, Deathwatch, Ecclesiarchy, Assassins, Adeptus Arbites.
1: HQ inquisitor, add a couple of acolytes (depending on Ordo) as gear; 2: Troops: Inq Stormtroopers; dedicated transport: Chimera;
3: Elite: Grey Knights basic squad; 4: Elite: Sisters Celestian Squad; 5: Fast: Valkyrie & Vendetta.
No Heavy:
1) the Inquisition is the purest form of an Elite force.
2) There is not a fluffy & unique unit. A Land Raider, Leman Russ or Exorcist? Does not represent the I. Orbital bombardment: so boring.
3) I want to keep both GK and SoB. And both are Elite in an Inq Codex.

2: Orks:
1: Warboss; 2: Boyz and Trukks; 3: Nobz; 4: Warbikers 5: Looted Wagon
There is room for more stuff. Perhaps Stormboyz OR Warbuggies in the Fast section and... lots of good choices in the Elite section: Burnas, Lootas, Commandos...

3: Tyranids:
1: Hive Tyrant; 2: Hormagaunts & Termagants; 3: Elite: Ymgarl Genestealers; 4: Fast Gargoyles + Ded Transport: Spores; 5: Heavy: Carnifex
This was the hardest one for me. I needed some Genestealers.

4: Imperial Guard
1: Command Squad; 2: Troop: Platoon; 3: Elite: Stormtroopers + Dedicated Transport: Chimera; 4: Sentinel (both); 5: Leman Russ.
I think you can easily add Rough Ryders to the Fast section.
The Troop section must be reduced, it is a complicated unit. Perhaps we will lose some options here.

5: Space Marines.
1: Force commander 2: Tactical Squad + Rhino; 3: Terminators (both types) 4: Land Speeder 5: Land Raider
I think there is room in the Fast section to add Vanguard Veterans.

6: CSM
1: Lord; 2: Chaos SM + Rhino; 3: Elite: Berserkers + Plague; 4: Elite: Rubrick + Noise; 5: Fast: Raptors.
No Heavy section, for two reasons:
1) They lack a fluffy & unique entry there: Land Raiders and Predators are SM; Oblits are exceedingly rare in the fluff...
2) You can get all cult troops together since they are all marines with slight modifications, and I think any Chaos player will take this over a tank.

7: Eldar:
1: Farseer; 2: Guardians (both); 3: Fire Dragons + Wave Serpent; 4: Shining Spears 5: Fire Prism
I think there is enough room in Heavy to add Dark Reapers OR Wraithlords.

8: Necrons:
1: Lord + Court; 2: Troop: Warriors + arks; 3: Immortals + Night Scythes; 4: Wraiths 5: Spiders + scarabs

9: Tau:
1: Battlesuit Commander; 2: Fire Warriors+ Devilfish; 3: Crisis; 4: Pathfinders; 5: Apocalypsis
I will totally add Vespid or Kroot at some point. The most unique trait of the Tau is that they accept other factions and fight at their side.
Perhaps in the fast option, with a few infiltrating Kroot with Hounds or Vespid. The pathfinder entry should be small enough.

10: Daemons:
1: Herald, select a mark 2: Generic troop, get the mark of the herald; 3: generic elite:get the mark of the herald; 4: generic fast unit: get the mark of the herald; 5: Soul Grinder
Basic unit for generic: Troop: old style lesser daemon; Elite: fiend equivalent and/or skullcrusher cavalry equivalent; Fast: furies (lesser daemons with wings) and/or hounds.

11: Dark Eldar:
1: Archon; 2: Troops: kaballite warriors + Raiders; 3: Troops: Wyches 4: Elite: Incubi. & Fast: Hellions. 5: Ravager
I think there is more than enough space to get Ravagers in the Heavy Section. Incubi and Hellions could share a single page.
Coming to think of it, you can easily get Incubi and Hellions in one page and Talos & Ravagers in another. They are all small entries.

12: Adeptus Mechanicus
1: Magos; 2: Troop: Skiitari + dedicated transport (Triaros conveyer or modified Chimera); 3: Elite: Thallax; 4: Elite: Secutor with combat servitors 5: Thanatar siege automata (with more Legio Cybernetica options, of course)
No Fast options. Not their thing.
Electropriests or Pretorians should be considered for page 3 or 4.


I am giving you a 13rd faction. Squads and Genestealer Cult will make it 15.
13: Lost and the Damned
1: HQ Rebel Leader (Apostate, rebel general or mutant -beastman) 2: Troop: Renegade Milita (multiple choices, including normal soldiers, mutants and gor-equivalents) 3: Elite (quite similar to troops: elite freedom fighters, big mutants mob & Bestigors) 4: Fast: Skirmishers 5: Heavy: A page to build a basic tank, cheap and weak, with or without transport capacity.
The Elite & Fast sections have most of their options in the Troops section. I think there is enough room for demagogues in the Elite section.

EDIT: important things missing, blatant mistakes and second thoughts.

Wait did you say CSM DONT have unique entries in HS? and why does it need to be unique they are a traitor legion, and they sure as hell dont leave it all sitting their when they repaint their armor....

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Start by making all Marine armies one book (yes, even Grey Knights, do it like the Horus Heresy books where faction specific stuff is under that faction's section and everything else is shared).

From there throw in Orks, Nids, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, CSM, Daemons, IG, Sisters and you've got 10 armies down and room to put in an "Imperial" faction (Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Storm Troopers, Imperial Knights all as ally-able armies) and we're sitting at 11.

So the real question is who gets the last slot?

Slaugth of course.

Slann?

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
Wait did you say CSM DONT have unique entries in HS? and why does it need to be unique they are a traitor legion, and they sure as hell dont leave it all sitting their when they repaint their armor....

Yes I said just that. There are not both unique & fluffy units in the Heavy section.

Do you mean Defilers? Associated with the Black Legion, created by Abaddon´s sorcerers. Or they can count as a IW thing. In a fluffy army, they shouldn´t be there.
Havocs? Devastators with spikes.
LR, Vindis, Predators? Not unique at all. All of them from other armies.
Oblits: Exceedingly rare and associated with Dark Mech and IW. In a fluffy army, they shouldn´t be there.
Dinobots?

And Legions =/= Chaos Gods. There are four chaos flavors, completely different from one another in all regards. I will take the choice of customizing my army against a shoe-horned Heavy option any day of the week. Just by allowing to take cult units as Troops if you get a marked Lord you will get five quite different armies. Chaos = Variety.

Ignore the shameful 5th Codex! Forget, yet not forgive, the 4th edition Codex! Go back to when Chaos was a pleassure to play with.

Imperial Guard.

"Inquisition" Codex, can be called anything really, but it's primarily a Sisters of Battle/Inquisition mash-up, with SoB/Inquisition HQ's, Grey Knights and Assassins elites, and Battle-Sister and Henchmen troops.

Space Marines. Has all of the Space Marine chapters rolled into it with the exception of Grey Knights, even the non-codex compliant ones. This is the largest 40K codex, with the most rules and variety in order to encompass all the different chapters.

Eldar Codex.

Dark Eldar Codex.

Chaos Space Marines.

Chaos Daemons.

Tyranids.

Necrons.

Tau.

Orks.

Retain the allies chart, but restrict things more heavily. The three Imperial armies can only be battle-brothers with each other. They must be desperate allies or worse with everything else. Eldar can be battle-brothers with Dark Eldar, but both armies are desperate allies with everything else. Chaos Space Marines and Daemons are battle-brothers, but CSM is desperate allies with everyone else, Daemons can not ally with anyone except with CSM and with Guard as desperate allies. Tyranids can not ally with anyone, but get FoC shenanigans to compensate.

I think key to a Black Codex would be including only choices with minimal special rules. You don't release a rule book that includes a second section that essentially begins with "now forget everything you've read thus far..."

 da001 wrote:

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
Wait did you say CSM DONT have unique entries in HS? and why does it need to be unique they are a traitor legion, and they sure as hell dont leave it all sitting their when they repaint their armor....

Yes I said just that. There are not both unique & fluffy units in the Heavy section.

Do you mean Defilers? Associated with the Black Legion, created by Abaddon´s sorcerers. Or they can count as a IW thing. In a fluffy army, they shouldn´t be there.
Havocs? Devastators with spikes.
LR, Vindis, Predators? Not unique at all. All of them from other armies.
Oblits: Exceedingly rare and associated with Dark Mech and IW. In a fluffy army, they shouldn´t be there.
Dinobots?

And Legions =/= Chaos Gods. There are four chaos flavors, completely different from one another in all regards. I will take the choice of customizing my army against a shoe-horned Heavy option any day of the week. Just by allowing to take cult units as Troops if you get a marked Lord you will get five quite different armies. Chaos = Variety.

Ignore the shameful 5th Codex! Forget, yet not forgive, the 4th edition Codex! Go back to when Chaos was a pleassure to play with.

so the most diverse and powerful army will be the space marines..... because csm will have no hard hitting weapons just bolt guns, but the marines can have their devs etc etc, chaos is a copy paste of marines with spiky bits THATS what they are.... they are the traitors, and they dont forget what they were to begin with..

First up: NO FLYERS. Flyers take up space, and the anti-air every list needs to have to deal with them take up space. Since this is a space-saving exercise, we should save space. So cut both flyers and dedicated anti-air units and leave them out until the full codex arrives for each army. Actually, scratch that. Cut flyers till the full codex, but leave anti-air units in the black codex. That way, when proper codexes start getting released, we don't have the situation we had in late 5th/early 6th when certain armies had flyers and nobody else had a way to stop them.

Space Marines get one list for all chapters to pull from, with one page of snowflake-specific units (Death Company, Ravenwing, Wolf-Whatevers) that can be used to make the vanilla marine list look like a snowflake chapter. Drop all of the variant Drednaughts until the full codex.

IG gets a section. More space for troops and less for Elite and FA since IG troops used to be a huge list of choices and their Elites and FA didn't have an overabundance of really good units, so they can sacrifice some room from those two sections to make room for more troops.

Orks get a section and its all generic orks. One page of rules for clan-specific units, much like the snowflake list from the above mentioned SM section.

Tyranids are an obvious choice. They go in and get their whole (non-flying) list.

Eldar get a section. Maybe drop Warp Spiders till the proper codex gets released (I'm biased against them).

Dark Eldar get a section. Don't know the list enough to say what gets cut (if anything) but the black codex entry should probably include skimmers if GW actually wants people to play DE.

Necrons. Maybe cut some of their more esoteric units for space (but bring 'em back in the full codex) like Flayed Ones, and that goofy flying Egyptian river barge thing.

Chaos gets a section. Not CSM or Daemons. CHAOS. One section, that is 50% larger than a regular army entry. Put daemons in your elite and FA slots, with CSM and cultists in your troop slots, and some vehicles and odd units in your heavy slots. BOOM! Chaos just got chaos again. Oh, and cult marines (Khorne, Nurgle etc) are troops when your HQ has the appropriate mark.

Tau. Everything stays except Riptides (calm down guys... you can have them back in the full codex... I just want you to see that you can win a game without them, too).

Adepta Sororitas get a section. Everything stays because their army list is already pretty anemic.

Agents of the Imperium! This is where everything that should never have gotten it's own codex goes. Inquisition, Grey Knights, Temple Assassins, whatever. All of these units are Elites or HQ because they can only be taken as allies for other armies. Seriously. This section is as big as any other section, but its doubled-down on powerful stuff.

That leaves us with one open slot remaining... I don't know what to fill it with (I want to say 'Squats', but that ship sank long, long ago) but why not use the opportunity to develop a new xeno race for 40K? Maybe something in the vein of Chaos Dwarves from WHFB... a solid core of HQ and Elites from one race, and a bunch of troops and other options from a bunch of slave races that serve the main race. Kind of what Tau could've been if GW hadn't stopped with vespids and kroot.

squidhills wrote:First up: NO FLYERS. Flyers take up space, and the anti-air every list needs to have to deal with them take up space. Since this is a space-saving exercise, we should save space. So cut both flyers and dedicated anti-air units and leave them out until the full codex arrives for each army. Actually, scratch that. Cut flyers till the full codex, but leave anti-air units in the black codex. That way, when proper codexes start getting released, we don't have the situation we had in late 5th/early 6th when certain armies had flyers and nobody else had a way to stop them.

Space Marines get one list for all chapters to pull from, with one page of snowflake-specific units (Death Company, Ravenwing, Wolf-Whatevers) that can be used to make the vanilla marine list look like a snowflake chapter. Drop all of the variant Drednaughts until the full codex.

IG gets a section. More space for troops and less for Elite and FA since IG troops used to be a huge list of choices and their Elites and FA didn't have an overabundance of really good units, so they can sacrifice some room from those two sections to make room for more troops.

Orks get a section and its all generic orks. One page of rules for clan-specific units, much like the snowflake list from the above mentioned SM section.

Tyranids are an obvious choice. They go in and get their whole (non-flying) list.

Eldar get a section. Maybe drop Warp Spiders till the proper codex gets released (I'm biased against them).

Dark Eldar get a section. Don't know the list enough to say what gets cut (if anything) but the black codex entry should probably include skimmers if GW actually wants people to play DE.

Necrons. Maybe cut some of their more esoteric units for space (but bring 'em back in the full codex) like Flayed Ones, and that goofy flying Egyptian river barge thing.

Chaos gets a section. Not CSM or Daemons. CHAOS. One section, that is 50% larger than a regular army entry. Put daemons in your elite and FA slots, with CSM and cultists in your troop slots, and some vehicles and odd units in your heavy slots. BOOM! Chaos just got chaos again. Oh, and cult marines (Khorne, Nurgle etc) are troops when your HQ has the appropriate mark.

Tau. Everything stays except Riptides (calm down guys... you can have them back in the full codex... I just want you to see that you can win a game without them, too).

Adepta Sororitas get a section. Everything stays because their army list is already pretty anemic.

Agents of the Imperium! This is where everything that should never have gotten it's own codex goes. Inquisition, Grey Knights, Temple Assassins, whatever. All of these units are Elites or HQ because they can only be taken as allies for other armies. Seriously. This section is as big as any other section, but its doubled-down on powerful stuff.

That leaves us with one open slot remaining... I don't know what to fill it with (I want to say 'Squats', but that ship sank long, long ago) but why not use the opportunity to develop a new xeno race for 40K? Maybe something in the vein of Chaos Dwarves from WHFB... a solid core of HQ and Elites from one race, and a bunch of troops and other options from a bunch of slave races that serve the main race. Kind of what Tau could've been if GW hadn't stopped with vespids and kroot.

Kain wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Start by making all Marine armies one book (yes, even Grey Knights, do it like the Horus Heresy books where faction specific stuff is under that faction's section and everything else is shared).

From there throw in Orks, Nids, Tau, Eldar, Dark Eldar, CSM, Daemons, IG, Sisters and you've got 10 armies down and room to put in an "Imperial" faction (Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Storm Troopers, Imperial Knights all as ally-able armies) and we're sitting at 11.

So the real question is who gets the last slot?

Slaugth of course.

Just saying.

Slaugth. clearly. There is a serious lack of real xenos in 40k.
Nids are the only pure bred xenos, with Necron holding their own as a copy of humanity as to looks, yes, but no humanity in them. Orks, Eldar and Tau are enough like humans to be humans that have been away from home for too many millennia and evolved into something else.

 Purifier wrote:
Slaugth. clearly. There is a serious lack of real xenos in 40k.
Nids are the only pure bred xenos, with Necron holding their own as a copy of humanity as to looks, yes, but no humanity in them. Orks, Eldar and Tau are enough like humans to be humans that have been away from home for too many millennia and evolved into something else.

Well in the case of the Eldar and Orks, it's less a case of them looking human and more a case of us looking Eldarin/Orkoid given that they predate us by at least sixty million years.

I'm not a fan of this "shove everything in one book and cut all the options" idea.

The only way I'd be down with this is if there were actual codexes coming out that gave back all the options.

Making CSM just marines with spikes won't be popular with most chaos players.

I think that might be their greatest dream, actually. Hmmm.

I don't know a single CSM player who wouldn't trade in the mauler/forgefiend for a thunderfire cannon.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I think that might be their greatest dream, actually. Hmmm.

I don't know a single CSM player who wouldn't trade in the mauler/forgefiend for a thunderfire cannon.

Granted, access to SM would be very cool and very fluffy, but don't take away the more chaosy stuff like defilers.
(I'd love to make a recently converted renegade force using SM stuff.)

 MWHistorian wrote:
I'm not a fan of this "shove everything in one book and cut all the options" idea.

The only way I'd be down with this is if there were actual codexes coming out that gave back all the options.

Making CSM just marines with spikes won't be popular with most chaos players.

The intent is to make these skeletons so that when an edition drops everyone is up to date, and later on these skeletons added onto with the full codexes and supplements.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I think that might be their greatest dream, actually. Hmmm.

I don't know a single CSM player who wouldn't trade in the mauler/forgefiend for a thunderfire cannon.

Hi!
I will take chaos-y stuff over imperial stuff every time. That´s why I proposed cult units instead of "imperial equivalents with spikes" for CSM in the list.

Not that I will complain if an IW list get access to a daemonically possessed thunderfire cannon....