What do Chaos Marines need to not become another joke codex?

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**Sheokronath**

I'd like to see an army wide rule that actually gets used. Yeah, I want Legion Tactics, no matter how much GW pushes the renegade angle I haven't in four years met a Chaos player who doesn't play one of the Traitor Legions.

I'd like a buff to aspiring champions to mean they can actually win a challenge, I roll on that table maybe once every four games however, in place of a buff to them I'd be fine with a rule where one of the squad members steps up to replace the champion when he dies, to show a new champion rising which is very flavourful and will give me an opportunity to actually get some boon rolls in once in a while..

Also, Chaos Drop Pods that aren't overpriced suicide pods and some additional wargear. Give us the option to take Kai Guns for ten points with the old statline.

Let Chaos Lords take the weapon options cult units can get. Why can't a Nurgle Lord Take a plague knife? Why can't a Slaaneshi Lord take a Doom Siren? Lucius has one. Something that really bothers me about the book is that cult units seem forced in to roles. Where are the thousand son terminators and raptors? They obviously exist, why can't we use them? We don't need alternate models, just let termis purchase an upgrade that gives them Inferno bolts and voila.

The new CSM Codex (if it ever arrives, not thrilled by the whole Daemonkin thing) needs an overhaul badly, if the new one is as soulless as the current one then I'll be using the Horus Heresy army list, I'll trade marks of Chaos Heldrakes to represent my force in a fluffy way any day.

**Pain4Pleasure**

The chaos don't deserve grav or cents. These are brand new to the marines so have had no time to even make it into chaos fluff wise.

**Konrax**

We don't want grav or cents.

We want demonic power!!!!!!

**Melissia**

More daemon-possessed equipment and warpgear would be nice, yes.

**VictorVonTzeentch**

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
The chaos don't deserve grav or cents. These are brand new to the marines so have had no time to even make it into chaos fluff wise.

Grav weapons have been around since before the Great Crusade my friend.

**Azreal13**

VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Pain4Pleasure wrote:
The chaos don't deserve grav or cents. These are brand new to the marines so have had no time to even make it into chaos fluff wise.

Grav weapons have been around since before the Great Crusade my friend.

More to the point..

You have a shiny new assault rifle.

I shoot you in the head with my antique WWII bolt action rifle.

Now who has both a shiny new assault rifle and an antique?

**Rosebuddy**

In addition to introducing more low-tech weaponry I would really want to push the angle that your army isn't an organised force like anything the Imperium fields but rather a collection of champions and their personal retinues. The HQ choices would be lords, daemon princes and special characters. IDK what I would do exactly to make the DP more than just an extra large and choppy version of a close combat lord but I'd like to reflect their status as the end-game of all champions somehow.

What I would do to lieutenants is move them to the elites section, give them the basic profile of a regular chaos marine but with one more wound and then offer them the choice of one out of several consul-like upgrades. This character wouldn't represent a true leader of armies but someone who's either on the road to championhood or who has simply distinguished themselves in their chosen role after thousands of years. So if they used to be a heavy weapons trooper you'd give them +1BS and a big gun, if they were a tank commander you'd give them special rules and purchase a vehicle for them, if they were a techmarine you'd give them their extra arms and unlock automatic artillery, if they were an apothecary you'd offer them the options of poison-based weapons and unlock various genetically engineered war beasts for them to babysit, if they're a sorcerer or demagogue you give them psychic powers and unlock cultists... and so on and so on. They would be the missing link between a regular marine specialist or trooper and a lord. Either they're biding their time to take the next step or they aren't into it and have simply become exceptional at their form of warfare.

If this idea is used then daemon princes can be restricted to battles of a minimum points value but automatically unlock two of the unit types or special tactics that lieutenants do, without having to spend slots or points on them. The idea is to show that they can call upon much mightier hosts than mortals can.

I also like the suggestion of aspiring champions being more than just a mirrored veteran sergeant. You lose out on a lot of flavour when they're mostly the dude who's assigned a power fist.

**VictorVonTzeentch**

Azreal13 wrote:
VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Pain4Pleasure wrote:
The chaos don't deserve grav or cents. These are brand new to the marines so have had no time to even make it into chaos fluff wise.

Grav weapons have been around since before the Great Crusade my friend.

More to the point..

You have a shiny new assault rifle.

I shoot you in the head with my antique WWII bolt action rifle.

Now who has both a shiny new assault rifle and an antique?

A fair point!

**lustigjh**

VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Pain4Pleasure wrote:
The chaos don't deserve grav or cents. These are brand new to the marines so have had no time to even make it into chaos fluff wise.

Grav weapons have been around since before the Great Crusade my friend.

Not to mention:

- CSM kills a loyalist SM, steals his grav weapon (dang, ninja'd)
- CSMs raid a weapon depot and steal grav weapons and bikes
- CSMs conquer a forge world and use it to make their own grav weapons
- Loyalist SMs turn renegade and keep their grav weapons
- CSMs just happen to have some daemonic, Warp-powered equivalent of grav weaponry

**aka_mythos**

Korinov wrote:
The low tech suggestion, specially regarding some heavy stubbers and grenade launchers, is really spot on. Some options for warp or even daemonically enhanced ammo could be added as well (i.e frag grenades infused with some nasty, nasty secondary effects).

GW fears making chaos cooler than loyalists.

That said I think introducing this sort of additional equipment as a way to distinguish undivided legionaries from the big 4 cults or to distinguish Renegades from Legionaries would be a nice way to change things up and be quite representative of their distinct situations. For example it seems to me Renegades that don't necessarily have full access to the Hell-forges of the Dark Mechanicum are far more likely to be forced to scrounge and raid Imperial Guard and Planetary Defense Forces armories... Those would tend to be lower tech weapons like heavy stubbers and grenade launchers... Meanwhile those former Legionaries with stronger alliances with the Dark Mechanicum would have more of those pieces of tech that were banned from being developed by the Emperor, semi-daemonic weapons and rampant AI's and the like. Similarly I imagine the Iron Warriors would have been better at maintaining some of the older technology on their own due to having had more forgelords and techmarines... I wouldn't say give them a whole bunch of 30k stuff, but the simple things like boarding shields would be distinctive stay overs.

**Rosebuddy**

I'm fine with some weapon technologies not being available to CSM, even when it's easy to give them at least a more expensive version, because imperial marines should have a high-tech flavour.

Exactly which weapons were available when has fluctuated with editions, anyway. RT renegades could have multimeltas, which didn't change until the 2nd ed chaos book. The black codex that was released with the basic rules themselves even allowed CSM to equip their basic squads with both jump packs and heavy weapons!

EDIT:

aka_mythos wrote:
Similarly I imagine the Iron Warriors would have been better at maintaining some of the older technology on their own due to having had more forgelords and techmarines... I wouldn't say give them a whole bunch of 30k stuff, but the simple things like boarding shields would be distinctive stay overs.

This sort of thing is why I wouldn't mind a separate book for the specific legions. Just the basic CSM list can be huge and trying to develop all nine legions at the same time might be too much. At least if you're going to do more than a separate FOC and some army-wide special rule (which I'm personally fine with, anyway).

**aka_mythos**

In 2nd edition a Chaos army could buy any unit available in the Loyalist Marine codex for 25% premium to cost.

**Rosebuddy**

aka_mythos wrote:
In 2nd edition a Chaos army could buy any unit available in the Loyalist Marine codex for 25% premium to cost.

I wonder how many people have chaos landspeeders and such gathering dust.

**aka_mythos**

Rosebuddy wrote:
aka_mythos wrote:
In 2nd edition a Chaos army could buy any unit available in the Loyalist Marine codex for 25% premium to cost.

I wonder how many people have chaos landspeeders and such gathering dust.

I saw someone selling one they had converted on ebay a number of years back... probably right around the time its owner realized GW was never going to let him use it ever again.

Back in 2nd edition that rule was how GW gave chaos the way of representing their army as a Renegade force or a legionary force with strained maintenance of some loyalist tech. Now even if you want to play a Renegade army like Crimson Slaughter you end up playing "drop assault" specialists that can't even take drop pods.

Maybe in this era of formations and allies it'd be appropriate for some way of allying in select loyalists to represent such renegades.

**Experiment 626**

I fear that no matter how much we may dream & wishlist for Chaos Marines to get anything close to what Vanillas (and likely Dark Angels) are getting, it would require GW to re-do a bunch of our current kits in order to give us those new option(s).

Sadly, considering how they blaitently flipped us the bird with the KDK and ignored that perfect opportunity to re-do the ancient Berserker kit, I don't see us actually getting any new models if we ever get a new codex...
There's just too much of our model line that news:
1. An actual kit, such as Chosen & Cultists
2. Transition from Finecrap into proper plastic. (Havocs, Plagues, 1ksons, Noisey dudes, etc...)
3. A make over to replace old & tired looking models. (CSM's themselves, Termies, Bikers)

Pretty much the only kits in our current line up that don't desperately need replacing are Hellbrutes, the Daemon engines, Termie Lord, Raptors/Warptalons & Possessed. Everything else really needs the treatment that Loyalists have been getting.
But then look at Eldar - it took what, 7-8 years for those plastic Jetbikes to become a reality?! That they're still stuck with only a single Aspect in plastic, plus ancient Guardians.

**Ratius**

Its strange because going (solely) on that online poll that was up recently, CSM are the second biggest played faction GW have.
You'd think if they gave them a buff, sales would go even higher or more people would jump into them. I know I would.

**Rosebuddy**

A new box of chaos marines based on mk2-4 armour and styled after the old RT renegades would be pretty tremendous.

**JubbJubbz**

More than any specific options/freedoms I think CSM really need a shake-up in design philosophy. There's way too much 'start with loyalist unit X, subtract useful rule Y, add wacky useless rule and/or ridiculous self harm penalty Z, increase point cost'. There's a couple different directions you can take chaos marines but they really need to to give them identity rules wise and stick with it instead of repeatedly using that formula to create units everyone just groans 'meh' about.

To go along with what others have said above, I too think one good direction for CSM to go in ruleswise would be more focus on their 'leaders' including aspiring champions. There's a fluff line somewhere in the dex I believe about the leaders are what keeps the chaos marines together. Take it and run with it GW. If aspiring champs had rules like stubborn / whatever it would encourage challenges without just hamfistingly requiring them as 'champion of chaos' does.

Perhaps whats really needed is just some authors that have a real desire to bring crunch of CSM up to snuff with the lore. For instance, chaos terminator armor should be exceedingly rare given how chaos marines often lack infrastructure and are seemingly always in a fight for survival. Why then is the only real use for them minimum suicide squads? They should be expensive power houses. The owner of that armor has had to fight off chaos marines trying to take it for millenia and the best way to represent that is take the powerfist off loyalist termi and make it vulnerable to morale checks???

**ChazSexington**

dragoonmaster101 wrote:

More Changes:

Cultists can purchase suicide bombs

Cultists can purchase cheap heavy weapons

Plague marines get shrouded

We can now shoot into combat that has only cultists and enemy troops in it. Roll a d6 on the roll of 1-3 cultist hit on the roll of 4-6 enemy hit.

More cultist options, please, I want cultist armies to be a thing.

Imperial Armour 13 with CSM allies.

**Slayer le boucher**

PandaHero wrote:
I would love a white scar equivalent as chaos I like bike army, but I dislike the Imperium lol. It could give me the options of playing Chaos with my Ravenwing army lol

Take a CSM Lord on Bike/Jugger make an awesome conversion using ork bikes and dark eldar jetbikes bits;

Take 2 Cultists units and 3 bikers units, then take the Gorepack formation from KDK multiple times...

here you have a Biker army!!!

**Roknar**

The problem with CSM is really that there are too many distinctive armies for them to do it in one book.
The most iconic being lost and the damned, renegade astartes and any of the nine traitor legions, all of which are quite different from each other. Also all of which any sane person would at least attempt to deliver over daemonkin/crimson slaughter books.
I have no idea what GW thinks CSM are supposed to be, but it's most definitely not what 95% of CSM players believe them to be.

So unless GW has some kind of epiphany and decides to commit to chaos and make a whole bunch of books for them, I don't see them realizing any of these ideas, as cool as they may sound. I don't see how they can make a codex that isn't half baked by design unless they spread the love over multiple books. I just hope that's not what they're trying to do with daemonkin.

**Abadabadoobaddon**

Make baleflamer AP4 and increase pts cost. Add decurion that requires mandatory Possessed as core, gives everything Fear and Soulblaze but gives your enemy FNP and randomly hits your own guys with Str4 AP2. Release plastic Chaos Lord clampack. No other changes. K thx bye.

- Games Wokshop

**Achaylus72**

Experiment 626 wrote:
So, now with those Loyalist dogs getting a shiny new 7th ed codex, alongside overall across the board price drops, even more Grav-spamming, buffs to their Chapter Tactics, decent to amazing Formation bonuses, etc...
What is it going to take for Chaos Marines to compete at this point? We don't have the massive Battle Bro's BFF club that Loyalists do - we're stuck with Daemonic allies and the new Daemonkin, the former of which is also beginning to show it's age.

Personally I'm hoping that this time around, we don't receive any new units at all. We've got pretty decent unit selection across the board overall. No, what we desperately need are more options in terms of weapon upgrades for our squads, and better pricing across our units!
Look at what just the Vanilla Marines have gotten in terms of 'new toys' for their squaddies/characters over the recent past;
- Grav pistol
- Grav gun
- Grav Cannon w/amp
- Heavy Flamer
- Sternguard ammo
- Relic Blade
- Eviscerator

It gets even worse when you take into account the other three books of the 'Big 4' Chapters, as BA's get Hand Flamers, Inferno pistols, Angelus Boltguns, Glaive Encarmine... DA's get Plasma cannon Termies, Plasma Talons, Corvus hammers, Blade of Caliban, Mace of Redemption... SW's get Frost Cannons...
We've been stuck with the exact same 3 special weapons, 4 heavy weapons, and basic close combat upgrades for going on 17 **** years!! Where the hell are all of our own unique toys that merge the power of the warp with arcane technology? What happened to all our Plasma cannons & Heavy flamers from the Heresy, when the former was actually much better understood at the time?!!

More than anything else, beyond pts drops, I don't think we can gain any ground in our overall competitiveness until we get some more options for kitting out squads... Melta spam in Rhinos just isn't enough these days.
And for an army that's all about being aggressive and getting into assaults, we're actually really, really terrible at even getting there! At the very least we need some new flavours of Land Raiders and an assault Rhino to get help get us stuck in.

Beyond that, I'd love to see Chosen actually be worth a damn, and not simply a bastardised Sternguard+Vanguard but -11 turd fest.

Of course, this is GW we're talking about, so the only thing I'd expect from a new CSM book is;
1. Army-wide nerfs & pts-hikes across the board.
2. No new models
3. They decide that Formationhammer is no more and thus we get 0 Formations, no Decurion, but a return to the days of 0-'X' options everywhere, because... "reasons"

Well let's look at this way, Chaos Space Marines are still Space Marines and they are technically can carry any weapon that Space Marines are given, this unwritten rule has never changed in the 10 years that I have been in the hobby.

Your Space Marine enemies with crap their pants when you hit them with their own weapons and it is legal.

**aka_mythos**

Roknar wrote:
The problem with CSM is really that there are too many distinctive armies for them to do it in one book.
The most iconic being lost and the damned, renegade astartes and any of the nine traitor legions, all of which are quite different from each other. Also all of which any sane person would at least attempt to deliver over daemonkin/crimson slaughter books.
I have no idea what GW thinks CSM are supposed to be, but it's most definitely not what 95% of CSM players believe them to be.

So unless GW has some kind of epiphany and decides to commit to chaos and make a whole bunch of books for them, I don't see them realizing any of these ideas, as cool as they may sound. I don't see how they can make a codex that isn't half baked by design unless they spread the love over multiple books. I just hope that's not what they're trying to do with daemonkin.

I think GWs waking upto the possibilities. I wholeheartedly agree with you. The real shame is that GW insists the CSM codex represent these different things when it doesn't. The greatest sin is how often the CSM fiction presents things that we can't actually play or represent on the tabletop. Crimson Slaughter being the perfect example of drop pod assault specialists who don't get drop pods. Renegades in general don't make sense with our book because the book would have us giving them things only former Legionaries should have.

I think daemonkin is at least a step in the right direction for wanting to represent god devoted armies and comes far closer than the main CSM dex of representing World Eaters.

**Konrax**

aka_mythos wrote:
Roknar wrote:
The problem with CSM is really that there are too many distinctive armies for them to do it in one book.
The most iconic being lost and the damned, renegade astartes and any of the nine traitor legions, all of which are quite different from each other. Also all of which any sane person would at least attempt to deliver over daemonkin/crimson slaughter books.
I have no idea what GW thinks CSM are supposed to be, but it's most definitely not what 95% of CSM players believe them to be.

So unless GW has some kind of epiphany and decides to commit to chaos and make a whole bunch of books for them, I don't see them realizing any of these ideas, as cool as they may sound. I don't see how they can make a codex that isn't half baked by design unless they spread the love over multiple books. I just hope that's not what they're trying to do with daemonkin.

I think GWs waking upto the possibilities. I wholeheartedly agree with you. The real shame is that GW insists the CSM codex represent these different things when it doesn't. The greatest sin is how often the CSM fiction presents things that we can't actually play or represent on the tabletop. Crimson Slaughter being the perfect example of drop pod assault specialists who don't get drop pods. Renegades in general don't make sense with our book because the book would have us giving them things only former Legionaries should have.

I think daemonkin is at least a step in the right direction for wanting to represent god devoted armies and comes far closer than the main CSM dex of representing World Eaters.

I agree the kdk codex appears to do a great job representing those blood thirsty psychos.

Hopefully the tzeentch one isn't garbage, otherwise I will stick with my 2012 csm codex.

**aka_mythos**

Konrax wrote:

Hopefully the tzeentch one isn't garbage, otherwise I will stick with my 2012 csm codex.

I just hope its not some weird false-start. At different times GW has singled out specific sub-factions and given them individual attention, but it was never a guarantee that other sub-factions of the same army would get done. I hope they do give us a Tzneetch, Nurgle, and Slaanesh daemon kin codex. GW's just so hush hush about what they do and they've made no promises, Khorne Daemonkin could be the Iyanden or Catachan codex of Chaos... promising fork in the road that leads to a dead end.

**Spetulhu**

In a way the CSM Codex already is a joke. What joke, you ask? You rarely see very many CSM in the army if it's supposed to do something. My old CSM mate maybe picks a few Chosen to escort his Lord/Sorcerer, because fluff. Anything else is done better by things not CSM.

So priority 1 should be to make the CSM themself worth taking!

**aka_mythos**

Spetulhu wrote:
In a way the CSM Codex already is a joke. What joke, you ask? You rarely see very many CSM in the army if it's supposed to do something. My old CSM mate maybe picks a few Chosen to escort his Lord/Sorcerer, because fluff. Anything else is done better by things not CSM.

So priority 1 should be to make the CSM themself worth taking!

I think that's a good point. I think part of the issue with troop CSM unit, is that our CSM are crowded out with "Elite" troop choices in the form of Cult Marines and crowded out by the much cheaper Cultists. If we presume GW continues doing Daemonkin codices for the 4 chaos gods, those armies represent the armies most devoted to those gods where the those cult marines are most plentiful... At that point would it continue to make sense for the 4 cult marine units to continue to be Troop choices in the main CSM codex?-I don't think GW will think so. It might not be a popular choice but there is a justifiable rationale. Simply put as long as Cult marines are troop choices there will almost never be a reason to take basic CSM over them.

At that point when its just a choice between CSM and Chaos Cultists and its easier to focus and fixing the CSM unit. The CSM unit's main problem is that just like loyalist tactical squads they are generalists but beyond that they're generalists who aren't as good. They lose out in little ways that add up to something more significant that the cost difference and while they can have a greater number of models than a tactical squad those extra numbers aren't a real choice because it limits our already limited mobility while becoming a liability that can lead to greater number of points fleeing the table.

To fix them we need to address mobility and numerical liability. Mobility is an army wide problem that needs to be addressed with drop pods or a bigger transport or scouting/infiltrating/outflanking units. To address numerical liability you need something that fills that same gap that ATSKNF, but it needs to be in an appropriate way. I'd want to see something like the unit having stubborn until the point some condition is met, maybe something like their champion getting killed. I don't know, but something like that.

IF however the Cult Marine units remain troop choices, than the only feasible way to make CSM worth taking over those is if you're able through upgrades and options to make them as "elite" in capability. While that might be good in some ways, it really isn't a way GW design units anymore and if it gets to detailed you move into the territory of needing to give a number of similar options to the non-troop but basic CSM units. Its frankly more thematic for chaos god worshipers to be the standout elite troop units.

**Rosebuddy**

Maybe copying the Havoc specialisation idea would be a start? That is, the troop choice CSM unit isn't just called "Chaos Space Marines" but instead specialise in short-range shooting and assault and are called, idk, Assailers or some suitably aggressive term that isn't already taken. No heavy weapons but they can take a special weapon for every so-and-so models and have some access to improved close combat weapons. Veteran skills allow for even more specialisation.

Then you could add a number of different conveyance options and you'd have a decent core trooper. You could also give the Rhino the option of adding sponson weapons in exchange for transport capacity. Or give the Predator the option of gaining five-man transport capacity in exchange for removing the turret. You'd get a Razorback-ish vehicle that isn't just the same thing and is a very organic field tweak of existing vehicles. If you then also increase the possible sponson weapons from HBs and LCs to autocannons, missile launchers, twin plasma guns, twin heavy stubbers, mortars etc etc you'd really get some extra versatility.

And that's without making any use of IG vehicles or inventing entirely new things.

**Konrax**

CSM is a vastly better choice compared to thousand sons.

Rhino with havoc launcher is also decent.

If we could take a couple cheap power weapons, say 5-10 pts each that would be a start.

At this points csm is a worse tactical marine and the only thing we have going is the havoc launcher.