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From what I've seen it's basically that they aren't anything special, and are typically outclassed. They're IIRC 14 points, with no ATSKNF, and that stupid "must challenge" rule.

From a lore perspective a lot of it comes from the fact that the old Codexes attempted to give Chaos a solid identity, and after the 3.5 book that went away in favor of generic warbands, when most Chaos players didn't want generic warbands, they wanted the Traitor Legions.

In general a big issue with 40k chaos is that they lost their identity. In 2nd edition and to a lesser extent 3.5 there was a conscious design decision to make each "flavor" of Chaos distinct to allow for maximum variety. Chaos has always been the one faction, more than anyone else, who should have had multiple codexes for each type of army:

1) Traitor Legions
2) Renegades (i.e. more recent Chapters a la Red Corsairs)
3) Cultists/Beastmen/Lost & the Damned
4) Daemons