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So I am just now noticing (relatively new to CSM) that the codex doesn't make much sense in the following regard: building an army of recent Chapter rebels is encouraged, however, wtf happens to all their gear?

As an example, when a chapter turns traitor, are they magically forced to turn in all their plasma cannons, grav guns, and flyers before they say goodbye to the IoM and go chaos?

Is this explained in the fluff somewhere I overlooked?

No. There is no fluff precedent, it's just for mechanics.

Mechanically, CSM is designed to be more than just "Space Marines with spikes", thus the inclusion of the Dino-bots and the removal of much of the signature CSM gear.

I can understand the spirit behind the decision, but I think that they went overboard in some aspects. Chaos Space Marines really could have benefited from the LRC and drop-pods, at the least.

Newly turned renegade chapters have not yet claimed any rewards or gained daemon hood. They are best portrayed by the SM codex with perhaps a malefic libby to conjure daemons or get possessed. They are also not so deeply entrenched into the cults and with the chaos gods that they can trust the daemons or cultists they fight beside with their backs. Thus being come the apoc with the daemons and the been living in the warp mockeries that call themselves CSM. Theoretically by the time the renegade group gains enough credit with the chaos gods that they start gaining mutations, rewards, and daemon hood they would have worn out all their gear and would have to replace them from goods that the dark mechanicum can provide.

There is also the tyrants legion list.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/t/Tyrants-Legion.pdf

Fair enough...I'm playing a traitor chapter, and my buddy says he'll build me a Flyer when I get 2000 points table ready.

I guess I'll just use the Space Marine flyer rules for it. Can't use the Heldrake rules, because Vector Strike wouldn't make sense.

You should also look at hellblades and helltalon. They are both more standard flyers in the CSM army. Imperial Armour 13 has the rules for them.

I'll take a look if my buddy has that book.

Using the IA books is generally frowned upon in my meta, for the main reason that only one of us has been compelled to fork over the cash for any of them. We try to stay with the 'regular' codices where possible.

But as long as those units rules aren't crazy overpowered or underpriced I could talk my buddies into it. Are they fair rules?

You're playing CSM... take every advantage you can get your hands on, you're going to need it.

I haven't seen anything massively OP. There are a large number of strong options in IA13 but nothing on the level of a waveserpent or riptide. There is however a tank in there that is one of the best waveserpent hunters in the game (I suspect it may have been designed to hunt AV12 and less skimmers).

ansacs wrote:Newly turned renegade chapters have not yet claimed any rewards or gained daemon hood. Etc.

Right. If a space marine chapter just flipped yesterday, the best codex to represent them would be codex: space marines. You can run traitor marines with the SM codex just like you can run traitor guard with the guard codex.

It's not until they've been around chaos for awhile that they'd start really racking up the chaosey stuff, like marks, etc., and by that time, who knows, maybe some of their equipment has already broken. SM stuff needs to be kept up in a constant state of repair and resupply. Once they have neither of them, well... just how well do you think a plasma cannon could be kept going with nothing but duct tape?

I guess if you want to represent a 50/50 renegade legion you could probably ally CSM with SM which would represent the SM members who have not been tainted so much keeping to their old familiar equipment and tactics whereas the tainted ones are not entirely trustworthy anymore and thus equipment they are running out of is confiscated from them.

BTW Ailaros the IG dex definitely does the recent turned renegade guard really well but there is now an extremely well themed renegades and heretics list out. It does an incredible job representing an IG force that has been fully corrupted.