Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So after the first weekend seems like the support for Traitor's Hate is lackluster at best. I actually like it, and think several new mechanics have been overlooked. I think CSM got what they were asking for in a lot of ways, and CSM players need to realize your never getting 3.5 codex level power again. Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

So for no additional points in this book we got: Free Universal Veterans of the Long War, ObSec, Free Boon Roll per turn no combat required, and you can roll 2 boons and pick one or both...... That's just the new decurion. You have cultists squads that can revive to outflank 50% of the time, you can charge from deepstrike, fire twice with oblits per turn, attack twice with berserkers.....I'm not seeing the downside here.

A common complaint CSM players voice, we don't get free rhinos/vehicles/stuff. Well, looks like we have a free direct advantage vs imperium with VotLW, more chances for awesome character boosts, and the occasional Daemon Princes. Seems okay to me, feels pretty chaosy. More boon rolls, and a little safety from spawnhood.

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

I understand that many of you are frustrated that this book did not catapult CSM to the top tier of competition. However, isn't some progress in the right direction a good thing?

If your a skeptic, please, dust off your CSM and play a few games. I'd love to hear some real experiences, not just armchair hate. If your on the fence, I say Traitor's Hate is a good read, and great upgrade to any CSM army.

Sidenote: I play Black Legion, so free VotLW is very nice and helpful for me.

I don't play chaos, I've never liked the filthy heretics.

Jokes aside, I've read through the book, and although I don't play CSM it seemed pretty powerful.

It's not 'meta' and it sure as hell isn't riptide wing or scatbike level.

I would like all codexes to be at this power level, it seems to have strong combinations, but is also fun and has the lore in mind, additionally it is inclusive for all forces and preferences of units being used.

Just my $0.02

Cheers!
~Mikey

TremendousZ wrote:
I think CSM got what they were asking for in a lot of ways, and CSM players need to realize your never getting 3.5 codex level power again. Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

I think what most CSM players were asking for is rules for Legions and good internal balance. It just so happens that the 3.5 codex happened to be the overpowered one that also had Legion rules in it, not that CSM players "want overpowered Legion rules." The two don't have to be mutually exclusive.

There's always this smug "lol you just want to be OP again get over it XD" tone you can tell a mile away from these posts. In all my time watching Chaos Space Marine players vent - and they do, it's true, rant a lot but not without good reason - have I ever seem them crave 3.5 power levels. What they want are the 3.5 OPTIONS. That is, being able to take an army that isn't a Nurgle Lord on a bike, with bikes, and minimum Cultist tax and a Helldrake. When people say they miss the 3.5 codex days, what they mean is they miss the options, the customisability, the uniqueness.

Traitor's Hate is more of the same. "You will take this units to stand a chance on the tabletop and you will like it, now shut up whining." The vast majority of CSM complainants don't want powerful, they want OPTIONS. You could make CSM's the most broken thing on the tabletop, but if everything outside of three units is absolutely worthless - even if those three units wipe the floor with Riptides and Knights - then people are still going to complain, because being shoehorned into taking 'powerful' units is bad. Yes, poor internal balance is not unique to CSMs, but they're one of the most flavourful, diverse and potentially unique armies out there that are shoehorned into a handful of units to so much a play the damn game and that's not even getting onto how they're more vanilla than the damn vanilla Space Marine codex. That's not what Night Lord players want, that's not what Word Bearers players want.

Nobody was expecting Traitor's Hate to suddenly revamp the codex, but I think people were hoping for more than some psychic powers and free VotLW.

TremendousZ wrote:
So after the first weekend seems like the support for Traitor's Hate is lackluster at best. I actually like it, and think several new mechanics have been overlooked. I think CSM got what they were asking for in a lot of ways, and CSM players need to realize your never getting 3.5 codex level power again. Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

So for no additional points in this book we got: Free Universal Veterans of the Long War, ObSec, Free Boon Roll per turn no combat required, and you can roll 2 boons and pick one or both...... That's just the new decurion. You have cultists squads that can revive to outflank 50% of the time, you can charge from deepstrike, fire twice with oblits per turn, attack twice with berserkers.....I'm not seeing the downside here.

The down side is that "Boons" of Chaos are a thing in the first place. Oh you get free VotLW? Well that's pretty useless now since taking the full formation gives you Hatred Armies of the Imperium. Free +1 Leadership? Just take the Icon of Vengeance for Fearless. Charge from Deepstrike? Cool too bad its disordered unlike everyone of the loyalist options to do that same thing.

A common complaint CSM players voice, we don't get free rhinos/vehicles/stuff. Well, looks like we have a free direct advantage vs imperium with VotLW, more chances for awesome character boosts, and the occasional Daemon Princes. Seems okay to me, feels pretty chaosy. More boon rolls, and a little safety from spawnhood.

Again, Boons are dumb.

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

There are Legions other than the Cult Legions.

I understand that many of you are frustrated that this book did not catapult CSM to the top tier of competition. However, isn't some progress in the right direction a good thing?

Most people didnt want to be catapulted to the top, just to have options of the older books

If your a skeptic, please, dust off your CSM and play a few games. I'd love to hear some real experiences, not just armchair hate. If your on the fence, I say Traitor's Hate is a good read, and great upgrade to any CSM army.

Sidenote: I play Black Legion, so free VotLW is very nice and helpful for me.

I'll probably get it later on as I want to Return to CSM and Chaos in general, I picked up IA:13 for that reason and because Renegade Guard. But im not overly excited by Traitor's Hate, I do like the Possessed Formation though.

1. Boons aren't dumb when given for free.
2. Free LD9-10 is MUCH better than paying for the Fearless icon. That was really just complaining to complain.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
1. Boons aren't dumb when given for free.
2. Free LD9-10 is MUCH better than paying for the Fearless icon. That was really just complaining to complain.

You can polish a turd, but it's still a turd.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
1. Boons aren't dumb when given for free.
2. Free LD9-10 is MUCH better than paying for the Fearless icon. That was really just complaining to complain.

Or perhaps they should just be higher leadership standard? And even when free boons are still dumb, they were an interesting concept when they first came out in Fantasy, but they have overstayed their welcome along with being required to do challenges.

Clearly GW listened to the complaints about free rhinos and didn't repeat that 'mistake'!

Free LD9-10 is MUCH better than paying for the Fearless icon. That was really just complaining to complain.

They artificially lowered our LD score in the 6th ed codex for no other reason than to shoehorn VotLW into the unit entries. As VictorVonTzeentch points out, our LD should natural be higher to begin with.

As for "Traitor's Hate" as a whole? Total bust so far at my LGS. No one actually pre-ordered it as the CSM players are still very gun-shy about new rules. On looking through the store copy, a few people bought it and have run some games and the general consensus is that some of it's cool from a fluffy standpoint but outside of narrative games, Traitor's Hate does very little for CSM.

I plan on using the Raptor Talon formation because I already run a gaggle of Raptors (I just really like them), so it's a fun way to make them *slightly* better. It's still typical GW though. "We'll give your Warp Talon's the ability to assault out of DS, but it will be disordered and, oh yeah, you still can't have anything to help mitigate scatter. So enjoy that ..."

I think there are some sleeper formations in the book but they require so many expensive/subpar units that I don't know if they will really gain traction.

Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

We're still pretty much there. Unfortunately Traitor's Hate really just underscores the bad shape the core book is still in.

So for no additional points in this book we got: Free Universal Veterans of the Long War, ObSec, Free Boon Roll per turn no combat required, and you can roll 2 boons and pick one or both...... That's just the new decurion. You have cultists squads that can revive to outflank 50% of the time, you can charge from deepstrike, fire twice with oblits per turn, attack twice with berserkers.....I'm not seeing the downside here.

The Boon table is terrible and simply needs to just go away. Your other points are a little misleading ... There are a lot of caveats/requirements to make a lot of those happen. I will likely run Kharn's formation but, like the Raptor Talon one, I'm running for fluff purposes because I already have the models and may as well out them to use. I'm not entirely sure how much better it really made them.

A common complaint CSM players voice, we don't get free rhinos/vehicles/stuff. Well, looks like we have a free direct advantage vs imperium with VotLW, more chances for awesome character boosts, and the occasional Daemon Princes. Seems okay to me, feels pretty chaosy. More boon rolls, and a little safety from spawnhood.

The common complaint is more that they can take free drop pods. A unit CSM don't even have access to. Free VotLW doesn't really stack up to that in any way shape or form. Especially when we already have such easy access to hatred to begin with. More boon rolls doesn't excite me and the boon table has A LOT of issues. I find that the few times I rolled the Dark Apotheosis result, my model either outright died (because there wasn't enough room for the demon model), or got WORSE as a result of becoming a demon prince.

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

Nope. All they did with that was give us back something they took away in the newest codex for no reason. That's also just the four cult legions. CSM players have been asking for actual Legion rules (akin to Chapter tactics) for ages now. This comes no where close.

I understand that many of you are frustrated that this book did not catapult CSM to the top tier of competition. However, isn't some progress in the right direction a good thing?

I don't think anyone actually expected the new supplement to make CSM "Top Tier". Nothing shy of a complete rewrite from the ground up of the core codex will do that. I think the disappointment comes from the fact that most don't really even see this as "some progress in the right direction". It's typical GW CSM thinking. Here's bonus ... now here's 3 things that penalize you for taking that bonus. Here's a really great unit with excellent rules. Now here's the insane and terrible unit you'll have to take with it as a tax for this new formation ... It was a good try but it's just such a rough core codex that it needed a lot more than what Traitor's Hate gave it.

I don't think TH is BAD, I just don't think it helps enough. Is it better than nothing? Sure.

What I find is that it kind of just helped push the current style of CSM play which IMHO isn't in the "spirit of the game" for Chaos. Things like handwaving marks of chaos where they don't belong and saying they are really something else, allied detachments just to take the juicy formations only, encouraging MSU spam or not taking a core of Marines, pushing taking BL "allies" just for the Cyclopia Cabal to use the new powers, etc.

It's not bad at all. I just feel it exacerbates the problems instead of making strides to help them. I do not feel comfortable as a CSM player who likes non-marked forces to take marks or kind of pretend that X is really Y because X the way it's described doesn't work for my force (an example I constantly use is Mark of Nurgle and saying it's really bionic enhancement). I don't find that Traitor's Hate fixes any major issues, but it does provide some nice incentives to bring actual Marines, just it does so in a way that helps the min/max approach instead of the fluffy approach.

I've played against csm with new rules allready and can say that it adds some degree of variety indeed. There's finally a reason to field not just one min squad of termies, but 3 or 4! And a termie lord that gets a 40 pt discount. I bet that every second csm player has a termie indep that either doesn't see daylight or is pretending to be an obliterator.

2 Boons with choosing 1-2 is still random but in a more fateweaver-random way. There's almost no chance of failure - yep, you can still roll double spawns or dp and sspawn or dp and dp but MOST of the time you're getting at least something nice or really good.

For example, in the last game, 2 boons got a spawn out of infiltrating havok champion first turn. And this spawn proceeded to wreck an immolator, rout a squad of sisters with 4 meltas and than almost wreck a rhino. So, he payed off almost 10-fold. Than there was a DP out of a half-dead lord.

I think that boons are not to be underestimated. Random but far less so with this rules.

Also, there are some decent tourney lists to be seen involving solo nurgle spawns that can be technically spammed in insane numbers.

All in all, i think they polished a turd quite well.

TremendousZ wrote:
So after the first weekend seems like the support for Traitor's Hate is lackluster at best. I actually like it, and think several new mechanics have been overlooked. I think CSM got what they were asking for in a lot of ways, and CSM players need to realize your never getting 3.5 codex level power again. Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

So for no additional points in this book we got: Free Universal Veterans of the Long War, ObSec, Free Boon Roll per turn no combat required, and you can roll 2 boons and pick one or both...... That's just the new decurion. You have cultists squads that can revive to outflank 50% of the time, you can charge from deepstrike, fire twice with oblits per turn, attack twice with berserkers.....I'm not seeing the downside here.

A common complaint CSM players voice, we don't get free rhinos/vehicles/stuff. Well, looks like we have a free direct advantage vs imperium with VotLW, more chances for awesome character boosts, and the occasional Daemon Princes. Seems okay to me, feels pretty chaosy. More boon rolls, and a little safety from spawnhood.

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

I understand that many of you are frustrated that this book did not catapult CSM to the top tier of competition. However, isn't some progress in the right direction a good thing?

If your a skeptic, please, dust off your CSM and play a few games. I'd love to hear some real experiences, not just armchair hate. If your on the fence, I say Traitor's Hate is a good read, and great upgrade to any CSM army.

Sidenote: I play Black Legion, so free VotLW is very nice and helpful for me.

First of all I agree with most people here. It's not about how powerful it is. The base codex is still as bland as ever and does a very poor job of representing CSM. TH does very little to rectify that. And for those harping on about how legions aren't a thing? Even the cult legions are big enough to have several sub factions. Hell, Black Legion alone lists 9 other sub factions in their supplement, some of which are large enough to list several Warlords just for that faction. If that's not reason enough to give csm some kind of overarching traits akin to chapter tactics and give the various legions some flavour I dunno what is. TH does nothign to change that.

VotLW is just a bad mechanic and it doesn't get much better when you give it for "free". Hatred( faction) is not a good mechanic imho, especially not when you have to pay 3-5 points for it. It's unfair towards that faction and it becomes utterly pointless vs other factions. Not knowing which faction you are going to face just makes it even worse. It's not really free either. In order to get that, you have to use the decurion, which is more limiting that it appears at first sight. Almost all formations require you to take character, which will more often then not be 100+ points. And you have to take a minimum of 3 units, and if you then also want some kind of guarantee to use a specific power, you need at least 3-4 lvl 3 psykers adding another 300+ points. Your average decurion is going to run you at least 300 points in characters alone. Which is not only somewhat limiting in terms of building your list, it also goes against the fluff of csm following one strong leader. Again, that wouldn't be so bad if we could use something like the 30k lieutenants, but isntead you need a minimum of 2 actual chaos lords unless you pick the cultists. In which case you have take a dark apostle, which should actually be at least as strong as a lord from a fluff perspective. (should only be a word bearers thing actually)

The boon table can go straight to hell, free or not. It's a horrible mechanic. Sure getting a free boon or two is better, but its still a horrible mechanic. KDK do the whole god reward thing much better. Apotheosis is bad and there are too many pointless results.

TremendousZ wrote:you can charge from deepstrike, fire twice with oblits per turn, attack twice with berserkers

Yea, except we have no reserve manipulation, no deepstrike mitigation and if you do manage to get close enough? It's a disordered charge, immediately making one of the marks worthless. And I could live with a disordered charge, but then you compare it to marines who get the same, except with mitigation and a charge bonus. What makes this so much better that we have to jump through so many hoops?
The oblits are ok, but they are too restricted with their weapons. In order to really benefit from the formation you want to deepstrike in, but then you realize the warpsmith can't get close enough to buff them because he can't get a bike/mount/jump pack for some arbitrary reason. Which also why it does nothing to improve mutilators.
And the buff for berzerkers is also just ok. You still have to somehow get them into assault in the first place, and they're still too expensive. +3 inch helps but not enough to allow them to footslog and the rhino still prevents them from assaulting. And the double attacks? Eh. What's the likelyhood that you charge, don't destroy the unit in your phase OR the opponents following phase? Because it's only then that you get to do that extra attack. That's going to be fairly rare And if you want to make it into combat somewhat reliably? You need a bunch of sorcerers that then again take up a good chunk of your list and is also really unfluffy. And even then you're jsut catapulting one of minimum four units.
Other formations are dubious too. Vector striking pinned/GtG units?, yea, good luck with that. And terminators that suffer from all the deepstrike problems and then get to fire their oneshot weapons twice...oh wait..they don't. Then you get hatred to charge them afterwards, except they can't and will more than likely be shot of the board. Unless you take large units, which makes deepstriking even more risky not to mention hella expensive considering you have to take a minimum of three.

TremendousZ wrote:By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation.

Umm, no. Unlocking the cult units of your choice is as easy as buying a mark on your lord of choice in cad, not to mention the purge detachment which needs elites as the only compulsory choice. And nothing is stopping you from taking formations along side your CAD. TH does nothing to help with that. And the CAD does it better too. Want a zombie army? Take typhus and as many cultists as you can field, no need for an apostle or other auxiliaries. TH is not one bit more fluffy then what we had before. It just does it badly in a different way.

That said, I bought traitors hate and it does give us more options. I even think its one more step in the right direction for GW. I also think it does more good then bad, and yet, that right direction is still somewhere way off on the horizon.
I am also very dissapointed in the psychic powers and lack of relics. Space marines and even daemons got 4 completely unique and flavourful powerful psychic disciplines. Instead, we get yet another copy and paste job. I don't care how powerful they are. Was it really so much to ask to get our own? Plus I don't like how they tried to chaosify them. It makes zero sense. These are not sorceries, they are psychic powers. And not only that, they are the same "noble" powers. They aren't corrupted at all. it makes no sense to give them a different description when they are the literally the same.
And where are the relics? Again, not only did marines and daemons get them, the blood angels book was released back to back with TH and they got yet another set of relics. There is no reason whatsoever that CSM should be left in the dark.

Sidenote: I play Black Legion and the free VotLW doesn't do squat for me as I prefer to use FW units, which require a normal CAD and thus I still have to pay the tax. Plus the formations are cheaper (they require less units) and I hate spamming the same unit, which TH does in spades. Playing in lower points games makes TH very difficult to use efficiently.

TremendousZ wrote:

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

I may have read this wrong, but Cult troops aren't even available in the Chaos Warband? If you think that marking Chaos Marines with Slaanesh gives me my Noisemarines warband descended from the Emperor's Children, including Noise Terminators and Assault Noisemarines, then clearly there's no conversation to be had here.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:

TremendousZ wrote:

Now the overlooked. Veterans of the Legions. By moving Cult CSM troops out of required or elite slots, you can field your 'legion' while still getting the benefits of every other formation. Want to play Deathguard? Slap some MoN on the Chaos Warband and add the VotL. Chances are your bringing whats in the warband anyways. Don't like the marine tax? (hate that expression by the way) Bring the Lost and the Damned....and turn them all into zombies while your at it with Typhus.

I may have read this wrong, but Cult troops aren't even available in the Chaos Warband? If you think that marking Chaos Marines with Slaanesh gives me my Noisemarines warband descended from the Emperor's Children, including Noise Terminators and Assault Noisemarines, then clearly there's no conversation to be had here.

While true to a point, I don't think it's exactly true. I never liked the idea that ALL Emperor's Children legionnaires became Noise Marines (same with World Eaters, Death Guard.. well Thousand Sons are kind of a weird outlier I guess). I'm not saying that "Veterans of the Legion" stuff in any way makes up for it, but I do think it's not out of the fluffy realm to have like a Slaanesh themed army with CSM squads and whatnot with Mark of Slaanesh, and then your Noise Marines are your elite guys (kinda like how the Kakophoni are in 30k) that have fully given themselves over. I think that can be made kinda fluffy, honestly. Cult Troops are a formation, they aren't in the Chaos Warband itself. Now yes I do admit 100% that we need Cult Terminators back. I also would like if giving the appropriate mark allowed access to the specific weapons (I want to say this was the case in 3.5 but I don't remember) so like a squad of CSM or even Raptors and Havocs w/Mark of Slaanesh could take noise marine weapons in place of special/heavy weapons. That, again, could be pretty fluffy as an Emperor's Children warband with CSM squads with noise weapons, Raptors with noise weapons ("Assault Noisemarines"), Cult Terminators and then again, actual Noise Marines as the elite troopers.

Again the biggest problem with this book is that it doesn't bring back the feel of Chaos. It's not a bad book, just Chaos has seemingly lost most of its flavor and is now pretty bland, because for whatever reason GW refuses to give back the things that really made Chaos stand out.

WayneTheGame wrote:

While true to a point, I don't think it's exactly true. I never liked the idea that ALL Emperor's Children legionnaires became Noise Marines

Absolutely agree! But its what I want for my warband.

Snipped things I totally would love to see:

for whatever reason GW refuses to give back the things that really made Chaos stand out.

Agreed again.

I always assumed that Cult units like Terminators and Raptors went away to match the fluff better. There weren't Noise Terminators in the Heresy, and still aren't, at least as far as Forge World is concerned. Nor are there Noise Raptors. Kakaphoni are power-armoured noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, and that's the extent of noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, even as early as the heresy.

That was always my interpretation though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I always assumed that Cult units like Terminators and Raptors went away to match the fluff better. There weren't Noise Terminators in the Heresy, and still aren't, at least as far as Forge World is concerned. Nor are there Noise Raptors. Kakaphoni are power-armoured noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, and that's the extent of noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, even as early as the heresy.

That was always my interpretation though.

Because surely no Terminator saw a Blastmaster or Sonic Blaster (which also didnt exist in the Heresy, so by your qualifiers shouldnt exist) and thought; "I need to get me one of those." What's the excuse for no Plague Terminators? Death Guard used plenty of Terminators. Rubric Terminators? Surely they would have been created. Terminator Berzerkers? Oh wait, FW does have those, they are called Red Butchers.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I always assumed that Cult units like Terminators and Raptors went away to match the fluff better. There weren't Noise Terminators in the Heresy, and still aren't, at least as far as Forge World is concerned. Nor are there Noise Raptors. Kakaphoni are power-armoured noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, and that's the extent of noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, even as early as the heresy.

That was always my interpretation though.

Because surely no Terminator saw a Blastmaster or Sonic Blaster (which also didnt exist in the Heresy, so by your qualifiers shouldnt exist) and thought; "I need to get me one of those." What's the excuse for no Plague Terminators? Death Guard used plenty of Terminators. Rubric Terminators? Surely they would have been created. Terminator Berzerkers? Oh wait, FW does have those, they are called Red Butchers.

Yeah, Red Butchers should come back. Good point. Maybe the ravening lunatics got themselves wiped out - even the Legions had far far fewer terminators than conventional troops.

As for whether or not a terminator saw a sonic blaster, well, I am sure Imperial terminators saw lascannons and multi-meltas too but seem to have some inexplicable aversion. Units simply don't have access to certain weapons; chalk it up to a geneseed flaw.

As for Rubric terminators, we don't know anything about the Thousand Sons terminators. Maybe they all got obliterated during the battle for Prospero? Wait until book VII, then complain.

As for plague terminators, terminators with Mark of Nurgle exist. That would represent corrupted, pustulent-ridden terminators who were in the Legion.

The core of the legions, remember, were power-armoured troops. It's no surprise that these troops are the core of modern warbands made from that legion, as the number of elite forces that survived the heresy dwindles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean heck, the little fluff blurb in the Heresy book about Red Butchers goes out of its way to mention how few survived the first battle of the Horus Heresy. How many do you think made it through the Scouring and the intervening years?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I always assumed that Cult units like Terminators and Raptors went away to match the fluff better. There weren't Noise Terminators in the Heresy, and still aren't, at least as far as Forge World is concerned. Nor are there Noise Raptors. Kakaphoni are power-armoured noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, and that's the extent of noise troopers for the Emperor's Children, even as early as the heresy.

That was always my interpretation though.

Because surely no Terminator saw a Blastmaster or Sonic Blaster (which also didnt exist in the Heresy, so by your qualifiers shouldnt exist) and thought; "I need to get me one of those." What's the excuse for no Plague Terminators? Death Guard used plenty of Terminators. Rubric Terminators? Surely they would have been created. Terminator Berzerkers? Oh wait, FW does have those, they are called Red Butchers.

Yeah, Red Butchers should come back. Good point. Maybe the ravening lunatics got themselves wiped out - even the Legions had far far fewer terminators than conventional troops.

As for whether or not a terminator saw a sonic blaster, well, I am sure Imperial terminators saw lascannons and multi-meltas too but seem to have some inexplicable aversion. Units simply don't have access to certain weapons; chalk it up to a geneseed flaw.

As for Rubric terminators, we don't know anything about the Thousand Sons terminators. Maybe they all got obliterated during the battle for Prospero? Wait until book VII, then complain.

As for plague terminators, terminators with Mark of Nurgle exist. That would represent corrupted, pustulent-ridden terminators who were in the Legion.

The core of the legions, remember, were power-armoured troops. It's no surprise that these troops are the core of modern warbands made from that legion, as the number of elite forces that survived the heresy dwindles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean heck, the little fluff blurb in the Heresy book about Red Butchers goes out of its way to mention how few survived the first battle of the Horus Heresy. How many do you think made it through the scouring and the intervening years?

Considering the fact that using a Sonic Weapon doesnt require your Geneseed, thats a stupid suggestion. Lascannon and Multi-Melta Comparison is bad as well, those are heavy and Sonic Blasters are a Boltgun, Besides there were Terminators that had Multi-Meltas, they were called Justaerin and guess which Legion they were? Not a Loyal one.

Mark of Nurgle doesn't covey the same effect as being a Plague Marine, there is little reason they shouldn't have some sort of Toxic Based defense, like Grave Wardens.

Since Plague Marines, Noise Marines and Berzekers are not limited to just the Legions. Its silly to assume that new Terminator Traitors wouldn't become Plague/Sonic/Berzerkers. So the argument that they are the Elite Force of Heresy doesn't really stack up either.

The Red Butchers could easily have been replaced after the first battle and been supplanted by the INCREASING numbers of Insane Killers, a number of them having Terminator armor. But also see the above, being a World Eater is not a pre-requisite of being a Khorne Berzerker anymore than being Emperor's Children is a requirement for being a Noise Marine. The only "Elite" Cult troop that would be dwindling would be the 1ksons and even then, they probably have a method of calling souls back to suits of armor.

For a long, long while, CSM have been bleeding out of a huge wound from head to crotch. Applying some band aids here and there is nice and all, but does not solve the main issue: the current CSM codex is a pile of gak.

And sadly band aids are the only thing CSM will be getting until a new edition shows up. Guess who's going to be the first, experimental unpolished codex of the new edition? Yay.

I don't quite understand your post. If you're saying Terminators should have access to Sonic Blasters because they're a standard rapid fire weapon, then I think Loyalist terminators should have access to Plasma Guns, as they also replace boltguns in certain units.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that GW changed the fluff:
The Leman Russ was a fast tank, faster than a baneblade, until 6th edition, and then that was reversed.

The Chaos legions had cult terminators and whatnot available until fourth edition, and then that, too, was retconned, both out of the rules and out of the fluff (I have never read any Chaos novel that has non-power-armour Cult troops that cannot be represented on the tabletop with the existing rules).

IG players don't complain about the awkward fact that the Baneblade's top speed is three times that of the Russ, even though that change is only one edition old, while I have seen Chaos players complain that GW changed their fluff three editions ago.

Holy gak, going throughthis thread made me realize just what people mean when all CSM players do is complain.

"I don't see how charging from DS makes my raptors/warp talons more useful" -> Facepalm

"We should have high Ld to begin with instead of getting free VoTLW" -> Literally two sides of the same coin

Sigh. And this is why genuine complaints get discredited with the "all CSM players are so salty" argument.

Unit1126PLL wrote:I don't quite understand your post. If you're saying Terminators should have access to Sonic Blasters because they're a standard rapid fire weapon, then I think Loyalist terminators should have access to Plasma Guns, as they also replace boltguns in certain units.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that GW changed the fluff:
The Leman Russ was a fast tank, faster than a baneblade, until 6th edition, and then that was reversed.

The Chaos legions had cult terminators and whatnot available until fourth edition, and then that, too, was retconned, both out of the rules and out of the fluff (I have never read any Chaos novel that has non-power-armour Cult troops that cannot be represented on the tabletop with the existing rules).

IG players don't complain about the awkward fact that the Baneblade's top speed is three times that of the Russ, even though that change is only one edition old, while I have seen Chaos players complain that GW changed their fluff three editions ago.

Im not even particularly in need of Cult Termies, Im just saying there are reasons that they could. Im saying that the should be able to have Noise Termies because why not, literally what does it hurt? What does it hurt to have Cult Terminators? How would it be different from the various flavors of Loyalist Terminators or Chapter Tactics?

DaPino wrote:Holy gak, going throughthis thread made me realize just what people mean when all CSM players do is complain.

"I don't see how charging from DS makes my raptors/warp talons more useful" -> Facepalm

"We should have high Ld to begin with instead of getting free VoTLW" -> Literally two sides of the same coin

Sigh. And this is why genuine complaints get discredited with the "all CSM players are so salty" argument.

No one said it doesnt make them more useful, just that they aren't as useful their Loyalist Counter parts that get to do the same thing but better.

They should have high Ld, they had high Ld in the last codex, only for it to be taken away and turned into a Tax. One that first had to be bought, and now comes free if you play this specific way, but half of the "bonus" if you want to call Hatred Space Marines a bonus, is irrelevant because the over all formation gives the Hatred Armies of the Imperium, which you guessed it, includes Space Marines. Sure, the free +1 Leadership is good but its hardly a bonus to jump up and down over.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

Unit1126PLL wrote:I don't quite understand your post. If you're saying Terminators should have access to Sonic Blasters because they're a standard rapid fire weapon, then I think Loyalist terminators should have access to Plasma Guns, as they also replace boltguns in certain units.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that GW changed the fluff:
The Leman Russ was a fast tank, faster than a baneblade, until 6th edition, and then that was reversed.

The Chaos legions had cult terminators and whatnot available until fourth edition, and then that, too, was retconned, both out of the rules and out of the fluff (I have never read any Chaos novel that has non-power-armour Cult troops that cannot be represented on the tabletop with the existing rules).

IG players don't complain about the awkward fact that the Baneblade's top speed is three times that of the Russ, even though that change is only one edition old, while I have seen Chaos players complain that GW changed their fluff three editions ago.

Im not even particularly in need of Cult Termies, Im just saying there are reasons that they could. Im saying that the should be able to have Noise Termies because why not, literally what does it hurt? What does it hurt to have Cult Terminators? How would it be different from the various flavors of Loyalist Terminators or Chapter Tactics?

What different flavours? Chaos termies have more options than loyalist termies.

As for what it would hurt... *shrug.* What would it hurt to give all Guard troops choices the option for carapace like they had in 4th? What would it hurt to give the Doctrines system back to guard as an alternative to chapter tactics?

Guard lost as much flexibility and customizability as CSM but for some reason whine less.

Again, It's great that GW threw us a bone, but the same stuff still applies to this release as it always does for chaos. They keep handing out renegade stuff and we don't want it. We want Legions! I don't know how hard it is for them to figure out that like 90% of the chaos marine playing community wants chaos legions back. All you need to do is look at how well HH is doing and put 2 and 2 together.

There's some useful stuff, there's some not so useful stuff in TH but lets be honest. The play style of Chaos Marines simply does not work anymore. We are an assault army with almost no access to assault vehicles and too slow to catch anything important. We also have no means of deep strike mitigation or reserves manipulation.

Until GW gives us Traitor legions, rules, models and formations that make it possible to build an entirely fluffy and semi-competitive army which includes full psychic disciplines, proper marks, proper cult units like terminators/ havocs/ bikes etc. and Relics for every traitor legion. I refuse to acknowledge a job well done.

edit: When I say proper cult units, I mean the whole army. If Plague Marines have 5+ feel no pain, and fear. Then everything in the army must have those same rules when playing Death Guard. If Noise Marines have access to sonic weapons, all Emperor's Children units must have access to sonic weapons.

This book is for our last remaining CSM-player pretty useless.
Because we have a houserule since nobody wanted to play against Tau, Eldar, Necrons and AdMech-Convocation anymore: No Formations, except Clowns.
Too bad, his only other army are Orks.....
As long he don´t want to get steamrolled by Decurion; shot by D-weapons; meet some crazy suits; getting skyhammered or something dump like that(Its kind of a "Balance of Terror"-situation: If somebody fields a Formation, the others will bring it too.....).

Also: Shifting Worldscape is banned here(as well as DftS), because it just caused very unpleasant "discussions".
When I say 40k is a mess right now, I refer to that. Long discussions on that topics are the reason why I stay the hell away from tournaments and rather play 30k this days.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Again, It's great that GW threw us a bone, but the same stuff still applies to this release as it always does for chaos. They keep handing out renegade stuff and we don't want it. We want Legions! I don't know how hard it is for them to figure out that like 90% of the chaos marine playing community wants chaos legions back. All you need to do is look at how well HH is doing and put 2 and 2 together.

This is, I think, the long and short of it. It's not a question of power (although, it is, and traitors hate is a step in the right direction) as much as not being the product the Chaos players want.

The demand, at least vocally and among every Chaos player I've met in the last six years, is for Codex: World Eaters, and Codex: Deathguard, and Codex: Alpha Legion, and so on. It's why the "dinobots" met with such revulsion, I think. If they had come with a Codex: Dark Mechanicus, players would have shrieked with delight. But, GW cant quite seem to thread the needle between "this is a Khorne army" and "this is a World Eater army", and so they cant quite conceive of the narrowly focused product players seem to want.

And I think that has to do with the background. Very few legions are intact enough to have entire fighting forces from the same legion.

I think GW are trying to make their fluff (that most legions shattered long ago, and that the unique thing about Abbadon was the ability to call back together such a shattered force) match with the crunch (that you can no longer take a mono-legion army).

@Brutus_Apex: I agree wholeheartedly.

And as for flavourful terminators? Wut?
DG grave wardens should be all but lethal to be around. They would be perfect for GW to introduce too. It would be as easy as being a dark mirror to the Dark Angel knights. But instead of gaining toughness they'd reduce the Strength of the enemy unit. With the usual fnp and what have you. Maybe even two wounds. Adapt the price to whatever is appropriate, but that is the kind of stuff csm should be rocking.

World eater themed terminators could have rampage and HoW with higher strength, maybe sweep but no guns. Thrashing around, charging with no regard to themselves. The red butchers don't have to have survived to still exist. Even back then they were the equivalent of humanoid chaos dreads. Strap some crazy into a dreadnaught armour and let him loose. Said armour could easily enough be retrieved later.

Not sure about the other cults, but most of the legions, loyalist or not, had some kind of special terminator unit. It would only make sense to give csm something similar in 40k. Only warped in some form. Until we that kind of stuff, we'll always just be faceless villains. DG used dangerous radiation based weaponry even before they fell and the y only got more resilient after their fall. Give us appropriate weapons that might even hurt us for all I care and balance it towards fnp and iwnd if they are strong, risk /reward and all that. Anything. I just want to play legions with appropriate fluffy rules rather than spacemarines -1 with spikes. And that has to happen on the codex level.

Roknar wrote:
@Brutus_Apex: I agree wholeheartedly.

And as for flavourful terminators? Wut?
DG grave wardens should be all but lethal to be around. They would be perfect for GW to introduce too. It would be as easy as being a dark mirror to the Dark Angel knights. But instead of gaining toughness they'd reduce the Strength of the enemy unit. With the usual fnp and what have you. Maybe even two wounds. Adapt the price to whatever is appropriate, but that is the kind of stuff csm should be rocking.

World eater themed terminators could have rampage and HoW with higher strength, maybe sweep but no guns. Thrashing around, charging with no regard to themselves. The red butchers don't have to have survived to still exist. Even back then they were the equivalent of humanoid chaos dreads. Strap some crazy into a dreadnaught armour and let him loose. Said armour could easily enough be retrieved later.

Not sure about the other cults, but most of the legions, loyalist or not, had some kind of special terminator unit. It would only make sense to give csm something similar in 40k. Only warped in some form. Until we that kind of stuff, we'll always just be faceless villains. DG used dangerous radiation based weaponry even before they fell and the y only got more resilient after their fall. Give us appropriate weapons that might even hurt us for all I care and balance it towards fnp and iwnd if they are strong, risk /reward and all that. Anything. I just want to play legions with appropriate fluffy rules rather than spacemarines -1 with spikes. And that has to happen on the codex level.

Fundamentally, what would you say the distinction between Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines is in the fluff? As in, on the battlefield against, say, the Tau, how would the Tau tell the difference between Loyalist Marines and Traitor Marines?