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One Formation I miss from 7th is the Helforged Warpack. It was an okish formation, its main bonus being some extra uses of Daemonforge, but what drew me to it was the fact you could make a single Walker in the Formation a Warpack Alpha. This gave it a 4++, but most importantly it turned that Walker into a Character. This meant you could Challenge stuff, get a Warlord Trait, etc.

How many CP would be reasonable to apply the Characted keyword to a Walker? And should such a character also be able to benefit from Character-specific Stratagems, or be allowed to take a Relic?

The only chaos walker that isn't more than 9 wounds is the dreadnaught, right? If that's the case, I think 1CP to make a walker your warlord is reasonable. Sure, you get to extend any aura buffs granted by a warlord trait, but you're also a slow, expensive priority target that may or may not get be able to hide behind screening units. If I"m not mistaken, Bjorn is a character, so a walker character isn't unprecedented.

I'm not familiar enough with the relics to comment on whether or not they should be valid options.

It seems like an interesting update to add a bit of unusual flavour and variation, but as Wyldhunt points out, it falls somewhat flat in practice with the character rule being largely pointless except for dreadnoughts/ Helbrute. Helbrutes can already benefit from legion tactics anyway, so no change there, but Relics are kind of out of the question in most instances due to them not being able to equip the relevant piece of war gear to replace.