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Should have the strongest HQ's.

Orks get bigger and stronger the longer they live/ more they fight.

Chaos lords are litteraly blessed and watched by the gods of the setting.

What do you think?

Seems like chaos particularly space marines just copy loyalists. I don't mean the models just the way they are structured. I mean 10,000 years should be enough time for far greater divergence.

Would be interesting if they could manage to show that the loyalist are better supplyed and and a more unified regimented force and Chaos is... Well more chaotic with larger variances in power. Think a graph one is steady and the other has large dips and crests.

To be clear this pertains to the rules not the models or fluff. The fluff does a good job of demonstrating this and the models mostly look good though I do wish they went a little more horrific on the chaos models, bring a little scary.

This is some general musings, please share your thought. What should chaos in particular play like?

Part of the issue for this is that GW has moved towards "no models-no rules" approach, so although a Chaos Lord should have free reign to have a bunch of options that befits them, unless it's modelled on as an option, GW won't give it to them, which is why Chaos Lords no longer can take jump packs or bikes. Until GW fixes this, you'll always be restricted arbitrarily to what GW has available in terms of models.

Rules-wise, I don't think it's that bad tbh at the moment. In the previous edition, I would say that CSM and Orks did feel like that they had the short end of the stick for Herohammer, but the new codices (despite many other flaws) do let you build out very tanky or killy bosses (warbosses actually feel scary for marines to face off against beyond the killa klaw boss for once) and Chaos Space Marines do have Daemon Princes and Lords-Discordant for more flavour if you feel like regular Lords don't feel like they cut it for you. Daemon weapons and marks of chaos were handled better this time around as well.

If there's anything, it would be to make some of the baseline weapons a bit more interesting so it doesn't feel like you NEED a relic to make taking a Warboss or Chaos Lord worth it.

Define that greater divergence between chaos and loyalist marines. If we go by the lore, loyalist marines always have had outliers in terms of power. Best example being heresy era Sigismund who would absolutely trounce 99% of chaos champions you put in front of him.

In terms of rules both chaos and orks can make very powerful characters and Chaos Marines arguably have the best character in the game right now, Abaddon.

I agree that ork warbosses and chaos lords should play and feel very powerful, but they should not just have the most powerful characters bar none. Tyranids and harlequins are often left out in these discussions, which are also faction that should have very powerful characters and you most certainly can't talk about characters that should play and feel powerful without talking about custodes. So orks and chaos spaces marines having the claim to get the strongest characters is not something I would agree with as a blanket statement.

I think that there should be more customization, across the board. But Chaos and Orks really need it.

 Grimskul wrote:
Part of the issue for this is that GW has moved towards "no models-no rules" approach, so although a Chaos Lord should have free reign to have a bunch of options that befits them, unless it's modelled on as an option, GW won't give it to them, which is why Chaos Lords no longer can take jump packs or bikes. Until GW fixes this, you'll always be restricted arbitrarily to what GW has available in terms of models.

Rules-wise, I don't think it's that bad tbh at the moment. In the previous edition, I would say that CSM and Orks did feel like that they had the short end of the stick for Herohammer, but the new codices (despite many other flaws) do let you build out very tanky or killy bosses (warbosses actually feel scary for marines to face off against beyond the killa klaw boss for once) and Chaos Space Marines do have Daemon Princes and Lords-Discordant for more flavour if you feel like regular Lords don't feel like they cut it for you. Daemon weapons and marks of chaos were handled better this time around as well.

If there's anything, it would be to make some of the baseline weapons a bit more interesting so it doesn't feel like you NEED a relic to make taking a Warboss or Chaos Lord worth it.

There are still things that can be done without bits to accommodate them. For example, Chaos Mares are blessed by the dark gods. They should have stats that reflect that. I'd say all Chaos Marines should be tougher and stronger, S5, T5 base. And their blessed boltguns firing all manner of strange projectiles from the Chaos Forges should remain S4, but gain either D2 or -1 Rend. I also think they should have an extra point of movement. Adjust points to compensate.

 Togusa wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Part of the issue for this is that GW has moved towards "no models-no rules" approach, so although a Chaos Lord should have free reign to have a bunch of options that befits them, unless it's modelled on as an option, GW won't give it to them, which is why Chaos Lords no longer can take jump packs or bikes. Until GW fixes this, you'll always be restricted arbitrarily to what GW has available in terms of models.

Rules-wise, I don't think it's that bad tbh at the moment. In the previous edition, I would say that CSM and Orks did feel like that they had the short end of the stick for Herohammer, but the new codices (despite many other flaws) do let you build out very tanky or killy bosses (warbosses actually feel scary for marines to face off against beyond the killa klaw boss for once) and Chaos Space Marines do have Daemon Princes and Lords-Discordant for more flavour if you feel like regular Lords don't feel like they cut it for you. Daemon weapons and marks of chaos were handled better this time around as well.

If there's anything, it would be to make some of the baseline weapons a bit more interesting so it doesn't feel like you NEED a relic to make taking a Warboss or Chaos Lord worth it.

There are still things that can be done without bits to accommodate them. For example, Chaos Mares are blessed by the dark gods. They should have stats that reflect that. I'd say all Chaos Marines should be tougher and stronger, S5, T5 base. And their blessed boltguns firing all manner of strange projectiles from the Chaos Forges should remain S4, but gain either D2 or -1 Rend. I also think they should have an extra point of movement. Adjust points to compensate.

But then you would have to buff possessed to reflect their own recent stat changes, and the other unintended consequences of having S5 T5 terminators and other units like bikers becoming T6. This isn't even including other chaos factions like Death Guard or Thousand Sons where the stat increase would make a significant difference and cause issues with how their resilience is reflected compared to other armies, like Custodes, who would then also likely have to be boosted. I would say the core problem behind this is that stat inflation in 9th edition has already gotten out of hand already and if GW did want to do it, that they should done a stat reboot across the board at the same time and use a wider range of numbers rather than everyone being so close together. So that way you could have more granularity to reflect the stats of things like veterans of the long war compared to newer heretic astartes who wouldn't necessarily warrant such a sudden stat boost from betraying the Imperium.