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Pact Bound Zealots is an epic failure and how to fix it.

Let us start with knowing two things.

1. Five of the detachments in Chaos Space Marine Codex are a representation of the five undivided Chaos legions and their prefer method of engagement or legion style: Black Legion (VotLW), Night Lords (Dread Talons), Iron Warriors (Fellhammer), Alpha Legion (Deceptors), Word Bearers (Pact Bound Zealots).

2. Each Detachment can be universally used by any legion etc and not tied to one specific legion. It is a style of abilities stratagems and enhancements that follow the path of battle for those legions.

Pact Bound Zealots and why it doesn’t fit either the Word Bearers engagement style or legion style, or any Chaos Undivided style.
A. Word Bearers are Undivided in their worship of the Dark Gods, just as are the other Undivided Legions.
B. Word Bearers and other Zealots have a stronger tie to the Dark Gods with Dark Apostles, Daemonkin.
C. The other detachments do not need to pick any Mark except Undivided and gain all benefits of Dark Pact, Stratagems, and Enhancements. Encompassing fully the Undivided Status.
D. Pact Bound Zealots can pick Undivided also but lose 75% of their stratagems,100% of their Enhancements and 80% of their Dark Pact.

As it is written now, Pact Bound has to choose a Mark for each troop and vehicle. In theory this could give a close representation of having marks for all four dark gods in a detachment to show it is Undivided on their worship of the Dark Gods. But it fails miserably.

The pact bound Advance Dark Pact 5+ Sustain or Lethal forces you to pick one of the 4 dark gods or undivided. Yet in reality game play, range units are always Nurgle and melee is always Slaanesh; and rarely if ever, Khorne or Tzeentch are picked. Thus this detachment is a really a detachment of zealots for two dark gods with a sprinkle of Undivided for the undivided stratagem profane zeal.

As for enhancements, pact bound is also based only on the four dark gods. Which means once again a character will be bound to one of the marked gods and not undivided with all four.

Pact Bound Zealots are basically a mini 2 dark gods combo legion rather than an Undivided legion who worship the four gods equally.

Four of six Stratagem are also Based on what mark a unit has which means sone units won’t get the full stratagem.

How to fix Pact Bound Zealots. There are numerous ways people can come up with to fix it. My view is to take most of what GW provided to a degree and reshape it to a Universal legion Undivided Pact Bound Zealots of ALL of the Dark Gods just like the other detachments in the codex.

1. Dark Pacts. Basic 6+ like the other detachments.
2. Advanced Dark Pact 5+ as in Pact Bound Zealots.
3. Characters leading a unit have a stronger tie to the Dark Gods than just a unit without a character leading it. Units led by a Character can choose the Advanced Dark Pact.
4. Units with no Character leading it can use the Basic Dark Pact.

All units can choose to use any of the dark pacts just like the other detachments.

Stratagems: as long as a unit is led by a character, you can use the full version of the Stratagems. A non character led unit can only use the basic level of a stratagem. This falls under Eternal Hate, Festering Miasma, Skinshift, and Torpefying refrain. This allows all units to use all stratagems, but better if led by a character.

Enhancement: 1. Book of Chaos: within 6" of this HQ, units without an HQ can choose the Advanced Dark Pact. 2. Talisman of Chaos: Bearer can choose at the start of their battle round one of the following +1 Toughness, +1 Attack to a range attack, +1 attack to a melee attack, +2” move. 3. Eightfold Weapon: increase ap to weapon by 1. Bearer and unit receive 6+ Feel No Pain. 4. Blessings of the Dark gods: this item grants +1CP at the start of your turn on a 5+. If you killed a unit in the previous round add 1 to the roll.

I'm not super familiar with CSM in general this edition; the preview of the Dark Pact mechanic felt kind of unfluffy and turned me off.

That said, your overall pitch seems pretty reasonable to me as a mostly-outsider looking in.

Book of Chaos is a very minor source of concern for me as didn't like the way auras encouraged armies to huddle together in past ediitons.

Eightfold Weapon seems like it risks being worse than the Talisman because the Talisman can *also* boost the bearer's melee effectiveness but has more versatility on top of that. Would have to crunch numbers, but you'd basically need the -1AP to be better than +1 Attacks or else the Eightfold Weapon is just a strictly weaker option.

Other than that, this seems pretty reasonable.