I have replied:
Hmm... where to start. Ok, simple disclaimer.
Gav, I own the following Chaos armies:
Word Bearers (loads of Marines & Daemons – my first Chaos army, started in 2nd Ed)
Alpha Legion (loads of Marines & Cultists)
World Eaters (follows the fluff to the letter with Sacred Number units and so on)
Death Guard (7 units of 7 troops, all modelled very nicely, using a mix of 2nd Ed, 3rd Ed and even Forge World models - I like my Death Guard army)
Iron Warriors (filled with Havocs and siege weapons and bands of fire-support warriors)
Lost & The Damned (a mass of Mutants and Traitors backed up by Night Lord infantry, tanks and Defilers – I /really/ like my
LatD army)
Now, looking at what armies I play you can probably guess that I am one of those people who have a few issues with the current 'Chaos' Codex. And by a 'few issues' I mean 'despise with a unyielding fury'. However, rather than spewing bile and personal attacks at you, I feel this discussion would be better served with an open look at exactly where my dislike of your Codex comes from (and I say ‘your’ because you are credited as the writer – I am well aware that there is much more that goes into a Codex than just what you write personally).
But before we do this, as in any great debate or discussion, I need to directly address a couple of areas in your words above where I disagree.
Daemons:
Specifically these words of yours - “They were only folded into the Chaos Space Marines in the previous version of the Codex.”
I’m sorry to say this Gav, but there are only three possible explanations for why you’d say what you said here:
A). You’re being forgetful.
B). You have a selective memory.
C). You’re lying.
Why? Well, your comment simply isn’t true.
What Chaos Codices/Army Books have included named God-specific Daemons as part of the Chaos Marine Army list?:
1. Realms of Chaos – Slaves to Darkness
2. Realms of Chaos – The Lost & The Damned
3. Codex Army Lists – 2nd Ed (can’t find my copy, but as the specific Daemon profiles are in Codex Imperialis, I have to assume that they were included in the place-holder Codex that came with 2nd Ed)
4. Codex Chaos – 2nd Ed
5. Codex Chaos – 3rd Ed (Jervis’ one)
6. Codex Chaos – 3rd Ed (Pete Haines’ one)
What Chaos Codices/Army Books have NOT included named God-specific Daemons as part of the Chaos Marine Army list?:
1. Your Codex.
So really, the inclusion of Daemons as part of the Chaos Marine list isn’t recent, or just something that happened in the last Codex (Pete Haines’ Codex). It’s all of them – except yours. Even in Jervis’ original very thin and very uninspired 3rd Ed Codex (a Codex that has bears several striking similarities to yours), where the Daemons were a single entry, there were rules that allowed you to modify their statline to show the different types of Daemons.
Now, yes, the 2nd Ed Codex – a glorious style of book that we can only wish
GW would go back to – did have a Daemon World list in it, but it wasn’t the only list to have Daemons, it was simply the list you used to represent Daemons World Armies. The Codex also had a Chaos Cult army list. Can you imagine if, say, 4th Ed Tyranids had rolled around and Genestealers had been removed from the book, only to emerge in a Genestealer Cult Codex 8 months later, and the reason by the writer given was ‘Oh, they had their own list in another addition, so including Genestealers with the main ‘Nid list is more of a recent thing’? Tyranid players would have gone crazy. The same thing applies to Daemons.
To put it another way - you took something away from Chaos that they had always had. Think about that.
Restrictions vs Flexibility:
As someone who has been quite vocal about my distaste for the ‘Chaos’ Codex, I have often come across the argument that the previous Codex was too restrictive and that this new Codex removed those restrictions therefore giving us more flexibility. This line of thinking is /technically/ true, but is actually quite disingenuous.
How can I best explain this? I know: With ice cream!
Say rather being a book with different Legions, it’s actually an ice-cream store with many different flavours. Say the flavours are:
1. Chocolate ice cream.
2. Strawberry ice cream.
3. Honeycomb ice cream.
4. Rocky Road ice cream.
Mmm… sounds good, don’t it? And so much choice! But say that you could only have one flavour at a time. Aww! No fair. That’s so restrictive. But, at the very least, I can have all the different types, just not all at the same time.
Now let’s say your Codex is also an ice cream store. The flavours you have are:
1. Vanilla.
But there’s no limit on how much vanilla I can have. I can have a little bit of vanilla, I can have a lot, I can have two scoops in two different bowls, three in eight bowls – any combination of vanilla that I want.
But it’s still only vanilla.
If I want Chocolate I can’t, and while I might have been restricted to only having one flavour at a time, at least I had the choice. Now I only have one choice. And having only one choice is the same as having /no/ choice. To extend the metaphor, all the Legions are now are different coloured tubs for vanilla ice cream.
The idea that the old Chaos Codex was ‘restrictive’ and that the new one ‘frees up’ players and gets them away from proscribed gaming simply doesn’t hold water. I have always been of the opinion that fluff and rules should be congruous, and for the most part, Haines’ Codex got that right. It wasn’t balanced – not by any means, but what
GW Codex is? – but the rules stuck to the fluff quite well, and so an army that followed the fluff made good use of the apparently ‘restrictive’ rules. Essentially I think you’re looking at it backwards. You’re trying to say that the old Codex forced you down a certain path – you play World Eaters hey, then you /must/ play this way and this way only!!!!! – but that wasn’t the case. It was often a case of I want to play World Eaters, what is their fluff, oh, they have that sort of formation do they, what do the rules say, oh, the rules are set up in such a way as to let you play as the fluff describes.
And then, at its core, the previous Chaos Codex had the standard list which had no restrictions on units other than the rivalries between the Chaos Gods. You could have an army that had Plague Marines, and Thousand Sons in it, or Noise Marines and Berzerkers just by playing the standard list. At no point where you ‘forced’ or ‘restricted’ to play a specific Legion – the Black Legion covered everything!!!
Your Codex doesn’t free anyone up or somehow release them from proscriptive or restrictive gaming. Why? Because it removed all the options. It’d be like being a star athlete who’s been confined in a small room and is finally let out, only to have his arms and legs cut off. In other words, what good is a lack of restrictions if there’s no choice to be had – you can have any flavour you like as long as it’s vanilla?
So with that out of the way, I want to look at a few specific items within the Codex (and I’ll leave Daemons alone as they’ve been covered already).
I’ve written ‘Chaos’ Codex a few times, rather than Chaos Codex, and the bunny-ears are intentional. The reason for that, as mentioned when I talked about Daemons, you have taken away things that Chaos has never or should never have lost.
Daemonic Gifts are a good example.
I know what you’re probably thinking – “Half the Daemonic Gifts weren’t even being used!” or perhaps “The system of limitations on gifts was too complex”.
But you took Daemonic Gifts away from Chaos. You made them into Loyalist Marines with a Wargear List and nothing to make them Chaos besides a generic Daemon weapon and Marks. This isn’t a case of “there’s no rules for that axe” it’s a case of “there’s no way to represent the corruption inherent in worshiping Chaos… I just have all the same options a Loyalist Marine Captain has – what about this makes me a Chaos Commander?”.
Daemonic Gifts, and the mutations/boons/curses given by the Chaos Gods has been part of Chaos since their inception – you know this, I don’t need to tell you. Realms of Chaos had D1000 – Dee-One-Thousand FFS – tables for mutations. Now I’m certainly not saying that we need or even should go back to such a level of granularity but consider Gav – you took one of the very things that makes Chaos /Chaos/ away! They’re not there any more. They’re gone. Hence ‘Chaos’.
Your argue that you should need rules for various mutations etc.. I argue that mutations etc. are part of the fluff, and the rules should follow the fluff, therefore there should be rules for mutations etc.
Marks vs Icons
Why do squads of Marines forget whom they worship when the guy with the Icon dies? Why are there no Cult Terminators/Havocs/Bikers/Chosen? Why, if your aim was to remove restrictions, did you remove the options that had been previously restricted? Why does a Deathguard army now consist of some actual Plague Marines, and some Marines who may or may not forget what God they’re dedicated to?
What was so bad about the Marks system? And is it too cynical to say that the reason it was changed to Icons was because the new Chaos Marine kit included a nice new plastic Icon and
GW wanted people to buy said kit for said Icon ie. the models drove the rules in this instance?
Possessed
I very keenly remember Pete Haines’ designer notes in White Dwarf describing that the change to Possessed came about as people didn’t like the random nature. I thought it was a great idea – made Possessed instantly viable. Then we get the new one and they’re back to random again. Why?
And, while we’re on the subject of Possessed please, Gav, tell us all – why do you roll /after/ deployment? Did you not ever stop and think that maybe rolling before deployment might be the better option, y’know, let plays have an inkling of what their Possessed are going to be able to do before they set them down on the table? Yes, no, maybe?
Daemon Princes
Now I saw your comment above that maybe you went too far, but why are the glorious veterans of thousands of battles, the champions of the Gods who have ascended to Daemonhood through their vile acts of slaughter limited to… wings or not wings. They can’t even get Daemon Weapons for crying out loud! It goes back to my ‘taking the Chaos out of Chaos’ thing, and why it’s a ‘Chaos’ Codex.
I think a lot of people celebrated what could be done with Daemon Princes in Haines’ Codex, as it was such a big relief from the mono-dimensional boring choices from Jervis’ original 3rd Ed Codex. Then we get yours and it’s very similar to Jervis’ original entry. Was that by accident?
Defilers
WS3? They’re as skilled as Guardsmen in
HTH are they? I’ve never understood this. Please explain it so I know.
Lash of Torment
I think you’ve probably heard enough on this subject, but really, how was the power of this… power… not caught in play testing?
I realise now that I’m nitpicking, but those last two were something I had to ask. Getting back to my main point:
The legacy of the current Chaos Codex is that it took the Chaos out of Chaos Space Marines. ‘Loyalists w/Spikes’ or ‘When Good Marines Go Bad’ is about the best way to describe the current Codex. You can better represent the various Legions using the current Loyalist Marine Codex than you can the ‘Chaos’ one, and that to me is a huge problem.
Daemons are gone. You have to play a different army to have them now. Having a group that allows the mixing of Codices isn’t a way to explain away this problem either – not all groups are flexible, some groups are very large and need the structure of proscribed rulebooks to avoid arguments, and tournaments and leagues certainly can’t have custom armies.
Daemonic Gifts and all those very Chaos-y upgrades and choices are gone.
Legions are gone, reduced to paint schemes and fluff.
/Chaos/ is gone.
Being restricted to one of four options is better than having unlimited choice with one option.
Cane wrote:Definitely awesome that Gav Thrope responded to the seemingly onslaught of negative attention the Chaos dex has received over the interwebs although imo the large outcry against GW is overblown and overly emotional/irrational than anything else. Podcasters and other internet users seem to like this 'dex as well; and I really don't value HBMC's questionable posts since he's got a record of trying to put down people even though he's in the wrong in the first place (me being such a person before) - and he doesn't have the balls or common decency to say that he's wrong.
Not to mention whenever he's shared his guard dex thoughts its just nitpicking; just because he posts the most on Dakka doesn't mean he has THE opinion to hold. Just saying.
Ah, good. You're just a big ol' walkin' talking' logical fallacy aren't you? Let's see we've got hasty generalisations, golden means and a great big ad hominem to cap it all off!
Yes, go on, attack me and not my arguments. That's the internet way!
Suffused with the dying memories of Sanguinus, the warriors of the Death Company seek only one thing: death in battle fighting against the enemies of the Emperor. 
(thats not an attack I like HBMCs posts, I even spell his name right) 
and 
12001st Valusian Airborne
Chrome Warriors