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Reasoning behind purposed rules:
After reading through the new chaos codex I was fairly disappointed that cult armies continued to be neglected as they were in the previous codex. There seems to be a major inconsistency with the fluff and composition of armies dedicated to a single chaos god. Armies which utilize cult marines as troops have elite and veteran units without the options/morale benefits provided to their core units. Fluffy cult armies composed of fearless cult troops have characters and elite units that are not fearless and lack the option of taking the quintessential equipment of their force. A Khorne berserker force is put into a position where they have fearless troops but, have terminators, bikers, characters, and etc; that are prone to leadership test failures. I made these rules to allow people to play armies that are represented in the background and help compensate those players for restricting their unit selection to create a fluff based army.

RULES:
Chosen God: One of the four chaos gods must be taken as the chosen god of your army.

General Cult army rules: All units with the option of taking a mark must take the mark of their chosen god (except cultist). Any unit that takes this compulsory mark also receives the fearless rule for free.

Cultist: Do not have to take a mark, but if they do it must be that of their chosen god. This will not grant them the fearless rule; they also do not benefit from the options provided to cult armies unless they are directly stated as receiving said options.

Allies: Daemon allies all must have the mark of the chosen god - otherwise they may not be taken. Chaos space marine armies featuring the marks of other gods are Desperate Allies instead of Battle Brothers.

Slaanesh -
Doom sirens become a 15 point option for all characters.

Throughout the army, sonic blasters may replace bolters for 3 points and combi-bolters for 1 point. Autocannons and reaper autocannons can be replaced with blastmasters for 20 points. This effects vehicles as well.

Noise Marines: Blastmasters may be selected at any unit size and up to four may be taken. But, if a unit of noise marines fields more than one (or two if their unit numbers 20 models) it becomes a Heavy choice instead of a Troop selection.

Nurgle -
Any unit with frag grenades may replace them with blight grenades for 1 point each.

Close combat weapons may be upgraded to plague knives for 4 points per model.

Plague zombies may be used without Typhus

Tzeentch -

Units with bolters and/or boltpistols may buy inferno bolts at 4 points per model or gun in the case of a vehicle.

Units with combi-bolters may buy inferno bolts at 6 points per model or gun in the case of a vehicle.

If one model in a unit purchases inferno bolts all models in the unit armed with a bolt firing weapons must purchase inferno bolts.

Characters may become psykers with a mastery level of one for 15 points. Same lore restrictions as a sorcerer with the mark of tzeentch

Khorne -

Close combat weapons may be upgraded to chain axes for 3 points each.

All characters have have a Deny the Witch save of a 5+.

No. The 3.5 codex is never going to exist again and for good reason.

This current codex is already the most customizable army in the game by a wide margin. It does not need more.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
The 3.5 codex is never going to exist again and for good reason.

Yep.

Oh. My. God.

Srsly d00d? Dex isn't even properly out and the whining begins? Unreal. It seems to me some people will simply find any reason that they can to be unhappy.

In your defense, however, I do like that you are thinking outside the box and doing something to address your dissatisfaction... it's not strictly just whining.

So, good for you.

There is a logically inconsistency with having players fielding a cult army with core troops that are fearless, but whose elites, veterans, and characters are not. This seems faulty, both in game play and fluff. "My troops will stick it out to the end; but my terminators, chosen, and characters will make a break for it?"; this is a pretty big oddity.

Plague zombies are a major component of the 13th crusade engulfing many worlds, they are featured in the black library novels and other sources of background. But the chaos codex only allows them to be fielded with the presence of a special character - this seems to be a pointless restriction, same with the cult equipment and weaponry.

There are clear background examples of noise weaponry being possess by HQ characters and other units in recent novels. There is even is a EC chaos lord miniature with a doom siren and a plasma pistol sold by GWS’s website under the Chaos Marine HQs. That model can’t exist as WYSIWYG in the current codex - not even as a noise marine champion. Game-wise, I view my perks and provided options as relatively minor considering the unit omissions that are require to receive them.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
No. The 3.5 codex is never going to exist again and for good reason.

That reason being GW's fear of loyalist players throwing another fit over not having the best codex.

I fully support the OP and I expect to enjoy reading many, many other Legion plug-ins in this subforum in the next few months.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
No. The 3.5 codex is never going to exist again and for good reason.

That reason being GW's fear of loyalist players throwing another fit over not having the best codex.

Your tinfoil hat must be mighty indeed.

That codex was an affront to the entire game. The codex coming out in 2 days is more than sufficient to handle every possible iteration of chaos space marines. It's got more customization in it than any codex ever written except the previous Tyranid codex. The only complaints that will exist about it are because idiots on the internet will complain about everything.

The codex is meh in my opinion.....no opportunity to build a dedicated Alpha legion / Night Lord army.......non fearless options as highlighted by oP, oh and the stupid space zoid.

This is of course just my thoughts as a gamer and CSM player on the dex......was hoping for something a little better to be honest

 DarknessEternal wrote:

That codex was an affront to the entire game. The codex coming out in 2 days is more than sufficient to handle every possible iteration of chaos space marines. It's got more customization in it than any codex ever written except the previous Tyranid codex. The only complaints that will exist about it are because idiots on the internet will complain about everything.

Or trolls who get off on other people's disappointment? I'm sorry if 3.5 touched you in a bad place or something, maybe there's a support group for that. If you don't like homebrew rules, don't read these threads.

I saw this in other documents including the old codexes....


It will never fly, the point system is broken... What about night lords getting night vision..... How bout fearless on the Black legion, or Power of the machine spirit on those mech guys.... (I obviously never played with or against that group).

The Chaos is a huge codex.... they pulled out all Daemons which is totally lamb, and the new DP is even lamber. The new codex lost its evil, and its tactics.... It might as well be another marine codex. But push comes to shove it would be nice to SEE a working all cult army.

Fearless can be a bad thing. Maybe after "years of war" the marine just learned to use "Combat Tactics" and lost fearless... then confused in his chaos greed forgot about "combat tactics" too.

If you are upset about plague zombies only being able to be fielded when unlocked by Typhus, you just might weep when you see only 10 zombies per unit are allowed. Zombie apocalypse? Not quite..

There's already a whole zombie army list in the siege of vraks.

A gentle reminder - if you're reaching for words like "tinfoil hat," odds are good that you are straying very close to the line of polite posting. Simmer down, and remember that this forum is for discussing proposed/homebrew rules; if you aren't interested in doing that, you don't need to post in here.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
There's already a whole zombie army list in the siege of vraks.

They must have been chainsawed by the Imperium since then because RAW in the new codex only lets you take 10 per unit. Sucks I know. Was ready to buy a bucket load of them as well..

 Janthkin wrote:
A gentle reminder - if you're reaching for words like "tinfoil hat," odds are good that you are straying very close to the line of polite posting. Simmer down, and remember that this forum is for discussing proposed/homebrew rules; if you aren't interested in doing that, you don't need to post in here.

Eep sorry, I didn't realise this was for HB rules. I'm new forgive me. *runs off to familiarize himself with forum*

The problem with the 3.5 codex wasn’t that a EC or WE army could have sonic blasters or chain axes outside their single cult unit. Blastmaster havok squads and berserker bikers wasn’t the issue with that codex. GWS even has an EC warband as an apocalypse datafex:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1181495_Chaos_Space_Marines_Datasheet_-_Emperor's_Children_Warband.pdf

There is little logic in preventing cult armies from having such options; “A EC lord can’t have a doom siren unless he is Lucius, disregard that EC lord we are currently selling on our website”. If you want plague zombies in your nurgle army hope you like having Typhus around. What the player of a cult army gives up in terms of unit restriction strongly overshadows what they are getting IMHO.

 Grunt13 wrote:
If you want plague zombies in your nurgle army hope you like having Typhus around.

Unlocking army types via special character has been the standard practice for 4 years.

And as stated, Games Workshop already makes a 40k army list where you can have untold numbers of zombies without any special characters.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 Grunt13 wrote:
If you want plague zombies in your nurgle army hope you like having Typhus around.

Unlocking army types via special character has been the standard practice for 4 years.

And as stated, Games Workshop already makes a 40k army list where you can have untold numbers of zombies without any special characters.

The zombies in the the IA book are a different breed of undead than the ones depicted in the chaos codex (different rules) and are a unit choice in the Renegades and Trait army list not a unit that is available to a chaos marine army; to get them a chaos marine player would have to use the IA traitor army as allies if that was even possible with a forgeworld army. Plus taking a unit of IA zombies from a forge world armylist, who possess different rules and stats, is far more clumsy than simply allowing a nurgle army to take the zombie unit presented in the chaos codex. But that is beyond the point - you are likely wrong when you state that it is possible to include the zombie unit from IA7 into the current chaos marine army.

Characters like Bile might have had their own modified troops attached to them, but that wasn’t the case with plague zombies who had their own unit in the LatD codex without requiring any characters to unlock them. And like what was mentioned above, zombies where also featured in a forge world army list.

Zombies in a nurgle dedicated army are right out of the several black library books and many other sources of background material. What I am recommending is that a player has to field an entirely nurgle army to gain access to the zombies, whereas currently the only thing a player has to do is throw Typhus in their army next to a bunch of thousand sons and khorne berserkers - I think that I am charging a steep enough fee to merit their inclusion.

I agree with op, actually I am in a similar predicament and started a thread on this board and I'm trying to consolidate everyone's ideas. If you would like to please drop a copy of your proposed rules post on my thread.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/481356.page