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A big, big update this time. 6th Edition changed a lot of things and so did I. They're now back, more chaotic good than ever and still kicking. It's pretty much finished except for a few minor tweaks and the Devastators page. Hope you enjoy!

PS: please tell me if I missed anything!

One of the fluffier custom Marine books I've seen to-date. Its good to see a fandex with so much background in it.

Not sure about the rules yet, still looking through it.

Thanks! The fluff took me quite a while to right. The aim was to format it like an official Codex, Glad to see you appreciate it!

Couldn't read the fluff past the part where you claimed your chapter is a descendant of a primarch that doesn't exist, who founded a legion that also doesn't exist. It was also difficult to get past the part where your planet, somehow, produces an obscene number of psykers.

The fluff just screams Mary-Sue and tries to force upon the reader how amazingly special and unique they are. No one makes a chapter and claims to be one of the lost legions. The lost legions are a special part of our collective Warhammer universe, something that keeps some level of mystery that we'll never know, but can always speculate. You effectively kill that when you try and claim your chapter to be one of those lost legions. Its just a big 'don't' when writing fluff for your chapter.

The rules also seem rather overpowered. Everything just appears to be C:SM++; the best example are your tactical marines. They're identical to ordinary tacticals, but have the Crusade special rule (VERY powerful, probably too powerful to be honest) and have better weapon options, yet are cheaper, for no reason.

Everything just has more special rules, more wargear options, more vehicles, and just more everything for a slight cost increase. It just seems so overpowered with all the options, psychic abilities on everything (even the tanks!?), and general improvement over ordinary codex options.

I won't even get into how or why they have so many special weapons/vehicles/wargear that no other chapter has, that they somehow manage to produce themselves with no aid from the Ad Mech. Or how they haven't been wiped out yet.

It feels too much like you wanted your chapter to be special and unique and awesome, yet every drawback you've given them in rules or fluff either doesn't make sense or makes them even more super special snowflake.

Not every marine chapter needs to be so different from every other chapter to be considered unique and special. Remember that marines are by and large, a uniform fighting force in terms of logistics and general war planning. They all use standardized vehicle patterns, weapons, armour, and for the most part, tactics and strategies as well. There are variations and permutations, but they still remain space marines with universal weapons and thinking. Some dislike psykers, some like them more, others have more tanks, some prefer stealth, but they all shoot the same bolters, drive the same rhinos, are organized more or less the same, and all fight in generally predictable patterns as the situations dictates.

Your chapter should be no different on any of those fundamental levels. Your chapter is not a lost legion. It is not housed in a fortress-monastery that can withstand the might of an Imperial Navy battlegroup. They cannot produce the equipment and technology required to properly equip a full chapter (even the Salamanders can't achieve this, and they are literally some of the best smiths/armourers/artificers in the galaxy).

If they're hunted by the Inquisition, why haven't they been eliminated yet? If the Imperium wants something dead, it dies. This applies to everything short of the Eye of Terror. Your chapter, if persued by the Inquisition, will be located, and a battlegroup dispatched to send Exterminatus on the planet, thus eliminating your chapter's backbone. You can have a chapter that is fleeing the Inquisition, but those chapters have no fortress monastery, but instead have a small fleet where they scavenge as much imperial tech as they can, and generally suffer from constant losses until they one day become extinct.

That was *quite* rude to put an understatement but at least you were honest.

As to the fluff, didn't GW actually say the lost legions were there if someone wanted to create a DIY legion? You also seem to have missed most of what I did write, including the part where I said 'and someday, be it in this millenium of five, Nirvana will be attacked by a full-scale Inquisitorial invasion, and the Dark Crusaders will be utterly wiped out' (page three, hard to miss). Not to mention, you try and locate co-ordinates on a planet that is constantly moving around the galaxy.

Rules-wise, if you haven't missed anything, Tacs are 15 a model, whereas Dark Angels tacs are 14 a model. The only difference is replacing Stubborn with Crusade, and Crusade isn't actually the be all and end all. That's from playtesting, by the way. The 3-mark is useless and the 5-mark only really affects assault units, of which there aren't that many. Were I to look very closely, I may very well find stupid game-breaking combos, but by and large there's been a *lot* of balancing and a lot more to come.

Painbiro wrote:
That was *quite* rude to put an understatement but at least you were honest.

Good thing I don't particularly care being called rude or not so long as my points are deemed valid and fair. What you deem polite, may seem like genuine feedback with nothing to hide. I spent some time on Bolter and Chainsword writing a DIY chapter fluff, and the feedback I got there was amazing, but directly to the point. No nonsense, no holding back, and it worked. Not everything in life needs to be sugar coated.

As to the fluff, didn't GW actually say the lost legions were there if someone wanted to create a DIY legion?

They did, but imagine that everyone starts writing chapters that replace the lost legions. It would become such a cliche that it would become so excessively silly and overdone no one would take it seriously. Combine this with the ability to create a chapter in dozens of various foundings from geneseed stocks while completely avoiding stepping on others' or established fluff, and you quickly realize there's no reason to create a chapter of the lost legions other than making your chapter appear more special than they need to be. This is both a point about stepping on the fluff unnecessarily while also being a point about writing in general. Trying to cram your chapter into everyone's established lore is not a particularly creative or appealing way of writing out your fluff. It'd be the equivalent of writing a chapter who fought on Armageddon and managed to Gazgkull before he left the planet.

You also seem to have missed most of what I did write, including the part where I said 'and someday, be it in this millenium of five, Nirvana will be attacked by a full-scale Inquisitorial invasion, and the Dark Crusaders will be utterly wiped out' (page three, hard to miss). Not to mention, you try and locate co-ordinates on a planet that is constantly moving around the galaxy.

You're right, because a planet who's home is that of one the alleged first founding chapters, who's location and general pattern must be known to the Inquisition, assuming they have three brain cells to rub together, must be so difficult it'd take in excess of 5,000 years. If the Inquisition wants something dead, something truly dead that is agreed upon by dozens of Inquisitiors which is known to higher officials; it will be dealt with in less than a few hundred years, particularly if this planet somehow travels past Cadia and Terra (also a bit of a 'lolwut' in your fluff, seems like excessive name-dropping for the sake of making your chapter seem more important). If they really are hunted the way you make them out to be, they would already be gone, far before the 35th millennium. Odd planet orbits do not stop the Imperium from destroying things. The Imperium may use some older technology and doesn't take to innovation well, but they are still incredibly tech-adept and would easily be able to find a planet they already knew about. Especially one this important.

The point is that it doesn't make sense from just about any fluff perspective. It just makes them seem excessively special for no real reason.

Rules-wise, if you haven't missed anything, Tacs are 15 a model, whereas Dark Angels tacs are 14 a model. The only difference is replacing Stubborn with Crusade, and Crusade isn't actually the be all and end all.

You forget a lot of the hidden costs that DA have that C:SM don't, which your dex has the best of. A 10-man DA squad with veteran sergeant, flamer, and missile launcher is 170pts. A C:SM 10-man squad with flamer and missile launcher is 170pts. Your squads are cheaper, with better options (your lascannons are effectively 10pts cheaper) and no real drawbacks. And crusade is actually really good, especially at higher point values.

That's from playtesting, by the way. The 3-mark is useless and the 5-mark only really affects assault units, of which there aren't that many.

Continuing from my last point, to simply wave away this army wide special rule is absurd. The 3-mark is far from useless. Its still very useful, and an army wide buff. Not a single squad, not a bubble, an army wide buff. The 5 mark is incredibly powerful; to say its worthless except for the assault units is nothing short of trying to justify some poor decisions. You can very easily construct an army list to take full advantage of this ability. Furthermore, at 2000pts+, its not rare to have 5+ enemy units destroyed by turn 2-3. Nothing to be dismissed by a simple hand wave.

Were I to look very closely, I may very well find stupid game-breaking combos, but by and large there's been a *lot* of balancing and a lot more to come.

The problem is that you have most options that most marine codices have, and a plethora of others that none even come close to having. Your ability to have psychic sergeants everywhere, or tanks with psychic tokens to enhance other psykers, or cheap scoring psykers that protect other psykers, or just cheaper, better vehicle options is nothing to sneeze at.

There's no real drawback to using this codex over other marine codices. None really. Some units are a touch more expensive, but they have more options, and often better options.

To illustrate this point, a 5-man Long Fang squad with 4 missile launchers is 115pts. A 5-man dev squad from your codex with 4 missile launchers is 110pts. You have a unit that is better than another unit commonly considered to be hilariously overpowered. Let's also not forget they can take flakk missile for 10pts extra, bringing ther total to far cheaper than what Chaos or DA can bring to the table.

Sorry, but this codex is not nearly as balanced as you think. There are very obvious glaring issues with the balance and strength of certain units and combinations. There's also an excessively large number of new pieces of wargear that take the best of a number of different codices.

And that's without further delving into why it doesn't make sense fluff-wise.

Finally, I may sound rude, or harsh, or whatever you may want to label it, but I genuinely want you to understand where a random person seeing this for the first time is coming from. Understand that if you were to walk into a random gaming club and presented this codex, you would not receive the positive feedback you may want or desire. I speak what I mean and get to the point. I hope you see that. Your gaming group may be fine with this codex, which is fine; I truly don't care. But if you post it here seeking feedback, I'll provide it, and you may not like it. But I assure you that there exist many other gaming groups that would refuse to play against such a codex.

As I said, I appreciate you being honest and you've made a lot of good points. Since I haven't actually got the DA codex yet I was working off memory, and didn't notice a lot of the hidden costs. (I thought flakk missiles were 10 points on DA though?)

The Crusade 5-mark was going to give Soul Blaze, but that created the problem that a lot of people thought it was useless (riiight...). Crusader is pretty sad though. The 7, 9 and 10 marks get funny though.

The idea was to have an army which struggles to get kills early-on but will dominate in later turns. If there is any way I could make it more like this concept, please tell me.

So far, from feedback, I'm thinking:

Crusade: the 5-mark just gives Soul Blaze instead of +1 Attack.

Devastators & Wrathguard Veterans: missile launcher becomes 10 points (+5 points).

Wargear: More limitations, point increases and less AP2 being thrown around. More hidden costs.

Other units: I need more feedback to know what's wrong, but I'll look over and see what needs nerfing, or buffing, or just removing and burning.

Fluff: The whole idea is that they aren't supposed to be found. I'll add more and remove some and rewrite other stuff. The only reason for their survival is the buerocracy; by the time the Inquisition organises an Exterminatus and sends it at them, the planet's moved. Also I'm not sure the Imperium does have three brain cells between them. I also wrote a short story in which a suicide team took advantage of Horus' invasion, infiltrated Terra alongside the Chaos Legions and destroyed the Imperium's records of them (no, I really did write it. I'm not making that up). That was supposed to be explained in the Codex, but I deleted a full two pages of fluff pre-compilation and forgot to put it in there.

Keep the feedback coming. It's not over yet.

Slowly picking away through this, but I came across this obscenely broken combination.

-Librarian w/ terminator, stormshield, and level 2 psyker, with the Gaze of the Scryer.
-4x Avenger Terminators with TH/SS

Deep strike somewhere and watch as your opponent helplessly tries and kills you through your essentially 2+ re-rollable armour, or 3++ while still being able to re-roll fails of 1...half of your failed rolls.

And they have two wounds. And three attacks each. And a bunch of psykic powers.

525 points of completely invincible killing power.

I like the fluff, it's interesting, nowt wrong with basing them off one of the missing primarchs, thats what there missing for haha

Rules wise the units are too cheap to come with crusader for pretty much nothing, overall everything seems too cheap for ablities given to them, I would also drop the multi wound psychic termies entirely it smacks of wishing you had paladins in a c:sm army.

Blacksails, why so rude? I know you said that you dont need to sugar coat everything... But respect and common decency say you should at least try, go take a look at the idiocy of that dudes salamanders codex, people were still politely trying.to help him.

 Formosa wrote:


Blacksails, why so rude? I know you said that you dont need to sugar coat everything... But respect and common decency say you should at least try, go take a look at the idiocy of that dudes salamanders codex, people were still politely trying.to help him.

I don't feel like I'm being rude, mainly because text doesn't convey as many subtleties as speech. I haven't insulted him in any way, just pointing what I think is right/wrong with his codex.

I was also one of the biggest contributors to the 'idiocy of that dudes salamanders codex'. People weren't calling me rude there, despite my posts bordering on geniune insults. Then again, I also suggested a lot of ways to improve before he continue any further.

I'll say this; I commend anyone for taking the effort to make a codex, particularly one that is well laid out with descriptions and fluff. I respect the effort, but I can dislike everything about for numerous reasons. Perhaps next time I'll preface my points by saying that, but I mean everything that I say and couldn't really find a nicer way of putting it.

My overall problem with this codex is first and foremost with the fluff. Here's what I think about fluff.

We have this enormous galaxy with millions of planets over 10,000 years of more or less recorded history to play with. There have been countless wars spanning the galaxy with thousands upon thousands of factions spanning a dozen primary races. With specific regards to marines, there have been well over two dozen recorded foundings during those 10,000 years with anywhere from half a dozen to a hundred chapters being created during these foundings. There are nearly infinite combinations for a custom chapter to use as a backstory, from when they were founded to how they were founded and for what purpose. There are a million unexplored or undocumented planets to choose from with thousands of enemy warbands/splinters/kabals/waaagh/regiments to choose from to fight on a regular basis; none of which need to be official. The fraction of official fluff that currently exists pales in comparison to the possibilities you can create without ever mentioning the name of one singular existing regiment/chapter/warband.

So when I see people create a chapter that they claim to be one of the original foundings, I don't see creativity or originality. A truly unique chapter would be founded during some obscure founding at some point in the 10,000 years of history we can play with, and create a rich and unique story of how they came to be, what hardships they had to overcome, who their greatest enemy is, and why they continue to fight. All of that would have to loosely fit within the established logic and order of the Imperium; a renegade chapter would be constantly on the run with a haggard fleet desperately trying to salvage equipment, all the while slowly dwindling in numbers as they fight in the Emperor's name despite their tarnished name. A renegade chapter actively hunted by even a fraction of the Imperium's might will eventually come to an end, whether through destruction, or on a penitent crusade.

All this begs the question of why use the lost foundings at all, despite GW stating they exist for room for custom chapters. There's honestly very little reason to use the lost legions as a basis, because unless you are a phenomenal writer, it will likely always feel like the author is trying to force upon you how absolutely amazing and important their chapter is, which does not make for good reading. Furthermore, now you've imposed on my fluff that you are one of the lost legions. In my fluff, with my marine chapter, the lost legions are still lost; unknown to all. There's a fundamental conflict between my shared universe and your shared universe. It would be the equivalent of creating a chapter that fought on Armageddon and managed to kill Gazgkull before he left. You can theoretically do it, but its poor form. Most custom chapters (the good ones, anyways) limit their interaction with established big players (except for the administration of the Imperium, obviously) as it feels like blatant name dropping by saying that your chapter fought alongside the Salamanders at Battle X, and then fought alongside the Blood Angels at Battle Y, and then went to defeat Hive Fleet Leviathan.

How would I improve this fluff? Well, I'd start by not making it a first founding chapter. I'd make them an early founding chapter on a planet not riddled with psykers. This also breaks with established fluff. Psykers are extremely rare, and even on planets with 'higher than normal rates' the number of psykers is still astronomically low. Certainly not enough to create a full chapter drawing from one planet alone. I would make them something along the lines of the Exorcists, which have more psykers than normal, but not excessively so. Then, if you wanted to make them hunted by the Imperium, actually make it so that they are in danger, not holed up in a fortress that makes the Fang look like a speedbump. Make them constantly on the move with their fleet of two-three Venerable Battlebarges gifted to them after a particularly noteworthy campaign. This gives them enough firepower to still pose a threat (plus support vessels), but can be easily wiped out by a taskforce from an IN battlegroup. Then make them slowly suffer losses that they can't quite keep up with, as they only draw recruits occasionally, following a successful campaign.

However, with all those fluff changes, most of the rules would have to be drastically altered.

All that being said, those are my thoughts. If my posts sound rude; it is not my intention. I don't post in people's threads to make them feel terrible, I do it to help them and improve, hence my lengthy posts in many, many fan dexes. If I wanted to be rude, I'd leave short posts stating it was terrible, or insult you, but I have not and will not do that.

I hope that clears anything up.

From what I've read, Im on board with what Blacksails was. If you'd care to look closer, Blacksails wasn't being rude, there's a difference between rudeness and dishonesty, stop mucking up the line people.

While the fluff (Im going to focus that) sounds good, hes right, there is way too much special going on here. The missing legion, and a orbit spanning a galaxy (Have I got that right?) sounds like two very big things. They dont tend to put more than one in the same book, I'd tone down the plot steroids here a bit if I were you, rather than responding so hostile to constructive criticism.

I really agree with Blacksails, and I think you should consider that, if he wanted to be rude, why would he take so much time and thought into giving specific feedback? His is amazingly good feedback, just because it isn't what you want to hear doesn't make it rude.

blood lance wrote:
While the fluff (Im going to focus that) sounds good, hes right, there is way too much special going on here. The missing legion, and a orbit spanning a galaxy (Have I got that right?) sounds like two very big things. They dont tend to put more than one in the same book.

The problem with that is, if the planet doesn't move, why has it not been shot with an Exterminatus yet? Even the Imperium isn't that incompetent that they can't organise a day-long sojourn carrying what is essentially a big gun. Thus, both.

Oh, I'm not judging Blacksails or anything, I do appreciate his honesty. I just didn't expect it to be so blunt and now I sound more than a bit pretentious. His feedback is very much helping, and I didn't even notice that Avenger Terminator/Libby combo. That is absolutely, irreparably broken. Other things need nerfing as well. Instead of increasing unit costs (because I've made a half-dozen lists already) I'll just nerf Crusade and other stuff.

A couple things too,
Ein. Basic wargear. I mentioned earlier the Dark Crusaders are supposed to struggle with 2+ saves. Well, with plasma gone for a while, and Thunder Hammers too, what else can I remove to limit AP2? Psyweapons being as rare as they are, I don't really want to remove them, but what else will I need to do?

Zwei. Crusade. What makes it so powerful? My revised table is 1. Crusader 2. Soul Blaze 3. Fleet 4. Furious Charge 5. Fearless. Is it still overpowered for +1 point over Stubborn Dark Angels?

Drei. Wargear. I may have gone overboard with options here. Should I get rid of most of the Chapter Relics and other stuff and just stick with the basics?

Vier: Anti-aircraft. Something about the 6th codices is that they will still struggle against flierspam, especially Cron Air and 9 Vendettas. Should rifledreads still have Skyfire and Interceptor, or is that something that I should just ditch?

Funf. Special characters. Did I go a bit overboard with them?


That's about it. Thanks.