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BlackSanguinor wrote:
Blood Angels...unique flavor of the army

Cute

BlackSanguinor wrote:
Vanguard Veterans painted black will totally be the same as Death Company!!!

Sorry, but yes, they would. They might not be the exact same thing as the current rules for death company, but you could easily make a fluffy death company unit using the vanguard veterans rules.

And of course the only essential attribute of Blood Angels are the Assault squad troops.

It is. It's exactly what you think of when you hear "Blood Angels", lots of jump infantry dropping out of the sky to kill you at close range.

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.


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BlackSanguinor wrote:
Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

And, again, you're way too focused on duplicating the current codex rather than writing new BA rules from scratch. No, a C:SM-variant BA army would not have the exact same units and rules as the current one. However, it would still be BA.

The ideal would be to spread players as evenly across available Codexes as possible.

Hence I would probably cut (or at least merge) the one or two Codexes that have the least players, and "split" the one or two Codexes that have the most players into slightly different, but similar books.

The former likely aren't power-armour books, the latter likely are.

 Peregrine wrote:

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.

Hell, they did that with the Inquisition for the Grey Knight codex, and didn't seem to bat an eye for that. And that was done for the sake of making it more homogenous. If the game can survive it being done poorly, they can survive it being done well.

I'd cut down the SPace marine books into

Codex: Space marines (Incorporating all the chapters bar Blood angels, dark angels, and grey knight's. But it would be a bigger codex than most to compensate for holding many armies and models)
Codex: Angels of death (Blood/dark angels, with HQ's defining if bikes, termies, or assault marines, are troops)
Codex: Daemonhunters (Mix of grey knight's and sisters of battle codex, with a few familiar witchhunters elements.

We don't need 7+ marine books. 3 cover's it just fine, even then, I considered adding both of the angels into the basic space marine book,. and having that become like, a huge anthology codex, with all the options for running allied-marine armies in one book.

 Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.

Neither are Chaos or Grey Knights. They're in power armour, but both armies have expanded well beyond being just Space Marines - not to mention one of them being the arch nemesis of the Space Marines.

Considering that to cut a Space Marine codex, they'd need to be rolled into the Space Marine codex, neither of these books belong there. Your crtieria for counting them as 'astartes books' is 'are they in power armour'. So again, you might as well put Sisters of Battle in there. They're functionally the same thing on the table with a lower stat or two, if you're going ti include Chaos and Grey Knights.

there was a codex with ultramarines and gen vanlilla marines. in 2nd edition it was title Codex: Ultramarines. though it double up as "every chapter that didn't already have a codex" SW/BA/DA had their own books, as did SOB, i really don't see the problem with making a rulebook sized/thickness codex with a "one size fits all" approach and re-inventing the chapter/legion traits system, adding several different lists depending on who is leading the force, thus dictating which units are troops elite and such, have marines (loyalist) chaos, all eldar in one book, and a seperate one including the rest of the races. it'd save both money for me, and it'd mean each update of the codex's i'd have rules for each of my armies......5 codex's 188-230pages not the 13/18 48-120 they have planned, is what i'd prefer!!!!

I think they should make a codex for each of the chaos gods for the forces that dedicated themselves to one of them and leave the current codex as undivided.

all eldar in book "eldar"
nids, necrons, tau in book "xenos"
Marines of all flavours in book "marines"
Inquisition, sob, IG in book "Imperial Forces"
anything else missed out in book titled "insert good name here" Just a thought (and one that will never actually happen beside in my mind)

 schmoozies wrote:
I've long advocated for a two book approach to most of the marine books. Have one core codex for Marines that has all the rules for generic space marines and Ultramarines. Use the Chapter Tactics rule to establish a marine base line.

Than do a second supplement book that features the divergent chapters. Chapter tactics change to reflect the different tactics of each group and you can have a special rule that may swap the locations of certain units in the force org chart (assault marines to troops for BA, Bikes to troops for White Scars etc) a few pages for any units unique to the chapter (Ravenwing for DA, Death Company for BA etc) and characters.

I figure each chapter needs 5 pages of Fluff, 5 pages for characters and 2 for units, plus the appropriate unit entries to match the main codex. You could cover each sub codex in 15-20 pages and wind up with a solid 120 -150 page book covering Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Salamanders, White Scars, Imperial Fists, Iron Hands and Raven Guard. Add Black Templars as a "Crusading" chapter and your good to go.

The only ones who in my mind are structurally different enough to warrant their own books in mind are Space Wolves given their pack structure and tendency to avoid heavy weapons in non dev squads, and Grey Knights (who I do agree really shouldn't be a separate army but included in some sort of Allies of the Imperium book along with Cult Mechanicus, Inquisition and Assassins.

I agree with this assessment. And then apply it to Chaos SM for United/Faction books. It would help with the codex saturation and update issues and free up design time/effort with model designs. Let there be about the same number of Imperial and non Imperial books.

So we have for Imperial:
Marines
BA
SW
DA
BT
GK
IG
SoB

and for non Imperial:
Eldar
DE
Necrons
Tau
Tyranids
CSM
Daemons

Thats 8 vs 7 not that bad if you ask me but I would gladly trade one of the Space Marines Codices for Codex Adeptus Mechanicus.

Edit: Oh man I really forgot the orks
So it's even.

 Peregrine wrote:

BT have no reason to exist at all, even GW doesn't care about them anymore.
DA can be replaced with a single "terminators as troops" character in C:SM to represent deathwing.
BA can be replaced with a single "assault squads as troops" character in C:SM.
GK have no reason to exist as a full army, replace them with a single "GK strike force" unit in an allies supplement.

The only sufficiently telling response to this is:

 Fafnir wrote:
Black Templar, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels could all be easily rolled back into a standardized loyalist codex, but expanded to fit more variant chapters.
I don't necessarily like the Space Wolf codex, but it's just barely different enough to stand on its own.

Grey Knights should be scaled back and folded into a greater (and this time, fully functioning and independent) Inquisitional codex.

I agree with everything said here.


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People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, while also allowing building many different types armies. Some sort of a trait system where you could choose few special features for your chapter would be ideal. You could mix and match them to create different chapters. BA can take assault marines as troops and furious charge, Raven Guard can take assault marines as troops and add infiltrate to some units etc. This also means tat all those pointless discrepancies between the armies would vanish; we do not need Devastators priced three different ways or four different ways to buy your Tactical Marines. Such differences exist merely due the codices being written in different times, and not because they would be intentional attempts to add any flavour to the armies.

I have 10,000 points of painted Black Templars, including a pair of super heavy tanks. It was my first army, and it will be the army I continue to add to until I can't paint anymore.

I love the lore of the Black Templars. I loved our old codex (until the most recent FAQs). I love the book Helsreach by AD-B. You can say I'm a fan, I think.

All of that said, I have no problem with them rolling my Templars back into the Codex:Space Marines. The Blood Angels have taken the role as the "crazy assault army" and are faster than the Templars will ever be. The Space Wolves are more "shooty" than the Templars are, even though you can build some shooting focused Templar lists. The Dark Angels can drop down more terminators, bikes, or speeders than the Templars can hope to field. Both DA and BA are "Chaplain rich", which I always thought was the Black Templar thing.

Khorne and Space Wolves are better anti-psychers than they'll ever be.

What niche is left for them? Mixed PA and Scout squads? 20-man assault squads? The Emperor's Champion's Vows? What?

We can all argue which is the more Codex-Divergent between the Black Templars and Space Wolves until we're blue in the face, but what's the point? If they're rolled into the Codex: Space Marines, we'll at least get an update every edition. That's a fair trade off!

As for Chaos Space Marines, I would like to see a codex for the original legions and one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos. The Legion book could have Terminator and PA rules and units for each legion, be crammed with special characters, and so on. The Renegade Book could have...dunno. Perhaps just use the Codex: Space Marines for Renegades or something. Perhaps that's a bad idea.

 Crimson wrote:



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People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, .

People are way too obsessed with different factions getting a codex.

Blood Angels or Grey Knights get released and get 2, maybe 3 plastic-kits and 2 or 3 Finecast. Dark Eldar or Necrons get released and get well over 20, in the case of Dark Eldar over 30 new releases.

Dark Eldar alone get more new releases than ALL Space Marine releases in 5th Edition taken together (!).

Just because there's a book for something doesn't mean that it's "equal" in the attention it gets.

If you wan't a a "big Space Marine Codex to rule them all", just get a book-binder to bind them all into one book for you.

Games Workshop is a miniatures company, not a book company (Bl excepted). The Codexes mean nothing. The miniatures is what counts.

Honestly, I voted for all of them except GK. I see no reason why the rules could not be folded into a main SM codex and use a simple trait system to access them, representing chapters or their successors.

I did not vote for GK as they're somewhat alien even to the normal marine chapters.

Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.


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 greg0985 wrote:
A Raven Guard codex would be cool, as the generic codex I don't think represents their way of war very accurately.

How so?

SoB are not SM - that was his point

Raven Guard are poorly represented by the current codex because their combat style is completely different to any of the other existing Marines. They don't use shock tactics. A Raven Guard army at the moment would be best represented by using Black Templar mixed squads and Wolf Scout and old-style Veteran squads in Elites! Raven Guard issue sniper rifles to their assault squads, etc.

BlackSanguinor wrote:Vanguard Veterans painted black will totally be the same as Death Company!!! And of course the only essential attribute of Blood Angels are the Assault squad troops. It's not like that is more Raven Guard than Blood Angels. I mean everyone knows the Blood Angels don't follow the Codex Astartes at all *sarcasm*. Also your idea might have worked if it was implemented first. However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work. Its established fluff. This might confuse you a bit, but a lot of people play Blood Angels because they like their unique units and the unique flavor of the army, something they won't get with your suggestion. I think a large Space Marine codex could work, however it would have to have several different armies for the more unique chapters, or something like what Super Ready mentioned.

Raven Guard, contrary to modern belief, are not an assault marine focussed army. It's just that their character, Shrike, happens to be the captain of an assault company! The Blood Angels are a pretty codex chapter, to be honest. Until the current codex, their unique units were: Death Company, Bhaal Predators, Tycho and Corbulo. Yes, they got ragey rules and overcharged engines, but you could make that an upgrade for a vanilla codex and create any Blood Angels successor chapter.

More options are always better. What's better? Having a Blood Angels codex, or having a Codex that lets you make Blood Angels - or even create your own chapter that uses, say, Predators with assault cannons to support the rapid strike Bike squads that make up the majority of their army?

BlackSanguinor wrote:Right, so then they get Honour Guard with Jump Packs (same) but no Furious Charge, Baal Predators don't have their signature weapon (Flamestorm Cannon) and are in HS, not FA and then BA have to pay more for one of their signatures? Dreads can't get Talons. My point is, its too late to roll back BA. They are too established with enough very different units. Though I do agree the Pred needs more options.

Hahaha. The Bhaal Predator's signature weapon is the twin-linked Assault Cannon. The Flamestorm Cannon is the signature weapon of the Land Raider Redeemer, which it was invented for. They just tagged it onto the Bhaal because they made Fire into a Blood Angels theme for the new codex, even though a Fast Tank is logically the LAST place you want a giant flamethrower.

As for 'very different units', what even makes the Bhaal unique? The Bhaal Predator is one of the Blood Angels iconic units, second only to the Death Company. What is it? A Predator with Fast (could be a 20 point upgrade), TL Assault Cannons and a Force Org swap. Really feeling the unique now. Death Company? Making Death Company an option in the vanilla codex would be an awesome idea. You could use it to make Wulfen squads for a Space Wolf army, or Dragon Claw squads for a Black Dragons army, or... the list goes on!

Fafnir wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

However now that Blood Angels have all those other unique aspects, cutting it back like that just wouldn't work.

Sure it would. BA players would complain, but the game as a whole would be improved.

Hell, they did that with the Inquisition for the Grey Knight codex, and didn't seem to bat an eye for that. And that was done for the sake of making it more homogenous. If the game can survive it being done poorly, they can survive it being done well.

Yep. Heck, just as many Sisters players were glad to see the back of the poorly shoehorned Inquisition units from our Codex as miss them and want them back!

Folding the variant chapters into one codex would only improve the hobby aspects of 40k.

Orkimedes1000 wrote:all eldar in book "eldar"
nids, necrons, tau in book "xenos"
Marines of all flavours in book "marines"
Inquisition, sob, IG in book "Imperial Forces"
anything else missed out in book titled "insert good name here" Just a thought (and one that will never actually happen beside in my mind)

What? Eldar are Eldar, yes, okay I can see that. To make a fluffy DE army just don't use any psyker units. But Nids, Necrons and Tau? You'd need to make them three separate army lists for it to make any kind of sense, and at that point you should put them in different books.

I appreciate you listing Inquisition and SoB separately though. Seems some people still recognise that they're completely unrelated armies. Being able to outright include Sisters and Guard in the same army would only work if you could make a pure army of either force though. Inquisition forces should really be an "allies codex" though, like the original Codex: Sisters of Battle. Enough options to be played as a standalone army, but really designed to be added to another army as flavour.

 Fafnir wrote:
Black Templar, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels could all be easily rolled back into a standardized loyalist codex, but expanded to fit more variant chapters.
I don't necessarily like the Space Wolf codex, but it's just barely different enough to stand on its own.

Grey Knights should be scaled back and folded into a greater (and this time, fully functioning and independent) Inquisitional codex.

Grey Knights were at their coolest when they were a single unit that could be included in any Imperial army. Just like Assassins.

Combining all the Marine chapters into one big book would be awesome - if done like this. Don't drop all the unique stuff. Just make it so that it's obvious they're for specific chapters, but don't legislate against them being used in any army list. Yes, you'll get some tournament players who decide that (silly example) a scout army supported by darkshrouds is dead killy but never create any fluff to explain it, but if this board is anything to go by even most WAAC players will put some effort into fluffing it up so that their homebrew chapter uses recovered stealth field technology to support their scout/disruption groups or whatever, and anything that gives fluff-building options is only going to improve the hobby.

Crimson wrote:I agree with everything said here.


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People are way too obsessed over their army having their own codex. Having one big but flexible codex can retain the flavour of your army, while also allowing building many different types armies. Some sort of a trait system where you could choose few special features for your chapter would be ideal. You could mix and match them to create different chapters. BA can take assault marines as troops and furious charge, Raven Guard can take assault marines as troops and add infiltrate to some units etc. This also means tat all those pointless discrepancies between the armies would vanish; we do not need Devastators priced three different ways or four different ways to buy your Tactical Marines. Such differences exist merely due the codices being written in different times, and not because they would be intentional attempts to add any flavour to the armies.

Yes. This exactly.

Homebrew chapters are very awesome. The Wings of the Emperor's Flame are much more awesome than Blood Angels Fifth Company #6, even if both of them do feature predominantly Assault Squads backed up by Flamestorm predators.

I would like to see a 2 book approach as earlier said.

1 book that remains the Vanilla book, nothing really changes. These are chapters that may be unique, but aren't unique enough to warrant a different enough codex (like Imperial Fists or the like)

The second book combines all the current books into one, and makes a like a "Codex: Divergent Chapters" and has rules and units for all the chapters that don't follow the Codex Astartes very closely or have incredibly unique traits that are hard to represent in a standard book. Armies like Space Wolves, Black Templars, and the like will go here.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
SoB are not SM - that was his point

Nope ...

 -Loki- wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
You might as well throw Sister of Battle in there.

SoB are not SM.

Neither are Chaos or Grey Knights.

No, they really are.

 kronk wrote:
one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos

What would differentiate this from a C:SM army?

Yes, it was.

His point was (however fallacious) that Grey Knights and Chaos Marines are as close to being Space Marines as Sisters are.

*sigh* I miss the days when no-one really knew what Grey Knights were...

 Manchu wrote:

 kronk wrote:
one for renegade space marines that haven't fallen to Chaos

What would differentiate this from a C:SM army?

No idea, as I said in that same post. I'm not certain there would be a point. Along similar lines, the Lost and the Damned lists, while interesting, has been made redundant with IG allies IMHO.

BT have some of the best fluff and serves purposes no other SM armies do. No psykers, army wide Vow buffs, specific psyker-hunting units possible, the crazy movement-after-taking-wounds stuff they can do, and a lot of possibilities for special rules to take advantage of the presence of psykers (i really do like abhor the witch vow)


DA dont do anything that hasnt been done before. Troop terminators? See GK and SW. Bike armies? C:SM has white scars and bike armies have never been very effective. They have a few gimicks like the new banners, but those arent there to follow any fluff, just to make the army better than just a generic army. Fluff wise DA are pretty plain also. They fight chaos, cool everyone does. They hate the traitors, everyone does. They have some old tech... now where have i heard that before. Generic enough to be thrown into the C:SM codex.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Yes, it was.

No, it wasn't. Of course SoB are not SM. His point was that if I was going to have CSM and GK on the list then I might as well have SoB because the only thing CSM and GK have in common with other SM is power armor. That was his point. It is incorrect. Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

I'd cut the four loyalist books that are essentially marines with minor differences. (SW, BA, DA, BT). None of these warrant their own codex, their weapons and armour should already be covered by a base codex, and minor doctrinal differences can easily be represented through the use of traits or special characters.

Having five different basic marine codexes is one of the biggest causes of game imbalance, IMO.



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 Manchu wrote:
Take the power armor off a GK and you have a naked SM. Take the power armor off of a CSM and you have a naked (perhaps mutated) evil SM. Take the power armor off a Sororitas and you have a naked human being.

Well, the GK is a psyker too.

 Redbeard wrote:
Well, the GK is a psyker too.

Sure, but the common denominator is that he is a SM. Being a psyker, like being a viking wolf man, or a sparkly vampire, is icing.

The important difference is that DA did it first.

DA had terminator-only armies before Grey Knights were a thing.

DA had pure bike armies when White Scars were sword-waving maniacs.

DA are one of the great legacies of early 40k. DA and BA were the first variant Space Marine chapters.

The problem is that all of the cool, unique Dark Angels stuff has at one point or another been given to someone else.

Mortis-pattern Dreadnoughts, AKA Riflemen? Originally DA-only.

Land Speeder Tornadoes? Originally DA-only.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The important difference is that DA did it first.

Absolutely correct. There is a lot of history pushing the DA dex. Whether that is a good reason for them to retain a separate book ...

Something worth mentioning is how GW has been using the divergent Chapter codices to seemingly "test" new options that then filter back to one another or to the vanilla dex.

Also, BT seem to be taking it pretty hard in the poll. I wonder if that has to do with them having the oldest dex.

Black Templars had the Land Raider Crusader first (Armageddon campaign book? Maybe?), but then everyone got them.

BA had Storm Ravens first, now most SM Codecies have a version of them. Except Space Wolves, because feths those Viking-Werewolf guys.

It's not a reason to keep your own codex, if that's your argument.

 Manchu wrote:

Also, BT seem to be taking it pretty hard in the poll. I wonder if that has to do with them having the oldest dex.

For me, its for the reasons I posted earlier. Other Space Marines have "usurped" most of their uniqueness. Also, I'd rather just get an update every edition and stay current than go through this current Oldest Codex crap again.

Sure, I'll pay 1 points for every marine to have a frag grenade and another 2 points for Kraks. Why not? No sergeants? Well feth those guys, anyway. Whirlwinds? Those are for wimps! Etc, etc...

Having (or not having) access to a handful of random pieces of kit could also be accomplished through the use of traits or special characters. If you take the Black Templar character, Land Raider Crusaders go from being 0-1 to being 0-3 (or dedicated transports, or whatever).

Well, I believe I made my stance on the matter pretty clear a few posts ago - I think all unique and variant units should be moved to Codex: Space Marines and the extra Astartes codices dropped. Some duplicate units don't need to make the jump of course (Sanguinary Guard can just be an upgrade for a Command Squad, for example, and the same being true of Honour Guard).

All I'm saying is that you can't put the Dark Angels down as a chapter because of their lack of unique units.