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 tomjoad wrote:
There has been, like, 5 pages of misunderstanding about this. I'd rather get back to reading Chaos players gripe than keeping hearing people claim that you couldn't use Vulkan if your Salamanders were painted orange or Tigurius if your Ultramarines were painted grey.

Firstly, of course you can. Don't be obtuse.

Secondly, how do you suspect this would be enforced? I am currently painting an Ultramarine army, but I am not using the official GW paint scheme. If my blue's aren't exactly matching the Codex, would you bar me from using Cato Sicarius?

Yellow, black, and white can all be very challenging colors to paint. Should a poorly painted Black Templars army be precluded from using Helbrecht? I imagine you would say "Sorry mate, those lads are more grey than black, I think. Nice try, though"?

OF COURSE NOT. GW will not make such a rule and frankly, I'm disappointed in the critical thinking ability of anybody who thinks they would. It's embarrassing.

You hit the nail on the head. You could use Chaos Space Marine models painted lime green as Ultramarines provided they had the correct war gear/weapons on the model. Power armor with a bolter is still power armor with a bolter.

Matter of fact, my SM army can currently be DA (they all have DA iconography but will be painted black), BA, several chapters out of the upcomming C:SM, and Chaos SM. I bought all of the unique SCs, units and vehicles to field these armies. I have Ravenwing Black Knights/RCS, Death Company, Shrike, Kantoe, Khan, Telion, Abbadon, a Defiler, just to name a few.

 tomjoad wrote:
The difference with Ezekial/DAs being that the entire codex has access to a ML3 psyker, where as many armies chosen out of C:SM will not if a standard libby can't upgrade. And, honestly, I think that will be the case. If so, that would be a bit of a shame, but the bigger shame will be that only Ultramarines (based on what we currently know) will have any access to Divination. Ther could be some wargear or abilities as yet unknown that change that, but cutting off large swathes of the codex from the best powers, yet still allowing a small segment to get them, would be very unfortunate.

Is Ezekial ML 3 with 3 powers and his special mindworm or is he ML3 with 2 powers and mindworm

Sorry for the repeated questions, I dont have a DA codex and know very little about the DA special characters

Two powers and Mind Worm.

The more I think about this, the more I believe the new C:SM will simply be poorly written. Why?

The key new selling point, the main difference between the new and the old codexes, the chapter trait system, is just sloppy and unbalanced. (Keep in mind I say all this as an Ultramarines player!)

To start, as rumored, the Ultramarines are getting not only the most powerful and versatile traits, but traits that either make for bad gameplay, or make no sense from a fluff standpoint, or both. The tactical trait has your entire army magically become more accurate, easily trumping any of the other chapters, but with zero fluff justification (especially when you realize this makes tacticals more accurate than your veteran units). And the means of accomplishing this is through bogging down the shooting phase by letting you re-roll a significant number of dice every time you shoot. This is a very lazily written way of achieving a heavy-handed boost for the entire army.

The assault trait, well that one's pretty weak at least. But then the devastator trait has you moving and firing your heavy weapons for what reason exactly? How does this reflect anything about Ultramarines training or doctrine? I foresee very few people making use of either of these traits as well, leading one to wonder why they're even here. Giving you these options is potentially a good idea, but the execution is just very poor.

Then on top of that, you start limiting special characters needlessly, and with obviously unfair results for certain chapters. Iron Hands get zero characters, Imperial fists and their successors are balkanized, and the Ultramarines get access to nearly half a dozen characters on top of their already superior chapter traits. If characters were being limited in the interest of balance, that would be one thing. But I don't think anyone can argue the Iron Hands and the Ultramarines are equals in this system. This goes beyond sloppy writing, it actively discourages players from being creative or even taking certain chapters in the first place in a very obvious way.

While I could see the unbalanced and poorly thought-out chapter traits being the result of too little play-testing or a lack of creativity, limiting the use of special characters so harshly seems to be very deliberately done, and there's no way the writer could mistake the results.

I know I'm rehashing a lot of complaints that have already been voiced, and I hope that we're just not getting the whole picture somehow. But from what we know so far, taken together, I think the internal balance on this codex will end up being atrocious. It makes me not even want to play an army I've been collecting since second edition.

I think it should have been obvious to anyone that fluff will trump fairness in this edition back when we saw the allies chart.

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
I doesn't break my entire army, just prevents me taking more tjan 1 of my HQs at a time, as I have no generics.

Then take the non-generic model, and make a chapter master/libby/etc that has his same wargear and say "This model is a generic chaplain for this battle."

Or take only one HQ, like a good number of us do.

I have spent the last 18 months planning out and creating personalised characters for the sole purpose of having every Special character. I have hunted down bits and bought specific kits, converted up, lovenly painted, and written detailed and intricate fluff for each of them. For the express purpose of being able to field, any and all HQs in the dex, in particular pairings (IE, Calgar and Vulkan) due to fluff. Basically telling me to just generic, is like telling me to take my hobby work and put it where the sun don't shine, if you'll pardon my phrase. It'd be the equivilent of doing a full year's worth of overtime doing paperwork just to have the boss shred those papers for the hell of it.

While I could take just 1 HQ, it'll make it less interesting and more difficult as I am quite reliant on them. But that's a different can of worms.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The more I think about this, the more I believe the new C:SM will simply be poorly written. Why?

The key new selling point, the main difference between the new and the old codexes, the chapter trait system, is just sloppy and unbalanced. (Keep in mind I say all this as an Ultramarines player!)

To start, as rumored, the Ultramarines are getting not only the most powerful and versatile traits, but traits that either make for bad gameplay, or make no sense from a fluff standpoint, or both. The tactical trait has your entire army magically become more accurate, easily trumping any of the other chapters, but with zero fluff justification (especially when you realize this makes tacticals more accurate than your veteran units). And the means of accomplishing this is through bogging down the shooting phase by letting you re-roll a significant number of dice every time you shoot. This is a very lazily written way of achieving a heavy-handed boost for the entire army.

The assault trait, well that one's pretty weak at least. But then the devastator trait has you moving and firing your heavy weapons for what reason exactly? How does this reflect anything about Ultramarines training or doctrine? I foresee very few people making use of either of these traits as well, leading one to wonder why they're even here. Giving you these options is potentially a good idea, but the execution is just very poor.

Not to whine about CSM, but really how is the CT any different from Marks of Chaos. Nurgle is far better than any of the other marks. Why wouldnt we to expect that one of the CT would be much better than the others.

I think the new C:SM book, based on rumors not only makes ultras the best but also makes SC of all types worse. For tournaments are you going to have to write down your CT? When do you pick it. If a C:SM player without any SC can just pick whatever they want right before the game while everyone else is rolling on their silly warlord table(mostly for a 1/6 chance of getting anything good). Tailor your list to what the enemy is bringing by changing your CT, utter BS.

Fluff rant, to add to yours
Ultras with assault doctrine getting fleet? When WS, RG, NL, AL, WE are all faster in the fluff than Ultras




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:

While I could take just 1 HQ, it'll make it less interesting and more difficult as I am quite reliant on them.

You can still ally in the other. They just cant ride in the same landraider

Also, it just seems counter productive for sales. One player decides he wants to play exclusively White Scars. There's about a dozen models he has no use for and will never buy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Exergy wrote:

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The more I think about this, the more I believe the new C:SM will simply be poorly written. Why?

The key new selling point, the main difference between the new and the old codexes, the chapter trait system, is just sloppy and unbalanced. (Keep in mind I say all this as an Ultramarines player!)

To start, as rumored, the Ultramarines are getting not only the most powerful and versatile traits, but traits that either make for bad gameplay, or make no sense from a fluff standpoint, or both. The tactical trait has your entire army magically become more accurate, easily trumping any of the other chapters, but with zero fluff justification (especially when you realize this makes tacticals more accurate than your veteran units). And the means of accomplishing this is through bogging down the shooting phase by letting you re-roll a significant number of dice every time you shoot. This is a very lazily written way of achieving a heavy-handed boost for the entire army.

The assault trait, well that one's pretty weak at least. But then the devastator trait has you moving and firing your heavy weapons for what reason exactly? How does this reflect anything about Ultramarines training or doctrine? I foresee very few people making use of either of these traits as well, leading one to wonder why they're even here. Giving you these options is potentially a good idea, but the execution is just very poor.

Not to whine about CSM, but really how is the CT any different from Marks of Chaos. Nurgle is far better than any of the other marks. Why wouldnt we to expect that one of the CT would be much better than the others.

I think the new C:SM book, based on rumors not only makes ultras the best but also makes SC of all types worse. For tournaments are you going to have to write down your CT? When do you pick it. If a C:SM player without any SC can just pick whatever they want right before the game while everyone else is rolling on their silly warlord table(mostly for a 1/6 chance of getting anything good). Tailor your list to what the enemy is bringing by changing your CT, utter BS.

Fluff rant, to add to yours
Ultras with assault doctrine getting fleet? When WS, RG, NL, AL, WE are all faster in the fluff than Ultras




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Deadshot wrote:

While I could take just 1 HQ, it'll make it less interesting and more difficult as I am quite reliant on them.

You can still ally in the other. They just cant ride in the same landraider

Actually ATM I couldn't as I only have 2 Tac Squads, hence my reliance on HQ's and the other slots, for fluff reasons.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I think it should have been obvious to anyone that fluff will trump fairness in this edition back when we saw the allies chart.

Even the fluff has issues in regards to representation - there is no fluff reason why the Ultramarines should feature more SCs, or better Traits than other chapters. They have them because GW have given them more attention over the years, and that has been carried forward and added to with each iteration of C:SM, there was nothing preventing GW from bringing the other featured chapters up their level other than a lack of will on their part. They could have added new SCs, or better yet, developed a system for making unique and interesting characters out of the generic HQs and then presented the SCs as "templates" of pre-chosen abilities and equipment.

Denying access to SCs if your army isn't of their chapter doesn't require that one chapter retain access to more, and better, SCs than the others.

Here's how I see the CT making sense (and I am totally trying to justify this for them). UM have to have something extra special wonderful about them... but it can't make them specialized (that's not their thing, after all). So its efficiency. Guilliman and Calgar are the masters of organization, logistics, and planning (after all). How do you show drop pods that fire a second sooner, bolters that are brought up quicker, marine who move with an efficiency and precision unmatched by the "lesser" chapters? You can't give them an extra turn (way too much), but you can reward them just a few extra shots here and there (reroll 1s and TL for tacticals). The efficient and deadly use of the tactical squads should be the hallmark of the UM. Think of it being more the Captain using his tactical marines better than using his veterans...not their aim being better/worse.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The more I think about this, the more I believe the new C:SM will simply be poorly written. Why?

The key new selling point, the main difference between the new and the old codexes, the chapter trait system, is just sloppy and unbalanced. (Keep in mind I say all this as an Ultramarines player!)

Not to derail you but 40k Radio has stated that they haven't given us all the Chapter Tactics info. Then they stopped answering questions about the time I asked which ones they skimped on.

I get that, but there are totally better ways of doing it, which leads me to believe there wasn't a whole ton of thought put into this.

Just off the top of my head, I think giving tacticals Split Fire would have demonstrated their flexibility and economy of force better than twin-linking them. Having the Assault doctrine give you a re-roll on Reserve rolls for any fast attack units would represent logistical efficiency. And the Devastator doctrine making one unit of devs scoring could show the ability to shift to a defensive stance as needed.

And each of these independently seems, to me, to be weaker than any single other chapter's traits. But the fact that you have options to choose from on the fly before a game, and the array of special characters available, gives you flexibility that matches the Ultramarines fluff. And again, this was not hard to think up, and probably encourages a fairly balanced army composition and more equal use of the three doctrines depending on the mission.

 Deadshot wrote:
Also, it just seems counter productive for sales. One player decides he wants to play exclusively White Scars. There's about a dozen models he has no use for and will never buy.

As a White Scars player, I'm super happy to just stick to my Chapter Tactics without needing special snowflake characters as crutches for my fluff and/or power level.

I'm sure you've come up with a good fluff excuse for fielding Calgar and Vulkan together or whatever, but let's be honest here, it's still just an excuse to have X and Y rules together. Otherwise it wouldn't be an issue for you to field the Vulkan mini as a generic HQ dude, but clearly model use is not the issue here, the issue is not getting free twin-linked meltas.

Q: Has Marneus Calgar changed at all?
A: Calgar gets three warlord traits, his armor does not prevent him from preforming a sweeping advance, and he went up in points. He's a supreme badass but you pay for it.

Seriously...
Do I smell Matt Wards fishy fingers in this dex?
Sounds more like bollocks to me.

I do just want to point out that Vulkan is not a captain or Chapter Master. He goes where the Tome of Fire takes him. It is perfectly fluffy for Forgefather Vulkan He'stan to temporarily fight with other chapters as he goes about his journey looking for the Primarch's artefacts.

 Deadshot wrote:

 Valhallan42nd wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
I doesn't break my entire army, just prevents me taking more tjan 1 of my HQs at a time, as I have no generics.

Then take the non-generic model, and make a chapter master/libby/etc that has his same wargear and say "This model is a generic chaplain for this battle."

Or take only one HQ, like a good number of us do.

I have spent the last 18 months planning out and creating personalised characters for the sole purpose of having every Special character. I have hunted down bits and bought specific kits, converted up, lovenly painted, and written detailed and intricate fluff for each of them. For the express purpose of being able to field, any and all HQs in the dex, in particular pairings (IE, Calgar and Vulkan) due to fluff. Basically telling me to just generic, is like telling me to take my hobby work and put it where the sun don't shine, if you'll pardon my phrase. It'd be the equivilent of doing a full year's worth of overtime doing paperwork just to have the boss shred those papers for the hell of it.

While I could take just 1 HQ, it'll make it less interesting and more difficult as I am quite reliant on them. But that's a different can of worms.

You can still use your personalised characters in "casual” games, just as long your opponent is agreeing to it.

No, its nothing to do with that. Here's the simple fact, I had a vision of having 10 Company captains and 1 CM. As many SC as I could. I didn't care how they meazured up in game, because I know that Vulkan and Lysander are godsends compared to the likes of Shrike and Cassius who have niches. I did that because I wanted it to be my hobby. I would have done it if Sicarius made you autolose. I don't care about the competition and having the lastest and greatest. I did it because I love my army and have worked on it with my money, my time and my effort. No othe reason. I designed X and Y models, converted most of them, designed extensive fluff on why X and Y were X and Y, their relationships with each other, their background. Literally a whole world. It was not just an excuse to have this this and this.

For reference, I have a grand total of 2 flamers on Tac Squads, 1 Heavy Flamer on my Termies, a Meltagun on my rarely used command squad, either a HF or Meltagun on an.Ironclad Dread and occassionally a multimelta on a Land Raider variant. That is all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Redcrusair.

Another can.of worms, but depends on how strict its enforced. My only availible gamibg area is a GW.

We only have some of the information. The 40k podcast guys that have the codex even said as much (according to what has been re-posted here) So things might even out once more is reveled, or at the latest in a few weeks when we get the actual book.

With changing chapter tactics from a character dependent thing to a army based one, I can see the restrictions on special characters. It is a bit irritating. I was planning on putting together a Lysander counts-as to represent Captain Agemmon, of the Ultramarine's first company. I guess that gets scrapped. And the mechanics of characters like Cronos, Talion, and even Cassius are open enough that they could be dropped into any chapter without batting an eye. Heck, they fit better in some chapters then they do in the Ultras. If I asked you what chapter a T6, half bionic, chaplain wielding a MC combi flamer loaded with hellfire rounds came from, your first 3 answers are probably going to be Imp. Fists, Iron Hands, or Salamanders.

C:SM has always included a healthy dose of "make it your own." These rumors seem to be taking a step back from that. Hopefully more will be made clear. There is also supplements to consider, I think the piles will be evened out once those start dropping.

 Deadshot wrote:
Another can.of worms, but depends on how strict its enforced. My only availible gamibg area is a GW.

Urgh… you can only play at GW? Well you seem to be all out of luck then, friend.

 Redcruisair wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Another can.of worms, but depends on how strict its enforced. My only availible gamibg area is a GW.

Urgh… you can only play at GW? Well you seem to be all out of luck then, friend.

Yep. The other options are a tiny gamers cafe that's an hourwalk, an hour's drive in another town and I am too young to drive, or play at home which involves bringing my only 40k playing friwnd on an hours drive to here.

 SickSix wrote:
I do just want to point out that Vulkan is not a captain or Chapter Master. He goes where the Tome of Fire takes him. It is perfectly fluffy for Forgefather Vulkan He'stan to temporarily fight with other chapters as he goes about his journey looking for the Primarch's artefacts.

And you can do that just fine via allies, apparently. You just give up the option of allying in Eldrad as well, or whatever the current power combo is.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 SickSix wrote:
I do just want to point out that Vulkan is not a captain or Chapter Master. He goes where the Tome of Fire takes him. It is perfectly fluffy for Forgefather Vulkan He'stan to temporarily fight with other chapters as he goes about his journey looking for the Primarch's artefacts.

And you can do that just fine via allies, apparently. You just give up the option of allying in Eldrad as well, or whatever the current power combo is.

True. But that requires more Salamanders. Vulkan spends a lot of time off by himself. But yeah, I guess we are stuck with allies.

But, I do actually support the notion of preventing powergaming combos. Like in 5th, when people used Kahn to get an outflanking Shrike(or whoever).

Not everyone likes it for their own fluff/powergaming reasons but I actually like it.

 Deadshot wrote:

if you have all of them, you can field what, 4 sm ones and then one other in a game... (2hq, the scout and the tank guy) (if rumors hold out..

in the 5th ed dex, and in 5th, you could field... 1 um HQ, 1 other and the 2 other guys...

not really sure i get your arguemnt, how many HQ guys are you running in a game?

Numbers arn't the issue. With 5th Ed, I could run any combo I decided fitted my fluff, even if it was terrible. Cassius with Kantor and not Sternguard or Hammernators or TFC.or anything. I could mix my "chapters." I could always take 2 HQs. Now I can take 2, but only if they are Calgar and Sicarius who in my personal fluff, don't really fit and rules wise are not great either together. I can't take my custom Sgt Chronos either. And I have to take a trait.

Now if I want to run any HQ other than those 2 UM, I have to run them solo.

Basically the last 18 months has been made a waste of my life. In 1 fell swoop. I'd much rather have no traits, no Combat Tactics, no Centurions, no new Clampacks. All I wanted from the new codex was a few adjustments, a Warlord table and 6th Ed updates (Stormtalon added in, HP in profiles, etc.)

 Deadshot wrote:
Numbers arn't the issue. With 5th Ed, I could run any combo I decided fitted my fluff, even if it was terrible. Cassius with Kantor and not Sternguard or Hammernators or TFC.or anything. I could mix my "chapters." I could always take 2 HQs. Now I can take 2, but only if they are Calgar and Sicarius who in my personal fluff, don't really fit and rules wise are not great either together. I can't take my custom Sgt Chronos either. And I have to take a trait.

Now if I want to run any HQ other than those 2 UM, I have to run them solo.

Basically the last 18 months has been made a waste of my life. In 1 fell swoop. I'd much rather have no traits, no Combat Tactics, no Centurions, no new Clampacks. All I wanted from the new codex was a few adjustments, a Warlord table and 6th Ed updates (Stormtalon added in, HP in profiles, etc.)

no, you run one hq and one as a ally. you just need 4 troops to do it.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:

Q: Has Marneus Calgar changed at all?
A: Calgar gets three warlord traits, his armor does not prevent him from preforming a sweeping advance, and he went up in points. He's a supreme badass but you pay for it.

Seriously...
Do I smell Matt Wards fishy fingers in this dex?
Sounds more like bollocks to me.

I'm pretty sure if I remember all the info we got so far, it looks like the 3 chapter traits replaced God of War. And the armor thing applies to his Terminator armor, which he has to pay to upgrade into on top of his base points cost which I think is 275 points. I THINK he's at least 280 in the Terminator armor. There also has been no word so far that his statline changed so he looks like he shares the same number of base attacks and wounds as a regular Chapter Master.

You can still ally in an HQ from another Chapter though. The Relics might let you create something similar to some of the SCs as well.

Well, here's a bit of news that may or may not have already been posted before. I emailed Forgeworld, and they confirmed that the various space marine characters from the Badab War IA books would get updated after a new C:SM release. Obviously, they did not confirm that there was an upcoming release, and gave no time table as to when the update would occur. I play Red Scorpions, so that's why I asked them about it.

Brother Weasel wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Numbers arn't the issue. With 5th Ed, I could run any combo I decided fitted my fluff, even if it was terrible. Cassius with Kantor and not Sternguard or Hammernators or TFC.or anything. I could mix my "chapters." I could always take 2 HQs. Now I can take 2, but only if they are Calgar and Sicarius who in my personal fluff, don't really fit and rules wise are not great either together. I can't take my custom Sgt Chronos either. And I have to take a trait.

Now if I want to run any HQ other than those 2 UM, I have to run them solo.

Basically the last 18 months has been made a waste of my life. In 1 fell swoop. I'd much rather have no traits, no Combat Tactics, no Centurions, no new Clampacks. All I wanted from the new codex was a few adjustments, a Warlord table and 6th Ed updates (Stormtalon added in, HP in profiles, etc.)

no, you run one hq and one as a ally. you just need 4 troops to do it.

Which I don't have. I have 2.

Look, I know everyone really likes fluffy Chapter Traits, but I don't. I have been dreading it since I first learned what they are. They have affected my hobby in a very negative and discouraging way. I haven't worked that hard for similar to SCs, or "pick 1." I worked for my hobby, and all I ask is a pat on the back and a note slsaying "Good Job, enjoy!"

Not "Shut up, enjoy the shiny new Traits" which are, and in my opinion always were, bad. I genuinely believe, not factoring in my personal bias, Chapter Tactics is a much better system. That's nothing to do with my own situation, I just believe objectively its better than this new stuff.

Deadshot you still get your pat on the back, do you believe your hard hobby work will be less appreciated because what you can bring to the table top. You have clearly distinguished the two, you want credit for your efforts on the hobby side not actual game play.