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Interesting topic here. Why do Chaos Marines appear to be bested by their loyalists kin all the bloody time? The only time Chaos Marines seemed a challenge was in the HH books, then millenia down the line all they do is die. It was a while ago, but I read this book "The Chapters Due" and Scipio squad of the Ultramarines 2nd company cut down a Claws of Lorek Chaos squad as they disembarked a Rhino with only one wounded marine, if I remember correctly. This seems to happen frequently in most novels. I think some of you know what I'm talking about. My point, why does this happen? Is there a reason? I mean, they are marked by Chaos and possess power that loyalists do not.

Because the good guys always have to win. Even if the bad guys are more experienced, pumped full of warp dust and have the same wargear the good guys do.

I know exactly how you feel. It never feels like an epic fight between good and evil. Instead it is a horribly one sided affair.

Perhaps all those centuries of debauchery, stabbing your former brothers in the back, indulging your evil hobbies, dealing with untrustworthy allies and whatever other randomness your cursed gods want isn't conducive to being an effective military force.

I mean, the Dark Mechanicus gets eaten as often as not by their own technology, even if it is "more advanced", Fabulous Bile and other evil apothecaries spend all their time giving the equivalent of corrupt politicians SM upgrades, Nurgle cultists don't maintain equipment, Khornate fanatics run around beheading anything they can find including themselves, Slanneshi spend all their time surfing for porn and Tzennech is busy casting spells that can explode their own heads about 10% of the time.

How successful do you think chaos should be?

Until you get on the tabletop and CSM whoop on my UM's

Durandal wrote:
Perhaps all those centuries of debauchery, stabbing your former brothers in the back, indulging your evil hobbies, dealing with untrustworthy allies and whatever other randomness your cursed gods want isn't conducive to being an effective military force.

I mean, the Dark Mechanicus gets eaten as often as not by their own technology, even if it is "more advanced", Fabulous Bile and other evil apothecaries spend all their time giving the equivalent of corrupt politicians SM upgrades, Nurgle cultists don't maintain equipment, Khornate fanatics run around beheading anything they can find including themselves, Slanneshi spend all their time surfing for porn and Tzennech is busy casting spells that can explode their own heads about 10% of the time.

How successful do you think chaos should be?

Chaos should be more successful then what they're always displayed as. I will assume you're being funny, consdering your references to porn and such.


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Johnnytorrance wrote:
Until you get on the tabletop and CSM whoop on my UM's

By UM's you mean Ultramarines? My brother plays them and he uses the dakka tacitcs, it proves quite successful. Load up on tac squads and devastators. It should work well.

Durandal wrote:
Perhaps all those centuries of debauchery, stabbing your former brothers in the back, indulging your evil hobbies, dealing with untrustworthy allies and whatever other randomness your cursed gods want isn't conducive to being an effective military force.

I mean, the Dark Mechanicus gets eaten as often as not by their own technology, even if it is "more advanced", Fabulous Bile and other evil apothecaries spend all their time giving the equivalent of corrupt politicians SM upgrades, Nurgle cultists don't maintain equipment, Khornate fanatics run around beheading anything they can find including themselves, Slanneshi spend all their time surfing for porn and Tzennech is busy casting spells that can explode their own heads about 10% of the time.

How successful do you think chaos should be?

And yet thats what makes DE so successful.

Lets see: An old thing for Khorne used to be that they had to repair and keep their weapons intact, as a useless weapon showed a useless master, Slaaneshi enjoy killing and delight in hearing the suffering, and then you have those seeking to master weapon creation, Tzeentch often mutates its weapons into..more interesting things, or infuses them with the warp, Nurgle cultists actually DO take care of their equipment, and those that usually are far to past to take care of them usually end up with mutated bile shooters anyways.

Fabius Bile enjoys getting new recruits as any other, because if he's in an experimental mood he'll create things for anyone, Dark Mechanicus doesn't often get eaten themselves...Thats usually the slaves they employ that do.

Chaos does not = Stupid Evil, in some cases yes you'll find them, but Chaos is the faction of Madmen and Evil Thinkers alike, heck at times the Warp itself will provide weapons for them.

 Nightwolf829 wrote:
I know exactly how you feel. It never feels like an epic fight between good and evil. Instead it is a horribly one sided affair.

Yes. I'm not saying Chaos Marines should be undisputed champions but as you said, the battles should be more epic.

I has a 3++ with Eternal Warrior and an extra wound! You has a 5++, and Champion of Chaos special rule.

Good triumphs over evil!

triumph damn you! I can re-roll!

The degenerates lack good and proper righteous fury. Twisted and corrupted minds and bodies don't help either.

Animus wrote:
The degenerates lack good and proper righteous fury. Twisted and corrupted minds and bodies don't help either.

Says a man who gives his praise to a false corpse. You Imperial fools have yet to understand true power

This is very annoying to me too. In my opinion according to fluff your average CSM should be much more experienced and skillful than your average loyalist.
If you want a good book that actually levels the playing field, read Storm of Iron.

 herpguy wrote:
This is very annoying to me too. In my opinion according to fluff your average CSM should be much more experienced and skillful than your average loyalist.
If you want a good book that actually levels the playing field, read Storm of Iron.

Yes, it is. And thanks, I shall read this book.

It's simply plot armor for loyalists, if you read any space marine book (not knocking them helsreach is one of my favorites) they tend to win, they are GW's poster boys so they can't always have them tying the traitors or losing. I definitely wish it was better portrayed though as their aren't many good novels about chaos winning.

If you feel brave enough to see how thick plot armor can get, watch the ultramarines movie.

Also the Night Lords series by ADB is a very good read, lots of insight into daily chaos lives and they fight a lot of loyalists in the 3 books.

 Kharn745 wrote:
It's simply plot armor for loyalists, if you read any space marine book (not knocking them helsreach is one of my favorites) they tend to win, they are GW's poster boys so they can't always have them tying the traitors or losing. I definitely wish it was better portrayed though as their aren't many good novels about chaos winning.

If you feel brave enough to see how thick plot armor can get, watch the ultramarines movie.

Also the Night Lords series by ADB is a very good read, lots of insight into daily chaos lives and they fight a lot of loyalists in the 3 books.

Yeah, I did watch the Ultra movie. They lost 2 or 3 brothers to a slew (I don't even know how many) of Chaos Marines. Plot armor is quite ridiculous

Agreed, it's plot armour and that's a shame. When I discovered the 40k universe back when the second edition had just come out, I think that there were more stories of equal fights than there is now. Now it's "You want to read a story where your faction wins? Read your codex."

That's a real shame since that's what drew me into this universe. Also the evil and badness have been toned down - please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that it hasn't always been the way that Horus repented in the end. That kind of softness sickens me and tells me that the writers can't write something original and have to copy from Star Wars like so many other aspects have been.

Do anyone know about the background of Games Workshop and if some new owners went other ways during the late 90s or 0s? It sure would make sense.

The hilarious thing is that CSM's should actually have a larger kill ratio against loyalists, not the other way around. In a fight between a veteran and a young scrub, the veteran should win the fight as he holds the advantage of experience, which is the only variable between the two. The "young" warrior should only be winning by logistics or random luck, loyalists should only have a logistical advantage over CSM's, nothing else.

It's called plot armor.
Also, I've always thought it was chaos that was supposed to be stronger.

If you want to see a massive example of what your talking about, read battle for the fang

It has always bugged me that chaos marines are less expensive and less effective than loyalist marines, because really it should be the other way around. Becoming a worse guy (not a bad guy, you were already that to begin with ) should make you more powerful, because a) grimdark! b) else why do that in the first place ?

Chaospling wrote:
Agreed, it's plot armour and that's a shame. When I discovered the 40k universe back when the second edition had just come out, I think that there were more stories of equal fights than there is now. Now it's "You want to read a story where your faction wins? Read your codex."

That's a real shame since that's what drew me into this universe. Also the evil and badness have been toned down - please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that it hasn't always been the way that Horus repented in the end. That kind of softness sickens me and tells me that the writers can't write something original and have to copy from Star Wars like so many other aspects have been.

Do anyone know about the background of Games Workshop and if some new owners went other ways during the late 90s or 0s? It sure would make sense.

Yes, Horus did indeed repent in the end. I agree completely with you, farrr to darth vader-ish

The UM movie, urghhh...

Bolters are deadly yes, but PA is supposed to be more than tissue paper against it.

Chaos Marines are not idiots.

UM recruits do not become Tacticals immediately.

Chaplains do not have the Staff of Deus Ex Machina.




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I think Dawn of War II does it great. To represent better logistics and slightly better maintained wargear, loyalists get somewhat more hitpoints (We are talking something like 1,5% though) and bolter DPS, as well as the Kraken Bolts ability, but CSM get a bit higher melee damage to compensate.

They are quite equal in that game.

I admit I haven't read many Warhammer novels, buuuut I recall in ' Treacheries of the Space Marines ' there is a part that is grossly one sided for Chaos involving waves of Khorne worshipping marines unleashed on a city. Over all that particular story in the collection wasn't too great but that single description has stuck with me ever since in just its sheer brutality where Imperial Forces were steam rolled as if made out of paper. It was amazing.

Overall though I admit a lot of the stuff I have read about the exploits of Chaos champions has been massively dissappointing... Opening a book expecting to read of sorceries and brute force and finding yourself reading about skipping slaanesh worshippers, library scouring tzeentch followers..... Nope.

As for the tabletop, I've fielded both Death Guard ( my major army ) and Imperial Fists ( secondary), and while both are strong and more than capable I have delt far faaar more damage with Nurgle on my side.

I would say plot armour is the reason that it seems like it does. It does go both ways, not very often, but it happens.

"Oh your juiced up superhuman chainsaw-sword wielding explosive shotgun toting power armoured guy also comes in daemonically possessed form?"

Seriously, nobody would play normal SM if CSM were how they should be.

it's plot armor, read a novel featureing chaos marines as the protagionists and you'll see the same thing from the other side

Actually, fluffwise most regular chaos space marines don't get any extra 'bonuses' over space marines. And at the same time they have worse and more irregular maintainance and outdated gear. They do get 'freedom' and enormous ambitions. Chaos rewards those who prove themselves worthy and not everyone who says: "Aha, i'm a bad guy now! Chaos, reward me pls". So, you can expect a chaos champion, sorcerror, apostle and aspiring champions to be much more powerful than their loyalist's counterpart. And the ones who are explictly blessed by Chaos Gods - resented by plague marines, berserkers, noize marines, 1000 sons(blessed?). Also those who has mutated or accepted some sort of daemonhood - possessed, obliterators, daemon princes.

But regular CSM spend most of their lives in warband's affairs. They're usually not trained in the manner loyalists are. Their equipment is outdated and worse maintained. They're more barbaric overall.

Crimson Slaughter Supplement wrote:[...] for the Chaos Space Marines are fearsome foes. They possess all of a Space Marine's abilities and skills, and his matchless gear of war. In addition to this, such enemies also wield the corrupting powers of the Dark Gods and their insidious gifts.[...]

And what exactly are those gifts that every chaos marine possesses?

I have always thought the difference was about logistics - that loyalists had the entire Imperium backing them - and the traitors whilst their heroes have access to powerful weapons bought by either dark promises or piracy the average CSM is cut off from a good regular supply chain and has to make do - hence the difference ... They may be more experienced, harder warriors but when push comes to shove the quartermasters really matter.