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Ello chaps, i monumentally love chaos, and i decided having 3 chaos armies from the CSM dex (Death guard, Iron warrior and emperor's children) and 1 chaos army from the IG/AM dex (Lost & The Damned) wasn't enough, now i'm looking into using more imperial armies for more chaos rules. I was wondering what chapter tactics, and space marine armies for that matter suit each legion ruleswise?

- I was thinking iron hands could be death guard or iron warriors (not that i would go iron hands because i have these two armies already)
- Blood angels would do great night lords or world eaters, because of speedy dedicated assault troops
- Spess woolvs would be nice for more iron warriors maybe?
- Grey knights would be interesting to look into, but i'm not sure who to count them as.
Oh and, who would suit Thousand sons?

One last thing, what other imperial armies could be used to count as what?
I read on the sisters of battle tactica thread that black templars could count as word bearers and sisters count as religous nutjobs with combat slaves. i like that idea, because i want to do word bearers too :p

Thanks for reading chaps!!

Actually, with the abundance of Psykers, GK could quite feasibly be molded into a Ksons army. Inquisitorial Henchmen could be all sorts of daemons slaved to their cause, and there must be some Rubric Terminators(Paladins). Purifiers could actually work well as standard rubric marines, with the flame psy-attacks being analogous (and much better) to soul blaze on standard cult troops. Crowe is merely the Sorceror who controls the empty husks. DKs could stand in as DPs as well, especially with a little modeling creativity.

Night Lords - Raven Guard
Word Bearers - Black Templars
Black Legion - Ultramarines
Iron Fists - Imperial Fists
Alpha Legion - Space Sharks (they specifically foster an aura of terror about themselves, so the Chapter Tactics that give them all Fear makes sense.)

I don't recommend using Chapter Tactics to represent the four 'affiliated' legions. They already have unique rules to them.

Death Guard - Imperial Fists
Thousand Sons - Ultramarines or Red Scorpions (gives them access to the best psyker Space Marines can field)
World Deaters - Blood Angels (Death Guard make a much better stand-in for the horde of screaming maniacs that is the World Eaters than any other group)
Emperor's Children - Space Wolves (the highly customizable nature and the doubling-down of unusual HQs would serve to represent the individualstic nature of the Emperor's Children personalities)

Why do you need to use this SM book for your Chaos Legion?

From what I gather there is no more Legions in the year 40 000. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Do you need to win? Is it because of a perceived lack luster codex? Why not just use the 3.5 codex if you want the flavour?

Just wondering.

Davor wrote:
Why do you need to use this SM book for your Chaos Legion?

From what I gather there is no more Legions in the year 40 000. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Do you need to win? Is it because of a perceived lack luster codex? Why not just use the 3.5 codex if you want the flavour?

Just wondering.

There still are Legions. Most of them fractured after fleeing into the Eye of Terror with the failure of Horus Heresy and they aren't THAT huge anymore, but they're still the biggest and most powerful mortal forces in Chaos' fold. Some members of the Legions separated and formed their own warbands either deliberately or out of pure randomness(TZEEEEEEENTCH!) as they could've been teleported far away through time and space by one of the warp storms, but they still are tiny in comparison to the remnants of the first traitor Legions.

As for having to use the C:SM.. some people don't want to use old books for many reasons, including the fact that Codex: Space Marines is an up to date book that can be played legally everywhere and in some cases it works better for non-Black Legion forces than the Codex: CSM. Iron Warriors using Imperial Fists' chapter tactics or Night Lords with Raven Guard ones are clear examples that it can be played much better and fluff-compatible with the loyalist Codex. Same goes for Renegade Chapters that don't necessarily become mindless slaves to the Dark Gods, at least not yet. Codex: Chaos Space Marines is awfully limited in it's options and only set on one particular idea of what a Chaos force looks like.

Asking him a question such as "Do you need to win?" is kind of ridiculous - no matter how much you love the army you dreamed up you -will- grow tired of never winning any games just because you didn't build it that one particular way that's really unfluffy for most of the traitor Legions. There's nothing worse than seeing your beloved army get repeatedly butchered and tabled over and over again just because the book is poorly written. Nobody likes losing all the time nor having uncompetitive army.

Davor wrote:
Why do you need to use this SM book for your Chaos Legion?

From what I gather there is no more Legions in the year 40 000. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Do you need to win? Is it because of a perceived lack luster codex? Why not just use the 3.5 codex if you want the flavour?

Just wondering.

You're wrong.
Iron Warriors are still very organized.
Death Guard, still around and organized but nobody really knows what they're up to because that would require GW to pay attention to what they're writing.
Word Bearers. Still united but split into separate chapter sized elements that come together when needed, so still a legion.
Black Legion, still kicking and growing.
Alpha Legion, who knows what they're doing but what evidence we see is that they're still operating as a legion, but due to their legion's way of fighting they are often split up on separate missions.
So, 5 out of 8 legions still together. More than half and each one many times larger than a loyalist Chapter.

Even without that, the others have some factors that keep them vaguely united.

Unpopular fluff (as from a black library book) has it that the armies of Night Lords are mobilizing again in a united force again.

World Eaters are a shattered legion but Angron can unite a large number of them in a crusade.

KSons are largely two factions. One loyal to Magnus and another loyal to Ahriman. There are a couple other mini-warbands but this is the same for all of them.

Reason I ask if Legions still exists how come they are never used as a legion like old days? A Legion would spank Chapters any day, so how come that never occurred?

Also since I don't know, if fielding a Legion shouldn't you have many more minis than we field now? Also how come not use the FW Legion books? Right there you have rules for them.

There is ways to field Legions right now. Unless your Legion is not in the FW Heresy books, then why can't you use the CSM book? After all, you are not using 100 000 men all at once on the table board so how come the CSM can't be used? I thought from taking a brief look at it, you can field a lot of stuff fluffily. Just use count's as to what you think should be what.

Davor wrote:
Reason I ask if Legions still exists how come they are never used as a legion like old days? A Legion would spank Chapters any day, so how come that never occurred?

Also since I don't know, if fielding a Legion shouldn't you have many more minis than we field now? Also how come not use the FW Legion books? Right there you have rules for them.

There is ways to field Legions right now. Unless your Legion is not in the FW Heresy books, then why can't you use the CSM book? After all, you are not using 100 000 men all at once on the table board so how come the CSM can't be used? I thought from taking a brief look at it, you can field a lot of stuff fluffily. Just use count's as to what you think should be what.

Limited options and viability, along with basic space marines being apparently better than a basic chaos space marine.

Davor wrote:
Reason I ask if Legions still exists how come they are never used as a legion like old days? A Legion would spank Chapters any day, so how come that never occurred?

Also since I don't know, if fielding a Legion shouldn't you have many more minis than we field now? Also how come not use the FW Legion books? Right there you have rules for them.

There is ways to field Legions right now. Unless your Legion is not in the FW Heresy books, then why can't you use the CSM book? After all, you are not using 100 000 men all at once on the table board so how come the CSM can't be used? I thought from taking a brief look at it, you can field a lot of stuff fluffily. Just use count's as to what you think should be what.

1. Same reason why you can't field differing regiments for guardsman, differing craftworlds, differing ork warbands, and the sorts besides perhaps a single specialist unit. It just doesn't work that way. Besides that, lots of former legionaries die. Past that, same reason why SM divided into chapters and you almost never see an entire chapter deployed at once really.

2. yet again, not necessarily. Legions were often deployed in larger units than SM but not always and what we see on the board is only a fragment of a battle (that or a skirmish). For example, if this were so, guardsman regiments would be quite small. Heck, even in FW Heresy the armies aren't really that big if you think of it. As per FW Heresy books not being used as CSM books, there are a couple of reasons. For starters, playing them in a standard game requires player consent as the games weren't made for eachother. They just have enough commonalities to be played against one another. Besides that, it lacks some of the charms of new codices. Even if the defiler sucks, a couple like the model and wouldn't be field-able. Why would somebody want them back? Besides the fact they got removed from CSM, same reason why SM get them. Same reason why most factions still want them. And counts as I'm not sure where you are going at. Isn't that what the presenter was trying to do with SM?

3. Because the CSM book isn't perfect. It's terribly imbalanced, doesn't represent newly fallen CSM nor can it really represent others. FW requires permission whilst, although technically all games require permission, you are more likely to get a game if you ask with the CSM. If not, have fun playing your Kson army. Heck, have fun trying to run Tzeentch marines in general.

4. Finally, CSM are worse than SM which begrudges some.

The FW Legions books do not represent a chaos legion 10,000 since the Horus Heresy. 10,000 years in the Eye of Terror changes you a lot. 30K traitor legions are just that...traitors. 40K Legions are CHAOS and Love it! Possessed, marks, obliterators and demon engines are all great fluffy stuff that wasn't really around in 30K or just being introduced. 30k does not represent 40k. the 40k codex is seriously flawed rules and fluff wise. Chaos Legions are still around but we have no way to represent them on the table. The loyalist chapter tactics actually do a better job. As to the whole "you can't field a legion on the table" argument. that's crap. You can't represent a tomb world or craft world on the table either. However, a small group from a Legion/craftworld/tomb world still fight as if and with the character of the larger force.

Davor wrote:
Why do you need to use this SM book for your Chaos Legion?

From what I gather there is no more Legions in the year 40 000. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Do you need to win? Is it because of a perceived lack luster codex? Why not just use the 3.5 codex if you want the flavour?

Just wondering.

An interesting question i must say,
I actually really like the chaos dex currently,but it's kinda boring me that i have 3 armies all for one dex and i still want to expand, so i'm looking into the imperial dexes for the sake of more rules, and conversion opportunities, I wouldn't mind having a go at making some sort of iron warrior thunderfire, or converting a helltalon to count as a stormtalon