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I have heard here and there that Chaos got robbed in their latest codex, and while I am not a big Chaos player, nor have played against any Chaos armies lately, I was wondering why that is. Flipping thru it, they seem to have everything. Heavy hitting units, close combat troops with jump packs, lots of characters, and can have Daemons as allies for close combat madness. What else is there to ask for?

Was it because CC was tougher to do in 6th?

Has anyone dived deep enough into 7th to see how the new rules impact them?

For many of us, it can still be summed up as: no legions.

It is not the power level, it is the power balance.

Chaos is defined by it's sub-factions, possible more than any other faction in the game. It is defined by its Legions because they are the roots of the army. There are 9, there are extensive fanbases and novels for all of them, and they all have unique twists and characters.
The problem is that the Codex tries to represent all 9, plus recent turncoats, plus lab-grown warriors, plus the radical 'I only wanted to help' and just doesn't have the scope to represent all of them.
If you want a general smear of Chaos then the book works. You can have Plagues marching by Rubricae, with the Warpsmith and VotLW in tow, Where it fails is when you want to delve deeply into a single sub-faction, at which point the general smear lacks the detail to properly execute any of its sub-components.

Plague Marines bring a twist of the Death Guard, but the book doesn't have the Terminators, Chosen, Raptors or Daemon Engines that they should *also* have. We have a weird disconnect where the veterans are not Fearless, don't have poisons or Blight Grenades, don't have FNP and just don't represent the same Legion as the Plague Marines.
The same can be applied to any of the Legions.

On a more practical level, the book doesn't have a cohesive style. What should a Chaos army be good at? We have Eldar being lightning fast with psychics and firepower. We have loyalists being rapid strikes with elite infantry and special-issue wargear. We have Orks as a massed tide of inaccurate, cheap units that pack surprising power behind each blow when it connects.
But what are Chaos? They are a mishmash of melee-MEQs without any style beyond a specific unit. Are they fast? Are they shooty? They just seem like Marines, minus the toys and delivery mechanisms, with some Daemonic rules added to a handful of units. If you don't want to go down the Daemonic route, Chaos doesn't really have any unique units. Recent turncoats have nothing to distinguish themselves unless they plunge head-on into Possessed or Daemon Engines.
The book also suffers from especially high amounts of imbalance between units, with certain units being made utterly redundant by others within the army. If you want a Thousand Son warband and the one unique unit you have is utter drek, then you're out of luck.

My problem is that it tries to cover everything, badly. People aren't attracted by the mixed smear of Chaos, they identify with specific warbands and Legions and then the rules fail to cater for them.


As an aside, Legions are totally a real thing in 40k. We have several novels dealing with 'pure' warbands, we have Angron's Dominion of Fire and Armageddon, we have Codex: Black Legion and we have warbands bigger than the Imperial Fists 3rd Company, who are apparently big enough to qualify for unique rules.

There are a TON of problems with the CSM codex, starting with the fact that the Space Marines effectively have twice as much everything than Chaos is even hinted at getting.

No storm bolters. No grav guns. No storm ravens/talons (in fact, they gave us the Heldrake and when that was too good, it got its neck broke) 1k Sons cost too much. Khorne Berzerkers cost too much and die too easily. We get nothing with Sky Fire. We still scatter crazy when trying to deep strike and we don't even get Drop Pods. NO CHAPTER TACTICS/LEGION TACTICS. Most of the Marks are trash. WE DON'T EVEN GET THE SAME GEAR AS THE LOYALISTS.

Ex: Loyalists get "Twin-Linked Bolt Guns." 4 words.
CSM? Combi-bolters. Not even 1 word.

No plasma cannons in the CSM army. No ATSKNF. We have to pay for EVERYTHING that sets us apart from the Loyalists, the dumbest of which is Veterans of the Long War which is SO DUMB that Black Legion HAS to pay for it, regardless.

We had FMC's but then FMC's took a hit and take longer to get into combat, even though the Tau can't Markerlight Down FMC's anymore, but big whoop. We're not the only FMC's out there and what was taken away hurts Chaos especially.

Effectively, while other armies can get what their army is supposed to have and such, Chaos, for some reason, has to be balanced (and by that I mean out of balance [underneath]) against every other army.

In short? GW hates Chaos and Chaos players. We are get punished for EVERYTHING, including our damn Warlord Traits and Boon table.

Two more things Chaos has NOTHING to speak of without going Daemons or getting lucky on a Warlord Trait?

We get no Recon units. We get no Scouts. We get no Infiltrators. AT. ALL.

Hell, I'd argue that half the Special Rules are unavailable to CSM armies and the other half are designed AGAINST CSM armies (like Monster Hunter, Sky Fire, etc.).

In the end? Chaos Space Marines are the red-headed step child anchored to the bottom of the pool.

This disheartens me so much that I'm about to switch my CSM army over to Astra Militarum, then paint them in Chaos colors and go hunting Space Marine chapters because of bitterness and as a matter of fact that the genetic super warriors are now becoming anything but.

Seriously? When did IG transports start beating SM/CSM transports? Did I miss something? And when the hell did Space Marines become better armored IG? Wth is a Space Marine anymore anyways? And since that question has to be asked, you know that the CSM's are in even worse shape. Forget Daemon allies. I WANT MY DAMN CHAOS MARINES.

There is much foulness in the 40k universe.

The csm codex has a lot to like and good things in it the problem is that they don't have the things necessary to bring these things togeather to make them all really shine. As a result you have a fisjointed army with crude ugly mechanics that work against or independent of eachother. And that is its primary problem.

There are two issues

First and foremost, it doesn't "feel" right, it's like a "Chaos: Lite" or "Chaos Shareware". the loyalist books, even the main SM book, all go into much greater detail about the individual fighting methods and lore of each chapter, with specific in-game rules and often unique units and characters, while the massive Legions that have fought the Imperium for millenia get a quarter of a page of copy-pasted fluff and that's about it, with several formerly somewhat unique units becoming genericized. It's also got this very awkward split focus on loyalist traitors and Legions, so we get weird situations where "Berzerkers" get more benefits of being dedicated than their Terminator armored superiors, and a whole bunch of renegade warbands running around with ancient daemon engines and Heresy era wargear (like Reaper Autocannons, TL boltguns on termis, Havoc launchers, etc) and a complete lack of post-heresy equipment.

It doesn't feel like an army that brought the Imperium to its knees, it feels like "generic bad space pirates".

Second, with regards to gameplay, half the book is awful, while a couple units are/(were) completely over the top, basically acting as crutches (heldrake) that the rest of the army had to overly rely on. Furthermore, with regard to the functioning on the army, it still *FEELS* like an army stuck between 4th and 5th edition, with a vehicular emphasis on AV12 units (that worked great in 5th and died hilariously easy in 6th) and a heavy emphasis on elite heavy CC units that really work best when they can consolidate into new combats (not something done in the last 3 editions of the game) or at least from transports (which, barring the Land Raider, hasn't been possible since 6th).

TL;DR fluff and feel is bad, army has terrible internal balance, feels like a 4th/5th ed army, not a 6th/7th ed army.

As you can already see, it's mainly people who are butt-hurt that the current CSM codex isn't the old 3rd edition CSM codex which was hideously overpowered and had a few little fluffy rules that they used to use.

If you go into CSM not wanting stupid overpowered, for them to be space marines with different colored armor, or for them to be exactly the same as they were for a brief period in the 1990's, there isn't really much by means of objections.

In reality, you can do a bunch of different things in a bunch of different styles on the table top, and you still have a huge amount of different ways you can play a chaos army and still be fluffy. It's a fine army.

But that won't stop people who want you to feel bad try and convince you that you shouldn't be happy.

 Ailaros wrote:
As you can already see, it's mainly people who are butt-hurt that the current CSM codex isn't the old 3rd edition CSM codex which was hideously overpowered and had a few little fluffy rules that they used to use.

TL;DR "lets ignore the content of what everyone posted and project our own internal problems onto what they actually said instead"

Seriously, please stop putting words in other people's mouths here.

 Ailaros wrote:

In reality, you can do a bunch of different things in a bunch of different styles on the table top, and you still have a huge amount of different ways you can play a chaos army and still be fluffy. It's a fine army.

What are these styles?
As I see it, we have 6 troops options available; all of them are infantry, 5 of them are in power armour, and 5 of them can take Rhinos. Supplements add 2 more types of infantry. We can take a Land Raider to transport them. None of them are fast, infiltrate, scout, deep strike or indeed have any special movement options whatsoever. Crimson Slaughter Possessed come closest with a D3 roll. Whoopee.

For reference;
- Marines get 2.5 types of infantry with Crusaders. One of those can Infiltrate and Bikes are an easy port. Then you have Rhinos, Razors and Drop Pods to deliver them. Scouts get Land Speeders. You can branch out and take Stormravens or Land Raiders as well. You also have 7 Chapters, 2 Supplements and Forge World traits to spice it up.
- Eldar get infiltrators, Jetbikes and fleet infantry. You get 2 types of skimmer to cart them around. You get T6 superheavy troops.
- Tau get infiltrators, skimmers and jetpack-Battlesuits with Farsight. You can get deep strikes in here as well. Your HQ choices directly amplify the output of the squads they are with to provide Stubborn, Tank Hunter and run'n'gun.

We don't have Infiltrators, we don't have Scouts, we don't have transports outside Rhinos or Land Raiders and we don't have mobile infantry. We don't get Bikes, Jetbikes or Jump troops. We have low amounts of Deep Strike, and lack any homing equipment to deliver them.
Our one option for Infiltrate comes as a Warlord trait and even then, is randomised in how effective it is. We can Scout a single unit if we take a Lord with the right Mark and Steed.
There is an objective on the other side of the table, and I didn't take Huron or a Slaaneshii Lord. What are my options to claim it besides moving a maximum of 12" per turn over terrain?

What is our style? Because it looks like it is ambling up the field with infantry or Rhinos, and then all of the flavour comes from individual units rather than any cohesive style.

Personally it's a few things:

1) No Legions. The main appeal of Chaos was always the tragic cruelty of the Heresy, but Space Marines get Chapter Tactics while Chaos get nothing. The codex is fine at the surface for a generic RT-era "Chaos Renegade" warband that has a bit of everything, but not for mono-legion armies that have been more common since RT.

2) Underpowered. While power is subjective, CSMs don't get anything to make them seem like the 10,000 year old marines. There should be more plasma weapons, more weird technology that has been lost since the heresy (Volkite, for example), to set them apart and give equivalents to Space Marines. Hell I remember when the "Gets Hot" rule was specifically for Chaos only to represent old MkI plasma guns from the Herey; even with that being a detriment, it made Chaos feel *different* and archaic. Nothing about Chaos now conveys that imagery of 10,000 years of change. In 2nd edition, Chaos had a lot of combi-weapons (IIRC only characters would have it in Space Marine armies), MkI Plasma Guns, Plasma Cannons (I think, not 100% sure if Marines could have them too; I know for a fact only Chaos Dreads could have them), Autocannons in squads, Chainfists, Power Mauls, Chain Axes and the like. Most everything they had was different from Space Marines but similar, again giving that "precursor" feel to them.

3) Nurgle is good, everything else isn't as good. Going back to #1, if you want to a non-Nurgle army you're already at a disadvantage. Things like daemon engines are a neat idea but they could have actually included engines from Epic not created ridiculous (albeit cool-looking) things like the Forgefiend because Chaos needed another vehicle; how about giving them Heresy-era battle tanks instead that could be suitably corrupted/mutated?

4) Chaos has IMO lost its identity. It's basically just spiky marines with worse choices and daemons. There used to be much more depth to the army that made a Chaos army look and play distinctly on the tabletop. Right now, if you remove daemons Chaos has nothing that sets it apart.

Vaktath wrote: "lets ignore the content of what everyone posted and project our own internal problems onto what they actually said instead"

Seriously, please stop putting words in other people's mouths here.

Or, you know, actually read what other people are saying and see the obvious patterns.

For example, when I said:

Ailaros wrote:As you can already see, it's mainly people who are butt-hurt that the current CSM codex isn't the old 3rd edition CSM codex which was hideously overpowered and had a few little fluffy rules that they used to use.

What I was refering to was...

Tannhauser42 wrote:For many of us, it can still be summed up as: no legions.

Mozzamanx wrote:Chaos is defined by it's sub-factions, possible more than any other faction in the game. It is defined by its Legions because they are the roots of the army. There are 9, there are extensive fanbases and novels for all of them, and they all have unique twists and characters.
The problem is that the Codex tries to represent all 9, plus recent turncoats, plus lab-grown warriors, plus the radical 'I only wanted to help' and just doesn't have the scope to represent all of them.

Mozzamanx wrote:Plague Marines bring a twist of the Death Guard, but the book doesn't have the Terminators, Chosen, Raptors or Daemon Engines that they should *also* have.

Mozzamanx wrote:People aren't attracted by the mixed smear of Chaos, they identify with specific warbands and Legions and then the rules fail to cater for them.

Vaktathi wrote:while the massive Legions that have fought the Imperium for millenia get a quarter of a page of copy-pasted fluff and that's about it, with several formerly somewhat unique units becoming genericized. It's also got this very awkward split focus on loyalist traitors and Legions, so we get weird situations where "Berzerkers" get more benefits of being dedicated than their Terminator armored superiors

And when I said:

Ailaros wrote:If you go into CSM not wanting stupid overpowered,

What I was referring to was largely innacurate power level complaints, such as...

Mozzamanx wrote:They are a mishmash of melee-MEQs without any style beyond a specific unit. Are they fast? Are they shooty?

The book also suffers from especially high amounts of imbalance between units, with certain units being made utterly redundant by others within the army.

TheRedWingArmada wrote:Effectively, while other armies can get what their army is supposed to have and such, Chaos, for some reason, has to be balanced (and by that I mean out of balance [underneath]) against every other army.

In short? GW hates Chaos and Chaos players. We are get punished for EVERYTHING, including our damn Warlord Traits and Boon table.

Two more things Chaos has NOTHING to speak of without going Daemons or getting lucky on a Warlord Trait?

We get no Recon units. We get no Scouts. We get no Infiltrators. AT. ALL.

Hell, I'd argue that half the Special Rules are unavailable to CSM armies and the other half are designed AGAINST CSM armies (like Monster Hunter, Sky Fire, etc.).

In the end? Chaos Space Marines are the red-headed step child anchored to the bottom of the pool.

Vaktathi wrote: with regards to gameplay, half the book is awful, while a couple units are/(were) completely over the top, basically acting as crutches (heldrake) that the rest of the army had to overly rely on. Furthermore, with regard to the functioning on the army, it still *FEELS* like an army stuck between 4th and 5th edition, with a vehicular emphasis on AV12 units (that worked great in 5th and died hilariously easy in 6th) and a heavy emphasis on elite heavy CC units that really work best when they can consolidate into new combats (not something done in the last 3 editions of the game) or at least from transports (which, barring the Land Raider, hasn't been possible since 6th).

TL;DR fluff and feel is bad, army has terrible internal balance, feels like a 4th/5th ed army, not a 6th/7th ed army.

And when I said:

Ailaros wrote: for them to be space marines with different colored armor,

I was referring to...

TheRedWingArmada wrote:No storm bolters. No grav guns. No storm ravens/talons (in fact, they gave us the Heldrake and when that was too good, it got its neck broke) 1k Sons cost too much. Khorne Berzerkers cost too much and die too easily. We get nothing with Sky Fire. We still scatter crazy when trying to deep strike and we don't even get Drop Pods. NO CHAPTER TACTICS/LEGION TACTICS. Most of the Marks are trash. WE DON'T EVEN GET THE SAME GEAR AS THE LOYALISTS.

Ex: Loyalists get "Twin-Linked Bolt Guns." 4 words.
CSM? Combi-bolters. Not even 1 word.

No plasma cannons in the CSM army. No ATSKNF. We have to pay for EVERYTHING that sets us apart from the Loyalists, the dumbest of which is Veterans of the Long War which is SO DUMB that Black Legion HAS to pay for it, regardless.

Mozzamanx wrote:They just seem like Marines, minus the toys and delivery mechanisms,

So, if you want, you can ignore what everyone else is saying, and decide to be mindlessly callous towards the person who can summarize everything more succinctly, but abstract reasoning skills doesn't make me some sort of brutal ogre that's crushing people's white-armor-clad opinions. Not everyone is a snowflake, and complaining isn't a sign of intelligence.

It's a lot easier for people to give up and complain about internal codex balance than to figure out how to use things correctly, but that doesn't mean CSM is bad, and it doesn't make other people feeling bad about something they want to like any more noble.

Thankfully we have an answer to legions... FW's Horus Heresy (aka 30K) is brilliant. Use it. it works and is as balanced against 40K armies as anything else in 40K.

If you want possessed heavy and mangled by the warp then go with C:CSM.

If you want recent turncoats just play counts-as C:SM.

 Ailaros wrote:

A very big quote series

1) Were the Legion rules a bad thing, is the Codex better for their removal, and would it be impossible for them to be implemented in a way that is balanced and fluffy? Because a lot of people are asking for them and it seems like it would please a lot of people to have them back.
2) Is it justified that in a Nurgle-dominated warband, that the base troops are the Fearless, FNP, Poisoned grenades crew while the Terminators are not? Or that Ahriman's Rubric was confined to the troops alone and all of his Terminators are just fine and dandy?
3) Is it tactically engaging to have minimal speed in your troops, 2 transport options of dubious effectiveness, and no scatter mitigation or Outflanking for the rest of the army? Is there a reason for this to be omitted?

At the risk of being aggressive, your battle reports are based on Huron infiltrating massed numbers of World Eaters. Is this evocative of the background to you? Is there any story behind the local space-wizard-pirate finding a bush big enough to hide 40 frothing Berserkers and 10 Terminators? Or is this the result of trying to make Berserkers work and the best alternative is to introduce a non-Khornate character with psychic powers to get them upfield before they get shot? Is it tactically engaging to roll a '3' for the number of infiltrators and have the entire game be a product of delivering power armour into combat rather than any actual decisions made? Would you have had the success you did if you rolled a '1' for the number of infiltrators?

 Ailaros wrote:

So, if you want, you can ignore what everyone else is saying, and decide to be mindlessly callous towards the person who can summarize everything more succinctly, but abstract reasoning skills doesn't make me some sort of brutal ogre that's crushing people's white-armor-clad opinions. Not everyone is a snowflake, and complaining isn't a sign of intelligence.

I'm not going to get into a massive quote-war here, but ultimately, no, you're intentionally mis-charaterizing what people wrote. You said "it's mainly people who are butt-hurt that the current CSM codex isn't the old 3rd edition CSM codex which was hideously overpowered and had a few little fluffy rules that they used to use." That's not what people were posting. They were bringing up issues with a confused theme and gameplay problems.

In fact, the 3E book wasn't mentioned until you mentioned it. People pointed out that the book tries to do multiple different things and does it poorly, while the loyalist CSM book gave a large number of chapters the exact kind of attention people wanted to see the Legions get.

Hell, most people probably playing CSM's today have not ever even seen the 3E book at this point.

It's a lot easier for people to give up and complain about internal codex balance than to figure out how to use things correctly,

And yet you're completely glossing over the fact that it *does* have an internal balance problem.

 Deuce11 wrote:
Thankfully we have an answer to legions... FW's Horus Heresy (aka 30K) is brilliant. Use it. it works and is as balanced against 40K armies as anything else in 40K.

If you want possessed heavy and mangled by the warp then go with C:CSM.

If you want recent turncoats just play counts-as C:SM.

30k isn't indicative of the legions post-Heresy, which is what most Chaos players want. Not during the Heresy, but afterwards.

Ok so maybe GW had plans to do additional codexes like they did with the Black Legion to go futher into things like the Emperor's Children, and so on. To be honest, the CSM codex could probably be the size of the full 40k rulebook if you fill it with everything that could make up a chaos army, which to me, could very well be everything under the Emperor.

I like the idea of the older Space Marine weapons, like the Plasma mk1 stuff. I always hated the Get Hot rule, but does make some sense with veteran marines I think. Maybe the renegade marines would use the newer stuff. I dont know.

I thought it had more to do with the actual rules behind the units, but this seems more of a fluff thing. Or I mean, rules reflecting the fluff.

I think the Chaos Marine box set, the normal chaos marines, is in a desperate need of an update. Like the Chosen from DV. All Chaos troops should look like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I will say this, I remember the 3E codex... the one with having a champion turn into a greater demon, thus losing the champion. hated that. I think they released 2 codexes. Not sure which one everyone liked.

In my eyes, I don't want to go back to 3.5. I want a Codex built from 7th edition principles that provides buckets of tactical options, represents all 9 Legions alongside renegades and mixed warbands, and ideally does so with a unique CSM twist on things.

- Spawn move to the Troops slot. Bikes is stealing from Loyalists and Raptors are supposed to be rare.
- Units get cheaper the bigger they get. The first 5 cost you 75pts. The next 5 are 12pts each. Then the next are 10pts each, and the last 5 are 7pts each. If 20-man squads is a CSM thing, make it desirable.
- Introduce Legion 'Marks' on a squad-by-squad basis. For example, squad A can have Night Lord geneseed for +Xpts. This gives Fear and Night Vision, but suffer -1 for Blind tests. That way you please both Legionary splinters, but allow them for a mixed warband.
- Introduce Cult upgrades as a 'level 2 Mark'. If the Mark of Khorne was Rage, Butchers Nails would be Rage, Fearless and +1WS for example.
- Introduce wargear that isn't based on Chaos. Volkite relics, Rotor Cannons, vat-grown warriors as WS3/BS2 demi-Marines. Biological or chemical weapons for Havocs and Plagues that would be banned by the Imperium.
- Introduce what can only be described as the Chaos Battlewagon. High frontal armour, large capacity and open-topped. Cheap enough to be a delivery vessel.
- More mobility and deployment. Cultists can upgrade to Infiltrate, Possessed get Scout and Beast movement, Alpha Legion upgrade to provide Outflank. Icons get their DS mitigation back and Sorcerers can open portals to bring in reserves.

There is so much potential to the army but it remains untapped, and any attempt to discuss the list is met with complaints about a book written over a decade ago. 3.5 is dead and buried, nobody wants it back exactly as it was, but it had a whole host of options that have been utterly abandoned.

KTG17 wrote:
Ok so maybe GW had plans to do additional codexes like they did with the Black Legion to go futher into things like the Emperor's Children, and so on. To be honest, the CSM codex could probably be the size of the full 40k rulebook if you fill it with everything that could make up a chaos army, which to me, could very well be everything under the Emperor.

I like the idea of the older Space Marine weapons, like the Plasma mk1 stuff. I always hated the Get Hot rule, but does make some sense with veteran marines I think. Maybe the renegade marines would use the newer stuff. I dont know.

I thought it had more to do with the actual rules behind the units, but this seems more of a fluff thing. Or I mean, rules reflecting the fluff.

I think the Chaos Marine box set, the normal chaos marines, is in a desperate need of an update. Like the Chosen from DV. All Chaos troops should look like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I will say this, I remember the 3E codex... the one with having a champion turn into a greater demon, thus losing the champion. hated that. I think they released 2 codexes. Not sure which one everyone liked.

What I think was rather telling is this: The 3rd edition Codex came out and was written by none other than Jervis Johnson himself, the man who for the longest time had a running joke in White Dwarf that, all due respect to him as a person with 20+ years tenure at GW, whatever army he played in a battle report would lose. When the 3.5 codex came out, Pete Haines and Andy Chambers wrote an article outlining all the issues with the 3rd edition Codex, how it didn't really reflect Chaos, and the like. Of course, it was strongly rumored that Big Pete made Iron Warriors OP because that was his army (having bought them off of Andy C). Ever since then, it's been downward spiraling. The 4th edition Codex undid most of the good parts of 3.5, going back to the lackluster 3.0 version. The 6th edition is roughly the same thing, with the same problems - Chaos got some new units but most of them aren't really good in practice and aren't really indicative of Chaos. The 3rd edition book had those very same problems (Raptors and Obliterators were largely unused) that the 6th edition book made, only this time there isn't 6.5.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

So, if you want, you can ignore what everyone else is saying, and decide to be mindlessly callous towards the person who can summarize everything more succinctly, but abstract reasoning skills doesn't make me some sort of brutal ogre that's crushing people's white-armor-clad opinions. Not everyone is a snowflake, and complaining isn't a sign of intelligence.

I'm not going to get into a massive quote-war here, but ultimately, no, you're intentionally mis-charaterizing what people wrote. You said "it's mainly people who are butt-hurt that the current CSM codex isn't the old 3rd edition CSM codex which was hideously overpowered and had a few little fluffy rules that they used to use." That's not what people were posting. They were bringing up issues with a confused theme and gameplay problems.

In fact, the 3E book wasn't mentioned until you mentioned it. People pointed out that the book tries to do multiple different things and does it poorly, while the loyalist CSM book gave a large number of chapters the exact kind of attention people wanted to see the Legions get.

Hell, most people probably playing CSM's today have not ever even seen the 3E book at this point.

It's a lot easier for people to give up and complain about internal codex balance than to figure out how to use things correctly,

And yet you're completely glossing over the fact that it *does* have an internal balance problem.

He just believes that CSM should really just be renegades and that's it, he will ad homenim and generally logical fallacy down any other argument. It's pretty much assumed by now.

I've seen 3.5, and yes I can sum up we've only gotten worse over the years, so I will say that I am biased for 3.5.

I didn't knew that chaos marines could take Land Raiders. Why aren't people taking them . A LR crusader seems like a perfect delivery unit for a melee zerkers or terminators , even noise marines could do ok a big 12 man squad supported by 2-3 HQs everything hiting at i5 on with FnP . They also help with anti tank , the machine spirit can fire the Mulit Melta after movment opening any transports.

Why weren't they used in 6th , was it because people were buying 3-4 helldrakes and had no points for land raiders left ?

Chaos marines only have access to the godhammer pattern; no redeemers or crusaders.

They also lack PotMS, but are cheaper.

Makumba wrote:
I didn't knew that chaos marines could take Land Raiders. Why aren't people taking them . A LR crusader seems like a perfect delivery unit for a melee zerkers or terminators , even noise marines could do ok a big 12 man squad supported by 2-3 HQs everything hiting at i5 on with FnP . They also help with anti tank , the machine spirit can fire the Mulit Melta after movment opening any transports.

Why weren't they used in 6th , was it because people were buying 3-4 helldrakes and had no points for land raiders left ?

1) We don't have Crusaders. We only have the Lascannon variant.
2) We don't have Machine Spirit on ours. To make up for it, they are a whole *20pts* cheaper!
3) Ours don't have the option for Multi-Meltas.

Just a few reasons.

I hereby christen us the Hobo Space Marines.

But that is stupid , why give chaos a land raider then , if no one will buy them .
Although it does explain why I never saw one played since 5th ed .

Was it ever explained why they don't have different land raiders w30k seems to be full of them .

Makumba wrote:
But that is stupid , why give chaos a land raider then , if no one will buy them .
Although it does explain why I never saw one played since 5th ed .

Was it ever explained why they don't have different land raiders w30k seems to be full of them .

Combination of factors. As per why add a choice nobody really uses, it's a problem for every army to varying degrees. It just kind of happens.

As per why CSM don't get them, arbitrary reasons to attempt to differentiate the two armies. The biggest problem with CSM is that... they represent so very much in reality. Legions, warbands both pure and mixed, old armies, new armies, veterans, hordes of beginners, siegers, close combat lovers, not even that chaotic, undivided, Tzeentchian and other gods, heavily chaotic, and more. One must be careful lest CSM become CSM+. It's a blatant and fluffy trap really. Well then, how do you avoid making them just SM+ and make them different? You try to move laterally with differing choices! Problem is this doesn't always work and, in fact, has lead to SM-. So how do you represent not only ancient warriors but also new recruits? Well, in the end you get a mess of a codex that can't represent anything properly besides a nurgle CSM army (but not the specific legion) and a mix of them yet not Black Legion

Makumba wrote:
But that is stupid , why give chaos a land raider then , if no one will buy them .
Although it does explain why I never saw one played since 5th ed .

Was it ever explained why they don't have different land raiders w30k seems to be full of them .

You have to remember, GW doesn't play the same game most people do. They'll take a Chaos Land Raider because it's cool, or because they have a nasty CC squad of Chosen with their Chaos Lord. That's always been the problem; GW creates units that they think is cool, without actually caring if they are cool with how they actually work in the game. Which is also why if you look through books, WD articles and past history you'll see GW playing what the competitive gamers dismiss as garbage, literally because they think it'd be cool to do. The way they play it's likely that none of them deliberately try to break anything, so you'd never for example see somebody field 3x Riptides outside of a specific scenario (see the final "real" White Dwarf with all the Riptides vs. Tyranid MCs) and you'd never see something like a Centurion Grav-star or whatever it's called against footslogging Berzerkers, but whether that's because the person playing SM just didn't realize that it's possible or knows that it wouldn't be a fun game is up for debate. I'd like to think that the designer aren't incompetent buffoons and purposely don't take OP combos because they know it's not going to make for a fun game, and they're playing friends/co-workers so why wouldn't you want your buddy to have fun?

The fluff has always been that most of the Chaos vehicles and the like broke down and were irreparable because the Traitor Legions had limited supplies after their retreat and were generally more concerned with saving their own hides than bringing all their equipment. This is why Chaos don't get things like Landspeeders (and before 3rd edition why they didn't have jump packs), so I assume it was extended to other LRs (although keep in mind originally there was just the "Godhammer" Lascannon LR and the Crusader was a relatively recent version make by the Black Templars, which were post-Heresy anyways so it wouldn't have existed during the HH). Which again goes back to the fact that the Chaos 'dex represents all possible permutations of a Chaos army (poorly, but still) which gets even sillier when you consider something like the Crimson Slaughter who are recent traitors and wouldn't have just left all their landspeeders and the like.

The problem has always been how to make Chaos feel like Space Marines without making them a carbon copy. They're more than just spikes, after all, but few if any edition of the Chaos Codex has ever really captured it and made the actual Traitor Legions feel like they were a threat from the past. Even the lauded 3.5 codex just made them strong, but other than legion rules didn't really add much to make them that unique. With the HH books I'd like to see Chaos get old, archaic weaponry that hasn't been seen since the Heresy, that would let them play similar to but not the same as Loyalist Marines, and they would still look like Marines but with differences.

But if it doesn't have machine spirit or a multi melta then it is not cool , it is a bad unit .

I don't get it Land Raiders are suppose to be super relic from legion times and in legion times tacticals were 20 man strong , how can the same tanks suddenly lose machine spirit and carry fewer dudes and become one variant , that was actualy fabricated post heresy.

One of my favourite "easy differentiations from Space Marines" would be to allow all unit champions to take Terminator armour.

I actually like the Chaos Champion rule and the Veterans of the Long War rule as they make Chaos Space Marines differentiate a lot from Space Marines loyal to the rotten corpse - the rules just need slight changes so they actually seem reasonable:

Chaos Champion rule: Chaos Champions may choose if they want to issue or accept challenges but only if a challenge is won when issued by the Chaos Champion himself, only then are you allowed to roll on the Chaos Boon table.

Veterans of the Long War rule: Needs bigger buff besides Hatred (Space Marines) and +1 Leadership. I would say the And They Shall Know No Fear rule should be added and maybe Adamantium Will.

Honestly I wish you could purchase mutations before the game. I always felt it silly how fast you could accrue mutations in a single game. Plus mutations always got reset.

KTG17 wrote:
I have heard here and there that Chaos got robbed in their latest codex, and while I am not a big Chaos player, nor have played against any Chaos armies lately, I was wondering why that is. Flipping thru it, they seem to have everything. Heavy hitting units, close combat troops with jump packs, lots of characters, and can have Daemons as allies for close combat madness. What else is there to ask for?

Was it because CC was tougher to do in 6th?

Has anyone dived deep enough into 7th to see how the new rules impact them?

apart from the lack of legion rules, which even if they were simple like chapter tactics and had one (probably black legion) that was clearly better than all the others, would make a lot of people happy let me try to answer this.

A lot of the units are just unplayably bad. Regular possessed, mutilators, warp talons, and thousand sons are just comically comically bad. 3 dedicated assault units, with no shooting, without grenades. Note that 2 of the 3 were new kits in 6th and that probably had something to do with people thinking CSM are bad

A lot of phoning it in. Forgefiends, maulerfiend, heldrakes, and cultists are all pretty chaoitc ununiform things and yet they have so few options. Daemon engines in theory should be able to show up to the battlefield in almost any configuration. Cultists also should be very customization. Nothing totally broken like the 3.5 rules, but some options would make them more interesting. Few units in the game have so few options.(I realize cultists can take marks, but seriously?)

Bad game mechanics. Things getting soul blaze and fear kind of defines the 6th CSM book. If these things were any good, maybe people would be happy. But the CSM codex is full of adding lazy USR that dont do much. The CSM god psykic lores are also full of it and just seem to be situational, underpowered, and limiting.

Limited Tactics. Champions of Chaos limits a player tactically. It takes a CSM player who might want to actually play the game and play his army tactically and forces him to yell Kill Maim Burn while running his troops head long into a slaughter. Forges a great narrative for anyone but the CSM palyer but really removes a lot of fun from the game. This kind of runs with the bad game mechanics. CSM pykers again are limited in the pskyic powers they can take compared to most armies. Tsons aspiring sorcerers particularly so.

Finally

Bookkeeping. The Chaos boon table was supposed to make the CSM codex. It was supposed to be awesome, the reason to get into combat. The high risk high reward chaos mantra. It was supposed to forge that narrative and make games super cinematic. Sadly few of the boons are worth anything. The 10 points you can pay or wound you can take to get a roll on the boon table is almost always better saved rather than take the horrible junk of the table. Because of bad game mechanics again and just plain awful rules it has been reduced to a bookkeeping chore. After getting across the table, being forced to challenge, probably being declined, else getting killed but occasionally actually killing an enemy character you get to roll on the boon table and find that your chaption without a ranged weapon has +1 BS, or that your WS7 beast is now WS8, or your guy with a power fist is +1 init, or that in the slim event that your guy passes a deny the witch roll you inflict a str 6 hit, or your bike now has fleet, or your fearless unit is now stubborn, or most likely that your character is now too far away or too late in the game to benefit from anything. You just have to jot things down that you will never use. It's not forging a narrative, it's not cinematic, it boring.