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MarsNZ wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Crimson Slaughter were very much an odd release. But not the only odd one.

GW for some reason has consistently refused to make Legion books, which is odd because it would basically be a license to print money. They made Crimson Slaughter, which nobody asked for or cared about. They did Black Legion...when the core codex is already built entirely around the Black Legion.

How do you figure that? Because it includes a single Black Legion named character? By that logic it's just as much Codex: Red Corsairs.

Not at all. Previous CSM books have been patterned along similar lines (e.g. Cult units as Elites and able to mix and match cults in the same army) and were defined explicitly as being the model for the Black Legion. This has been true since 3rd edition.

 Mumblez wrote:
Now my only question is: if Marneus Calgar is the Spiritual Liege, what is Abaddon's fancy-pants title?

Failbaddon the Armless

 Vaktathi wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Crimson Slaughter were very much an odd release. But not the only odd one.

GW for some reason has consistently refused to make Legion books, which is odd because it would basically be a license to print money. They made Crimson Slaughter, which nobody asked for or cared about. They did Black Legion...when the core codex is already built entirely around the Black Legion.

How do you figure that? Because it includes a single Black Legion named character? By that logic it's just as much Codex: Red Corsairs.

Not at all. Previous CSM books have been patterned along similar lines (e.g. Cult units as Elites and able to mix and match cults in the same army) and were defined explicitly as being the model for the Black Legion. This has been true since 3rd edition.

That was relevant back in 3.5, and not since. Elite cult troops? Well, I can make them troops with MoK lord so what are all these World Eater players complaining about? Ditto Death Guard players, what's the problem you've got troop slot Plaguemarines? See what I'm getting at? Black Legion players are just as boned by the current dex as every other Legion player. It's Codex: Marines-1 and nothing else.

I agree. It's a cool and popular thing to hate on the Chaos codex but tbh I think they are arguably the best fluff codex written by GW for 2 entire editions. The only thing wrong with them is that when it comes to competitive play, everything could use a points sink.

But leaving that aside, the CSM codex is gold.

CSM are a huge faction with near limitless variety. And yet, it is possible to construct virtually any lore-friendly CSM army with the codex.

Iron Warriors? Field Maulerfiends, Forgefiends, Heldrakes, Helbrutes, Oblits, Mutilators and a Warpsmith.

Word Bearers? Spam cultists led by Dark Apostles, ally with Chaos Daemons, get some possessed into the list along with lots of regular organized CSM squads.

Night Lords? Bring on the Raptors and Warp Talons. Outflank squads with Huron as a counts-as named NL character. Unleash the nightmarish spawn onto the enemy.

Nurgle? Field Typhus. Get your shambling horde of plague zombies going, give the rest of your army MoN and paint them accordingly. Ally with Daemons and spam Nurglings and other servants of disease.

Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch etc. you know the drill.

We want Night Lords that can see in the dark and attack at night.....

I won't be greedy and ask for Stealth adept back....

Most scenarios Night Lords can attempt to attack at night if you choose.

 Sir Arun wrote:
I agree. It's a cool and popular thing to hate on the Chaos codex but tbh I think they are arguably the best fluff codex written by GW for 2 entire editions. The only thing wrong with them is that when it comes to competitive play, everything could use a points sink.

But leaving that aside, the CSM codex is gold.

CSM are a huge faction with near limitless variety. And yet, it is possible to construct virtually any lore-friendly CSM army with the codex.

Iron Warriors? Field Maulerfiends, Forgefiends, Heldrakes, Helbrutes, Oblits, Mutilators and a Warpsmith.

Word Bearers? Spam cultists led by Dark Apostles, ally with Chaos Daemons, get some possessed into the list along with lots of regular organized CSM squads.

Night Lords? Bring on the Raptors and Warp Talons. Outflank squads with Huron as a counts-as named NL character. Unleash the nightmarish spawn onto the enemy.

Nurgle? Field Typhus. Get your shambling horde of plague zombies going, give the rest of your army MoN and paint them accordingly. Ally with Daemons and spam Nurglings and other servants of disease.

Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch etc. you know the drill.

You have good points, but I'm afraid I disagree with you.

Alpha Legion has no way to reliably be sneaky outside of getting a warlord trait that lets you infiltrate. No way to represent their willingness to train and support cultists. No way to represent their "You activated my trap card!" way of doing things. I've taken to using loyalist marine Raptor chapter tactics and their chapter master (possibly getting some human imperials in the future to support them) to represent Alpha Legion.

Night Lords don't really have a good way of using fear, especially as the actual fear rule is useless against many armies. They also can't take raptors without taking chaos marines or cultists. This would be solved with a formation/detachment that features lots of raptors and somehow lets you use fear type effects against things with ATSKNF/Fearless. "You may not know fear, but you will know it is best to run."

Thousand Sons suffer from lacklustre abilities and, despite being the most psychic of the legions, have some of the worst (non)options when it comes to psychic powers.

Those are the big three that I wish were easier to represent. I'm sure others with more interest in the other factions could tell you the problems with their legion of choice.

I agree that you can actually represent Iron Warriors pretty well though. World Eaters suffer from weak-ish rules, though the new Khorne support helps with that.

 Sir Arun wrote:
I agree. It's a cool and popular thing to hate on the Chaos codex but tbh I think they are arguably the best fluff codex written by GW for 2 entire editions. The only thing wrong with them is that when it comes to competitive play, everything could use a points sink.

But leaving that aside, the CSM codex is gold.

CSM are a huge faction with near limitless variety. And yet, it is possible to construct virtually any lore-friendly CSM army with the codex.

Iron Warriors? Field Maulerfiends, Forgefiends, Heldrakes, Helbrutes, Oblits, Mutilators and a Warpsmith.

Word Bearers? Spam cultists led by Dark Apostles, ally with Chaos Daemons, get some possessed into the list along with lots of regular organized CSM squads.

Night Lords? Bring on the Raptors and Warp Talons. Outflank squads with Huron as a counts-as named NL character. Unleash the nightmarish spawn onto the enemy.

Nurgle? Field Typhus. Get your shambling horde of plague zombies going, give the rest of your army MoN and paint them accordingly. Ally with Daemons and spam Nurglings and other servants of disease.

Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch etc. you know the drill.

You're trolling, right? The Iron Warriors are not just about heavy support spam, the Word Bearers are not about cultist spam, the Night Lords are not about Raptor spam (Raptors for the most part have even split entirely from the legion into their own warbands), Death Guard is not just about plague zombies, Emperor's Children is not just Noisemarine spam, etc. This is a horrible oversimplification of Chaos Space Marines to a childish degree, and ignores that the Legions for the most part still use old Legion gear. The Chaos Space Marine Codex is complete gak at representing any of the Chaos Legions- the Horus Heresy is the only good source of Chaos rules these days with CSM just taken as allies for the odd daemon engine.

Night Lords don't really have a good way of using fear, especially as the actual fear rule is useless against many armies. They also can't take raptors without taking chaos marines or cultists. This would be solved with a formation/detachment that features lots of raptors and somehow lets you use fear type effects against things with ATSKNF/Fearless. "You may not know fear, but you will know it is best to run."

To be fair, the Night Lords are not the Raptor Legion, they tend to use large amounts of ground forces as well.

ignoring the legions for a moment, what CSMs need most is delivery options and I think there is a LOT of potential for GW to get creative with that. what I think GW should do is look to the Horus Heresy for inspiration. look at the stuff the SMs had and say "ok after 10 thousand years to play around with this, and do all sorts of crazy deamon binding etc... what would happen to this sucker? take the contemptor dreadnought, just for example and sue that basic frame combined with a LOT of deamony corruption to give CSMs some sort of funky deamon the helbrute was a good place to start but the rules didn't really change much at all. IMHO demonic posession should give a 5+ invul save (you're turning the tank into a deamon engine after all) and hey while we're it it, IWND.

even if you kept the lascanons a 5+ invul IWND land raider might come off as pretty tempting

Yeah well, those models fitted in well with my Chaos Bonebreakers Chapter.

I can see the hate for CS, in fact I was as disguisted by them being given a suppliment as I was at the BL getting one.

Really hope that we can get some legion rules as I desperately want to field a better, more fluffy Night Lords and Iron Warriors army.

But until then I'll continue to use the Deamonkin book. As you know what? It's a hell of a lot of fun to play! AND even though I thought it was going to be pish, it's just great fun to not be gunlining chaos or going Nurgle cause you kinda have to.

However saying that... There's a new Space Marine codex on the way apparently So we can all sit back and see what they do to the existing legion rules that we got jealous of in 6th.

They may retcon them for SM as well now and we'll all be back in the same boat.

 Grumzimus wrote:
I can see the hate for CS, in fact I was as disguisted by them being given a suppliment as I was at the BL getting one.

Really hope that we can get some legion rules as I desperately want to field a better, more fluffy Night Lords and Iron Warriors army.

But until then I'll continue to use the Deamonkin book. As you know what? It's a hell of a lot of fun to play! AND even though I thought it was going to be pish, it's just great fun to not be gunlining chaos or going Nurgle cause you kinda have to.

However saying that... There's a new Space Marine codex on the way apparently So we can all sit back and see what they do to the existing legion rules that we got jealous of in 6th.

They may retcon them for SM as well now and we'll all be back in the same boat.

Thanks to the recent trend with main-army codices, I'm not even remotely looking forward to the new SM Codex. It's probably only going to get worse and find ways to dick over CSM even more.

 Jimsolo wrote:
With literally the exception of what has been written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, I find Chaos Marines to be the most ludicrous, nonsensical concept in the sea of unbelievable silliness that is 40k. Even CS Goto couldn't make them more ridiculous. Compared to the asinine, motivation-less, wooden garbage that is already CSM fluff, the Crimson Slaughter is just another drop in the bucket.

hahaha lol rofl

I have no problem with GW trying to expand the universe by adding more warbands, legions, chapters, or what have you. It's really curious that they got their own codex supplement instead of a legion, but GW's been giving CSM legions the shaft since 4th edition.

MarsNZ wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Crimson Slaughter were very much an odd release. But not the only odd one.

GW for some reason has consistently refused to make Legion books, which is odd because it would basically be a license to print money. They made Crimson Slaughter, which nobody asked for or cared about. They did Black Legion...when the core codex is already built entirely around the Black Legion.

How do you figure that? Because it includes a single Black Legion named character? By that logic it's just as much Codex: Red Corsairs.

Not at all. Previous CSM books have been patterned along similar lines (e.g. Cult units as Elites and able to mix and match cults in the same army) and were defined explicitly as being the model for the Black Legion. This has been true since 3rd edition.

That was relevant back in 3.5, and not since. Elite cult troops? Well, I can make them troops with MoK lord so what are all these World Eater players complaining about? Ditto Death Guard players, what's the problem you've got troop slot Plaguemarines? See what I'm getting at? Black Legion players are just as boned by the current dex as every other Legion player. It's Codex: Marines-1 and nothing else.

Except that it is set up where it is an Undivided force, unless you take a Marked lord. You are able to take Cult Choices from all 4 of the gods as Elites Choices, which was the Black Legion's thing. It is literally Codex: Black Legion, Black Legion is shown off the most, talked about the most and is the basis of all non-mark specific forces in the Codex.

Sure you can make watered down versions of the other Legions, and even more watered down versions of the more recent traitors who inexplicably decide to abandon their wargear when they start worshiping the big four. It is as much as you would decry it a book about the Black Legion and its Warbands.

I see the chaos codex as more a codex for a warband containing aspiring champions of various origin and their followers.

So Codex: Chaos undecided

I'm back... and excellent hating-on the Crimson Slaughter, thank you for that moment!

In response to some of the comments:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I don't like Crimson Slaughter becuse that time and effort should have gone into an actual legion book.

I think that's where my knee-jerk reaction was - when codex Black Legion came out, I just assumed the next step was Codex: Night Lords, Codex: World Eaters, and so on. It was a huge let down that a new faction would be given the limelight like that.

 CalgarsPimpHand wrote:


Chaos space marines are a dying faction in the dying game that is 40k, and Crimson Slaughter are just another symptom of the cancer. Bland, weak codex, nonsensical units and wargear, total lack of character, with a mishmashed aesthetic and some of the worst models in the entire game. People hate the Crimson Slaughter because it's such a huge missed opportunity. Instead of a legion supplement or even a real renegade supplement they made Supplement: Dark Vengeance models.

I think that's my second reason for wanting to hate on not just Crimson Slaughter, but the state of Chaos. I think deep down I want the fluff to portray Chaos as a huge and growing threat, one that will require the Imperium to lay everything on the line to survive. (Much like the fluff during the 13th Black Crusade, as an example) Today, it seems that Chaos is limited to small warbands, while the demon primarchs of the Heresy seem silent and content to fade from having any role in the story.

That said, I think the Dark Vengeance models are considered quite good - it's not my favorite, but I think a lot of people would be thrilled for a chosen box that look like the Crimson Slaughter chosen in Dark Vengeance.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I actually like them. Just got finished painting twenty cultists and a Sorcerer as CS.

Their warlord traits chart isn't terrible. I run two detachments with their supplement, one being Crimson Slaughter, and one being Night Lords.

They have a horror movie appeal. Some of their altar of war and Planetstrike rules are pretty cool.

Plus I like painting red marines, but never liked World Eaters, Word Bearers, Red Corsairs, or Blood Angels.

That's cool - to be clear, while I wanted to take a moment and hate the CS, none of that hate is for players who love them. I heard the novel presented them better than the codex, and my own chosen Chaos faction are the World Eaters, and what ever holes I can poke in CS fluff, I'm sure World Eaters must look doubly bland to most players. I was bummed that my WEs didn't get a codex of their own, but with Khorne: Daemonkin I find I can finally field the 1st War of Armageddon style army that I was shooting for originally, so everyone wins.

It was good to get some grumping done. Now, here's to when GW moves along after a few more creative team changes, and the Crimson Slaughter codex has modern dreadnoughts and assault cannons, and World Eaters figure out how to open the door on top of their Rhinos, so they can have an open topped assault transport... Until then, cheers!

 Sir Arun wrote:
I agree. It's a cool and popular thing to hate on the Chaos codex but tbh I think they are arguably the best fluff codex written by GW for 2 entire editions. The only thing wrong with them is that when it comes to competitive play, everything could use a points sink.

But leaving that aside, the CSM codex is gold.

CSM are a huge faction with near limitless variety. And yet, it is possible to construct virtually any lore-friendly CSM army with the codex.

Iron Warriors? Field Maulerfiends, Forgefiends, Heldrakes, Helbrutes, Oblits, Mutilators and a Warpsmith.

Word Bearers? Spam cultists led by Dark Apostles, ally with Chaos Daemons, get some possessed into the list along with lots of regular organized CSM squads.

Night Lords? Bring on the Raptors and Warp Talons. Outflank squads with Huron as a counts-as named NL character. Unleash the nightmarish spawn onto the enemy.

Nurgle? Field Typhus. Get your shambling horde of plague zombies going, give the rest of your army MoN and paint them accordingly. Ally with Daemons and spam Nurglings and other servants of disease.

Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch etc. you know the drill.

Okay then.

Ultramarines? Take 1-6 Tactical Squads, 0-2 Assault Squads, 0-2 Devastator Squads
Blood Angels? Take a lot of Assault Squads
Dark Angels? Take Bikes + Terminators and Plasma weaponry
Space Wolves? Take anything that has Close Combat capabilities

 Mumblez wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Mumblez wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Crimson Slaughter were very much an odd release. But not the only odd one.

GW for some reason has consistently refused to make Legion books, which is odd because it would basically be a license to print money. They made Crimson Slaughter, which nobody asked for or cared about. They did Black Legion...when the core codex is already built entirely around the Black Legion.

How do you figure that? Because it includes a single Black Legion named character? By that logic it's just as much Codex: Red Corsairs.

Because Black Legion has always been the vanilla legion and that's what the codex was, a little bit of everything and not enough of anything.

Does that make the Black Legion the spiky Ultramarines?

That was the basic idea.

Hmm. That makes a surprising amount of sense, actually. Now my only question is: if Marneus Calgar is the Spiritual Liege, what is Abaddon's fancy-pants title?

Failbadon the armless. * sighn*
CSM were the thing that actually brought me to wh40k. Interesting, well developed and varied armies. Sadly they never got representation in rules.

Also I don't think that thousands sons should have any hellbrutes at all, just dreds.

The probleme is that GW don't know the feth to do with CSM or Chaos.

I mean the very concepte of CSM is something coming out of the brain of a madman on LSD, in the 80's they where close to what Chaos is, take a look at the RoC books, but just like the very concept of Chaos, it was all over the place and hard to grasp, even if it meant it was unique and unparalleled by anything else in the Hobby.

It was the "feth i'm free to do what ever the feth i want, and write my own story without any bounds of any sorts" book and concept.

And when things settled down with 3rd and 4th, well they simply din't know how to mimic that or use it, it as lot of potential, but they simply fail to grasp it, and when they finaly grasp it, they just gak their pants out of fear and are too timid about it.

Chaos as an idea is limitless to what you can do, be it on a fluff point of view, or by the hobby aspect, no other army in the game as such freedom, and thats the problem, no matter what, it will always feel subpar, because it will restraint what Chaos is.

I don't have a problem with Crimson Slaughter. They are very vanilla, but if you don't have vanilla, you can't appreciate chocolate or strawberry.

In fact it's great that they flesh out non-Legion renegades too, even though I do wish that CS had bit more character.

Backfire wrote:
I don't have a problem with Crimson Slaughter. They are very vanilla, but if you don't have vanilla, you can't appreciate chocolate or strawberry.

In fact it's great that they flesh out non-Legion renegades too, even though I do wish that CS had bit more character.

But we still dont have the chocolate or strawberry.

Backfire wrote:
I don't have a problem with Crimson Slaughter. They are very vanilla, but if you don't have vanilla, you can't appreciate chocolate or strawberry.

In fact it's great that they flesh out non-Legion renegades too, even though I do wish that CS had bit more character.

Not sure what you mean by too lol. They haven't fleshed out either renegades or legions. So far it's just kinda, yea let's do marines but not quite and ...oh..I dunno..DINOBOTS that'll make em unique. That'll do for now, so let's focus on other stuff....oh wait..there's that bloodthirster coming..ah ..well...ok..let's just slap together something quick and call it a day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think that their fluff to rules ratio is at the bottom of the food chain pretty much. They have rules and units and can totally win and all...but GW still hasn't decided what they want CSM to be.

I think part of the problem is GW try to make the legions in 40K very open ended and open to interpretation, but this leaves people confused as to what a warband of any particular legion might complain.

The result is people look for examples of fleshed out warbands in novels, then over apply the hallmarks of that warband to the whole legion.

Another problem is we have instances of fluff where it says things like "night lords aren't pious followers of Chaos so struggle to maintain the conditions required to maintain daemonic allies (i.e. they use fewer daemons)" and people extrapolate it to mean "don't use any space marines that have taken on any daemonic aspects" and come to the conclusion that things like warp talons, heldrakes, mutilators, etc aren't 'fluffy' for a Night Lords warband (where I feel these units actually fit the striking from the dark with overwhelming force theme very well).

 MWHistorian wrote:

Backfire wrote:
I don't have a problem with Crimson Slaughter. They are very vanilla, but if you don't have vanilla, you can't appreciate chocolate or strawberry.

In fact it's great that they flesh out non-Legion renegades too, even though I do wish that CS had bit more character.

But we still dont have the chocolate or strawberry.

Well yea, but you gotta start with vanilla...

I'm sure the Legions are just around the corner! *smirk*

Backfire wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

Backfire wrote:
I don't have a problem with Crimson Slaughter. They are very vanilla, but if you don't have vanilla, you can't appreciate chocolate or strawberry.

In fact it's great that they flesh out non-Legion renegades too, even though I do wish that CS had bit more character.

But we still dont have the chocolate or strawberry.

Well yea, but you gotta start with vanilla...

I'm sure the Legions are just around the corner! *smirk*

Replace OP with GW.

Another note of sadness is that GW seems to have all but forgotten that chaos space marines still have different geneseeds...and also still collect them. Do they even mention that part in the codex fluff?

It gets mentioned that chaos space marines try to loot geneseed from loyalist stashes in order to create new space marines.

Traitor geneseed is generally pretty messed up from warptaint.