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Please. Give Chaos Space Marines some way to stay in combat. They cost just as much as a normal Space Marine, but they are a bunch of pansies. If they lose one guy in close combat, they proceed to fail their leadership and get caught in a sweeping advance.

Not that they necessarily need to be fearless, just something. Higher leadership? Reroll failed leadership checks? Maybe one of the Marks they can take helps them out? (I was thinking Mark of Khorne, since it turns them into basically madmen). Or have some other way to excuse the equal point cost while still being able to run away.

Honestly, they should get And They Shall Know No Fear but rename it And They Know They Are Fear

They should get stubborn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And deny sweeping advance.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Honestly, they should get And They Shall Know No Fear but rename it And They Know They Are Fear

I like this.

My idea was to give the champion another wound and access to a larger variety of Wargear (so he does better in a challenge) and add to the "Champion Of Chaos" special rule that if the champion is victorious in a challenge, the squad gains Fearless until their next turn.

Make CSM cheaper by the dozen to compensate for the lack of atsknf.

Giving them stubborn wouldn't be a bad idea, or possibly drop in cost by one point each perhaps.

atsknf is worth 5ppm in my opinion. Just an arbitrary number I decided on.

That's exactly how GW creates rules too

Tactical_Spam wrote:
Honestly, they should get And They Shall Know No Fear but rename it And They Know They Are Fear

ATSKNF represents marines being heavily and continuously brainwashed into being obedient to their superiours, eager to die in the name of whatever they're fighting for and being fanatical about it. CSMs of the old legions never practioned breainwashing (it was included after the Heresy), and renegades dropped that practice, as they viewed "hypno-indocrination" as a leash and a symbol of their servitude to the corpse-emperor.

If anything, I would like SCMs having second (this time unmodified stubborn-style) morale check if they get caught by sweeping advance, and if they succed they pretty much go "oh, snap, running away only gets us all killed" and stay in the fight much like the loyalists. Oh, and heroic morale on everything, like on legions, so the don't need snake eyes on the heavily beaten squads to stop running away. Probably re-rolling fear test too, since they had seen some gak.

Teo wrote:
Please. Give Chaos Space Marines some way to stay in combat. They cost just as much as a normal Space Marine, but they are a bunch of pansies. If they lose one guy in close combat, they proceed to fail their leadership and get caught in a sweeping advance.

Not that they necessarily need to be fearless, just something. Higher leadership? Reroll failed leadership checks? Maybe one of the Marks they can take helps them out? (I was thinking Mark of Khorne, since it turns them into basically madmen). Or have some other way to excuse the equal point cost while still being able to run away.

They have access to Veterans Of The Long War - which is higher leadership - and the Icon Of Vengeance - which gives them Fearless. In addition, the Chaos Lord and Dark Apostle (and Herald if you're a daemonkin player) are all fearless, and confer this to their unit.

I'm happy to agree that they pay too much for these abilities compared to basic space marines (Chapter Tactics + And They Shall Know No Fear should definitely cost more than 1 point) but they do have them.

Daemonkin are a step in the right direction as Blood For The Blood God! is a match for chapter tactics, and the Mark Of Khorne is not a bad price for what you pay for it on marines. We could do with equivalents for the other four powers though, and that's a lot less likely because rules releases are driven by GW model releases; Khorne Daemonkin was primarily driven by the Bloodthirster releases and the fact that the Lord Of Skulls wasn't in any extent codex.

They should be immune to fear and sweeping advances, but everything else is fine. Generic CSM running off the board or getting pinned is fluffy because they have a sense of self-preservation, whereas Marines don't.

Immune to Fear should be a given (or better, ATSKNF should only give loyalist marines a re-roll on Fear to make Fear less of a waste, and CSM should have a matching rule). Whatever the case, CSM should be equal to their loyalist counterparts in not freezing in fear.

I also don't think CSM should be immune to sweeping advances, but there should be some minor penalty - this is a matter of discipline vs self preservation and they do tend towards the latter. Like maybe they lose a number of models equal to the difference in sweeping advance dice rolls if they are caught by a sweeping advance (to represent a few marines taking the opportunity to run, while the rest stay). Not the result, just the difference in the dice roll (subtract low from high, regardless of which side rolled which). This gives a nice distribution from 0 to 5 where you're most likely to only lose 1 model. The distribution (rounded):

17% chance to lose zero
28% chance to lose one
22% chance to lose two
17% chance to lose three
11% chance to lose four
6% chance to lose five

 Filch wrote:
atsknf is worth 5ppm in my opinion. Just an arbitrary number I decided on.

That's way too much. In many cases, it is a disadvantage.

I think they should be better at running away. My thought experiment CSM unit takes inspiration from the crusader squad, allowing one to add Initiates (CSM with -1 WS, BS and Ld) to swell the ranks, but led by CSM and a champion. And when they get caught in a sweep, the unit can sacrifice up to 6 initiates to add that number to their sweep test.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
They should be immune to fear and sweeping advances, but everything else is fine. Generic CSM running off the board or getting pinned is fluffy because they have a sense of self-preservation, whereas Marines don't.

Hear, hear.

Actually if they got another round of overwatch type shooting it could balance out.

fight combat, lose by whatever and bolt....the bolting squad fires as they leave, if they kill their pursuers then they are not removed if they do not kill ALL of them then they are removed.

Call it ambush tactics or something.

Many of these marines have seen the worst and survived, they should be able to take down a pursuit, if not then they deserved to die.

I think it fits their style to be cowards. Without a strong Fearless leader around to keep them under control, they're running off the table. Even their sorcerers are cowards who would prefer to hang out in the back.

But since sticking a Chaos Lord in EVERY SQUAD isn't a feasible idea, I think instead just giving the champion an optional (or automatic) Fearless upgrade would work. That way, if he dies, the unit runs away. But as long as he's around, they stand and fight knowing they'll be executed or worse if they turn and flee. Makes even challenges more exciting when you can possibly lose the guy keeping your unit's morale in check!

I don't think Chaos Space Marines should be immune to fear because they're basically being ruled by it. When there's no hierarchy of worth but instead everyone is terrified of Abaddon and his friends, they are clearly not fearless. I mean who would actually group with Kharn knowing his reputation? A guy who values his spinal cord, that's who.

Who would group whith Kharn? Any Khorne loving CSM worth his salt. What better than to spill blood beside the greatest champion of the skull throne? And if you get hacked down for being in his way, Khorne cares not from where the blood flows.....