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You know, I don't think in my years and years I have ever heard fluff as to why Chaos backpacks have their exhaust vents out on arms (other than originally for a different look, of course).

Does any of the new Heresy stuff make any mention? I would assume even if it was a legitimate but niche design for a powerplant, at least some marines, loyal or otherwise, would have that style during the Heresy, and Forgeworld, in their pretty detailed designs to evoke that period, would make them?

The only explanation I've ever seen is in Betrayal, where there's a *single* Death Guard with a chaos style backpack described as: ".. a prototype Anvilus pattern backpack unit - this variant has enhanced stabalising thruster vents to aid in void operation, but inferior rad shielding."

Anvilus 9 was a Forge World, overrun by renegade Techpriests at the outset of the Heresy.

I always assumed they had been twisted by the warp.

For the same reason CSM don't get things like assault cannons, fancy land raiders etc and yet 30k BA can load up on both.

GW/FW need to shuffle things around to suit the accountants.

The actual design? Those are jump packs.


CSM had an option to take em back in the day- and if you look at the very old csm packs, the arm vents were slotted on top of regular vents.


The design got copied across to the next sculpts but without the normal vents. Nowadays its all pseudoscience, technobabble reasons.

Huh wow.. never noticed that. Looks like a lot of my renegades actually have jump packs

 MarsNZ wrote:
For the same reason CSM don't get things like assault cannons, fancy land raiders etc and yet 30k BA can load up on both.

GW/FW need to shuffle things around to suit the accountants.

landraiders tend to decay when warpy stuff happens (also, to be fair, there's only 1 non-forgeworld land raider available to the legions, the one everyone hates in 40k), also, Exactly: the ONLY 2 legions with assault cannons are imperial fists and blood angels.

Well, damn. Seems like every once in awhile I get shown old stuff I didn't know about-every time I find new Rogue Trader era stuff it's like buried treasure. Thanks, Angel!

i actually have one of those old Chaos packs, and never really noticed how they compared to the ancient Imperial packs I have rolling around, as I am so used to the extended arm vents from 2e onwards.

 MarsNZ wrote:
For the same reason CSM don't get things like assault cannons, fancy land raiders etc and yet 30k BA can load up on both.

GW/FW need to shuffle things around to suit the accountants.

It's not really so nefarious.

It's just so that each faction would have its own things.

I mean, I hear Chaos players gripe about this all the time, but suddenly reverse the situation. Chaos Marines get everything regular Marines have, but then they get all the Chaosy goodness too. Which leaves Space Marines as Chaos Marines without all the Daemons.

Whether or not the rules have always been effective at balancing out the factions is irrelevant. Chaos Marines gave up all the goodies that regular Marines get because instead of Techmarines and Forgeworlds, their armories are run by dudes who don't care about boring things like Razorbacks and would rather build a giant metal dog with a flamethrower mouth.

 =Angel= wrote:
The actual design? Those are jump packs.


CSM had an option to take em back in the day- and if you look at the very old csm packs, the arm vents were slotted on top of regular vents.

That's the only bit of art in existence of them functioning like that, and there's also art from the era of regular packs being used to the same effect:
http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2009/5/24/1109-Copyright%20Games%20Workshop,%20Imperial%20Guard,%20Jump%20Pack,%20Retro%20Review,%20Rogue%20Trader.jpg

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:
For the same reason CSM don't get things like assault cannons, fancy land raiders etc and yet 30k BA can load up on both.

GW/FW need to shuffle things around to suit the accountants.

It's not really so nefarious.

It's just so that each faction would have its own things.

I mean, I hear Chaos players gripe about this all the time, but suddenly reverse the situation. Chaos Marines get everything regular Marines have, but then they get all the Chaosy goodness too. Which leaves Space Marines as Chaos Marines without all the Daemons.

Whether or not the rules have always been effective at balancing out the factions is irrelevant. Chaos Marines gave up all the goodies that regular Marines get because instead of Techmarines and Forgeworlds, their armories are run by dudes who don't care about boring things like Razorbacks and would rather build a giant metal dog with a flamethrower mouth.

I think the issue is that CSM are deprived of things that they should logically still keep (like drop pods), not that they are deprived of things that the loyalists have invented since the Heresy (such as the Redeemer).

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:
For the same reason CSM don't get things like assault cannons, fancy land raiders etc and yet 30k BA can load up on both.

GW/FW need to shuffle things around to suit the accountants.

It's not really so nefarious.

It's just so that each faction would have its own things.

I mean, I hear Chaos players gripe about this all the time, but suddenly reverse the situation. Chaos Marines get everything regular Marines have, but then they get all the Chaosy goodness too. Which leaves Space Marines as Chaos Marines without all the Daemons.

Whether or not the rules have always been effective at balancing out the factions is irrelevant. Chaos Marines gave up all the goodies that regular Marines get because instead of Techmarines and Forgeworlds, their armories are run by dudes who don't care about boring things like Razorbacks and would rather build a giant metal dog with a flamethrower mouth.

I think the issue is that CSM are deprived of things that they should logically still keep (like drop pods), not that they are deprived of things that the loyalists have invented since the Heresy (such as the Redeemer).

but how many drop pods would they realistically have easy access to? the traitor legions basically used all of them at terra, and then had to book it without recovering them. Night lords, I think, should still have them, and it's possible that CSM could have looted them since then, but by the same logic, CSM should have access to Battle tanks. Honestly, I think the best way to play the occassional chaos force that has drop pods is to use unbound like it was intended to: a fluffy list that you generally can't make without some help.

They would still have the blueprints, no?

 Ashiraya wrote:
They would still have the blueprints, no?

No? the legions didn't make most of their stuff, that would be the mechanicum, but even then, the dark mechanicum are more interested in biotechnology and titan than making drop pods.

 Brennonjw wrote:


but how many drop pods would they realistically have easy access to? the traitor legions basically used all of them at terra, and then had to book it without recovering them. Night lords, I think, should still have them, and it's possible that CSM could have looted them since then, but by the same logic, CSM should have access to Battle tanks. Honestly, I think the best way to play the occassional chaos force that has drop pods is to use unbound like it was intended to: a fluffy list that you generally can't make without some help.

Drop pods are glorified escape pods. Chaos still build and capture starships, and I can see them removing all the escape pods on the crew decks, armouring them up and improving the engines.
Compared to all the deamon engines and what not they've built since then (or has mutated out of existing equipment) drop pods are relatively simple, we've been making them in M2.


Now, 40k drop pods don't even need life support- the marine's armour(or mutations?) will take care of that for them.
All they need is a big engine to get up to speed, maneuvering engines to aim and brake jets and suspension so they don't kill everyone inside when they land.

Not to hijack...

I have about a dozen of those R/T era packs, if anyone wants them.

Consistency aside, one of the FW HH books has a Marine with that design of backpack with some (paraphrased) description that the wider spacing is for Void maneuvering.

Edit - It's HH Book 1. Anvilus pattern backpack for Void operations on a DG.