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Sadly, that's actually sounds quite plausible.



Well, everything apart from the 40k End Times at least...

Remember the Eye of Terror campaign? Chaos won. Loyalists threw a massive temper tantrum, one we're still paying for 14 years later. End Times 40k will never happen, simply because GW is not fool enough to **** off the largest faction of their fan base by having their Gary Stu's fail once again.

If anything happens to radically change the story of 40k, it'll be that the Loyalist Primarchs return, and lead a gloriously one-sided crusade that finally sees the Eye of Terror cleansed, the Daemon Primarchs banished and/or imprisoned for all time, and Chaos reduced to a minor annoyance that only Tyranids & Orks continue to remotely consider a potential threat.
Meanwhile, the now unstoppable Space Marines will roflstomp everyone that gets in their way, and the Xenos races will finally bow down to their power armoured masters!

A brand new game will launch, which will be called Space Marine 40k. The only relevant army will be the various flavours of Loyalist marines, and everyone else who survives the great purging will exist purely to act as punching bags.

 Malisteen wrote:
Actual prediction:

no new codex at all. CSM decurion and a couple new artifacts, none of them remarkable one way or the other, released as part of a campaign expansion late 2017.

So, basically, the IG & Ork treatment, but with even crappier bonuses and a higher ratio of unplayably bad choices?.

Unlike Necron / Tau / Eldar / SM who got full books and good bonuses?

LOL, that seems right.

And worst of all, no new models.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Well, everything apart from the 40k End Times at least...

Remember the Eye of Terror campaign? Chaos won. Loyalists threw a massive temper tantrum, one we're still paying for 14 years later. End Times 40k will never happen, simply because GW is not fool enough to **** off the largest faction of their fan base by having their Gary Stu's fail once again.

Just because 40k gets its own End Times, doesn't mean chaos has to win it like they did in WHFB. The 40k end times will happen, destruction everywhere, major setting shake up, it's already happening in the space wolves campaign. Eye of terror will pour out (along with that CSM decurion but no new codex), and make it all the way to earth... only for the emperor himself to wake up and save the day, and begin his work of re-conquering a ravaged galaxy in 'Age of Imperium' a new game replacing 40k outright, with no points values, and a simplified 4 to 8 page core rule set which will basically serve as a slightly cleaned up version of AoS, compatible enough that you could play AoI armies against AoS armies if you really wanted to.

I am hoping that GW realizes they need army wide Stubborn and/or Fearless on all the SM units, not just on IC's. That alone would basically bring them up to decently playable compared to where they are now.

Everything else would just be gravy. Yes, they need a lot to bring them up to the top tier but then I think if they just made a solid, internally balanced codex it would go a long way (but yeah, who am I kidding, we'll never get that)

I have always thought 'stubborn' and 'hatred: AotI', would make good default special rules for all Chaos Marine units (and by this I mean 'units that are chaos marines', not non-marine units in the same army like cultists and spawn). But that's wish listing and not predictions, so... *shrug*.

See, the main problem with the book is that they are the same price as loyalist marines, but lacking any kind of LD shenanigans. If they were cost appropriate sure, like 10PPM for a Chaos marine, that would be OK, but as it stands you just get less for the same price.

It's the most glaring error/issue in the 6th ed book and I am amazed it came out this way when you look at the 5th ed book. Not an example of a great book, but I mean at least they had army-wide Fearless.

I would not be happy with 10ppm CSM. While it would accurately represent the fluff to have hordes of them being mowed down by even the most meager resistance, they are supposed to be Legiones Astartes, buffed to OPness by the powers of Chaos.

But, as it stands, every Imperial officer and his moral support has a carpet of corrupted power armour lining their battle records.

 More Dakka wrote:
See, the main problem with the book is that they are the same price as loyalist marines, but lacking any kind of LD shenanigans. If they were cost appropriate sure, like 10PPM for a Chaos marine, that would be OK, but as it stands you just get less for the same price.

It's the most glaring error/issue in the 6th ed book and I am amazed it came out this way when you look at the 5th ed book. Not an example of a great book, but I mean at least they had army-wide Fearless.

The problem with Chaos is that we still have to pay through to nose for every potential basic special rule we can access, not just Ld issues.

Even at 10pts/model base, by the time you add in VotLW + Mark of Chaos (our current awful versions of ATSKNF + 1/2 Chapter Tactics), you're back up to 12 - 14pts/model. But then we still have to pay of the inflated 'Champion tax', since we can never opt out of taking him, and still factor in an Icon (equalling the other half of our Chapter Tactics)
So, by the time your basic rules are all paid for, even with a 10pts/model base, we'd still be overcosted, since we've functionally never left 4th/early 5th edition.

And that's before we even touch on the myriad of other issues, such as how Champion of Chaos is even more self defeating than Mob Rule, no delivery systems for any of our assault options, lack of deathstars and/or deathstar counters, seeing our Legion rules removed because "they're too complicated" only for Loyalists to get & keep the exact same things in Chapter Tactics, etc...


We need a Maple Loafs re-build at this point...

Blow everything up. The codex, the entire model line, EVERYTHING! (even the newest kits - burn them all!)
It's long past time that GW really needs to go full-on Dark Eldar mode.

Haha, good analogy, sadly army books don't get first round draft picks for being DFL!

yeah for sure there's a lot of issues, but the LD problem just breaks the fluff as well as the game for me, so until at least that is addressed I won't even consider using the CSM codex.

 More Dakka wrote:
Haha, good analogy, sadly army books don't get first round draft picks for being DFL!

yeah for sure there's a lot of issues, but the LD problem just breaks the fluff as well as the game for me, so until at least that is addressed I won't even consider using the CSM codex.

Well, to be fair, CSM's should never be the stupidly blind & foolishly ultra-brave morons that those brain-washed Loyalists are.

I'd settle for Stubborn in close combat + only lose D6 models when failing to break away before the rest auto-re-group, since close quarters is where every Chaos Marines aspires to be - reveling in his superiority above all other lowly mortals, drinking in their fear and bathing in their blood!
On the other hand, Chaos Marines have no question about turning tail and leaving their 'brothers' to die in their place when resistance is especially stiff, especially when they're getting shot to pieces.

we need to keep that distinction for sure. But we should be a helluva lot harder to break in assaults than we currently are.

VotLW granting Stubborn and Hatred: Armies of the Imperium would be welcome. Possibly for only 1 pt/model.

Personally, I have no idea what to expect if/when we ever get another codex. I suspect we will get a massive chaos model line update akin to Dark Eldar but as far as rules go it could go anywhere.

The new BL and CS formations definitely don't bode well for us thats for sure. Those formations for the most part are completely useless game wise. And at the end of the day Chaos cannot even begin to think about being a competitive army without cheap and effective assault transports, deep strike scatter mitigation/reserves bonuses or Space Marine level shooting bonuses and grav weapons.

Nobody at GW currently has either the balls, interest or insight into how to make a solid Chaos Marines army.

Or, how about just making them start at Fearless. For FREE. Because they see actual Chaos stuff, so they're not going to be afraid of mere mortal bullets. The idea that they can break and run is ridiculous.

I disagree. They should be able to flee. They don't have ATSKNF for a reason, they abandoned their Emperor and humanity to serve themselves and the dark gods. They are completely self serving many of whom lack honour. They don't necessarily flee out of fear, but more as an act of self preservation.

The cult marines? sure, they should have fearless in many cases but certainly not armies like the Night Lords.

They should definitely have "Legion Traits" for free like the space marines do, but of all the gakky terrible rules that the new codex has, the only thing that I like to come out of it is VotLW. I think its fluffy and separates newer Chaos Marines from the ones that have been in the eye for hundreds of years. The main problem with it is that it costs too much and doesnt benefit the unit enough.

Fine, then CSM get ATSKNF, too. CSMs should never be cut down during a tactical repositioning. That's just stupid.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Fine, then CSM get ATSKNF, too. CSMs should never be cut down during a tactical repositioning. That's just stupid.

See I think instead, we should get a rule (maybe tied into VoLW since they are supposed to be the most bad ass of the traitor legions forces) that actually negates ATSKNF. So many space marine forces have special rules and equipment that gives them extra bonuses against CSM, most times in assault where we should be winning, that we instead should have a rule that makes their marines actually scared of us and get chased and cut down. We are supposed to be their oldest enemy and most dangerous, knowing their tactics, command layout, and home worlds, yet we can't figure out how far they are going to "tactically retreat" to as defined by the codex adeptus astartus that all our troops learned from long ago?

You give CSM a rule to nullify ATSKNF and suddenly assaults are less one sided. The fear rule that seems to be on every other unit in our codex has a use again. Plus it would be nice for once to have loyalist players see a CSM list and go "gak, now my guys are gonna run away." Instead having to resort to fearless HQs to keep units where they need to be... Just like us.

Actually, I'm planning on something like that for my homebrew stuff. I'm changing Sweeping Advance to be less all-or-nothing, to allow for design space in buffing assault without worrying about conflicts with the current sweep rules, and one of the changes is that (normally) you don't actually re-tie an opponent up in combat after forcing them to flee, you just get an extra round of attacks counting the opponent as WS1.
Chaos Marines, however, DO hold the enemy in combat, showing their relentless advance and vast combat experience.

 Mr_Piddlez wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Fine, then CSM get ATSKNF, too. CSMs should never be cut down during a tactical repositioning. That's just stupid.

See I think instead, we should get a rule (maybe tied into VoLW since they are supposed to be the most bad ass of the traitor legions forces) that actually negates ATSKNF. So many space marine forces have special rules and equipment that gives them extra bonuses against CSM, most times in assault where we should be winning, that we instead should have a rule that makes their marines actually scared of us and get chased and cut down. We are supposed to be their oldest enemy and most dangerous, knowing their tactics, command layout, and home worlds, yet we can't figure out how far they are going to "tactically retreat" to as defined by the codex adeptus astartus that all our troops learned from long ago?

You give CSM a rule to nullify ATSKNF and suddenly assaults are less one sided. The fear rule that seems to be on every other unit in our codex has a use again. Plus it would be nice for once to have loyalist players see a CSM list and go "gak, now my guys are gonna run away." Instead having to resort to fearless HQs to keep units where they need to be... Just like us.

I could definitely get behind that. I play both sides (favor loyalists though), but lore wise it would make sense and it would go a long way towards evening the playing field.

CSM can't get Ld shenanigans or Deep Strike mitigation. Those core rules are there for a reason - what's the use if everyone's going to ignore them? Someone's gotta follow them and it sure as hell isn't going to be the goodguys.

It'S kinda hard to get that down. On the one hand they should pretty much all be fearless in the actual sense, not the rule. The majority deal with horrors that would give the average citizen a heart attack or drive them balls to the wall insane on a daily basis. A few dead csm would barely register to them. And the whole "angel of death" thing kinda gets lost on you when you have the same body, except now imbued with unholy strength.

On the other hand self preservation matters to them more than to marines since they know the price of failure in the eye of the gods all too well. Plus they want to realize their own selfish goals, which doesn't work so well when you're a just a figment of soul being tormented for eternity.

They're not exactly forgiving when it comes to treason either. So if one of the squad decided to make a run for it, while the champ thinks he can increase his power? I doubt he'd let that guy go. Bringing the rest of the squad in line much like a commissar would (except with more gore). Similarly I don't really see them fleeing close combat. It would be much more likely to be cut down while retreating than to press your luck.... unless you can trip your fellow marine into the attackers to keep them busy.

So in game terms I dunno, it Shouldn't be flat out fearless. But maybe something along the lines of a commisar where getting sweeped/failing moral would instead kill d3 and the remaining guys get to move d6 in any direction. I feel it should be at least on par with atsknf but different. This way they would sacrifice some poor sod and either do a tactical retreat or go for a more juicy target if greed overcomes your champ while the attackers are busy maiming his buddies.

Could still work with stubborn and co vs the imperium of man.

Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

Chaos marines are a separate thing. You could just give them all fearless and veterans to give them ability to choose to fail morale checks when there would be one + hatred (everything because we are not clashing with just imperials).
Is this fluffy? Yes. On top of that this is a gale and "fluffy" means nothing if the game is not balanced.

shiwan8 wrote:
Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

Chaos marines are a separate thing. You could just give them all fearless and veterans to give them ability to choose to fail morale checks when there would be one + hatred (everything because we are not clashing with just imperials).
Is this fluffy? Yes. On top of that this is a gale and "fluffy" means nothing if the game is not balanced.

Maybe because at their core, Chaos Marines are simply Loyalists who've traded Imperial brain-washing & dogma for selfish desires and enslavement to the Dark Gods?

Really, that's the main difference between a Loyalist vs. Chaos Marine.

Both are merely slaves in their own way. However, Loyalists don't know any better than to die for sometimes meaningless goals or ideals. They'll rigidly stand firm and throw away their lives even when victory is unachievable, because their indoctrination tells them to. (Imperial Fists and their successors are well known for this!)
A Chaos Marine on the other hand knows when to save his own skin and/or leave another to die in his stead.

Chaos Marines should be as prone to falling back to enemy shooting as everyone else, perhaps even slightly more so when their unit is getting really hammered!
However, when it comes to close combat, there's very little that's scarier than a blood hungry Traitor Marine reveling in his glory, and at this point, they should be just as hard, if not slightly harder to break than a Loyalist Marine.

Forget unnecessary army wide special rules that only make the game more and more bloated. Just bring back veteran traits and make them available to VotLW units (simple things like infiltration or moving through ruins would be enough).

Then Legion specific rules like in 3.5. You don't need much to provide each Legion with a specific and interesting flavour. Make Vindicators 0-1 for regular CSM but Iron Warriors, and allow them to take Basilisks again. Give Night Fighters to the Night Lords and allow their Raptors to hit and run again. Etc.

Then give Chosen the statline they deserve. WS5, 2 wounds. Plus a free veteran trait of choice. I wouldn't mind paying 20+ points for each base Chosen if they were like that. Expensive, but the kind of unit that outflanks inside their rhino in turn 2 or 3 and the opponent craps his pants.

The issue is, I'm not sure the current state of the game would really allow an army like CSM to shine in any kind of way. The game is currently dominated by things that can vaporise the enemy either by shooting it with insane firepower from 30'' away or more, or flawlessly deepstrike in your face and shoot you with some Str. D flamer then charge you in the assault phase because general rules are for losers, ha-ha-ha.

In the end it doesn't matter, GW doesn't care at all, they know quite well the mess they've created but they are not interested in fixing anything. The rules designers are incompetent beyond measure, they don't even know what they're doing most of the time, and it's been this way for a long, long time.

Legion rules should be like Chapter Tactics (Legion Legacy?), but granted on a per-unit basis so you can mix and match in a single army. The downside would be that units drawn from different Legions would treat each other as Allies of Convenience or Desperate Allies. Maybe even have a legion ally grid (Iron Warriors don't trust anybody and everyone hates Emperor's Children for example). This would give you an incentive to concentrate rather than just put WE on all your cc units and IW on all your shooty units.

The Warlord and his Chosen could act as enforcers and have rules to help override the downsides, basically holding your disparate Warband together. Black Legion could get a bonus to this to reflect their polyglot composition.

Black Legion itself would not be on the Legion Legacy list at all since they're really a warband, not a true First Founding legion. Instead the Legion Legacy would be Sons of Horus - this would be used to distinguish Black Legion CSM from the old Sons of Horus vs recruits from other legions/chapters.

shiwan8 wrote:
Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

CSM are essentially similar to, and equivalent to SMs. However, they are currently strictly inferior, which is bad game design. CSM should be generally superior, but fewer in number. Basic CSM to a very small degree, Cult CSM to a high degree. ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics shouldn't elevate SM to be a clearly superior option for essentially identical models.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

CSM are essentially similar to, and equivalent to SMs. However, they are currently strictly inferior, which is bad game design. CSM should be generally superior, but fewer in number. Basic CSM to a very small degree, Cult CSM to a high degree. ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics shouldn't elevate SM to be a clearly superior option for essentially identical models.

I agree. My point was that if this wishlisting only aimw for balance between CSM and marines then everything else is still likely to beat us without much effort. I personally think that a fair chance against all opponents should be the goal.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

CSM are essentially similar to, and equivalent to SMs. However, they are currently strictly inferior, which is bad game design. CSM should be generally superior, but fewer in number. Basic CSM to a very small degree, Cult CSM to a high degree. ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics shouldn't elevate SM to be a clearly superior option for essentially identical models.

This whole line of conversation comes from the CSM codex being used by GW to represent too many thing.You said earlier CSM should be fearless because of all the Chaos horrors they've endured and then someone countered that they shouldn't because they turned from the Emperor and are no longer a selfless indoctrinated force... But you're both right. One of you are effectively talking about former legionaries and the other about "Renegades" and this is the problem with how GW represents Chaos Marines with a single book in 40k.

I think when it comes to the former legions, they should be fearless for free, but it should come with caveats... something in the vein of "if your warlord dies" you lose it, as it reinforces the idea of the unifying will and wrath of a Chaos Lord being the driving force that keeps a warband operating like an army rather than just a mob.

I think Renegades are bit more difficult, because the Chaos codex as a whole so complete misses it on trying to represent a former loyalist chapter. There are shades of grey on the path to chaos where some Renegades aren't necessarily aligned with the Ruinous powers, where it's more an Imperial imposed label than a dogmatic practice, and where they still operate more like a loyalist chapter. Then there is the other extreme where they are starting to look more and more like the former legionaries due to they growing number of alliances with chaos warbands and dependence on materiale from the Dark Mechanicum.

IF GW split Chaos Marines into a book for the former Legionaries and a book for the Renegades it'd be easier to represent Chaos and by virtue of being easier it would allow the book to focus on a theme better.

 aka_mythos wrote:
someone countered that they shouldn't because they turned from the Emperor and are no longer a selfless indoctrinated force...

Except, that's bunk.

If a CSM is "born again" and "found Gawd", he's not backing down.

Heck, look at the esprit de corps of the Warmahordes and Infinity players on Dakka who've forsaken GW as their former passion.

 aka_mythos wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

shiwan8 wrote:
Has anyone here noticed how you are debating how CSM should work in relation to loyalists? Theres more to this game than that.

CSM are essentially similar to, and equivalent to SMs. However, they are currently strictly inferior, which is bad game design. CSM should be generally superior, but fewer in number. Basic CSM to a very small degree, Cult CSM to a high degree. ATSKNF and Chapter Tactics shouldn't elevate SM to be a clearly superior option for essentially identical models.

This whole line of conversation comes from the CSM codex being used by GW to represent too many thing.You said earlier CSM should be fearless because of all the Chaos horrors they've endured and then someone countered that they shouldn't because they turned from the Emperor and are no longer a selfless indoctrinated force... But you're both right. One of you are effectively talking about former legionaries and the other about "Renegades" and this is the problem with how GW represents Chaos Marines with a single book in 40k.

I think when it comes to the former legions, they should be fearless for free, but it should come with caveats... something in the vein of "if your warlord dies" you lose it, as it reinforces the idea of the unifying will and wrath of a Chaos Lord being the driving force that keeps a warband operating like an army rather than just a mob.

I think Renegades are bit more difficult, because the Chaos codex as a whole so complete misses it on trying to represent a former loyalist chapter. There are shades of grey on the path to chaos where some Renegades aren't necessarily aligned with the Ruinous powers, where it's more an Imperial imposed label than a dogmatic practice, and where they still operate more like a loyalist chapter. Then there is the other extreme where they are starting to look more and more like the former legionaries due to they growing number of alliances with chaos warbands and dependence on materiale from the Dark Mechanicum.

IF GW split Chaos Marines into a book for the former Legionaries and a book for the Renegades it'd be easier to represent Chaos and by virtue of being easier it would allow the book to focus on a theme better.

Ideally, considering we're never going to get more than one book for Chaos, GW goes the route of putting less emphasis on the 10,000 veterans of the Heresy, and instead things like Legion Tactics, etc... are more geared towards simply allowing the various warbands to fight in way that's reminiscent of their heritage.

Basic bread and butter Chaos Marines are either the recently turned traitors, and/or the lesser clones that the older Legions churn out to replace their losses. (it may have been awful compared to the first two Ultramarine novels, but 'Dead Sky Black Sun' gave an awesome insight into how the Iron Warriors create 'new' traitor marines!)

Now a unit like Chosen however? Yeah, these guys are ****ing insane! THESE guys are a unit composed entirely of Heresy veterans, or the Honour Guards/Command Squads, etc... of their former Chapter.
Allow them to function similar to old school Wolf Guard, in that you can 'break off' individual models to act as additional leaders and/or bullies amongst your other squads.

It would also really allow Chaos players to build up a cadre of lesser Lieutenants and higher ranked Champions who act as the eyes & ears and enforcers of the warband's Chaos Lord!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
someone countered that they shouldn't because they turned from the Emperor and are no longer a selfless indoctrinated force...

Except, that's bunk.

If a CSM is "born again" and "found Gawd", he's not backing down.

That is why I go on to emphasize the weakness in the nebulous approach GW has taken is that not all Renegades have "found Gawd" and that you have these two types of Chaos Marines that are should be as different from each other if not more so than Space Wolves from Ultramarines. The book fails representing both because of these sorts of distinctions. I would like to see both get their own books, but if we're stuck with a singular book I do prefer the sort of conditional fearless like I mentioned before.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Experiment 626 wrote:

Ideally, considering we're never going to get more than one book for Chaos, GW goes the route of putting less emphasis on the 10,000 veterans of the Heresy, and instead things like Legion Tactics, etc... are more geared towards simply allowing the various warbands to fight in way that's reminiscent of their heritage.

Basic bread and butter Chaos Marines are either the recently turned traitors, and/or the lesser clones that the older Legions churn out to replace their losses. (it may have been awful compared to the first two Ultramarine novels, but 'Dead Sky Black Sun' gave an awesome insight into how the Iron Warriors create 'new' traitor marines!)

Now a unit like Chosen however? Yeah, these guys are ****ing insane! THESE guys are a unit composed entirely of Heresy veterans, or the Honour Guards/Command Squads, etc... of their former Chapter.
Allow them to function similar to old school Wolf Guard, in that you can 'break off' individual models to act as additional leaders and/or bullies amongst your other squads.

It would also really allow Chaos players to build up a cadre of lesser Lieutenants and higher ranked Champions who act as the eyes & ears and enforcers of the warband's Chaos Lord!

I'd be cool with that sort of concept if GW went that route. 10,000 years of chaos' perversion and deviation with gene-tech would likely give us something far more interesting than the basic "chaos space marine" squad. I'm a fan of Fabius Bile and seeing the result of similar efforts taken by other groups to maintain their warband and legion strength would provide an opportunity to give more character to a unit that's often brushed aside in favor of cultists.

I'm not a fan of the formations that are in the Black Legion and Crimson Slaughter supplements, but one thing I think it does sorta right is when you take the formation-of-formations you end up with a 5 or 6 independent characters... kinda giving you something like what you're getting at with Lieutenants...but also serves GW's purpose of portraying chaos as disparate warbands and units that come together to form an army rather than being something constantly cohesive.