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 Drasius wrote:

 Rydria wrote:
I just opened my codex now and cringed when I noticed that mark of slaanesh is 2pts/model on everything even Havocs, I feel like i'm getting punished for wanting to play a mono god army.

It's also 1ppm on oblits. Who have powerfists. And can't get any other weapons. Perhaps you'd like to pay 10 points for the nurgle banner on possessed? That gives fear. To a daemons unit. There are countless examples of this throughout the poor joke that we call a Codex.

You can't even sweep units with Oblits because there slow and purposeful.

That +1 initiative increases your durability against warp spiders, now how OP is that for just 1 point you get toughness 5 against 1 model in the game.

 aka_mythos wrote:
Mechanics like this are just more palatable when they are thematically carried through rather than just being tacked on. It wouldn't be as bad if the Champions actually stood a chance, if they were more interesting, and if they had the means to be developed as individual powerhouses. IF they were good, they would be forced to roll on the table more often and GW would sell more Spawn and more Daemon Princes.

I think the problem is that you're challenging characters that are designed to beat you (aka space marines). Champion of Chaos is there to reward you for challenging IG sergeants and the like. And also to make sure you do your mookly duty by forcing you to challenge Chapter Master Smashfether to heroic single combat and losing. Cinematically.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
Mechanics like this are just more palatable when they are thematically carried through rather than just being tacked on. It wouldn't be as bad if the Champions actually stood a chance, if they were more interesting, and if they had the means to be developed as individual powerhouses. IF they were good, they would be forced to roll on the table more often and GW would sell more Spawn and more Daemon Princes.

I think the problem is that you're challenging characters that are designed to beat you (aka space marines). Champion of Chaos is there to reward you for challenging IG sergeants and the like. And also to make sure you do your mookly duty by forcing you to challenge Chapter Master Smashfether to heroic single combat and losing. Cinematically.

You know it might be interesting to see like Harlequins or various others where the Champion of Chaos becomes a sort of "Mini Lieutenant" where he gains a higher statline, 2 wounds and the like.

Of course that's more or less just hopeful wishlisting..

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
Mechanics like this are just more palatable when they are thematically carried through rather than just being tacked on. It wouldn't be as bad if the Champions actually stood a chance, if they were more interesting, and if they had the means to be developed as individual powerhouses. IF they were good, they would be forced to roll on the table more often and GW would sell more Spawn and more Daemon Princes.

I think the problem is that you're challenging characters that are designed to beat you (aka space marines). Champion of Chaos is there to reward you for challenging IG sergeants and the like. And also to make sure you do your mookly duty by forcing you to challenge Chapter Master Smashfether to heroic single combat and losing. Cinematically.

I understand what your saying, but I'd counter that a victory out of combat with an inferior foe is not heroic, its mundane.

CSM is suffering from a severe case of "the fiction means nothing" when you compare it to our rules... this severe disconnect makes it impossible to represent CSM in any meaningful way. No codex is perfect, and no reasonable CSM player really expects us to get everything, but its hard to stomach getting next to nothing of the things we are told to expect by the fiction.

 Rydria wrote:

 Drasius wrote:

 Rydria wrote:
I just opened my codex now and cringed when I noticed that mark of slaanesh is 2pts/model on everything even Havocs, I feel like i'm getting punished for wanting to play a mono god army.

It's also 1ppm on oblits. Who have powerfists. And can't get any other weapons. Perhaps you'd like to pay 10 points for the nurgle banner on possessed? That gives fear. To a daemons unit. There are countless examples of this throughout the poor joke that we call a Codex.

You can't even sweep units with Oblits because there slow and purposeful.

That +1 initiative increases your durability against warp spiders, now how OP is that for just 1 point you get toughness 5 against 1 model in the game.

Also, some Blind protection and some psy power protection that involves ini tests...well, there might be one. At least i remember wolves had this earth crack thing.

There were a few comments about people complaining about csm players whining and what isn't represented in the current dex, so I figured I'D list a few things that we already had and lost.

We were the only army that could summon daemons, which were also part of our dex. I don't mind them separating, but we lost some of our charcter being not being able to summons anymore. WE got that back later, except not really because everybody else got it too when they shouldn't. Any space marine or eldar caught summoning daemons would be executed on the spot. Plus, we're not even good at it unless you take a daemon prince or a CS artifact. And what self respecting sorcerer would want to sacrifice himself in order to summon a greater daemon, that's what you have summoning rituals/sacrifces for.

Artificer Armour. That was taken away and replaced by nothing. We have it now on the warpsmith and oblits/mutilators, but that is a staple of csm lore. Their armour fusing with their body, and yet we can't take it.
Master crafted weapons. The lore is full of mentions of our ornate/barocque armour/ships. We destroy worlds to get our hands on loot and steal gear from defeated character. But none of that is master crafted because reasons.
Teleport Homers!?! Not only that, our icons also acted as beacons. We were more than capable of deepstriking accurately and into the heart of the enemy as the lore likes to describe. And we didn't need to shoehorn a cabal into our list to fish for a psychic power to do it.

Undivided was an actual thing and all four gods have had all kinds of unique wargear over the codices. Now? Go Khorne or go home.
We also had Sorcerer LORDS, not the second in command we have now. It was an upgrade for full blown lord, Like you would expect any TSons lord to be.
Thousand sons were't stuck with an attached sorcerer and were immune to small arms fire (literally immune). Which I think represents their fluff much better than AP3 bolters.
Possessed not only had bolt pistols, they even had the option to take bolters. (wasn't really a good idea but I liked it and if we could have cult possessed, it would make sense for Tzeentch)
Raptors had hit&run, like you would expect for night lords. The also made it so you would fall back automatically if they won CC, but we actually kinda got that back now with the raptor talon. So yay, one to scratch of the list.

Not sure if marines still have that, but we had bionics. Essentially a poor mans RP, but very fluffy for iron warriors.
We even had (some) god specific vehicle upgrades.

This isn't a comprehensive list either, we had our own guns and all, but we've being continually stripped down edition after edition.
As far as I'm concerned, what csm players want the most, is to be a unique and flavourful faction and to be a more or less accurate representation of the fluff. Which, just based on the stuff we already had is just not true anymore.
Of course we also want it to be balanced and competitive, but that goes without saying and is true for all factions. But for me? First and foremost it has to be somewhat fluffy. I don't care if csm were broken OP, different paint job marines are different paintjob marines, not chaos space marine and as a result I just can't get excited for them.

Formations help but they're not enough and they're too rigid. Ironically, csm are more efficiently represented by a CAD system if you ask me. Take the purge for example, awesomely fluffy detachment for anything nurgle, and pretty good too. Fluffier than either supplement, but that's just my opinion.

The problem with "CSM whining" is that we have repeatedly gotten all the stuff that made us unique/good taken away. Some of the posts here already stated it but off the top of my head:

1) Undivided being a thing.
2) Sorcerer LORDs that were big bads in their own right, not henchmen.
3) BIG ONE: Legion tactics so that Word Bearers played different to Night Lords of Alpha Legion
4) Support for mono-god armies other than Khorne

That's the thing. Chaos has become BLAND and uninspiring, basically faceless mooks that just exist as a foil to the heroic and noble Adeptus Astartes.

We basically wanted to have something like Sauron and the forces of Mordor, the "Great Enemy" that there was little hope to stand against, and instead we got Cobra Commander and COBRA, just hapless incompetent thugs that come up with some crazy plot for world domination only to be handily defeated by the good guys and sent running until next episode.

Even with their chapter tactics shenanigans and multiple books, loyalists are all identical but with differently coloured armor.

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
Even with their chapter tactics shenanigans and multiple books, loyalists are all identical but with differently coloured armor.

But they really aren't, and even so that just lends credence to the fact that loyalists don't need multiple codexes. Other than Space Wolves, all the others could be one book with their special units limited to them/successors.

WayneTheGame wrote:

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
Even with their chapter tactics shenanigans and multiple books, loyalists are all identical but with differently coloured armor.

But they really aren't, and even so that just lends credence to the fact that loyalists don't need multiple codexes. Other than Space Wolves, all the others could be one book with their special units limited to them/successors.

Used to be anyways, they kept adding and adding and now some of them would just be straight up huge, but of course that's something that Chaos doesn't get, being stuck with one codex trying to represent all of renegades/legions/gods/cults..

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
Even with their chapter tactics shenanigans and multiple books, loyalists are all identical but with differently coloured armor.

Let's agree to disagree on that lol.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:

Sonic Keyboard wrote:
Even with their chapter tactics shenanigans and multiple books, loyalists are all identical but with differently coloured armor.

But they really aren't, and even so that just lends credence to the fact that loyalists don't need multiple codexes. Other than Space Wolves, all the others could be one book with their special units limited to them/successors.

Used to be anyways, they kept adding and adding and now some of them would just be straight up huge, but of course that's something that Chaos doesn't get, being stuck with one codex trying to represent all of renegades/legions/gods/cults..

Thing is though most Marine chapters can make due with that; other than some specialized units, they are mostly identical and don't really warrant entirely different books. In fact, most of them don't even need different models, just a regular kit and then a separate upgrade sprue. Chaos is the one that really should have multiple codexes, because Traitor Legions should be different than Renegade Chapters which should be different from Daemons which should be different than Lost and the Damned/Renegades and Heretics.

If GW cared about Chaos, we would have a Codex: Chaos Space Marines, Codex Emperor's Children, Codex Thousand Sons, Codex Alpha Legion, Codex Death Guard, Codex Black Legion, etc. etc. just like the Space Marines,

But we don't, and so GW continues to shoe horn all of the Chaos Space Marines into one book, and it fails miserably. Traitors Hate is a band aid on a sucking chest wound.

 Arbitrator wrote:

TremendousZ wrote:
I think CSM got what they were asking for in a lot of ways, and CSM players need to realize your never getting 3.5 codex level power again. Lets just remember where we came from with the last CSM codex.

I think what most CSM players were asking for is rules for Legions and good internal balance. It just so happens that the 3.5 codex happened to be the overpowered one that also had Legion rules in it, not that CSM players "want overpowered Legion rules." The two don't have to be mutually exclusive.

There's always this smug "lol you just want to be OP again get over it XD" tone you can tell a mile away from these posts. In all my time watching Chaos Space Marine players vent - and they do, it's true, rant a lot but not without good reason - have I ever seem them crave 3.5 power levels. What they want are the 3.5 OPTIONS. That is, being able to take an army that isn't a Nurgle Lord on a bike, with bikes, and minimum Cultist tax and a Helldrake. When people say they miss the 3.5 codex days, what they mean is they miss the options, the customisability, the uniqueness.

Traitor's Hate is more of the same. "You will take this units to stand a chance on the tabletop and you will like it, now shut up whining." The vast majority of CSM complainants don't want powerful, they want OPTIONS. You could make CSM's the most broken thing on the tabletop, but if everything outside of three units is absolutely worthless - even if those three units wipe the floor with Riptides and Knights - then people are still going to complain, because being shoehorned into taking 'powerful' units is bad. Yes, poor internal balance is not unique to CSMs, but they're one of the most flavourful, diverse and potentially unique armies out there that are shoehorned into a handful of units to so much a play the damn game and that's not even getting onto how they're more vanilla than the damn vanilla Space Marine codex. That's not what Night Lord players want, that's not what Word Bearers players want.

Nobody was expecting Traitor's Hate to suddenly revamp the codex, but I think people were hoping for more than some psychic powers and free VotLW.

I was gonna make a big reponse post to the OP, but Arbitrator here covered everything nicely. Traitors Hate is just some dumb formations that may raise the power potential slightly, but addresses none of the real desires of the CSM playerbase. CSM's have been powerful post 3.5, sych as 4E Lash armies, and they were very powerful in early 6E with hellturkey spam, but that wasnt what anyone was looking for.

Traitors Hate is just another phoned in book of lame duck freebies designed to push sales, not something that in any way fixes what CSM players actually have problems with.

 Tamwulf wrote:
If GW cared about Chaos, we would have a Codex: Chaos Space Marines, Codex Emperor's Children, Codex Thousand Sons, Codex Alpha Legion, Codex Death Guard, Codex Black Legion, etc. etc. just like the Space Marines,

But we don't, and so GW continues to shoe horn all of the Chaos Space Marines into one book, and it fails miserably. Traitors Hate is a band aid on a sucking chest wound.

See no I disagree we need THAT much variety. I think that supplements could work (although I hate hate hate the fact they are as expensive as a codex) for specialized formations. But no, I think that we basically need one for cults, one for traitors, and then renegade chapters and cultists/traitor guard

A simple Legion Tactics thing and properly functioning Cult units outside of Tac equivalents would solve 99% of the issues people have. That GW appears to go out of their way to avoid this license to print money boggles my mind.

Exactly. The thing is, Chaos aren't complaining about being "weak". We are complaining that ever since the 3.5 days, we have had everything unique and identifying about Chaos gutted and removed and replaced with bland alternatives.

I'll be the first to admit that the daemon engines look cool, but Chaos is not "marines who use daemon engines". Chaos doesn't feel like it's anything, it doesn't feel like a long-forgotten past of the Imperium coming back to haunt them (i.e. traitor legions), it doesn't feel like temptation and hubris that causes angels to fall into darkness (i.e. Renegade Chapters), it doesn't feel like the taint of sin that promises power in exchange for your soul (i.e. Cultists/Lost and the Damned) and it doesn't feel like otherworldly immortal manifestations of pure emotion and hatred (i.e. Daemons; hell one of the daemon princes is strongly hinted at being Genghis Khan, and in Talon of Horus it mentions a Khorne daemon that was created in like the 12th century AD).

Chaos feels like a bland mix of all of those, while giving none of them justice. The biggest problem is Chaos is supposed to be the big evil, but nothing about it is fearsome. I get that fluff doesn't always equal rules, but Chaos is the only thing in the fluff that basically spells doom just by existing; worlds are obliterated to prevent the taint, populations are executed, sterilized and/or sent to concentration camps to isolate them just by being near something tainted.

Some of that overpowering "almighty evil" needs to come across, and it hasn't in forever.

Aye, thats pretty much it exactly. They come off pretty much as one dimensional generic BBEG's and not the nuanced lost and damned that they should be. There's no hint of that ancient menace, they're just "bad" marines.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Aye, thats pretty much it exactly. They come off pretty much as one dimensional generic BBEG's and not the nuanced lost and damned that they should be. There's no hint of that ancient menace, they're just "bad" marines.

It's worse than that. As I said earlier, in the fluff Chaos is brought up to be like Sauron/Mordor level of badassery, like this overwhelming force mustering that nobody is going to be able to stand against. But instead we get 1980s era Cobra or Decepticons; a bunch of bumbling mooks who talk big and bad but their zany schemes are easily thwarted by the heroes and they run off, tails between legs, vowing revenge next time as the heroes celebrate.

Aye, though sadly they're not the only faction to suffer that way, GW's writing quality has plummeted over the last decade. Between the Hogwarts Hostel description of the Scholas in the Tempestus book, the GK's slaying SoB's to use their blood in a very Khornate ritual and Draigo the invincible, and just about anything related to Space Wolves, the background writing for 40k has gotten truly awful

Not to forget the not so Great Devourer....

It's worse than that. As I said earlier, in the fluff Chaos is brought up to be like Sauron/Mordor level of badassery, like this overwhelming force mustering that nobody is going to be able to stand against. But instead we get 1980s era Cobra or Decepticons; a bunch of bumbling mooks who talk big and bad but their zany schemes are easily thwarted by the heroes and they run off, tails between legs, vowing revenge next time as the heroes celebrate.

That's almost exactly how I describe my issues with the Dark Apostle entry. You have the book version from the Word Bearers series where the Apostles are basically towering infernos of bad assery. Powerful psychers wreathed in demons and able to command the warp itself with a thought .... (these would have been represented well by the old Lord entry that allowed Lords to be Psykers as well).

Then there's the codex version ... he raises your leadership ... kinda .... YAY! lol

Tycho wrote:

It's worse than that. As I said earlier, in the fluff Chaos is brought up to be like Sauron/Mordor level of badassery, like this overwhelming force mustering that nobody is going to be able to stand against. But instead we get 1980s era Cobra or Decepticons; a bunch of bumbling mooks who talk big and bad but their zany schemes are easily thwarted by the heroes and they run off, tails between legs, vowing revenge next time as the heroes celebrate.

That's almost exactly how I describe my issues with the Dark Apostle entry. You have the book version from the Word Bearers series where the Apostles are basically towering infernos of bad assery. Powerful psychers wreathed in demons and able to command the warp itself with a thought .... (these would have been represented well by the old Lord entry that allowed Lords to be Psykers as well).

Then there's the codex version ... he raises your leadership ... kinda .... YAY! lol

I would kill to have the old Lord entry back... In my opinion, GW should have stuck with the Lord and Lieutenant entries and just expanded upon them. (For those who don't know, CSM of 3.5 had 2 unnamed entries for HQ choices Chaos Lord and Chaos Lieutenant. The Lord could be upgraded into a Sorcerer Lord or a Daemon Prince while the Lieutenant could be upgraded into a sorcerer, Lords had pretty much the same profile that they do now while Lieutenants had the profile you see on current sorcerers I believe).

Honestly, everything should have a lord upgrade for CSM, that would certainly make it different from SM in allowing for most of their HQ's to become high powerful commanders.

Chaos Lords would either have a smaller version, or have an even more powerful version.

Though honestly I just would prefer having the ability to mix and match on a chaos lord as one would will. I mean really what are they SM being all organized like that.

I loved the pet-spawn......
Or my old Dark Apostle in general....

CSM should have a lord upgrade for everything (giving it a Captain statline) whereas the basic lord can be made into a Dreadlord or whatever that has a CM statline.

Nah what they need to have, simple IMHO:

1) Lord, can become Sorcerer Lord
2) Lieutenant, can buy Sorcerer or buy something to turn into a dark Apostle OR Warpsmith (basically a generic hero guy who can "upgrade" to the others)

Champions need to have the option to upgrade to Terminator armor a la Wolf Guard champions, thematic and fluffy too that you have these "Warbands" with their leader who has extra goodies. I'd even say as far as champions should be able to get marks of chaos on their own, to represent the touch of chaos affecting them more than regular goons

WayneTheGame wrote:
Nah what they need to have, simple IMHO:

1) Lord, can become Sorcerer Lord
2) Lieutenant, can buy Sorcerer or buy something to turn into a dark Apostle OR Warpsmith (basically a generic hero guy who can "upgrade" to the others)

Champions need to have the option to upgrade to Terminator armor a la Wolf Guard champions, thematic and fluffy too that you have these "Warbands" with their leader who has extra goodies. I'd even say as far as champions should be able to get marks of chaos on their own, to represent the touch of chaos affecting them more than regular goons

Something like the extra mark for champions would be nice. Doesn't have to be a mark though. It's in the same vein as cult terminators. The more dedicated and stronger the individual, the more they are touched by chaos. Like normal marked csm are different from cult troops, which in turn are different from their special characters (at least lorewise).
The only units we have in the codex that are unique in that sense are the cult troops. Warp corruption is kind of our thing, so I'd really like to see some cult goodies other than just a small stat change and a mount for lords.

A series of cult codices should work pretty well if they actually put some work into it for a change, instead of getting bored half way and then copying the rest from somewhere.

I agree with that. In my CSM codex fix, there's marks and then straight up dedications to gods, which was the part that unlocked Cult Marines.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Nah what they need to have, simple IMHO:

1) Lord, can become Sorcerer Lord
2) Lieutenant, can buy Sorcerer or buy something to turn into a dark Apostle OR Warpsmith (basically a generic hero guy who can "upgrade" to the others)

How would that be reflected in the models? The problem is that we want fluff > rules > models while GW operate on models > rules > fluff. Go to the webstore. Look at the selection. Are there enough distinct product offerings to repackage them as lord model, sorcerer lord model, sorcerer model, lieutenant model? If no then this is a nonstarter.

I think the fundamental problem with Chaos is that they are not popular enough to justify a product line that would accommodate rules to do their fluff justice. So the models drag everything else down. We just can't expect GW to expend significant resources supporting what is effectively a legacy line of products.