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Well look at it this way. There are two facets to an army. Competitive and flavour.
Competitively, the index is miiiiles ahead of where our 6th ed was relatively speaking. The game as a whole seems more balanced, so that's good.
Yea, we have our stinkers, but so does everybody else. Other units got some pretty nice buffs so on a whole, all is hunky dory here.

On the flavour side they replaced more or less well made legion rules for each legion so that they played pretty differently with...well..nothing really. There is a re-roll aura but everybody gets the same, so were're back to paint scheme legions.
One of our army mechanics was marks, that got replaced with .. nothing. They're just gone. All it does is limit the icon you can have (even more so than before). So not only are legions a paint scheme, but now so is your dedication to a god.
The other mechanic was being able to receive gifts from the chaos gods and becoming a prince, which for many chaos champions is their whole raison d'être. Gone.

So we went from a sandboxish army with finally well represented legions to a bland pile of spiky marines. Cult legions got it a little bit better but there are more undivided legions than cult legions which all get to twiddle their thumbs.
And the cult legions aren't done well either. The major complaints coming from deathguard player who cannot take certain units because they have other equivalent units of their own...except those haven't been released, so again, they replace terminators with nothing.

We aren't the only faction to suffer from this kind of bland mess, but we're the only one that got fixed so recently in such a big manner only to get it all taken away.
And the fact the we lost both army mechanics and the fact that there is no mention of the undivided legions raises legitimate concerns about how GW is going to handle them.
Not everybody is willing to put blind faith into GW fixing everything in a new codex.

 Roknar wrote:
Well look at it this way. There are two facets to an army. Competitive and flavour.
Competitively, the index is miiiiles ahead of where our 6th ed was relatively speaking. The game as a whole seems more balanced, so that's good.
Yea, we have our stinkers, but so does everybody else. Other units got some pretty nice buffs so on a whole, all is hunky dory here.

On the flavour side they replaced more or less well made legion rules for each legion so that they played pretty differently with...well..nothing really. There is a re-roll aura but everybody gets the same, so were're back to paint scheme legions.
One of our army mechanics was marks, that got replaced with .. nothing. They're just gone. All it does is limit the icon you can have (even more so than before). So not only are legions a paint scheme, but now so is your dedication to a god.
The other mechanic was being able to receive gifts from the chaos gods and becoming a prince, which for many chaos champions is their whole raison d'être. Gone.

So we went from a sandboxish army with finally well represented legions to a bland pile of spiky marines. Cult legions got it a little bit better but there are more undivided legions than cult legions which all get to twiddle their thumbs.
And the cult legions aren't done well either. The major complaints coming from deathguard player who cannot take certain units because they have other equivalent units of their own...except those haven't been released, so again, they replace terminators with nothing.

We aren't the only faction to suffer from this kind of bland mess, but we're the only one that got fixed so recently in such a big manner only to get it all taken away.
And the fact the we lost both army mechanics and the fact that there is no mention of the undivided legions raises legitimate concerns about how GW is going to handle them.
Not everybody is willing to put blind faith into GW fixing everything in a new codex.

I think GW had to make a blank slate so that they can slowly introduce that stuff back in overtime to properly balance it, rather than put it all in at once and hope for the best. Even marines got hit by the same thing, so marines and Chaos are currently on an even playing field. The only difference is, marines get primaris and Chaos get DG/TSons.

While rather odd, it's also known that there are several more Death Guard models on the way - none of which have rules thus far (meaning they'll come in the box and be rolled into a proper codex or an annual index later). So the Death Guard will have terminators (hell, we saw the models), etc. but GW is doing their usual "nothing gets rules till its released!" kind of thing.

Everyone has a bland army at the moment, due to the indexes (which oddly don't seem that bland to me). The special cupcake rules will all come later and the game balance will go to hell again and it'll be proper 40K, I'm sure.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Because saying Death Guard/Thousand Sons stuff is 'Chaos' is like saying that a Blood Angels or Dark Angels release means the 'Space Marines' received a release. Yeah, technically they did but only people running Death Guard/Blood Angels/Thousand Sons/Dark Angels actually GET that stuff.

That's not totally true. New Plague Marines mean also new sets for Black Legion and Word Bearers at least. Pox Walkers can easily be used as alternative plague bearers. Iron Warriors are known to have used marked troops as well. ALL competitive chaos players used Nurgle bikers before and if the new PMs or the drone have decent rules they will still do so, if the codex allows.

You are right though in pointing out the fractured nature of Chaos players. Due to the character of the army you would have, in a perfect world, at least 5 sets for every choice in the codex, one for every mark. For the most part this will never happen, instead GW seems to give every faction something special instead that the other chaos armies can't use, which is also fine by me, but makes some people feel left behind.
To be honest, I can't even understand people arguing about, for example, the Khorne Berserkers. Yes, they are a very old set with very "heroic" proportions, BUT these marines had already nearly the size of primaris marines 10 years ago.
Why GW never released chosen and/or havocs in plastic is absolutely beyond me, I'll admit.

 Elbows wrote:
While rather odd, it's also known that there are several more Death Guard models on the way - none of which have rules thus far (meaning they'll come in the box and be rolled into a proper codex or an annual index later). So the Death Guard will have terminators (hell, we saw the models), etc. but GW is doing their usual "nothing gets rules till its released!" kind of thing.

Everyone has a bland army at the moment, due to the indexes (which oddly don't seem that bland to me). The special cupcake rules will all come later and the game balance will go to hell again and it'll be proper 40K, I'm sure.

^This

I wouldn't mind an updated csm box and havocs however. I don't really mind the subfaction stuff but the very core undivided stuff feels a fair bit dated.

Are we all forgetting that Oblits and Mutis got nerfed? Oblits are no longer the reliable unit hunter they where, now their gun is freakin random. And mutis...dear god the Mutis. They, somehow, made them worse than they were! I wasn't even sure that was possible.

BTW i play DG and im not happy about this. We just watched SM get a ton of new toys and Chaos got, Plague Zombies that are a separate unit, and some Drones. Wooo.....

Now im not just mad as a CSM player, im made as an Ork player. The SM favoritism is getting ridiculous and its toxic, as anyone who wants in to this hobby has the Power Armored shoved down their throat as their starter army.

SilverAlien wrote:
Just anger that we got something we'd been asking for over a decade now (legion rules please), then they got taken away a few months after they were added. As well as the marks that had been our only compensation for loss of legion rules.

It has left people very salty. Thousand sons in particular, due to the way this edition kinda screwed them up.

I don't play chaos but do love their fluff. It's totally understandable because traitor legions was a very very long time coming and a revival of how chaos should work...just in time to go away.

 Tiberius501 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:

Spoiler:

Well look at it this way. There are two facets to an army. Competitive and flavour.
Competitively, the index is miiiiles ahead of where our 6th ed was relatively speaking. The game as a whole seems more balanced, so that's good.
Yea, we have our stinkers, but so does everybody else. Other units got some pretty nice buffs so on a whole, all is hunky dory here.

On the flavour side they replaced more or less well made legion rules for each legion so that they played pretty differently with...well..nothing really. There is a re-roll aura but everybody gets the same, so were're back to paint scheme legions.
One of our army mechanics was marks, that got replaced with .. nothing. They're just gone. All it does is limit the icon you can have (even more so than before). So not only are legions a paint scheme, but now so is your dedication to a god.
The other mechanic was being able to receive gifts from the chaos gods and becoming a prince, which for many chaos champions is their whole raison d'être. Gone.

So we went from a sandboxish army with finally well represented legions to a bland pile of spiky marines. Cult legions got it a little bit better but there are more undivided legions than cult legions which all get to twiddle their thumbs.
And the cult legions aren't done well either. The major complaints coming from deathguard player who cannot take certain units because they have other equivalent units of their own...except those haven't been released, so again, they replace terminators with nothing.

We aren't the only faction to suffer from this kind of bland mess, but we're the only one that got fixed so recently in such a big manner only to get it all taken away.
And the fact the we lost both army mechanics and the fact that there is no mention of the undivided legions raises legitimate concerns about how GW is going to handle them.
Not everybody is willing to put blind faith into GW fixing everything in a new codex.

I think GW had to make a blank slate so that they can slowly introduce that stuff back in overtime to properly balance it, rather than put it all in at once and hope for the best. Even marines got hit by the same thing, so marines and Chaos are currently on an even playing field. The only difference is, marines get primaris and Chaos get DG/TSons.

Tbh, I would have preferred if they started with an actually blank state. Just the datasheets and no army rules at all, for anybody. Not counting the odd aura and psychic powers.
As opposed to kinda adding army rules...but not really and even then only for half the legions in the case of csm and even those are only half implemented.

As it is I'm not at all convinced that csm will be getting a codex any time soon or even that it will give the non cult units something to make up for the loss of marks.
It will be index + DG and probably TSons first. I could easily see GW not adding any gift based mechanics into either as they are already heavily gifted by their gods.
So the rest of csm is not unlikely going to languish with a super bland dex for a long time....again.

It gets worse once you realize that Guardsmen are now 4 ppm and Cultists are still 5, which makes absolutely no sense.

 Grimmor wrote:
It gets worse once you realize that Guardsmen are now 4 ppm and Cultists are still 5, which makes absolutely no sense.

Hey! Just because guardsmen have a better save, and better synergies, and better leadership, doesn't mean they shouldn't be cheaper!

Obviously cultists are paying for the mark that puts them on the same level.

The Mark that does nothing. You might as well paint Mark:erlight on their foreheads.

 Grimmor wrote:
It gets worse once you realize that Guardsmen are now 4 ppm and Cultists are still 5, which makes absolutely no sense.

Different armies different costs. Chaos Marines shouldn't had cheap and reliable infantry at the same point efficience than Imperial Guard, otherwise you end with armies that can do everything.

The main thing is:

1.) we got Traitor Legions back after over a decade, only to have it torn away from us again mere months later.

2.) Marks seem to be doing nothing now (well, at least compared to other old special effects. They're basically special keywords now), which use to be an integral part of Chaos.

3.) GW promised that the traitor legions would be getting something similar to Primaris Marines and while I don't think it's official, it seems like the Plague Marines was that "something special", which is sort of a kick to the nads to people who were expecting something "new".

That said, while I do own a massive Plague Marine army, I'm not that torn up about it. When the Chaos Codex drops I expect all this stuff to be put right back in. We're in a no better position than the other space marines or the craftworlds, so it's not like chaos's suffering alone. If the codex drops and nothing changes, that's when we should break out the torches and pitchforks. Primaris Marines are just getting the lion's share of attention because their codex is all but confirmed to be the first to drop, and they're getting all of the associated hardware to go with it.

plague marines aren't new, but the rest of the plague range is new. I expect chaos' release pattern for the forseeable future will be based around the 4 gods.

Most likely. That's what AoS ended up doing and it's not like the CSM aren't already divided along those lines.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
So GW announces 8th with the release of Primaris marines and Death Guard.

People then start talking about how it's, "yet another space marine release with no love for chaos." Is everyone forgetting about the new Death Guard faction of Chaos who are also being released? I'm confused as to why people think it's all marines and no Chaos.

Without wanting to get into the greater Derp, just because there's a couple new Death Guard kits doesn't mean much for anyone not playing the relatively niche Death Guard subfaction

Most CSM players don't see "Chaos" as one single faction, mainly because it's not functionally played as one by most people.

Yeah. Just like AoS, Chaos players shouldnt expect much love to generic Chaos Marines.

I know how it feels. I played Undivided in fantasy

 Galas wrote:
Yeah. Just like AoS, Chaos players shouldnt expect much love to generic Chaos Marines.

I know how it feels. I played Undivided in fantasy

well one plus is that chaos has undivded Legions that are quite popular.

 Galas wrote:

 Grimmor wrote:
It gets worse once you realize that Guardsmen are now 4 ppm and Cultists are still 5, which makes absolutely no sense.

Different armies different costs. Chaos Marines shouldn't had cheap and reliable infantry at the same point efficience than Imperial Guard, otherwise you end with armies that can do everything.

Cheap? Yes. Reliable? As meat shields, sure, anything else, hell no. Guard have a better save, grenades, significantly better army synergy and actual weapon options. Cultist are dirt cheap meat-shields, ones that now cost more than a unit that is objectively their superior.

And, news flash, Space Marines already can do everything, more or less. Having Cultists be priced appropriately (meaning cheaper than Guard) is just being consistent.

Imo while I'm not happy that cultists cost 1 point more than IG infantry, I feel it is fair. They're part of the CSM army, which is largely backed by BS3+ models in 3+ armor wielding decently powerful weapons and daemons. In fact they're cheap meatshields for an army that otherwise doesn't have cheap meatshields. Space Marines don't have cheap meatshields.

This is just like the "WK VS IK" Debate. Different armies have different costs and they shouldn't be compared to each other in a vacuum. If CSM had access to extremely cheap meatshields that were ALSO good at killing stuff, it'd make them too good. Why ever play infantry IG if you can get the same baseline infantry in the CSM codex, better Elite Infantry, better HQs and possibly cheaper/better tanks?

It's not the same baseline infantry. See Grimmor's post above yours. Cultists cannot achieve what Guard can, as they do not have the same equipment or orders. To ensure there is a balanced game, you cannot have units which are objectively better costing less than the other unit. That goes against the concept of balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The thing that irritates me personally is that I went back to England for a visit in December and got the Traitor Legion book. I was really looking forward to using it when I returned again for a longer time period in the summer... Now I'll never even get to use it. There was some pure awesome sauce in the TL book. Absolutely gutted I wont be able to test it out!

You can totally have units wich are objectively better costing less than the other unit if they are in different factions with different focus.

A Tau meele unit shouldn't never be as point-optimal as a meele unit for Space Wolves, or Khorne Chaos Marines, or Orks. They need to be "good enough" for the Tau standard, so if I as a Tau player need to put some meele in my army, can pick that unit to do the job... just well enough. And thats what Cultists are. They are "good enough" meat shields in an army of "elite" infantry.
Imperial Guard is an army based in mediocre and cheap infantry. Thats why they have the best mediocre and cheap infantry in the game.


The "everything should cost the same" is the way other games like Infinity work. They are much more balanced, because everyone has access to the same tools and at the same prices, but with different sinergyes between them, and in different numbers (Not everyone has the same access to heavy troops, or hackers, or camouflage guys, etc...) but at the same time is a game that offers much less variety than 40k. If people cry about how the index are "bland"... just try Infinity (And I'm saying this being a ultra fan of Infinity that plays every week. But to Caesar what its of Caesar)

Which would be fine balance wise if the guard player wasn't able to take a SM patrol ally, or one of the 1HQ+(upto)6HS/6FA/6Elites options of marines alongside. But they can. What you are saying *would* work if allies were not possible but they very easily are.

And they are paying that by having two forces with 0 sinergyes between them.

But I have to agree. Assimetrical balance works better when you can't min-max factions as you like.

Gonna have to agree with Galas here. While I can understand the frustration of having legion rules taken away so recently, the whinging comes across as an unspoken "I want Chaos to be the new Eldar".

Legion rules will return, just not yet. The indexes are the Ravening Hordes of the 41st millennium. Once actual codices roll out there'll be some sort of chapter/legion/sept/kabal/craftworld/clan/hive fleet/dynasty mechanic

Hrm..... I have just realised how bland and unflavorful my 40k life will now be with the 8th edition chaos index :(

I had just got my Night Lords army rules I had always wanted....

Gone!!

Like tears in the rain

;(

 Tiberius501 wrote:
So GW announces 8th with the release of Primaris marines and Death Guard.

People then start talking about how it's, "yet another space marine release with no love for chaos." Is everyone forgetting about the new Death Guard faction of Chaos who are also being released? I'm confused as to why people think it's all marines and no Chaos.

Yes, loyalists get new figures. So do we as Chaos. Loyalists are the most popular faction, of course a new edition is going to have a release with some new figures of them in it. And Chaos is also a really popular faction. Well, check out thos awesome minis we get on release.

Sorry to sound like I'm ranting, it's just really weird seeing so many people say this. I know Eldar and Drukhari and Nids and Orks and everyone else don't get new figures in the new set, saying marines are getting another update while our armies die with finecast. I totally get that side of things. Chaos was also in a bit of a rut, with some of the oldest minis in the hobby (obviously excluding poor factions like the Battle Sisters). So one old faction is having some updates! (Along with Thousand Sons).

Oh Chaos is getting something - a shaft their pooper and not in a good way

1) Summoning - gone, there is literally no situation where it's worth risking mortal wounds to summon, when you can just pay the point price to take the units outright (since you do have to pay the points any way), so there's one game mechanic out the window, why did they even keep that mockery aside from rubbing it in our faces is beyond me

2) Magic, by all the Chaos Gods, magic in 8 ed sucks, sure, not only Chaos suffered from this, but If I was collecting Tzeench or bought any of the Thousand sons which were introduced just recently I'd be pissed, they release an army focused on magic and the nerf magic into unusable level, there is literally no point in using any magic whatsoever:

you have a 1/9 chance of perils now, which do D3 wounds and to a flimsy sorcerer that's a lot, not to mention your opponent now has a 50% chance to deny the witch and the spells themselves are very weak, basically you're statistically about as likely to inflict wounds as receive them

So it's like shooting a plasma pistol that kills you on a below 4

3) Chaos Marks - absolutely meaningless, like you add a keyword, so, yeah, cool, now my cultist is a Nurgle cultist, what changes - nothing

4) Fortrifications? Oh they're the same as Imperium, just have worse saves


New Death Guard?

It's way worse than the old Death Guard, cause you can't use half the units, also Nurgle mark means nothing so you don't get the added toughness and you have the same Feel No Pain as before, but now your crappy poxwalkers don't even come back from the dead, cause there's no Artefact for that...



There is not 1 good thing for Chaos in this edition


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Roknar wrote:
Well look at it this way. There are two facets to an army. Competitive and flavour.
Competitively, the index is miiiiles ahead of where our 6th ed was relatively speaking. The game as a whole seems more balanced, so that's good.
Yea, we have our stinkers, but so does everybody else. Other units got some pretty nice buffs so on a whole, all is hunky dory here.

On the flavour side they replaced more or less well made legion rules for each legion so that they played pretty differently with...well..nothing really. There is a re-roll aura but everybody gets the same, so were're back to paint scheme legions.
One of our army mechanics was marks, that got replaced with .. nothing. They're just gone. All it does is limit the icon you can have (even more so than before). So not only are legions a paint scheme, but now so is your dedication to a god.
The other mechanic was being able to receive gifts from the chaos gods and becoming a prince, which for many chaos champions is their whole raison d'être. Gone.

So we went from a sandboxish army with finally well represented legions to a bland pile of spiky marines. Cult legions got it a little bit better but there are more undivided legions than cult legions which all get to twiddle their thumbs.
And the cult legions aren't done well either. The major complaints coming from deathguard player who cannot take certain units because they have other equivalent units of their own...except those haven't been released, so again, they replace terminators with nothing.

We aren't the only faction to suffer from this kind of bland mess, but we're the only one that got fixed so recently in such a big manner only to get it all taken away.
And the fact the we lost both army mechanics and the fact that there is no mention of the undivided legions raises legitimate concerns about how GW is going to handle them.
Not everybody is willing to put blind faith into GW fixing everything in a new codex.

Agree with all except the part about competitive

With Summoning now gone (lets be real, you have to pre-allocate points for your summons, that means you will never, ever summon since it's simply better to just take the demons without summoning them)

With magic nerfed to the ground

Chaos lost 2 tools that made their armies competitive, because there's plenty armies that shoot better and assault armies aren't competitive at all anyway



Poster child of the new edition - Deathguard, is also nerfed compared to previous ed, has less unit choices, less toughness, worse pox walkers (they no longer come back from the dead).... Basically it's a generic shooting army, that doesn't really do the shooting too well either when compared to how net Imperium armies do it

Let's not forget Fealess as well, you had fearless on your Death Guard before, now you don't...

It's a shadow of its former self

Dovis wrote:




1) Summoning - gone, there is literally no situation where it's worth risking mortal wounds to summon, when you can just pay the point price to take the units outright (since you do have to pay the points any way), so there's one game mechanic out the window, why did they even keep that mockery aside from rubbing it in our faces is beyond me

Wrong. You now get a system that isn't broken. You have 300 points for example. You either buy a unit with them, or you have the flexibility to summon a specific unit you need right at the time you need it. It's the ultimate toolbox. Works well in AoS. Try playing some games before writing off a mechanic.

2) Magic, by all the Chaos Gods, magic in 8 ed sucks, sure, not only Chaos suffered from this, but If I was collecting Tzeench or bought any of the Thousand sons which were introduced just recently I'd be pissed, they release an army focused on magic and the nerf magic into unusable level, there is literally no point in using any magic whatsoever:

you have a 1/9 chance of perils now, which do D3 wounds and to a flimsy sorcerer that's a lot, not to mention your opponent now has a 50% chance to deny the witch and the spells themselves are very weak, basically you're statistically about as likely to inflict wounds as receive them

So it's like shooting a plasma pistol that kills you on a below 4

Thousand Sons will get a codex, that will give them bonuses. If you are seriously suggesting that the rules you have on release day are as good as it gets for Tzeench, you are in for a suprise.


3) Chaos Marks - absolutely meaningless, like you add a keyword, so, yeah, cool, now my cultist is a Nurgle cultist, what changes - nothing

This is just the baseline. Wait until the codexs start appearing, and prepare to chow down on these words

4) Fortrifications? Oh they're the same as Imperium, just have worse saves


New Death Guard?

It's way worse than the old Death Guard, cause you can't use half the units, also Nurgle mark means nothing so you don't get the added toughness and you have the same Feel No Pain as before, but now your crappy poxwalkers don't even come back from the dead, cause there's no Artefact for that...


There is not 1 good thing for Chaos in this edition

Writing off an entire faction on release day is so short sighted and reactionary it barely deserves a reply. You have a release which is essentially a framework that allows all models that are currently sold to be used. We know for a fact that a Death Guard book is coming. probably in the very near future with Morty and Typhus.

Have a look at AoS. You have great battletomes that really flesh out a force, loads of narrative, unit specific rules and bonuses that fit with the army, cool detachments that thematically deliver bonuses. Don't worry, GW has proven they can do this.