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Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

melbards wrote:
Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

It was intentionally left out to prevent cult units getting Objective Secured.

If you're desperate to use them, use Vanguard Detachments.

honestly if you really want the CPs needed from a battalion just toss 3 10 man cultist squads into your list.

Its just gw being a dick to world eaters and Emperors children, I assume it will be changed if they ever release a WE codex and EC codex to go with the deathguard and thousand sons because we all know plague marines and rubrics are going to be troops choices in their own dex.

Well, we assume so and stand a pretty good chance due to older codexes doing so. I would be really salty if it turns out that we're stuck with Tzaangors and Poxwalkers as our only Troop choice.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

melbards wrote:
Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

It was intentionally left out to prevent cult units getting Objective Secured.

If you're desperate to use them, use Vanguard Detachments.

If thats the case I feel this all could easily be fixed by the rules for cult marines reading like this, "The Battlefield Role of WORLD EATERS
Khorne Berzerkers is Troops instead of Elites for purposes of force organization but are still considered elites in any other circumstance".

Im not sure if force organization would be the proper term but they would only count as troops when it comes to building your army but elites for anything else. That way no rule that applies to troops would ever apply to cult marines. This will be my house rule.

migeddo wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

melbards wrote:
Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

It was intentionally left out to prevent cult units getting Objective Secured.

If you're desperate to use them, use Vanguard Detachments.

If thats the case I feel this all could easily be fixed by the rules for cult marines reading like this, "The Battlefield Role of WORLD EATERS
Khorne Berzerkers is Troops instead of Elites for purposes of force organization but are still considered elites in any other circumstance".

This will be my house rule.

Or just say "Berzerkers/Emperor's Children count as troops if ALL detachments in your army are World Eaters/Emperor's Children. Bam. Problem solved.

 TonyH122 wrote:

migeddo wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

melbards wrote:
Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

It was intentionally left out to prevent cult units getting Objective Secured.

If you're desperate to use them, use Vanguard Detachments.

If thats the case I feel this all could easily be fixed by the rules for cult marines reading like this, "The Battlefield Role of WORLD EATERS
Khorne Berzerkers is Troops instead of Elites for purposes of force organization but are still considered elites in any other circumstance".

This will be my house rule.

Or just say "Berzerkers/Emperor's Children count as troops if ALL detachments in your army are World Eaters/Emperor's Children. Bam. Problem solved.

Or just accept that they're elite models and not intended to be used as troops so filling up a Battalion detachment with them doesn't mean you've met the troops restrictions for the additional CP.

Makes me wonder if it is also something to do with people trying to make troop detachments by exploting the use of the <Legion> keyword to make Elites into Troops.

Perhaps GW are trying to get more standard Chaos Space Marines into a force. I know in seventh edition depending on what mark your chaos lord had there was usually no point in picking standard chaos marines, better to use cult marines or cultists.
Still, not sure I like this move though.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Well, we assume so and stand a pretty good chance due to older codexes doing so. I would be really salty if it turns out that we're stuck with Tzaangors and Poxwalkers as our only Troop choice.

Or you know....chaos space marines? Or is everyone still convinced they aren't a thing?

I will probably just sell my death guard if the codex does not have plague marines as troops, just because I bought so many assuming they would remain troops as in the index.

The army is not very competitive at the moment and that would be the nail in the coffin.

Eh, Khorne and Slaanesh are incredibly likely to get their own faction specific codices at some point. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's also not going to kill you to run a few 5-man Chaos Space Marine squads if you're trying to fit a force org chart.

(or run a detachment of the "all elites" type or whatever)

 sfshilo wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Well, we assume so and stand a pretty good chance due to older codexes doing so. I would be really salty if it turns out that we're stuck with Tzaangors and Poxwalkers as our only Troop choice.

Or you know....chaos space marines? Or is everyone still convinced they aren't a thing?

Unless they changed the lore, The mono-god traitor legions no longer have "normal" chaos marines in them. All the legionaries have since turned into whatever cult marines their patron god favours. So yeah, Chaos Marines wouldn't be a thing unless they changed the lore.

Although this does make sense why WE and EC don't have their own codex; ever since Kharn went a little burn happy with that flamer, both legions no longer fight as anything but raving warbands.

There's a detachment that lets you bring HQ plus 3x [insert slot name]. Use that.

White Scars can't switch their bikes to Troops, so they'll simply have to run the 3x FA detachments to get a biker army.

You loose CP in exchange for being able to run your monobuild. If you want ObSec / Troops, run Troops.

 sfshilo wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Well, we assume so and stand a pretty good chance due to older codexes doing so. I would be really salty if it turns out that we're stuck with Tzaangors and Poxwalkers as our only Troop choice.

Or you know....chaos space marines? Or is everyone still convinced they aren't a thing?

Well under the index rules DG & TSons can't take CSMs, I it seems unlikely the codexes will change that (especially for the TSon's).

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Well, we assume so and stand a pretty good chance due to older codexes doing so. I would be really salty if it turns out that we're stuck with Tzaangors and Poxwalkers as our only Troop choice.

Or you know....chaos space marines? Or is everyone still convinced they aren't a thing?

Unless they changed the lore, The mono-god traitor legions no longer have "normal" chaos marines in them. All the legionaries have since turned into whatever cult marines their patron god favours. So yeah, Chaos Marines wouldn't be a thing unless they changed the lore.

Although this does make sense why WE and EC don't have their own codex; ever since Kharn went a little burn happy with that flamer, both legions no longer fight as anything but raving warbands.

I didn't know that. I thought even the cult legions had to supplement their ranks with renegades (or standard chaos marines) But I guess it would make sense from a purity point of view

Oh look, I solved your problem. No need to take troops here.

If you care so much about the fluff of your army, you won't miss the 2 CP. And if you care about the CP, I'm sure it won't kill you to add some cultists or poxwalkers.

Well, they've been cutting down on the 'take non troops choices as troops' since 6th edition. They had a minor resurgence with 7th ed space marines (because of course they did), but not even 8th ed space marines can do anything like that now, unless I'm mistaken.

Eldar Jetbikes are Fast Attacks, not troops now. As they should have been. Want to run Floor is Lava Eldar? Take Outrider detatchment.

Want to only take only Noise Marines or Plague Marines? Run Vanguard. Stronger units should be restrained by Force organization limitations/requirements.

Fully loaded out with Sonic weaponry that ignores cover and just gaks out shots, and with their Music of the Apocalypse rule, Noise Marines far outshine most, if not all Troop choices.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 TonyH122 wrote:

migeddo wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

melbards wrote:
Hi,

So I bought the new csm codex today and can't seem to find anything that mentions the previous Emperor's children army rules that allows noise marines to be taken as troops instead of elites in an all EC army. In the previous chaos index this was allowed and now it seems to be left out which seriously undermines my army planning at the moment

Has anyone else noticed this or did I just miss it entirely?

It was intentionally left out to prevent cult units getting Objective Secured.

If you're desperate to use them, use Vanguard Detachments.

If thats the case I feel this all could easily be fixed by the rules for cult marines reading like this, "The Battlefield Role of WORLD EATERS
Khorne Berzerkers is Troops instead of Elites for purposes of force organization but are still considered elites in any other circumstance".

This will be my house rule.

Or just say "Berzerkers/Emperor's Children count as troops if ALL detachments in your army are World Eaters/Emperor's Children. Bam. Problem solved.

Or just accept that they're elite models and not intended to be used as troops so filling up a Battalion detachment with them doesn't mean you've met the troops restrictions for the additional CP.

I'm not salty about it. It's just that, given that these guys will surely be troops in their own codex, the problem is not that these guys can be troops, it's that everyone would take them as troops all the time if they could. The simple fix of making them troops in armies that ONLY have World Eaters detachments just allow us to have now what we had during the Index, and will have soon again in the respective Legion codices.

 Thadin wrote:
Eldar Jetbikes are Fast Attacks, not troops now. As they should have been. Want to run Floor is Lava Eldar? Take Outrider detatchment.

Want to only take only Noise Marines or Plague Marines? Run Vanguard. Stronger units should be restrained by Force organization limitations/requirements.

Fully loaded out with Sonic weaponry that ignores cover and just gaks out shots, and with their Music of the Apocalypse rule, Noise Marines far outshine most, if not all Troop choices.

They far outshine most CSM troop choices. Troop choices as a whole is not even a little true at this point. Remember, CSM squads are awful and not worth using over cultists as it stands, who are still just worse guardsmen. Our troop choices remain awful and now even cult legions can't bypass this.

Anyone defending this is just used to GW screwing over CSM for no good reasons. Oh yeah no, noise marines as troops would totally upset the balance unlike intercessors, lol. it was a moronic choice from moronic game designers, has nothing to do with the actual balance of the game as it currently exists.

SilverAlien wrote:


They far outshine most CSM troop choices. Troop choices as a whole is not even a little true at this point. Remember, CSM squads are awful and not worth using over cultists as it stands, who are still just worse guardsmen. Our troop choices remain awful and now even cult legions can't bypass this.

Anyone defending this is just used to GW screwing over CSM for no good reasons. Oh yeah no, noise marines as troops would totally upset the balance unlike intercessors, lol. it was a moronic choice from moronic game designers, has nothing to do with the actual balance of the game as it currently exists.

Are you aware that intercessors are sub-par troop choices, and quite a bad unit in general? The rest of the post is even more uninformed and inflammatory.

Just stop making statements about game balance if you have no clue about competitive gaming.

I think it might be that way until/if those legions get their own books. Deathguard and 1ksons have restrictions placed on their detachments that WE/EC don't currently have. Likely they did not want in codex factions that had different army lists. From a game design standpoint it is better to not have units change slots. It is also a check on Berzerkers spamming CP because they are troops, as WE have the ability to have those units attack 3 times. If they were troops it would be possible to have them to easily get 12 CP (HQs +90 Berserkers is less than 2k points), and even easier to get to 9-10 CP. With them in the elites slot, taking the same number of berserkers nets you 6 CP, to get to 12 CP you need to at least take 90 cultists for 360 points, Which means 20 less berserkers.

They were not as powerful in the Index, so you had the option to take them as troops. Now that you have a powerful ability you can use with them, they remove the option to try and spam that powerful ability. You are still more than welcome to run the respective special Chaos units, but now there's a cost to building your army that way.

GW has been very vocal about trying to lower the quality of cheese in the game. I'm surprised anyone expected otherwise.

Ushtarador wrote:
Are you aware that intercessors are sub-par troop choices, and quite a bad unit in general? The rest of the post is even more uninformed and inflammatory.

Just stop making statements about game balance if you have no clue about competitive gaming.

Now compare intercessors and noise marines and see how they stack up. That should illustrate how silly claims of noise marines not being able to obj secured for "balance" reasons is.

Stock, it's pretty even. Intercessors at 20 ppm and noise marines at 15 ppm, so 3 intercessors for 4 noise marines. That's 6 to 4 wounds, 3 upgraded bolters to 4 stock bolters, 6 melee attacks+ 3 pistol vs 8 melee attack and 4 pistol. Noise marines have their suicide attack as well. So that's a fairly clear tradeoff of durability and range for the primaris vs better melee power and their special ability for noise marines. So do we are stock noise marines aren't really doing anything that impressive compared to intercessors?

We can talk about sonic blasters, but that puts their cost on par with intercessors, meaning bigger gap between wounds and melee attacks more or less the same, for a couple extra shots at range. Good, but again still a fairly clear tradeoff between ranged damage (mostly at the 15-24 range) versus wounds.

Even if we are arguing the extra firepower matters more than the durability... we are talking about a notably sub par troop choice as you yourself said. One not really worth using. Noise marines at their best are edging them out, not blowing them out of the water. So the idea that noise marines just couldn't be troops for balance reasons is absurd. You could possibly make that argument for zerkers, who are exceptional, but noise marines wouldn't be an auto take even as troops at this point.

Bottom line, if they or anyone else thinks cult units (as a whole) with obj secured would be overpowered, you should laugh in their face. It is just utter nonsense.

Mortarion's Herald wrote:
They were not as powerful in the Index, so you had the option to take them as troops. Now that you have a powerful ability you can use with them, they remove the option to try and spam that powerful ability. You are still more than welcome to run the respective special Chaos units, but now there's a cost to building your army that way.

GW has been very vocal about trying to lower the quality of cheese in the game. I'm surprised anyone expected otherwise.

No way. They did that in the index to sell more berzerkers. Now they're totally tired of selling berzerkers and want to sell something else. Huehuehue

/s

To be fair, the new EC rules not only gives an incentive for Noise Marines to sit and shoot, but also would benefit greatly if it would also force the enemy to charge them instead of the other way around. This is the same reason why Plague Marines were considered OP in 5th edition; they were incredibly hard to shift, had no incentive to move, and you had every incentive to come to them. Giving them ObSec, an ability that further discouraged moving and encourages enemies to move on to you is a huge boon.

And something about the wounds; Intercessors have more raw wounds but are more susceptable to multi-damage weapons, which Noise Marines are less susceptable to. Compounding the fact is that Noise Marines have Music of the Apocalypse, which means there's a consolation prize for the Noise Marine player when his guys bites it.

Finally, the position of Troops is another boon for noise marines is that they have Endless Cacaphony, granting them a second round of shooting at the cost of 2CP. Normally this is a decently big drawback since if you were forced to use Vanguards to bring in the bulk of your forces, you wouldn't have that many CPs to work with. But take them in a Battalion (or brigade even) and suddenly the high CP cost becomes a non-issue. Intercessors, by comparison, don't have any Strategems unique to them like this. (And berserkers have this too, in the form of that 3 CP strategem that lets them fight twice, or thrice as the case may be considering their own special rule).

I still think cult marines should be troops, as they're effectively there every edition (almost no one fielded them in the elites section, it's just way too easy to make them troops in the past even if you weren't trying), but comparing them to intercessors is being a tad skewed. Intercessors are pretty on par with Noise Marines in a total vacuum, but taking into consideration their wargear options, the implications of their rules, the legion rules and strategems (the latter three of which are all points-free btw), the gap widens considerably. A better example would be to compare them to, I would think, Scions (an elite unit that is so head and shoulders above their common counterpart that there's almost no reason to field the basic version anymore).

Noise marines are some of the best marines per point in the game. They only cost 15ppm, can take really good guns, have 2 attacks in close combat, and get to fight again when they die. In the fight phase of they die, they can reroll wounds from the new HQ, and target characters with their shooting.

If they were troops they would be some of the best in the game.

jcd386 wrote:
Noise marines are some of the best marines per point in the game. They only cost 15ppm, can take really good guns, have 2 attacks in close combat, and get to fight again when they die. In the fight phase of they die, they can reroll wounds from the new HQ, and target characters with their shooting.

If they were troops they would be some of the best in the game.

They would be some of the best *marine* troops in the game. Which isn't saying much because marines themselves aren't very good. They have strong characters, vehicles, and the edge given by chapter tactics currently, but their actual MEQ aren't impressive in the slightest. Currently the best marine troop in the game is... probably cultists for CSM (literally just worse guard) and..... scouts(?) for SM as they at least fill a role beyond objective grabber and cp generator. Some chapter specific variants might also be good.

The best troops are things like genestealers, guard infantry as a whole, brimstone horrors and ork boyz. Bezerkers are the only cult unit I'd put on that list even if they were troops and had legion tactics, noise marines would be worth considering for objective secured but even that's not an auto take.

Edit: I'd also like to point out a once per turn strategem that works on any slaanesh unit, noise marines being one of the least useful choices, isn't really a balancing point. EC tactic is good, but other troops have access to compareable tactics. and most multi damage weapons won't be targeting basic troops. Even overcharge plasma and autocannons have better targets. Most of what they will be shot with would be one damage weapons, so having 2w per model at a competitive price is a good deal.