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Hey folks. A little idea I've been kicking around in my spare time, I'd appreciate any guidance from people who're actually good at this game (I just charge down the table and let the dark gods decide what happens). The concept is Fabius Bile has been up all night working and staying awake by mainlining Red Bull, and demolished the line between genius and madness entirely. The result is a Creations of Bile detachment, except:

* Every eligible unit (not Damned) gets all six enhancements: +1 WS, +1 BS, +1T, +1S and +1A in melee, +2" Movement.

* Enhanced units cannot make Dark Pacts unless led by a character (the regular troops don't even know what a god is at this point).

* In every one of your Command Phases, each enhanced unit takes D3 Mortal Wounds (they're so juiced up their internal organs just explode randomly from time to time).

* Points costs are doubled.

So basically it's turning your already melee-formidable CSM army into an absolute blender, but you only get half an army. 5A S5 WS2+ chainswords will go through virtually any opponent like hormagaunts through grots, but despite being T5 your basic Legionary is still 2 Wounds 3+ Save, and you're severely outnumbered so no matter how much damage you put out, you're at risk of being dragged down by just having enough dice rolled against you. Plus you're going to need to have your boys attacking virtually 24/7, so scoring VPs from Actions, or even just being on objectives unless there happens to be someone to kill already there, will be a balancing act.

I did wonder about leaving Damned units, who don't get Bile enhancements, at their regular points cost, but I worry that access to cheap cultists will make it too easy to use them for VP activities while the Legionaries are busy killing. I'm also on the fence about the points cost for (normal) enhancements, whether they can be left as-is since their effects haven't been boosted, or whether just being applied to a super-enhanced character means they're unbalancing unless that's accounted for in points. Prime Test Subject can give you a WS2+ with rerolls S9 6A D3 daemon hammer (before you even take Chance for Glory into account), but you've already paid 160pts to get the Chaos Lord to wield it, does PTS itself also need its cost doubled?

Obviously it's thoroughly broken, but I'm hoping for broken in a madcap fun way, rather than just ruining the flow of the game and wasting everyone's time. Thoughts?

I think a Kill Team would also work, crank their stats to Custodes levels but have them constantly taking damage every turning point would make for a fun narrative game.

You can take unafffected units for performing mission parameters, the only infantry you use is probably ones inside transports or deepstrike with a character attached. Points costs being doubled seems unecessary, the other downsides are probably enough on their own, double is easy but it is way overkill, unless you're able to stack single-target buffs or have expensive but great mobility options there's just no point in not just having twice as many not-super guys or just bikers. The juice damage incentivises big units with characters instead of MSU to limit the amount of juice damage you take, not being able do Dark Pacts does the same, overkill to me. If you want to keep the double price, you could make juice lower leadership unless the unit includes a character leading to increased casualties from Dark Pacts unless a character leads the unit.

All your units exploding all the time seems like it'd be a waste of time just to manage, I think it might be more fun and easier to balance if you reworked the detachment to add more self-damage elements to the enhancements and Stratagems.

I'd definitely ditch the constant mortal wounds, and your buffs probably don't warrant *doubling* their cost.

It seems to me like the way to go here is to either:

A.) Just have them be their own bespoke datasheet that you price appropriately and take as many as few of as you want. Or...

B.) Figure out how to move some of this into the design space of the strats/enhancements to make it feel like more of a detachment.

So assuming B, maybe you do something like:

* At the start of the game, decide what flavor of enhancements Bile has been working on. Either make your dudes a little tougher, a little stronger, or a little more agile (better WS/BS). Or just keep the "no dark pacts" thing. I feel like that probably more or less balances out the stat boosts.

* For enhancements, go with options that will improve their physical stats further. Maybe some stuff to turn characters into pseudo-apothecaries.

* For strats, have an option to let them really go overboard on the combat stims and take some mortal wounds at the end of the fight phase as a result. Probably some standard marine strats for showing off how tough they are (-1 to-wound if Strength > Toughness, etc.). Maybe something apothecary-ish for characters (heal the unit.)