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One thing that I think kinda bothered me about the 3.5 chaos codex was folding all the "special" chaos units into generic squads, and separating them based on chaos mark.

units like "khorn berzerkers" "plague marines" and "thousand sons" disappeared and you were just supposed to represent them by having a unit of marines with mark of khorne, mark of nurgle, or mark of tzeentch.

But... are all chaos marines with mark of tzeentch "thousand sons"? Do they all have to be hollowed out husks of armor with pixie dust? Why can't there be just chaos marines with mark of tzeentch that are different from thousand sons?

BanjoJohn wrote:
One thing that I think kinda bothered me about the 3.5 chaos codex was folding all the "special" chaos units into generic squads, and separating them based on chaos mark.

units like "khorn berzerkers" "plague marines" and "thousand sons" disappeared and you were just supposed to represent them by having a unit of marines with mark of khorne, mark of nurgle, or mark of tzeentch.

But... are all chaos marines with mark of tzeentch "thousand sons"? Do they all have to be hollowed out husks of armor with pixie dust? Why can't there be just chaos marines with mark of tzeentch that are different from thousand sons?

Its been a while, but I think its a fingers/thumbs thing. All Plague marines are marines with the mark of Nurgle, but not all marines with the mark of Nurgle are Plague Marines. That said it may also be a difference without a distinction.

in 3.5 giving the mark of Tzeentch makes a normal CSM a rubric. they don't necessarily need to be Thousand Sons Rubrics, but they are rubrics.

I wouldn't characterise them as generic though, the 3.5 dex allowed you to apply Marks to a wide range of squads to make different Cult troops, plus you got to apply a Veteran skill on top.

Per the rules specifically in the 3.5e codex, mark of tzeentch directly made the marked unit have the aspects of a rubric marine that being a hard to wound automaton or a sorcerer sergeant. There weren’t rules for tzeentch marines with attributes more like a normal marine squad, just the sorcerer+ tough slow and purposeful marines way.

You could have in the context of the 3.5e codex fielded some non-‘thousand sons’ army, and given them mark of tzeentch, as long as you are okay with being restricted to bolters and becoming extra tough and slow and purposeful.

Or if they are less strongly empowered by Tzeentch, maybe the non-‘thousand sons’ army could feature units without chaos marks at all, or with the mark of undivided.

I think there are ways to field a tzeentch force in the context of the 3.5e book, but if you simultaneously really need the units to have the full mark of tzeentch, but you don’t want them to have the automatons+sorcerer setup, then that specific need is not supported by the rules.

I guess my general thought process was this:
a unit of chaos space marines with mark of khorne should be different than a unit of khorn berzerkers.
a unit of chaos space marines with mark of nurgle should be different than a unit of plague marines
a unit of chaos space marines with mark of tzeentch should be different than a unit of thousand sons rubric marines

that sort of thing. I suppose I've been thinking about what kind of bonuses/rules could be applied via mark that are different from those specific cult units.

They did this in the followup Codizes, however, it also meant that Rubric Terminators, Plague Marine Havocs, Khorne Berzerker Bikers and so on disappeared and the Cult units only stayed as the base infantry until 7th/8th edition, when TS and DG respectively got their own Codex with said Terminators, but then losing other units again.
I think the only time you had the full roster of CSM with marked renegades and full Cult units was in the 5 months of 7th edition codex + Traitor Legions Supplement. The Legion formations basically turned marked CSM units into the Cult version, but you could still forgo using those formations and play Tzeentch marked CSM with a pretty useless 6++.

BanjoJohn wrote:
But... are all chaos marines with mark of tzeentch "thousand sons"? Do they all have to be hollowed out husks of armor with pixie dust? Why can't there be just chaos marines with mark of tzeentch that are different from thousand sons?

In 3.5 they were all rubric squads with the exception of chosen - if you made them all aspiring champions they were a band of sorcerers.

You could always play them as a different legion of course but the mark itself as a codex entry was a structured freebie - you paid 10 points for the 15pt (normally unavailable to troops) daemonic essence mutation, fearless, and slow and purposeful at the cost of not being able to take variant weapons, etc.
If you choose to model them as cyborgs led by a warpsmith instead I don't think anyone would mind.