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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.

Yeah there just weren't any rules for, say, a normal Black Legion or Red Corsair marine dedicated to Tzeentch who wasn't a sorcerer. Which didn't really make sense to me at the time, since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

This once got me in trouble. I was playing a mega battle sometime after the 3.5 codex came out, and after Cypher got his White Dwarf rules.

Mega battle was: Imperial vs. Chaos. I was Imperial side, and got specific permission to use Cypher in my Imperial Guard list. Cyper could take a single unit of Chaos Marines as a retinue. They could be 20-men strong back then. Chaos marines could take a mark, I gave them Mark of Tzeench. One Chaos Marine unit with the mark of Tzeench in your army could be upgraded to Rubric Terminators, so I did it. The result: Imperial Guard having a deepstriking unit of 20 Terminators. I got called a rules lawyer.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

No it isn't the whole thing. Tzeentch is also the god of change, knowledge, deception, scheming, revolution, and mutation. Most of his followers aren't sorcerers though they're usually led by them.

The Thousand Sons legion is unique in that all of their non-sorcerers were turned into dust, but that isn't applicable to the other legions. They would just be heavily mutated, like the TS would have been without Ahriman.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

No it isn't the whole thing. Tzeentch is also the god of change, knowledge, deception, scheming, revolution, and mutation. Most of his followers aren't sorcerers though they're usually led by them.

The Thousand Sons legion is unique in that all of their non-sorcerers were turned into dust, but that isn't applicable to the other legions. They would just be heavily mutated, like the TS would have been without Ahriman.

You mean turned into some sort of Magic Construct?

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

No it isn't the whole thing. Tzeentch is also the god of change, knowledge, deception, scheming, revolution, and mutation. Most of his followers aren't sorcerers though they're usually led by them.

The Thousand Sons legion is unique in that all of their non-sorcerers were turned into dust, but that isn't applicable to the other legions. They would just be heavily mutated, like the TS would have been without Ahriman.

You mean turned into some sort of Magic Construct?

No. Not at all.

 JNAProductions wrote:
No. Not at all.

Thank you for telling me what Orkeosauraus meant.

In related news I just searched for "characters dedicated to Tzeetch" and all the results were either sorcerers or magical constructs. Or both.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
Yeah there just weren't any rules for, say, a normal Black Legion or Red Corsair marine dedicated to Tzeentch who wasn't a sorcerer. Which didn't really make sense to me at the time, since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

I suppose they just haven't received a mark. Maybe they have to prove themselves and become chosen before Tzeentch bothers with them, or let themselves be possessed.

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

No it isn't the whole thing. Tzeentch is also the god of change, knowledge, deception, scheming, revolution, and mutation. Most of his followers aren't sorcerers though they're usually led by them.

The Thousand Sons legion is unique in that all of their non-sorcerers were turned into dust, but that isn't applicable to the other legions. They would just be heavily mutated, like the TS would have been without Ahriman.

You mean turned into some sort of Magic Construct?

No I mean the exact opposite. Rubric of Ahriman. Remember?

In related news I just searched for "characters dedicated to Tzeetch" and all the results were either sorcerers or magical constructs. Or both.

"Most of his followers aren't sorcerers though they're usually led by them."

We aren't talking about characters or even chosen, we're talking about the regular legionaries. The ones who carry bolters or chainswords, and weren't subject to the Rubric. Those exist amongst the undivided legions but that's what the 3.5 codex fails to represent.

Thanks for articulating that point, that was kind of what I was going for.

Like... what I meant by "thousand sons" was the magic suits of armor with dust inside, not just specifically the legion called "thousand sons".

Like... to me it makes sense for there to be maybe like.. a minor mark and a major mark,

There's a big, huge, gigantic, colossal difference between "What should be conceptually possible in the 40k universe" and "What is allowed within the confines of a particular ruleset (in this case 3.5)"

Conceptually yes, there are Tzeentch-aligned Chaos Space Marines out there that have nothing to do with Rubrics or Thousand Sons or Sorcerors at all, they just follow Tzeentch in their own way. Conceptually there's nothing wrong with that interpretation.

Rules wise in the 3.5e dex the moment you get the Mark you become a Rubric or a Sorceror

Conceptually, carrying the favour of a God does not always manifest in exactly the same way. People dedicated to Khorne are not all frothing mad berzerkers. People dedicated to Nurgle are not all tougher than those who aren't

Rules wise, those people get +1A and +1T regardless.

It's kind of pointless to play "Well this should exist" for a ruleset that was rendered obsolete 20 years ago. Yes, those things should exist. But they didn't. If you're still playing 3.5 to the point where that distinction is in any way relevant to you, write some homebrew and chat to your opponents, if they're already playing with rules from 2002 then chances are they're open to that kind of flexibility

In 3.5 a Chaos Marine is a Chaos Marine, and which legion they belong to or which god they worship doesn't affect their combat performance to any degree worth representing, unless they're so far off the baseline that they warrant a Mark.

I think you may be applying the modern obsession with subfaction-based stat minutiae to an edition that preferred to differentiate subfactions through force organization and unit selection.

I think it's always been a bit of a stretch that loads of Chaos Marines worship any Chaos god other than Khorne.

Given what they are and how they're conditioned, there should be hardly any Slaanesh worshippers.

Nurgle worshippers often seem to be afflicted rather than choosing to worship Nurgle. I've recently thought that the Thunder Warriors would have been a more natural fit, given their bodies were failing them with weird tumours and so on, worshipping nurgle would make sense there. But Astartes don't really suffer from physical frailty that makes Nurgle worship appealling, so I think plague marines would be relatively rare.

With Tzeentch, I think you'd have individual marines with that sort of personality, maybe a slightly greater number of Psykers too. But I imagine they'd be more the sort of ambitious types - maybe warband leaders or at least in the leadership. It seems unlikely to me that you'd have whole warbands with the same outlook.

Khorne warbands on the other hand should be very common - Space Marines emotional spectrum is heavily canted towards rage and hate, they're obsessed with war and combat, and they have limited access to sources of pleasure outside of that arena.

I'll accept having one legion each that the Chaos Gods all took a special interest in, but for later warbands I see it mostly being Chaos Undivided/Renegades, Khornate Warbands with way fewer of the others.

Charax wrote:
There's a big, huge, gigantic, colossal difference between "What should be conceptually possible in the 40k universe" and "What is allowed within the confines of a particular ruleset (in this case 3.5)"

Conceptually yes, there are Tzeentch-aligned Chaos Space Marines out there that have nothing to do with Rubrics or Thousand Sons or Sorcerors at all, they just follow Tzeentch in their own way. Conceptually there's nothing wrong with that interpretation.

Rules wise in the 3.5e dex the moment you get the Mark you become a Rubric or a Sorceror

Conceptually, carrying the favour of a God does not always manifest in exactly the same way. People dedicated to Khorne are not all frothing mad berzerkers. People dedicated to Nurgle are not all tougher than those who aren't

Rules wise, those people get +1A and +1T regardless.

It's kind of pointless to play "Well this should exist" for a ruleset that was rendered obsolete 20 years ago. Yes, those things should exist. But they didn't. If you're still playing 3.5 to the point where that distinction is in any way relevant to you, write some homebrew and chat to your opponents, if they're already playing with rules from 2002 then chances are they're open to that kind of flexibility

This whole conversation has been about "should", I already know what the rules published for 3/3.5 say, that is not the confusing part. I'm gathering ideas for homebrew stuff. I suppose I could have stated that earlier.

I think Mark of Tzeentch gave +1 to Invulnerable saves in 7th, or granted a 6++ (maybe a 5++?) to models that had no Invuln.

Breton wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
since there should just be regular Tzeentchians who are neither pyskers nor magic constructs (but who really like tricking people and reading etc).

Except "Magic" is the whole thing for Tzeentch. I would expect everyone who dedicates themselves to Tzeentch would become one or the other if they got any favor. Or disfavor as the case may be.

I think Warhammer Fantasy shows this dichotomy fairly well with Chaos units devoted to Tzeentch:

Tzeentch is a popular God among tribal shamans and Sorcerers, but tribes who worship the Great Eagle as their sole patron are uncommon. Most Marauders prefer the bloodiness of Khorne, the glittering prizes of Slaanesh, or the resilience gifted by Nurgle. What Tzeentch’s warbands lack in numbers, however, they make up for with cunning. They make use of guile in unison with their brawn, using tactics more akin to guerrilla warfare to destroy their enemies. Carrying totem banners of powerful magic into battle, they are perfectly capable of causing immense suffering to their enemies.

Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch tend to be subtly individual, with many small differences between them. Typically their plate armour and shield will be engraved with intricately patterned sigils that radiate with raw power, or flow with blinking eyes or gibbering mouths, or are perhaps inscribed with a minute arcane text making the wearer literally a walking grimoire. Though it is not immediately visible, many will have mutated flesh, their Chaos armour melting and reforming around the warped appendages of their bodies. They are deadly and unpredictable; they are warriors who have the favour of the God of Magic.

Despite his position as the God of Magic, Tzeentch, like His brother-Gods, indulges frequently in warfare and favours some warriors over others. To His Chosen He grants not only augmented physical ability and equipment, but also an innate awareness in strategy. Where Khorne’s Chosen comprise of supremely powerful and savage warriors intent on acts of unbounded violence, the Chosen of Tzeentch are more effectively used as part of grand, complex strategies. They are highly cerebral fighters known to plot their manoeuvres so quickly and elaborately that it often appears to their enemies that every eventuality had been planned for ahead of the battle.

The Knights of Change are mighty and terrible warriors, not bred only from the ranks of the northern tribes but also from the lands of the Empire, Bretonnia, Tilea and Estalia who have turned apostate, abandoning their native lands for the dubious favours of Tzeentch. Many were individuals of great importance and temporal power in their former lives, such as statesmen and nobles, while others were famous Templars or renowned military men. Atop their great Chaos Steeds, they carry ostentatious weapons in a grotesque echo of the illustrious Knightly Orders to which many of them once belonged.

The legions of Tzeentch are not as numerous as those of wrathful Khorne, and do not possess the unholy resilience of those belonging to His rival, Nurgle. Nonetheless, when the Great Conspirator is ascendant, His war leaders are gifted with the preternatural ability to perceive and react to a dozen different futures. Those few who succeed upon the twisting path of Tzeentch become the most otherworldly of all Chaos Lords, leading His hosts with distinction. They are blessed with both exceptional martial skills and the arcane strength of the Lord of Magic, a deadly combination which makes them both cunning leaders and lethal warriors, who command their armies with uncanny presence.

Tzeentch has much, much more than just sorcerers and constructs, at least thematically.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think Mark of Tzeentch gave +1 to Invulnerable saves in 7th, or granted a 6++ (maybe a 5++?) to models that had no Invuln.

That's how Mark of Tzeentch worked in 4e, and then a separate unit was created literally just called "Thousand Sons" to represent the rubric marines. Which is also kind of awkward, because now you can't play the Thousand Sons legion in its entirety and have it make internal sense.

If I were doing 3.5 over again I would make MoT work like 4e by default (representing warp mutations) and then allow any unit in a Tzeentch cult army to be made into automatons for extra points (sort of like Khornate chainaxes, which I think could be purchased for any unit with MoK). And then aspiring champs and chosen specifically become sorcerers instead (same points but different benefits).

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
If I were doing 3.5 over again I would make MoT work like 4e by default (representing warp mutations) and then allow any unit in a Tzeentch cult army to be made into automatons for extra points

IIRC I think they had plans at the time of some sort of legion book(s), like the old eldar craftworlds book to expand on the legions but never got around to it. No models no rules I guess.

Though at the time there weren't many cult variants that the marks didn't cover. Thousand Sons terminators and berzerkers on juggernaunts were the iconic ones.

A.T. wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
If I were doing 3.5 over again I would make MoT work like 4e by default (representing warp mutations) and then allow any unit in a Tzeentch cult army to be made into automatons for extra points

IIRC I think they had plans at the time of some sort of legion book(s), like the old eldar craftworlds book to expand on the legions but never got around to it. No models no rules I guess.

Though at the time there weren't many cult variants that the marks didn't cover. Thousand Sons terminators and berzerkers on juggernaunts were the iconic ones.

Chaos is like Eldar and Space Marines in that you could just paint them differently to fit your faction, instead of needing separate models, so "no rules no models" doesn't exactly fit

BanjoJohn wrote:
Chaos is like Eldar and Space Marines in that you could just paint them differently to fit your faction, instead of needing separate models, so "no rules no models" doesn't exactly fit

I mean to push the release of legion books at the time as chaos already had their 'craftworld' style rules in the main codex.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think it's always been a bit of a stretch that loads of Chaos Marines worship any Chaos god other than Khorne.

Given what they are and how they're conditioned, there should be hardly any Slaanesh worshippers.

Nurgle worshippers often seem to be afflicted rather than choosing to worship Nurgle. I've recently thought that the Thunder Warriors would have been a more natural fit, given their bodies were failing them with weird tumours and so on, worshipping nurgle would make sense there. But Astartes don't really suffer from physical frailty that makes Nurgle worship appealling, so I think plague marines would be relatively rare.

With Tzeentch, I think you'd have individual marines with that sort of personality, maybe a slightly greater number of Psykers too. But I imagine they'd be more the sort of ambitious types - maybe warband leaders or at least in the leadership. It seems unlikely to me that you'd have whole warbands with the same outlook.

Khorne warbands on the other hand should be very common - Space Marines emotional spectrum is heavily canted towards rage and hate, they're obsessed with war and combat, and they have limited access to sources of pleasure outside of that arena.

I'll accept having one legion each that the Chaos Gods all took a special interest in, but for later warbands I see it mostly being Chaos Undivided/Renegades, Khornate Warbands with way fewer of the others.

Slaanesh also makes a lot of sense- it plays off excess and pleasure. Taking the satisfaction of the kill or of a job well done to the extreme is on-point for Marines.

Likewise, Nurgle is a god of hope to those in despair. Marines are not physically frail, but they are always stretched thin against great odds. The one thing they routinely fear is failure, even if they don't typically understand the emotion well. Playing off that despair against overwhelming odds is how Nurgle can corrupt superhuman warriors.

As Ashiraya mentions, Tzeentch is the least likely for warriors compared to the others. I suspect Tzeentchian cults are particularly common amongst nobility, politicians, diplomats, and the like though.

Space Marines are kind of fatalist so Nurgle has something to hook into there. Marines are supposed to die fighting and Nurgle teaches that struggle is unavoidable and inevitably ends in failure so all there is to do is to suffer well.

There's a great short story in the Dark Millennium compilation (the original, from 2001 or thereabouts) about an Ultramarine captain falling to Nurgle mid-battle as a result of a GUO's psychic influence. More recently, in Requiem Infernal, Nurgle slowly asserts control over an entirely unwilling Guardsman and ultimately puts him in a situation where he can either give in or be agonizingly tortured for all eternity.

The Chaos gods can project corruption into unwilling recipients through cursed artifacts, immersion in areas where the walls between reality and the warp are weak, or just raw brain-melting psychic power. If someone expresses emotions that resonate with a particular god that makes them more vulnerable, but it isn't a hard requirement for corruption to take root.

So the idea of Tzeentchian warbands doesn't bother me- it doesn't mean every member willingly sought out power and signed a Faustian bargain for it. Tzeentch can amplify those tendencies and ultimately coerce allegiance ex nihilo.