Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

I'm definitely not a fan of some armies getting books for subfactions and even sub-subfactions, while others are lucky if their book hasn't lost units since the previous iteration.

And World Eaters seem especially egregious, given how much of their stuff is just generic, while their roster of actually unique units is paper-thin.

I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

I would just do one big Chaos codex that includes marines, daemons, and cultists. That wouldn't fit with GW's design philosophy though.

If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the Signless wrote:
If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

I'm not sure this makes sense. They clearly want the Agents to function as allies, but not on their own. And Corsairs and Harlequins can still be taken in Drukhari armies (indeed, the most popular Drukhari detachment use Harlequins), and a selection of Drukhari units are in the Craftworld codex for an Ynnari list.

Crimson wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

It does feel strange. I kind of wonder if it's because they started with DG and TS instead of EC and WE? Like, I can understand not giving Thousand Sons access to things like raptors, some of the more fleshy units, etc. due to the whole rubric thing. We arguably shouldn't have gotten hellbrutes (or should have gotten a variant hellbrute instead). And while DG could probably reasonably have access to most CSM units, I can understand GW being more iffy about jump pack units, maybe bike units (despite how popular nurgle bikers were back in the day), or even obliterators (not as overtly plague-y as other stuff.

So if you can talk yourself into making the first two god-specific books eschew big chunks of Codex: CSM, I can see there being a temptation to try and do the same thing for WE and EC. Except that WE and EC both (to my mind) have an easier time using all the generic CSM stuff, and the bespoke kits/units they got are generally less well-rounded. Like, TS and DG both have a mix of melee and ranged units. WE and EC are almost entirely just melee units (plus noise marines). But yeah, an approach closer to what they did with loyalists probably would have made more sense.

BorderCountess wrote:

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?

Well, there is that. Which is part of why I think a big-book-of-Khorne would maybe be a better approach. You can give their version of havoks, predators, etc. Khorne-y rules if you want to differentiate between how they're used by Khorne marines as opposed to other marines, or you can just give them reprints of the vanilla CSM datasheets to help round out the army a bit. Being able to team up with some traitor guard types would also provide some more gun to a largely melee army while also giving you a giant pile of bullet catchers to help your Khorne games feel sufficiently bloody.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 The XenoReaver wrote:
I think comparing to the Loyalist Marines is an unfair comparison. They have the Codex Astartes that for the most part, they mostly all follow. Something which Chaos forces don't do, they do their own thing so their forces being vastly different would make sense to me. I feel the problem is GW isn't putting the effort in to make them unique enough and interesting.

To me, the problem with World Eaters specifically here is: how unique and interesting can you make an army that just wants to rush forward chop heads off?

Blades of Khorne plays as an interesting army where they rely on finesse to control the opponent's movements and have a lot of combat tricks to be able to do things like slide into combats during your opponent's turn. They retain the melee first feel while gaining a lot of tricks that a good player can exploit and create a unique feeling army as opposed to more heavily armoured and slower chaos warriors. The problem with World Eaters isn't that GW can't make a unique Khorne army, it is that it is limited by a limited model range and some boring rules.

 the Signless wrote:
If Agents of the Imperium were better supported, a Forces of Darkness with a lot of the daemons that would be present in all of the chaos armies and some of the more generic cultists could have been cool. Throw in another book for the eldar support factions of Ynnari, Harlequins, corsairs, and exodites which canonically work with both craftworld and dark eldar.

Unfortunately, Agents is the proof that GW has no interest in supporting that kind of add on soup.

I'm not sure this makes sense. They clearly want the Agents to function as allies, but not on their own. And Corsairs and Harlequins can still be taken in Drukhari armies (indeed, the most popular Drukhari detachment use Harlequins), and a selection of Drukhari units are in the Craftworld codex for an Ynnari list.

I am advocating for GW to make these work as standalone books which can be played solo as well as working as an allied force. This way daemons players can keep their fun while the units are available to all of the books that would need them. A bloodthirster makes sense in CSM, World Eaters, and in daemons so it would be a convenient place to put it. Same with some generic support like cultists which are in all of the CSM variants anyways (except EC because GW hates them).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Crimson wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
I think the ideal has much less to do with whether a subfaction has a book or not, and more about the number of options available to them. A specific World Eaters book with 10 units seems much worse than if World Eaters were part of a Big Book 'o' Chaos where they had those same 10 units, plus another 50 to draw upon if they wanted.

And if GW absolutely wants to sell more books, it could be a supplement that could be used in combination with the main CSM codex. That's how it works for loyalists, and I don't really understand why GW chose a different model for chaos. It is like if the variant marine chapters only had access to the handful of bespoke units they have and not the generic marine units.

It does feel strange. I kind of wonder if it's because they started with DG and TS instead of EC and WE? Like, I can understand not giving Thousand Sons access to things like raptors, some of the more fleshy units, etc. due to the whole rubric thing. We arguably shouldn't have gotten hellbrutes (or should have gotten a variant hellbrute instead). And while DG could probably reasonably have access to most CSM units, I can understand GW being more iffy about jump pack units, maybe bike units (despite how popular nurgle bikers were back in the day), or even obliterators (not as overtly plague-y as other stuff.

So if you can talk yourself into making the first two god-specific books eschew big chunks of Codex: CSM, I can see there being a temptation to try and do the same thing for WE and EC. Except that WE and EC both (to my mind) have an easier time using all the generic CSM stuff, and the bespoke kits/units they got are generally less well-rounded. Like, TS and DG both have a mix of melee and ranged units. WE and EC are almost entirely just melee units (plus noise marines). But yeah, an approach closer to what they did with loyalists probably would have made more sense.

DG and TS are several release waves deep at this point. On launch, with only a few specific marines and the terminators, they were in a much more similar position to where WE are now. Now with DG's unique vehicles and TS unique goat-birds it is a harder argument to say that they should just be rolled back into CSM. I think we should give WE time to come up with some more stuff to fill their gaps.

There's no reason that lesser Daemon engines should be unique to Death Guard. They could easily be rolled back into generic Spiky Marines with only a negligible loss of options (while regaining all of the units which they arbitrarily lost when they were split off).

They give DG a unique identity as opposed to the generic CSM vehicles. All of the imperium could be rolled into a single book but we don't because we understand that guard, SoB, and SM are different branches of a united front despite often fighting side by side.

It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

DG and TS are several release waves deep at this point. On launch, with only a few specific marines and the terminators, they were in a much more similar position to where WE are now. Now with DG's unique vehicles and TS unique goat-birds it is a harder argument to say that they should just be rolled back into CSM. I think we should give WE time to come up with some more stuff to fill their gaps.

Lord Damocles wrote:It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

the Signless wrote:Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

I think I agree with Signless more than I disagree here. Hypothetically, if you keep adding units to make WE more unique, then eventually they will feel more unique. I do, however, feel like WE are off to a rougher start in terms of "justifying their existence". (Ignore the dramatic phrasing; it's late and I'm struggling to think of a better way to word the sentiment.)

Even in the early days of Death Guard, between plague marines being usually durable and all the crawlers and drones and whatnot that (iirc) they got pretty early on, they definitely felt like they occupied a somewhat different niche than the rest of vanilla CSM. And then Thousand Sons had their rubricae who had similarly decent defensive profiles, sometimes had slow & purposeful or similar rules, had their psykers all over the place, etc.

In comparison to those, I think WE units struggle to feel like they're as different or like they're doing as much "weird stuff" that warrants its own faction. Like, a baked-in psyker, invuln save, s&p, inferno bolters, etc. all make rubric marines feel like a very different unit than your typical legionaires. Whereas berzerkers kiiiiinda just feel like they're legionaires with a melee boost. And as spelled out in the opening post, a lot of the "unique" WE units are (at least conceptually) kind of the same as some vanilla CSM units. Jakhals are cultists. Eight-bound (as far as I'm aware) are conceptually just greater possessed. Berzerkers are pretty close to legionaires, etc.

So while DG and TS both felt like they were going in their own weird direction, WE so far kind of feel like they just deleted half the CSM codex and gave the survivors a melee buff.

Finding a way to make the army feel more nuanced would probably help with that. I'm here for the sort of Blades of Khorne style finesse you mentioned earlier, but I'm not sure WE have really set themselves up for that sort of thing so far? And it feels like it would be less challenging for the designers to just incorporate a wider variety of existing units (the Codex: Khorne approach) rather than figuring out a million ways to do "run forward and charge" in an attempt to make run forward and charge rewardingly interesting. But I'm here for it if they can do it.

I don't feel the issue is that WE are too close to CSM. Its that WE is too close to WE.

Which is I guess the same position expressed differently. Berzerkers are fine and have been in 40k forever. But Jackals feel like "little berzerkers" and Eight-bound feel like "big berzerkers".

I think DG had more themes to build around more or less from the get-go.

You could take:
Mortarion & Daemon Prince herohammer.
Typhus and lots of Poxwalkers.
Go wide with Plague Marines - stabby or shooty or a mix of both.
Terminators
Daemon Engines
Regular Tanks
Or some mix thereof.
Only the tanks are really moved over from CSM.

I guess you can say "isn't a blightlord just two plague marines in a trenchcoat" - and to some degree it is. But I think its different enough - and Deathshroud are clearly different.

What have WE got?
Herohammer - sure.
Loads of Jackals? They have a detachment for it, but not much other support.
Lots of Berzerkers? Yes, but there's no options here so its narrower than Plague Marines.
Stuck with regular terminators (boring). Does "lots of Eight-bound" have the same feeling? Not really convinced.
CSM Daemon Engines (boring).
CSM Tanks (boring).

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Yeah let's just do away with CSM altogether, I mean they're just reskinned SM. Why bother even having Drukhari or Mechanicus cos they're just reskinned Aeldari and Guard.
God I'm so glad we got rid of all these snowflake bloat factions.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

I think it's definitely reasonable to ask which units really need to be unique. As opposed to, for example, differentiating terminators by giving them the Mark of Nurgle or the Mark of Slaanesh or such (which could even come with some unique wargear if it really needed to).

It would also just allow for more varied lists - especially with factions like World Eaters. e.g. you could run things like Havocs with Plasma Cannons as the Teeth of Khorne for more ranged support - rather than having to rely on four marginally different Berserker variants.

 vipoid wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

I think it's definitely reasonable to ask which units really need to be unique. As opposed to, for example, differentiating terminators by giving them the Mark of Nurgle or the Mark of Slaanesh or such (which could even come with some unique wargear if it really needed to).

It would also just allow for more varied lists - especially with factions like World Eaters. e.g. you could run things like Havocs with Plasma Cannons as the Teeth of Khorne for more ranged support - rather than having to rely on four marginally different Berserker variants.

A nice thing about this is that it can represent the fact that "turning cultist" isn't a binary switch, but a blended progression. You got your base CSMs, you got your CSMs who are leaning towards Khorne, you get your Berzerkers who are fully dedicated, and then you get your adherents that are mutating and becoming posessed. The better Chaos books let you do the whole spectrum.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It's the circular argument for snowflakiness - arbitrarily changes to justify separate rules, and then you have to forever have more changes and more divergent rules because they need their separeness to be justified.

95% of the Death Guard list is just reskinned Chaos Marines units or stuff copied from the Daemons book.
But nooo Blightlords are so unique from Terminators because they can take a flail and a not-grenade launcher...

Ironically, your argument is also circular. This subfaction is 'reskinned', so we don't need it -> this faction is reskinned SM, so we don't need it.

Instead of the Big Book of Khorne book that many of you have requested, I think they should bundle that together with the Big Book of Slaanesh. They could make it suitable for their Sci-Fi and Fantasy games. And put in many, many random tables. And they could give it a name that echoes with nostalgia. Something like Realm of Chaos. Or maybe Slaves to Darkness.

And then they could do it for Nurgle and Tzeentch in another book. Call it, say, The Damned and The Lost.

 Fifty wrote:
Instead of the Big Book of Khorne book that many of you have requested, I think they should bundle that together with the Big Book of Slaanesh. They could make it suitable for their Sci-Fi and Fantasy games. And put in many, many random tables. And they could give it a name that echoes with nostalgia. Something like Realm of Chaos. Or maybe Slaves to Darkness.

And then they could do it for Nurgle and Tzeentch in another book. Call it, say, The Damned and The Lost.

I see what you did there and I love it.

 the Signless wrote:
Perhaps at the beginning, but we are nearly a decade on from DG having their own rules and identity. Generic CSM do not play with debuff auras that is a unique niche for the current DG book. Rolling everything back into CSM as opposed to giving these armies more support would remove some unique factions without much benefit.

..

What does a debuff rule have to do with miniatures?

You can roll all that back into csm and provide detachments for debuffs all you want.


I'm not sure I see the point of this whole thread given some of these comments. Death guard are justified because they've been out for a decade but we need to examine world eaters? Why aren't we waiting 10 years to have this conversation so we can say that it s too late to roll them back?

In which case I can't wait for my 10 ork codexs which we'll debate the merits of in 2067 when there are too many units to roll them back.

Jokes on you the only armies making it to 2067 are Kroot and Squats.

I realise some of these points are a little late and scattershot, but reading through the thread left me with some thoughts and rather than quoting half a dozen people... I think this is better:

Penitent Jake is correct, I think, in highlighting the model/release advantage of the Cult Legions being in their own books. WE are anemic (heh) right now, but will hopefully be properly fleshed out.

Personally, I think that the World Eaters are the worst realised of the four Cult Legions; but I don't think that's an inherent fault. The Death Guard are the best done, but had the advantage of a big Edition Launch wave (and an extremely passionate sculptor/long time Nurglite, Maxime Pastourel). The Emperor's Children I'd place next as far as having a diverse and interesting range (though they lack a bunch of bafflingly easy CSM ads), then the Thousand Sons (as I begrudge the AoS hand-me-downs). The World Eaters suffer both from few models (like EC & TS) as well as little inspiration. For example, when the Jakhals name was being rumoured I imagined that WE Cultists would be units of scavengers who picked over the dead in the wake of the Berzerkers - syphoning blood from corpses and removing skulls. (There's a scene like this in The First Wall, where the World Eaters themselves focus on killing while leaving the menial aspects of Khorne worship to their followers.) Or their could be "professional soldiery" (like the Blood Pact) who handle all the logistics for the Legion and are the ones who actually keep things functioning. Etc, etc - I'm sure people can come up with tons of interesting things. Instead, their Cultists turned out to just be also-Berzerkers. And the Eightbound! Another name that leaked (alongside lore), and left me imagining what a Marine with eight Bloodletters hammered into him would look like... only for the answer to be a big-Berzerker. It's not that there's nothing interesting to do with the World Eaters; GW just didn't do anything interesting with them.

A bunch of people have brought up a pan-Khornate book. A reminder that Codex: Khorne Daemonkin existed in 7th edition, and was such a book. (It's a bit of a pity that they then went with Codex: Death Guard instead of Codex: Nurgle Daemonkin, but arguably "what's in a name?")

A bunch of people have mentioned "The Teeth of Khorne" as being an old World Eater unit that could be brought back. I wanted to clarify that this was never actually a unit - in Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness (1988), there were lists for World Eaters, Emperor's Children, and Black Legion. (Plus the Ordo Malleus.) The Chaos units were very basic - Assault, Tactical, and Devastator - and then they all had lots of options. (Including Jump Packs; yes, even the Devastator squads). In the little lore blurb for World Eater Devastators, it says "As the teeth of the World Eaters, Devastator Squads rarely limit themselves to providing tactical support. They are often found in the thick of any fight, taking blood with as much abandon as their comrades-in-arms." Somehow this has turned into a myth that their was a "Teeth of Khorne" unit.

Having said that, I'd love to see a Teeth of Khorne unit. (Afterall, GW adopted the fanon connection between the Saturnine Terminator name and the "egg man" TDA design.) Give them Heavy Bolters/Ectoplasma Cannons/Ectoplasma-Burners as options, and don't forget that they still have the 'Nails biting.

Other WE units I'd like to see off the top of my head: more Khornate Daemon Engines (Blood Slaughterer, smaller Brass Scorpions, etc), proper WE Terminators (not necessarily Red Butchers - let HH stuff stay in HH, the Cults can develop over ten thousand years), Berzerker Surgeons (as a 3-model kit like TS Exalted Sorcerers; a mishmash of Berzerker + Apothecary + Warpsmith + Master of Possession), Jugger Riders, a Cult Vehicle Upgrade sprue (ditto for the other Cult Legions), and proper integration of Khornate Daemons (ditto for the other Cult Legions).

 ElEssEm wrote:

Penitent Jake is correct, I think, in highlighting the model/release advantage of the Cult Legions being in their own books. WE are anemic (heh) right now, but will hopefully be properly fleshed out.

Personally, I think that the World Eaters are the worst realised of the four Cult Legions; but I don't think that's an inherent fault.... The World Eaters suffer both from few models (like EC & TS) as well as little inspiration. For example, when the Jakhals name was being rumoured I imagined that WE Cultists would be units of scavengers who picked over the dead... Or their could be "professional soldiery" (like the Blood Pact) who handle all the logistics for the Legion and are the ones who actually keep things functioning. Etc, etc - I'm sure people can come up with tons of interesting things. Instead, their Cultists turned out to just be also-Berzerkers. And the Eightbound! Another name that leaked (alongside lore), and left me imagining what a Marine with eight Bloodletters hammered into him would look like... only for the answer to be a big-Berzerker. It's not that there's nothing interesting to do with the World Eaters; GW just didn't do anything interesting with them.

Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree that there isn't necessarily a problem with the concept of having World Eaters as their own book/faction, but that the lack of variety in practice has been kind of underwhelming. As people have said during this thread, WE don't have to basically just be an entire army of "run forward and charge," but that's kind of what they are at the moment. Like, jackals and 8-bound both sort of feel like GW basically just wanted to make cultists and possessed with a Khorne reskin and then gave them new datasheets with a melee lean to justify it.

In other words, I think the same people who like TS and DG being their own factions are open to WE being their own faction. But personally, I think WE have made worse use of the "space" being their own faction provides than TS and DG did even in their early days. And combined with their currently one-note playstyle, it feels like GW essentially charged WE players money and used up slots in the release cycle to reskin some existing units and give you a more boring playstyle.

A bunch of people have brought up a pan-Khornate book. A reminder that Codex: Khorne Daemonkin existed in 7th edition, and was such a book. (It's a bit of a pity that they then went with Codex: Death Guard instead of Codex: Nurgle Daemonkin, but arguably "what's in a name?")

Yeah, Daemonkin seems to have been extremely well-received by those who played it and those who didn't. Giving people a way to reunite their CSM and daemon units while also providing a thematic army rule to let them play differently is exactly the sort of thing I want to see from Codex: Khorne as well as from other monogod books. I'd just take it a step further and add even more units to the roster than the daemonkin book did.

Other WE units I'd like to see off the top of my head: more Khornate Daemon Engines (Blood Slaughterer, smaller Brass Scorpions, etc), proper WE Terminators (not necessarily Red Butchers - let HH stuff stay in HH, the Cults can develop over ten thousand years), Berzerker Surgeons (as a 3-model kit like TS Exalted Sorcerers; a mishmash of Berzerker + Apothecary + Warpsmith + Master of Possession), Jugger Riders, a Cult Vehicle Upgrade sprue (ditto for the other Cult Legions), and proper integration of Khornate Daemons (ditto for the other Cult Legions).

Love most of these! The only one I'd be a bit iffy on is WE termies. Are termies-but-angry really so different from standard terminators that they need their own kit/datasheet? Like, I get wanting unique aesthetics, but the existing kit and CSM rules would probably suffice.

Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Berzerker Terminators are a unit from back in the day. 2nd edition and the great 3.5 Codex iirc. They had some bonuses over regular Terminators like extra CC attacks or Furious Charge and Fearless. Something like that. In 2nd ed they were real nasty.

See, to me that sounds too much like something normal terminators already have covered, but I might just be under-appreciating the power of getting angry. Anger-based rules are kind of like inspiration or discipline-based rules. They kind of imply that units without said benefit were kind of half-assing their anger/enthusiasm/discipline.

The existence of marines who get Furious Charge and bonus attacks because they're angry kind of implies that you're bitter, ancient night lord whose face twists up in rage at the sight of loyalists... just isn't feeling big enough feels to be rewarded for it. If he was actually bloodthirsty or actually full of rage, he'd have Furious Charge, after all. And all those marines who get lethal hits when the right character has joined them? They're actually really prone to slacking off and not bothering to aim their shots unless there's an authority figure standing over their shoulder.

(Which is of course silly. But the flip-side of that is that maybe being angry doesn't actually deserve to translate into melee buffs.)

Nurgle Terminators aren't tougher because they're just mentally tougher soldiers who were otherwise slacking off before they became followers of Nurgle. They're tougher because having gone down the path of corruption they've become infused with power from their chosen god. Likewise, Berzerkers aren't just "angry marines", they are instead given a supernatural prowess and ferocity because of their allegience and sacrifice. They should be a cut or two or three above their non-aligned bretheren.

Your argument is a bit like Death Guard shouldn't get a bonus for being fat. There's a little more going on with a Death Guard marine than a bit of chunk.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Nurgle Terminators aren't tougher because they're just mentally tougher soldiers who were otherwise slacking off before they became followers of Nurgle. They're tougher because having gone down the path of corruption they've become infused with power from their chosen god. Likewise, Berzerkers aren't just "angry marines", they are instead given a supernatural prowess and ferocity because of their allegience and sacrifice. They should be a cut or two or three above their non-aligned bretheren.

Nurgle (Death Guard) terminators are tougher because they're mutated and half their body is just puss/rottingflesh that isn't essential to their ability to keep fighting. As far as I'm aware, berzerkers don't have a similar mutation or a supernatural boost that makes them (literally) magically stronger or faster or anything like that. My understanding is that they're just angry (due to the nails) and hopped up on the adrenaline that comes with that anger. And I don't mean to discount how useful adrenaline is, but I tend to think that marines are generally working with some amount of adrenaline in their systems if not straight up dosing on combat stimms.

Thus what I mean about the existence of berzerkers kind of implying that other marines are half-assing it. If the only difference between a berzerker and a night lord with a chain weapon is that the berzerker gets angry automatically, then it sort of suggests that a night lord who gets angry would have berzerker style buffs. And if he doesn't have those buffs, well, clearly he doesn't actually feel very strongly one way or the other about this whole long war thing.

Why do you think their supernatural embellishments need to be visible in the way the Death Guards are?

Death Guard are portly and mutated. Tsons are dust filled animated armor. Slaanesh and Khorne Marines aren't so outwardly different, but that doesn't mean they aren't also imbued with unnatural "gifts".

In the old lore (2nd ed) The Mark of Khorne was said to make the armor of the wearer and the body into one, and they had an increased armor save as part of that. (2+ rather than 3+). I don't know if that's still part of the description of Berzerkers or not.