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This was honestly my biggest disappointment with the Chaos Marines codex for 9th edition - No rules for making your own Legion/Warband.

Just.. why?

The Tau, Eldar, and Tyranids are able to make up their own Septs, Craftworlds, and Hive Fleets, but the mirror flip of the poster boys gets shafted here?

I probably would have complained a bit if the codex was behind the power curve, but I honestly would not have cared all that much. Having rules for custom legions was the main thing I was waiting on for Crusade rules.


Furthermore - if you're going to force us to play as your cookie cutter legions anyway, GW, then why in the heck do you still have a restriction on not letting us use the named characters from those legions?

You're already screwing me over by saying "Well, you have to play these ones. Why not try Black Legion rules for them?" and then I can't just use a reskinned Abaddon named "Babbadoo the Barmless" or whatever.

I hear the Night Lords complaints and I'm definitely irked by models being made obsolete and the Chaos Lord changes, but this was the biggest complaint I have with the whole codex. Every other codex had some customization for your own factions, but the arguably most customizable faction previously in terms of wargear and army loadouts now has the least customization in terms of identity.

It's ok, 9th is the most narrative edition ever so I am sure everything will be fine.

(For the record I am being sarcastic. It sucks and they should add some.)

Even us Necrons can design our Dynasties. Yikes on trikes!

It may be a sign of things to come. I can see them removing custom subfactions going forward for balance reasons.

If they do that though, I'd like to see a similar treatment to how the legions got, I.E. Each Subfaction gets a full set of stratagems, WLTs and relics.

Given how they can't really balance the DIY stuff and there's always options better than others, sometimes better than the existing ones, I wouldn't mind seeing them go away and keep it entirely as "pick the one that fits your army the best"

Thousand Sons can't do it either.

I'm pretty sure (but not positive, not a faction I am familiar with) Death Guard also lack custom subfaction rules as well.

IMO, its either an indicator that they will be removing custom subfactions from 10e or an indicator that they consciously made the absolutely baffling and unjustifiable decision that chaos codexes don't get customization options.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Thousand Sons can't do it either.

I'm pretty sure (but not positive, not a faction I am familiar with) Death Guard also lack custom subfaction rules as well.

IMO, its either an indicator that they will be removing custom subfactions from 10e or an indicator that they consciously made the absolutely baffling and unjustifiable decision that chaos codexes don't get customization options.

Chaos knights have them by contrast. But agreed, they seem to struggle with the custom factions and the sheer volume of stuff baked into the legions might have left them very glass half empty feeling.

Well that's very dissapointing. :/

They need to keep something back for the supplements.

 Sim-Life wrote:
They need to keep something back for the supplements.

Oh god you might be right.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh god you might be right.

They could very easily do a "Renegade" Chaos themed campaign book, combine it with a new plastic Huron mini, put in a "Hounds of Huron" Army of Renown, the missing Renegade Legions (Purge, etc.) and custom build-a-traitor rules.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oh god you might be right.

They could very easily do a "Renegade" Chaos themed campaign book, combine it with a new plastic Huron mini, put in a "Hounds of Huron" Army of Renown, the missing Renegade Legions (Purge, etc.) and custom build-a-traitor rules.

Yup, they'll have to sell you something come the last 6 months of 9e. This sounds as good as anything else....

If it wasn't trash and had new better alpha legion content I'd buy it.

So I guess there's some more money saved.

Well....Horus heresy is always happy to have more traitor players.

Also everyone now remembers that one brief moment in 7th ed where chaos had a golden time of really fun traitor legion combos and units.

The Legion supplement proved that, with a little cleanup and some rebalancing, it was entirely possible to have all Legions in one codex with all rules.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also everyone now remembers that one brief moment in 7th ed where chaos had a golden time of really fun traitor legion combos and units.

We all remember...

Very glad to see them leave they were a balancing nightmare

Y'know in terms of balancing, they could always just make the custom traits worse than the full Subfactions ones, given that the Subfaction traits tend to have two effects. You could just have one effect.

Or you could limit custom traits limited to narrative/crusade mode.

Or have no strategems beyond the basic ones of your faction.

Just look at the "Inspiring Leader" generic trait from the core book. Its generally pretty garbage.

I genuinely don't agree that custom subfactions should be a baby thrown out with the bathwater.

Making your own Space Marine chapter has been a thing in multiple codexes and is generally a fun project. I do not see why the whole idea should be scrapped just because GW sucks at balancing in general.

People generally want customization and options in any sort of game. If you're making a narrative gameplay mode to your game, then giving people the rules to make a subfaction, flavor it, and play it is a smart decision. Very few other games on the market can really boast it at present.

Would making those custom options less optimal than the "competitive" options suck? Sure.

But 9e touched on what I felt was a great idea with the Crusade mode and allowing the player more options to craft a narrative of their own army. I think it would be quite miserable to completely abandon the idea.

If the custom regiments are in matched play they need to be viable. If it's just 1 then people will play with non-custom rules anyway.

Crusade and be whatever, remove or matched play and don't artificially gimp them

I do see their lack of inclusion could cause some annoyance. But, to be honest, if they revert back away from "build your own subfaction", I'll be fine with it. Not every codex has had that anyway--it's just surprising that CSM of all codexes doesn't, considering things like myriads of Renegade chapters and the like.

It has just been a source of imbalance from the get-go. I've always felt that the fluff subfactions mostly had enough variability between them that you could just pick one and use that subfaction's rules as "your dudes" anyway.

I suspect custom Legions traits hit the editing room floor when they decided to give every Legion in the book a supplements worth of support. Something had to give and customs Legions was that thing.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Also everyone now remembers that one brief moment in 7th ed where chaos had a golden time of really fun traitor legion combos and units.

We all remember...

Traitor legions hands down was one of the best supplements they ever put out.

 alextroy wrote:
I suspect custom Legions traits hit the editing room floor when they decided to give every Legion in the book a supplements worth of support. Something had to give and customs Legions was that thing.

And yet Space Marines...

chaos0xomega wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I suspect custom Legions traits hit the editing room floor when they decided to give every Legion in the book a supplements worth of support. Something had to give and customs Legions was that thing.

And yet Space Marines...

Have custom chapters but less chapter specific items in the Codex. All that additional content for the 1st Founding Chapters (and Crimson Fist, DeathWatch, and Black Templars) are in the supplements.

This is an apples and oranges comparison. Space Marines have custom chapter traits, but little specific chapter support. Chaos Space Marines has deeper Legion content, but no custom legion traits.

I suppose they might get around to publishing Codex Supplement Chaos Warbands to even things out in less books. Or maybe those will appear in Warzone books.

"little specific chapter support" is not what I expected to hear from a faction that has 1 codex and 4 other codexes for subfactions.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
"little specific chapter support" is not what I expected to hear from a faction that has 1 codex and 4 other codexes for subfactions.

11 supplements. Marines have a Codex and eleven supplements.

So, as I'm sure you'd agree, Marines really do have very little specific Chapter support. Clearly Chaos asking for the same thing that every Codex before it this edition has is just a bridge too far...

Yeah that doesn't make sense. Well, you could argue a lot of the non snowflake chapters have really garbage tier chapter specific stuff. They do have lots of stuff, but it mostly sucks.

All i ever wanted outta CSM updates were the 4 cult legions, Tsons, WE, EC, and DG to be able to take Daemons as troops with the stipulation that you cant have more daemons then astartes as troops.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
All i ever wanted outta CSM updates were the 4 cult legions, Tsons, WE, EC, and DG to be able to take Daemons as troops with the stipulation that you cant have more daemons then astartes as troops.

Well good news! We got something like that: They took Cult Troops out... of... our Codex... hmm...

No wait, that's nothing like that...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
All i ever wanted outta CSM updates were the 4 cult legions, Tsons, WE, EC, and DG to be able to take Daemons as troops with the stipulation that you cant have more daemons then astartes as troops.

Well good news! We got something like that: They took Cult Troops out... of... our Codex... hmm...

No wait, that's nothing like that...

*Curb your enthusiasm plays*

I still say to this day and i will die fully on this hill, that 8th ed GW should have leaned into the soup lists and encouraged more of it to bring a mix of themed armies to gether, like knight and guard or sm and guard, Daemons and CSM, Eldar covens ect ect.

Like they do in AoS with coalition troops where if you are a tzeentzch army, you can take Slaves to darkness as long as they are tzeentzch marked and they are troops for you.