fbpx JOIN LOGIN JOIN

I Hate Malefic Lords More Than You: Editorial

dark aposotle chaos marine hor wal

JStove is back with another article for the record books. Come find out why he hates Malefic Lords so much, especially as a Chaos player!

Jstove here, and as I’m writing this, someone is winning the So-Cal Open tournament with a Malefic Lord list.

How do I know that? I don’t. But Blood of Kittens was live on Facebook talking about the top tables and some recent FAQs released by GW. He spoke about how field was being dominated by Chaos lists with Malefic Lords. So do I think A Malefic Lord list will win the So-Cal Open? Yes. Will it actually win? I don’t know but I’m pretty sure most of the top 5 is gonna be Malefic Lord lists. I’d bet all my Dark Imperium Death Guard models on it.

Which means it’s time to talk about tournament rules… Some of you reading this article are going to say, “That’s why I don’t do competitive play.”

Shut up. Don’t bother posting that in the comments. I’m gonna make this easy for you… The competitive community is interested in doing all the work of fixing the game so you, as the non-competitive, Saturday afternoon gamer don’t have to deal with that crap. Right now, it’s only a competitive problem… But if we fix it, everyone benefits. Not just competitive players.

Some of you reading this article are going to say, “What’s a Malefic Lord?”

Good question. The Malefic Lord is a dirt cheap Chaos Psyker from one of the Forge World lists for Guard Heretic armies. He’s just a low-budget Smite battery that spams Mortal Wounds at your opponent. Chaos players are grabbing them by the fist full and throwing them at people. That’s what they are, that’s what they do.

So we ban all Forge World and that solves the problem, right?

Nope.

There are some models from Forge World that are abusive, and the Malefic Lord is the prince of them. He’s such a prince of being a jerk that he’s ruining the game without even having an official model. But the Malefic Lord himself is not the disease, he is merely a symptom. The real issue here is that the list building restrictions in 40k are too loose right now and tournament organizers need to tighten them up. Banning Forge World won’t stop the train. The spam issue we are facing will continue to be a problem in 8th edition long after we slay the Malefic Lord.

Chaos Sorcerer

Furthermore, there’s a lot of cool stuff from Forge World that frankly I’d like to keep seeing. All the 30k legion dreads and tanks are awesome, the Kharybdis Assault Claw is a little too good but at least Loyalists and Traitor legions can both have it. I’d hate to see Elysian and DKoK players getting kicked out of the scene after working so hard to build all-resin Guard armies.

Stay in your box My solution for the spam problem is simple. Tournament Organizers should tell their competitors to stay in their box.

NO SUPREME COMMAND DETACHMENTS.

Having access to a fundamentally unlimited number of HQ slots is always problematic because lots of armies have access to either A) Expensive super HQs that can do it all and are very impactful on the table, like demon princes, primarchs, and triumvirate characters. Or B) extremely cost effective HQs like… wait for it… Malefic Lords.

sorcerer redux by methistonSTAY IN ONE KEYWORD. And I don’t mean <Chaos> or <Imperium> I mean the keyword in your codex. That means that you can still put a model like a Leviathan Dreadnought in your Marine army because it’s a Marine model. Nids can still have their Malanthropes and Elysians can still play the game. But Malefic Lords? Sure, they can play… But they can’t tag along in the Chaos Marine army! They have to stay in their Lost and the Damned list.

Why I hate Malefic Lords…

As a Chaos player, you’d think I’d be pretty happy to see my team winning, but it’s not my team… It’s team Malefic Lord. Just like back in 6E, it was team Cultists and Heldrakes. Just like how Death Guard is Team Mortarion and an allied Warptime Sorcerer. This kind of stuff goes on for days… We also used to have crap like Khorne Demonkin + Cyclopia Cabal, Flying Circus, and of course, Coteaz goes in every Imperial list.

The end result is meta flattening and meta flattening isn’t fun. Nobody goes to tournaments to see copy cats. They go to tournaments to see the best players pushing the coolest toys across the table. When you boil down every codex to one dumb gimmick, you might as well stay home. It doesn’t matter if that gimmick is your team or the other guy’s.

kool aidCheck out all the JStove originals!

About the Author: Jack Stover