Good morning Chaos faithful, and all you other losers who are stuck reading blogs about whiny chaos marines… It’s time for another post about traitors!
And if you’re tired of whiny chaos players, why not submit your own articles about something besides chaos? You can do it here, at the link provided.
Now let’s get to the big issue- Everyone has an idea for how to fix Chaos Space Marines, the little demon engine that couldn’t. The book hasn’t aged well, and it’s suffering from a serious identity crisis. Most of the “How I’d fix chaos” articles I’ve read have been pretty good, but they focus more on the obvious problems and less on the character of the army. This is the issue I want to address most.
THE REAL PROBLEM WITH CHAOS:
Is that it hasn’t been an actual chaos space marine army for years. Here’s an obligatory whine about how great our 2nd ed and 3.5 ed codex were. The 4th ed codex was the first codex to re-imagine chaos marines not as the 10,000 year old traitors, but as the new school renegades that just went AWOL in the last 900 years of the 40k timeline.
And, if the success of Horus Heresy and Betrayal at Calth has taught us anything… IT’S THAT NEWSCHOOL TRAITORS F***ING SUCK AND WE DON’T CARE.
I like Huron Blackheart, but I don’t give a shit about him. The Tyrant of Badab was way better as a forgeworld book. And let’s get one thing straight about Crimson Slaughter- NO ONE EVER LIKED THEM, WE ONLY LIKED THEIR WARGEAR. STOP PIMPING NEWJACK TRAITORS AT THE EXPENSE OF OLD SCHOOL TRAITORS.
We’re all throwing our wallets at Forgeworld for legion resin so fast, that they can’t build spartans fast enough to deliver them to us. The people have spoken, SCREW RENEGADES, MAKE CHAOS BOOKS ABOUT THE REAL TRAITORS.
WHAT THE CHARACTER OF THE BOOK SHOULD BE
Not only chaos, but 40k in general, is having a serious identity crisis. With allies, formations, and decurion style detachments, just walking in with 2 troops and an HQ and having power armor isn’t good enough anymore. Not even loyalist marines, who have decent power armor thanks to chapter tactics, want power armor. Everyone’s riding pound puppies or in a bikestar or trying to find some way to upgrade or ditch their 3+ saving throw.
Chaos Space Marines should be a book about… Chaos Space Marines.
Everything should harken back to a shattered legion that’s been turned into an unruly mob of demon worshiping psychopaths. Instead of throwing in new flavor like demon engines and cultists, it should be about making all the old marine staples like land raiders and marine blobs work, and the core of the book should reward you for building fat lists full of bolter-toting murder junkies, not 2 squads of cultists and a heldrake.
Furthermore, Chaos should be an effective assault army, and they should have batshit crazy assault rules to reflect this. Not just demon weapons, but superior ways to get into melee and earn the attention of the gods, and not just for Khorne. In a world gone mad with xenos shooting phases, Chaos should have better gap-closing power than anyone. Would that be unbalanced? I dunno, what do you think of tau and eldar? Rhetorical question. Chaos should be as good at getting into fights as shooty armies are at shooting them, without needing a goofy formation to do it. Furthermore, they should be able to do it with no frills, basic marine elements like tanks and power armor infantry, the way their primarchs intended.
So with that in mind, here’s my formula to bring back Chaos, and bring back power armor.
-ARMY WIDE SPECIAL RULES-
-Veterans of the Long War stays. It was probably the best idea in an otherwise disappointing book and gave the army flavor.
-Icons lose all their dumb rules. They were mostly bad. New rule- Icons count as a teleport homer for any model with the Demon special rule.
-Marks are reworked to have more massive gains in tune with space marine chapter tactics, they still cost points, but costs for units will be flattened to compensate.
-Slaanesh: +1 Initiative, Feel no Pain, Fleet. Models in terminator armor may sweeping advance. Psykers unlock Lore of Slaanesh. Hate Demons of Khorne.
-Nurgle: +1 Toughness, Shrouded, Slow and Purposeful, Fear. Psykers unlock Lore of Nurgle. Hate Demons of Tzeentch.
-Khorne: Rage, Furious Charge, Counter Attack. Hate Demons of Slaanesh. Psykers may never join units with the Mark of Khorne. (Bringing back the old school, death to those cowardly wizards)
-Tzeentch: Invulnerable save boost, all weapons gain Soulburn. (It’s crap, but it’s fluffy.) Psykers unlock Lore of Tzeentch. Hate Demons of Nurgle.
MARKED CHARACTERS MAY NOT JOIN MORTAL OR DEMONIC UNITS WITH A CONFLICTING ALLEGIANCE. Abbadon and Belakor ignore this rule.
-Eye of the Gods: Simplified down to a 2d6 table, with snake eyes being spawn, 7 being nothing happens, and 12 being Demon Prince, and random perks in between. I personally loved the old table, but it’s way too much book keeping in a game that has become bloated with bookkeeping. Instead of distributing random boons, the table is set up to push the champion further along the path of chaos toward demonhood, with the ultimate goal of becoming a prince… Unless he hits snake eyes somewhere along the way and spawns out! Gotta keep the risk in there. Some units will have a means to improve the roll.
When a model hits the jackpot and becomes a prince, he retains all his wargear and special rules- The goal of the model is to become a prince. In the current 6e codex, a well-kitted model would never actually want to become a prince because he loses his wargear.
Furthermore, models that are champions of chaos are NEVER ELIGIBLE TO BE EATEN BY POSSESSED VEHICLES. The gods have bigger plans for them.
-INFERNAL ARMORY-
-Fluff aligned demon weapon for every God.
Every god gains a piece of generic wargear characters can buy.
-Nurgle characters may purchase blight grenades.
-Slaanesh characters may purchase doom sirens and sonic blasters.
-Tzeentch characters may purchase inferno bolts- All bolt weapons are AP3.
-Khorne characters may purchase the Collar of Khorne. (Bringing back the old school Khorne wizard hate) Collar of Khorne grants Hatred: Psykers, Adamantium Will, and makes the model and the unit he joins immune to blessings and hexes, friendly and foe. If the unit he joins is under the effect of any psychic power when he joins it, it immediately expires.
-Khorne characters may upgrade any chainsword to a chainaxe for free. (Fluff bonus)
-Chaos armor is back. (Artificer armor, but chaos flavored)
-Models in terminator armor may upgrade to Cataphract armor for free.
Check back next week for part II of Jstove’s How To Fix Chaos Space Marines Codex!
Check out all the JStove originals!
About the Author: Jack Stover
