It's not just about fluff, it's about cohesiveness. My Blood Angels devastators can rage out. Does it add an on table benefit? Rarely. Does it make them overpowered? No. Does it make them feel like they are part of the same Chapter/Legion as the rest of the guys on the table? Absolutely.
If it can work with Blood Angels and Space Wolves, it can work with the cult Legions just as well.
Originally Posted by daboarder
Indeed, as was the bit after when the legions disentegrated (for the most part) into warbands. Its funny, things like how Typhus left the Death Guard because Mortarion just wanted to sit on his plague planet not doing a lot are conveniently lost in these debates. Or how World Eaters and Emperors Children were broken and scattered on Skalathrax (sp?) into warbands or squads that joined other warbands that would support their particular 'wants.' in many ways pure legion armies might be less fluffy than mixed warbands...
But the truth is, with a meaningful mark system, you can represent any legion without the convulted, self serving mess of 3.5. Sure, you might lose out on tiny rules but what I don't get is why this is such a big deal- if you're whole army is t5, or has 2 attacks, can people really not cope with maybe not having fnp or furious charge?
And as stated, to cost it appropriately would mean its too expensive for anyone who likes to win occassionally to take, and gw would just get slaughtered for that. The sooner the IA rules and 3.5 becomes a distant, horrid memory the better because then people might focus on what they have, not what they feel they lost
Maulerfiends are on the loose, Maulerfiends are go;
Mauler, Mauler, Mauler, Maulerfiends!
Apologies if this has been posted already. I checked the summary and I didn't see anything on the specific "Mastery Level" of Ahriman. The Dude already has me in the doghouse! ^.~
Bigred/BoLS:
So, another day, another set of 6th Edition rumors. Something is up for sure. You're gonna love these.
First up, various sources have identified Ahriman as being a psyker with Mastery Level:4 (eat that puny Grey Knights). More interestingly the Chaos codex is said to include a new vehicle stat named "Hull Points".
Rhinos have Hull Points:3, while bigger vehicles have more.
Grant from Faeit212 dropped in with these tasty morsels:
"On HullPoints: If a vehicle has 3 hull points it will die after 3 shaken results, but it can still explode after 1 shot as normal.
On Assault: All cc weapons have AP values in 6th similar to what was in the fake 6th ed rule book leak.
On the flying Dragon thingy: Imagine a dragon made of "fire" and coverd in a platemale armor and you won't be too far off. That is the best discription I can give. Some of the concept art shows it mauling a valkyrie mid flight. It is pretty cool.
But I've said too much! "
Soooooo if you know anything about me at all, you'll know that I read the Ahriman part and was content with seeing just that.
Cool, cheers Ah-a-nothepsis. Still not sure on the dragon thing (feels out of place with marines a bit, but I'll wait until I see it before making a final judgement).
Rhinos have Hull Points:3, while bigger vehicles have more.
Grant from Faeit212 dropped in with these tasty morsels:
"On HullPoints: If a vehicle has 3 hull points it will die after 3 shaken results, but it can still explode after 1 shot as normal.
On Assault: All cc weapons have AP values in 6th similar to what was in the fake 6th ed rule book leak.
On the flying Dragon thingy: Imagine a dragon made of "fire" and coverd in a platemale armor and you won't be too far off. That is the best discription I can give. Some of the concept art shows it mauling a valkyrie mid flight. It is pretty cool.
But I've said too much! "
Soooooo if you know anything about me at all, you'll know that I read the Ahriman part and was content with seeing just that.
I'm also liking the hull points tbh. Ought to make glancing transports to death significantly easier without weakening battletanks too much.
Ahriman: Mastery 4 might be cool, it might be lame, will depend heavily on his actual powers and number of shooting attacks. (if he's the same as he is now but with 4 powers per turn, I still wouldn't take him)
Not if he's a grossly overcosted T4 character, and I say that as a Thousand Sons fan. Hopefully it won't be like the Necron characters.Soooooo if you know anything about me at all, you'll know that I read the Ahriman part and was content with seeing just that.
Um, the Cultist/Traitor Guard thing goes farther back than the Eye of Terror. They were in 2nd Edition, dropped for the 3rd Edition mini-dex, brought back as a sideline for Alpha Legion and Word Bearer builds, and then dropped again for the "Less-Is-More" mantra of the whole 4.5 fiasco that hit us with a whale-sized ugly stick. It also doesn't help that GW let Relic tease us with 6 Dawn of War games with Cultists as cheap cannon fodder!
Are you a Wolf, a Sheep, or a Hound?
Boys, boys.. I'm talking about the potential for a completely new revamp of Ahriman. GW knows that keeping him the same way he is now and just tacking on ML:4 is not impressive. They probably want you to buy more finecast Ahrimans, if he turns into that. To make you buy more stuff, the characters get more powerful. You guyz already knowz this.
You mean to tell me that this Master Level rule is NOT indicative of GWs move for powerful special characters? Need I remind you that each version of Ahriman (and Thousand Sons rubrics) has been different in each codex due in no small part to the fact that there are different writers for each codex?
I say Ahriman is about to be brought back from the grave, so to speak.
Of course.... if this stuff is true. -.- As Tanith on B&C said, I'm trying not to believe anything yet. Trying...
Not to mention that Chaos cultists and renegades are, per capita, one of the most prolific "mook-level" enemies of the Imperial military, perhaps second only to orks.
The Heretics and Renegades list is fine for renegade armies that mirror the Guard's organizational structure. It's quite poor at representing the masses of crazed cultists, mutants, and daemonic technology (with supporting CSM) that makes up really crunchy Chaotic forces.
"Dragon"'s starting to sound like some kind of K'daai-style thing rather than anything else. Which is a shame because those are not nice models
Mastery Level and the resurgence of Psyker power sounds interesting. Revamp to the vehicle rules? well, it's interesting at least.
Remnants: A log whereupon a veteran attempts to piece an army together from scraps and trades
Danger! May contain Oingo Boingo
While the dragon seems far fetched, its the type of thing I would love in this book.
I don't want a chaos techmarine "because loyalists have them, so chaos should too". When was the last time someone saw a techmarine in a marine army on the tabletop? Allow an undivided chaos lord to take a servo army to represent IW? More than fine. But we don't need more copies of loyalists units that no one who plays loyalists uses in teh first place.
These are the "evil" bretheren of the space marines, who have had 10,000 years to evolve beyond the restrictions of the codex astartes, former legion organizations, reliance on "approved" STC tech, and other similar limitations put in place by the administratum of the imperium "because its good for you". Daemonic war engines, twisted weapons created by perverted and outcast AM magi, that is the type of stuff I'd hope for in this book. I don't want a vindicator with a MoS, I want a warengine spawned directly from the mind of a slaaneshi devoted tech priest.
Chaos is the darkest parts of living creatures hopes, dreams, wishes and souls. A flying half-daemon, half mechanical dragon fits the bill in my mind.
This may support a prior rumor, but I saw what was being called a Chaos Dragon being worked in in CAD for sprue design a while back and mentioned it to Harry. However, I thought it was for Fantasy. Hard to tell now with these rumors if maybe it was for 40k. It was definitely armored. But I didn't see an assembled version. Thought I'd toss this out there fwiw.
Cheers
Well didn't someone say it may usable for daemons as well in some form? So it could very well be a kit for both 40k and fantasy.
+1.
The first time I ever encountered Chaos Marines, I thought to myself "normal marines, but evil and with horns. What is this, GI Joe?" The forces of Chaos should be the stuff of twisted nightmares, cyber-daemons, and hideous magick; not same as the good guys, but with spikes on.
Not that they should be unrecognizable, mind. The through-a-mirror-darkly, brothers-betrayed theme should be strong. But the forces should be distinct at even the most casual glance, and the constant "it's from the heresy, so us too" refrain doesn't help that.
Don't mistake the next paragraphs, I am all for you guys having the tools to play your Chaos Marines your way, and if this is how you envision them, more power to you. I sincerely hope the codex has the tools to allow you to play them this way.
I don't see the entirety of Chaos Space Marines this way though. ADB's Night Lords, as a single example, are best represented by being only slightly different from their loyalist brethren. The Night Lords, the Alpha Legion, any number of more recent renegades, some group of traitor legionaries that have been caught in the warp's time dilating effects all may eschew the more chaotic choices. They may view it as a tool. They may be equally repelled by both chaos, and the "false emperor." The fluff abounds with Chaos Marines that were at the siege of the imperial palace, but for whom only a few hundred years have passed, subjectively. In the 40 'verse, that's an eye blink.
There's nothing wrong with other fans of the faction desiring to field armies less in the thrall of chaos, or to field armies representing something more close to the legions when they were in the middle of the heresy. Sure, they can use counts as to do regular old Space Marines, or Blood Angels, or whatever, but then they'll get grief for, "being counts as when they should clearly be using the CSM dex, because there's horns on those guys' helmets, and that's Chaos that is."
As long as the new CSM dex has the tools to represent both approaches, or any of the multitude of options in between the two extremes, then we're all good. If the legion players are left out in the cold though, that's a weakness. If you all are, then that's a weakness too.
I have two Chaos Space Marine armies. One is World Eaters. I love their fluff. Because I'm a huge fan of the Heresy, I've chosen to represent them as World Eaters on the way to the eye after the failed siege. They are power armor, terminator armor, and metal boxes, almost exclusively. My other army is renegades, corrupt, wholly in the throws of chaos. So, obviously I'm sympathetic to both sides of the discussion.
Personally, I want to be able to play both armies as I envision them. One, chaos legions, only a bit different than their loyalist brethren, more fierce, more unrestrained. The other, chaos run amok. Why should I not be able to field both from the same codex? Why should the Chaos codex not have the tools to enable that?
On the dragon front, it's the kind of thing I'd hate to see in the book. I don't play fantasy because I hate that sort of thing. In the words of a friend, "unless there's grenade launchers, I'm not interested, and even if there are, no dragons, or I'm done." While I'm not that extreme, I'd view a unicorn in the chaos dex the same way I do a dragon, misplaced and inappropriate.
There is no reason both cannot co-exist, all it would take is having some units more gribbly then what players have become accustomed to over the past...20 years.
Noise Marines
Personally I don't see this as being much of an issue in my local area. I think CSM players get grief because they are basically using count-as to escape a pretty bad Codex. However, if the new CSM codex is good competitively, I see a lot less people complaining that your using the Vanilla SM dex. Most of these people just don't like the fact that your beating them with Blood Angels period, regardless of what they look like, and use your count-as as a point of attack when their plans on the battlefield fail. That said, I am a big fan of WYSIWYG but when flopping between any of the SM codexes, thats not usually hard to resolve.
I think they will give options for both, the question is HOW far they will push in both directions. Personally I see no problem in using a mark of chaos to represent a legion trait. After all, its not like Lord Nurgle knows what the term Feel No Pain is and points to the rule book entry when blessing his warriors. It is perfectly reasonable to think that some of the Death Guard legionaries have been blessed further than others. Instead of regular and chosen, you have plague marines, and cult marines. Same is true for all the other marks. Honestly the only one that would come off as odd is Thousand Sons, but based on fluff, rubric marines are very rare to begin with (the few that survived the Space Wolves, and all the Black Library books where only several appear at a time) and whose to say that your commander doesn't have a more advanced unit of rubric marines to serve as a bodyguard while the "regular" rubric marines simply carry a mark.
The point is you can bend the rules to fit the fluff, and you can bend the fluff to fit the rules. Your are playing a board game with toy soldiers, if you can use your imagination to make your army and the game come to life, then how much harder is it to come up with a reason why certain units exist or behave the way they do. I realize a lot of people want Codex: World Eaters and Codex: Thousand Sons, but that is never going to happen. But if you could live through the last iteration of the codex, I don't see how you couldn't survive this one, cause honestly, the last one was horrible, and ripped a lot of the heart out of CSM.
I do agree with this. It seems like a far stretch. Either they will have to include some very good reasoning behind this in the fluff, or it will have to give the army some tactical option which makes the army more unique.
I'm almost wondering if maybe the dragon is a Tzeentch war engine, and the other 3 gods will get unique war engines of their own...
Blood and Skulls, Plague and Famine, Change and Mutation, and Sexytime!
“If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you” - Bruce Lee
This isn't the case.
My Sons of Medusa Project Log
I will simply have to hope that there is another flyer option besides this dragon.
Somehow a daemonic dragon doesn't sit right with me for a Night Lords army. Actually it just seems downright silly.
Just have to point out that while they were dropped in the 3ed minidex, they were reintroduced in a Chapter approved article within a year from the codex being released. Then came the 3.5 codex which included cultists. The only Chaos codex so far that has not included cultists is the current one, also, every single computer game I know of that features CSM also includes cultists, so saying they are somehow an odd part of CSM is really not taking into consideration the almost 20 years when cultists were a part of the chaos arsenal.
Reintroducing cultists is only right and proper, and removing them was one of the stranger decisions GW has made imo. That's like removing Scouts from SM. Sure, not everyone uses them, but they are an integral part of the army background-wise.
My scratch-built Stompa, Traitor Guards, Cthulhu daemons and Word Bearers and my my terrain log.
"It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."
- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz
I am not saying that the other way of playing an army is wrong, but I am just looking at it from a "what would GW do" perspective. They make money through selling miniatures, and they sell miniatures by providing a variety of "cool stuff". If they make the options in the CSM book very similar the SM book, or if they simply re-create something from 1.5 editions ago, there isn't anything "new and cool" there to sell. Also, there isn't anything "new and cool" to attract new blood to the hobby. To truly add something to the game, the book needs to add something that isn't available elsewhere, and hasn't been seen before. That was one of the biggest failings of the current book in my opinion, more so that elimiantion of specific legions rules. It didn't really provide anything unique to the hobby.
I am just saying, if you are looking for something to give you your 3.5 ed army book back, you might be 30-40% satisfied. I look at the latest C:SM as an example. It brings back alot of the "chapters of legend" that was missing from the previous book that people loved from the IA days, but it doens't bring back 100% of it. Some of the flexiblity and specialization is there, but some of it is dependant on the use of Special characters. There was, however, alot of other good stuff that was added as well.
I just think in the grand scheme all codexes should provide equal "scope" and "variety" of playability within an army, both for player enjoyment and balance. If this book includes everything C:SM does and plus all that cult/chaos stuff, there is much more scope to the book, and much less chance it will be balanced and well designed.
Just my 2c.
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