Chaos Space Marines

[Son of Sanguinius]

What follows is the basic structure of a Chaos Space Marine codex I've been working on. Your input, if respectful and accompanied by explanation, is welcome and requested. There are no points costs - I am currently working on them, so for now my interest is what you think of the mechanics. Thanks to all who reply.



Army Special Rules
Select one of the following to apply to most of the units in your army.

We Have Returned!
- Units with this rule may launch an assault in the same turn that they fired Rapid Fire weapons. If the unit already has the Relentless rule, replace the first sentence of this rule with “Unit gains Counter-Attack”.

For the Dark Gods!
- Units with this rule have the Stubborn special rule and always count as being equipped with a Chaos Icon.

Iron Within, Iron Without
- Units with this rule have the Stealth special rule and reduce all enemy cover saves by 1.

Ave Dominus Nox!
- Units with this rule have Night Vision and cause a -1 Ld penalty on any enemy Morale check taken within 6”. This penalty is cumulative.

We Are Legion
- Units with this rule have the Stealth special rule and ignore restrictions on testing to regroup, with the exception of unit coherency.



Marks of Chaos
Marks replace Legion rules. In most cases, this replacement will be free.

Mark of Khorne
- Unit gains a +1 Attack bonus.

Mark of Tzeentch
- Unit gains a +1 Leadership bonus. Units with Leadership 10 (before modifier) instead roll 3D6 for Leadership tests and choose which roll to apply.

Mark of Nurgle
- Unit gains a +1 Toughness bonus.

Mark of Slaanesh
- Unit gains a +1 Initiative and Acute Senses.



Armory
Demon Weapon
- Upgrade for close combat weapon, power weapon, lightning claw, power fist, thunder hammer, or force weapon. Pass unmodified Leadership test at start of turn or suffer Perils of the Warp.
- Close combat weapon, power weapon, lightning claw, force weapon: Also follows rules for a witchblade.
- Power fist, thunder hammer: ignore initiative penalty, +D6 to armor penetration rolls

Hell-forged Armor
- 2+ armor save



Psychic Powers
None of these psychic powers are God specific.

Doombolt
- Ranged attack. 24”, S10, AP2, H1

Empyrean Terrors
- Ranged attack. All enemy units within 6” must take an immediate Morale check with a -2 Ld penalty. Cumulative with other penalties.

Eye of the Gods
- Target friendly unit within 12” gains one of the Fleshforger bonuses. Normal rules and penalties apply.

Felfire
- Ranged attack. Inferno cannon profile.

Gift of the Gods
- Ranged attack. 12”. Can target enemy or friendly unit. Target has to pass Toughness test or suffer a wound with no saves. If this kills a model, that model is replaced with a Chaos Spawn under your control.

Hellmaw
- Ranged attack. 18”, SX, AP2, H1, Blast. Models touched must pass I test or be removed.

Mindshatter
- Ranged attack. 18”. Psyker and target roll for as per Mind War. If the target loses, its Leadership suffers a permanent -4 Ld penalty and loses Fearless if it has it.

Ruinous Torrent
- Ranged attack. All enemy models within 6” take a poisoned (4+) ap – hit.



Headquarters
Abaddon, Warmaster of the Traitor Legions
- Chaos Lord, add 1 to WS
- The Sword and the Talon: Demon weapon that counts as a witchblade and doubles all of Abaddon’s Attack bonuses. Incorporates storm bolter with inferno bolts.
- Armor of the Warmaster: Terminator armor that confers 3+ invulnerable save and immune to Perils of the Warp and psychic powers or demonic gifts without a given Strength value.
- All friendly units within 12” of Abaddon have Fearless. Enemy units within 12” of Abaddon suffer a -2 Ld penalty for all Morale checks.
- Makes Chosen into Troops

Erebus, The Black Apostle
- Dark Apostle with Chaos Lord profile.
- Units within 12” may re-roll failed Morale checks.
- Destroyed cultist units may be placed in reserve and re-enter the battlefield as a new unit

Kharn, The Betrayer
- Chaos Lord, add 1 to WS
- Gorechild: Power weapon that add 2 to Strength and +D6 to armor penetration
- Mark of Khorne. Doubles all attack bonuses.
- Fearless, unless with unit. If unit fails Morale check while he is joined, remove one random model as a casualty and unit counts as passing Morale check automatically. Subject to No Retreat.
- May take jump pack or bike.

Ahriman, The Exile
- Chaos Sorcerer with Chaos Lord profile.
- Mastery Level 3
- Black Staff: force weapon and psychic hood that adds 6” to psychic power ranges
- Knows all CSM psychic powers, and one random enemy psychic power (decided before start of game)

Typhus, The Herald
- Chaos Lord
- Psyker (M1)
- Manreaper: Two-handed power weapon. Poisoned (2+). Forgo normal attacks to make a single attack that auto hits all models in base contact.
- Mark of Nurgle. Assault and defensive grenades.

Lucius, The Eternal
- Chaos Lord, add 1 to WS and I
- Preferred Enemy (characters, independent characters)
- May allocate wounds in an assault to any model in base contact.
- Mark of Slaanesh. Fleet. May take jump pack.

Ferrix, The Grand Warsmith
- Chaos Lord, add 2 to Toughness
- Has Bolster Defenses (3x), Orbital Bombardment
- Makes Obliterators Elites and/or Heavy Support

Perlicitor, The Favored
- Demon Prince with wings
- Makes Raptors into Troops
- Heroic Intervention and half scatter when deep striking
- Causes -2 Leadership penalty to all Morale checks within 12”

Alpharius, The Serpent
- Chaos Lord with 1 Wound.
- Allows you to add or subtract 1 to or from any of your Reserves rolls or rolls to determine table edge for outflanking units.
- Allows you to subtract 1 from any of your opponent’s Reserves rolls.
- When slain, take an unmodified Leadership test. If he passes, replace one other character or independent character in the army with Alpharius. If he fails, he is removed as normal.

Demon Prince
- Add 1 to Toughness.
- Equipped with close combat weapon, can take force weapon and/or upgrade to demon weapon.
- Psyker with Mastery Level 2

Chaos Lord
- Replace Fearless with 6” re-roll Morale check bubble
- Can take thunder hammer, storm shield, force weapon
- Can be upgraded to a psyker
- Allows you to take cult units (power armor, foot) as Elites or Troops, if properly marked

Chaos Sorcerer
- Subtract 1 from Wounds, Initiative, and Attacks
- Can upgrade to Mastery Level 2
- Can take psychic hood

Dark Apostle
- Same profile as Sorcerer.
- Units within 6” may re-roll failed Morale checks.
- Psyker (M1) with unique powers
- Powers summon demon packs, allow units to teleport
- 5+ invulnerable save
- Allows you to take Possessed Marines (without wings) as Elites or Troops

Demonsmith
- Same profile as Sorcerer, but subtract 1 from Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill
- Can take demon weapon and unique wargear
- Can repair vehicles
- Can resurrect a vehicle with demonic possession
- 5+ invulnerable save

Fleshforger
- Same profile as Sorcerer, but subtract 1 from Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill
- Confers Feel No Pain on unit. Add 1 to Feel no Pain rolls if unit already has Feel No Pain.
- Carries 3 enhancement drugs, one use each. Can be used on any non-vehicle, non-demon unit. More than one drug on one unit gets dangerous for enhanced unit.
- 5+ invulnerable save

Damned Retinue
- Entourage unit for Chaos Sorcerers, Dark Apostles, Demonsmiths, or Fleshforgers
- Thralls: Can be sacrificed to enhance psychic powers
- Corrupted Servitor: Can assist with repairs or fight
- Demonhost: Brutal attacking familiar
- Enhanced Warrior: Tough bodyguard that character can re-allocate wounds to



Elites
Chosen Marine Squad
- Add 1 to WS, A
- Options and function similar to Wolf Guard Pack
- Lose Infiltrate

Possessed Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with Demon, Rending, Furious Charge, Fleet
- Can take wings

Berserk Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Khorne
- Can upgrade with Terminator armor, jump packs, or bikes
- Furious Charge, Counter-Attack, Fearless, Headstrong

Rubric Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Tzeentch, Feel No Pain
- Can upgrade with Terminator armor
- Inferno Bolts

Plague Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Nurgle, Feel No Pain
- Can upgrade with Terminator armor
- Poisoned attacks (4+)

Noise Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Slaanesh
- Can take Terminator Armor
- Sonic Cannon: Can either be fired as a flamer or bolter
- Blastmaster: Heavy flamer, heavy bolter, or plasma cannon



Troops
Chaos Space Marine Squad
- As now, with Ld 8.

Cultists
- Guardsmen profiles.
- Infiltrate, Stealth. Can replace them with Furious Charge and Stubborn or Feel No Pain and Fearless.



Fast Attack
Chaos Reaver Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with jump packs

Chaos Marauder Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with bikes

Chaos Spawn Pack
- Ogryn profiles
- Beasts
- Rage, Furious Charge, Rending

Raptor Marine Squad
- Chaos Space Marine profiles, add 1 to I and A
- Jump packs, deep strike, hit & run, scout, fleet
- Banshee masks



Heavy Support
Chaos Havoc Squad
- Chaos Space Marines with heavy weapons

Obliterators
- Ogryns profiles with BS 4
- Obliterator weapons: lascannon, plasma cannon (not subject to gets hot!), multi-melta, heavy flamer, power fist
- Demon, Hell-forged Armor, Slow and Purposeful, Deep Strike

Chaos Predator
- More weapon options

Chaos Vindicator
- As now

Chaos Whirlwind
- Different missile types than loyalists

Chaos Land Raider
- More weapon options
- Rules matching loyalist counterpart

Chaos Defiler
- Add 1 to WS, BS
- Can alternate loadout to be ranged or assault oriented



Dedicated Transports
Rhino
- As normal.

Drop Pod
- As per loyalists.

Chaos Land Raider
- See above.

[Orthodox]

I appreciate the format. Piles of tables that duplicate the same old options and stats distract from innovations.

Are marks and army rules determined army-wide and without reference to what units are present, are they tied to HQ?

This is a functional army and I could play against or with it. It's kitchen-sink, and doesn't feel like an incorporated list with substituents. Chaos has that problem more than most armies. I think some things like the flesh forger can be rolled into other units, for gameplay and to avoid fluff reductiveness.

I think regular marine squads are important for character. Whether they are informal warbands or regimented legions with veteran officers and young recruits, the regular ten-schmoe loyalist structure is inappropriate. I like ld8 marines, since marines with better stats will have better jobs to do, but will usually need to be welded together by a ld10, ws5 champion to show the different structure of chaos armies. It also makes havocs into something other than heavy troop squads by omitting a champion entirely.

[Son of Sanguinius]

I appreciate the format. Piles of tables that duplicate the same old options and stats distract from innovations.

Thanks. I tried to get to the core of what I wanted to see. That said, the final product will be more in keeping with GW's style.

Are marks and army rules determined army-wide and without reference to what units are present, are they tied to HQ?

You start with a Legion rule, regardless of HQ. Just pick one and go.

This is a functional army and I could play against or with it. It's kitchen-sink, and doesn't feel like an incorporated list with substituents. Chaos has that problem more than most armies. I think some things like the flesh forger can be rolled into other units, for gameplay and to avoid fluff reductiveness.

Thanks. I actually made the Fleshforger a separate IC because I didn't want to duplicate the current Space Marine apothecary. What unit (existing or potentially existing) would you incorporate him into?

I think regular marine squads are important for character. Whether they are informal warbands or regimented legions with veteran officers and young recruits, the regular ten-schmoe loyalist structure is inappropriate. I like ld8 marines, since marines with better stats will have better jobs to do, but will usually need to be welded together by a ld10, ws5 champion to show the different structure of chaos armies. It also makes havocs into something other than heavy troop squads by omitting a champion entirely.

Can you explain this a little differently? I'm having trouble discerning your point.

[Orthodox]

Right. Loyalist companies are divided into squads, and the captain appoints a sergeant to lead them, possibly just by choosing the most responsible fellow from his peers in the squad. Sometimes, a veteran sergeant takes command. If I wanted to play evil loyalists, I'd play evil loyalists.

Traitor armies do not all operate alike, but they are all in circumstances loyalists are not. In warbands, aspiring champions may have to win control of their squads by force or acclaim. In centralized armies, a lord will need to place close allies in charge of individual units, and in traitor legions, any new recruits would probably be controlled by the thouand or ten thousand year old veterans.

There are also the tabletop problems. Troop squads from the fourth edition book allow a heavy weapon after only at ten models, which is useless. The alternative is to allow one at the base size, which ends with spam. Chaos units do not solve the problem with combat squads.

If regular marines have ld8, their champion can be made more expensive by combining ld10 with ws5, to illustrate that he has to control them directly, instead of being an appointed authority like loyalist sergeants. To further emphasize this, make the base unit size six models: one champion and five marines. He isn't the ringleader of a group of knuckleheads; he's the commander of a warband. Now they can have a missile launcher at base unit size without being a throwaway unit.

If a throwaway heavy weapon unit is required, then havocs can be base unit five with no champion. Any army with its act together enough for dedicated heavy units doesn't need lieutenants to bully them around. Havocs imply a vague notion of professionalism and resources. The differentiation also allows troop units to take multiple heavy weapons at large squad sizes, to represent the often mentioned khornate dakka armies, or iron warriors.

So, that's where I come to the specialists. This is chaos! Occultists and technicians might be valuable enough that they can bargain their skills and remain independent parts of the army whom none of the factions dare to push around. They aren't Lords though, so it's hard to make them HQ unit ICs with great stats. They probably just as often accumulate gangs of followers and bodyguards.

If the champions of chaos marine squads are already a little special, there's no reason they can't take combat drugs to become apothecaries, or daemon icons and chains to become thaumaturges. The specialists can be in the troops section, so that way people actually take them and the HQ choices aren't completely crowded.

Junior sorcerors have WYSIWYG problems, since it's hard to say that the champion may buy a force weapon and choose a psychic power when they look like any other power weapon. However, heterogeneity is great, and sorcerors might seclude themselves and require fewer henchmen than chirugeons or whatever. I think it's very straightforward to give normal aspiring champions the option to buy combat drugs OR a daemon icon OR a servo arm OR a thrall wizard that gives him powers.

That's intense. In 4th ed, the main way to differentiate chaos marine squads is by their god. That blows. That makes their only individuality which of four or five colors they like. It also reduces the chaos powers to color-codes, when they should be sacred and capricious. It's more reductive than both the 3.5 versions who were full-on cult member marked by their god, and the 3.0 version that gave champions marks of personal devotion but didn't color-code the entire squad.

In order to distract from this, the squads can be given professions by upgrading their champions to represent specialists, and they can have idiosyncrasies like opting to take thirteen models with three heavy weapons, or ten models with an extra power weapon instead of a heavy/special. Only by adding a few lines (may be equipped with combat drugs, etc), a single unit can prevent the entire army from being anonymous slobs who did or did not drink the kool-aid of one or another god.

Why are there mastery levels, minor-hero level sorcerors, flesh smiths and apostles, and other things duplicating other codexes like assault marines and drop pods?
Out of nowhere the other day, talking about the word sorcery, it occurred to me that you might have used mastery levels. Why did you use mastery levels? There are... a few models in this army that use psychic powers. Just having a power means they can cast a power, be able to buy multiple powers is better than that, and being able to cast multiple powers is a single special rule that may apply only to one or two units. The grey knight book needs that shorthand, but there is no reason to assume 40k needs something from wizard-levels.

Then, ok, having checked that mastery levels do appear in this thread, it also appears that sorcerors, et al, have the profiles of their loyalist counterparts. What? They're different, they aren't the same guy, they are different. Also, it doesn't really count as writing a codex.

Librarianships and chaplaincies do not run their own warbands, they are staff offices instituted by an overarching hierarchy. They supply special skills, but don't really need to be independent operators. Sorcerors are not these things. They are ambitious power brokers who have to look out for themselves, even and especially so in the black legion, where despite the hierarchic organization, they have to vie with each other for power and ambition.

Of course Sorcerors have the three attack, two wound Corbulo/reclusiarch profile. They are also expensive, because a loyalist, institutional chapter has all kinds of support staff working together, but that is not chaotic, and it should be hard to fit a chaos lord and a full-on HQ level sorceror into the same 2000 points. Then you just give them the special rule, like "sorcery," or "dark pact" or any bromidal placeholder, that lets them cast more than one power in some special way.

This is the opportunity to invent something, this is what ingenuity means. Speaking of bromidal placeholders, I figure you are probably not thrilled with acute senses on noise marines. After all, it's just a question of trying to find something that lets noise marines be a little shootier, and just popping that into the list since you need something, anything, to make them look on paper like they are different.

The underlying dissatisfaction involved with that is it means nothing. I can't see in on the model, and I can't feel it when I play against it. It's a nice touch, I guess. What else would they get? It doesn't hurt anything. Those just aren't satisfying words to write or say.

Then, speaking of covering all bases and updating everything into a spikier copypasta of the loyalist books, there are drop pods and jump-pack assault marines. Drop pods have this whole infrastructure of needing to be rebuilt and maybe sticking around after battles to recover things, as well as being the tool of tiny strike forces instead of bizarre invasion forces in legion strength or with cultist hordes. Either warbands are pirates with insufficient time or resources to regularly use drop pods, or they are legion strength and might as well just land behind lines of cultists already on the planet. Those groups that somehow do use drop pods without being adequately represented by the loyalist books are in that specific area that Imperial Armor supplements are meant to cover, and don't have to be shoehorned into a conventional list that is meant for balanced games at the expense of some role playing potential.

Jump pack units are a fraction of most chapters, and fractions of chapters turn traitor, so fractions of fractions would even have access to jump packs, regardless of whether they would want to use them. They might not, because traitors don't fight the same way that loyalists do. Asserting that the two groups are that similar is also asserting that separate books are pretty much dispensable.

So speaking of "role play potential," how comfortable are you with character sheets? I think that in a large scale game that is suited much more to win/lose gameplay than narrative roleplay, it is pretty horrible to have to look at a character sheet to get a sense of what a character is meant to be like. Much more relevant are the experience of interacting with them through game-play and of just seeing them modeled on the board.

I really like collaboration, it yields better stuff and it means that writing these things may actually come to something and affect some small community. So it's nice to make something respectable with a variety of considered opinions. So I like to see lists, like yours, that are more than a complaint that the GW codex doesn't have x units and just cramming them in to a less-playable whole.

[Son of Sanguinius]

I think I get what you mean, Orthodox.

For all of its flaws and oddities, I happen to enjoy the GW codex mold. I find the structure of the metagame fun, and the challenge of tweaking that structure more so. I'm not out to, in this case, create something entirely new. What I'm essentially aiming to do is recreate the 4th edition CSM codex with a 5th edition structure and more flavor. The desired end result is a codex that will yield more competitive armies than simply another minor variation on two Lash Princes and as many Plague Marines as you can afford, while still allowing Chaos players of all stripes to field something along the lines of their imagination.

To be honest, if I let my imagination run wild, I'd end up with basic CSMs being two wound hyper elites, supported by an intricate Mark and Gift system and characters capable of wielding the most devastating but risky psychic powers and weapons in the game. Unfortunately, I find this gets the least amount of attention. Even less than the current, horribly bland codex that GW prints out.

I appreciate your call for ingenuity, and I can honestly say I'm attempting it, but I'm trying to attempt it within the parameters of the system. If you have more specific ideas in this perspective, please toss them my way.

You have my apologies if I'm way off base with regards to what you're talking about. But either way, keep suggesting improvements.

[Orthodox]

Parameters are my purpose and my life, I love parameters.

I find it very unpleasant to write about this seriously, as though it had actual consequence when really it won't produce anything or inform anyone. If this gets more involved than an outline again, I will feel bogged down with futility, so please be able to draw substantive conclusions from what are essentially bullet points summarizing obvious concepts.

Ultragrit is better than True Grit, because it uses simple tools from the main rule book, instead of inflicting a complicated but less detectable set of exceptions the way true grit did. Ingenuity does not mean writing a long set of customized exceptions, it means using the tools given to make something unexpected, like the chaos marines' and grey hunters' equipment.

For this reason, try giving basic models a pistol and bolter, and only the choice to swap the bolter for a combat weapon. Characterizing warbands distinctly from each other is easier with basic options like this.

Special rules can be superfluous in other ways. Heavy Bolters and Predators do not impress particularly and could easily be given rules to improve their attractiveness. Special bolt rounds, for instance, could make heavy bolters a central part of the army. However, codex:heavy bolters is not a salable book. If the predator were to be characterized perfectly, it might have a rule that allows its turret always to fire at cruising speed.

However, the goal is to perfectly characterize armies of chaos space marines, not the predator. The predator is in the list in the first place because it would be weird if marines couldn't take some kind of tank. In a sense, the platonic ideal of a predator is just a box with a gun on top, and it should fit in around the rest of the list instead of exalting itself. Of all the things to have expanded rules, predators do not have high priority.

These are all meant to be analogues to the idea of an intricate Mark and Gift system. When the problem is perfectly representing chaos space marines, the solution is to play some kind of Necromunda adaptation, to play Inquisitor, to play a d20 role play game. It's hard in 40k to make a two-wound hyper elite that still looks like ten guys with only three special models among them. The effects of multi-wound units are muted outside of hero-units of unique models like Nob Squads and Tyrannid Warriors; the identical equipages and large unit sizes of conventional grunt units indicate that the models are fungible with no individual identities, and never intended to be perfect representations of anything.

At this point, 40k has more than one face. Its primary expression is a challenging game between two persons; the participants may not know anything about the background, it's a playable game that happens to involve more personal and sustained investment than a board game. The game does not adequately accommodate narrative; it does not force any reference to previous campaign events or the combatants' agenda. I don't hate that. It is ok, because the game is still equipped to imply the background, to play in the style of that particular army. The important thing is to maintain that understanding, that an army should play like its background the way that a particularly agile badminton player plays like an eldar (not with psychic powers, like).

The army list printout is not a character sheet. Reading it is bad. The game is experience through opponents' movements and through the models themselves, so the names of special rules do not inform the game experience at all and cannot be interacted with. I kind of wonder about acute senses for noise marines, for example.

The current codex mold isn't to say that marine psykers have to be less powerful than heroes because... It's to say that loyalist armies are, as collectives, very integrated, and so specialists don't need anything more than their skills to qualify. There isn't any reason to follow some kind of pattern set by codexes. The pattern is set by the rulebook, and army lists arrange those tools to describe their army.

The specific suggestions are to give squads only a pistol and bolter with the option to exchange one for a combat weapon, allow a them a great number of other WYSIWYG equipment changes, and not to do things like include spiky assault squads. Instead of making a cohesive army list, it seems more like snapping your fingers and saying that here, I can use assault squads if I want to. Of course, I could have done that before, you haven't really made anything. This is an important one: make chosen into their own cult of undivided. They can have god specific items, but the idea is that while the god-cults have a religious ecstasy and earn their marks by giving themselves completely to their creeds, chosen are ambitious individuals who tear down the sky and carve their names on the world, regardless of affiliation. There are plenty of units that are too power hungry to properly join cults and those should have their own unit entry.

I like army lists to be slim and effective, like an apple product, an ak-47, and karl lagerfield, all together in a photoshoot for Monocle magazine. I'm trying to mine you for new ideas. They just have to be ideas and not derivative fantasies.