Chaos Theory

So it has been a long time since Chaos Space Marines have received much love from the dark gods of GW, and the few rumors floating around the interwebz have been few and far between, with the bulk of which surrounding the idea of chaos in the 6th edition box set. In my opinion, the codex still has a few nifty tricks up it's sleeves here and there, but against the ever growing number of 5th ed. armies it's age begins to show through rather quickly.

With several options in their troops section, as well as unique units like the Obliterators (though the Grey Knights try to imitate them) and tricks like Daemonic Possession, the armies of Chaos Space Marines have ways to keep pumping pain and heresy throughout the galaxy. But are all these options enough? Or are they possibly too much? Unfortunately I find it to be a little of both.

In my opinion, the biggest change I see in the new armies that hit 5th is the points change. If you stop to look at units from 4th (or older) to 5th, their points generally lower, if only by a little bit. This "streamlining" often helps the army afford other things, be it entire units, more wargear, or a combo of the two... 5th armies can often bring much more to the table than the old expensive... and rather underwhelming units of old. I can attest to this with my Black Templar army. While I will still sing the praises of my one and only troop choice, it is somewhat disconcerting to pay 17 points a model for a marine who can be either duel armed or have a bolter, and only have frags... while wolves have both duel armed, bolters, frags, and kraks... for 15 points per. It's these points that are saved which quickly add up... and like other older armies, the CSM's feel it hard.

So what can be done? I have compiled a few things I scavenged from around the internet, as well as a few ideas of my own that may hep to improve the codex. Again, these are a gathering of ideas, and not all are great.. but I could see them improving the army.


Chaos "Undivided"
As much as I enjoy the concept of Daemons fighting alone, the two codexes could really do for a re-unification. I'll get to it later, but the use of marks on HQ's could help to improve lesser daemons into a version (buffed or nerfed) from the current daemon codex. I personally feel like there is a lot of interesting uses for more potent daemon allies to the Chaos army, as the current daemons in the CSM army are limited severely in their uses. They aren't bad, but certainly not forgiving to bring in an army that is hurting for points as it is.


The Right Leadership
While I understand the reason for cult troops being placed in the... well Troop section... I think there is a way to bolster their cult troops in a unique way to allow while keeping things fair.

I like the 4 cult troops, but feel they could use a bit of a bolster... but if they become too much better than regular troops, they become OP. So make all cult troops in a non-troop section, placing Khorne and Nurge in Elites, Slaanesh in Fast Attack, and Tzeench in Heavy Support. Now before berating me here's the trick. An HQ with a mark (including unique characters) make that corresponding Cult Unit a troop choice.

This could also come into play for the dameons if they were to be incorporated into the same codex.


Free "Mark"et of Ideas.
I personally believe the way to make this army stand apart from others is the put a little more emphasis on the Marks. This means that the cost of many of the marks could use a reduction to make them more accessible. If I remember right, the mark of Nurgle on Terminators is 50 points. That's pretty darn steep for a buff that disappears if the bearer is killed.

On top of this... I feel the marks themselves could use a little improvement, at least where the cult troops are involved. I think plague marines could use true T5, and CSM with the mark would still only have the T4(5). Minor buffs to the cults would make them feel a little more bang for the buck like than simply running cheap CSM units with similar effect.

A last little trick I'd like to see is the inclusion of marks for vehicles. Each mark could have a unique buff to add to a vehicle.

Khorne- Makes the vehicle an assault vehicle.
Nurgle- ignores shaken and stunned (I know this replaces D.P., but I'll get back to this.)
Slaanesh- makes the vehicle fast
Tzeench- grants the vehicle a 5+ invulnerable save.

As for Daemonic Possession, this could allow daemons to be transported in the vehicle.

Pick your Poison
I look at the CSM codex as one of limited options. "But Loki," you ask, "The CSM army has so much to choose from!" Yes it does... but in a way it limits you. For instance... there are only two transports in the whole army... the rhino (which you can't assault from, and the Land Raider which is 220 points for the same 10 cap as the rhino. This hardly compares to the loyal marines who have 4 transport options (and the LR has variants).

I would love to see some new units as well as some nice new variants for existing units. Dreadnoughts could use for a bit of a tweak. Maybe a corrupted techmarine or something to keep the shenanigans to a low. We see this kind a thing already with the Dark Eldar Grotesques.

The big thing here I'd like to see is the inclusion of cultists. I think there could be much fun to be had with a sacrifice engine. These could be cheap little 6 or 8 point models that can access wargear to bolster their own power and make for a cheap horde like troop choice, or just spam them to sacrifice to bolster other units. When I see Chaos, I think sacrifice... and this little unit could answer that gap nicely.


I think these are just a few ways to add some flavor and power to the codex. There are some things that I haven't mentioned that would be nice to see back in the army. The inclusion of Legion characters (an Alpha Legion Raptor, Word Bearers possessed, or Night Lord Chosen upgrade character would be interesting). Not to mention the Holy Numbers. It was a nice way for fluff to interact with rules. I also think you could make the rule heralds of the Chaos Daemons where an HQ with a mark can not join units with a different mark would be a nice touch of fluff rules.

All in all, the codex works decently now. But if these addition/changes were made... I'd have to consider them as a next army. Any thoughts, or suggestions?

Cheers!

One More Trick up my Sleeve

Good afternoon everyone, hope you've had fun since I last saw you all. Last time I said I'd be posting some pictures of my Tau, but I haven't made any considerable progress on painting them, so hopefully I'll have something worth reporting next time.

As for today, I'm reminded of a nice long conversation Loki and I had about the 'blue' space marine codex in comparison to their blood angel and space wolf brethren. I've been thinking about how to make a list that can be approximated by the other codices, but that the 'blue' codex can do better if only slightly. While the wolves and angels can each build their own unique builds, Loganwing and Jumpers respectively, the list I've chosen for comparison for all three armies is the 'razor spam' army, supported by other elements. The Ultramarines will represent the 'blue' codex in this round. Forgive me if this reminds you of Ishmael's army:
Chaplain Cassius 125
Three dreadnoughts with two twin-linked autocannons 125
Three tactical squads with combi-melta, meltagun and missile launcher in an assault cannon razorback with hunter killer missile 260
Two landspeeder duos with multimeltas 120
Three devastator teams with four missile launchers 150

I will admit there are some problems with the comparing the blood angels' and space wolves' versions of this list. Coming from the space wolves side, the problem is that there are no tactical or devastator squads for direct comparison, so I substituted the space wolves closest equivalents the grey hunters and long fangs. Using a basic rune priest or wolf priest instead of Cassius and five man grey hunter squads with meltagun and combi-melta wolf guard instead of tactical squads and five missile long fangs instead of devastators brings the wolf variant to 1714 points for the same firepower as the 2000 points 'blue' marine list. That is a striking difference, though keep in mind that there are fifteen fewer bodies in the troops section than in the 'blue' version. For the sake of effieiceincy I'll give the wolves the win hands down. As a side note, the discrepancy in points between the lists drops from 286 points to 61 if you include the fifteen extra bodies. A wolves 'razor spam' list may prefer to run lascannons and twin-linked plasmaguns rather than assault cannons but their cost is the same so that shouldn't factor into the comparison, just in case you were wondering.

Comparing blood angels' version of 'razor spam' is a bit more difficult because of their divergent (read heretical) force organization, it is impossible to have both three devastator teams and three autocannon dreadnoughts in the same detachment as both occupy a heavy support slot and blood angels do not have a master of the forge to move the dreadnoughts into another slot. On the bright side, I can decide not to care about that and compare the costs of each unit. Blood angels' obsession with speed means their razorbacks are fast, but they also cost fifteen points more expensive each. Luckily for them, their devastator missile launchers are five points cheaper each, netting them twenty points per squad. With three squads of each, the blood angels come out fifteen points ahead of the 'blue' marines. If they could have both the dreadnoughts and the devastators they would be slightly ahead of their 'blue' brethren, but they cannot.

In the 'razor spam' department, the 'blue' codex falls behind the space wolves because they need to purchase more bolter brothers to access their meltaguns and missile launchers and have the melta and missile capacity of space wolves at a lower points level. On the other hand, having access to shooting dreadnoughts in their elites choices allows the 'blue' marines to field more long range anti-tank shooting than the blood angels. Out of the fifth edition marine codices, barring grey knights, the 'blue' codex falls between the shooting capacity of the wolves and that of the blood angels, netting the 'blue' book a solid okay rating.

I'll try to cook up an assault comparison using the best close combat units from each of the codices to see if the 'blue' codex can hold on to its okay rating. On that note, what units would you like to see in that comparison, as I'm not the most familiar with any close combat units.

Till then,
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam

Progress Report: Godfrey's Templar II

Hey everyone! As I mentioned the other day, I wanted to put up a progress report on my Templar army. I have been distracted by other projects, and in the time I've owned these guys I have started, finished, and often sold Daemons, Dark Eldar, and Grey Knights. Though I like to play around with alternative armies, this is my baby.


As you can see, my Crusade Fleet has grown quite a bit since the last time I talked about them on here, so I wouldn't mind showing the progress.


Marshal Hector Keys accompanied by Sword Brethren. The model is a Scibor Minis model with added Scibor shield and Holy Orb to give him the correct weapons layout as per how I usually run him.


Godfrey, The Emperor's Champion and the crusader squad he leads. Fun Fact: Godfrey was named after Godfrey the Baron of Ibelin. I also chose to paint the tabard on my Champion to match the Iconography.


Marsha Tyberius Irons. Made using the Helbrecht model with the addition of a helmet, he generally only sees play as Helbrecht. As it is currently the only "actual" marshal model, it seemed fitting.



>Brother Dominus, one of a few models named from the anime series Big O. Armed with assault cannon and a converted DCCW, he makes for a great mid field tank hunter.


Michael Seebach, Master of Sanctity. The model was converted from a Legion of the Damned sergeant. His three cenobite servitors are the retinue of Hector Rex with minor conversions.


Grimaldus. My favorite model made by GW, both in fluff, and game play. This Chaplain in one of the bigger reasons I chose to play Black Templar.


As you can see from the first picture, I still have plenty of unpainted models. I am working to get as many of them done as possible so that one day I can put up a finished review of the entire army.

Cheers!

Taurrible

I've been able to get in about a half dozen games in with my rebooted Tau and have been having smashingly consistent results. The smashing part has been my army against whatever rocks were nearby, but there are two upsides I've seen in these losses that give me confidence that I can return to playing Tau without hating 40k and the army. A quick recap of the Tau's latest (getting) hits might sum up why I'm loving losing left and right while I race to get the army painted for a Bloomington tournament on the 21st.

I've had the opportunity to play Loki and Meister Kai twice each with my new Tau, all four games were kill points and both pairs of games were similar. I played Kai's mechanized Eldar first on dawn of war and made some major errors in deployment that gave the opening to glean easy kill points. Getting seized on didn't help, but after the game we talked about how I could have deployed and played better. The next game we played we decided to take our time and talk about each decision and why it was a good or bad choice. Over the next four hours we talked about how to set up the next turn's shooting, what units constituted a bigger threat to the army and how to mitigate the influence of dice by moving to a safer position. Where the first game Kai and I played was a slaughter, the second ended with my broadsides as the only Tau survivors and losing by one kill point. The game involved some ridiculous rolls for good and ill, but I was able to be more aware of what I was trying to do with my army and what choices I hadn't seen.

Both times I've played Loki I've been facing his paladin army and can't say it's anything but a royal pain to kill anything. In the first game we played I didn't use my kroot to screen the rest of my army properly and lost a hammerhead to Loki's scout shunting dreadknight on the top of one, followed by poor use of my piranhas and the dreadknight butchering by broadsides on turn two meant that I ran out of weapons able to inflict instant death on the paladins fast. After only being able to get two of his six kill points, the game wasn't close by any stretch. The second game was very different. When Loki won the roll and opted to go first, putting two pallie squads on the midline of the board, I decided to not try to seize or deploy anything. On the bottom of one his squad without Drago was hit by my whole army, dropping it to four wounded pallies. When the sun rose next turn Drago and his squad started working on a parking lot of piranhas and hammerheads that had moved twelve inches to block them from the rest of the army that was almost base to base in a corner behind two units of kroot. One of those bought me the turn I needed to finish the first pallie squad and died to the dreadknight, the other died to Drago's pallies, buying another turn. Disruption pods saved all three shots from the vindicare before a railgun showed him what a real gun was. In the end it came down to four pallies, Drago and a cowardly inquisitor against three suits, an immobilized piranha and a hammerhead. Six models to five models, eleven kill points to three, but a much closer game than it looked.

What have I learned? I've learned that I can play Tau without getting a headache and I can stop worrying about whether or not I'm going to win. Odds are I'm not going to win any single game, but it will satisfy me if both armies are bloodied and I've learned something about how to play 40k better. Loki talked about a shift in 40k from a game that had a lot more options whose enjoyability came from their ludicrousness rather than their competitiveness as a choice. I disagree with his division between a 'fun' game and a 'competitive' game because I used to wrestle and get beaten, a lot. In wrestling and 40k, to me, the fun doesn't come from rolling another player over and mollystomping them as one mindset I haven't run into would have it, but from the both of you walking away with (proverbially) broken noses, knowing that you both gave your best and ended up evenly matched. The outcome of the game isn't so important to me as the effort that was put in and any insight gained for the next game.

I'll try to post some pictures of my Tau with the next update, but that would require me to get them painted, which I will, but first lunch. Ribs sound delicious.

40k: Fun or Functional

Greeting everyone. After a long time thinking on the matter, I have started to at a lot of things about the game that have changed over the years. While a lot of the changes have been great, there's one that makes me sad.

While rules have been added, changed, or even removed, some of the more interesting and fun aspects of the game have gone missing. I look at the ork codex as my large example of some of these more... fun rules. From Shock Attack guns to mine field clearing grots... the codex was and is full of some fun moments. Now of course this codex is designed to be somewhat humerus, it wasn't always the only one to have some unique rules come up.

Codex Necrons has a fun little rule/ability. The Nightbringer has a fun ability to throw units away from him so long as they are S3 or less. He also has a very... very specific rule. If he is hit with a C'Tan Phase Blade... he doesn't take any wounds, and the bearer looses their weapon. Now this only really effects the Caladis Assassin (even though she's been newly redone recently). Of course the rule isn't really "good" but it's funny when it happens. In all the years I've played, I've only ever seen that happen once, and tremendous laughs were had. Either way, his rules allow for some unique moments to occur, and while the rule which applies to only the Caladis Assassin is limited, the S3 push away is something that many players may not see coming.

Lets look over to Daemons. While the codex is kind of a joke as it is (no offense to those who play it) there are some moments in it as well. Fateweaver, apart from his meta, has a funny rule. If he takes a wound and fails his leadership... he runs back to the warp in fear. Now, this makes me laugh a lot as I can easily see any mage running at the first sight of danger... and it's replicated with Fateweaver's cowardice here. Maybe this was put in more as a balance to his powerful re-roll ability, but even if so, it's a fun way to make the model balanced while doing it in a funny and entertaining manner.




Another fun little rule, while not huge, is in the Eldar codex. Prince Yriel has a pseudo daemon weapon that likes to see him squirm. At the end of the game... if he's still kickin, the blade tries like hell to make him stop. It's not huge, but it makes for a funny moment if he does die.

In the end, I feel like the game has shifted from trying to be entertaining to simply being about competitiveness. The new rules which accompany the models and units of fifth edition seem to encourage players to use the more powerful options over others. While in some of the older editions the options were funny vs powerful... fifth has almost no fun choices inherently and pretty much leaves you choosing between powerful or less powerful options. Maybe I'm just missing some of the old days where the game was more about fun than winning... but I sure would like to see some more entertaining moments pop up.

Kill Points, Not as Bad as You Think

Good morning everyone, hope you've had a good week or so while we've been working on wrapping up our classwork for this year. I haven't gotten to play as many games as I would like, but I wanted to talk about something that I think a lot of people and I will disagree on and spark some discussion on. Let's talk about having a lot of kill points in your army.

As the win condition for one of the three big rule book missions, kill points are a point of contention between people who hate them and...well most people hate them. As far as I know, this hatred comes from the equality of units in the kill points system. To get a kill point all you have to do is completely destroy a unit. All units are worth one kill point, no matter how expensive or hard to kill they are. A squad of three termigants, a devilfish and a land raider are each worth one kill point which is the major point of contention with people who hate kill points.

In contrast the 4th edition big rule book used a system based on how much each unit cost in points, called victory points. Victory points still exist in the 5th edition big rule book, but in my experience are rarely played, so let's only touch on them briefly. Using victory points a player would receive the points cost of a unit if it was completely destroyed and half the points cost if it was reduced to half strength or suffered a weapon destroyed or immobilized result. This rewarded players more for killing expensive units than it did for killing small impotent units and it made it possible to get some value out of damaging a vehicle that refused to die. With kill points you are left empty-handed unless something is entirely dead.

Tournaments that I go to generally use kill points as a tie breaker in objective games and as a primary win condition. Knowing this and that our gaming club uses the big rule book missions, most people around here are very conscious of how many kill points are in their lists. Their line of thinking goes that if a high kill point army fights a low kill point army it is at a disadvantage because the low kill point army has a lower threshold of kill points to attain before it will win unless it is wholly annihilated.

This is absolutely true, but I think it is incomplete in its analysis of having many units in an army. In having a high number of kill points, a list must also have a high number of units. The vanilla, blood angel and grey knight codices have the ability to break their squads into combat squads under certain conditions, creating new units and kill points. The imperial guard has the ability to combine multiple infantry squads within a platoon to reduce the number of units and kill points in the army. Each combat squad can operate independently and do the same thing their parent unit could do, albeit at half the strength.

The benefits of having these Multiple Small Units is in the more efficient allocation of damage and protection from overwhelming damage it affords the army as a whole. If a platoon's infantry squads combine, they stop conceding multiple kill points if they all die, but they can no longer act independently. While a combined squad of four infantry squads with lascannons can generate four lascannon shots on one target which may be effected by a single order, the four infantry squads can generate four lascannon shots that target independently. While some vehicles are more difficult to destroy than others, any can be killed in one penetrating hit. If all four lascannons fire at a vehicle simultaneously the odds of killing that vehicle are the same, barring any unit effecting abilities like orders, as if they were to be fired at it sequentially. However, if the infantry squad were to fire sequentially from different units, it is entirely possible that the first shot could kill the vehicle. This would allow the remaining units to fire at the vehicle's contents, if any, or another target. If the first shot does not kill the vehicle, the other shots may still be fired at the target, but if all of the shots were in one large unit, they must all fire simultaneously at the same target, baring abilities like target locks. By having more units, rather than fewer larger units, the units are able to more efficiently allocate their damage output.

On the reverse, units must only shoot at one unit, again barring special abilities. Some units have the ability to put out enough damage to eradicate a full squad, be in marine combined guard or any other, in one shooting phase. Consider the possibility that one unit was to receive enough wounds that its full strength version would perish. If the unit is at full strength they will all die, but if the unit has been divided into smaller portions only that smaller portion will die. It is simply impossible to lose ten models out of a five model unit. I will fully admit that those five models are dead and your opponent has received a kill point, which would be true whether the unit was divided or not. However, if you have divided the unit's special weapons evenly, the enemy has only taken away a portion of the full strength unit's damage output. While you have conceded a point towards the win condition or tiebreaker, you have retained more ability to take points in return than you would have if you had not divided your unit.

This MSU strategy is especially effective in objective games where any unit may contest a point and troops may claim them. The same weaknesses and strengths that apply in kill point missions apply here, but the ability to have more units that can claim objectives raises the threshold of units that a low kill point army must destroy to prevent the high kill point army from being unable to claim or contest an equal number of objectives.

These are my heretical thoughts on kill points and I would welcome anyone who disagrees to persuade me that I am wrong. I will attempt to do likewise for you and perhaps we will both gain a broader understanding of the subject. I leave you with a joke.

Why can twelve vanilla marines fit in a drop pod while only ten wolves or angels can?
The pod doesn't have room for the wolves' egos or the angels angst.