A New Codex for Chaos

There are rumors going around of a sixth edition of Warhammer 40,000 complete with a much needed new rulebook for the armies of the Chaos Space marines.  Supposedly this new edition will focus on chaos and the chaos legions, ie those that sided with Horus during the rebellion against the emperor.

That all sounds fine and I was content to wait and see.  However a bunch of people online have gotten their panties in knots already over these rumors.  Fixing the Chaos Codex isn’t hard, it isn’t rocket surgery.  Here is what I would propose as someone having carried the torch for Chaos through many, many, rule changes.

HQ

HQ is easy you’ve got your Daemon Princes, your Lords, and your Sorcerers.  You also have your special characters.  GW likes them, I don’t.  GW likes them because they can charge an even larger premium on the sales of special character models.  Always remember the rules exist to sell miniatures.

The thing people seem to complain about is not being able to make all powerful mega Lords and Princes anymore so that will probably come back.  I expect a lot more options and upgrades available similar to what you see on the Fantasy side in their Daemon Codex.

The biggest decision after who is going to lead your army is what god are they going to follow.  I’d force people to choose right from the get go and theme the entire codex around this.  Either your leader is devoted to Chaos Undivided or he/she is devoted to one of the four gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Slaneesh, or Tzeentch.  This choice will affect your troop options severely.  If you choose one of the four gods you may take troops devoted to that god as Troop choices.  If you opt for Undivided you may take up to one troop choice from each god.

Lords and Sorcerers can be mounted on daemonic mounts.  Nurgle lords can have a pet Beast of Nurgle who is Toughness 5.  These are all wargear upgrade options.

Elite

I’m old school so I think all followers of chaos should be warped and corrupted so I would have no possessed entry.  I’d have a single elite choice, entitle “Chosen of Chaos”.  This would be like the Nobz mob in the Ork Codex.  I remember when Chaos Lords could have retinues and the Chosen/Nobz are the comrades in arms of the Lord.  Chosen could either be in terminator armor or not, just like Nobz mobs.  I don’t know about bikes, I guess you could throw that option in.

There would be a special character which allowed you to take Chosen as troops enabling the all terminator army.  There would also be a special character making raptors troops too.

Chaos should be more like the Grey Knights a smaller elite force.  I mean some of them have been fighting for 10,000 years, you’d think they’d have improved over time, plus had their numbers reduced.

Troops

This is easy too, you have your Bezerker entry, they are Khorne’s mortal foot soldiers, specializing in close combat.  One major addition I’d make to differentiate the loyalists from the Chaos worshipers is more daemons.  For every unit of mortal foot soldiers you are allowed to take a single unit of the same or lesser size of daemonic foot soldiers.

Remember the elaborate summoning rules where Khorne had to get into H2H, Nurgle had to cause wounds, Tzeentch cast spells, and Sleneesh force moral checks I think.  That is too complicated for today’s 40K, so probably just Deep Strike but force them to appear within six inches of someone with the matching mark.

Nurglings are supposed to be the most numerous of all lesser daemons.  So Plaguemarines would be allowed to have a unit of Plaguebearers and a unit of Nurglings.  The Nurglings would be say 1-3 stands and wouldn’t be summoned.  They would just start the game with the Plaguemarines.  I’d also not have Nurglings take up any space in transports.  So you could cram 10 Deathguard plus 3 stands of Nurglings into a rhino.  Call this rule, “There is always room for Nurglings.“

Vehicles

Right now there is a loyalist rhino box and a chaos rhino box, a loyalist predator box and a chaos predator box, and two landraider boxes.  This is just dumb.  There should be one box for each vehicle type and then one box called “Chaos Vehicle Upgrades” or some such.  Putting these in their own boxes will reduce clutter on shelves and allow people to convert IG vehicles to chaos easier. These upgrades would be all new and all spiffy plastic bits.

Daemonic possession of vehicles would be encouraged.  It looks cool and differentiates the bag guys from the good guys.  Making the vehicle immune to shaken/stunned is good but why are daemons worse shots?  Some daemons can see into the future, surely that helps with their aim?  I’d make possessed vehicles BS 4 or even WS/BS 5.  Then make it expensive say 25% the cost of the base vehicle.

New Stuff

There is no point in releasing a new codex without new models to flog.  Chaos will get a drop pod, a new daemon engine, and two flyers.  Just look at the Forgeworld stuff.  They probably won’t even get a drop pod, just use the Chaos Vehicle Upgrade bits to convert the existing loyalist one.  The daemon engine will probably be smaller than a defiler.  Think along the lines of obliterators or killer cans.  Something that would be fun to build and be fielded in groups of 1-3.  Call it the Chaos equivalent of the attack bike or even landspeeder.  I don’t care if it floats or flies, it is a size of model that is missing from the Chaos range.

There will of course only be one flyer model, you just can configure it to be a bomber or a fighter.  I doubt Chaos will get the deploy troops from a flyer option, but you never know.

Fast Attack

I never get to use this much.  Raptors as troops is a given, maybe that is the Night Lords bone, just bring the right special character. You could make bikers cooler by giving them the option of having jet bikes.  Make a new kit that can be built with or without wheels, or just force people to build their jet bikers.  Chaos is supposed to use pre-Heresy weapons still.

I’m not sure Fast Attack daemons will happen, that might be something unique to the all Daemon list and I’m fine with that.

Heavy Support

There are a lot of givens here: Landraider, Predator, Vindicator, Defiler, Devastator equivalent squad, Obliterators, plus the flyers. Because heavy support has so many options my gut says the new daemon engine thing will be fast attack.  Heck where do dreadnoughts fit in, Elite or Heavy Support.  I don’t think Chaos will get too many new big toys, but instead will get a lot of smaller options plus combined with special characters to tweak army list composition.

Special Characters

These aren’t going anywhere and supposedly heroic individuals are making a comeback on the battlefields of the 41st millennium. Most of the ones that are already sculpted will continue to exist in the rules.  They’ll probably get the bring along lots of troops of that god special rule.  Abbadon will make Chosen troops, Kharne will make Bezerkers troops etc.  What they have to do to make a true Chaos Legion codex is release one special character for each Legion.  I’ll leave that as an exercise for the readers.  One trend which I kinda like is special characters who aren’t HQ.  The Imperial Guard codex has a bunch but even Orks or the Codex Marines have some, you have your special scout sargent etc. etc.  There will probably be one or two of these, but they really need one special character per Legion…

Well more wasted time today.

I’d like Chaos cultists, a special character that allowed cultists would be cool and something I’d consider running just to paint something other than power armor.  ;-)