acrozatarim

If EC are coming this edition then they will most likely be scheduled soon after the main CSM release, because that'll see Noise Marines and Lucius stripped out of the CSM book and they won't want to leave players of those units in limbo for long.

I need to fight the urge to finally start that Ork army.

As someone who started freelancing with Black Library over on the Age of Sigmar side last year, without going into the details of my contract etc, I haven't been asked to not discuss GW stuff online, and what GW have asked of me is reasonable stuff. When I do chat about AoS stuff over on the Grand Alliance forums, I'm just doing so as another human being (unless I'm being an insufferable artiste because one of my works has just been published and I want to preen about it for a day or two). It'd get to be a problem for me if people started jumping on the random crap I post and going 'oh this has weight and meaning as a statement about AoS because he's a writer', but that'd be a problem for me as a forum-goer rather than for me as a BL freelancer, if that makes sense. If I had to take a guess - and I legitimately don't have any actual facts here, as I don't know that many other BL authors personally as yet, but I do have somewhat related experience from my work in the ttrpg industry - I'd imagine that plenty of folks may have retreated their online footprint in forums etc because, well, have you seen the internet lately? It's tiring, and for a creative, there comes a point where you look at how the scales balance when it comes spending energy on dealing with people online vs getting on with your work, and decide you need to focus on the latter.

Undivided is very strong on Obliterators; full rerolls with Profane Zeal boost their reliability massively.

I think Possessed just got better as the Dev Wound change makes them more effective against units with anti-Mortal FNPs. There will also generally be less Overwatching to shoot them down on the approach, and Custodes are weaker as melee roadblocks. Warp Talons at 100 for 5 looks quite interesting.

There is already a hard cap on extra CP per round in the core rules, so sadly the Eye of Tzeentch isn't such a CP machine.

Just played my first game of 10th, CSM vs SM, and it was... honestly really good. Mission stuff felt great, units mostly felt great. I know there's balance and rules issues, particularly with some of the indices, but when you aren't featuring the problem units the actual game seems to be very solid. Much better than 9th in several regards.

You'll probably want to change up some of the Marks - the CSM legionaries, for example, tend to be better built for melee, whereas the MoN and MoT help principally with shooting - but there's nothing that on first glance looks like a 'do not do this' level of bad. Of course, it's a bit hard to tell exactly how some of this stuff is going to pan out in 10th until folks get a good few more games in.

Honestly, I dont think there's anything grievously wrong with the list you've got, so I'd try it out as is, then try a list with a helbrute another time to compare.

There's no minimum Battleline requirement. Battleline just means you can take up to 6 of a given unit rather than up to 3 max. I'm really interested to hear how you go with the winged daemon prince. Sitting here with the daemon prince box and trying to decide which way to build it! I think cultists are one of the few places that the Mark of Tzeentch seems better as a shooting buff than the Mark of Nurgle, since lethal hits does a bit more work on a S3 attack. If you had a Helbrute I'd recommend a Mark rather than Undivided on the Havocs, since getting 5+ sustained and lethal is just so good, but since you don't Undivided does seem a solid choice there for greater accuracy.

It feels like this could make MoN really critical for dealing with things like Oath of Moment, Stormspeeder combo set-ups, and indirect fire madness.

So, Chosen are 23 points a model, Legionaries 20 points a model. Chosen have killier melee weapons, can have lots of plasma pistols, and a few combi-weapons; Legionaries notionally can drag heavy or special weapons along, but that means they can't take a chainsword. Let's face it, the main benefit of a Legionary squad is piling lots and lots of chainsword attacks into melee, so taking advantage of 'free' wargear may reduce the damage you're outputting in melee. Chosen have inbuilt advance/charge/fallback stuff; Legionaries reroll 1s to wound, or full rerolls when objectives are involved. Chosen also have 3 wounds; Legionaries have very slightly more character options (Abaddon and Lucius). I'm wondering if Chosen are now simply the 'better' choice for our main infantry. They're more resilient, don't need the Mark of Slaanesh to get advance and charge, and have more tactical flexibility because taking combi-weapons doesn't strip them of their melee tools, although legionaries can pack in one more power-fist equivalent weapon into a 5-man squad. On the other hand, Legionaries have those melee wound rerolls, and can get access to advance/charge with the right Mark anyway. Is a 15% higher price per unit on Chosen enough to make legionaries feel like a fair choice when compared to them? If we want a squad that can bring a load of special weapons, then weirdly Raptors seem a better choice than legionaries, as they're cheaper and can take 4 of a special weapon choice in a 10-man unit. Thoughts?

Yeah, I know it's just on his attacks. It means he hits a bit harder than he would otherwise. There's lots of little powers like that on various minor leaders' sheets like this guy, nothing particularly wrong with it.

It's a toned down version of Devastating Wounds. Honestly, we could do with a lot more instances of DW being turned into that instead.

They reliably kill, not just damage, Rhinos and their equivalents at 18" range. Yes, lascannon range matters - that's the weapon's main benefit. But if you're in range, statisically, lascannons are just outright worse except against targets that have a high enough Invuln. The main gun on an Executioner, an undeniably focused tank-killing weapon, is doing roughly equivalent to or worse than the Ret squad's MMs into a Land Raider. So a Ret squad with MMs has anti-tank firepower in the ballpark of a heavy laser destroyer. Yes, shorter ranged, but let's not pretend that multi-meltas 'suck' into armour even at their base level, without any Miracle Dice shenanigans.

You want regular battle sisters because they help generate lots more Miracle Dice, which the Triumph of St Katherine and a Dialogus turn into as many 6s as you want on squads like Retributors.

I'm aware re the range. However, the needing 5s thing is often a distraction from the general situation - what matters is the final output, which is the numbers above, where Rets will flatten T9 vehicles like Rhinos and do meaningful damage against higher T vehicles as well.. A weapon that needs 2s to wound a vehicle but which has few shots, low damage, or poor AP is going to be rubbish anti-tank no matter how easily it wounds. And where it's not a distraction is in abilities that allow Rets to overcome it. A Dialogus in the unit means you're getting a 6 on something. A Dialogus and the Triumph means you're getting a concerning number of 6s, because the Dialogus' ability isn't 1/turn or anything.

Yeah, that's all fair! Points depending, Dialogus looks like a genuinely good attachment for a Ret unit, being able to just go 'they get a 6' regardless of what you're actually rolling on your Miracle Dice.

You may be missing their reroll of 1 on wound rolls there, at least (Edit: OR, on rereading what you actually wrote, you may have included it! Possible I've misunderstood). Against a Rhino with just the Heavy bonus, the squad deals an average of 10.9 wounds; if they have Melta but not Heavy, they deal 12.8 wounds. Yes, variance can be an issue, but that goes both ways - spikes in the damage dice can bring down far tougher vehicles than the average, and damage rolls are specifically ones you can use Miracle Dice for, letting you potentially slam through a very high damage salvo. For more numbers, vs a Land Raider the squad deals 6 wounds if just Heavy, 7.1 wounds if just Melta, or 9.5 wounds if both.

Ah, damn, missed that. It's still decent for pushing the chainglaive up past a key Str break-point, so you'll wound a Land Raider on a 4+ on the charge, but not nearly as great as I thought - oh well! That said, it looks like he also pairs nicely with the Elixir.

Yeah, Multimeltas do more damage to tanks than lascannons, gun for gun, both due to the higher AP mod and double the number of shots, and not including the Melta damage bonus. Obviously the range is an issue by comparison, but Multimeltas are actually pretty great for man-portable anti-tank weapons - it's just that all man-portable anti-tank is less potent than it used to be. A squad of Retributors either standing still and firing at max range, or hoofing it into Melta range and firing without the Heavy bonus, will both reliably one-shot a Rhino, which is not nothing in this new paradigm. Damage is less impressive vs heavier tanks at T10+ and 2+ armour saves but even then they'll strip a decent number of wounds off just by themselves, and the use of Miracle Dice can obviously swing their damage up significantly.

I've seen people feeling a bit down on the Lord Discordant, and not unreasonably so, but it's worth pointing out that the Talisman of Burning Blood goes really nicely on him, because the +d3 Strength and Attacks goes on every melee weapon and he has 2 Extra Attacks weapons along with his glaive - including the Anti-Vehicle 2+ techno-virus injector - so it can crank up his melee output by up to 9 extra attacks if you get lucky.

I'm trying to get my head fully round the implications of the Marks in this detachment. They come in four layers - the Marks themselves, the Stratagems, and the Enhancements, and finally how this all interacts with the specific units. For the Marks themselves, I'd rate MoS over MoK for melee, and MoN over MoT for ranged, on the basis that Sustained Hits is generally better than Lethal Hits. That said, the Undivided Mark may be the dark horse here, as it works for both melee and shooting and, while not as good as Sustained Hits by itself, does raise reliability. Stratagems are a mixed bag here. I don't think Eternal Hatred is worth taking the MoK just to get the +1 to the Fight on Death roll, nice as it is. Unnatural Swiftness is worth taking the MoS for, but Chosen can already advance and charge, so MoK or Undivided push back as superior choices there, I think. MoT is great for Obliterators, who can work with Lethal Hits even if they'd prefer Sustained Hits, and for whom the healing and getting back a whole model is amazing. It could even work for Possessed - yes, the Dark Pact benefit sucks because they don't have ranged attacks, but the old Pact of Flesh in 9e was amazing for a reason, and pulling back 3W T6 Possessed to creep ever closer to the enemy is amazing. Dark Obscuration is pretty good anyway for MoN but might be key in protecting units from godawful combo set-ups like the loyalist Primaris speeder nonsense. Then there's Profane Zeal, full rerolls on hit and wound for Undivided. I guess it'll depend on exactly how the numbers crunch, but this looks legitimately good enough as a justification for Undivided in and of itself. For the Enhancements, Talisman of Burning Blood is pretty great for a Khorne Lord Discordant or Daemon Prince, where even just the +1 extra strength pushes them up over some key break points (Lance on the Khorne Discordant means they wound a T12 heavy tank on a 4+ in melee rather than a 5+, which is not nothing). Eye of Tzeentch is... tricky because you need the same mark on the character and the unit they lead, and Dark Pacting by yourself on some little foot character is living pretty dangerously. You could stick it on a Warpsmith in a unit of Havocs but the Havocs themselves get absolutely nothing out of the Warpsmith in their unit, and again would probably prefer to be Undivided or Slaanesh. There might be mileage in finding whoever the cheapest character is, slapping this on them in a little 5 man unit of legionaries with bolters, a heavy weapon, and an Icon, and just scudding around in relative safety popping shots at things and soaking up the bonus CP - but it might just be too many points for the benefit. The Orb of Unlife... just seems to suck, and sadly isn't an argument for the MoN at all. The Intoxicating Elixir is an argument for the MoS just for the 5+ FNP alone. Finally, the Liber Hereticus is good, although you can already get its benefits through a Helbrute. If it's cheap points-wise, worth taking though.

I'm... not underwhelmed, I'm not even just whelmed (though there are some dud entries). I'm... just feeling cautious. This might be reasonably balanced - points costs notwithstanding, of course? There's some interesting ways the pieces here could click together with the Marks, but there's a lot of limits on leader/unit interactions since, of course, we don't have the sheer breadth of different sub-versions of characters that loyalists have.

I have to admit, my eyes had thoroughly glazed over before half way through. Space marines just have too damn many datasheets, and are in dire need of some consolidation/thinning down.