Starting a Word Bearer's Host

[Redcoat]

Hi all,

 

I'm just getting back into 40k after a good 7/8 years away (although in the intervening time I've still been reading all the BL books) and with the new edition of 40K I'm looking at starting a Word Bearer's Army. Couple of reasons for this, one I really enjoyed Dark Apostle, I like the fact that unlike many traitor legions the Word Bearers are still intact led by their Primarch, and they have their faith and their chaplains!

 

Couple of questions. I've been planning the 1st 1000 points, and have so far only bought 1 CSM squad. I've done some reading around on the forum, and it looks like some players have quite strong views on what should or shouldn't be included in a Word Bearer's Host, specifically the use of Icon's. Now I was originally planning (eventually) having squads of each icon including in the host. The reason being that although the legion worships all the chaos gods (and the apostles certainly wouldn't have marks as they devote themselves to all the gods) surely some marines would through their own individual faith and worship practices be drawn to particular gods? This wouldn't mean they stop acknowledging the other gods, just that they focus on their "favourite" if you like, and still fits in with the legion worshiping all the gods - surely they would have banners and icons relating to them all.

 

To back this up there are certain passages from the Dark Apostle novel where they mention "those word bearers who stray closest to the worship of Khorne" (when the corphoryaus (sp?) launches an assault against the loyalists) as well as the first acolyte asking someone if they are feeling the lure of Slaanesh. I see this as still fitting comfortably with the background. For example with ancient Rome or Greece, they had a pantheon of gods, but certain individuals would still worship particular ones more than others (see the Roman Legions and the cult of Mithras).

 

Another reason why I think this works, is that although when the list in the Index Astartes was brought out for the Word Bearer's they said you couldn't take marks apart from Chaos Undivided, this I think was more to the fact that if you gave a marine a mark they "became" a traitor marine from another legion (for example mark of nurgle meant they became a Death Guard Plague Marine). In the current codex you can give marines marks, but they still retain their original warband/legion 'membership'.

 

Sorry I know this is long winded but has been bugging me for a bit since I've been reading this forum. Would like to hear opinions from other chaos players esp other Dark Apostle's out there!

[Cornelias]

i totally agree with everything you've said, that's how i've always seen undivided armies progressing tbh.

go for it, if not just for the reason of making your painting/modelling more intresting :P

 

 

remember to keep us informed with WIP threads ;)

[Forward Operative]

I really like your fluff. Yes, individuals would lean toward a specific Chaos God more than others while venerating all four. I can't imagine every Legionaire believing in the same thing without some philosophical discussions talking about the strengths of one god over the other. Especially a group that follows all four.

 

Justl like I see my Alpha Legion progressing to Tzeentch above the other 3 Gods of Chaos.

[minigun762]

So your plan is to have different squads, each with an Icon of a different Chaos God?

 

I like it personally.

 

I have always been in the camp that a "true" WB host should either be all Icon of Chaos Glory or each god represented. The 1st one is usually alot easier to do.

 

As for how to make it more effective on the tabletop, maybe try to match up the Icon with the goal of the CSM squad. Slannesh and Khorne are great assaulters while Tzeentch and Nurgle are pretty resiliant against shooting.

 

So go for it.

[The Prophet]

I agree, you should feel free to use icons and marks as you wish with a Word Bearer army.

 

What fun is an army of religious fanatics if you can´t let them express some serious sectarianism?! I have some units dedicated to certain gods, and some units in which specific models are dedicated to certain (and different) gods while the unit as a whole has the icon of chaos glory.

 

For the Apostle, I give him a Mark of Chaos Ascendant in my background and modelling, while using different specific marks in games. This is to represent his interest in all the chaos gods, while still making temporary pacts with certain gods.

[Jarulek]

Go for it! I have a squad of 8 Khorne Worshippers in my WB army also because of that passage.

 

Also, the other undivided legions (excluding BL) don't worship or are reluctant to worship the gods of chaos and see it as a means to an end, whereas the Word Bearers embrace all of Chaos. I would find it inappropiate if the other undivided legion player would field cult troops or certain icons in their Alpha Legion, Iron Warrior or Night Lords army.

[Smurfalypse]

In that paragraph about the host members who strayed to close in their worship of khorne, its very much implied he looked down on it and was sending them in first to kinda get rid of them. At least thats what i took from that little scene ^_^ Im a very very passionate word bearer player (have used them since second ed.) and im ok with icons of different gods but i think taking a cult unit is WAY outside the lines. Thats just me and my opinion isnt gonna change on that subject.

 

With out last codex we had, i used to run a daemon unit from each god...All favored numbers, ie. 6 daemonettes, 9 flamers, 8 bloodletters, 7 plague bearers, 10 furies. I toyed with the idea of having different icons in my current list but ended up throwing it out as i would have to take small units and i didnt want to sacrifice size just to throw in some love for each god ^_^ If you can manage it, please share the list as i would love to see it bro.

[the jeske]

surely some marines would through their own individual faith and worship practices be drawn to particular gods?

well as the new book doesnt say anything about how WB work , we can asume that the old fluff is still active . And this means that WB that start worshiping a single god are hunted down and killed or if they are really unlucky brought before lorgar .

, this I think was more to the fact that if you gave a marine a mark they "became" a traitor marine from another legion (for example mark of nurgle meant they became a Death Guard Plague Marine).

not really it only ment that your following a single god . something like plague marines now , as we dont get truelly dedicted to chaos csm , as stupid as it may sound . WB couldnt have marks because they dont worship single gods ever . As for the close to worshiping khorn thing . It only says that they were close to worshiping not that they actually did worship .

[minigun762]

im ok with icons of different gods but i think taking a cult unit is WAY outside the lines. Thats just me and my opinion isnt gonna change on that subject.

 

Agreed.

There is a big difference between a particular unit raising a special banner for a particular god and a Cult troop.

 

Maybe that unit is being asked to perform a mission where additional cunning (Tzeentch) or savagery(Khorne) might be useful.

Or maybe its just the demand of the Host's Dark Apostle that a unit be dedicated to each Chaos god to appease them and receive their blessings for a battle/campagin. So justifying an Icon in a squad is ALOT easier and more fluffy than justifying Cult troops.

[TheDarkApostle]

Well, myself I generelly pro-Undivided-Marks-Only since I feel that Lorgars twisted ego which won't let him worship anything but everything at the same time somehow would be fully carried over to his sons as well. After all you also need to remember that the Word Bearers don't just pray to the Big 4, but also the countless lesser Princes, Goddesses and lesser Gods of the Warp. :P

 

TDA

[iwasfrozen]

Do it.

Your money your army, If your happy making a WB army wit Cult Troops then who are we to tell you otherwise ?

[Brother Gothard]

Do it.

Your money your army, If your happy making a WB army wit Cult Troops then who are we to tell you otherwise ?

We're not telling him he can't do it. We're just letting him know that Word Bearers aren't about the worship of one over any other gods.

 

In the 4th ed C:CSM, Word Bearers could only take the Mark of Chaos Undivided, but not because taking the other marks meant you were suddenly a cult marine. No, the stipulations for running a Cult army were clearly laid out in the Cult section: all units in the army must have X mark, except vehicles which can be unmarked. Taking the mark of nurgle doesn't make you a Death Guard player, it makes you a Nurgle player. So that explanation doesn't hold any water.

 

And the only reason this current codex allows a unit to take a mark but still maintain their legion membership is because the current army book is "Codex: Chaos Renegades." When/if they do a cult/legion book, dollars to donuts you'll find the Word Bearers can only take the Mark of Chaos Glory.

 

The Dark Apostle book barely supports the view that Word Bearers will single out a particular God over others in their worship. And even then, the Word Bearers as a Legion worship the PANTHEON of Chaos Gods as a whole. Its always been my understanding that they worship Chaos as a whole, and not any single part over another. That is why all the previous iterations of the Codex books have shown Word Bearer armies with Undivided troops, but a selection of Daemons from each god, or at best units of Cult troopers as "mercenary support."

 

That said, I think if you were to have an Army with an UNMARKED HQ choices, and 4 units of troops, one each with the various icons (BUT NO CULT TROOPERS), you could pass as a Word Bearers army. Otherwise, I'd see your army as Word Bearer by name only.

[Smurfalypse]

It is your money and your choice, we are basically just saying a TRUE member of the great host would have the followers of a single god sacrificed to each of the other gods (You know, to even things up :o). Though if everyone who claimed to play word bearers who posted a list up here with cult units or marks on their leaders stopped doing so or stopped using the cult units or marks on commanders, than i would have alot less fun getting passionate about the legions fluff and doctrines :P

 

On to the topic at hand again. I liked the idea, but its very very hard to implement. The easy (and in my opinion the best) way to handle WB's is to just go with the undivided thing, base CSM's are seriously probably the best all around troop choice in the game right now and an icon of chaos glory has saved me from running more times than i can count, so dont look down on the baby icon for sometimes the strongest choice is the most zealous choice.

 

FYI, run as many possessed as you can....units of 20 everywhere, it will drive your opponents nut's. :P

 

Good luck in your games and your army building. Let us know how it works out in games and what you decided.

[Redcoat]

Wow, quite a few opinions. First off I take it when you all mention "cult" troops I take it you mean bezerkers, plague marines, noise marines etc and not squads of csm with different Icons.

 

The way I see it, yes the legion worships all the chaos gods equally. And you certainly wouldn't rise very far in the legion dedicating yourself to the one god (esp the Dark Apostle's who encourage worship of all). However is it really likely that word bearer marines who after sitting through all the sermons about the gods and worshiping them, are really going to get bitch slapped by an apostle for worshipping a particular god? That would be like saying "worship the mighty gods of chaos, but not too much, and don't go finding out about any of them, you cant worship Slannesh, but of course you must becuase he is a god, but you cant follow him, neither the Lord of Skulls or Father Nurgle, but you must worship them, but without worshipping them". After reading Dark Apostle I imagined it as the majority of the legion would worship all the gods (hence why the normally refer to gods plural and therefore chaos undivided) but some might find themselves drawn to a particular god (hence the passages in the book Dark Apostle where those marines who are drawn to Khorne are sent into the assault first, and the First Acolyte asking the possessed if he's being drawn to Slannesh - and to answer a previous post I don't see those being referred to in a negative way, after all, encouraging worship of the gods is going to include worshipping particular ones - and they were just being used to their strengths).

 

As for army selection, I've only got around to buying one squad of CSM, who I've assembled with an Icon of Chaos Glory. Which reminds me, anyone got an idea why there is no longer marks of chaos undivided in the codex?

 

Currently the plan was to assemble a Host, which would include at least one of every entry in the army list, which I could then pick from for smaller games. The entire host would only be used in Apocalypse games with friends/brothers. For that I was looking at something similar to a company sized force, ie 6 tactical squads (2 IoCG, 1 Khorne, 1 Slaanesh, 1 Nurgle, 1 Tzeentch), 2 Assault Squads (perhaps Raptors/Possessed 1 of each), 2 Devastator Squads (Obliterators/Havocs). But that is all some way in the future. For the 1st 1000 points I was thinking of CSM squad with IoCG, and 1 squad with Icon of Khorne.

 

If its easier to think of it, the Icon of Khorne could represent those brothers who practice the rituals and worship of khorne more than the other gods, but haven't gone over fully (ie Bezerkers).

[Jarulek]

Didn't Lorgar state that the Legion should worship the Gods equally, instead of individuals? I thought I read that somewhere.

 

I must say I'm being drawn to what TheDarkApostle said though. Different cults within the legion could lead to dissent and rivalry between Khornates and Slaaneshi marines for example.

 

Oh, towards the end of the novel Jarulek appears on the battlefield on a Disc with Screamers accompanying him. So we have a Dark Apostle with Tzeentch tools and bodyguard, an Slaaneshi-ish standard bearer (Burias) and a pack of Khornate assault marines.

 

Btw, I noticed people discarding Black Library books as un-fluff sometimes. What's this all of a sudden?

[Smurfalypse]

Didn't Lorgar state that the Legion should worship the Gods equally, instead of individuals? I thought I read that somewhere.

 

I must say I'm being drawn to what TheDarkApostle said though. Different cults within the legion could lead to dissent and rivalry between Khornates and Slaaneshi marines for example.

 

Oh, towards the end of the novel Jarulek appears on the battlefield on a Disc with Screamers accompanying him. So we have a Dark Apostle with Tzeentch tools and bodyguard, an Slaaneshi-ish standard bearer (Burias) and a pack of Khornate assault marines.

 

Btw, I noticed people discarding Black Library books as un-fluff sometimes. What's this all of a sudden?

 

About Jarulek..He definately come out on a disk and some tzeentch tools ect ect, but in the end where did that get him? Oh thats right, the mark of lorgor found itself on his disciple. Just saying, he definately showed preference in ONE scene, he died horribly, and was basically abandoned by the will of lorgor, so i dont think much can be said for any of that :lol:

[Drudge Dreadnought]

I always figured Icons were the same as any special weapon. So a group of undivided marines that are given the job of assaulting on the front lines in the upcoming battle would pray to khorne right before and invoke his blessings and then carry his icon with them. The next battle the same squad might be praying to tzeentch or nurgle to bless them for that specific battle to help them hold an objective better, etc. Doesn't mean they don't worship them all, they just might call for the blessings of one for some specific task.

[Jarulek]

About Jarulek..He definately come out on a disk and some tzeentch tools ect ect, but in the end where did that get him? Oh thats right, the mark of lorgor found itself on his disciple. Just saying, he definately showed preference in ONE scene, he died horribly, and was basically abandoned by the will of lorgor, so i dont think much can be said for any of that :P

 

Please don't remind me of that tragic event :(

 

He was not the first Apostle that got owned by his own vision though. Bah, now that little Marduk is in charge. I hope Kol Badar will waste him in the sequel ^_^

 

Major spoiler btw...

[TheDarkApostle]

Didn't Lorgar state that the Legion should worship the Gods equally, instead of individuals? I thought I read that somewhere.

 

Oh, towards the end of the novel Jarulek appears on the battlefield on a Disc with Screamers accompanying him. So we have a Dark Apostle with Tzeentch tools and bodyguard, an Slaaneshi-ish standard bearer (Burias) and a pack of Khornate assault marines.

 

Btw, I noticed people discarding Black Library books as un-fluff sometimes. What's this all of a sudden?

I recall something alike that as well, can't remember where though. Possibly the IA or one of the older 'dexes.

 

The Disc and Screamers on the other hand could potentially be explained by them being the deamons closest and most easily able to break through. Not to forget that he also had some furies going about and no to mention that even though we only have Bloodletters, Horrors, Daemonettes, Plague Bearers, Flamers etc as the only mentioned daemons of the respectivly God it doesn't have to mean that those are the ONLY daemons of those Gods :wacko: But instead there is a multitude of different kinds of daemons serving each of the Gods (which I believe also would include the stronger of the Lesser Chaos Gods :( ) who all in game terms usually get to represent the Daemons of the Big 4. IMO it's just like the 3,5 'dex said: Just because an item is described as an axe or sword in the rules it actaully has to be like that. So a Chain'axe' can just as well be a chainglavie or a chainsword while a dreadaxe can just as well be a dreadsword or a dreadglavie. ;)

 

Peopel thinking of BL not being really canon is not a recent thing but a general de-facto that's been hold for the past couple of years IIRC. I am lead to believe that it originally hails from the BL autors love of mixing up the official fluff, for instance there are a multitude of books where Astartes Legions suddenly have numbers or chapter masters (and in one case even a brand new Primarch!) which is not supported anywhere else but instead most of the time completely opposite in all other official publications of GW fluff.

 

TDA

[BrianBlessed]

It sounds good, as long as you don't stray too far towards a particular chaos god, a squad of each as you mentioned would be balanced and look cool.

 

I have the Icons stuck into the base next to a bolter marine meaning that I can swap them out and try different gods as I see fit.

 

For my Wordbearers I have been gathering the bits I need to create a command staff along similar lines to what you are doing. Comprising of an aspiring Dark Apostle, a sorcerer of Tzeench, a slannesh champion, a khorne champion, a nurgle champion and a undivided Icon bearer (I want to make it like a word bearers standard but thats proving elusive bitswise) As long as its balanced and undivided is in charge its fluffy enough.

[Jarulek]

Peopel thinking of BL not being really canon is not a recent thing but a general de-facto that's been hold for the past couple of years IIRC. I am lead to believe that it originally hails from the BL autors love of mixing up the official fluff, for instance there are a multitude of books where Astartes Legions suddenly have numbers or chapter masters (and in one case even a brand new Primarch!) which is not supported anywhere else but instead most of the time completely opposite in all other official publications of GW fluff.

 

TDA

 

Well, I can see why that is in some cases. I've noticed that the reason most people don't like a book or don't think of it as canon is because the race/legion/species they are playing is getting their arses kicked. I've noticed this myself while I'm reading Battle for the Abyss.I've also noted some inaccuracies in the timeline. But yeah, I see your point.

 

How about the Index Astartes Books?

[Jarulek]

It sounds good, as long as you don't stray too far towards a particular chaos god, a squad of each as you mentioned would be balanced and look cool.

 

Maybe ah 0-1 rule or an allowed percentage for bigger games like apocalypse.

[Redcoat]

What do people think of this as a starting 1500 point army? Ok so its not got a squads with every icon, that will only appear in larger (2500+) armies which I will be eventually building up to.

 

HQ

 

Dark Apostle = 150 points

Chaos Lord with power armour, plasma pistol, accursed crozius (daemon weapon +personal icon)

 

 

Elites

 

Possessed Squad = 165 points

5 Possessed Marines + Rhino APC

 

Dreadnought = 120 points

Plasma Cannon + Close Combat Weapon + Extra Armour

 

 

Troops

 

Squad 1 = 240 points

10 Marines inc AC with plasma pistol + power fist, plasma gun + heavy bolter, Icon of CG

 

Squad 2 = 260 points

10 Marines inc AC with power weapon, flamer + meltagun, Icon of Khorne, Rhino APC

 

Squad 3 = 270 points

10 Marines inc AC with plasma pistol + power weapon, plasma gun + heavy bolter, Icon of Nurgle

 

5 Summoned Daemons = 65 points

 

5 Summoned Daemons = 65 points

 

Fast Attack

 

Chaos Spawn = 40 points

 

Heavy Support

 

Chaos Vindicator = 125 points

 

Total = 1500 points

 

 

Maybe thinking of not taking the Nurgle Squad, and instead Terminators as I think I might have put too many troop choices in (yes I know daemons dont count as a troop selection, but I included them in there as they otherwise are treated as troops!)

[Magnus Thane]

Why the heavy bolters?

 

As for icons... i see no reason why they couldn't take it.

It could just as well mean they carry the favor of a singular god with them or are carrying an artifact related to that god with them.

One can be Undivided and carry icons around.

 

As for fluffyness... sources tend to conflict. If you feel it suits your force, go for it. It's such a little detail in the end compared to some things out there, i fail to see what the problem is.

 

Contentwise, i like what you took. Lots of Marines with a good doze of Daemons and a vehicle.

Cool Chaos Champion too.

 

When you expand maybe you could add in a Termie Lord and his retinue?

[Redcoat]

Heavy Bolters, cos thats what you get in the box set lol. For the Nurgle squad I was thinking of putting a different one in there (I've only bought squad 1 so far) but not sure what would best suit a defensive role.