Something that always bothered me...

[Sanctimonius]

'Next,' cried the desk clerk. A marine shuffled forwards. 'Name.'

 

The marine puffed out his chest. 'I am Ragnar Bloodmaw, dread scourge of ten sectors. I come to pledge my allegiance to the Blood Reaver and abandon my servitude to the Corpse-Emperor!' The marine ended his speech with a bellow echoed by several of his fellows who hovered at the edges of the conversation.

 

'Excellent! More recruits in the Eternal War! We were running a bit low. Now, I just have some paperwork to fill out.' The clerk pulled a notepad and a pen from a drawer. 'Please answer these questions. Do you hate the Emperor?'

 

'Of course!'

 

'Have you pledged your soul to any of the following: A daemon, one of the Pantheon, another marine?'

 

'Uh...yes?'

 

'Perfect. And finally, do you possess upon your persons any restricted flora, fauna, anything that the armies of the Archenemy didn't have access to 10,000 years ago?'

 

'...wait, what?'

 

The clerk placed the notepad on his desk with a sigh. 'Yes, it's sad but true. Due to copyrighting agreements with Terra, we aren't allowed to field anything we didn't have access to when Horus rebelled. We're trying to negotiate with them, so...fingers crossed!'

 

'But that doesn't make any sense!'

 

'You're telling me, we only became the Red Corsairs a few hundred years ago. But them's the breaks when you decided to join us. Now throw out your plasma cannons, your Mk VIII armour, any vehicles we didn't attack the palace of Terra with.'

 

'But I've had this armour for three hundred years!'

 

'Yeah, it sucks. Still, we have some MkIV on backorder, lovely stuff. Open cabling, short circuits. The works!' He pointed behind Ragner at one marine. 'Is that a frostblade?'

 

The marine indicated that it might be.

 

'Sorry, it'll have to go onto the pile. We'll get you a combat blade, we're allowed to use those.' The desk clerk smiled as the Space Wolves-cum-Red Corsairs grumbled and stripped of anything recently added. Any complaints about fluff were quickly quashed. When they stood there in their new issue 'I love Chaos and all I got was this lousy underwear' underwear, they were waved through to the Maelstrom. The desk clerk sighed and looked over the growing pile of Imperial-copyright before him. 'I hate it when they bring drop-pods,' he muttered.

 

It's a place where the fluff and rules just don't match. Fluff tells us marines turn to Chaos all the time. In fact it seems barely a day goes by when a marine doesn't think 'Hmm, a lifetime of prayer and abstinence or generally letting my hair down. Byes!' But what gets me is what they do on the way to the Warp. Do they throw off their wargear, leaving it strewn behind them like horny teenagers skinny-dipping? Do they have to trade it in for the obligatory spiky armour?

 

I know that the rules have to draw a line somewhere, but it always surprises me when I see just when the Red Corsairs became...well, the Red Corsairs. They are a remarkably modern Chaos faction, yet they apparently immediately joined the 10,000 club and traded all their nice, shiny and more importantly modern gear for obliterators and horned terminator suits.

Personally, I want access to the Space Marine codex, to represent recently turned renegades. Maybe a squad of devastators turned tail, maybe a land speeder or two. Of course there needs to be a penalty, Chaos doesn't have access to the same resources. But couldn't it be dealt with by charging us 10% more, points-wise? I want my spiky marines, but I also want to represent the fluff. I don't want counts-as Blood Angels, I want a Red Corsair army with some renegade Vampires-in-Power-Armour. 

Anyone agree with me?

[Blade_and_Honour]

I have often thought the same (main gripe is with the lack of "drop pod" or as chaos call there own DREAD CLAW!) but there does need to be some separation from loyalists.
Maybe if we had a HQ that unlocked a small amount of new SM stuff with the loss of autocannons, daemon stuff (oblits, warp tallons, possessed etc) but that would just make us SM

I think that we DO need our separation from the SM book as otherwise we are just marines with daemons and not truly chaos. 
That being said, drop pods and orbital support should be available to us (IMO) as a lot of the chaos stuff i read the chaos DROP POD or use some form of bombardment/orbital strike.

Also, GIVE MY CHAOS LORD SOME SORT OF SHOOTING PROWESS! - just something like a bolter with special ammo (say, something like the SM hellfire rounds :P)

I really think that the reason we don't get the cool stuff the SM get is the attempt (even in the new models) further from the marine look and into a position where we stand out from the crowed of marine books  

[Captain Semper]

:lol:

 

You got me on your side just with the MkIV line... Hahaha! Excellent way to make a point! :tu:

[Dam13n]

It does make little practical sense that they'd just throw those weapons and armour away.

 

The old fluff tried to overcome this with a mix of reasons.

 

1 - destroying relics of the Imperium

2 - limited access to maintenance

3 - attrition

4 - limited access to off-the-line replacement parts

5 - corruption of weapons

 

As a result, that rare plasma cannon melted itself and couldn't be repaired. That land speeder was poorly maintained and fell out of the sky. That frost blade was possessed by a daemon and became a daemon weapon. That lovely suit of Mk8 armour got damaged and replacement parts were salvaged from older marks creating a mix-matched suit of many marks.

 

If you want marines that have only just turned from the emperor, then using any of the loyalist codices is probably a better fit than the CSM codex, which better fits marines that abandoned the Imperium many years (or centuries) ago.

 

What goes against this more than anything is the act of salvaging weapons and armour would allow any warband access to any weapon in the 40k universe.

 

But from a rules perspective, each army needs to be distinct. Giving CSM access to all the weapons, wargear and vehicles available to Imperial SM would unbalance things too much in Chaos' favour.

[totgeboren]

If only SM and CSM could ally, these problems would be solved. You could then have under-equipped renegades as the base for your army (CSM as main), with some newer stuff as backup (SM allies).

And then if only GW got rid of/nerfed ATSKNF, we would have a pretty good game on our hands. :)

[Punk possum]

I have some beef with the same things as you, how do Chaos forces get to the battle field? They have no drop pods, the only flyers are space dragons (with a distinct lack of seats from what I can see) and yet they are happily ravaging worlds all over the place how? by jumping from orbit and locking their armour like Master Chief in Halo3?   

Also if we are using the equipment left over from the siege of terra what happened to the Fell Glaives? Jet Bikes? rad grenades? Whirlwinds? Storm Birds (mind you £400 for a T-hawk how much for a Storm Bird!)?

Now I don't think its fair to expect to get daemon building eating gorillas, Plague toughened zombie marines ect and all the Imperial arsenal too but there must be a case for a renegade mildly corrupted middle ground. Given the recent Craft world specific add on and now the Tau add on is it too much to hope for a fluffy renegade add on. I personally would quite like one for the first legions, rather than token units and legion specific warlord traits.

[Brother Ambroz]

The following is also a humorous explanation by ADB.

 

"Dude, Horus just croaked. What now?"

Abaddon re-tied his topknot. He totally had an idea. "I totally have an idea," he said. The Traitor Legions looked on expectantly. "Here's what we do. We run away."

Many helmed heads nodded. This seemed a wise course of action.

"Good idea," said Erebus.

'Hush." Abaddon frowned at the interruption. "But I think we should leave behind our jetbikes, Dreadclaws, Whirlwinds, Landspeeders - pretty much all anti-grav technology, really - as well as our bikes, attack bikes, and pretty much anything else we've used so far."

Fewer helms nodded this time. "Dude," said Lucius the Eternal, "we might need all that stuff. Some of that stuff is rad."

"Nah, I've made up my mind. Let's just go."

"But..."

"Let's. Just. Go." Abaddon waved the Talon of Horus. Its scythe-blade fingers made clickety-click sounds.

"Okay, let's just go," agreed Lucius.

Khârn wasn't so easily placated. "What about Cyclone Launchers? Because I saw those in Horus Heresy: Collected Visions, so we must be using th--"

"I feel like I'm talking to myself, here." Abaddon pointed a claw at the World Eater. It poked Khârn in the eye.

"Ow, Jesus, man. Okay, okay. We'll go."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Abaddon pimp-walked from the room, strutting like he owned the place.

"Hey, what about this conversion beamer?" asked Typhus. "Couldn't we use these in Rogue Trader? These are awesome. They go, like, FWOOOOOSH."

"Leave it!" Abaddon's voice called from the other room. Typhus put it down, grumbling.

Fabius Bile sort of shrugged. "So, uh, can I come with you guys? Because I was checking the passenger lists, and none of the Legions are taking their Apothecaries. I mean... don't you need us?"

Lucius patted his brother on the shoulder. "It's okay, man. We'll allude to the Apothecaries in the background text. I mean, you won't get to ever do anything, but you'll sort of be there in the fluff, y'know? A bit? Maybe?"

"Balls to this. I'm leaving the Legion. I'll make my own rules."

Khârn snorted. "Your rules will be lame for competitive play. Just watch. And people will call you Fabulous Bill."

The Traitors walked from the chamber, out to the landing pad. It was deserted.

"Uh, Abbs?"

Abaddon turned to Ahriman. "S'up?"

"Um." The Thousand Son gestured to the empty landing pad. "Where are all our gunships?"

Abaddon ignored him. "Weren't you red a minute ago?"

"We're blue now. It's... it's this whole... thing. Look, seriously, where are our Thunderhawks?"

"Oh, right. Them." Abaddon toyed with his topknot, swishing it back and forth, like a kitten with a fluffy toy. "We won't need those. We can run everywhere and stuff. Or push Rhinos out of hangers and ride them through the atmosphere. It'll be cool."

The Traitors shared a glance. This wasn't going well. Abaddon noticed their hesitation, and sought to calm them. "Relaaaaax. I'll invent new stuff. Like... spider robots with daemons in, and they have claws and stuff. They'll defile things. Maybe they can be called Defilotrons. It'll be sweet. And they'll have a gun on their chests, and tiny little heads. What? Why are you looking at me like that? You just wait. We'll rock this place all to hell."

 

So as you can see this topic's been debated for a long time. Frankly some things really don't make sense. One thing which C:CSM should have most and definitely needs is dreadclaws/droppods of some type and really trying to keep us separate from loyalists is no excuse now. I mean just look at what we got this edition, spikey librarians, spikey chaplains, spikey techmarines, spikey vanguard veterans.... and as usual ours are worse than theirs (except for the sorcerors that is). For some of the other stuff, like landspeeders and thunderfire cannons, that's definitely understandable but droppods are a core part of our fluff. Additionally our army is in dire need of another form of transportation other than rhinos and land raiders.

[Clewz]

you used to be able to get loyalist stuff in the 2nd edition but you had to pay double the cost for it 

[Sception]

There's always the marine book for representing recent traitors with all the new stuff. I'm not a fan of losing all the loyalist toys with only marks in return, but if I had my way instead of just getting their toys, we'd get different, warp fueled arcanotech straight from the dark mechanicus. Once freed of Imperial & Martian strictures, the Heretechs of the eye should have churning out all sorts of weird new tech, not jugt big dinobots, but personal weapons and wargear as well.

 

Maybe instead of artificer armor, chaos armor - "rune inscribed, spirit possessed, and infused with dark magyks, the armor of the those chaos marines that have spent centuries exposed to the baleful energies of the eye of terror warp and grow, fusing with the flesh into an impenetrable shell" - chaos armor may be purchased as an upgrade for characters with power or terminator armor, ~20ish points, grants feel no pain (5+). Maybe offer it as a squad upgrade for chosen/terminators/cults for ~5/model.

 

That sort of thing. Eldritch guns, daemonic grenades, etc. Maybe a skimmer of our own.

 

As for justifying it in the fluff - when new traitors join existing chaos warbands, all their toys are stolen by the warpsmiths to be stripped down, experimented on, & used for parts. Those not willing to part with their toys don't get to claim refuge in the eye / maelstrom, and are forced to fight for survival against a vengeful imperium on their own.

[nurglez]

Aye its bothered me, but you put up with it because thats what we do. Remember templars and dark angels having the old storm shield while marines had a new one? How about grey knights, the most well equipped warriors in the whole imperium not being able to equip storm shields (apart from Draigo and inquisitoral troops), and all the rest.

 

Basically, if you want lloyalist equipment, use a loyalist codex. Thats all we can do.

[Sanctimonius]

Hah love the ADB thing. But then I always do...

 

It just bothers me. There's a real disconnect between the rules and the fluff, and of course there will be. The books are released in a much shorter period of time than new rules and codeces. But we've had plenty of things in the fluff for a long time the rules haven't shown, like the whirlwinds, the transports, the little tools that Chaos is known for except on the tabletop. 

I don't want us to be stripped down marines, and I like the directions we're taking in that we're gaining things the loyalists don't get. But the things that make us Chaos MARINES, and not just Chaos, are worse than their loyalist counterparts. No drop-pods, ATSKNF, worse options with nothing to replace it... I want more Chaos-y options for my basic troops instead of a little thing I can pay for to get an extra leadership and hatred. Don't get me wrong, I like the rule, I just want more. I want to be able to make my legion, I want to represent a recently turned renegade chapter, I want that option for transporting my guys if the squad is bigger than ten men. 

 

Sigh. Chaos makes me want more. Guess that's why I play Chaos.

 

Also would like to say, and I've said it before - why do some loyalist factions get a more unorthodox organisation than we do? Space Wolves get their wandering heroes, their frostblades, their scouts. I want me some of that action. But Chaos!

[Kol Saresk]

I think GW's idea was "We'll give Chaos Marines their own versions of these things like daemon tanks and warpgates."

 

But as we all know, GW's execution was "We'll drop everything the Loyalists have, give them spikes and giant turkeys that eats people for Thanksgiving instead of the other way around."

[Pariah Mk.231]

I think GW's idea was "We'll give Chaos Marines their own versions of these things like daemon tanks and warpgates."

 

But as we all know, GW's execution was "We'll drop everything the Loyalists have, give them spikes and giant turkeys that eats people for Thanksgiving instead of the other way around."

 

And suddenly, turkeys going "gobble-gobble" makes more sense, they're trying to evolve into Heldrakes.

[Xenith]

This is where the last 2 CSM codices have screwed up, imo. Recently turned traitors are better represented with the respective loyalist codex. Instead, C:CSM 4th ed was shoehorned in to be Codex:Renegades, removing specific rules to make us different from C:SM, but also failing entirely to represent newly renegade chapters.

[Dam13n]

What irks me far more than the "why don't we have all the Imperium's shiny new toys?" argument is the "why has the dark mechanicus stuck to the STC land raider and predator variants?"

 

Whilst it's a big deal for a member of the mechanicus or a techmarine to alter a vehicle without an STC diagram to go by, I can't imagine that the Dark Mechanicus would really care that much.

 

Why not have a Predator with a Hades Autocannon or Ectoplasma Cannon? Why not have a Land Raider with Baleflamer sponsons? Why not have a Chaos Razorback with a Reaper Autocannon?

 

- - - - - -

 

On another note:

 

The lack of access to Drop Pods is a big hit to the tactical flexibility of CSM, as they offer a great deal. But with CSMs greater access to special weapons (chosen and havoks can pack plenty for not many points) giving CSM easy access to a safe method of putting those units in-amongst the enemy would be incredibly powerful.

 

- - - - - -

 

The key thing is balance, it's something that GW is trying to accomplish with the new 6th edition books. True, they've not got it right (as Ravenwing (Scouting bikes with access to loads of special weapons), Tau gunline (thanks to supporting fire) and Eldar Dire Avenger spam (thanks to the "shoot and run" rule) are all very powerful builds, IMHO), but the codices are (again IMHO) generally better than their old incarnations from a diversity and balance point of view.

 

Have Chaos Marines suffered for being the first 6th edition codex? - Probably, we'll have to see what Codex: Vanilla is like before making too much of an assumption on the matter. We also don't yet know if a supplement may or may not be coming for Chaos. If it does, and it offers a few tweaks to correct the weaker aspects of the CSM list (like Tzeentch), then I can forsee a decent future for us.

 

The ball is in GWs court, and as we've seen from our last codex, no matter how much we may complain, GW won't do anything unless they want to do it.

[nurglez]

True, this is a balance issue at heart.

 

If chaos got everything that codex:space marines got and more, why would anyone use codex:space marines? While its an over simplification, it seems to make sense.

 

As Dam13n mentioned, hopefully with supplements GW will add some flavour to chaos. a renegade supplement with some "current" tech but with less daemonic equipment would be nice, but who knows what we will receive.

[Brother Ambroz]

Or if we'll recieve anything. Really though there are quite a few things we don't need and shouldn't have access to from C:SM. The renegades as you mention should have access to more current wargear but less daemonic options. Both renegade and legion warbands should have access to some sort of drop pod or deathclaw. If they need to they could tweak it, so maybe remove the inertial guidance (or whatever that rule is called), but these things are so essential to the fluff it's ricidulous we don't have them. I mean just look at the way ADB so eloquently put it:  "We can push rhinos out of hangars and ride them through the atmosphere."

[Iron_Within]

I can understand why a lot of the complex equipment has gone the way of the Dodo, Jetbikes, Landspeeders and the like are a swine to maintain and when you're spending and eternity to fight for the laughter of the thirsting gods sometimes remembering to tighten the screws on the anti grav plates just passes by. Also, many of the items that didn't survive were either frighteningly powerful (the pre-heresy stuff) and/or fragile and the target for loyalists both during the Heresy and renegades after such as the badab war.

 

I think also, some of this equipment, LS for example just lend themselves much to the Marine psychology, maybe you need the disciplined existence to want to be stuck in one, it neither has the visceral appeal of tearing your enemy apart with your chainsword, the kick of a bolter, or the roar of an autocannon or the egomaniacal buzz of a tank, you get too.... ride around making observations, reports and some targets of opportunity, not much fun for the glory hunting, half crazed warrior god.

 

This is all poor justifications however. I look at HH: Betrayal with envy. I want a real justification for why I don't have these things (plasma cannons; everyone traded them to admech to soup up into ecto cannons etc.). That in fact is one possible answer, the dark ad mech trade in tech, but what would they want in return? Slaves, resources and tech to turn into monsters. Just all the justification I need to want a Dark Ad Mech list.

[Dark Disciple]

Chances are when the Chaos Codex supplement comes out it'll be for the Red Corsairs to give them some of their post heresy toys back ala 2nd Ed. codex. Of course it could also be an Alpha Legion one that explodes when you open it!

 

Disciple