Has your opinion of the supplements changed with 7th?

[sunspear]

I am just getting back into the game, digging out my old bits boxes and sortnig through stuff, I am trying to get a handle on all that I have missed out on. My question is, has anyones opinion of the BL and CS supplements changed with the release of 7th?

[incinerator950]

They seem to have somewhat been designed with it in mind.

[Dam13n]

Crimson Slaughter was a nice addition when it came out.  With the introduction of Malefic powers and the ability to take a Daemon Sorcerer, if anything it's gotten better.

 

Black Legion remains an OK book.  Chosen troops are nice, as are some of the Artefacts (although others remain over-priced and under-effective).

 

All in all, there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with either of them, and there never was.

 

Having more options is usually a good thing.

[the jeske]

CSM got worse

BL is the same as  it was

CS is made out of relics that should have been in the main book , so either it or the main book make no sense to exist at the same time.

Belfegor is still pro.

The dreads got better in 7th , but no pods and weaker arment still make them meh[dangerouse to us too as they can give up VP points].

Vraks is horrible , as it always were.

30k armies are more interesting then w40k ones

Demons are still pro

[Sception]

In my mind CS gets slightly better thanks to the daemonic sorcerer upgrade, but I'm with Jeske, almost anything that makes CS good should have been a core option to begin with (apart maybe from troop possessed, but I don't like possessed regardless, troop or otherwise), so while they're not a bad choice to make, they remain a frustrating choice to have to make.  Not much else changes for them other than the drake nerf which hits all chaos marines.

 

BL is the same, relative to other CSM subfactions - ie bad.  Vets remains effectively a downgrade on most of our units.  The Legion has some interesting artifacts, but nearly every one is overpriced, and they're overshadowed by relic options from the slaughter (for lords and sorcerers) and the parent book (for princes).  Troop chosen, while still better imo than troop possessed, doesn't mean as much as it used to now that chosen are scoring anyway, and objective secured isn't all that impressive on a unit that is as painfully fragile for their points as chosen are, especially when they're required to burn two points on vets.  IMO, if you want to highlight chosen, you're better off with a single unit of the Slaughter's Ravagers or Cypher's Fallen, rather than multiple units of Black Legion chosen.

 

I don't see too much change in CSM overall or the parent book in particular, other than the heldrake nerfs - which I could live with if it weren't for line of sight angles being drawn vertically as well as horizontally for vehicles, which makes it very difficult to use the baleflamer at all - not only to you have a painfully narrow front arc, but also a minimum range of nearly nine inches, and even if you can see an enemy unit to shoot at, you cannot kill any models outside of the gun's very narrow line of sight, regardless of how you position the template.  While a 90 degree field of view would have been fine (which is how I originally read 'can pivot 45 degrees' - ie 45 to the left, or 45 to the right, for a 90 degree total ark - but it seems I was wrong on that), 45 degree line of sight on a flier meant to fire at ground targets is just painfully restrictive.

 

Of course, with the faction leaning so heavily on baledrakes before, that's an overall downgrade.  Other vehicles got a bit better, but not better enough to make up the difference, and mostly remain just worse versions of the same vehicles available to every other meq faction (chaos land raiders < loyalist regular land raiders << any land raider worth using; helbrutes << all loyalist dread varieties; etc).

 

Belakor is still amazing, but is much less versatile now, and less fun, due to the changes to telepathy.  Now he's mostly an invisibility bot - and don't get me wrong, invisibility is incredible, but it's also broken as hell and in danger of facing the ban hammer from tournaments and just-for-fun local groups alike.  What is especially disappointing and frustrating is that the telepathy discipline used to have 3 solid tools against death stars - terrify, which could panic even fearless units; puppet master, which could turn ott lord of war weapons on their own forces; and hallucination, which could see beefed up units slaughtering themselves with their own powerful weapons.  All three have been removed - terrify no longer breaks fearless, every possible result of hallucination has been nerfed so badly that it wouldn't be worth trying to cast as a WC-2 power even if you could just choose the result rather than rolling for it, and puppet master was removed entirely.  Yeah, telepathy remains strong for invisibility, and to a lesser extent shrouding, but those aren't answers to death stars, they're the sort of powers that make death stars even more frustrating to play against.

 

No big changes for the helbrute formations - fearless cultists are still arguably worth the price of a brute, especially with the cover save it gains by hanging out with them; deep striking helbrutes still aren't particularly worth taking due to our lack of scatter mitigation.  The squadron of five might be worth looking at again, between being able to claim objectives, and only giving up a single victory point if all five are wiped out, which is harder to do with the new damage chart, though for armor 12 it remains to be seen whether that is 'much harder' or 'only a very little bit' harder.  15 hull points or 5 destroyed results seems like reasonably tough, but then again the formation costs around 600 points.  That's starting to get into 'lords of war' territory, and while I think they may be worth another look in 7th, in the end I still don't think that their durability and offense will justify that sort of investment.

 

Our melee princes (especially parent book mace princes but this also applies to BL shiver princes - but not CS princes due to lack of daemon weapons), are also worth another look, so long as they have mark of nurgle.  While nurgle melee princes have gotten worse, they haven't gotten as much worse as those of every other faction or alignment, due to nurgle's 2+ jink save.  Unfortunately, nurgle also means S&P, so no running, and no sweeping.  But even if they get caught in the open after an enemy unit falls back, they still have that 2+ jink save.  Ignores cover weapons are the bane of nurgle princes (nurgle anything, really), so whether they will continue to be effective as a tool for rush lists will depend heavily on how common ignore cover remains in 7th.

[the jeske]

 

(apart maybe from troop possessed, but I don't like possessed regardless, troop or otherwise)

Apostol makes posessed troops. The Jeske Genius level Codex Designer.

[Sception]

I don't know about that.  I mean, yeah, apostles and possessed are both associated with word bearers, but does that mean they're associated with each other?  In the Black Legion, it's sorcerers that handle their possessed.  Do we really even want troop possessed as an option, now that everything's scoring anyway, and you can go unbound regardless?  They seem a quintessential elite unit, thematically speaking.  Even among the Word Bearers, there's one notable possessed company, not entire armies thereof.

 

And do we really want to hang the usefulness of apostles on troop possessed?  I'm not even happy with apostles as a separate choice from lords in the first place.

 

Anyway, I don't personally feel that troop possessed was an option that really needed to be in the core book to begin with.  Not like divination sorcerers or artificer armor did.  The lack of those options damages the thematic or mechanical versatility of the parent book in a way that the lack of troop possessed does not.  Again, even for word bearers, possessed are honored elites, not common line grunts.

[Dallas Drake]

Getting safer Malefic on the Crimson Slaughter Sorcerer has made my 7th ed. games loads more fun. I'm yet to get 'Possessed' and drag a Blood Thirster onto the table but most of the other Malefic spells are great, with Cursed Earth being very, very useful at a mere 1 WC (especially if you bring Daemons (inc. Obliterators etc.).

 

I think CSM are still pretty meh as a competitive army but there's a little more flavour there now & while CSM aren't going to win many tournaments I still think they're fun to play.

[Dallas Drake]

As for Possessed as troops, well surely we could view Cult troops (Noise Marines, Thousand Sons etc.) in the same way? Just because Possessed are troops doesn't mean you need to max out on them, I still treat them like elites, they just come from the troops slot now. I always take Cultists as my main 'grunts'.

[Sception]

But they're not the same?  Unless I'm mistaken, all of the original world eaters had the nails - they were all berzerkers.  All of the original Death Guard were infected with the Destroyer Virus - they were all plague marines.  All of the Thousand Sons that survived the heresy were transformed by the Rubric of Ahriman - some into more powerful sorcerers, the rest into rubric marines.  I'm not sure if all of the original Emperors children had the psychic surgery to become noise marines, but for the rest?

 

Troops cult units simply make more sense for these subfactions than troop possessed make for, well, anybody other than the Crimson Slaughter, Word Bearers included.  Crimson Slaughter were cursed with possession on a faction-wide basis, Word Bearers still treat possession as an honor reserved for the privileged elite - making them more comparable to terminators than cult marines.  Imo, troop chosen would make more sense for Word Bearers than troop possessed would, just like troop chosen would make more sense for iron warriors than troop mutilators or obliterators.

 

And just like terminators, in with the introduction of unbound, not being troops doesn't mean you can't field a whole army of them anyway.

 

 

I'm not trying to argue that a core CSM codex 100% shouldn't have troop possessed options, just that the lack of such an option doesn't represent a major thematic or mechanical failing of the parent book the way a lack of options for artificer armor, divination, or drop pods does.  so yeah, I'd put them in the same boat as troop terminators - something nice as an option but not at all necessary, the sort of thing I don't mind seeing reserved for a supplement.

[the jeske]

But the CS codex is relics+possessed. If one would cut out the key and scroll , and linked the possessed to apostols[which should be elite , just like the chaos tech marine] we could have all stuff in 1 book. The problem with this is of course , that we would have everything in one book and not 3.

[Sception]

Supplements are 97% fluff, anyway.  You could remove the heart and the balestar as artifacts, just make divination and artificer armor generally accessible to CSMs without artifacts, and leave the slaughter with the ravagers, troop possessed, unique access to their fancy sword and prophet of the voices, maybe give them a replacement artifact or two (perhaps something to allow re-rolls of the possessed chart for nearby units?  Maybe leave the daemonheart as it - it does enough other than grant a 2+ save that it could be its own relic for the slaughter even if the parent book had artificer armor in the specialist gear section), and when you factor in scenarios, cityfight strategems, and planetfall stuff you'd still have plenty of mechanical crunch to justify their supplement.  Especially since, again, supplements exist primarily as a vector for fluff rather than for rules.

[Dallas Drake]

I'd do away with the Apostle as a unit and just have it as a relic or upgrade like Prophet of Voices. All the Word Bearers books describe Apostles as more of a mix between Sorcerers & Lords anyway (think Jarulek & Marduk) and I just don't see where an Apostle fits in tbh. Maybe as an elite as you say? Hmm...

 

I see where you're coming from Malisteen, we don't have artificer armour, drop pods, etc. it does kinda suck. All GW had to do was like Jeske said, maybe think before they release a codex? Or just let people have some freedom & take a Chosen HQ, Possessed HQ, or a Raptor HQ or a Cult HQ (which we have). I don't see why it's hard to give CSM the kind of build freedom loyalists get, that said unbound is an option now so I don't know.

[minionboy]

Don't forget that in 7th edition you fill a Detachment with units of the same Faction, not codex explicit.

 

You can have a CSM lord, a black legion sorcerer, and possessed as troops, all in the same Combined Arms Detachment.  That said, you can no longer have an allied detachment of the same faction (note: the allies rules in the supplements just state that they're battle brothers with CSM, not that they may be taken explicitly as an Allied Detachment, it does nothing to override the Allied Deatachment rule of no same-faction allies, they can however be taken as a second Combined Arms detachment, as it has no such restriction).  So it really seems that GW got smart this edition.  The supplement-allies no longer have the ability to spam extra slots, but they kept in the ability to use them in the same army, so no more 4 drakes and no more 4 riptides (if you play with a single CAD).

[Sception]

Does that mean that any loyalist can select any unit from any imperial codex in any of their army slots within a battleforged army?  Like, space marines can just run guard fliers, or guard can run white scars grav bike troops or whatever without even having to take allied detachments in the first place?

 

And tyranids are back to having no ally options at all?

 

I admit I don't have the new rules, and won't be picking them up until they're available separately (or not at all, as sounds more and more to be the case with everything I hear about them), but that doesn't seem right.

[minionboy]

Does that mean that any loyalist can select any unit from any imperial codex in any of their army slots within a battleforged army?  Like, space marines can just run guard fliers, or guard can run white scars grav bike troops or whatever without even having to take allied detachments in the first place?

 

And tyranids are back to having no ally options at all?

 

I admit I don't have the new rules, and won't be picking them up until they're available separately (or not at all, as sounds more and more to be the case with everything I hear about them), but that doesn't seem right.

 

No, while Imperials are the same on the Allies chart, they are not actually the same Faction.  There are 17 factions in the game: Adepta Sororitas, Astra Militarum, Blood Angels, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, Eldar, Grey Knights, Imperial Knights, Inquisition, Necrons, Orks, Space Marines, Space Wolves, Tau Empire, Tyranids.  Also in the rules it states that all Supplements count as the same faction as the parent codex.  So basically they made it so that if your army has a Supplement, you can combine them in the same detachment (supplements now just add to the codex), but you can't take an allied detachment of the same faction.

 

So it actually puts Tyranids on a similar ground as other armies, nobody can have an Allied Detachment of the same faction, but they could however take multiple Combined Arms Detachments of the same faction.

[the jeske]

unless your marines of course. If your marnes you can mix and match what ever you like.

[minionboy]

unless your marines of course. If your marnes you can mix and match what ever you like.

 

Actually, it's a little different for them, Chapters with different Chapter Tactics count as a different faction.  So instead of being able to take them within the same FOC, they cannot be taken within the same FOC, but can instead be taken as allies, basically they're backwards.

[Emperors Immortals]

All I know is the new cam codex wasvawesone for me for about 3 weeks, then it did what jeske said it would; it totally scrapped out and died midfield.

 

The supplements have helped a fair bit for me, but mostly the brute/cultist daaslate has saved my casual game.

 

NoiseMarines; if memory serves me well, the core had the surgery and the rest followed eventually, there a much mote I dividualistic group then other cult marines.

[incinerator950]

 

 

unless your marines of course. If your marnes you can mix and match what ever you like.

Actually, it's a little different for them, Chapters with different Chapter Tactics count as a different faction. So instead of being able to take them within the same FOC, they cannot be taken within the same FOC, but can instead be taken as allies, basically they're backwards.

...Which is what he basically said.

[minionboy]

 

 

unless your marines of course. If your marnes you can mix and match what ever you like.

Actually, it's a little different for them, Chapters with different Chapter Tactics count as a different faction. So instead of being able to take them within the same FOC, they cannot be taken within the same FOC, but can instead be taken as allies, basically they're backwards.

...Which is what he basically said.

 

 

Um, no?  You can't mix and match whatever you like.  You cannot have Ultramarines with Ultramarine allies, though you can have Ultramarines with Iron Hands allies.

[Urauloth]

All Death Guard being infected is why it sucks that feel no pain is limited to plaguemarines only and there's no way of putting it on Nurgle-marked characters or TDA squads but that horse is pretty dead at this point I guess.

 

Ok, so, if I only have to select from the same faction, does that mean I can just take an Eye of Night HQ and some chosen troops from the BL supplement and then take my terminators from the main dex to avoid the BL veteran tax..? That doesn't seem like it was intended to work that way, but maybe they decided it was a lesser evil to battleforged heldrake spam, or something.

[Sception]

Yeah, it really doesn't seem like it was intended to make chosen and possessed troops for all chaos factions.  Both supplements refer to subfaction specific detachments, like "black legion detachment" or "crimson slaughter detachment".  What even does that mean, if detachments are only by 'faction', and black legion, crimson slaughter, and parent book csms are all the same faction?

 

Is a 'Black Legion' detachment a CSM detachment exclusively selected out of the black legion supplment?  If so, then no, you can't take an eye or memory HQ in a generic CSM or crimson slaughter army, because only 'any characters in your Black Legion detachment' can select Black Legion artefacts.  Is a Black Legion detachment any detachment that includes anything from the Black Legion supplement, such that a detachment could be a Black Legion and Crimson Slaughter detachment at the same time?  In that case, no CSM units with the option for veteran skills apart from cult units may be included in that detachment, since they'd face conflicting requirements that they both must and cannot take vets - so no chosen or possessed, troop or otherwise, anyway.  Which means only special characters would be allowed, so no artifacts could be taken at all, apart from those the special characters come with.

 

Is there no such thing as a Black Legion or Crimson Slaughter detachment any more?  If so, then you cannot use any of their rules or artifacts at all ever, because again those only become available to Black Legion and Crimson Slaughter "detachments".

 

The only interpretation that works is that a black legion or crimson slaughter 'detachment' is selected purely out of those supplement books, no cross polination, since their rules and restrictions are written to apply on a 'per detachment', not a 'per unit' basis.

 

as for the all cults thing - I don't think every CSM unit needs to have cult options - after all, while every original heresy vet from those legions is a cult marine, original legion vets are the elite minority at the top of the CSM pyramid, not the bulk of their modern forces.  But yeah, terminators and HQs at the least should have the option for cult rules and equipment, and it's a shame they don't.

[Midnightmare]

I would have thought you could not crossover gear from each detachment - couldn't have the Axe of Blind Fury on a Crimson Slaughter Lord for example.

 

Am I reading it right like this - to have a battlforged combined arms detachment you would have to select an HQ and the minimum two troops choices from each detachment? Only then you can start with the fancy stuff. So for a CSM/BL combined arms you would need two HQ's and for troop selections. Can you then add allies to this?

 

I'll admit I haven't spent a lot of time reading about detachment, it all appears a little confusing.

[Sception]

Close.  Unless I'm mistaken (which I could be), because the supplement rules apply to an entire detachment, you'd have to have two separate detachments to run them both in the same army, one run out of each supplement, with the rules and restrictions of that supplement.  There's no limit to the number of detachments you can take in a battleforged army, so that's not a problem.

 

In an unbound army, however, there are no detachments.  Since there are no detachments, there are no 'crimson slaughter' or 'black legion' detachments, and since the special rules and unique equipment are only available to units and characters within such detachments, they are simply unavailable to unbound armies.

 

In short, there is no such thing as a Crimson Slaughter or Black Legion unbound army, and options from those supplements are not available to CSM unbound armies.  Or, at least, that's the way it is for Black Legion, my Crimson Slaughter book isn't currently within arms reach to verify if the wording is the same.