Monogod Limits / Starting to hear the Word...

[Shinespider]

So there's a part of me that's always been attracted to Chaos, and until now, I've been channeling that part of me into the Thousand Sons. I adore them - I love their new models, I love Magnus the Red and his whole story - all of it.

 

And yet recently I've felt... stifled by them. There's an inherent weakness to any mono-god army - only 1/4th-ish of all chaos releases are relevant to you, resulting in vast breaks between major releases. Vaster than normal, anyway. On top of that, the Thousand Sons aesthetic, while cool, is very specific and kinda not-chaos. This fact has definite advantages - I really like the way they look, but it also means a lot of chaos stuff just doesn't fit in very well. 

 

Another option, of course, is just to have more Legions. I could have some death guard, some black legion, some Emp's children, and ally them all together in a big rainbow-colored force. This works on a technical level, but it's not really for me. I like the idea of my armies being more coherent than that. 

 

So my eyes have been drifting elsewhere recently. I have a soft spot for strange cults with insane doctrines (hence maining Admech).

 

So I've been mulling over the idea of a Word Bearers force. It would certainly have a heavy Tzeentch component (including characters that were Thousand Sons and still owe *some* fealty to their birth-Legion) but would offer a more diverse range of other opportunities as well. My Thousand Sons force will still exist, it'll just be small, and stay small.

 

So, with all this stuff bouncing around in my head -

 

Folks with mono-god armies - have you also struggled with feeling these limits? I imagine that there are quite a few people who got deep into Khorne Daemonkin and then spent a couple of years watching a big TSons release followed immediately by a big DG release. Slaanesh players are even deeper in the hole, having not seen a release in ages. What are your solutions?

[Vorenus]

I tend to play mostly World Eaters, or World Eaters + Chaos Daemons (Khorne, obviously).  I don't feel that it is too restrictive, but rather feel that it is fluffy and I like fluff.  I am primarily a narrative player, not a power gamer, though, so my opinion is based less on "efficiency" and "competitiveness".

 

Word Bearers are good, though, if you want to bring in lots of different kinds of Daemons.  

[Shinespider]

I didn't mean my post to come off as having anything at all to do with "competitiveness," that's not my angle either.

Rather - I come at from two standpoints, modelling and narrative.

 

From a modelling standpoint, my issue is obvious. One god means fewer bits to play around with, a more limited aesthetic space to explore.

For a narrative standpoint - the range of possible character is smaller. 

[Scammel]

That's really quite interesting to hear, because I come at it from another angle - I'm not actually a massive fan of large lists, and I love my Sons from both a modelling and gameplay standpoint because of the limitations. Deliberate personal army design choices come to the fore a little more, because you have to work a little harder to differentiate. Something something restriction brings freedom something something.

 

I especially used to enjoy those old variant army lists in the back of the Fantasy books, where half the units in the book would be gutted in return for a lift on the restriction on the number of Trolls you could field, for example. I like themes that run hard with one particular idea that permeates the army, from either a visual or unit selection standpoint.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I play an all slaanesh army, and I don't mind the restrictions.  In terms of painting, I like having an army with a coherent look and a restricted colour palette - it really helps the army look like a whole, rather than a collection of diverse units.

 

Not to say its not possible to have a consistent look with different cult troops, but it is more of a challenge as their stock colour schemes are such a part of their aesthetic.  I do think it is a challenge that I wouldn't particularly enjoy, however.  To each their own - I have a friend who played eldar and managed to have their specialty troops (dire avengers, swooping hawks, warp spiders, banshees, wraith guard and striking scorpions) painted in a consistent green and bone colour scheme, while still managing to retain the look of each as a distinct and unique unit - and I imagine something similar would also work fairly similar for a mixed god chaos army.

 

And its not as if going mono-god is such a huge limitation in terms of diversity - essentially, I'm just loosing out on berzerkers, plague marines and rubric marines.  That still leaves plenty of visual variety with daemon engines, hellbrutes, demon princes, spawn, etc who all look fairly different from chaos marines.

 

As well, it has encouraged me to convert units to give them the look I want to give them.  For example, my noise marines and my melee hellbrute all turned out quite well, and are unique in a manner that still fits well with my force as whole - check out the bottom link in my signature for pictures.

 

 

As for the story building side, I haven't seen it as much of a limitation either.  To be fair,if I were the type to give a background story to each model (or even each unit) I might find going mono-god more restrictive, but I'm not so having a brief outline (marines from various chapters suffering from and then punishing gross incompetence by imperial officials, which leads to their fall to slaanesh) is enough for me.

[Sgt. Blank]

I've got what used to be Khorne Daemonkin (now Worldeaters and Khorne Daemons) and I don't find it too restrictive. I am a pretty casual player, though, and I don't recall ever playing enough with a given Chaos force that it became boring.

 

The only hard restrictions are on other cult troops (and for Khorne) sorcerors. This leaves a lot of options for models even before conversion and the AOS Khorne stuff is thrown in. I get some of these options aren't available for Thousand Sons, though.

[WarriorFish]

I think it depends on what you need, or rather how you view your collection/armies. I play mono-Slaanesh as that's how I imagined the army, so that's how they work on the table top! Limitations for theme aren't inherently bad and can make things interesting. You can't solve something the same way everyone else, you need to do it the Slaaneshi way for example

 

If I want to do something non-Slaanesh I have different armies for that. Of the Chaos stripe that's Thousand Sons albeit still in development. I expect I will run them mono also for the most part, but I also plan to run them together quite a bit too as in the lore they are frequent allies

[Mekhitar]

My primary army is EC, so I’m used to all-slaanesh, all the time.

 

That being said, yup, I miss the other guys. I love Rubric marines, but taking Thousand Sons really -does- limit what the rest of your army looks like. Sure, I can split it into two legions, but I also really enjoy running mono legion forces. (They also look better on the tabletop with just one scheme.)

 

Similarly, I really enjoyed how much of a combined arms force Emperor’s Children used to be. I would run 10 man squads of marines with pistol and chainsword, and assault all I could.

 

Now, to get that fun assault feeling, I feel like I need to take zerkers - another unit that doesn’t fit into EC.

 

But I also like my mono slaanesh force...

 

I have compensated by building two armies. One, my original, is all blue and orange, and they are my Noise marine heavy slaanesh forces. The other is black, silver, and gold, and I play them as Black Legion. When I want to scratch the rubric and zerker itch, I put them on the table.

 

When I want pure slaanesh, maybe with some daemons thrown in, I go EC.

 

I have the advantage of 3 family members who play, 4 more close friends who play, AND the local league AND RTT players (mostly two different groups). So, I can basically get s game almost whenever I want/have the time... which lets me scratch both chaos itches.

 

The hard part is mostly deciding what chaos unit to paint what color, and finding a middle ground for my cultists that lets me run them with both. :p

[N1SB]

Folks with mono-god armies - have you also struggled with feeling these limits? What are your solutions?

Brother, I think I understand your situation because I faced a very, very similar one. I wanted to do a mono-god army, but always held-off because it seemed so limiting. When asking friends in my meta, they just tried to sell me on MORE of the same, like "look at all these Daemons of that Chaos power you can choose," not understanding I saw that as a limitation. I had my own breakthrough, thanks to B&C, and I'll just share it in case it helps you with yours.

Instead of focusing on the Chaos power/god, or even the Space Marine, I based it around a normal person/Guardsman, from his perspective.

In my case, it was Nurgle, and I imagined a Guardsman unknowingly carrying around Nurgle's Rot like a Typhoid Mary, infecting everyone else:

I basically had Nurglings driving tanks, operating artillery...basically like the Guardsman infecting a base and taking it over. The missing link for me was the Renegades & Heretics Index by Forgeworld, which I only looked at thanks to the R&H sub-forum. That opened up a lot of ideas. Now, there are Renegade Knights.

I further added Daemon Prince(sses) that were Nurgle-tainted Eldar, like priestesses of Isha. Even a Nurgle servoskull resembling a Plaguebearer.

Basically, mono-god didn't mean mono-theme in my case, because Nurgle is so generous with his gifts. I'm thinking of adding some Guardsmen slowly transforming into Plaguebearers, plus an Armiger Knight Titan rusting away and resembling a Plaguebearer, etc. It's still Nurgle, but really expansive.

+++++

To bring it back to the Thousand Sons, perhaps some sort of normal human cult that worships them as immortal guardians or something? Or some Imperium noble praying for more political power and Tzeentch answered by sending him a Sorcerer, a Wormtongue figure, with a retinue of Rubric Marines. Could be a Knight Titan house, now that we got a free Renegade Knights Codex.

[Shinespider]

Refocusing on the human aspect is interesting, and something I've also been thinking about.

Thanks everyone for your input.

[Trevak Dal]

Well they have basically another named version of And they Shall Know no fear...and can summon daemons better...

 

Huh, Wordbearers might be the best legion to go with to represent recently fallen loyalist marine forces. Their fancy equipment is breaking down, they are starting to get desperate...yeah maybe.

[Backslide]

I love my word bearers, normally its 60 odd cultists for me, lord and a sorcerer

 

Then its just depends on my mood frequently its a bit of a gunline with either knight or daemons in support

[BitsHammer]

I can actually sympathize with the main problem of feeling limited, not so much because of my 5th edition Plague Marine army (which is horribly out of date and partially illegal now due to loss of certain options) but rather my Sisters. While having a restricted set of options can spark all sorts of creative thinking in terms of solving problems in building your list, it can also leave you feeling rather hemmed in on options and frustrated if your meta ends up turning into a hard counter for the army you can build.

 

Personally I've started a Renegade CSM as a partial counter to this. Since I'm not going mono-god (the way I'm seeing the gods for my Marines Manevolent is more as tools to be used, just like how they see everything else around them in the official lore as loyalists) the codex turns into a large tool box with more options in terms of marks, powers, icons and even strategems. It's allowing me to tailor my units to the roles I want them to fill more than tailoring my choices to fit the restrictions imposed on me. Sure, there are still restrictions, but it's good to stretch your creative legs now and then and try new things out.

 

For the OP, if you don't want to completely change everything while still running your current models and just adding to them, consider running them as a part of the Black Legion. It's a fairly solid choice for any Chaos player who wants to take a wide array of options since everyone tends to work for them in some capacity through out the lore and they don't restrict your options as much as some of the other legions do.