Dark Vengeance, the Crimson Slaughter and the Word Bearers

[Rodiger]

I got back into Warhammer as a hobby with the release of Dark Vengeance in 2012, this was after a long break from when I used to play 2nd Edition 40k, Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition, as well a the likes of Epic and Necromunda in the 1990's as a teenager. Anyway, I can't say I was up on the lore in 2012 and I didn't question the Chaos component of the box, apart from being blown away by how great the models looked compared to the 90's ones. Since then I have read over half of the Horus Heresy books, and what struck me is how well the Chaos models would have worked for the Word Bearers, the Chosen could have been Gal Vorbak, the Helbrute could have been a Mhara Gal Dreadnought, there are a load of Cultists, the paint scheme isn't that different either. The other half of the box contains Dark Angels specific models due to the molding of chapter iconography onto the pads, so they weren't doing a Legion Neutral box. They could have very easily said these were Word Bearers, but we got the Crimson Slaughter instead. I suppose I have pondered this for a while, but with the release of Age of Darkness and deciding on a Legion, I have been looking at my Dark Vengeance Chaos models, (which are painted as Crimson Slaughter) and thinking I could use these as Word Bearers. So I suppose this is a very long winded way of saying does anyone know why we got Crimson Slaughter, and not Word Bearers in Dark Vengeance?  

[sitnam]

I think GW in that time period really wanted Renegade Chapters to me a more popular thing, as to why idk. The real question is why now go for Res Corsairs if that was the case?

 

6th/7th was weird

[Dr_Ruminahui]

@Rodiger, I'm unclear on your starting proposition - are you suggesting that the sculpts that they produced would have made good word bearers, or that the mix of units they provided could have been sculpted to be word bearers?

[Rodiger]

@sitnam Yes, I seem to remember just about ever comment board was full of people screaming for "Chaos Legions" and "Plastic Sisters"

@Dr_Ruminahui Sorry for not being clear. I was saying that I thought the sculpts themselves would have made excellent Word Bearers, the mix of units is also quite thematic now you mention it. If I remember correctly at the time (it was 10 years ago, I might be misremembering or forgetting stuff) the Chaos Marine models were largely full of spikes and horns with not too many mutations, the Chosen and the Helbrute are covered in them, albeit not to the extent of the Forge World mutations, but they also have the correct sort of mutation as well (no overly Nurgle, Tzeentch or Slanesh mutations). There were no separate Legions at that time either as they were all in the same book, for me it never really felt like these models fit, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Emperors Children or World Eaters very well, same with Iron Warriors, and Alpha Legion, they made ok Night Lords and Black Legion though. I suppose they didn't make great generic Chaos Models is my point if that is what they were supposed to be, they did make very good Word Bearers though. 

[Brother Captain Vakarian]

I’ve been searching for what I can find from Dark Vengeance to use as Word Bearers models! I wasn’t really involved in the hobby when it came out but the CSM models from DV really do seem made for Word Bearers. 
 

On a side note, how is the scale of the DV models to the current CSM range? 

[WrathOfTheLion]

They're a little bit smaller I think, but should look fine with them if you're not too pedantic.

They did a made to order reprint a year or two back, I know I picked mine up then.

[Rodiger]

I am just wondering if anyone had heard through open days or interviews with ex employees, that sort of thing, why GW decided to make a whole new Chaos Chapter rather than use a Legion that was perfect for the models. It's almost like the sculptors went here are some Word Bearers, then someone else went, we can't do Word Bearers, we would have to make other Legions if we did that, lets make up a whole new Chapter instead. It would have been much more work to do the Crimson Slaughter too, they had to write a book to go with the box set, they released 1 or 2 stand alone codex's, they made them the poster boys for Chaos, and I got the impression that the Crimson Slaughter were pretty much hated too. They could have just used an established Legion with all the lore already written, then make some new lore for the them as part of the release. I don't know if they were worried about it affecting the sales of their other chaos models, but there wasn't really anything faction specific at that time, unlike the Dark Angels where they did make them faction specific, then released a load of new models for Space Marines that Dark Angels couldn't use. The whole thing just looks really strange to me. 

[Xenith]

22 hours ago, Rodiger said:

does anyone know why we got Crimson Slaughter, and not Word Bearers in Dark Vengeance?  

As others have said, it was GW agenda at the time. For some reason they decided to not go with the insanely popular legions with specialist troops and make everything a lot more generic, starting with the 4th ed codex. This was somewhere from 2007 - 2014, basically through most of 4th - 6th editions of the games.

We still see some holdovers from that era, like where raptors went from a specific cult, like Havocs, who had their own special rules, to being just a spiky assault squad - with the advent of warp talons, raptors have never regained their role as harrying shock troops that preyed on the weak. 

As to why GW did it, the prevailing idea at the time was that in 40k, or at least the one touted by Gav Thorpe who I recall claimed to be working on orders from higher ups, the legions were no more - no longer organised fighting forces, and were instead fractured warbands that formed and reformed as they needed, which was better represented by generic rules for units. If your dudes had recently turned to chaos, they wouldn't neccessarily have raptor cults, but they would have renegade assault squads, so raptors became what they are today. 

[2PlusEasy]

In all fairness, Chaos runs in cycles.

The "warbands of renegades" concept has existed since Rogue Trader and 2nd edition in the 80s and 90s. The Legions existed in the background, but weren't unified and unique fighting forces as we understand them today: that came later in 3rd edition, and more specifically the 3.5 codex and Eye of Terror campaign book. So the Legion-centric Chaos focus most modern Chaos players understand really only hit home hard in 2003.

For whatever reason, GW decided to revert its design focus back to its Warband focus in 2007 during 4th edition. This wasn't necessarily in itself a problem, the problem was how they went about it: by taking away alot. Mortals and cultists were removed. Chaos Daemons were removed to form their own codex (which wasn't cross-compatible with Chaos Space Marines in 4th and 5th edition). The legion-specific rules, wargear and units were removed. What was left was unfortunately extremely underwhelming: it was codex space marines but with half of the options. It made alot of 3rd edition era chaos armies illegal, which naturally made the playerbase extremely disgruntled. GW tried to rectify this in 6th edition by re-adding Cultists, psychic disciplines, the chaos dinobots and veterans of the long war... But the damage was done.

This unfortunately left the Crimson Slaughter in a pickle: they had a semi-decent if unoriginal story and provided an excellent examination of how a loyalist chapter with bad luck and good intentions breaks down and becomes a renegade force. However, their $65 AUD codex at the time had 3 pages of terrible rules (decent rules or lack thereof being a big impact for sales in a tabletop game if you pay attention to "the meta of 40k") and were released at a time where very few Chaos players wanted a bar of them. Their revised release in 7th edition, now an $83 AUD codex supplement at the time, didn't fix either of these two issues which further disgruntled the chaos community and justifiably so. The final insult to injury was that The Crimson Slaughter had the paint scheme and melee focus of the World Eaters, and the emphasis on Possessed that was attributed to The Word Bearers but didn't do anything new to either, leading to the question by the community: "why bother in the first place?"

With a change in sales strategy, likely spurred by the popularity of the Primarchs and the Horus Heresy, we're back full circle to the year 2003 again with our Legion-focused Chaos forces. I still prefer the warband and renegades concept myself and think GW really missed an opportunity there. But, I'm happy to accept that I'm a minority in this.

I still rate the Crimson Slaughter myself, having appreciated them for what they were: a 90s era 40k concept in modern 40k (even though the cynic in me always asks "why didn't you just use the Red Corsairs GW?") With the new possessed and Khorne kits on the horizon, I might have to do a Crimson Slaughter themed Kill Team. If only I could track down the Sevastus Krannon model for a decent price in Australia...

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by 2PlusEasy

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Myself, I don't see the Dark Vengeance minis as being in any particular way Word Bearers either in design or implementation.  Sure, the models have a lot of mutations but such is appropriate for any chaos force that spends a lot of time in the warp or around sorcery / other warp forces.  If they had been intended as Word Bearers, I would have expected them to have more "paperwork" like the newest dark apostle model does - so, lots of scrolls, (im)purity seals, etc, which the models simply don't have.

Which is way I wasn't sure why the OP was associating the minis with Word Bearers in particular and needed to seek clarification on that.

[Rodiger]

@EnsignJoker @Xenith @2PlusEasy thank you for these detailed replies, I completely missed 3rd, 4th and 5th editions, and really apart from being blown away by the metal Chaos Terminators when they were released and reading about them in White Dwarf, I'm not sure I had much to do with Chaos in 2nd edition either. I do enjoy these potted histories, (I would love it if GW actually released a design history)  it is very informative and your reasons all make sense. I painted the Chaos side of Dark Vengeance as Crimson Slaughter and intended to play with them as that, but my regular gaming partner already played Chaos so I ended up playing Dark Angels instead. I still have my second copy of Dark Vengeance Chaos still on sprue, I might make them into Word Bearer allies for Age of Darkness. 

[Tokugawa]

3 hours ago, Rodiger said:

@EnsignJoker @Xenith @2PlusEasy thank you for these detailed replies, I completely missed 3rd, 4th and 5th editions, and really apart from being blown away by the metal Chaos Terminators when they were released and reading about them in White Dwarf, I'm not sure I had much to do with Chaos in 2nd edition either. I do enjoy these potted histories, (I would love it if GW actually released a design history)  it is very informative and your reasons all make sense. I painted the Chaos side of Dark Vengeance as Crimson Slaughter and intended to play with them as that, but my regular gaming partner already played Chaos so I ended up playing Dark Angels instead. I still have my second copy of Dark Vengeance Chaos still on sprue, I might make them into Word Bearer allies for Age of Darkness. 

Dark an…well, you didn't refuse chaos. Chaos hug you in another way.

[TheWarmaster]

On 7/20/2022 at 4:05 PM, Rodiger said:

I got back into Warhammer as a hobby with the release of Dark Vengeance in 2012, this was after a long break from when I used to play 2nd Edition 40k, Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition, as well a the likes of Epic and Necromunda in the 1990's as a teenager. Anyway, I can't say I was up on the lore in 2012 and I didn't question the Chaos component of the box, apart from being blown away by how great the models looked compared to the 90's ones. Since then I have read over half of the Horus Heresy books, and what struck me is how well the Chaos models would have worked for the Word Bearers, the Chosen could have been Gal Vorbak, the Helbrute could have been a Mhara Gal Dreadnought, there are a load of Cultists, the paint scheme isn't that different either. The other half of the box contains Dark Angels specific models due to the molding of chapter iconography onto the pads, so they weren't doing a Legion Neutral box. They could have very easily said these were Word Bearers, but we got the Crimson Slaughter instead. I suppose I have pondered this for a while, but with the release of Age of Darkness and deciding on a Legion, I have been looking at my Dark Vengeance Chaos models, (which are painted as Crimson Slaughter) and thinking I could use these as Word Bearers. So I suppose this is a very long winded way of saying does anyone know why we got Crimson Slaughter, and not Word Bearers in Dark Vengeance?  

I believe they wanted a new 'poster boy' chapter for Chaos. So they made the Crimson Slaughter. The actual lore in the Crimson Slaughter codex is really decent!  They tried something new for a while, and it was fun for a while. 

[MegaVolt87]

The DV models are quite small. They look fine when used with Mk III and IV or old CSM, but Mk VI and new CSM there is a noticeable size difference. 

[Prot]

Yes as mentioned a lot of that time frame was tied to DIY Chaos.  Up until recently a lot of the popular chaos tournament armies were all seemingly warbands spun off from armies we all knew and loved. 
 

But in that Crimsom Slaughter era they were also trying to create a narrative that showed how a chapter can “fall” to Chaos, and survive without the imperiums support. The background there was very cool. This pitted the Dark Angels against the Crimson Slaughter and I really enjoyed the fiction at the time. It also allowed GW to lay out this narrative without worrying about treading on an established Legions background. 
 

As far as the models they absolutely work for any Legion. But as others have mentioned the models are smaller than new ones nut I wouldn’t let that stop you. I’d simply put them on 32mm bases and have some fun with it. 

[Bloody Legionnaire]

On 8/8/2022 at 10:44 PM, Prot said:

Yes as mentioned a lot of that time frame was tied to DIY Chaos.  Up until recently a lot of the popular chaos tournament armies were all seemingly warbands spun off from armies we all knew and loved. 
 

But in that Crimsom Slaughter era they were also trying to create a narrative that showed how a chapter can “fall” to Chaos, and survive without the imperiums support. The background there was very cool. This pitted the Dark Angels against the Crimson Slaughter and I really enjoyed the fiction at the time. It also allowed GW to lay out this narrative without worrying about treading on an established Legions background. 
 

As far as the models they absolutely work for any Legion. But as others have mentioned the models are smaller than new ones nut I wouldn’t let that stop you. I’d simply put them on 32mm bases and have some fun with it. 

Are they smaller though? The Chosen that came with Dark Vengeance are much larger than the old CSM. They are about the size of nu-CSM and possibly slightly larger than them. 

[Kythnos]

Well I just had the DV Chosen (rebased to 32mm) and new CSM on the table two days ago and the Chosen were noticably smaller when put next to the CSM.

[Khornestar]

They’re quite tiny, like a full head shorter than many of the current sculpts. Some are slightly bigger than others, and the aspiring champion isn’t totally out of place mixed in with the new sculpts.

[Bloody Legionnaire]

15 hours ago, Khornestar said:

They’re quite tiny, like a full head shorter than many of the current sculpts. Some are slightly bigger than others, and the aspiring champion isn’t totally out of place mixed in with the new sculpts.

Umm.. no.. they are not!

Here is one, practically the same height as a Plague Marine..

[Paradigm]

13 hours ago, Bloody Legionnaire said:

Umm.. no.. they are not!

Here is one, practically the same height as a Plague Marine..

That one is by far the tallest of the bunch. It’s pretty accurate to say they’re about a head shorter than modern sculpts in general. 

That said they are mostly bulky enough that with some creative basing, you won’t really notice the height issue while gaming. 

They also still make great conversion fodder, and Kranon and the Mace Chosen and the Lightning Claw Chosen above, can easily double as generic HQ models, when based appropriately.

 

[Bloody Legionnaire]

Normally wouldn’t put this much effort into things, but I grow tired of reading people BS on the internet, and I’m right so there’s that. Here’s 3 DV Chosen and 2 “newer” sculpts:

 

 

 

I don’t know in what universe any of the DV chosen are “tiny” or “a full head shorter” compared to the “newer sculpts” but this one ain’t it… all of these models are relatively the same height and build.. 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Bloody Legionnaire