Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus - Chaos Space Marines

[Khornestar]

Back to the days of “gotta have a drawback, because it’s chaos.” But I’m still happy with it. ;)

[WrathOfTheLion]

It could be certain units, like those that are 'chosen' (Chosen/Terminators) get some more substantial interaction with the ability. We'll have to see what they do. It is the army rule, not the detachment rule, so it's more likely certain datasheets will have some interaction.

[Nephaston]

1 hour ago, Prot said:

On the surface I’m not too happy about this ability.  I could be wrong but it feels like that ability only happens about 1 in 6 attacks, correct?

That is,  as far as we are aware, correct. But there is a distinction to be made as those abilities key of critical hits, which is different from just saying hit rolls of six.

 

We could always see general abilities or stratagems that turn hit rolls of 5+ into crits, or units with an ability that keys off of Dark Pacts and allows for an increased crit range if they pick a specific pact, or maybe double pact for the price of one, Detachments that add choices to the dark pacts, etc.

[Tokugawa]

Primaris (or new scale) loyalists go tacti-cool way.

 

Chaos space Marines go mutated way.

 

And 30K keep stay in OG way.

 

GW want to and need to make the difference huge, because GW don't want to see you buy 1 model box but use it in 3 armies and 2 games.

[Zeruel]

Depending on how much interaction with Dark Pacts we see on datasheets across the board, I could imagine something like the Helbrute's Frenzy moves to if the model is damaged re-roll failed Ld tests for Dark Pact.

[spessmarine]

1 hour ago, Tokugawa said:

GW want to and need to make the difference huge, because GW don't want to see you buy 1 model box but use it in 3 armies and 2 games.

Debatable, compatibility with multiple systems increases number of people you can sell to. As well, don't see why they'd mind you using an army in 2 or more systems, gets you (ideally) buying a bunch of rule books.

[Tokugawa]

17 minutes ago, spessmarine said:

Debatable, compatibility with multiple systems increases number of people you can sell to. As well, don't see why they'd mind you using an army in 2 or more systems, gets you (ideally) buying a bunch of rule books.

You can try to find a Thousand sons player and ask him/her how they feel about the word "tzanngor".

[tzeentch9]

2 hours ago, Tokugawa said:

You can try to find a Thousand sons player and ask him/her how they feel about the word "tzanngor".

I’m fine with it thanks

[Mallios]

If some of our cultists still regenerate wounds and/or models, and if some of our vehicles regenerate wounds, Dark Pact's downside is much less absolute.

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

10 hours ago, Prot said:

Why do we have to plan to execute our ‘edge’? The drawback on a 1 in 6 ability seems silly. 

 

What is 1 in 6 about this ability? The ability always goes off. The leadership test is just to avoid wounds to the unit. And leadership is on 2d6 so a 6+ leadership is like 72% success rate before reroll. Not sure what you mean by a 1 in 6 ability.

[danodan123]

20 minutes ago, Rune Priest Jbickb said:

 

What is 1 in 6 about this ability? The ability always goes off. The leadership test is just to avoid wounds to the unit. And leadership is on 2d6 so a 6+ leadership is like 72% success rate before reroll. Not sure what you mean by a 1 in 6 ability.

I believe he means the effect of the dark pact, it doesn't give you a boost, it gives you a chance of doing more damage on a roll of a 6, on a d6, meaning 1 in 6 :)

[Kaiju Soze]

34 minutes ago, danodan123 said:

I believe he means the effect of the dark pact, it doesn't give you a boost, it gives you a chance of doing more damage on a roll of a 6, on a d6, meaning 1 in 6 :)

That was my read, and I largely agree; the units most likely wanting to use Dark Pacts are those (currently) without access to Icons, and so most at risk, which makes me less inclined to want to use Dark Pacts.

 

Never mind the dice skew I've witnessed where 20-30 dice come up with zero sixes. Or my chaos lord dying to his own overhearing plasma pistol, with CP re-roll, two games running.

[Doctor Perils]

46 minutes ago, Kaiju Soze said:

That was my read, and I largely agree; the units most likely wanting to use Dark Pacts are those (currently) without access to Icons, and so most at risk, which makes me less inclined to want to use Dark Pacts.

 

Never mind the dice skew I've witnessed where 20-30 dice come up with zero sixes. Or my chaos lord dying to his own overhearing plasma pistol, with CP re-roll, two games running.

I feel your pain, in my case it was Perils of the warp that killed my sorcerer with CP refills in successive games

 

Still, I've also seen my dice give me six sixes out of six dice. It's within the lore for chaos to seek rewards despite the risk of greater hazards. I far prefer this version where you not only have choice over activation and effect, but the effects will always be useful to some extent, and doesn't make your unit useless in case of a bad roll

[Prot]

12 hours ago, Khornestar said:

Back to the days of “gotta have a drawback, because it’s chaos.” But I’m still happy with it. ;)

 

As 40K tried to become more 'competitive' I thought we were past this game design mechanic. (IE Abaddon can't kill himself anymore... Doomrider doesn't 'drive off into the sunset', etc).

 

This is just bad to me. And what I'm trying to say about the 'ability' is my understanding is there is no benefit unless you roll a '6' on the dice, correct? So in 9th it was just cool/fun to roll those two multimelta shots off of your Helbrute, and hey... you get an extra hit once every... 3 shooting phases! Cool, but far from 'strong'. 

 

With Oaths, you're going to see a lot more payback from that. It's literally what I took every game, even when I had to pick one unit on the table to use it against all game. 

 

Regardless, I'm  hoping I've read it wrong, or GW left out a lot of details.

[ZeroWolf]

Only thing GW left out was how other units interact with it (like Chosen), otherwise the rule will be how its shown here (for now at least, things could change in the actual rules...or for once, they might not change)

[prava]

15 hours ago, Prot said:

On the surface I’m not too happy about this ability.  I could be wrong but it feels like that ability only happens about 1 in 6 attacks, correct?  Yet the mortal wounds on a non icon unit will probably happen much more often. 
 

why do we have to plan to execute our ‘edge’? The drawback on a 1 in 6 ability seems silly. 
 

Some units are possibly too important to use this… like Oblits or havocs where there isn’t much for ablative wounds or access to an icon. What about vehicles….? Dreadnougnts especially will see no benefit, only the possible damage. 
 

As someone who used to play Ultras for a long time the single use version of Oath was very powerful. When they announced the 10 th edition version of it, I thought it was a type O and wasn’t convinced otherwise until we saw GMan makes it twice a turn.
 

if you gave me the option with CSM , I’d much rather have the oaths ability over the CSM one. 
 

I’m open to being completely wrong about this. All I have to go on is my experience using the UM relic (in pretty much every game I played with UM, it was that good) and the experience of exploding 6’s with CSM in 9th which had no harmful drawbacks and frankly didn’t need it. I hope I’m very wrong in this. 

 

Yes, I believe your perception is off.

 

This isn't a "roll a dice, if you get a 6, this happens". Nope. This is a "increase your damage capability by 25% AT WORST".

 

In the end, on Marines you have something like 30% of suffereing D3 mortal wounds. In contrast, your damage capability increases by 25%.  On a squad that shoots 18 times you could go from 12 hits to 15 hits. +25%. In contrast, you will suffer d3 mortal wounds every 3 times you use this ability. So, it is very much worth. Even with anihilators it would be worth it if the sargent was alive. After... it would be a gamble.

 

And the ability to autowound on 6's is better than this 25% against some enemies. So worst case you get a +25% increase in damage output. But if you are a cultist you are getting +33%.

 

It is insanely powerful.

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Prot said:

 

As 40K tried to become more 'competitive' I thought we were past this game design mechanic. (IE Abaddon can't kill himself anymore... Doomrider doesn't 'drive off into the sunset', etc).

 

This is just bad to me. And what I'm trying to say about the 'ability' is my understanding is there is no benefit unless you roll a '6' on the dice, correct? So in 9th it was just cool/fun to roll those two multimelta shots off of your Helbrute, and hey... you get an extra hit once every... 3 shooting phases! Cool, but far from 'strong'. 

 

With Oaths, you're going to see a lot more payback from that. It's literally what I took every game, even when I had to pick one unit on the table to use it against all game. 

 

Regardless, I'm  hoping I've read it wrong, or GW left out a lot of details.

There are definitely some units it's not worth using on. On the other hand, that frees up 'power space' for the Faction in other areas, perhaps in said units. That's my grip with the previews. We see a lot of Space Marine content in the mechanical (i.e. non-Faction) previews so we have a much picture of what they're going to look like as a whole. We don't get that for the other Factions. For example, we don't really know what the Slaves to Darkness Detachment rule does. It could be that Dark Pact was purposefully left weaker so more power could be allocated to Detachment Rules for when they have the more agnostic Detachments which better represent Night Lords and/or Iron Warriors.

[Indy Techwisp]

11 hours ago, Tokugawa said:

You can try to find a Thousand sons player and ask him/her how they feel about the word "tzanngor".

 

The issue with Tzaangors is that they're an AoS model with no reason to be in the TSons, yet they pad out every box with them.

Everyone else got unique Cultist-type guys and we got the Beastmen of Chaos rejects.

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Prot said:

 

As 40K tried to become more 'competitive' I thought we were past this game design mechanic. (IE Abaddon can't kill himself anymore... Doomrider doesn't 'drive off into the sunset', etc).

Doomrider. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. A long time.

 

Seriously though, while I understand your concern, this isn’t nearly as bad as the “lol random!” Chaos boons table of yore that could randomly turn your decked out HQ into a naked Demon Prince or a spawn, and just killed them instantly if you didn’t have the model handy. Fun!

 

Also, as others have said, the effects may be improved on more elite units, and it might interact with DA prayers to maybe remove the downside or improve the upside. And CSM are getting a full book Q4 supposedly that might change the rule entirely.

[Scribe]

17 hours ago, Prot said:

why do we have to plan to execute our ‘edge’? The drawback on a 1 in 6 ability seems silly. 

 

Because, we play a Chaos faction. - GW, probably.

[Urauloth]

Rolling for drawbacks on the main faction ability makes me worried how possessed will look in 10E, I must say.

[sitnam]

10 hours ago, tzeentch9 said:

I’m fine with it thanks

And I like my Mutalith too

 

Quote

The issue with Tzaangors is that they're an AoS model with no reason to be in the TSons, yet they pad out every box with them.

 

Everyone else got unique Cultist-type guys and we got the Beastmen of Chaos rejects.

Except, that's not true. Tzaangors were released into mainstream 40k before Age of Sigmar. Their appearance in Silver Tower predated Wrath of Magnus by a few months. Marked Gors as a concept go all the way back to Rogue Trader too. Beastmen have always been a part of both universes, and the Tzaangors kit was designed with both from the offset

 

I have a hard time seeing how the Tzeentch faction, the followers of the god of birds and mutation, dont mesh well with literal bird mutants. Padding out the boxes is an entirely different issue however

Edited May 8, 2023 by sitnam

[jaxom]

Personally, I'd like to see the Cypher Lords Warcry warband get repackaged to be Tzeentch Cultists for 40k. Mix-and-match them with Catachans or something.

[sitnam]

3 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Personally, I'd like to see the Cypher Lords Warcry warband get repackaged to be Tzeentch Cultists for 40k. Mix-and-match them with Catachans or something.

I might of had the same idea

[Indy Techwisp]

31 minutes ago, sitnam said:

I have a hard time seeing how the Tzeentch faction, the followers of the god of birds and mutation, dont mesh well with literal bird mutants. Padding out the boxes is an entirely different issue however

 

Thing is, it's the Thousand Son's Army, not Disciples of Tzeench: 40k.
While Tzaangors do fit as Tzeench mortals, There's more Tzaangor units in our army than actual Thousand Sons.