Wh40k 10th Edition Faction Focus - Chaos Space Marines

[lansalt]

6 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Something had to be the worst Marine weapon

Why? They should be sidegrades vs. chainsword+pistol. Their plain fists are their worst weapon. It's unfluffy that boltguns are so weak.

 

[Schlitzaf]

But do you want to be saving with a 4+ on a Marine? 

[Khornestar]

The range is the tradeoff, I guess. Not a great trade but if they’re objective camping at least they can contribute up to 24”. No longer have to be within 12” to get that second shot, at least.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Khornestar

[lansalt]

13 minutes ago, Schlitzaf said:

But do you want to be saving with a 4+ on a Marine? 

When a marine shoots another marine, that would seem appropiate to me, yes

[Verbal Underbelly]

The most troubling problem for bolter wielding legionaries (personally) is the inability to double up on heavy weapons. I would have enjoyed a 10 man unit of bolter CSM with 2 missile launchers. I'd have some backfield flex and be able to genuinely objective camp. I know some weapon choices have a bit of parity but not being able to double up feels jarring.

[sitnam]

1 hour ago, OttoVonAwesome said:

What about the legions that don't really make dark pacts like Iron Warriors and Night Lords?

That’s not really the case though. They might not worship like the monogod legions and the Word Bearers, but the undivided legions definitely make dark pacts with the chaos gods and various daemons. Some of those warbands and individual Astartes do in fact worship the gods, whereas others seek to use Chaos as a tool. 
 

46 minutes ago, lansalt said:

The point is that bolters shouldn't be a tax or the worst option in any space marine unit. They're the iconic weapon of Astartes after all.

 

 It fills the same job it always has, of anti-infantry firepower. It might be iconic but it’s still just the basic rifle of the poster boy faction. All other basic weapons are balanced against it. 

[ShibeKing]

Dark Pact sounds cool since it feels like a thematic faction rule with its risk vs reward mentality. Leadership test shouldn't be that big of a deal (I hope). Agree with Khornestar about the Boltgun profile. They sound like such awesome weapons, then you see how they perform on the tabletop. Feels like you're getting catfished.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by ShibeKing

[Doctor Perils]

Considering Chainswords put out a whopping 4 attacks, and even plain combat knives do 3 attacks, does seem a bit of a shame the bolter wouldn't be any better than it is, but then chainswords may cost 1 point or something, which added up across your army might make a difference?

 

Still, Rule of Cool, I like my boltgun toting legionaries so I'll be sticking with a mix, it just looks better somehow

[Ammonius]

46 minutes ago, Verbal Underbelly said:

The most troubling problem for bolter wielding legionaries (personally) is the inability to double up on heavy weapons. I would have enjoyed a 10 man unit of bolter CSM with 2 missile launchers. I'd have some backfield flex and be able to genuinely objective camp. I know some weapon choices have a bit of parity but not being able to double up feels jarring.

Hopefully there is a Havoc-type squad that can take pairs or multiples of weapons.

 

A thought about Abaddon: His Lord of the Traitor Legions Aura seems like it will let you re-roll Dark Pacts rolls, which seems nice.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Ammonius
Added thought about Abaddon

[Large and Moving Torb]

Thinking a little more about the reveals - Dark Obscuration: I'd really like to know what the Stealth ability is, but for Nurgle-marked units at least, this seems like a very good way to limit damage from the Oath of Moment rule. Your opponent selects a unit for OoM in his command phase, during shooting picks his first shot at the unit, you interrupt with DO, and OH! No shooty for you! Now I'm interested to see how marks work in 10th as well. Will invisible Nurgle Helbrutes be a thing?

[bigtrouble]

3 hours ago, jaxom said:

Okay, math done correctly.

 

Nice breakdown. Fair to say there’s a toughness break point in there somewhere, but unless you’ve ended up in a situation where your troops have to tarpit something with a high T, the volume of fire usually wins the math.

[Kallas]

21 minutes ago, Large and Moving Torb said:

Thinking a little more about the reveals - Dark Obscuration: I'd really like to know what the Stealth ability is

I am expecting this to be a USR for -1 to Hit from ranged weapons; and specifically ranged weapons, and then there's either a second USR for melee (and possibly a third for universal -1) or just any other kind of -1 is spelled out because it's rare enough to not need a USR.

[Emperor Ming]

Basic bolters game wide could use an improvement, 2 shots is nice, but most things will laugh at s4 ap0

 

[BitsHammer]

10 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

I know there's 1 Renegade Chapter player for every 100 Chaos Legion, but I do kind of wish basic Legionnaires and Renegades had separate profiles. It's a small, pedantic thing, but not everybody is a Veteran of the Long War. 

In fairness not every member of a traitor legion is either. For example the Black Legion takes anyone with a pulse who swears loyalty to Abbadon, and we know the traitor legions have taken on recruits as well (Bile and the Night Lords books both mention making new recruits).

 

So as a combined rule it's fine. Could us a better name to cover all traitors but it's fine.

[Emperor Ming]

Also nice to see wound caps go

 

I wont miss those

[Special Officer Doofy]

2 hours ago, lansalt said:

Why? They should be sidegrades vs. chainsword+pistol. Their plain fists are their worst weapon. It's unfluffy that boltguns are so weak.

 

 

Shooting should be weaker than melee, melee requires the unit getting in there and can often have less turns of being able to attack (from a game balance perspective, not a real one). And while yes the bolter in the game does not fit the bolter in the lore, neither does the marine in the game match the marine in the lore. But most people are fine with that. No one wants to play 10 marines versus 2,000 guard/orks/cultist.

 

When they gave the intercessor bolter -1ap and then gave them the second -ap from the Doctrines, that is what start the whole AP issue of 8th and 9th of everything getting AP. I say this as a Chaos marine player with bolters. Leaving it at 0 (and lowering other weapons) is healthy for the game.

[Urauloth]

Liking all of this. Being able to run two heavy melee weapons rocks (only one in the kit I think, but there's two in the berserker box if you're kitbashing) and not having to fuss over whether you give your guy a mace or a sword or whatever is good too.
Could you take two heavy guns in the same squad before? I feel like you couldn't, but I'm probably an edition behind.

Love Dark Pacts. Great counterpart to Oaths. Really makes icons useful. Thematic and fun. Wonder if apostles will interact with them in some way?

Obliterator guns seem like they could be useful, depends how expensive they are (this is always what makes or breaks Obliterators every edition though innit)
Abaddon not being locked to his legion is great. Makes a ton of sense. He's the warmaster.
Overall, optimistic about Chaos in 10E so far. Might even look at getting out of the Killzones and into the larger battlefields someday if things are all headed in this direction.

[Tokugawa]

Psychic tome become a weak shooting weapon, and don't enable smite. Maybe most non-hero level psyker units in 10th will worked in this way.

[BitsHammer]

2 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

Psychic tome become a weak shooting weapon, and don't enable smite. Maybe most non-hero level psyker units in 10th will worked in this way.

Smite is pretty much gone from what I can gather. Seems it was replaced with various psychic shooting attacks.

[WrathOfTheLion]

4 minutes ago, Tokugawa said:

Psychic tome become a weak shooting weapon, and don't enable smite. Maybe most non-hero level psyker units in 10th will worked in this way.

They had to make the Sorcerer better I guess. I wish it did do more, but it is what it is.

[Bloody Legionnaire]

4 hours ago, Shadrach03 said:

I suspect the lord discordant would fit the bill as well.

 

Certainly it LD does fit the bill, but again *in context* and considering the new rules for how characters affect certain units, are we expecting that Abaddon will be able to buff an LD like he can a unit of bikers? 

I feel a bunch of tid bit "matter of fact" points relative to mounted or not is completely missing the context of which mounted units Abaddon can buff...

[sitnam]

2 hours ago, BitsHammer said:

In fairness not every member of a traitor legion is either. For example the Black Legion takes anyone with a pulse who swears loyalty to Abbadon, and we know the traitor legions have taken on recruits as well (Bile and the Night Lords books both mention making new recruits).

At this point in the timeline the vast majority of Heretics Astartes should not be Great Crusade and Heresy veterans. Between the Heresy, the Scouring, the Legion War, Black Crusades, etc, the attrition rates for those veterans should be disastrous. Post Heresy recruits, turncoat Astartes, and Renegade chapters should be the majority of Heretics Astartes.

 

As a CSM fan I am tired of every dang character being a Heresy veteran. A lot has happened in 10 millennia. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by sitnam

[Angelus Nex]

U might get 10 legionaires with just chainswords, charge a unit on an objective, activate dark Pact for lethal hits and start refilling all wound rolls except the 6s.

[Vanger]

50 minutes ago, Angelus Nex said:

U might get 10 legionaires with just chainswords, charge a unit on an objective, activate dark Pact for lethal hits and start refilling all wound rolls except the 6s.

Both Lethal Hits and Sustained Hits work on nat 6 to hits, as the name implies. So you can'r fish for 6s with VotLW.

 

My quick math says that Lethal Hits against anything you'd wound on 5+ or worse and Sustained hits against everything you wound on 4+ or better.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Vanger

[Doctor Perils]

4 hours ago, Bloody Legionnaire said:

Certainly it LD does fit the bill, but again *in context* and considering the new rules for how characters affect certain units, are we expecting that Abaddon will be able to buff an LD like he can a unit of bikers? 

I feel a bunch of tid bit "matter of fact" points relative to mounted or not is completely missing the context of which mounted units Abaddon can buff...

 

I'm not too sure what you mean by this? Like, Abaddon can't give out his Mark of Chaos Ascendant aura to the Lord Discordant? I mean, just based on the keywords he would be logically.

Or do you mean that in practice Abaddon wouldn't be giving it out to a Lord Discordant because there'd be little chance of getting close enough to each other that there wouldn't be better targets for the aura? In which case, all I can say is that games often play out differently from theory (at least in my experience of being a bad general ^^').

 

Basically I think @Shadrach03 was right to bring up the Lord Discordant :)

 

20 minutes ago, Vanger said:

Both Lethal Hits and Sustained Hits work on nat 6 to hits, as the name implies. So you can'r fish for 6s with VotLW.

 

My quick math says that Lethal Hits against anything you'd wound on 5+ or worse and Sustained hits against everything you wound on 4+ or better.

 

I hate to be the Ackchually guy (who am I kidding, I love it) , but those effects work on "Critical Hits", not simply natural 6s - we know there are rules that can change that range for wound rolls with the likes of Anti-X, so it's entirely possible that's also the case for Hit rolls.

 

As such, in @Angelus Nex example, it would be more interesting to take Sustained hits generally, as you will be generating more hits that can wound more reliably

Edited May 5, 2023 by Doctor Perils