Emperor's Children Index

[Dr_Ruminahui]

GW has released the Emperor's Children index.  You can find it here.

 

Contrary to expectations (well, mine anyway) it doesn't give you a new detachment - which on the plus side means you can still use any of the codex detachments for your Emperor's Children force (though you won't get full value out of Pactbound Zealots, as every unit must be Slannesh).  You also keep the Dark Pacts army rule.

 

All in all, its a weird way to allow chaos armies to field noise marines and Lucius, and the price of having to take Lucius as your warlord and everything having to be slannesh marked - given the very limited role marks play outside of pactbound zealots, in most armies all this does is force with flavour of demon prince you take.

Edited May 21 by Dr_Ruminahui

[spiros14]

I'm not that impressed with the lack of effort involved with the index. Considering that it's just two datasheets and a list of restrictions on their use.

 

What upsets me the most about it is that the designers didn't even care to change the noise marines to have the Battleline keyword. Instead they forced the player to take Lucius as a warlord so that his old index rule makes the noise marines battleline. To me that's laziness to the point of inconvenience. I cannot imagine that Emperor's Children players want Lucius in every game they play. Lucius is a fun character, sure, but the EC are a fractured legion of warbands whose leaders are chasing their own agenda. A player building a warband around, say, Eidolon doesn't want him subservient to Lucius just so he can field noise marines.
 

I'm hopeful that we do not need to wait for all that long for the actual EC release, because this index is a very disheartening affair.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Sorry for the wall of text on this - I understand your point and how you feel, @spiros14, I just argue that as insultingly brief as the index is, there is kind of a silver lining to that.

 

While acknowledging that the index is an extremely low effort holdover until the Emperor's Children codex comes out, in many ways that's a good thing.  Given that GW essentially didn't change anything, this means that functionally its as if Lucius and Noise Marines are still part of the codex - so much better than them half-assing it in a way that changed things for the worse.  My biggest fear was they were going to lock me into a specific Emperor's Children detachment that, because of the lack of attention given to it, absolutely sucked - that didn't happen.  Instead, I get to use my looking really good codex detachments and all the chaos units that I have lovingly painted and then give them a bit of Emperor's Children spin.

 

Now, there are 2 ways of fielding noise marines in a chaos marine army, or in other words, of fielding an Emperor's Children army:

 

  1)  Using the codex's Lost and the Damned rule, which limits you point wise but to a number that you were unlikely to exceed anyway.  Given that they inherently have the Dark Pacts rule, this mitigates one of the major disadvantages of other cult allies.  Going this route, the lack of battleline isn't such a big deal, as you are likely to run against the point cap.

 

  2)  Using the Emperor's Children index, which requires you to take Lucius.  Other than that, if you aren't playing Pactbound Zealots, there really are no disadvantages - you are basically just normal heretic marines with a predilection for pink and loud music.  That said, Lucius is a bit crap compared to other chaos characters (though, point values will be telling, but IMHO he has been overpriced so far in 10th and I don't expect that change) so having to take him is a disadvantage, if a slight one.

 

So, outside of Pactbound Zealots, where one really doesn't want to be limited to just the mark of slannesh, the index does kind of work to make noise marines both chaos cult forces just like those of other cults such as berserkers, rubrics and plague marines while also making them playable as if they were still part of the codex.  Sure, its inelegant and very kludgy, but in terms of overall effect to my own Emperor's Children it lets me use my models with almost no drawback on the battlefield. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't like Lucius and I don't like fielding him, as despite my having built my own model  his rules don't really do anything that I want to do.  Plus, background wise, he's not that interesting.  That said, with the allies rules, I don't have to and can field the leader of my choice unless I want to field more than 3 noise marine units.  Now, there are those players out there who do, and I feel bad for them but things could have been so much worse... I actually feel we lucked out and got close to the best rules out of it that we could have given GW wanting to spend virtually no effort on the endeavor.

Edited May 21 by Dr_Ruminahui

[MDops]

I'm sadly happy that they put out anything at all.

 

Just thinking out loud, it would have been nice to add in a token detachment, mainly to give n indication on the direction that they are planning on taking the EC when they eventually bring out the codex.

 

From the pessimistic side I can see why they did the bare minimum to get this out the door and working with the new codex. With a generous 2 models in the range compared to something like the BA or SW,  is there any financial incentives for them to do more that this?

 

Side note: noise marines seem to work quite nicely with the Dread Talon detachment trying to force the battle shock before the fight phase

[Indy Techwisp]

The index was exactly what we were promised when it was announced.

Lucias, Noise Marines and a way to field them in CSM despite them being removed from the Book, which is pretty much exactly what happened with Khârn and Berserkers last edition.

 

The reason we didn't get really anything besides moving 4 pages of the CSM index to a new document + a rules page about using them is most likely because there isn't a finalised way the EC work as an army yet.

If its even reached playtesting already, it's likely very early in that process meaning anything based on that would be wildly out of date come the actual release.

 

The Index allows you to continue playing EC as you have up to this point, with the same models and armies you have been, whilst letting GW clean up the CSM book ahead of EC no longer being a part of it.

Which is something the didn't need to do, but chose to do anyway.

They could easily have gone "We don't make either Lucias or the Noise Marine upgrade kits anymore. No rules for EC at all until their full release."