The "Codex Compliant" Chapters can, and absolutely should, have access to Unique units.

[Orange Knight]

I made a responce in a different topic with the following statements, but I don't want to derail the discussion there. I think fundamentally there is a lot of misunderstanding about some terms in 40k and I want to address them. And to clarify, I'm not expecting Games Workshop to actually change anything - I'm just clearing up the reality of the matter.

 

As an example, strictly speaking in the lore, the Blood Angels and Dark Angels are fully codex compliant.

 

There is no reason why a chapter should be limited in having some unique wargear variations that lets them perform a task in the way that suits them most.

 

Again, to use the Blood Angels as an example - Their Sanguinary Guard are utlimately Honor Guard with jump packs. We all know that the Codex Astartes does not prohibit Veteran Marines from using a Jump Pack.

The Blood Angels do have the Black Company - but this is one of those "secrets everyone knows" as they technically exist outside of their regular chapter structure. It's the shame of the chapter and again, in the lore, they don't actually appear that often and outsiders don't know of them. I'm happy to see them included as units on the tabletop of course.

The Dark Angels on the other hand are totally compliant in their organisation. All of their unique units fit neatly into the codex, they just have access to some more esoteric wargear which is perfectly in keeping with the lore. The Dark Angel Companions are just a variation of the Bladeguard Veterans. The Deathwing Terminators are just a variation of Assault Terminators, etc etc.

 

Returning to the idea of codex chapters having exclusive units.

 

Are the Salamanders not master craftsmen? Is it not feasable that these masters of fire and ash could produce a more powerful Incinerator variant in their Chapter World's forges? And could they not produce a more powerful Thunderhammer?

If the Salamanders had access to a veteran unit armed with improved hand flamers and Thunderhammers, I would not bat an eye lid. It's perfectly thematic, and perfectly codex compliant.

 

The same can be applied to all of the chapters. The proper way of doing it would be for these units to replace the closest analogue in the codex, but GW doesn't think ahead far enough to do this properly. 

 

The only chapters that aren't codex compliant would be the Black Templars and the Space Wolves. But again, how to really show this on the tabletop when armies are limited in points? Unique unit variations are not what define a chapter's compliance. 

In the lore, it is accepted that certain forgeworlds and planets are able to produce unique wargear and machines that they outfit to local forces. We even see this with unique weapons and options for the Imperial Guard. Are the Death Korps of Krieg not compliant with the Tactica Imperialis? Of course they are.

 

To end - it is folly to claim that "the codex compliant" chapters can't have unique units. If you actually dive in to the lore it becomes clear that titles like "divergent" are used incorrectly by the general community. Just because something is common place does not make it correct. I could go on and say how a lot of people's understanding of the lore in is shaped by popular memes and statements that are perpetuated on social media but are often times wrong. Only a small percentage of hobbyists dive into the novels themselves, or really form opinions on topics without external influences.

 

Edited February 13 by Orange Knight

[Orange Knight]

And yes, I'm aware that the Dark Angels have their "secret protocols" where they can reform all the successor chapters into a Legion if required, but that's litreally the same thing as the Imperial Fist's "Last Wall" protocol, and it isn't much different to how closely the Ultramarines operate with other chapters like the Novamarines and the Genesis Chapter - some of these Chapters literally trade Battle Brothers between each-other regularly.

Edited February 13 by Orange Knight

[DemonGSides]

I think that the shorthand of calling BA/DA/SW/BT 'divergent' when speaking about model lines and rules has brain wormed people when talking about lore.

 

Most people are only calling them divergent because their roster diverges from the SM main roster. That's it.  "Codex Compliant" chapters absolutely could have individual units, but that's what would also instantly make them divergent.

 

The Codex Astartes isn't something that we can read and point to so I don't know how much use it is to talk about what it proscribes and disallows. 

Edited February 13 by DemonGSides

[Evil Eye]

Myself, I'm of the opinion that codex-compliant chapters (that is, ones that are compliant enough that historically they didn't get their own books unlike Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Black Templars) don't necessarily need their own dedicated unique units or wargear (putting aside special characters obviously). Rather I think it would be better to have "generic" special options that can be used to represent the specialisms of the FF codex-compliant chapters, but can also represent successor chapters or homebrew/Your Dudes chapters with their own specialisms. For example, you could equip a Salamanders (or successor) army with an enhancement for flamers and melta weapons, and a Raven Guard force could take enhancements for stealth units and jump troops. OR you could make your own homebrew chapter that has the enhanced flamers and jump troops (call them the Sons of the Wyvern). That said, I feel the ability to provide more individual customization (and the wargear costs to facilitate it) would be necessary for such a system.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

43 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Myself, I'm of the opinion that codex-compliant chapters (that is, ones that are compliant enough that historically they didn't get their own books unlike Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves and Black Templars) don't necessarily need their own dedicated unique units or wargear (putting aside special characters obviously). Rather I think it would be better to have "generic" special options that can be used to represent the specialisms of the FF codex-compliant chapters, but can also represent successor chapters or homebrew/Your Dudes chapters with their own specialisms. For example, you could equip a Salamanders (or successor) army with an enhancement for flamers and melta weapons, and a Raven Guard force could take enhancements for stealth units and jump troops. OR you could make your own homebrew chapter that has the enhanced flamers and jump troops (call them the Sons of the Wyvern). That said, I feel the ability to provide more individual customization (and the wargear costs to facilitate it) would be necessary for such a system.

1. Lore drives the game and its rules 

2. lore still doesn’t support half the ‘divergent’ chapters aren’t divergent.

3. The point being made here is that there’s no excuse for the vanilla chapters not to have cool and unique units.

4. seems like you’re saying vanilla chapters should get special units but for some reason you just don’t want them to be special the same way the big 4 are.

 

edit realized my first 3 points were replying to someone else’s post not EE’s

Edited February 13 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Orange Knight]

If someone gave me a quid every time I came across a responce on a forum, or vlog, or any kind of media in which someone said: "They shouldn't get anything unique because they are vanilla" then I'd be able to afford a few more 40k armies lol.

 

Here's another tidbit of truth: The Iron Hands are way more unique and divergent in their culture as a chapter from the Ultramarines than either the Dark Angels or the Blood Angels. This would reflect in their units if the chapter was properly supported with models.

[Valkyrion]

Space Wolves aren't really that divergent.  They ride on wolves, which is a bit weird, but their structure is broadly that of a standard chapter. They have veterans, bikers, jump packs, devastator equivs, tactical equivs and so on. They might be a bit more Legiony than Chaptery as evidenced by lots of consul type leaders, more focused squads, larger than average squads, but really they share identity with the mainstream. Same with the Black Templars.

 

Having a slightly different organisation, or riding on wolves, or a proclivity for fire based weapons doesn't make you divergent. Neither does growing fangs, having a penchant for drinking blood or having coal black skin. 

Being entirely made up of Psykers does. Being possessed by daemons and then exorcised does. Excising flesh in favour of machinery does. 

 

Having lots of smaller differences makes you more divergent than some, but doesn't mean you are actually divergent.

 

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

Space Wolves aren't really that divergent.  They ride on wolves, which is a bit weird, but their structure is broadly that of a standard chapter. They have veterans, bikers, jump packs, devastator equivs, tactical equivs and so on. They might be a bit more Legiony than Chaptery as evidenced by lots of consul type leaders, more focused squads, larger than average squads, but really they share identity with the mainstream. Same with the Black Templars.

 

Having a slightly different organisation, or riding on wolves, or a proclivity for fire based weapons doesn't make you divergent. Neither does growing fangs, having a penchant for drinking blood or having coal black skin. 

Being entirely made up of Psykers does. Being possessed by daemons and then exorcised does. Excising flesh in favour of machinery does. 

 

Having lots of smaller differences makes you more divergent than some, but doesn't mean you are actually divergent.

 

 

Don’t they deviate from 1000 marines and standard codex adherent organization and structure?

 

as I understand it, they don’t have the 1st or 10th companies as the codex astartes defines them (as far as we know.) with 12 rather than 10 companies and a theoretical 13th.

 

in fact didnt Russ refuse to break his legion up hence why their chapter is so large and why until primaris showed up there were no official successor chapters?

like they literally ignored the codex, not sure how you get any more divergent.

Edited February 13 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Evil Eye]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

If someone gave me a quid every time I came across a responce on a forum, or vlog, or any kind of media in which someone said: "They shouldn't get anything unique because they are vanilla" then I'd be able to afford a few more 40k armies lol.

 

Here's another tidbit of truth: The Iron Hands are way more unique and divergent in their culture as a chapter from the Ultramarines than either the Dark Angels or the Blood Angels. This would reflect in their units if the chapter was properly supported with models.

The point isn't that they shouldn't be able to reflect their fluff-depicted quirks and specialisms, the point is that they can be depicted without having to have 100% specific rules entirely for that chapter and that, given that their own quirks are considerably less divergent than the Blood Angels (The Flaw and increased psyker-count forcing different organization), Space Wolves (saw the Codex Astartes and told Guilliman where he could stick it, radically differently organized and mostly unable to produce stable successors), Dark Angels (hoard rare technology and conceal their deviations from the CA due to their own insane paranoia and self-assigned mission) and Black Templars (also not interested in the CA at all and follow a very different organization structure due to their whole "crusading round the Galaxy as if the Great Crusade never ended" deal and following the Imperial Creed so fanatically that they don't even field Psykers, something explicitly stated to be very rare amongst chapters) it would make more sense to have rules that allow minor deviations from standard organization that can represent the First Founding OR homegrown/successor chapters; ultimately, being able to field Your Dudes (the most important dudes in the galaxy) how you want is more important than having every single FF chapter have bespoke rules that work for them and them alone.

 

As far as the Iron Hands, I could see them getting a full Codex, honestly. Granted, for the longest time the Iron Hands were more in the background than other FF chapters and their fluff expansion is a much more recent thing, IIRC coming from 6E-7E (hence why every tournament Marine army in that era got run as Iron Hands due to the utterly busted rules they got) but if they're that divergent according to newer fluff, then yes they deserve a separate book.

 

But the others could easily be repped with a "Create your own chapter" system (with suggested combinations of rules for the FF chapters). White Scars use a lot of bikes and fast thing, and don't tend to field many Dreadnoughts or slow stuff, Raven Guard tend to rely on stealth and eschew big loud targets like heavy tanks or standard bearers, Salamanders are all about close-range weaponry and have gotten very good at designing their wargear to accomodate that, etc. All of which are eminently achievable without pigeonholing every single homebrew chapter into being a palette-swap of one of the First Founding chapters (same reason I dislike the 5E system of "you have to take this special character to use any moderately-CA-divergent rules" as it basically means people are forced to run these characters or a proxy thereof to make their army play how they want to rather than being able to field the character they want). Yes, they do diverge from the Codex, but they're not so divergent they need a whole separate book and are on the whole Codex-compliant. And there'll be lots of homegrown or later-founding canon chapters people will want to run that don't match up to any of the FF chapters; unless you're suggesting every single canon chapter gets bespoke rules, in which case I direct you to the 3E-4E era where GW published articles presenting a HUGE amount of custom rules for minor chapters.

[Orange Knight]

I would argue the point above that with the Primaris reset, all the chapters are potenitally able to represent their warfare quirks more accurately (or will be able to once the Outrider aspect of the army gets a full set of releases).

 

The Primaris offer ways to build armies the original Astartes did not. You could make an entire sneaky army, and entire tough army, you could have lots of plasma, lots of melta, lots of flamers, etc. The Primaris range actually offers a lot more genuine variety than the original one did, even if the individual units offer less customisation.

 

But now GW have gone back to making unique and exclusive units for the various chapters. To that point, I don't think it's fair to tell any hobbyist that  they shouldn't want to have a unique unit or two to represent their chapter, especially when the lore makes it perfectly clear that it could be something reasonable. That's the point I'm making.

Edited February 13 by Orange Knight

[HeadlessCross]

I don't agree with unique units and upgrades as a whole because it implies that any First Founding Chapter, at any point in the past or in the future, would not have access to certain tools. It's a bit silly to think Ultramarines or their Successors never found Plasma Cannons for their Terminators and never will. That Dark Angels didn't use Sternguard until now was absolute hilarious when the old Company Veterans they had WERE Sternguard for all intents and purposes. Raven Guard and Doom Eagles not having a Jump Pack Honour Guard is an absolute crime. Chapters going on big crusades like the Black Templars should have access to Librarians and not lose them because they chose to use Crusader squads. 

 

To the already annoying Black Templar players that are going to go "BUT I DON'T WANT LIBRARIANS!!!1!", then don't use them. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option by default though.

[Evil Eye]

13 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

To that point, I don't think it's fair to tell any hobbyist that  they shouldn't want to have a unique unit or two to represent their chapter, especially when the lore makes it perfectly clear that it could be something reasonable. That's the point I'm making.

That's just it though. What unique units do they even need that aren't just slightly enhanced versions of existing units with some extra chapter-specific conversions? And again, see the problem of every homegrown chapter becoming a pigeonholed reskin of a FF chapter.

 

The shift to "Aspect Marines" has massively bloated the number of datasheets as is, and giving every single FF chapter their own unique unit is not going to help that. Giving options to existing units that allows them to better represent certain chapters without explicitly locking the mechanics to that chapter I think would be a better approach. For example, Bladeguard being able to be equipped with thunder hammers; good for Salamanders players without locking them to Salamander or successor chapter armies. Produce an upgrade sprue for different weapons for the Bladeguard (and other units for that matter) so the whole kit doesn't need replacing and Roboute's your uncle. Or Primarch, rather. Likewise for the Sons of Vulkan, Salamanders can get an enhancement to Infernus squads that can be shown with simple conversions rather than an entirely new datasheet and kit.

 

I get where you're coming from, but the current rules system just doesn't support every FF chapter getting their own unique units without it being at the expense of the faction as a whole, especially for people who want to field their own chapter with its own quirks. If we're sticking with the 10E paradigm (which honestly is a whole other kettle of fish) it just won't work.

[Evil Eye]

3 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

To the already annoying Black Templar players that are going to go "BUT I DON'T WANT LIBRARIANS!!!1!", then don't use them. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option by default though.

Black Templars shouldn't be able to use them at all because the Black Templars DON'T use them. If you want to run Librarians play a different chapter.

[VengefulJan]

47 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 I don't think it's fair to tell any hobbyist that  they shouldn't want to have a unique unit or two to represent their chapter.

I’m trying to understand, sorry. Could you give a hypothetical or example of what you feel the problem is? Based off of what read and the title of the thread, it kinda sounds like you are arguing two different points. Help me be on your level.

[HeadlessCross]

7 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

Black Templars shouldn't be able to use them at all because the Black Templars DON'T use them. If you want to run Librarians play a different chapter.

Taking Crusader squads stops the Librarian from being used though due to being hooked to the Black Tamplars keyword. The easiest fix is you just don't use Librarians if you're trying to be the best fluff bunny ever. It is not game breaking to suggest that Librarians should be available though, so what's the issue besides arbitrary restrictions of "I wasn't gonna take them anyway because it would shatter my world view"?

Edited February 13 by HeadlessCross

[VengefulJan]

3 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

Taking Crusader squads stops the Librarian from being used though due to being hooked to the Black Tamplars keyword. The easiest fix is you just don't use Librarians if you're trying to be the best fluff bunny ever. It is not game breaking to suggest that Librarians should be available though, so what's the issue besides arbitrary restrictions of "I wasn't gonna take them anyway because it would shatter my world view"?

To be fair, the intent of Black Templars having a book is so that you can play Black Templars. There are no considerations nor any perceived intentions for players to take the book and play them as a different chapter. If you want crusader squad-like units, but still want to keep your Librarians, then you will either need to have a discussion with your opponent(s) or accept the compromise that running that rule book means no librarians for you.

 

The book isn’t stopping you from playing BT with Librarians in the army, but the book won’t help you either.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Evil Eye said:

The point isn't that they shouldn't be able to reflect their fluff-depicted quirks and specialisms, the point is that they can be depicted without having to have 100% specific rules entirely for that chapter and that, given that their own quirks are considerably less divergent than the Blood Angels (The Flaw and increased psyker-count forcing different organization), Space Wolves (saw the Codex Astartes and told Guilliman where he could stick it, radically differently organized and mostly unable to produce stable successors), Dark Angels (hoard rare technology and conceal their deviations from the CA due to their own insane paranoia and self-assigned mission) and Black Templars (also not interested in the CA at all and follow a very different organization structure due to their whole "crusading round the Galaxy as if the Great Crusade never ended" deal and following the Imperial Creed so fanatically that they don't even field Psykers, something explicitly stated to be very rare amongst chapters) it would make more sense to have rules that allow minor deviations from standard organization that can represent the First Founding OR homegrown/successor chapters; ultimately, being able to field Your Dudes (the most important dudes in the galaxy) how you want is more important than having every single FF chapter have bespoke rules that work for them and them alone.

 

As far as the Iron Hands, I could see them getting a full Codex, honestly. Granted, for the longest time the Iron Hands were more in the background than other FF chapters and their fluff expansion is a much more recent thing, IIRC coming from 6E-7E (hence why every tournament Marine army in that era got run as Iron Hands due to the utterly busted rules they got) but if they're that divergent according to newer fluff, then yes they deserve a separate book.

 

But the others could easily be repped with a "Create your own chapter" system (with suggested combinations of rules for the FF chapters). White Scars use a lot of bikes and fast thing, and don't tend to field many Dreadnoughts or slow stuff, Raven Guard tend to rely on stealth and eschew big loud targets like heavy tanks or standard bearers, Salamanders are all about close-range weaponry and have gotten very good at designing their wargear to accomodate that, etc. All of which are eminently achievable without pigeonholing every single homebrew chapter into being a palette-swap of one of the First Founding chapters (same reason I dislike the 5E system of "you have to take this special character to use any moderately-CA-divergent rules" as it basically means people are forced to run these characters or a proxy thereof to make their army play how they want to rather than being able to field the character they want). Yes, they do diverge from the Codex, but they're not so divergent they need a whole separate book and are on the whole Codex-compliant. And there'll be lots of homegrown or later-founding canon chapters people will want to run that don't match up to any of the FF chapters; unless you're suggesting every single canon chapter gets bespoke rules, in which case I direct you to the 3E-4E era where GW published articles presenting a HUGE amount of custom rules for minor chapters.

You don’t really seem to understand the BA chapter and how it’s organized. DC have nothing to do with the chapter’s organizational structure, nor does more librarians, that just means the librarius has more members.

 

its organization is identical to what the codex astartes prescribes.

 

and your system of create your own chapter or represent the vanilla chapters…that’s already existed and still wasn’t really enough. 
 

first it was doctrines, now its detachments.

Edited February 13 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[SvenIronhand]

Where in the Codex does it prescribe a specialized forlorn hope company-sized formation, pray tell? 

[HeadlessCross]

5 minutes ago, VengefulJan said:

To be fair, the intent of Black Templars having a book is so that you can play Black Templars. There are no considerations nor any perceived intentions for players to take the book and play them as a different chapter. If you want crusader squad-like units, but still want to keep your Librarians, then you will either need to have a discussion with your opponent(s) or accept the compromise that running that rule book means no librarians for you.

 

The book isn’t stopping you from playing BT with Librarians in the army, but the book won’t help you either.

A player shouldn't require an opponent's permission for something like that, hence why it's something that should be default. 

[Evil Eye]

Just now, HeadlessCross said:

Taking Crusader squads stops the Librarian from being used though due to being hooked to the Black Tamplars keyword. The easiest fix is you just don't use Librarians if you're trying to be the best fluff bunny ever. It is not game breaking to suggest that Librarians shouldn't be available though, so what's the issue besides arbitrary restrictions of "I wasn't gonna take them anyway because it would shatter my world view"?

Crusader Squads are a Black Templar exclusive unit that falls entirely outside the Codex Astartes (and rightfully so; having initiates charging into melee clad in carapace armour in a squad alongside their power-armoured, more skilled brethren is not exactly conducive to high survival rates after all and only makes sense in the context of a chapter so zealously faithful to the Imperial Creed that they even reject psykers despite the rest of the Adeptus Astartes considering such behaviour more than a little nutty), and the Black Templars explicitly don't use Librarians (see prior). If you want to run an assault-focused but otherwise compliant chapter with Librarians whose regular Marines are mostly equipped for CQC, you can totally do that- Assault Intercessors are a thing after all. You can't give them pyreblasters flamers, which does suck, but that's on GW's ridiculous lockdown on unit customization rather than the Black Templars not liking Psykers.

 

Crusader Squads themselves are a Black Templar unit- if you want to use them, you can't use Librarians. You might as well ask why I can't take Abaddon in a Sisters of Battle army (the answer is because the braziers keep setting fire to his cape every time he comes to visit Ophelia for tea and scones with Morvenn Vahl and those cape repairs are expensive!).

[VengefulJan]

1 minute ago, HeadlessCross said:

A player shouldn't require an opponent's permission for something like that, hence why it's something that should be default. 

But it’s a rule book. It has the rules to say that this is how the army plays. If a person comes to me to play a game with their tau army and are going to be using guardsman units in that benefit from rules in the tau codex, I would like to know before hand before we have an altercation on the table.

 

This is the point of their being rules, so that we can trust the written text so we don’t have to have these long discussions with strangers every time we just want a game. If someone comes to me with wanting a game, I’ll tell them I’m playing Chaos Marines with Chaos Knights, and they can say Space Marines with Dark Angels Supp. and that should set up the base expectations of what units and tactics that both of us will employ against each other.

[Blindhamster]

23 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

You don’t really seem to understand the BA chapter and how it’s organized.

 

its organization is identical to what the codex astartes prescribes.

Yes and no.

 

Lore wise, evil eye is 100% correct, blood angels are noted to have a particularly high number of librarians, this has been a thing for a very very long time. We dont have a means to play that - because it isn't really needed, its still just librarians and space marines can take a lot in a game as it is. (lore wise, we have ~5-10 more than ultramarines (varies through editions), 5 of which are dreadnaughts lol)

 

then there is the death company, which absolutely does not fit within standard codex space marines structure.

 

then there are the sanguinary priests - which serve the role of apothecary sure, but also serve other roles. We've been tood and frowed on if we can use apothecaries as well over the editions, but quite often have been able to use both. Regardless, they do not follow precisely the standard codex apothecary role or organisation.

 

their chaplains perform the usual role, but also the other role associated with monitoring the flaw, again I believe blood angels have slightly more than most chapters as a result.

 

sanguinary guard are indeed "just" honour guard with jump packs. But i'd also note that honour guard was a uniquely blood angels thing for a very long time as well :P Command squads were the norm. Sanguinary Guard changed in role over the years. It's reasonable to assume other chapters might have /something/ similar, but personally, id want such a unit to be unique and to the theme of the particular chapter.

 

blood angels don't HAVE more assault squads, however blood angels are more likely to have full strength assault squads as its a role that always has marines voluneer into.

 

Ultimately, blood angels are a codex compliant chapter but with a *. They are in as much as their geneseed quirks allow. The majority of their divergences come from said quirks. But a few come from other bits of lore, such as the overcharged engines (that went the way of the dodo, despite that literally being the origin of "da red wunz go fasta".

 

Anyway, on the main topic. Yes I totally agree with the original point, all geneseed lines should have access to 1-2 unique units, they shouldn't necessarily require models (though cool if they do), but at least variants of existing units wound be good (so, like death company or hounds of morkai or deathwing terminators now), i don't agree with just making all the unique stuff generic. I personally LIKE the flavour/character unique units and rules represent. I like that GW tries to instill a bit of lore into things still, even if its less than it once was.

Edited February 13 by Blindhamster

[Evil Eye]

2 minutes ago, VengefulJan said:

But it’s a rule book. It has the rules to say that this is how the army plays. If a person comes to me to play a game with their tau army and are going to be using guardsman units in that benefit from rules in the tau codex, I would like to know before hand before we have an altercation on the table.

 

This is the point of their being rules, so that we can trust the written text so we don’t have to have these long discussions with strangers every time we just want a game. If someone comes to me with wanting a game, I’ll tell them I’m playing Chaos Marines with Chaos Knights, and they can say Space Marines with Dark Angels Supp. and that should set up the base expectations of what units and tactics that both of us will employ against each other.

Exactly this. It's why older editions explicitly outlined how to handle fluff-friendly exceptions to normal rules (such as Orks looting Eldar weapons, a unique Chaos daemon engine, etc) and how they usually added the caveat of "these are meant for flavour, not balance, and should be talked over with your opponent". To be honest, a large part of the problem is that due to the modern rules system and its keyword-lockout shenanigans, fielding non-conventional armies is much, much more difficult. Before, all that was needed to homebrew, say, a Red Corsair army having a pilfered Whirlwind would be "this is identical to a Space Marine Whirlwind but with upgrades from the Chaos vehicle armoury instead, is that OK?" and if it was OK, that was that. With the tangled web of cross-keyword interactions that's MUCH more difficult to do now. I can certainly understand the desire to have more creative freedom with force selection but A: even with a really flexible system, opponent consent is sometimes necessary and B: you're playing the wrong game if you're playing 10E and expecting creative freedom.

[VengefulJan]

6 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

… you're playing the wrong game if you're playing 10E and expecting creative freedom.

It hurts me on how much I agree with this statement.

[Orange Knight]

44 minutes ago, VengefulJan said:

I’m trying to understand, sorry. Could you give a hypothetical or example of what you feel the problem is? Based off of what read and the title of the thread, it kinda sounds like you are arguing two different points. Help me be on your level.

 

There are people in the hobby, many of them, who when presented with a perfectly valid opinion such as: "Wouldn't it be nice to see X Chapter receive more support, perhaps a unique unit or two" respond with: "No, they shouldn't have anything unique because they are a vanilla chapter that follows the codex"

 

And I'm paraphrasing. 

 

But the rebuttal I am showing is one that comes from a lack of understanding of the lore.