Greetings all,

Now some of you may be familiar with my work in creating fan base dexes, Codex Death Guard and Codex Tau, if you’re not familiar with them then you can find them on this various board. In addition to those two I have also done a Sister of Battle one and a few other small projects, those just haven’t ever made it onto the onlinez.
Now I’m wanting to introduce you all to my next project in the shape of a new chaos codex. With this project my aim is to deliver a completely new dex built from the ground up, not just a simple 5th ed tweak with point changes and a few new sparkly items. Let me make it clear that I actually like the current chaos space marine codex and yes I’m aware of its problems and those problems are pretty obvious.

In my opinion and I’m sure others will agree with me, the current form of chaos space marines has become stale. The fact players can make a CSM army using loyal marine dexes just goes to show that the fluffy theme of chaos just isn’t making it to the table top! Currently most chaos marine forces are too similar to loyal marines but with spikes and a grumpy attitude. I want the chaos back in chaos.

So what’s holding CSM back? Sheer diversity I’d say. There are so many types of chaos forces out there that one standard GW sized codex just simply will not cover. You have you four major cult forces, your standard generic undivided forces, your speciality forces such as Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Night Lords and etc. So how do I got about enabling CSM players in making these sorts of themed armies? The answer is the Chaos Lord.

This is my plan; you’re able to take only a single chaos lord who can then be upgraded to a daemon prince and or a sorcerer. Then for your lord you select a doctrine the reflects on the nature of the chaos marine force you wish to build. Some examples of doctrines – Khorne Lord, Occult Lord, Terror Lord, Nurgle Lord and Siege Lord. Now your CSM marine force just happens to be a Word Bearers force so you’d pick the Occult Lord doctrine, this will then enable you access to a higher count of daemons and daemonic gifts for your units. But if you had say a Night Lords army you’d probably want to go the Terror Lord option as that enables you access to more raptors and terror tactics for your units.

All units throughout the dex will have below all their generic wargear and upgrade options a list of doctrine specific upgrades. So for example if you the Occult Lord is at the head of your army you could take upgrades from the Occult Options, things like improved daemonic summoning icons and daemonic upgrades for the unit. But if you had the Terror Lord then you’d be given access to the Terror Options, upgrades like fleet or infiltrate for the unit. Now of course nothing is free, everything has its points values!

Of course cult favourites will remain, such as Plague, Thousand Sons, Khorne Zerks and Noise Marines. Although what force org. slot they sit in will depend entirely on your lord. Khorne Zerks for a Siege Lord would be an elite choice but for a Khorne Lord they’d be a troop choice. Expect to see cult terminators again to.
Other things you can expect are doctrine specific vehicle upgrades! So a possessed vehicle is unique to the particular god the entity within belongs to. So a Khorne possessed vehicle is hungry for blood whilst a Nurgle possessed one is bloated and tough to kill.

Expect to see non-generic daemonic weapons and sorcerers that are actually masters of wielding the ruinous powers that worship.

Okay so everything is all very much up in the air still, what I’ve mentioned above are just broad ideas that have been rolling around in my head during the long drives to and back from work. Now for a project so grand I am looking for input, ideas and inspiration. If you’re a good fluff writer and want to contribute then by all means! If you have some gnarly original art work then fire away! But what I am looking for the most is play testers, I don’t get to play the game as much as I like due to work and social commitments. So if you’re willing to participate with that side of the things that would be fantastic!

Cheers,
King

I actually threw together a draft codex (though I still have a couple of units I'd like to add to it) that covers this sort of stuff. It's basically a sort of middle-ground between this and the previous codex, with some new and interesting (IMHO) concepts thrown in.

Basically, I've gone a very similar route to you, but I wanted to emphasise the diverse nature of a Chaos warband by allowing it to access units from any Legion. There are restrictions, of course:

1. No unit can be a scoring unit unless there is an HQ choice that is dedicated to the same Legion.
2. You can only take one each of an Elites, Fast Attack and/or Heavy Support choice that is dedicated to a Legion for every Troops choice in the army. So, taking a single Death Guard Plague Marine squad (Troops choice) allows you to take one each of a Death Guard Elites, Fast Attack and/or Heavy Support choice.

Obviously, units not dedicated to a Legion are not restricted by the above.

Units are then able to dedicate themselves to a Legion, giving them a small list of capabilities - normally just a USR or some other minor ability. Most Legions require a specific Mark of Chaos to be purchased first, some require either no Mark or the Mark of Chaos Undivided.

There was also a sort of "animosity" rule, where units in different Legions or worshipping different gods would take a single shot at each other at the end of the Shooting phase unless either of them was within a certain distance of a Chaos Lord or Daemon Prince. The idea is to encourage single-Legion armies, but not make it impossible to create a mixed warband where the strength of its leader is all that's really holding it together.

There were also a few other little interesting bits, like a limited access to Daemonic Gifts for most characters, an expanded weapon selection for Dreadnoughts (power scourges, chainfists, thunder hammers, etc) and Defilers, and a couple of new vehicle upgrades.

It was entirely an exercise in mental masturbation, never really intended to go all the way with it

Ah some cool ideas in there Cheexsta. I especially like the animosity rule, that could be played up on nicely.


Although the toughest thing will be creating a straight forward system that enables legion cross overs that wont lead to the creation of tooled forces.

I do like your ideas legion mixing, although Im thinking something a little diferent myself. Mark of Chaos Undivided aka Undivided Lord will sort of give you a middle ground when it comes to unit options. So you can a slice of any legion you like and mix it throughout your army, just not as full strength as a dedicate god or legion type lord. Thats one idea anyway.

Or perhaps when you pick your lord doctrine you can pick a secondary, X number of units can then access the secondary but not the primary? The Lord only gains the personal buffs of the primary doctrine of course.

Alpha legion should be allowed two lords.

I'm very interested in this topic. I'm fairly new to the hobby, but I'm inspired by the Horus Heresy series to delve deeply into the variuos chaod armies.

I'm currently finishing my first 3,00 point Death Guard army and I'm planning to do a Word Bearers army next. I ultimately want to build as wide a variety of CSM armies as possible, not necessarily using the CSM codex but probably also at least one from each of the various SM codexes [codices?] to ensure they all play differently (no point having a bunch of armies that are painted different colours but all play the same!).

My craziest idea is a Tzeentch army based on the soon to be released Grey Knights codex (no-one is incorruptible!), but that is probably some way down the track (if the idea doesn't get so much criticism that I decide not to do it).

Anyway, being a bit of a noob I'm not sure what help I can be to this project but I'm certainly keen to help. I'm fairly good at research/writing, so I could probably help with fluff and I'm happy to try play-testing new rules.

Definitely, that's one of my main concerns and one of the main reasons why the animosity rule was introduced. If you do try to mix Legions or gods, you need to make sure you keep a Chaos Lord or Daemon Prince nearby (though one of the rules for Black Legion is that the range of their influence is increased, so they have it a bit easier). I'm tempted to add another little restriction where you can only take non-Troops squads from a particular Legion if you have at least 10 Troops models from the same Legion or somesuch, just so players don't take a 5-man Iron Warriors CSM squad with no upgrades just to get a nasty IW Havoc squad.


I like the idea of using Undivided Lords to give you a better ability to mix units, that's more or less what I aimed at doing with Black Legion. I'm not so sure about the second idea, it just feels a little overcomplicated.

Also, if you'd like I could polish up the draft copy of what I have and post it up here? There are no points values yet (everything is worth "Xpts"), it's just a rough outline to get the main ideas on (digital) paper and sort out the layout of the list.


The way I handled Alpha Legion is that Aspiring Champions could force up to two wounds allocated to them to be re-allocated to other members of the squad, sort of like IG Bodyguards. Independent Characters can join and leave units as normal, but in combat count as being accompanied by a retinue and can re-allocate wounds in the same way as Aspiring Champions.

In my mind, that would represent well the idea that an enemy might kill who he thought was an important character, only for it to turn out to be John Doe and for the real character to actually be elsewhere.

Why? Wasn't one of the identical twin Primarchs Alpharius/Omegon killed after the Horus Heresy by Roboute Guilliman?

Its all just a Ultramarines lie....

They have no idea if they even killed someone important - they are just guessing.