What I want from Codex: Chaos Legions (or whatever they name it)

I've obviously been fiddling with my Traitor legion, after all, that is what this blog is primarily dedicated to. That and Heresy era stuff in 40k. Now, as anyone who reads the blog knows, I'm not using the current Chaos Codex, but I know I haven't ever said what my real complaints about that Codex actually are and why I choose to not use it. So... allow me to enumerate.

The current Chaos Codex is a minimalistic attempt that destroys most of the flavor of Chaos and turns it into a bland pile of crap that performs poorly on both the battlefield and in capturing the imagination of most gamers(myself included).

The troops are generic and lacking in flavor. The four core cult forces are just that, 4 different units, and honestly only two of them are worth taking. The Berzerkers and the Plague Marines are, as everyone knows, better choices than Noise Marines and the shambling monstrosities that are the Thousand Sons. When you take them in comparison to other, newer (and older) codices, then you have no reason to even attempt to play as a Chaos army, it's simply not interesting or effective. Sure, the Lash+Oblit spam works on troops out of their metal boxes, but in 5th edition as we all know, Mech is king.

What I want to see in the Legions codex is not just a return to each Legion being unique, but each Legion having different, and viable builds when compared to one another. Obviously, I fully expect that we will see a lot of the same faces as in the previous books, Abaddon, Ahriman, Kharn, etc, but I want to see new characters. And by new, I don't mean just Abaddon with a facelift, I mean utterly new (special and generic) characters, preferably one per legion. The characters should unlock options for the entire army depending on what Legion they are dedicated to.

For example, a Word Bearers Acolyte or whatever their Chaplains are called could unlock something like making your generic marines into something akin to "Devoted" and give them all stubborn and relentless instead of whatever generic rules all chaos marines get. A Warsmith from the Iron Warriors could give all troops armed with a special or heavy weapon the tank hunters special rule and the bolster cover rule like the Tech Priests. The Alpha Legion dude could give something like all marines gain stealth and/or infiltrate. Things that make it obvious that your entire army, or at least parts of it, are actually acting in synergy with other parts of the army.

And really, the World Eaters deserve a bit more than just furious charge. Maybe more specialization in their assault troops or similar. Hell, give back the old Chain Axe rule and allow the Khornate Berzerkers to have rending or something like it in CC. Make the Legions unique and interesting again. Make me want to pay money to buy that codex, make me want to play my Iron Warriors as Iron Warriors.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

Project log update. 11/7/11

Ok, so I finished off the Pioneer squad. I finished fixing the Sergeants for the three squads I have finished.

Right now we have the following finished.

Garrison Squad. 8 marines with varying weapons, either axes or chain swords plus bolt pistol. 2 guys with real meltaguns. 1 Sergeant with powerfist and bolt pistol. The Sergeant has the head that I have denoted into being the veteran helmet. These guys were pictured before on the blog.

Construction Squad. 8 marines with bolt pistol and hammer. 2 guys with meltaguns (1 real, 1 Duncan brand kitbash that I need to do a tutorial on). 1 Sergeant with powerfist and bolt pistol, as the above Sergeant he has the veteran helmet. No pictures yet, will get those up ASAP.

Pioneer Squad. 8 marines with axes and bolt pistols. 2 guys with meltaguns (1 real, 1 kitbash). 1 Sergeant with powerfist and bolt pistol. Again, veteran helmet, and still no pictures.

Now, I have gone through all my bits boxes, I scrounged, I scavenged, and I finagled my way into finding enough bolt pistols, kitbashed meltas, powerfist, heads, backpacks, and torso's to do up a total of 7 more marines. Sadly, doing this will use the last of the heads I have from Maxmini so I'm going to have to order more before I can continue building. Now, if I pull the heads from the two built devastators, I can bump the squad up to 9, including the Sergeant. Only one problem. No legs. Not a single set unless I crack open my last box of tactical marines to steal their legs, which I will probably do.

But I won't have any devastators built, except two without heads. Now, I've got a different weapon batch for this squad, the Chaos Warrior/Chaos Marauder swords to go with their bolt pistols. Which gives each squad built so far individual appearances. One with cloaks, one axes, one hammers, one swords. Sure the sword squad will only have 9 marines (if I pull the heads off the Devs), but I won't have any of the Devs built.

I also won't have any characters built in the style of the army at all, which I really need to do. Also, all the marines so far have the regular, shitty style shoulder pads which I hate. Also, the majority of pieces in each squad are imperial, with insignia shaved away. Sure they look heresy, and sure the backpacks, heads, and weapons look damned good, but that's about all.

What I really need to do is put together the Forge World stuff and magnetize them with the 10 spare backpacks I'll have left over after doing whatever it is that I end up doing with the Devs/Sword squad.

I guess I better lay out a plan for the next little bit.

#1. More heads and backpacks from Maxmini. Either I've got three fully completed squads and two Dev squads fully complete (I've got two spare of the Veteran helmets, but not enough missile launchers), or I have three fully completed squads and one nearly complete. I figure I'll bulk it out to 6 squads of 10, just in case I ever field them, say... in Ard Boyz or something. So, just on the assumption that I'm going with the Devs being complete... I need 27 heads for the three squads, minus the 10 for the Forge World guys, and 3 total of the veteran helmets. Which still leaves me without having completed a single character figure. I guess I better figure to finish off the third squad of Devs also. Even if I just bump the Devs up to 6 people in total (if I ever feel like playing as Space Wolves, or as a just in case for the rumored Chaos Legion codex next year) and don't go with a single body after these... I'm going to need...26 heads. Truthfully... I may as well grab 40 heads of the regular heads, so I can build more special weapons as needed (I have plenty of Plasma Guns laying about), also that way I can bump the Devs up with a few spare bodies. Vet heads however, I only need 4 of. Better push that to 20 of those heads, so I can do a swap in when I start making characters and so I can make more Termies. Though I may want to get different heads on them just for differentiation. Backpacks... crap on a stick. I need nearly 50 more.

#2. Legs. Better buy more. Ditto with some meltaguns, the kitbash works, but I prefer real meltaguns.

#3. Hand weapons/bolt pistols. Yep, gonna needs some of those. Just for the one final squad, that's 10 bolt pistols, and 10 of some kind of weapon. Maybe I'll go with chainswords for those guys, I dunno yet. Must ponder.

#4. More missile launchers. I may have enough to finish the one squad of Devs if I go that route. But that still leaves me either 8 or 10 short. Better get that corrected.

#5. Shoulder pads. Ugh, I really hope that Maxmini gets those new pads released soon, I wanna buy them and cut the shitty pads I have now off my guys. At a ballpark if I only go with one shoulder per guy, that's still nearly 100 pads, and if I go with two pads per guy, as I want to... that's probably 200 pads. Lemme see here... 50 guys in the troops section, 15 in the Devs, misc in the characters/spares... call it ballpark 150 in reality. So, just on the safe side... 160-170.

#6. Vehicles/Dreads. Contemptor pattern dreads are fairly obvious. The Rhino's I can go with the ones I have and just add bling, or I could go all nuts and order Forge World Doors. I also should grab a Land Raider or two for my guys.

All that on top of painting. Fucks sake, this is going to be expensive as shit. But, I knew that when I started this project, and for the first time in a long while, I am going to follow it through when it comes to building this army in the way that I want to.

After all that... painting. Which I truly hate to do. I'm going to need more paint and shit.

Thank god for the new house I'm getting, at least I'll have a dedicated hobby room/man cave to build this stuff in.

For now... sleep.

Iron Within, Iron Without.

Finished Squad #2 and the problem of Squad #3.

Got squad #2 put together. Sadly, doing so used all the hammers I had save for 2. Also, I ran out of meltaguns when I finished squad #1. So... since all of Squad #2 has hammers except for the two flamers (which truthfully I will only rarely ever use), and the Sergeant who has a powerfist, I think I need to make two more marines for that squad, and I probably should get around to making an extra guy or two for squad #1. Also, the squad #3, which was supposed to be nearly identical to squad #2 will now not be identical, because I am out of hammers.

So, I think since I have a lot of regular swords from the Chaos Warriors box, I will use those. I also have a number of axes left over, and if needed, I can start popping those onto the guys for Squad 3, that way we have some type of variety. Squad 4 will probably end up with chain weapons. Squad 5 will be the Forgeworld non assault squad, armed with... I don't know yet, probably a mix of weapons. Squad 6 will be the Forgeworld assault guys, with magnetized backpacks so that they can pull duty as jumpers as needed. Axes, Hammers, Cloaks, Swords. That's pretty much the delineation for the squads planned.

Sadly, I also ran out of cloaks for squad #1 when I finished squad #1 so I can't put together two flamer guys that would be able to go with squad #1. Which isn't that big of a loss honestly, as I said, rarely ever do I use a flamer when a meltagun is an option. But, in going through my stuff that I have to put these guys together, another slight issue came to light. Sure I have torsos, not the ones that I want, and honestly not enough that will work for me, but I have some, I also have lots of backpacks and heads, which is awesome. What do I not have?

Lots of bolt pistols. Lots of arms that can be sliced and repositioned to hold some hand weapons, and most important of all, legs. In fact, I think I have somewhere around 4 legs left. Total. Which yes, that will give me a start on putting together the next squad, but uh... that sucks, because it means I probably won't get the guys all assembled for this squad before I go back to work on Tuesday. (I had 5 days off, tomorrow is day #4. Yes, it was glorious, and my god, did I ever need the break.)

So, on the to do list...
#1. Acquire meltaguns. 5 squads. 2 meltaguns per squad, that's 10 meltaguns needed. At the current rate on the interwebz, I am looking at something like... hell, I dunno, anywhere between 30 and 60 bucks before delivery.

 #2. Acquire legs, because honestly, while the one image I saw a while back of a marine made out of shoulder pads and nothing else was cool, I don't wanna go that route. Just to complete the next squad, I need at least 10 legs. That makes the 4 legs I have left become 2 for Squad 2's meltaguns, and 12 for Squad 3. Now, I could go out and buy just 10 tactical marine legs from the Battlewagon Bitz or somewhere like that, or I can get legs that look good. Besides, the 10 tactical legs are either $16 just for those, of $20 depending on the legs, and they are all bland and boring. I want spice, I want awesome, and those legs do not need to apply. Which probably puts me with either Chaos Marine legs, or Khornate Berzerker legs. Both of which need just a bit of work to make them nearly perfect. The Khornate ones need the Khorne symbol carved off, which isn't exactly hard, but the regular Chaos marine legs need to have those fucking chaos stars shaved away. Which is a pain in my nuts to do. So... fuck those legs, more than likely going to go with the Khornate legs. $8 for 6 legs, which makes it $16 for 12. Not quite a $1.20 per leg, but not a bad price at that. That is what I will most likely go with.

#3. Torso's. Yeah, the ones with the Imperial eagle and winged skull are great for space marines. This is preheresy, the Imperial Eagle was not allowed to be worn yet, that was for special units as a decoration. So, once again we have to back to getting different torso's. Now, what I have been doing so far is taking whatever torso I have and shaving off whatever logo existed there at first. The ones that worked best for me were the Assault Marine torso's, as those required a lot less work and looked better. But I ran out of those. I have lots of torso's with Blood Angels or Space Wolves regalia on them, but that's a lot of effort that I can better use elsewhere, and I could trade those bits or use them later. I've looked at a lot of torso's so far, both from GW and from the various other people online. Truthfully? The best looking torso for what I am working on is really the Berzerker body set. Sure all of them have the Khornate icon that's gotta go, but they all also have decent bits of fiddlery on them that look nice. 8 of those? $4. May as well grab two of them since I need enough for at least 1 squad.

#4. Shoulder pads. Damn this part sucks. Now, I've got the guys I already made, and I kinda wish I had held off on making them because of two reasons. #1, Maxmini is in two months time, making Preheresy power armor shoulder pads. #2, I found a site online that will do up custom pads with whatever design I want on them for about $1.25 per shoulder pad after a $25 set up fee. Now, that's still almost a hundred bucks for 60 total shoulder pads if I go with the custom ones. Or about $70 if I go with Maxmini if I like their pads depending on their price. Also, I'm going to have to pop off 20 shoulder pads (or 40) on the two completed squads. Personally, I'm thinking I'll hold off on the shoulder pads for now until I see what Maxmini has to offer. They haven't failed me yet, so I think I can wait just a bit.

#5. Weapons/bolt pistols/meltaguns. Now, hand weapons, I can get piecemeal from friends who are doing stuff with chaos warriors. Bolt pistols however... those I need to get. Nope, not going for the Berzerkers on this as their pistols are fucking ugly and huge when compared to the rest. 5 Chaos Bolt pistols are $3.5, and Assault marine pistols are $4.50 for 5. I'll probably go with a mix, which comes out to $8 for 10 total. Meltaguns however... well I talked about them earlier, $5-9 per meltagun is the average.

So, let's see here... Ignoring the shoulder pads for right now... $46 to put together squad #3. Considering that a base tactical squad from GW costs $37.50 right now, or a squad of 5 assault marines for $33.00 that price isn't to bad. Less than $10 more than a vanilla tactical squad, and that's counting two meltaguns. The only thing it doesn't count is shoulder pads, which I will deal with later.

That said... I guess I better find about $50 for this squad.

Guess I won't be getting them done tomorrow.