EDITORIAL: The State of Chaos Marines

Let’s start the complaining by saying the Helbrute, while a beautiful model, is worthless. You can relatively easily convert it to have different, more useful weapons, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Helbrute as a Codex entry is worthless. Even after a FAQ’d points decrease, it is still not worth putting into an army. It has no deployment method other than trundling up the field and it’s rules don’t do it any favors at all. There’s one chunk of the Chaos side that’s left in the dust.

The Cultists and Chosen are a one-shot buy. I don’t want more than one box. They start to get horrendously samey, especially since they all have certain poses that will make duplicates stand out painfully in an army. Yes, it’s easy enough to convert Cultists from other things, so I can’t complain much about not having a Cultist box, though it would be nice to have something to get lots of actual Chaos Cultists with all the options that they can have right out of one box.

The Mutilators and Warp Talons are worthless, Raptors are ok and are indeed beautiful models, and at the very least the box is a great way to get lots of Lightning Claws. The Maulerfiend and Forgefiend are situational at best and the Dark Apostle and Warpsmith.. well, I’ve never seen one in any list or on any table, fluffy or not. The other models are nice, but suffer from the same problem as the Chosen – you only need one and the load-outs they come with are not necessarily ideal.

That leaves the Heldrake as the only thing that’s worth getting, and even then you only want 2, else you risk going into ‘That Guy’ territory. I had to do some serious cutting and greenstuffing to get it to fly level, instead of eternally banking like a car with smaller wheels on one side.

A Helturkey and Cultists, that’s all that’s really worth getting in any significance out of the whole release of Chaos Marines. It’s not the models fault though, really. The Codex assigned all of these things certain levels of effectiveness and value. It made Mutilators and Warp Talons, potentially beautiful models, totally useless and it made the Heldrake what it is today. 

And on top of it all, the Codex didn’t even give Chaos players what we really wanted. When a Chaos Marine player opens up the Chaos book, they aren’t greeted with the vibrant range of Chaos that the Chaos Marines subscribe to, they’re instead tricked into a copy-paste of the previous book with a few extra dinosaurs thrown in, fewer Daemon Weapons, and Daemon Princes that are supposed to have eternal life, but without Eternal Warrior. Some things got better. As a Slaanesh player I’m ecstatic that Noise Marines became so much better, with the potential for FNP, and Blastmasters with AP3, but I can only take those weapons after paying a hefty premium, and only in any significance if I take a Slaanesh Lord, which forces me to spend points in a direction I may not want to go with my army. At least in the previous Codex, I could take Noise Marines right off the bat and have my Slaanesh Sorcerers leading them.

At least the Dark Angels players can be content that they didn’t get rolled into the Space Marine codex, but Chaos players are left frustrated, and can you really blame us? We had such hopes. Everywhere when the rumors were coming out people were praying, BEGGING for Legion rules. People were hoping for new Special Characters that would represent the Night Lords and Iron Warriors at the very least, and news of Word Bearer rules gave those players nosebleeds like you wouldn’t believe.

Instead we got a Dark Apostle and Warpsmith that are worthless, nothing for Night Lords, and no special rules in tandem with Daemons, and the fluff entries on each of these were totally shameful. Keep in mind, this was well before anybody gave any credence to the rumors of Supplements, but immediately people could see, they could FEEL that the Chaos Codex was incomplete. It didn’t represent what people thought of Chaos Marines at all. For the few people that were content playing a random warband or the Red Corsairs, or the Black Legion, the Codex probably didn’t affect them at all, but for those that are loyal to the Emperor’s Children or Night Lords, this Codex did nothing for them.

In many ways, we’re at about the same place we were at the twilight of the last Chaos Codex. Daemon Princes, Plague Marines, Obliterators.. only now we have a dragon and some Cultists thrown in too, and out of necessity a Havoc squad or ADL. How bad is that, to have a whole new codex after so many years, and the armies have barely changed?

Dark Angels changed dramatically, Chaos Daemons had quite the upset, Tau will never look the same, and Eldar are still exploring the range of their new Codex. Space Marines will probably also experience quite the upheaval if the current rumors hold steady.

An Eternity of Bitterness

Are you understanding the pain here? At the very least I’m sure you can understand my passion about this. I’ve invested THOUSANDS of dollars into this hobby, buying models, paint, codexes and other supplies, and hundreds of hours building, painting, playing.. so to have my investment get so very little return is incredibly frustrating. If this was some video game I paid 50 bucks for and played for a few hours until I realized that the character I was playing wasn’t as good as the other classes, I’d probably be a little frustrated and then switch characters. In this hobby, that’s not as easy, it would require more hours, more hundreds of dollars to buy a whole new army, and I’d be incredibly lucky to get anything at all for my current Chaos Marines. Is it wrong to want something better for something that I’ve put so much time, money, and energy into? Other players seem to be rewarded, but after a short period of time it just feels like Chaos Marines are getting dumped on!