Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: CSM Sadness, 1 Doesn’t Equal 2!
Goatboy here and the new Book of Rust doesn’t give Chaos Space Marines an extra wound. What’s a CSM fan supposed to do now?
It’s pretty dang disappointing and while there some gold in the hills it isn’t the gold I wanted. It also means we will probably have a good amount of time to wait for any kind of real Chaos Space Marine release. Heck – as it didn’t combo all the Daemon rules too it still has me thinking will see the Warp bros coming this year with hopefully a more interesting book.
But enough whining – let’s get into the book a bit and talk about it. The Good is that it does combo a ton of stuff that isn’t in print anymore to give a new player the chance to all the Chaos Space Marine rules with this book and a codex. That is great as it currently was sitting on what 3 or 4 out of print books to get all the rules for each of the Legions and their updates? That’s pretty good and just makes life a bit easier. We also did get a new data slate in Bel’Akor and a whole new army list that is pretty convoluted but interesting in that there could be something powerful in there.
The Dark Master
Bel’Akor is pretty beastly as a giant Daemon Prince/Greater Daemon thing. He has all the chaos marks so now can show up in any Daemon list, stays an HQ, and doesn’t have to be the warlord in a regular Daemon list. I can expect to see him show up in a Monster Mash Greater Daemon list going 4-2 or 5-1 at an event near you at some point. The fact he has all the Marks means he can get some fun updates like Advance and Charge from Slaanesh and a +1 to their save from Tzeentch if you want. He hits like a truck and with an option to slash for more attacks he can be a powerful addition to your Greater Daemon friends. Heck, I am looking at this now as I have a ton of big monsters who would love to have this guy be a friend – if I could only get one at some point.
Beyond that, we do get an Army of Renown that makes you take Bel’Akor as your warlord and has to have him in it. I kinda wish you didn’t have to as he is a big tax on that style of army. You gain the ability to have a mixed army that can’t have any Legion-specific units, Greater Daemons, Daemon Engines, and Daemon Princes. You can only initially take one of each Mark daemon type in the army so until you get all 4 Daemon Marked units picked then you can double up. So no massed Nurglings without massed Tzeentch, Slaanesh, and Khorne.
You do gain some cool psychic spells which are neat (you get Da Jump for an infantry unit – aka Missile Bloodletters) and a “can’t shoot unless closest” spell as well. The rest of them are kind of weird and if you want to take them on specific casters it is take this Spell set or the other ones on your dataslate. There isn’t any set of relics or Warlord options but you do gain some Stratagems. They are alright and I wish they would have added something that allowed the HQ options to take a Warlord trait of some sort. I think this limits a lot of the army to create neat little aura options that could be pushed it into a competitive option. There is an amazing auto pass option for morale for Daemons that counts as a 1. This is going to be a pain in the butt when dealing with the huge Pink Horrors unit sitting in the midfield for any of those army builds.
Overall it is a weird release for Chaos as we wanted more but what we get is handy – just to have it all in one fancy book to use. We all wanted more but it looks like we have to wait. On the other side of the book we do get a little Sisters of Battle Update and an Admech Army or Renown. Sisters get an update to Order of Our Martyred Lady and Admech get an Army of Renown that fits into how armies are currently being built.
Skitarii Veterans
On the Admech side we get a Skitarri focused Army of Renown. It adds in more layers of complication and forces you to pay more for your Rangers and Vanguard for more rules, abilities, etc. Is it an auto take? Enh – probably not as you lose out on some things and your army gets more expensive. Still, it might see some play as there are some interesting stakes and interactions to make your Skitarri a nightmare to remove. It makes me wonder when will see the basic trooper get more expensive in whatever update comes at the end of the year. The army doesn’t get any “cheaper” to purchase so at least there is that. The summer of finding all your armies covered in red rust dust is gonna keep moving into the new year. I do hear chatter on how Orks are gonna be nutty so maybe will all just be complaining about Greenskins before long.
Overall I think the Army looks alright. Admech is just good and the restrictions this army brings probably will keep it from not showing up. Especially on the character side as the army normally used multiple layers of stacking characters to power up more than one block of robotic cyborg dudes. It is a bit weird as it’s really only 3 pages of rules to limit your army choices, 1 warlord trait, 1 relic, and 4 Strats. They are good choices but we always want to see more choices.
Martyred Lady
The Sisters side of things looks ok as it gives an Order that isn’t always taken some extra bits and pieces. You can get a pretty cool murder machine Canoness if you want that can dish out multiple mortal wounds by taking 1-2 herself. The whole Order is dependent on the Opponent killing something of there’s which can always be an issue due to the Sisters player unable to control the activation. Of course, if your opponent ain’t killing your stuff it usually means you are winning so it isn’t the end of the world.
The supplement gives you 3 new Warlord traits which are ok – one lets you take a random Warlord trait on a unit and if they die it moves to another Character – which then allows you to pick. I really hate anything that is a random add on unless it is built to give you 2 for 1 if you roll randomly. Heck, that would have been amazing if you could pick one or roll for 2 and get a 3 Warlord trait Mini Morty Sisters of battle. The Legacy Warlord traits lets you give out mortal wounds on a 5+ when a unit sacred rite of Spirit of the Martyr is active and the unit getting beaten up is within 6″ of the warlord trait holder. That could be fun. The last one is the combo piece that lets you get +1 strength and attack for each wound the Warlord has taken. There is a fun relic that lets you burn wounds to activate the sword to dealing Mortal wounds instead of damage.
You get 3 relics – the cool Sword of Sacrifice, a Helm that gives you 2+ invulnerable save for a turn you can’t reroll, a weird Mace that hates Kids, and finally a scroll for an Imagifier can read for everyone within 6″ to get +1 attack. The Sword and the Scroll look interesting in that you can build up some crazy turns to throw out some massive amount of damage in a counter attack. Overall nothing extremely amazing here.
The Stratagems are much more interesting in you get a full page of them. You get some cool +1 to hit options if you are going against a bigger squad in Melee, abilities to shoot in your opponents phase in death or if the unit is only halfway damaged, a crazy Flamer power that lets you shoot your flamers a lot more, and finally you can throw on Objective Secured onto a unit that didn’t have it or have a unit with Objective secured count as one more model each. A lot of trolling like action in these strats.
Overall is this a much-needed book for your 40k purchase? Unless you play these 3 armies then most likely not. I am not even sure it is needed for those players’ armies too as normally a CSM player has been playing for a bit so they have all these rules. I really wish we had gotten a better update on the CSM front but I can’t get too upset as Bel’Akor does give me a new fun monster option for a Greater Daemon beatdown list.
Death to the False Emperor!
