Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Hot Mess – CSM Chaos Lord
Man I remember those old 2.5-3.5 days of the CSM Chaos Lord being a murder machine. Now he’s a 40K hot mess. What happened to that guy?
Why did he end up being some kind of lame accountant of Chaos instead of an ancient warrior cursed to live forever in service to grand dark masters? Or is that still an Accountant?
I have made a lot of Chaos Lords in my day and while they kinda got worse as I continued to kit bash them it still makes me sad to think they were once awesome. They used to be scary with crazy combat combos, jump packs of doom, and riding awesome bikes into the warp. These guys were the jerks of the 40K universe due to their pacts with the dark gods and having to listen to Abaddon drone on about how things used to be cool, back in the day. Now these guys are a forgotten footnote normally replaced with a Master of Executions, Lord Discordant, or a Daemon Prince trying to persuade your character to allow a light bit of mental interrogation.
Let’s see if we can make them better and have the whole rule of only one per detachment mean more than just a weird build tax. We want to make them an integral part of the CSM experience and hopefully truly lead the army like a Lord should. Or at the very least be a bad ass combat monster.
Let’s Make CSM Lords Worthwhile For Their Army
You have two options to make these guys good. They are either force multipliers where they amp up everyone else around them – or they are the star of the show with abilities that make them scary. Personally the days of a single infantry model being a bad ass are kind of gone right now so will start with just how to make them let the CSM be better than they were without him.
Fix His Reroll Aura
First thing I would do is update the CSM Chaos Lord’s Auras. His Reroll 1’s to hit should most likely be tweaked to just work with Infantry models only. Remove the CORE aspects and allow him to amp up all his foot slogging friends. This is an easy one and would just let him be something fun to have on the table top surrounded by Possessed and anchored by Obliterators. It also ensures he isn’t too abusable as we remove some of the Vehicle interactions that might be too good (and could be left to the Warpsmith if we were really building the army).
Make His Marks Important
From there I also think we should really look at how the Chaos Mark they get is shifted too. If he has a matching mark to the unit that is nearby they should somehow amplify them as a leader of the pact. This could be things like adding extra attacks, adding Strength, Toughness, etc or even just some kind of awesome other effect like letting them do mortal wounds on 6’s to wound. These sorts of things makes this model important and acting as a leader to units be important.
More Command Choices!
From there, the next thing I would do is just utilize the Wanton aspects to allow him to pick a unit and let them act in that phase for the turn. This would be cool as heck as you could easily combo things with shooting aspects and fighting aspects to jump a turn or two. Or help let him have some cool command choices to be different than grant things like full rerolls etc. Exploding 6’s is neat but having to move from turn to turn is a good balance but can be annoying when you end up missing your turn of heavy exploding 6’s due to good terrain or going first into a well hidden enemy.
Update the Chaos Lord’s Options
Why can Captains get a bike and a jump pack but the CSM Chaos Lord can’t? Why can’t he be tooled up with all kinds of weird options or upgrades? Why does making him possessed cost a Relic when it should just be a points upgrade based on his Mark? Why not give him all the choices so we can make a cool jump pack looking goth Night Lords dude who is made at all his choices he made in life? Just give me my Jump Packs back so I can do a tooled up mortal wound jerk and feel better about life!
I really just want them to become the ultimate bad guys they once were. The ability to only take one is just a slap in the face as taking one is such a tax for the army. There are better options to are cheaper and just do it better that you wonder why you would even take one? Let’s hope GW makes him unique whenever they update it again and let’s him work the table top like some kind of monster he should always have been.
For Abaddon and Chaos!
