Goatboy’s 40K Hot Mess: How To Add Space Marine Chapter Rules
Goatboy here. In today’s 40K Hot Mess we discuss ways GW could add the Space Marine chapters back into the codex – and not create an even bigger mess.
This lack of specific Chapter rules in the new Space Marine codex is frustrating. While I understand why Gw did it – there has to be a way to add it back in. Thus this whole little discussion on what I would do to get them back in. Let’s jump in and get to brewing.
How Much Change Do Space Marine Chapter Rules Need?
First of all at what level do we shovel these ideas in? Is this a whole new detachment level with enhancements, stratagems, and bespoken rules? Is this just a simple shift of a keyword and the abilities the keyword gives? Is this a wholesale change of everything we know and love about Space Marines?
You know what – I think it should be a simple shift. It should just be a true keyword shift that changes a top-level rule and then cascades down to the army itself. I don’t want to make a Detachment because it goes against the initial motto of the edition with a very limited, and clean Detachment system.
It would add in a whole slew of complex nonsense if we went with Chapter detachment rules. Again we are looking at Space Marines as a whole with all their other brothers in arms that have funky chapter rules and what not. I don’t want to see an Imperial Fist-Blood Angel army hodgepodge. I want to see a clean Imperial Fist army using the Space Marine rules and detachments listed within to create their army.
How Do Add Space Marine Chapter Rules Cleanly?
So what does this even mean? It means swapping out Oath of Moment and creating something unique for each Chapter. You would then also limit it on top of that to only being Space Marines. Thus letting all the cool detachments still flow into the other armies but then letting Space Marines Chapters have something cool and unique to them.
How do we do it? What could we do to give each unique Chapter its own top level rule to help mitigate the loss of Oath of Moment and get something cool in exchange? What kind of ideas sound good on paper and maybe be decent on the tabletop?
If we are replacing Oath of Moment we should think of things that are not “change all units all the time” options and instead things you can choose to happen. You could almost all Chapter rules “Oath of X” based on the chapter and try to make things match their fluff and interaction. It also doesn’t have to be all offensive abilities. Some could be defensive in nature.
Some Chapter Rules Examples
For example, take the Salamanders. We could call it Oath of Resolution and it would be: Select an enemy unit and all your units take -1D to any damage done by the unit. It would be a thing like screw you Angron you are not going to kill all my brothers with that sweep attack. Or eat it super-heavy you can’t do as much damage as before. It won’t always be useful, just like playing Oath of Moment into an MSU army. But it would be useful some of the time and still give you some interesting mid-game options.
Or for another example, take something like Oath of Destruction for Chapters that specialize in targeting specific enemies and bringing pain to bear. Things like Devastating Wounds to the target unit, which would be a powerful ability but again not nearly as good into MSU. This feels Little rules, that bring to bear one specific phase of the game and try to amplify it in a way to that fits a specific Chapter’s way of war.
For White Scars you could get Oath of the Wind for say… Iron Hands, that lets you pick a target unit and get +1D to your melee weapons versus the target. This way you could stack a few interesting things on top of each other to try and lop off the head of the enemy or wreck a Giant vehicle/MC/Knight etc. There are a lot of interesting options just to shift things and create a unique choice to build your Space Marines.
What other shifts to Oath can you think of? We could go with a whole – call this Oath and it shifts how you play for that turn? Or it can shift from different Oaths etc? This chains into Black Templar pretty well but what about the other ones? Do we just make it a single turn choice or make it something like you complete X things and you activate your Oath too just like how Knights gain Honor?
For the Emperor!
