Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Hot Mess: CSM Venom Crawler
Goatboy here and boy do we have a weird unit with the 40K Chaos Space Marine Venom Crawler. It needs help – bad!
I don’t think this model ever set the world on fire, so it is ripe for a nice update. The 10th edition Index change wasn’t too kind to it. While it isn’t terrible, it could use some work. I always wondered why this wasn’t the first model in a large scale of Dark Mechanica, but we’ll have to wait and see if that might be coming in the future.
Why is the Venom Crawler bad? Well, it doesn’t do a heck of a lot of things really well. It sorta is just there as a smallish dreadnought-like thing. that crawls around, bringing its reality-warping nonsense to the tabletop. The Venom Crawler was originally a kind of helper robot for the Master of Possession in that it helped cast spells, was a bit of a bruiser, and just kinda protected its master. Now it is just a weird little model that gets better if it kills something – which is kinda hard to do for it.
Let’s see if we can fix it with some thoughts and ideas. Dark Prayers to Dark gods full of pure Dank Energy. Grant it some kind of energy drink of warp nonsense and help bring it over the edge a bit.
Let the Venom Crawler Hit Harder
The big thing is deciding what it should be – designwise. Should it punch things hard? Should it shoot things hard? What if it could decide to do things on the fly like before you activate it for the turn you select a special ability from several options. Maybe it wants to juice up with some better combat profile and make its shooting attack worse. Or how about you want it to shoot better as it won’t get near someone soon enough. Having the ability to “decide” how to act gives it that “Dark Mechanicus” style of ability and lets it try to AI its way out of bad situations.
Give the Venom Crawler a Bonus Aura
How about something like just granting an extra pip of strength to your psychic shooting attacks? Or how about granting it more damage on those attacks, too, as it draws its warp energy into itself and grants its Master of Possession some extra juice to get things done? Heck, you could let it bring Warp Energy around itself and boost up other Daemon Engines or Daemon options due to its nature of being a sort of battery to the Warp nonsense of 40K.
Amp Up All Its Attacks
Look, the Venom Crawler’s guns need to shoot more and its tentacles need to slap things more. It is just that simple and the only way to get these Daemon engines to be better is to just make them a heck of a lot more deadly. They already get all the anti-vehicle and anti-daemon options thrown at them. So why not make them scary again by amping up all their attacks in some way. Make it part of its Daemon Forge thing where it has to hurt itself at the end of the turn when it decides to mainline warp dust in whatever orifice it likes to use.
Daemon Engine Healing Action
Look, if the C’Tan can regenerate wounds, so why can’t all Daemon Engines do the same thing? They used to have this, and why not let it be a part of its rules? I just find it weird that these living engines of death and destruction are just not that tough when you look at it. Having a daemon forced into a car should let that car be a bad-ass is all I am saying.
I have three of these guys painted and would love to see Venom Crawlers be cool. They just never got the spotlight they deserve, and I hope the new CSM book comes out with some kind of Vashtor-themed Detachment that is actually cool and lets Daemon Engines shine.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
