Warhammer 40K: Chaos Changes Are Gift And A Curse
Goatboy is back waxing poetic about the changes for the followers of Chaos from the latest Balance Dataslate.
Goatboy here with a Monday pondering about the tides and shifts of the vast ocean that is the Chaos Factions for 40K. This update was fickle like the Chaos Gods – sometimes embracing you like a long lost friends but other times pushing you down like a hated rival. It is the way of Chaos where a gift can be a challenge to strive through or it can just make you into a giant revolting pile of convulsing flesh. Let’s dig in and see if we come out alright in the end.
I think the update was pretty decent for Chaos as a whole. There were a lot of nice little bumps and while everything wasn’t amazing it still was enough of a win to let your Chaos Champions yell to the heavens. We’ll start out with what I think are gifts from the GW Chaos Gods of Rules.
Chaos Gifts
At a high level all the points updates were pretty kind. You saw the majority of the armies get some drops and while the newest one did see some points go up (I’ll talk about that later) it wasn’t all bad. I think the Chaos Daemons did the best as seeing none of their Greater Daemons take a hit, Be’lakor going down, and even some other targeted drops in their list. The army still feels a bit weird but for all those players who love giant monsters (which would be me!) it is a great time to throw them down on the table. I still think they suffer a bit from a lack of damage at times but this game isn’t always about smashing face as much as it is control the board.
Speaking of giant, things the Chaos Knights did see a nice thing added to them. Allowing their Titanic Knights the ability to “Koolaid” man through a wall with the only threat being a Battleshock chance is a net positive. We’ll see if it makes them better or actually brought in mixed armies. Here’s hoping we get an updated Detachment for them. Maybe we’ll get a book for them before long. It feels like an easy one-two punch to do them with Imperial Knights and please all the big kit fans.
The Thousand Sons escaped with minor shifts in their army. I get the feeling will see another tweak for them coming either in an actual book or another slate adjustment. With very little point shifts in their army they continue to be the “thinking” players army right now. They can just do a ton of damage as needed so without any major changes in how they work they will continue to be a boogie man. On top of the other “best” armies getting hit it might be a few months of The Thousand Sons dominating.
Continuing the Daemon train I think will see some Russian doll nonsense with the Daemon book. I love how all the Greater Daemons now are portal Shadow creators and it will let you do some crazy things. Expect to see a lot more specific marked little stuff pop out of the greater daemon friends. I have already talked about how I could have a ton of Daemonettes flowing off of a Keeper of Secrets and I think it could be a very strong thing to build out. Slaanesh stuff saw a points drop and I am wondering if even marking a Grinder to appear out of the blue might be a good thing. You’ll still need Be’lakor just to help you survive the first turn shooting but overall it feels like a good update for the Daemons.
Not All ‘Gifts’ Are Great
The poor Chaos Space Marines only had a few weeks of cheaper points. I agree with the change to the Warp Talons but thought the points increases were not needed. I still think if you can find room for 10 they are decent to have but fielding 30 is really too much. Thankfully they didn’t hit the Chosen squad at all but instead decided to go after Legionaries. It seems like GW has a fear that those units would be dominating. Another unit you can also add into the “why did they change unit” bucket was Havocs. It’s not the reason they were not showing up on tabletops. I mean I was looking at fielding a unit or two coming out of Rhino with Autocannons and Heavy Bolters. But will see if they end up not being worth it.
The movement shift for Chaos Knights is neat but it doesn’t feel enough to push you away from War Dog spam. I really wish we had some kind of Storm Ability to go off of all the big Knights and push for some cool things. Heck you could just make a Detachment that let you pick a power that chains off of each big knight to feed into the little knights. Make it like a Dark Mechanicus virus shift that lets them pick some cool power they can give to themselves and their little buddies. The Abominant would need to have a bigger aura so it would be worth taking. It just feels like they don’t know what to do with them and will just have to sit and wait.
World Eaters saw some points drop but they continue to be a weird army. I still think they just need more stuff to help fill the lists out beyond just Eightbound and friends. They got one of the biggest nerfs to the army with the Enhancement changes and while it was probably needed to curtail Angron coming back all the time it still feels too much. I still like playing them but I am going in a different direction with them.
The Death Guard really didn’t get anything super great beyond just having a lot more fun with Tank Shock now and tweaks to some of their ability to use Stratagems. I call it a side gift as the army continues to play well just not nearly as busted as others. They did see some point drops to their Daemon Engines and how they are super tough now they will come in hot when Tank Shocking.
Gifts That Could Have Been
I will continue to be sad at how some armies were just not allowed to breathe initially. The updated points we first got for CSM and then the shifted points only a few months later is kind of annoying. It continues the whole idea that if something feels too powerful it will probably get fixed quickly so don’t invest a ton in building that army. It makes you think that when doing any new editions you need to careful think how much time do I need to spend on this broken model or should I just invest in building up the basics first.
Overall I think the Chaos Factions did alright and while they are not busted by any means they all feel like they have relative play in the current Meta. Right now you can win with most things and while some match ups will be hard they at least feel like an army that can do work. Their stratagems work, the updated Dataslate rules work for them, and you get to build some fancy looking models.
Good? Bad? He’s the guy with the horns.
