Goatboy’s 40k – Chapter Approved & Chaos Marines
Goatboy here, and we have Chapter Approved 2019. Let’s talk about how the Traitor Marines did.
The big change is that the book got split into two – one has all the points, and the other has the extra missions, some data slates for stuff that isn’t in print, and some additional play types.
I won’t go into the extra rules book as there isn’t anything too new in there. The Chaos Daemons from the boxed sets show up, and that is about it for the Dataslate side of things. This feels like a band-aid to get the game in a place for the new edition. This means most of us competitive players will only really care about the point changes. As a Chaos Warlord, I again only genuinely care about those bad guys of the universe – so let’s go over what shifted in the book.
Points Going DOWN!
Overall, Chaos saw a lot of units go down in cost. In fact – that is the biggest thing from this book as everything feels more in line with what we see in the new Marine dex. Everything is cheaper, and my thoughts on a Beta Strike Chaos army are starting to come to fruition. I think the old ways of Chaos with Board control are going to change. Expect people to look for Warp Talons and Lightning Claw bits for awhile. Let’s look at the most significant drops in points.
First – if this book doesn’t have your unit’s points – it means a unit is now a Legendary unit. There are no index options in this book, so those biker characters are gone. It is depressing but overall the points dropped so, it is good. It also means all the other armies lost those weird index options (sorry, Ork friends).
HQ Changes
Daemon Prince w/Wings – Big drop as leaked
Dark Apostle – Big Drop in Points
Master of Executions – Went up in points
Master of Possession – Drop in points
Sorcerer – Drop in Points
Sorcerer w/Jump Pack – Smaller Drop in Points
Sorcerer in Terminator Armor – Small Increase in Points
Thunder Hammer for Characters – Sadly same as Imperial
Troop Changes
Cultists dropped by a point – yay!
Chaos Space Marines dropped by 2 points! – Awesome
Elites
Chosen went down
Fallen went down
Greater Possessed went down
Khorne Zerkers went down
Noise Marines went down including their big gun
Possessed went down by a nice amount
Terminators went down by a nice amount
Fast Attack
Chaos Spawn went down
Warp Talons went down on base cost and weapons
Fortification
Noctilith Crown went down
Heavy Support
Chaos Land Raider went down
Chaos Predator went down
Forgefiend went down
Maulerfiend went down
Obliterators went down by a decent amount
Venomcrawler went down by a decent amount
Dedicated Transports
Chaos Rhino went down
Flyer
Heldrake went down due to an option getting cheaper and another one getting free
Lord of War
Khorne Lord of Skulls – aka Goatboy’s Special Friend – Went down by a lot – Base Cost and Weapons both cheaper
Brass Scorpion went down
Named Characters
Abaddon went down
Harken went down
What Does It Mean?
Now, of course, what does this mean? Well expect a few more Night lord Detachments to show up, Chaos pushing towards either a CP battery like Red Corsairs or utilizing cheaper cultists to generate some command points, and heck maybe even Chaos Space Marines in things like Alpha Legion as a unit of 5 is only 55 points with a -1 to hit. The drop in Terminators could see a nice usage in World Eaters as they strive for multiple waves of damage with Raptors/Heldrakes hitting first and then a few waves of cheaper Zerkers/Zerker Terminators coming in to clean up the mess.
The drop in Warp Talons is pretty big as a unit of 5 is sitting under 100 points – which is always amazing for tie-up units that can ignore overwatch. The change in the Chaos Thunder Hammer is expected – but with all the other saving, it shouldn’t be hard to fit in an evil Smash Captain into the army. Heck, the drop in the Lord of Skulls (basically a bit more expensive than a Chaos Knight) has me really contemplating grabbing another Kytan ravager and making the Khorne party wagon of doom.
The obliterators dropping is pretty huge, too. I think they might be an answer to these marine builds as they can come in far enough way, layout a decent amount of firepower, and when mixed with Iron Warriors, and they become a pretty deadly force. Throw in a Chaos Lord in Terminator armor to deep strike too, mark them kinky, and watch as they throw out a bunch of fleshy bullets into the enemy’s face.
I think the Dark Apostle might show up more too as he can easily help your big monsters get a -1 to hit, and he costs a heck of a lot cheaper. His ability to have a 2+ for his power is amazing and could be a big boon, especially since the two jerks can always be useful to hold backfield objectives. The Daemon Prince gets cheaper, too, so having another bully unit threat is great. I just wish I could take more than 3 again.
While we didn’t get 2 wound cult troops, we did get them all to be cheaper. The majority of them were pretty dang good and just needed a bit of a discount somewhere to really help them out. Hopefully, a trend in balancing some of the Marine stuff will help even out the game a bit but we’ll see.
~Overall Chapter Approved 2019 is a good release for Chaos as a lot of things didn’t go up, and a bunch of neat stuff went down. Death to the False Emperor!
