Warhammer 40K: Four Things In Codex CSM Point The Way To Future Changes
Chaos Marines have a new codex and it gives us some hints of 40K’s future.
Chaos Space Marines are finally in luck. After a long wait, they’ve got a shiny new book. It’s a solid and fun book. It’s also a book that’s a little different. Let’s take a look at some things this book does differently, and what they could mean for the future of 40K.
4. A Better Land Raider
This is one of the smaller changes in the book, but still interesting. Land Raiders are an iconic unit used by both Traitor and Loyalist. Since they are the same unit in both armies, they normally have the same base stats. They are also a unit that’s been in trouble for a while and just isn’t that good. Now though the CSM version has gotten a few upgrades. In this book it jumped from T8 to T9! It’s dual Twin-Soulshatter Lascannons also gained +2 Damage. Overall those are some nice buffs that might just make it see a little more action. This leads to the question of – will we see loyalist Land Raiders get upgraded to match. I’d say yes.
3. More In-depth Sub-factions
Sub-factions have become a pretty big part of the game over the last few editions. For a long time, they’ve had a pretty standard format. You sub-faction gives you access to a faction rule, a warlord trait, a relic, and a stratagem. In a few cases, you might get a psychic power, or some other army-specific extra buff. But it’s normally just one of each thing. The exception to this has been army supplements, either full books like the Space Marines get, or a few pages in a campaign book.
CSM sub-factions however get much more in-depth rules. They get the legion trait, but also a secondary objective, and normally a half dozen warlord traits, a page of relics and a page of stratagems. This is the most in-depth we’ve seen sub-factions get in a core codex. Overall I really like it! It makes them feel a lot different. It’s also a nice middle ground between having all the Legions feel the same and needing to buy 8 supplement books. I wouldn’t be surprised if Loyalists copied this for a lot of the Chapters.
2. No Make Your Own Sub-factions
Noticeably missing from the book are rules for creating your own custom sub-faction. These have been included in all the newer “core” codices for a while. Leaving them out was a deliberate and interesting design choice. On the one hand, they are a cool way to customize your army and put your own lore into the game. On the other hand, they almost always lead to some broken combos. Create-your-own sub-faction rules have been abused in codexes again and again for well over a decade. Leaving them out of this and future codexes might just be a needed way to help balance things out. We will have to see if it’s a one-off for this book, or a sign of things to come.
1. Crusade Rules On Datasheets!
Read: Armour of Shrieking Souls
Crusade is a really fun and interesting way to play the game. Yet it always feels a little set apart from 40K in some ways. There are a lot of rules for Crusade, but they are all their own thing. It ends up just being this extra set of rules you tack on to the game. It’s not really “baked into” the rules of units at all. At least until now. To my knowledge Lucius The Eternal is the first unit in the game to have Crusade-specific rules written on their datasheet.
I think it’s pretty cool to have units that do interesting things in Crusade and makes Crusade both better and more a “real” part of the game. On the other hand, I hope you aren’t paying any points for a rule you can’t use a lot of the time. That does seem hard to balance. We will have to see if more Crusade-only rules make their way into datasheets in the future.
Let us know what changes you like in the new CSM book, down in the comments!
