Hey all, been a bit quiet as the final approach and execution of SmogCon takes up a lot of the start of each year, but now we are in the calm waters post event before it all ramps up for next year, I've been messing around with my 6mm again.

I picked up some of the Chaos machines I was always after (the Plague Tower and Slanneesh Knights) for a painting side project, and of course immediately started doodling some army notes.

When I came to look through the Chaos Army book for Net Epic it didn't quite seem to reflect the way Chaos worked that I remembered from my brief time with Space Marine back in the day.

Now, I never owned the Renegades book, and the copy I have now contains no army lists, just model rules and profiles, so I may be totally misunderstanding, but based off my reading of the Battle Report in WD 192 (Chaos vs Eldar Breakout) then originally there was no real restriction between what you took and Chaos god proportions.

In that battle report, the army is built around four greater deamons (Two Plague Towers, a KoS and a Lord of change), all of whom bring an eclectic mix of support cards, demons, marines, monsters and knights.

I appreciate the Net Epic book gives a lot of new options, and makes for a more thematic list by specifying the cultist/demon/marine split, and no doubt to give free reign to chop and change between all of them without any restriction would get unwieldy and possibly even lead to unfair games, but I guess I am just curious if I am misremembering the old army selection options, or a concious decision was made to reign in chaos when the book was written.

From what I can see the other army books all seem to reflect what I remember of Space Marine/Titan Legions and the army building choices, apart from Chaos which differs in this way.

Were any designers notes or similar ever made from when the books were drafted?

Cheers in advance.

I'm interested to know about this as well so look forward to seeing what Primarch's response it.

Certainly playing a mixed Chaos force would be far easier than the individual powers. Winning with an individual power can be quite challenging but I always feel when a greater sense of achievement when I do than with any other force.

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I wasn't around (with NetEpic) when the current Chaos book was made, so I cannot address that. However, even in the Renegades supplement for 2nd, each Chaos Power could only attach Power specific Support cards to that Power's Greater Daemon card. For example, Bloodletters could only be attached to a Khorne Company card, not any other Power, nor a generic Chaos one (not that there were any generic Chaos ones back then).

Do note that the current Chaos book does allow some cross-list support. For example, it does say that any Chaos Renegade Support or Special formation may be attached to any Power's Company formation. In addition, if that Power's 'Legion' is taken, then any Chaos Marine Support of Special may be attached to it. Thus a current Power - centric army can still be constructed very similarly to 2nd edition.

In addition, while the "Animosity" bit is a nice nod to 1st edition W40K rules for the Chaos Powers, I personally consider them as optional. Discuss that with your opponent, and you might be able to really build 2nd edition era style armies again.

Yeah, the Renegades supplement for 2nd never had "army lists" like NetEpic has, but it came with the punch-out army cards instead.

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Net Epic Coordinator

Just noticed the optional rule for combined powers. I think that is more what I was looking for, its hidden in the special rules page rather than the army section page, which is likely why I was missing it.

So, I think you can run the type of list I was expecting afterall, just at a penalty to chaos reward cards, which does then have an impact on the survivability of your Greater Demons.

Yep. Note also that Primarch's don't receive as many Chaos Cards* as they used to.

*My nephew refers to them as "cheat cards"!

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Clickable links for more Epic goodness:

Life of Die Channel including Epic Podcasts and Battle Reports

Epic 40K Players Page on Facebook
Net Epic Evolution Rules
Net Epic War! Campaign Rules

Chaos needs all the Chaos cards it can get, especially for turns one and two against Squats or Imperial Guard. The number of cards I've always had to expend to keep my Greater Daemons or Primarchs alive against armies with mass fire power is scary.

Chaos is still pretty flexible in NetEpic and there were restrictions in second edition Space Marine as Magnus explained. I'm pretty happy with how they've written the rules for the different Chaos combinations in NetEpic, it just takes a bit of time to find all the rules in the text.

Congratulations on picking up the Plague Towers and Slaanesh Knights by the way. I never added Nurgle or Slaanesh to my Chaos army back in the Space Marine era, so I don't have those models. A big mistake on my part.

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