Dear all,

As detailed at the GT, we in Scotland have been spending the freezing winter months on creating a Word Bearers Chaos Space Marine list that is balanced with Epic UK.
We have had a fair whack of play testing and a good deal of changes from these; but, with our limited gene pool of players in the frozen North, we want to open the list up for comments and other play tests.

This pretty much started life in Berlin where I read a novel on the word bearers during the HH (I literally had two books, that or Macro Economics- don't judge me). And got to thinking how they were one of the less loved, but still unique and interesting armies from GW.
I kept some of the unique units from the HH period (I'm sure many have disappeared from the lore, but I thought that was fun) and looked to create a list that captured the concept of an assault but fanatical space marine army.

Some of the units are strong, but with only limited numbers available, whilst other units are weaker than their CSpace marine comparatives to force a balanced list.
We found the list is limited to around ten activations, which works well to counter balance the strong assault units.
I also wanted to make the list quite unique, to take it away from the rhino rush Cspace marine style.
For this reason I went for the blunt, no rhinos.
But I also wanted to bring back to the game some much loved but unused units (Chaos Dreadnoughts that look like the bad robot in Robocop).
This was also the reason behind the cheaper Land raiders - we found these could greatly bulk up a squad, but also really limited the army size, and without being Fearless, died quickly when broken.

Anyway, please feel free to comment, - particularly after play testing.

Dan

(Also usual blurb about not owning any of the names etc - all Games Workshop...)

I don't think there's justification for Word Bearers getting fearless. Better morale than normal maybe (in 40k Word Bearers special legion ability is they can re-roll failed morale checks) but fearless seems excessive.

Gal Vorbek is a Horus Heresy era thing and they'd be more generically called 'Possessed' now. I can see Word Bearers having more Possessed than other legions so them having them seems appropriate.

I'd stick with regular defilers for the list but if you do have Soul Grinders they shouldn't be 2DC WE. They're identically sized to a regular Defiler. AV 3+ with an invulerable and no reinforced is as high as they should be stated.

Don't ditch Greater Demon summoning! Word Bearers are the most known for summoning demons of all legions and should have the option.

I think you should ditch the Mhara Gal (the current fearless Chaos Dreadnought already covers it well enough), the Ashen Circle and Vakrah Jal - these are all HH era units that aren't around in 40k. They're not options in the 40k Word Bearers Legion list certainly and he epic list should reflect that.

Inspiring characters, some slightly better morale rule (not fearless), Possessed and better demon summoning are the known characteristics and enough on their own to make the variant list interesting enough without these extra obscure units.

I'll see if I can get Blip to test these out, looks fun.

One comment that comes to mind is that Furies and Soulgrinders are already in the Daemon World list with the same names but drastically different stats, especially Soulgrinders which are just a Defiler variant and aren't equivalent to War Engines in any version of the game.

Also, Supreme Commander includes Leader, so your Dark Apostle has Leader twice.

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Nice one chap. Happy to have a crack with these in the near future. Glynn, I imagine that fearless is because that’s pretty standard with most (not all) chaos lists (eg 1k sons, Plague marines, Bezerkers, Noise marines, etc) so there is some logic there. Dan, one quick point to flag on that though is that chaos marines in epic uk are never fearless.

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But in epic fearless is much more important so GlynG is probably right there. Honestly giving a free (or cheap) character with leader to certain core formations is probably a better way to represent their better morale in that they can she'd BMs better.

You should absolutely take the existing stats and run with those. I don't really care about the names but if they're equivalent in playing, using the existing name is better for understanding. (Rose by any other name)

When I think word bearers I think demons. Lots of options and extra bonuses with demons.

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Thanks all.

The thoughts behind Fearless (which I know is great ) was to be the same as the other 'Original' or specialist Chaos Space Marines, - Thousand Sons, Plaguemarines, Noise Marines and Beserkers.
The alternative / balance is bigger units, which is what Dark legion have.

Try playing with and without and see if one is too weak / too strong.
I found with a ten activation list, if the Space Marines are not fearless in a squad of 6, one bad assault and you really are chasing the game as they wipe.

Glynn- totally appreciate I am the worse person to advise on Space Marine lore. Indeed I have no idea when Epic is actually supposed to be. - I also pretty much looked for names between one book (see above) and Googling 40k.

One other thought to add - Word Bearers (along with the Alpha Legion) are the two legions most known to inspire and recruit cultists and to often fight alongside them, often using them as bullet shields and cannon fodder.

Adding a limited number of cultist on foot formations (as per the LaTD list) could be fitting. 0-2 max? Or 0-1 per CSM core formation? Cultists are included as a unit in the 40k Chaos Space Marine codex, though they don't have access to any transport.