Note also that BL *is* a 2+ Ini army. It is only made 1+ by the slight-of-hand of avoiding hated factions. If the intention is that it should be (by-and-large) 1+ then I think should say so

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The awkward wording of the "hated factions" paragraph is due to the E:A design principle of having no negative army-specific rules a player might "conveniently" forget, which can be traced back to JJ.

At no time the BL list was supposed to have 2+ Ini mostly, which would then have been accidentally circumvented by hatred (almost) never applying. The hatred rule was purely fluff based.

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I do think background wise these chaps deserve 1+ init. They are veterans that could be (depending on how they have aged and mutated) up to 10,000 years old. Plus whoever has been recruited since then - and I doubt they are as civilised as the barbaric practices of codex chapters

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You have it backwards. It was always a 1+ initiative army but the 2+ came about from Jervis' general rule of thumb that you need to remember beneficial rules. So the initiaitve was reduced to 2+ and the rule was written that it was a benefit that dropped it to 1+ if you weren't near hated formations.

The CSM list was always seen as having the same initiative as the Marines.

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Ok well that's clarified one thing for this chaos newb at least - and the reason for the awkward and wording was news to me so thanks for sharing that with me. And as discussed the faction rules don't seem to work anyway (at least for BL) so we might as well call a spade a spade and give them 1+ init and have done. What do you think?

btw Chris who knows how old a chaos marine is and what bearing his 'age' has on his training? Given the nature of the warp a chaos marine being 10,000 years old seems unlikely. He might be older, he might be younger.. no?

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Its one of Jervis' key design rules and you can see it all over the Epic rules.

btw Chris who knows how old a chaos marine is and what bearing his 'age' has on his training? Given the nature of the warp a chaos marine being 10,000 years old seems unlikely.

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Cool

So if we ditch the hated faction rules and have a 1+ initiative then we have a fair(er) description of what is the reality of the list right now?

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While accepting the above background to the 40K universe and game, can we just do a straight comparison here:- from a 'Fluff' perspective, are Chaos marines better or worse than their Space Marine counterparts?

Put another way, if it were possible to find a way of giving races fractions of initiative and assuming the SM initiative is +1.0, what would we give the CSM +0.5, +1.0 or +1.5?

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I was thinking along the same lines myself:

* The faction hatred rules where clearly meant to be used and have an effect.
* They would have a negative effect to the BL either tactically (keep hated apart - difficult in the end game and you're scratching the bottom of the barrel for activations) or a real effect on initiative - depending on the situations in the game.

In other words if the faction hatred rules *did* have an effect, where would you measure BL's overall effective initiative? For sure it would have to be somewhere between 1 and 2.

If the faction rules are ditched - which the effectively are, how do we put back that negative effect that BL suffer from but Loyalists don't?

2+ Init with a Free Warlord I have mentioned. The fluff is that the Warlord keeps the marines in-line and controls their various 'predilections'. And all of a sudden his free cost is justified much like the Ork warlord. Some might thing this is to much of a nerf. Perhaps if the warlord had two re-rolls? Or maybe some other mechanic would do...

Gavin, you want to give this a go sometime?

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The only meaningful way to use the faction rules for the CSM is either make factions rare (perhaps the cult marines/demons idea) and most undivided or have the factions very distinct. So complementary abilities are in different factions (and have to ensure the CSM list doesn't fill those holes).

Personally I prefer a mass of undivided with rare factions, but thats just me.

Oh, of course theres a third way, max of x (1? 2?) factions per army plus undivided.

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Absolutely Alansa - my idea is that the Warlord gives a boost to the formation initiative when he is present. So the Warlord notes would say something like "The Warlord gives a +1 bonus to initiative of the formation he is part of"

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

An Initiative 0+ formation is a tricksy thing, especially since you can retain the initiative with no risk. I had a similar rule for Inquisitor Lords, but that was "ignore the -1 to initiative for having BM or being within 30cm of enemy when rallying". Before I ditched it to try and clear out special rules. Speaking of which, I thought we hated new special rules?  

Would this proposal mean no SC whatsoever for the Chaos army?

None of which are warranted.

You keep barking up the tree but there isn't anything in it.

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Sorry, missed out the point of making the BL standard initiative 2+ so adding the CSM Lord brings the formation back to the current initiative of 1+. This whole idea is both to provide the CSM player with a further choice while reducing the initiative slightly.

And as for the 'free' CSM lord, assuming the included cost was ~30 points in the existing formations, we could reduce the relevant formation costs accordingly and then allow people to buy the CSM lord as an optional upgrade in one of 5 slots. Done this way, perhaps the current Retinue might then be costed at ~250 points.

This would then allow you to re-cost the DP to 80 points, while leaving the other characters at 50 points (assuming you do not just merge the Champ with the IB and allow the IB to be sacrificed for augment summoning), and perhaps making the Warlord 30 points (in the same way that the Marines SC is an additional 50 points)

Is that a better description of the tree?

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Ok PG. But what do you think the overall *effective* initiative should be. If the faction hatred rules did work then surely this would be somewhat worse than 1+?

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