Hi All

I have been going through the various chaos lists (Khorne, Nurgle etc by Inquisitor and the missing Thousand Sons) and notice that the lists very much rely on the magic numbers for each of the chaos Gods.

Now I am all for fluff so my proposal is to tie it in with a game mechanic.

The initial problem is being able to field the minis which should not be a decision as to keep a rule or not, yet there is also the forced blow-out in costs for the army due to such huge numbers of vehicles.

My proposal is that the magic numbers for each of the gods ties into the game mechanic of the initiative roll. Each army could/should have the option to purchase their armoured companies, daemonic engines, contagion towers, Knights, Towers (although these are at 4-6), in numbers of 3-magic number. So as an example, Plague Marines could purchase their Plague Towers in numbers of 3-7

Now the initiative roll bonus will only be eligible if you have bought the named units in the correct number of the chaos god. The negative aspect of losing the daemons remains as the chaos god is fickle at not being appeased.

This should make these lists a little more flexible and playable by more players.

Thoughts?

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Not even one thought for a penny?

Boo!

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Hey hey. A response .

Thank you Hena. I guess however you are not a 'fluff' kinda guy?  

I am unsure where you are going with the Slaanesh knights. On one point you say keep them as a large yet in the same sentence talk about how hard they are in numbers. Is that hard as it buying them?

I agree with the 7 for Nurgle, yet should this not be up to the General whether he/she wants to field 7 and place all those 'eggs into one basket'?

Any other views out there?

Is Chaos that uninteresting that people want to just stick with LotD and Black Legion?

I don't mind, and I am not looking for an official list, just something that a few people may discuss and agree upon and try out with the 4 Gods lists...

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Er... I think there are quite a few Chaos variant lists out there:

Alpha Legion
The four "Cult" Legions
Hena's variant Cultists

Er, wait, here's a link to the list: Current Chaos Lists

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The "sacred numbers" of chaos is a very old piece of fluff which, if i recall correctly, is no longer referenced in any current GW background.

It seems excessively harsh to punish players for not taking formations in utterly arbitrary numbers.

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Nine for Tzeentch is unworkable.  I tried it in the Thousand Sons list.

It is too large of a formation for units with the average per-unit costs of the CSM lists.  It barely works for the cheaper infantry formations.  Forcing Termies and Armor (and maybe aircraft? - they are daemon engines) into formations of 9 crushes the activation count.  You end up with an IG-like army, with a little bit better command and control and far worse firepower, e.g. 9 Landraiders for 675 packs considerably less firepower than 10 Leman Russ for 650, and Init 1+ does not make up for the difference.

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Neal

Let me give you a little bit of background into how the Chaos lists evolved and you can judge for yourself.

First came the Black Legion and all was good. Neal developed the Thousand Sons and adjusted some of the maximum limits to 9.

I then build the Empeoror's Children, and made most of the formations sizes 6. It's a decent size for an elite formation and even Chosen aren't too unwieldy at that size. I also imagined that each base represented 6 models instead of 5, ergo a retinue consists of 6 squads of 6 noise marines. I've never felt that I needed to make the EC formations anything other than 6.

This worked well for the Children and I tried to bring this to the Death Guard and World Eaters but obviously the larger formation sizes make things more complicated, especially for super-expensive things like Chosen. If you think about it, one "squad" of Thousand Sons (9 marines) is probably best represented by 2 stands and not only would 18 stands be insane for a formation, but it wouldn't be immediately obvious that this is 9 squads of 9.

Adding incentives to formations for being sacred size just unbalances things (this didn't work too well in 40K) and formations are unlikely to remain at sacred-size for long. It'd be difficult to implement such a rule fairly.

I feel fairly strongly the magic numbers should be left in the background, for players to model or stick to at their own choosing or not, rather than having rules for them or different sized units in the variant lists. IMO it's better to balance unit sizes by what works best in EpicA, there are plenty of ways to diversify and restrict the variant power's lists without resorting to what seems a bit artificial a mechanism for real army composition.

Yes the Gods regard them as lucky numbers, but Gods are fickle and chaotic, for them to intervene and boost the effectiveness of their minions anywhere in the universe every time they are of that precise number and then to whip that favour away as soon as their number is of any other seems too rigid, regular and unrealistic IMO.  

On the other hand I do like modelling them where I can though; so for example my Khorne Big Mutants are as modelled as Minotaurs (beastman themed force), based 4 to a Warmaster base and ideally bought as Mutant upgrades in pairs.

As you will now probably be aware this topic has been discussed and tested at length. Hence the lack of responses.

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Cool

Happy with that.

Thank you all for your input. It did leave more questions than answers for me to think about  

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