Hi All,
So my Chaos Space Marine (CSM) codex finally arrived, meaning: I’ts time for a review. Apologies for the delay on this one. The CSM codex is a monster with, possibly, the largest set of crusade rules of any codex. As such I will divide up the review to do it justice.
Army Specific Rules:
Today’s article will focus exclusively on the unique factions rules for the CSM as they are complex but very powerful. You start by nominating a character to be your champion at the start of the campaign. Interestingly, you can only do this if your total power level of CSM units is over 20 (so keep that in mind if you want to run Daemons as well!). After each battle you will gain a certain amount of points based on your performance. The amount of points varies from D3+3 to D3. You can spend these points in one of three categories: Personal Glory, Dark God Glory, or Fleet Glory. While this might sound easy remember that after each battle your level of glory in each category goes down by one. If you are at level 7 or 8 you gain the favored rewards for this category, but if you are at a 1 or 2 you take Forsaken modifiers.
Personal Glory: being favored in this area allows you to add relics, warlord traits and a number of other requisitions for free once after each battle. In addition after each battle, if your champion destroyed an enemy unit, you roll a dice and on a “6” you gain a free battle honor that doesn’t count towards your maximum. If you are forsaken all of the aforementioned requisitions cost an additional Requisition point. Also after each battle you roll a dice, on a “1” that triggers a fight between your champion and another character. You roll 2 D6 and compare it to your champion’s leadership. If it is lower the challenging model (selected randomly) takes a battle scar. If the result is higher your champion is instantly slain and removed from the roster. The challenger becomes your new champion.
Dark God Glory: Being favored in this area allows you to use one of four requisitions for free, mostly dealing with the dark gods. One of the most useful is the one that allows you to add marks to a unit (you cannot start with any marked units save those that require it, e.g. Emperor’s Children). In addition, like the above result you nominate a marked unit, that destroyed an enemy unit, and roll a die. On a “6” you can give that unit a Chaos Boon even if it isn’t a character, though it must have a champion. If you are forsaken, then the selected Requisitions cost an additional RP. Also you must roll a die for a nominated marked unit. On a “1” that unit takes a leadership test, if it passes then it takes a battle scar, if it fails then it becomes a chaos spawn model.
Warfleet Glory: This is one of the less interesting options. Being favored means you can use the Increase Supply Limit, Fresh Recruits, Rearm and Resupply, and Specialist Reinforcements requisitions for free. After each battle you can select any non-Champion unit that destroyed an enemy unit and roll a die. On a “6” that unit gains a free Battle Trait or Weapon Enhancement that do not count towards their maximum total. As you can guess by now, being forsaken means that the earlier requisitions cost an additional RP. Also you roll a die after each battle and on a “1” you lose d3 requisition points.
Conclusion:
Wow these rules a re little complex but quite interesting. I have to say I am not a fan of units getting free, possibly unlimited upgrades on certain units. On a long campaign that can get out of hand, but it does only trigger on a “6′ and only when favored which can be difficult to achieve. I think the fluffy side of it is quite clever as you have to balance the various areas in a way that feels thematic for chaos. The threat of running out of supplies is very real for a faction without an established logistics arm. You also have a risk of Spawndom that will constantly haunt you. I am a little biased in my opinions as I went up against a pretty un-killable Daemon prince that had maxed out his free upgrades and was very annoying Daemon Prince (transhuman to hit and wound, also no re-rolls, had the once per game, Intoxicating Elixer and the Murder Sword).
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