Hi all! We are continuing through our review of the Chaos Space Marine codex. Today we will be going in depth on two legions (my two favorite ones) the Night Lords and the Iron Warriors!
Night Lords
The Night Lords get some intriguing options that might be traps, but are very fluffy ones. Their agenda gives one unit 1 exp each time one of the following happens:
- An enemy unit fails a morale test
- An enemy unit falls back
- An enemy unit fails an action
Now your unit has to be within 6″ of the enemy when this occurs, but you will want to be there anyway. I feel like this might be a trap as you will occasionally want to keep the enemy from falling back (via a strat). However if you can multi-tag units you can get a lot of exp very quickly. At the very least this is quite fluffy, and doesn’t prevent you from taking another agenda from your codex.
The Night Lords upgrade table has some decent options. One gives you +1 to hit and ignores cover when targeting characters with shooting attacks which is not very useful. Another option gives you the ability to use the “-1 to be hit with shooting” and “arrive a turn early from deepstrike” stratagems for free. Finally the last option makes unmodified wound rolls of a 6 an additional -2 AP. The problem with this table is that one option buffs shooting, one melee and one either option. There’s not a lot here for your characters, and the mutually exclusive upgrades means you might end up buffing the shooting of raptors and the close combat abilities of devastators.
The Night Lords get a pretty amazing requisition that triggers when you add a unit to your roster. The unit can never take a mark…but….you can give the unit champion a warlord trait, and the unit gets +1 exp when marked for greatness. This can make for some great units. One idea I have is a unit of Chosen or Terminators that can consolidate 3″ in any direction allowing you to charge, fight an enemy unit, and then consolidate back without them getting the chance to fight! Finally their relic is okay. Every time the enemy spends a CP you roll a D6, on a 5+ you get a CP. This worked better with 12 CP per player but it’s not awful for support characters.
Iron Warriors
The Iron Warriors agenda is an intriguing option. Your opponent selects one terrain feature on the battlefield. This feature gain heavy cover, light cover and defensible. A core unit from your army can complete an action to destroy this piece of terrain at the start of their movement phase. If they do they get 5 exp, you also gain a chaos point. This is a decent option, although your opponent can make this very difficult for you to achieve. Any way to get extra Chaos Points is great but you will need a tough unit, and to prevent your opponent from screening you out.
The Iron Warrior’s upgrade table is a bit better than the Night Lords. The first option gives units +1 attack if they are receiving the benefits of light cover, or are behind an obstacle. You also can use the Tank Destroyers or Methodical Annihilation strats for free. Both of these are quite handy. Lastly you auto-pass morale and re-roll failed out of action tests. These are much more broadly applicable than the night Lord options and can really buff certain units, although there is the danger that some shooting units only really want 1 out of the three options.
The Iron Warriors also get a great requisition. You can make a unit a Warpsmith for 1 RP giving them the ability to heal a vehicle within 3″ D3 wounds each movement phase. Their relic is fun, but not over-powered. You get the ability to make a friendly vehicle unit within 3″ a Daemon Engine until the start of your next command phase. Beyond this being very fluffy, it also allows this vehicle to get a 5++ and repair 1 wound.
Conclusion
All-in-all I feel like the night Lord rules are more thematic, while the Iron Warrior’s are more powerful. I am pretty happy with both sets of rules and feel like they encourage players to play in thematic ways.
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