Diatribes of the Dark Rabbit

Okay, so its been discussed to death a hundred times and the Chaos Codex has been out in some form or other for a pretty long time. Yet still, every time I trawl the web for a discussion on Chaos Space Marines, I seem to come across one or two (or three, or four...you get the picture) naysayers who state that all flavour and fluff has been drained from the new Chaos codex. It is apparently a shell of its former self, and they hearken back to the days of 2nd and 3rd Edition when the Traitor Legions had special rules, nay, entirely separate lists dedicated to them! I may be going a bit over the top here but I think my feelings on the subject can be best summed up by the following quote:

"Rules for fluff are a crutch for people who aren't imaginative enough to come up with their own fluff." - Caluin

The outcry seems to be rather strong amongst three different Legions: the Alpha Legion, the Word Bearers, and the Night Lords. Let's take a look at what has been lost by each of these three Traitor Legions in the transition to 4th Edition:

Alpha Legion
- Units can no longer select the Infiltrate veteran skill, which Alpha Legion players not only benefitted from having but also benefitted from having at a lower cost, a steal for them and ultimately what lead to them being typecast as an infiltration force.

- Cultists, cheap and expendable troops that were more or less on par with Guardsmen in terms of statline, the key difference being that they got to select Infiltrate and one other Veteran skill for free. For free. This essentially lead to Alpha Legion forces being typecast as infiltration forces supported by Assassins, because let's face it, there is absolutely no point in Cultists having Tank Hunters or Move Through Cover when they can have Furious Charge. I will eat my shoe if I can find anyone, even among fluff players, who, when given the choice, would not use Assassin cultists. I don't begrudge them this choice, it's what I would do, but please stop deluding yourselves into believing there was ever a choice.

- Many of the armoury options

Apart from this, it seems that an Alpha Legion force has access to all of the previous items that they did in the previous codex, including all vehicles.

Night Lords
- The free Night Vision veteran skill

- The ability to take the Stealth skill

- The modified Force Organisation Chart

- Many of the armoury options

The Night Lords even have access to the option that (in some peoples' minds) was thought to define their army - 3 squads of Raptors, one for each Fast Attack choice. Oh sure, you're not allowed to give them Infiltrate anymore but I think that for a reduced point cost and the ability to give them icons, I'd say it's a fair trade.

Word Bearers
- The ability to take any kind of daemon, regardless of allegiance, mainly because they are all grouped into the category of "lesser daemons" and "greater daemons".

- The modified Force Organisation Chart

- The Dark Apostle as an HQ choice, as well as his associated Accursed Crozius

- Many of the armoury options

Apart from that, the Word Bearers still have access to every unit choice in the Chaos Codex and like the other Traitor Legions, none of it is inconsistent with what they had in the previous edition.

Out of those three Traitor Legions that supposedly got hit the hardest, I would have to say I feel the most sympathy for the Word Bearers. They lost one of the features that could single-handedly make a Word Bearers army a Word Bearers army: hordes and hordes of daemons. Then I consider what the daemons made many Word Bearers armies: glorified Daemon Bomb lists consisting of nothing but Bloodletters and Daemonettes, with little thought for any of the other Daemon choices. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the "one man's cheese is another man's brilliance" philosophy but if anyone ever debates fluff with me and tells me that the Word Bearers had the option of taking Daemons of the four Great Powers and went from four to one, I will stab them repeatedly. Maybe it's different in your area but the internet community seems to suggest otherwise - out of the Word Bearers lists I have looked at each and every one has contained Bloodletters, Daemonettes or both, possibly Horrors and Flamers but certainly not Plaguebearers.

Just by looking at the bullet points I've written down, I can see that the majority of the things that each Legion lost were special benefits that the player received by "limiting himself" in order to follow the fluff for that specific group. The fact that players lament this loss says two things to me. Either their creativity has been confined to what the 3rd Edition Chaos Space Marine codex said their armies should be composed of or they started playing the Legion for the benefits that it entailed, above and beyond the standard army list. I find that Alpha Legion players are particularly guilty of the latter, lamenting the loss of Infiltrate, nevermind the fact that they got it at a major discount, or the Iron Warriors and their Obliterators of doom. Yes, I'm looking at all of you.

This brings me back to my original point - there was a time when I might have agreed with people and said that GW has violated the fluff that made the Traitor Legions. However, I've thought about the subject and realised that no, the removal of special rules for each legion hasn't changed a thing. Do we need special rules to define our armies for us or can we simply adapt the current codex to suit our needs? So before you start flinging about claims like "flagrant disregard" or "disrespect for the gamers" with relation to GW, just think about it for a second. These accusations just bother me, not because they are directed at GW but because they're just not true.

What was the point of this article? Well, I'm going to kickstart a series of articles that originally started as a forum post I made awhile ago about adapting the fluff of the Traitor Legions to the current 4th Edition codex. I will attempt to illustrate how all of the Legions can modify their background to accomodate each and every choice available. Of course, some may be more difficult than others, but believe me, it is entirely possible.