The mandatory "New Chaos Codex First Impressions" post!

Being the hip and trendy gamer that I am (I wonder if such a person ever existed) I am obliged to write something about the new Chaos codex. I guess there is at least one person out there who wants to hear my opinion so I'll just go ahead anyway. Going to keep this very brief at least. Our resident chaosmonger Tzif can delve into more details in the following weeks.

Let me start this with a mini rant. I really liked the chaos models from Dark Vengeance. The marines, the cultists, even the Helbrute are all awesome. So I had very high expectations for the new models coming out with the chaos release. Unfortunately I was very disappointed with that I saw. Not many new kits to begin with and what's coming out doesn't look that good in my opinion. The Heldrake seems out of place with the rest of the range and also looks kinda kitsch, the plastic Raptors are very poor compared with the Chosen models from Dark Vengeance and the Fiends are just meh. Only the resin characters are cool but then again nothing really special . Oh, and Mutilators are some of the worst models GW released in the last few years to my memory. 

Unto the book itself. One word comes into mind while flipping through the pages : Options! Really, there are so many options for almost every entry in the FoC, chaos players are going to be spoiled for choice. This offers great customisation and micro managing for competitive players but also  leaves the fluff bunnies to represents any chaos band they fancy with their models. 

Another thing that comes to mind is that there are too many damn rules. Loads of unique wargear that players will have to know by heart and also the Chaos Boon table is massive. It has literally twenty nine different outcomes that players will have to note down each time their champions kill another character in a challenge. This can get messy very quickly, with players forgetting which champion got what boon etc. On top of all that there is another table with Warlord traits, new psychic powers plus many more special rules. So yeah, thats a lot of new rules. Thankfully they are all neatly summarised in the last few pages of the codex so people won't have to look around all the time in order to find them.

I want to talk about units a little bit. I might be 100% wrong here but these are my initial thoughts. There's been a universal point drop all over the codex but this was expected as it's the trend with all recent codexes. Cheaper units mean more sales too!

Chaos lords are close combat monsters as always. I would dare even more now, a single lord could easily wipe out a MEQ unit if the has enough upgrades on him. Horde units are very viable now, with Cultists of course but even with unupgraded Chaos Marines.

Most vehicles are still unimpressive though. I was dissapointed with Heldrake rules wise as well, only one weapon at BS3 and a weak swooping attack. Both Fiend variants are good enough but they have big competition for the Heavy Support slots.

Overall it gives me the impression that the new codex is a very good upgrade of the old one. Similar structure and unit but with many cool new rules, many more options and customisation and generally more fun. I think people will like it. Competitive wise I am still not sure how good it's going to be but it's certainly an improvement over the previous edition.

What are your thoughts then? Let me know, especially if you already found any nasty combos/tricks to share. Thanks for reading!