Truculent Sheep
02-17-2013, 08:43 AM
What would I do if I were in charge of Games Workshop for a day? Well, apart from ensuring I became John Blanche’s special secret sparkle pony friend, I’d force the development team to develop a Squat codex at the point of a Volkite caliver. Then I would face up to the biggie - Codex: Space Marines, 6th Edition.
In many ways, this would be the toughest project one could imagine. Games Workshop itself has tried and failed many times. Starting in 1995, Codex: Ultramarines was so vanilla, you could <insert crap ice cream joke here>. 3rd Edition Codex: Space Marines was, likewise, a bit flavourless, and required splatpacks to liven it up. Fans of fully CA compliant chapters could, meanwhile, get knotted.
Fourth Edition saw a Codex with customisation at its heart, in the form of the Chapter Traits system, but was clumsy and inflexible. Codex compliant players and their armies, meanwhile, were left with little to play with, barring the Ultramarines Honour Guard and Tyrannic War Veterans.
Then Fifth Edition came along and ruined everyone’s party. On the one hand, it made all Codex Chapters utterly uniform in a fashion Roboute Guilliman could never have hoped for, while only allowing Chapter Traits if you purchased a Special Character. (Which is rather odd, unless one assumes Shrike is the only Captain in the Raven Guard, or has been cloned multiple times.)
Good news for the Ultramarines, of course, who basked in the glory of any number of special characters which, improbably, non-Ultra players were told they could use in their own armies because nothing says individuality more than hundreds of bald, bearded blokes, with silenced bolters, leading scout squads into battle.
Then there was the partisanship, where players of non-Ultramarine armies were left to feel like that kid with nits and a ZX Spectrum where everyone else was playing on their Commodore Amigas and strutting around with their Air Nikes.
This is not to say that the Codex was entirely awful. It did work, after all, and no one has yet died while using its army list. Sternguard veterans were a great idea, the Thunderstrike Cannon was cool and the Combat Tactics rule was welcome. Still, like all the other SM codices that didn’t focus on one or two Chapters, it failed.
So how would I go about guzzling the contents of this poison chalice? Simple. The problem has always been that the Codices have all tried to be all things to all men and do too much at once. This has simply not worked.
So instead of bringing out one Codex, bring out four. From GW’s perspective, this will make more sense as it gets to sell more books. For players, it makes sense because they will be able, finally, to get the rules to match their chosen Chapters.
The inspiration for this lies in the classic Codex: Angels of Death, back in 1996. The concept worked as it didn’t just focus on one Chapter, but two, and also linked them together with a shared theme and allowed players to get, in effect, two codices for the price of one. But more on that later.
Because the first book would be Codex: Space Marines, 6th edition, and it would focus exclusively on those Chapters that either fully or very closely comply with the Codex Astartes.
Beyond the usual fluff, it would feature a definitive Codex Chapter list, with lots of special rules and unique units that would, finally, make the Ultramarines a force to be reckoned with. The Codex would, however, have rules to cover Chapters like the Imperial Fists, Mortifactors and Blood Ravens who diverge just a little bit from Codex doctrine, for one reason or another, but are otherwise keen adherents. (“Stehl Rehn!!!”) As such, and in exchange for some unit options and special rules, players could field minor divergent armies too, without breaking the army list, but also allowing some customisation.
The next Codex, however, would be Fire & Shadow, a Codex that covers the Salamanders and Raven Guard (in a Codex: Angels of Death style-ee). This, finally, would give both Chapters a working, distinctive army list, with the running theme in both cases being that of ancient loss - be it the Salamanders’ quest to find their Primarch, or the Raven Guard’s ongoing trauma at the near disaster at Istvaan IV and the subsequent disappearance of Corax...
Then there would be Iron Scars, a codex covering both the Iron Hands and (FINALLY!) the White Scars. These very different armies would be connected by the theme of revelation. For the Iron Hands and their successors, it comes in the form of rediscovered writings by Ferrus Manus that call into question their modus operandi, threatening another schism; for the White Scars, it is a major discovery about the ultimate fate of Jaghatai Khan that drives them and their successors to form the Great Hunt, with conquest as their goal.
Fun and frolics would include Venerable Dreadnought commanders flanked by a Talon bodyguard; custom bionics; weird science; jetbikes; cyborg steeds; combat servitors and all the cool bits from Mongol multiplied by the power of 10.
Both these Codices would also contain rules for successor chapters, such as the Sons of Medusa, Storm Giants, Black Dragons, Mantis Warriors, Rampagers and so on, finally giving these neglected chapters a much-deserved spotlight.
The final tome would be published by Forgeworld, and would be the definitive guide to creating your own Chapter from scratch. This deluxe guide would cover just about every possibility, allowing you to customise armies and even create your own special characters. It would also feature lists for Chapters such as the Iron Snakes, Lamenters, Cacharadons, Mentors, Rainbow Warriors and more. Also, rules for the Adeptus Custodes, serfs and Chapters who've turned renegade but not necessarily thrown their lot in with Chaos.
And that’s how I’d fix the Space Marines. What, however, are the odds that they will jam it into one book again, and bodge the results horribly? I’ll leave it at that.
In many ways, this would be the toughest project one could imagine. Games Workshop itself has tried and failed many times. Starting in 1995, Codex: Ultramarines was so vanilla, you could <insert crap ice cream joke here>. 3rd Edition Codex: Space Marines was, likewise, a bit flavourless, and required splatpacks to liven it up. Fans of fully CA compliant chapters could, meanwhile, get knotted.
Fourth Edition saw a Codex with customisation at its heart, in the form of the Chapter Traits system, but was clumsy and inflexible. Codex compliant players and their armies, meanwhile, were left with little to play with, barring the Ultramarines Honour Guard and Tyrannic War Veterans.
Then Fifth Edition came along and ruined everyone’s party. On the one hand, it made all Codex Chapters utterly uniform in a fashion Roboute Guilliman could never have hoped for, while only allowing Chapter Traits if you purchased a Special Character. (Which is rather odd, unless one assumes Shrike is the only Captain in the Raven Guard, or has been cloned multiple times.)
Good news for the Ultramarines, of course, who basked in the glory of any number of special characters which, improbably, non-Ultra players were told they could use in their own armies because nothing says individuality more than hundreds of bald, bearded blokes, with silenced bolters, leading scout squads into battle.
Then there was the partisanship, where players of non-Ultramarine armies were left to feel like that kid with nits and a ZX Spectrum where everyone else was playing on their Commodore Amigas and strutting around with their Air Nikes.
This is not to say that the Codex was entirely awful. It did work, after all, and no one has yet died while using its army list. Sternguard veterans were a great idea, the Thunderstrike Cannon was cool and the Combat Tactics rule was welcome. Still, like all the other SM codices that didn’t focus on one or two Chapters, it failed.
So how would I go about guzzling the contents of this poison chalice? Simple. The problem has always been that the Codices have all tried to be all things to all men and do too much at once. This has simply not worked.
So instead of bringing out one Codex, bring out four. From GW’s perspective, this will make more sense as it gets to sell more books. For players, it makes sense because they will be able, finally, to get the rules to match their chosen Chapters.
The inspiration for this lies in the classic Codex: Angels of Death, back in 1996. The concept worked as it didn’t just focus on one Chapter, but two, and also linked them together with a shared theme and allowed players to get, in effect, two codices for the price of one. But more on that later.
Because the first book would be Codex: Space Marines, 6th edition, and it would focus exclusively on those Chapters that either fully or very closely comply with the Codex Astartes.
Beyond the usual fluff, it would feature a definitive Codex Chapter list, with lots of special rules and unique units that would, finally, make the Ultramarines a force to be reckoned with. The Codex would, however, have rules to cover Chapters like the Imperial Fists, Mortifactors and Blood Ravens who diverge just a little bit from Codex doctrine, for one reason or another, but are otherwise keen adherents. (“Stehl Rehn!!!”) As such, and in exchange for some unit options and special rules, players could field minor divergent armies too, without breaking the army list, but also allowing some customisation.
The next Codex, however, would be Fire & Shadow, a Codex that covers the Salamanders and Raven Guard (in a Codex: Angels of Death style-ee). This, finally, would give both Chapters a working, distinctive army list, with the running theme in both cases being that of ancient loss - be it the Salamanders’ quest to find their Primarch, or the Raven Guard’s ongoing trauma at the near disaster at Istvaan IV and the subsequent disappearance of Corax...
Then there would be Iron Scars, a codex covering both the Iron Hands and (FINALLY!) the White Scars. These very different armies would be connected by the theme of revelation. For the Iron Hands and their successors, it comes in the form of rediscovered writings by Ferrus Manus that call into question their modus operandi, threatening another schism; for the White Scars, it is a major discovery about the ultimate fate of Jaghatai Khan that drives them and their successors to form the Great Hunt, with conquest as their goal.
Fun and frolics would include Venerable Dreadnought commanders flanked by a Talon bodyguard; custom bionics; weird science; jetbikes; cyborg steeds; combat servitors and all the cool bits from Mongol multiplied by the power of 10.
Both these Codices would also contain rules for successor chapters, such as the Sons of Medusa, Storm Giants, Black Dragons, Mantis Warriors, Rampagers and so on, finally giving these neglected chapters a much-deserved spotlight.
The final tome would be published by Forgeworld, and would be the definitive guide to creating your own Chapter from scratch. This deluxe guide would cover just about every possibility, allowing you to customise armies and even create your own special characters. It would also feature lists for Chapters such as the Iron Snakes, Lamenters, Cacharadons, Mentors, Rainbow Warriors and more. Also, rules for the Adeptus Custodes, serfs and Chapters who've turned renegade but not necessarily thrown their lot in with Chaos.
And that’s how I’d fix the Space Marines. What, however, are the odds that they will jam it into one book again, and bodge the results horribly? I’ll leave it at that.