It’s Like Tactics: A look back and final Chaos Space Marine breakdown

My Tactics pledge: I am not the greatest player, nor a seal pup. I will endeavor to speak from my experience and always be honest about what is theory and what is play tested. Never will I assume to know better than anyone else... unless I must call out ego or pretension.

Well, we finally made it!

Five months later my tactical review of everything Chaos Space Marine is complete!

I never knew if it would ever end.

It was a very fun, rewarding task, with so many readers seeming to enjoy it. I've had a few days to look back and explorer how my views of the Chaos Space Marine codex have changed over time.

Having talked to Phil Kelly briefly about the codex it was important for him to make a codex that wasn't excessive like like Necrons or Grey Knights. Personally, I'd wager that the Chaos Space Marine was a way to hold back codex creep. As it turns out, the Chaos Space Marine codex regardless, is very competitive. The FAQs really helped out with Zombies, Abbadon, Noise Marines, and most importantly the Heldrake.

Still, many have this nagging emptiness about the Chaos Space Marine codex, assuming Phil Kelly would usher in the return of Chaos Legions; where everyone could make the Chaos Space Marine army of their dreams. The sad truth is all the complainers screamed of blandness and lack of depth with the codex, when what they really wanted was for GW to tell them exactly what lists they could and couldn't build. They wanted a specific Alpha Legion Lord that played a certain way with certain restrictions, so on and so forth for every Chaos Legion.

Forgotten, was the amount of freedom 6th edition provided, with Allies and "counts as" allowing players all the options necessary to create a Chaos Legion tailored to there personal vision. All it would take was a dash of imagination, something fluffy-bunnies claim to have, but their rigidity to doctrine never allows for.

So, in the end Phil Kelly did the only thing he could do:  clean up the old codex, expand, and add a few new units. If he tried to be everything to everyone he would have failed miserably because the curmudgeons would never been satisfied.

As you can tell I am a big fan of this codex, with anything that makes curmudgeons upset is probably a good thing for the game. Better yet, with the release of the Chaos Deamon codex the other half to the puzzle looks to be complete.

As for the units themselves, my opinions have changed a lot, so I want to present updated tiers for the Chaos Space Marine units. But first here are the tiers I had when the codex was first released, followed by the revised list.

It is easy to change you mind about a lot of things in just five months! That is why play-testing and not theory hammer is the best receipt for understanding how good or bad a unit is.

So what is next?

I was thinking about doing the same treatment for Dark Angels, but I am going to have to pass. My biggest love is Chaos Daemons and having a chance to review them is far too tempting! Besides it only makes sense just having done the Chaos Space Marines. I will also being changing up the format a little bit with added features and such.

Well with that, thank you all for reading this series and I cannot wait to get started on the next one!