Yesterday I had - due to a cold which rendered me unable to do anything useful ^^ - the opportunity to take a look at my wargaming hobby in general.

I unpacked (after more than two years in this house) all of my miniatures, counted them (again), mourned over the dozens of unpainted and unassembled minis (the new Chaos Marines or Thousand Sons as well as the Daemon Prince for instance) and also took a look at the newest ('bout half a year or what old) Chaos Space Marines Codex.

When the 4th Edition of WH40k was released,it wasn't with the impact the 3rd had on my army. From 2nd to 3rd, it was a huge step. Most rules I knew had been completly revised, profiles, weapons, even lots of background had been redone. The 4th editio, however, came rather unnoticed. The changes seemed minor in comparison, some features quite appealing, others far less.

Since yesterday though, it deems me completely different. I'm not the type of guy to go on a rant-rampage like "oh my, the new edition of just plain sucks! The old ones were SO MUCH BETTER!". In fact, I hate statements like that. Metal was NOT better before they invented technology that could cope with this kind of music and bring it's strengths to bear, D&D was NOT better with an A in front of it's name as a collection of some loosely coherent rules, and Windows ME was sure as hell NOT better than XP. If you don't like the new stuff, keep the old! It's anyway cheaper that way.

But on this special occasion (keep your red pens ready, folks), I gotta admit it. Yeah, the Chaos Space Marines Codex 3rd Edition (the second one ;) was indeed much better than anything that came after. I liked the idea of the 4th edition to keep things simple, to use "general" special rules and not between one and three for each troup type of every race. 

But honestly, have you taken a look at the wargear? I always went mad flipping pages 'cause I couldn't find it, until I realised, there wasn't any wargear to find. Granted, Chaos Lords tended to be uberpowered. But they tended also to cost a small fortune in points. Add a Terminator retinue and one lucky hit from a vindicator eradicated half of your army. And now? Where is my Chaos Armor, where are my daemonic gifts, where are my themed armies, my master crafted weapons, my PSI-gear, my veteran skills (I was SO happy to eventually get some after years of waiting), cult terminators, and where the f**k is the goddamn Fallen Angel again, the only sign of hope for at least some of the lost and the damned to return to the light of the emperor (posthumously, of course)??!!

*sigh* Guess I'm stuck with grumpy, confused 3rd Edition, full of "we did that for the first time"-errors and unbalanced codizes in dependency of their relative age...

But you know, since the 2nd Chaos Codex for the 3rd edition was one of the last ones to be released before the 4th edition, there's harder fates to cope with... *grin*

Tags: WH40k Warhammer 40k 4th Edition Codex Chaos