Traitors Hate

Greetings all,
So Traitors Hate.  GW Surprised a lot of us with a new Chaos supplement that actually was specific to chaos space marines and not Chaos daemons.  I was at wargamescon when the rumors started to hit.  Of course you dont believe these things until your buddies start sending you pics of the cover of the supplement with Kharn on it.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  Finally GW was going to release something for us long "suffering" chaos space marine players to at least be able to compete with the other armies in the game.  For once, we are finally going to get a Chaos "decurion" and not just a series of formations like we got from the Crimson Slaughter and Black Legion books.  So what did I think about it you may ask?  When I started hearing about the contents I will admit I wasnt thrilled.  Everything seemed just Meh but once I got the book in my greedy little hands, it did something that I didnt anticpate.  It excited the crap out of me.  The formations were good, not great but good.  It allowed us to take out our old models off of the shelf and once again bring them on to the desktop.  These formations really were built with a dark mech/iron warriors frame of mind as we finally got a way to run an army of Oblits, an army of tanks, or an army of daemon engines.  Warpsmiths appear to be the common denominator in these formations which depending on if you ask the internet, just plain sucks.  I fortunately am not one of those naysayers, I love the unit and always bring one or two in my Dark Mech armies.  The fomations also give me something for my nightlords; the raptor talon being just amazing for them.  The core choices appear pretty good as well with the Chaos Warband being one that I cant wait to try as it makes all units ob sec.  Due to this book, I am again putting down my admech, (lol, i know) and working on my Nightlords to get them up to snuff with the new formations.  I also want to see how I can incorporate my Dark Mech with this new book along with the daemon engine pack formation from the black legion book as that is one of my favorites.  Below are my favorites from the book  -

In no particular order

1.  Raptor Talon - We finally get a formation that makes both raptors and most of all warp talons into something that could do well when taken.  The big thing of course is the fact that on deepstriking, you can charge.  This is a huge boon and something not to be overlooked.  The fact that the formation also contains a lord could make this a hard hitting formation.  The fear bonus is just that a bonus that will only come into effect again a 3rd of the armies that you face.

2.  Hellforge Pack -  Another daemon engine formation but one that actually allows you to take up to 5 engines and allows the hellbrute.  The bonuses such as making one engine the alpha engine and giving them a 4+ invul to allowing daemonforge to be used more than once is pretty good.  The warpsmith as the tax is ok, he can repair the engines if need be and adds a fighty character to a unit.  I just wish that it also gave the bonues of allowing an engine to use the warpsmith's BS or WS just like the daemon engine pack but i guess you cant have it all.

3.  Cult of destruction - Finally we get a formation for oblits.  The bonus of allowing the unit to shoot twice is very good but somewhat limiting by the Oblits rules of having to use a different weapon every turn.  If this allowed them to shoot whatever weapon twice, this formation would be amazing.  The other amazing thing of course is the fact that you can take up to 5 units of oblits.  if the formation granted fearless to them or allowed Multilators the abilty to run and this formation would move from good to great.

4.  Terminator Annillilation Force - Just like with the Oblits, we get a terminator only formation of a Chaos lord and 3-5 squads of termies.  This is something I wanted for a while now as it allows me to create a super elite army with tough as nails units.  I know that for a lot of folks, terminators are really subpar but their ability to fight in both the shooting and assault phase makes them very flexible.  Their ability to be armed with anti-tank and anti-troop weapons also helps and a 2+ save is nothing to sniff at.  Their best ability however is their ability to deepstrike which combined with the formations targetted for annillilation rule makes the formation a great choice.

If anything this book really brought out the excitement of using your old chaos armies.  Sure this book doesnt make them top tier but at the very least gives chaos players more options and hopefully will aid in encouraging more old chaos players to dig out their old armies.