Introductory Navel-Gazing
I've played a few Games Workshop games on and off for about six years now. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool loyalist, but I've stuck with them because it's very easy to find players, especially in suburban Australia, where support for anything else seems about nil. I collected a 40k Chaos army between '96 and '98, but shelved / sold / lost them when the 3rd edition of 40k came out, because shelling out $120AUS didn't really appeal to me at the time. Not that it still appeals to me now, mind you, but I've decided to dredge my old army back up and bring them in line with 3rd Edition 40k - which, of course, requires a new codex. Getting back into the 40k mindset somehow makes me want to review it. I'm not sure why. I'm very sorry, unless you're one of the three people this could actually help, then I'm just sort of embaressed.
The Book
The first thing I noticed was that the book's length is only 48 pages. Not exactly short by any means, but it is noticable when the original Codices were two to three times that length. Content wise, there are two main sections: Pages 1 to 30 contain all the information you need to field & run the army, while 31 to 48 have some (very brief) background info and a gallery / painting guide.
The pages all look very nice, as is to be expected of GW's products. The art is also of a similar standard and, thankfully, consistant - no more airbrushed mood-pieces sitting next to comic book caricatures lacking anything resembling human proportions. Either look was fine by me, but I don't really think they juxtaposed well. The art in this edition is a mixture of original work and reprints from the earlier editions. While there are numerous styles (seven different artists are credited all up), they don't stray as far away from each other as they did in earlier products, resulting in a more coherant overall look.
I do have a few issues with the way the content itself is arranged, though. For example, the list of weapons / armour / psychic powers / demon gifts you can give your troops is presented at the beginning of the army list, but we don't find out how half of it works until after the army list, and then we don't find out how the other half works until after the special characters list. Why? OK, so the division isn't totally random or anything (equipment & vehicle upgrades are seperated from daemon gifts & psychic powers), but there doesn't seem to be any real reason to do this. A daemon gift and a piece of equipment are, in game terms, not all that different, so why put an entire section between them? Why not list the equipment, daemon gifts, pysionics, vehicle upgrades and their respective costs / restrictions together? The book's focus seems to be on ease of use as opposed to lengthy descriptions, and having to flip between three seperate sections just to equip an army and find out what everything does makes things a lot more tedious than they should be.
There are a few other issues I have with the way some rules are laid out. On the 'special rules' page, it states that no daemonic troops are set up with your army and must enter the game via summoning or possession, with the exception of a daemon prince. So far so good. But in the entry for Nurglings, it says they're set up as normal troops. Go back to the Demon Prince entry, and no rule like this is mentioned. It's not a contradiction or an error of the rules themselves (which is why I'm talking about while describing the book itself, not the contents), but the special rules should either say "Nurglings and Daemon Princes are set up as normal", or the relevant information should be given on their profiles, or both, but here it's one method for each. I know it's a minor issue but it confused me the first time I read through.
I know I've been picky, but really, those are the only things about the overall presentation and layout I had problems with. The rest is very nice, and every character / model mentioned gets at least one illustration or photo, and most get more, which is pretty damn good. Descriptions of troops are written on the margins of the pages, meaning you don't have to skim through something's background if you're only looking for its stats & vice versa.
Background Info
There is not a lot of background information in this book at all. Well, maybe there is. Yes, everything gets covered in one way or another, but it's very brief, especially when you compare it to the previous codex. The Horus Heresey & the Chaos Gods themselves got a vast amount of space dedicated to them in the previous edition; now the heresy gets perhaps 3/4 of a page when all the information given is put together, and the Gods get a few mentions here and there but no real story. The best way I can think of describing it is that it reminded me of someone's 40k fansite (or this review) which assumes that readers are already familliar with the material, and places background snippets here and there without really explaining how they fit together. This isn't to say it's bad, but I had to fill in a lot of blanks with info I'd learned from other GW products.
I've read that this is all deliberate on the part of GW, who want to inlcude most of the 'meat' in White Dwarf. I'm a little iffy about this. On one hand, the metamorphosis of White Dwarf into a something with a little more substance would make it much better value for money. On the other hand, it would a) Still be quite expensive and b) Divide all the background & info across a series of magazines rather than together in one volume, which would be a nightmare to sought through.
All up, the background information is pretty sparse, but it's supposed to be, so... hmmm.
The Meat
If there's a few changes I'm thankful for with regard to the new codex, it's that Chaos is no longer as open to blatant abuse as it used to be. Now you can only take one mark of chaos per character as opposed to the original four, which should stop people creating close combat monsters with additional toughness, psychic power and access to every piece of equipment in the armoury. If you no longer want to be dedicated to a particular God, you can take the new 'Mark of Chaos Undivided', which costs nothing but lets you re-roll failed morale tests. The mark your Lord takes also determines what kind of retinue they can have, and whether or not certain squads count as an elite or troops choices, making this an important overall choice instead of just choosing Nurgle because it gives you extra toughness (or whatever).
Chaos are now beginning to live up to their name, and are a lot more chaotic than before. Dreadnaughts are now more likely to go mad during the battle, and even attack your own troops if they stand too close. There are new possessed marines, who get random stat bonuses at the beginning of the battle, though all these results are positive - it would have added an extra element had there been a chance they would do something you didn't want them to. I also like the new summoning and possession rules for Daemons, which can really backfire on you if you're unlucky, placing your daemons in a disatvantageous position (summoning) or killing an important character (possession).
Speaking of Daemons, they are now a lot less effective, though they also cost less, which may or may not be adequate depending on your style of play. Greater daemons especially have been reduced to about one-third to one-half their original powers, though this is in line with the alterations made to stats across the board for all 40k stuff, and it prevents them being totally unstoppable.
Besides statistics going down, a lot of the Daemons' old powers went away too. Pink Horrors, for instance, no longer split into two Blue Horros upon being killed, which saddens me because it was one of my favourite Daemonic powers and made your oponent think twice about attacking them. The Steeds of Slaanesh can no longer use their tounges to attack, Bloodletters no longer have Hellblades, the Axe of Khorne is still available as a gift but the Bloodthirster no longer carries it, Plaguebearers no longer have Plagueswords etc. While this was most likely done out of a sense of balance (and justifiably), it removes a lot of the uniqueness from Daemons, who are now only differentiated by having one stat higher than the others on a generic profile. It would have been nice if there was some kind of middle ground.
On the plus side, the Thousand Sons marines are now totally different as opposed to simply 'Tzeench-Worhsipping Marines'. They are tough, slow, have two wounds, can rapid-fire even when moving and are immune to long-range weapons with a strength of less than five. They really feel like animated armour now, which adds a lot of character which was previously missing.
A totally new troop type, Obliterators, are now available, and I have mixed feelings about them. They're marines whose bodies are made out of weapons, and can 'morph' themselves into different configurations during the game, eg. one could have a heavy flamer while fighting in a building, then change to a lascannon when they see a tank. This is a really cool idea, but when the army already has Havocs and Noise Marines to lay down the heavy fire, a new heavy weapon group doesn't really appeal to me as much as I'd like them to.
Of the new additions, my least favourite are Raptors. Like the Obliterators, they're conceptually spiffy (jump-pack assisted close-combat troops who scream to frighten the enemy and can escape from close combat at any time), but something about them doesn't sit well with me. I think it's that Chaos Space Marines are supposed to be achaic and less technologically-advanced than the loyalist marines, and now that they have jump-packs, they're losing a bit of individuality. Then again, I haven't used any and this is just a gut-reaction, so disregard this paragraph (unlike the rest of the review, which is so damn useful).
The 'Chaos Cult' and 'Chaos Daemon World' army lists are now gone, and I miss them, especially since I now have several Beastman packs who I can't field anymore. However, the rules for Chaos Cult armies have been printed on the GW site, and it is called Codex: Chaos Space Marines, so maybe new info is coming in the future.
On the Special Characters side of things, Abaddon the Despoiler is back, and is more powerful than before, though this is because of the decreases in power of other characters rather than an increase in his Kharn the Betrayer is still one of my favourites, attacking anything he can get near, friend or foe, and is a good all 'round unpredictable psycho. Cypher, the fallen Dark Angel and his brethren are very stylish, though I wish they'd added more info on the Fallen Angels themselves. Ahriman is now more powerful than ever for the same reason as Abaddon. Fabius Bile still my favourite Chaos special character because of his total unpredictability. His statistics are randomly generated before each game, and he can 'enhance' marines to make them stronger, though they risk losing control (I would have liked this to also apply to the possessed marines as well, as previously stated). However, Bile's weapon, a giant syringue called the Xyclos Needler, has been changed from its original incarnation, and now has only one method of attack rather than the previous three. Still, it's only a minor complaint. The last special character is a totally new addition, a Daemon prince of Slaanesh called Doomrider. It's nice to see a decent Slaanesh character (Bile did not bear his mark though he was a member of the Emperor's Children), and he also has a randomness to his nature (he can vanish from the battlefield without warning), though the lack of background info on him prevented me from really warming to him as a character.
This has been quite long, hasn't it? My fingers hurt.
Modelling & Painting Guide
This section is really good, regardless of how much/little you know about conversions and painting. There's a few tips for newbies (how to paint X colour scheme, how to do bone, how to paint Bloodletters quickly, how to do realistic pustules) through to some shots of really amazing conversions and how they were done, my personal favourite being a Rhino APC with a set of organ pipes mounted on the back. This really helps give you ideas, since in previous GW publications, 'Chaos Conversion' basically meant 'We added some spikes and a severed head'. If I have any complaints, it's that the Night Lords Rhino is just a Rhino with spikes and a severed head, the 'flying disk' looks totally horrible (the rider is brilliant, though) and a few conversions use things you can't get anymore (ie. Necromunda & Talisman pieces).
In Conclusion
Codex: Chaos Space Marines is a fine supplement on its own, as far as getting a Chaos Space Marine army up and running goes. However, there is very little information given about Chaos itself, so if you really want to get into the spirit of things, you'll need to poke around on the internet or start buying White Dwarf. The main reason I found this to be dissapointing was that so much information was contained in the original Codex: Chaos, meaning you never had to buy another book. Other than that, the book itslef does what it's supposed to, and is of a very high standard presentation wise, apart from some layout problems that, although minor, made things take longer than they should.
Summary
For the high quality of the book & the art, but having a few things in a confusing order, it gets 4/5 for Style
For the new, less abuse-prone rules, the gallery & some cool new ideas, but the lack of background fluff, no Cult/Daemon World army list, & the homogenisation of Daemons, it gets 3/5 for Substance
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