Now for some Chaos!

The Chaos Codex is a very nice book.  £30 nice?  Almost definitely not.  But I’ve reconciled myself with the pricing policies inherent in my hobby and forked over the cash anyway.  I know PDFs of the codices are very easy to find (and free) and all that, but there is something to be said for the physicality of a book, even if the price tag rankles.  At least GW doesn’t seem to have spared any expense in its production.  See point 1 in this paragraph.  It is, after all, a very nice book.

It also comes with some interesting format ideas, one of which I think is a very good one.  There is a complete foldout reference page in the back, detailing, not just stat names and weapon profiles, but every unique special rule and every random table that the new book spews for the.  It really is a very nice touch and makes the thing far more practical to use mid-game.  And you will need to refer to it.  I say this to anyone who still needs to look up the mission or deployment types, then you should probably run screaming from this ‘dex.  Seriously.

There are three unit types that randomly shift special rules on a shockingly regular basis (all on D3 tables, thankfully) and another couple of units that you can change the weaponry of every turn (and actually have to.  You have to use a different set each turn).  And that’s before you get to the D66 table of Chaos boons (D66 in this case only having about 30 options).  And the fact that you can give nearly every character the opportunity to roll on the table before the game begins.

You’ll need an army list, or at least a piece of paper and a pen, because your squad leaders will be mutating all over the shop if you’re having a good game.  Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to do a bit of a dissection of the book and the units therein for your collective edification and to ease my own insecurities about the lack of content on my blog.  So, I declare this Chaos week.  I’ll go through the various units every weekday (hopefully!) with a few lines on my first impressions for each of the units.  It’s going to be mainly theory, however.  I want to play many games with this army, but I can’t quite yet. Certainly not enough to bring any sizable degree of practical experience to the table.

I’ll try to make it interesting.

Whether or not I succeed will be in the hands of the Four Powers though…