Good Idea, Great Idea, or Terrible Idea

[ElectricPaladin]

As you probably know, I've been working on a Blood Ravens army for a few months now. They've been lots of fun. I've never actually played the Dawn of War games - it all started with a free GW mini painted up as a Blood Raven on a whim, followed by reading about them on the wikis and 1d4chan and learning about their weird intellectual chapter culture, dubious might-actually-be-Thousand-Sons past, and habit of jacking sh*t from other chapters... and it was love.

Anyway, I recently had an odd thought: do you think I could get away with making a chaos army primarily composed of my Blood Ravens with some new chaosy HQs painted with a mix of modern and pre-Heresy color schemes and markings, a unit or two of cult Thousand Sons, and a few of the cooler new Chaos models? That way when I'm feeling loyalist, I just bring my Blood Ravens, and when I'm feeling like letting the galaxy burn, I bring my Blood-Ravens-turned-traitor. Two armes for (nearly) the price of one (well, one and a half or so).

Two questions:

1) In your opinion, is this idea be cool or dumb?
2) Does the new chaos codex include enough more or less "normal marines" units that I could use what I've already got in the way I've described?

(Question 2 is inspired by an idea I had earlier to use my leftover marines to make a small Grey-Knights-as-Exorcists army... that idea died when I borrowed a copy of the Grey Knights codex and realized that they really aren't a marines codex, and I'd need to buy a lot of new models - by contrast, my Blood Ravens have only cost me about $50 for about 1650 points, given how much stuff I already owned).

[Learn2Eel]

It would work very well, and due to the Thousand Sons links, your opponents would find it a very cool kind of army to face off against. I know a person that has a Blood Ravens contingent as part of his Space Marine forces, and I commonly joke about how my Thousand Sons will give them a special honour; leave them to last so the Thousand Sons can butcher them personally!

On the second question, the answer is yes. I won't post the specific points-per-model costs, but lets just say that for the price of 10 vanilla Space Marines with no weapon upgrades, you can get a plasma gun and a missile launcher on a 10-man Chaos Space Marine unit and still be cheaper!
You can take Predators, Vindicators, Godhammer Land Raiders, and in a sense, Sternguard Veterans (Chosen).

[Calgar33]

I've done a similar thing with my own chapter of marines, I custom built almost all of the vanilla marine special characters and started work on blood angels and space wolves ones.

[wittdooley]

It'll work really well, considering the Blood Ravens chapter master actually turns to chaos in DoW 2. Will work very, very well.

[Cursed13]

I would approve of a Chaos leaning Blood Ravens army. For models I would like to see Sergeants and commanders changed to more Chaos models, but the regular Battle Brothers unchanged. Mostly because this would be more accurate to the history of the Dawn of War games. Especially in DoW2: Chaos Rising, as the player, you can choose to follow down the path of Chaos and your unit leaders can take on Chaos traits and gain Chaos powers. I'm all about the expanded universe background story!

Actually the funny thing is, the farther down the path of Chaos my Captain went, the more deadly he became to Chaos. Any daemon that entered his aura bubble was immediately banished back into the warp, and any Chaos Marine that got even gently brushed by his lightning claws literally exploded, sending various body parts flying across the map. I would find limbs from earlier combats as I explored the level. It was endlessly amusing. Even falling to Chaos, my Captain would not swerve from his duty! But he still got exiled and sent on a 100 year crusade into the Eye of Terror...

But yeah, Exorcists as Grey Knights would never fly. Exorcists LOATHE psykers and abhor psychic powers. It's like trying to play Iron Hands using the Blood Angels codex. Sure you'll get the Dreadnoughts, but everything else just wouldn't fit.

[ElectricPaladin]

So, it's decided. If I ever decide that I can spare the cash from my primary products, I'll start adding chaos models to my collection so I can field my Blood Ravens as evil Blood Ravens. Thank you all for playing.

Though, one question for Cursed13... I though the Exorcists were Grey Knights successors. Aren't they all psykers like the Grey Knights? I assumed that like most successor chapters they use the codex of their parent chapter.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Sounds like the army'll be fun, good luck with it! Maybe model the Rubric Marines as though they were created from loyalist Blood Ravens? Edit: (It's pure speculation whether or not Sorcerers can "Rubric-ize" marines - I like the idea, since it explains how they deal with attrition and allows them to convert captured Space pups and Khornates into loyal automatons.)

Though, one question for Cursed13... I though the Exorcists were Grey Knights successors. Aren't they all psykers like the Grey Knights?

They share the Knights' geneseed, but aren't all Psykers and are equipped as a normal Space Marine chapter (plus, Forgeworld created a special character for them who uses Codex: Space Marines).

[magickbk]

The Grey Knights are all psykers because they are recruited from psykers. Any chapter that would share their gene-seed would be normal marines, unless they also recruited entirely from psykers. The primary difference in the Grey Knights gene-seed is that it was considered the most pure of all, taken from the Emperor instead of from the Primarchs.

[ElectricPaladin]

Sounds like the army'll be fun, good luck with it! Maybe model the Rubric Marines as though they were created from loyalist Blood Ravens? Edit: (It's pure speculation whether or not Sorcerers can "Rubric-ize" marines - I like the idea, since it explains how they deal with attrition and allows them to convert captured Space pups and Khornates into loyal automatons.)

That's a really neat idea. I'll definitely go with that. But ironically...

They share the Knights' geneseed, but aren't all Psykers and are equipped as a normal Space Marine chapter (plus, Forgeworld created a special character for them who uses Codex: Space Marines).

Darn. If I'd known that, I might have gone with Exorcists instead of Blood Ravens. Ah, well - with Blood Ravens I can have more librarians, since apparently Exorcists actually don't like psykers. If I change my mind later, it won't be hard. All I'll have to do is paint over the shoulder pads .

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

As far as I know (from info in the Badab War pt 2 and C:SM), the Exorcists don't have any issue with psykers - their history has a couple of famous Librarians who beat the tar out of daemons - they even have a special clique of Librarians within them, the "Broken Tower". Maybe it was added in a different piece of fluff? Still, it'd seem weird for a Grey Knights-descendant, raised under the eyes of Malleus (plenty of psyker Malleus Inq.s) to consider Psykers abhorrent.