Today all of the Chaos Index Datasheets are released over on Warhammer Community, we’re taking a look at all of them, and this time it is the turn of the Chaos Space Marines!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for giving us access to the rules a little early, and you can download them right now off WarCom!

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We also have a whole raft of 40k 10th Edition and Leviathan content up, so be sure to check it out here on the site or on YouTube!

Army Rules

The core mechanic of the Chaos Space Marines is the ability to gamble in order to get one of two buffs at the cost of perhaps taking Mortal Wounds with a Dark Pact. Basically whenever you shoot or fight you can choose to gain Sustained Hits or Lethal Hits, however if you do you take a leadership test with you taking D3 Mortal Wounds on a fail – not a bad trade off really, just be careful you dont cause yourself to drop below half strength and put you in that dangerous Battleshock position.

You are also allowed to take Khorne Bezerkers, Rubric Marines and Plague Marines, but the total combined can only be up to a quarter of your army.

Slaves to Darkness Detachment

The CSM Detachment is Slaves to Darkness, and this allows you to grant every unit in your army a mark of chaos – these essentially allow your Dark Pact special rules from the above to trigger on 5’s rather than 6’s making it more worth gambling on the mortal wounds. Undivided units on the other hand gain rerolls of 1 when under the influence of one of the two abilities.

Slaves to Darkness Enhancements

The Chaos Space Marines gain access to 5 enhancements, one for each god and then an undivided one.

Khorne gets +1 to their attacks and strength, and an addition D3 when under a Dark Pact

Tzeentch have the chance to gain 1 CP whenever you take a Dark Pact if you pass the leadership roll

Nurgle can cause splash damage to nearby units on a roll of 4+, again buffed by the Dark Pact

Slaanesh get a 5+ feel no pain, and the chance of causing the unit they are fighting to take battleshock

And finally undivided get the ability to gain both abilities from Dark Pact rather than having to choose

Slaves to Darkness Stratagems

As always we get 6 strats unlocked with the detchment:

Infernal Rites is basically Armour of Contempt, and reduces Ap against a target unit

Profane zeal gives you rerolls of 1s to hit and wound, undivided get a nice little bonus in that they get to reroll all hits and wounds instead!

Eternal hate allows units to fight on death on a roll of 4+, with a bonus to the roll for Khorne units

Skinshift is a 3 wound heal, which returns a slain model for Tzeentch

Unnatural Swiftness lets units fall back and shoot, with Slaanesh units getting to charge too!

And finally Dark Obsuration gives a unit stealth when shot at, and Nurgle can only be targeted when within 12″

Key Units

There’s lots of really cool stuff in this Index, and even some things that I really wanted in the previous Codex. For a start, it is possible to do a nice “Lost and the Damned” style army made up of cultists, traitor guard and beastmen backed up by daemon engines and led by Vashtorr. This is the kind of army I’ve wanted to run for a long time – Chaos Space Marines without the Marines, and its now finally possible!

This gels really well with Vashtorr’s ability to give nearby Daemon Engine units +1 Strength, making him someone you want to include if you are taking any of those units.

Speaking of Daemons, the Winged Daemon Prince has a cool ability where units he passes over have to take battleshock tests, which makes him a really nice way of fleshing units off objectives.

Beastmen are also pretty fun, acting as a melee scouting unit that can make longball charges to get onto an objective – sadly these and the traitor guard are not battleline, but at least it should make a varied force with units of beasts, traitors and cultists!

Abbadon of course is a linchpin of the army, and he grants a number of different buffs to nearby units – each turn he can choose to either give them rerolls of hits, grant them a 4+ inv save or re-roll battleshock, making him quite versatile and able to full multiple roles within the force

I’m interested in seeing how this is expanded this winter when the Chaos Space Marine Codex for 10th Edition is released – At the time of writing this it’s very much an unknown as to what a codex looks like, and i’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out!

Make sure to stay tuned to the site this week for more faction previews.

Published by Matt Crowther

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