Dawn of War Codex

Before everyone gets on my case about what would and wouldn’t be overpowered, I’d like to point something out – I am a designer. I do concepts first and numbers second. I am not interested in disrupting balance in favor of any faction, I just want to explore some options to possibly improve the game in terms of theme and unit structure. For the sake of argument, let’s just assume that the numbers are reasonably balanced and instead focus on the ideas that the proposal offers.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the proposal in question:

Remove Noise Marines and Plague Marines from the Chaos HQ.
They are getting dissolved into upgrades.

Add Mark of Nurgle and Mark of Slannesh to Chaos Space Marines as upgrades that become available at Tier 2.
Mark of Nurgle would a significant health boost and the Plague Marine passives (slow aura, normal firing, explosive death) while reducing movement speed. One member of the squad (along with the Aspiring Champion) equips a Plague Knife and Bolt Pistol while the other two squad members retain their Bolters. Plague Knives are intended to be roughly the same DPS as a Chainsword.
Mark of Slannesh would essentially turn the squad into Noise Marines – one unit gains a Sonic Blaster and the squad gains Cacophony. There may be room for the Aspiring Champion to be altered in some way, but I feel that he’s fine as he is – his melee weapon would benefit the squad admirably due to the Sonic Blaster disabling ranged attack.

Add Mark of Nurgle and Mark of Slannesh to Chaos Havocs as upgrades that become available at Tier 2.
Mark of Nurgle would essentially turn the Havocs into what Plague Marines are now – slow, durable units with two bolters, a Rocket Launcher, and the Plague Marine passives. The health upgrade wouldn’t make them as durable as the current Plague Marines, however – I’d say 1250 health rather than 2000 for a ballpark estimate.
Mark of Slannesh, as you may have guessed, would outfit them with a Blastmaster and two Bolters.

Remove Bloodletters from the Chaos HQ.
The resulting flexibility increase that would come from making those upgrades available is enough to warrant trimming elsewhere, and I feel the best place to do this would be in the removal of Bloodletters. Chaos already has jump melee with Raptors and teleporting melee with Terminators. Bloodletters’ presence also makes MoK CSM outright less desirable – while MoK CSM may be better at chasing retreating units due to a higher movespeed, Bloodletters have too many other advantages: being able to instantly close the distance with Warp, being able to dodge extremely damaging abilities with Warp, being immune to suppression, having a higher damage output (while they don’t have ranged weapons, they can teleport and that kind of nullifies that “drawback”) and being (arguably) cheaper than MoK CSM. I have no issues with Bloodletters remaining as Chaos Lord special infantry or something similar, but I feel that their presence in the Chaos HQ roster can easily be done without (especially if CSM/Havocs get the proposed upgrades).

This is something that I’ve been thinking of for a while. Back in the days of Company of Heroes, I primarily played Panzer Elite because I liked the concept of a single infantry unit that could be upgraded to handle different threats because of how unique it was compared to the other factions. Considering Chaos’s overall theme of “which god you worship heavily influences what you become”, the mechanic of upgrading base units into more specialized roles seems like something that fits Chaos’s theme rather well. While this would make Chaos infantry play much more flexible, it would also require a much heavier time investment – after all, a unit becomes completely disabled when dedicating itself to a Chaos God. This would also mean moving Chaos’s Flamethrower unit to Tier 2, something I consider to be a reasonable move what the enormous amount of AoE strength that Chaos already fields.

Most of the upgrades are self explanatory, but I feel the CSM Mark of Nurgle one could use some clarification. I think that Mark of Khorne CSM play could vastly benefit from having a squad that is capable of soaking damage for them rather than having to soak damage themselves, and I’ve always felt like it was strange that the Plague Champion was the only real melee example of a Plague Marine available. It was even stranger to me that the current Plague Marines are terrible in melee when the Death Guard was specifically trained to be adaptable and fearsome melee fighters, something that almost all Plague Marines follow. While MoK CSM already fill the “fearsome melee fighters” role, I figure that two units with melee weapons and two units with bolters appropriately represents Plague Marines’ adaptability while making them moderately effective at both ranged and melee combat.

Anyways, that’s the gist of it. Feedback would be appreciated.

Mark of Nurgle wouldn't be needed since Plague bearers are going to be an exclusive Vanguard unit for PC call-in T2,Their a debuffing anti-meele squad(Check the Balance discussion forums for that post.)

Why make Mark of Slannesh since NM are exceptionally good enough alongside your army to disable mass range blob mobile ,they won't scale that much in T3 . Strongly disagree with removing PM/NM ,their integrated into Chaos roaster,can't change what the devs implemented .
PM are effectively used when conjunction with Khorne worship/Sigil of Rift/Global teleport of CS ,they can paired with Raptor-melta guns for countering Vehicular play . BL cannot be removed ,their purpose to counter-initiative Jump squads with melee skill and excellent at retreat kills and passive teleport leap to close distances even better then Raptors in some circumstances . There's no point in removing that squad

Their Phase ability can save em momentarily where Raptors isolated are forced to take damage from all sources. BL are great when tagged alongside KCSM or Chaos hero ,even under Bloodlust/Coruscating flames/Breath of Nurgle + Heretic worship , they become dangerous adversaries . Though Chaos does lack a Sub-commander for their Eco-bleed control

What is it with people and their sudden MoN, MoS obsession nowadays.

Chaos Havocs, Chaos Space Marines, Plague Marines and Noise Marines all have their defined roles. There is zero reason IMO to add all these Marks. All these Marks suggestion should be directed at Codex Mod instead.

Making Chaos have AV, Anti-Melee, Anti-Range and Arty capability in only 2 units excluding their current upgrades feels a bit... Bleh to me.

I completely disagree with this proposal.

Using all the Marks is nice, but the price here is losing all the icon units like Noise Marines and Plague Marines.
I understand that is strange to see Khornate and Rubrics as marks upgrade and the other two unit as stand alone (and in two different Tiers), but that is no excuse to take away them all.

And about Bloodletters, Chaos have a very unflexible and situational Tier 2, and Bloodletters are the safest investment in the scenario were your opponent have access to AV and so a Dreadnought is out of the question.
If you want to delete them, you need to add a new unit in Tier 2.
Chaos economy is very weak, and that purchase is essential.

If the teleport is the problem you can take it way, or you can change Bloodletters for real Khornate Bersekers.
That I can agree with.
But i find that Chaos having multiple jump units is unique in a good way. Raptors and Bloodletters are very different units.

I suggested something very similar to this but didn't seem to be interesting for people.

The idea is giving the Plague Marines and Noise Marines the same treatment that Khorne Berzerkers and Thousand Sons had, and I like it.

I agree with Discreet. It is all very well going on about marks, but in the end it actually hampers chaos to lose those things in T1 or have to wait longer for their upgrade to build. It also means you have the option of going for a double CSM build early on and then getting these upgrades available, would then on the oppostie side of things make them overpowered, making your old CSM squads suddenly into a pair of Death Guard squads. I know you don't want people saying "OMG so OP, get a life, u reckt da game!" but I think it might need a bit more thinking through.