The sequel to this episode is for late August, with the changes from 6th through to 7th edition, how Forge World factored in and Imperial Armour Vol.13.
Speaking of, would love if you've got thoughts on the old Imperial Armor books vs.... campaign books now, I guess? Badab War Vol. II is one of my prized possessions I've held onto as my GW interest has waxed and waned cause that book was a work of love and it shows, definitely the blueprint/testbed for the Horus Heresy Black Books. My only regret is I didn't get Part I while it was still in print to have the proper set for a sweet coffee table duo.
@@mathewevans9706 Badab was the best, followed by Vraks, Fall of Orpheus was ok, Anphelion Project, Doom of Mymerra and The Assault on whatever were much more middling.
What I loved about 3.5 are the doctrines and the chaos lord rule of being a daemon prince by just spending x amount of points on gifts. literally explains why Doom Rider isn't the size of a bigrig.
Back then you got to know your army really well, and could memorise practically everything about it. No dipping into numerous books every five minutes and breaking the immersion.
I like how GW decided to make the space marine problem worse by adding a whole new type of space marine with three different armour types that results in up to three variants for each HQ alongside a worse version of the Horus heresy weapons squads. Going through the index cards for space marines is such a slog, it’s almost nauseating. I don’t know how players manage it.
Not that owning index cards but even with app it's just a mess, for example Berserkers at top of unit list and Master of Execution at bottom. Since was playing demo game and don't have printer make before hand, so it's just flipping through top and bottom of datasheets, as for Physical card i guess only "saving grace" is to take only those cards that using in game.
they axe the FW stuff to "reduce bloat and the difficulty to balance" but their whole primaris range has more than tripled the number of rules necessary - made even worse by the refusal to release multi-part-HQ kits
@@darko-man8549 so many baller models have been put on ‘rotation’ because of codex bloat. The space marine commander was probably the gold standard for an HQ kit and it’s gone to make way for primaris rocketeers and the notsquats that nobody asked for.
As a fellow veteran of the Long War, well said and great job showing the stark difference of how Codices used to look and provide value and bang for the buck vs. what they've devolved into.
i started with the chaos 3.5 Codex. I really appreciate seeing the 3.0 Codex. Still convert my vehicles like they're Demonengines and blessed by the warpsmith. I love the old artwork and the rules in 3.5 chaos so much.
@@kingofrohan888 …no. No, it wasn’t, and it’s objectively not even close. It had nowhere near the options and nowhere even remotely close to its lore, artwork and hobby. 9th Chaos was one of the best 9th codices. It still pales in comparison to those who came before, and there’s not rose-tinted glasses involved. It genuinely was just a higher calibre.
@@CTA12356 both. I miss the over the top eclectic weirdness of the art styles that drew me in. The stuff that's left looks like monotone Sci fi D&D art.
I stared playing 40K in 5th edition (World Eaters). I am still playing the same army to this day, but I will readily admit that it would have been more fun if I had been able to start with the 3.5 Chaos Codex. I’ll always be sad that I missed out on that era.
I started in 3rd for 40k and think it is much much simpler then now. Dead easy to pick up and learn. Found my love for Iron Warriors. Based off the white dwarf chapter approved. Bring back my basilisk! Miss the 3.5 dex hugely!
Those noise marine models are still the same ones we are using today. Also I believe in this codex you could replace autocannons with blastmasters which is just amazing.
*Eye of Terror global campaign Fun Fact:* Originally, Phil Kelly wanted to write a Chaos Crone World Eldar variant army list for the supplement instead of Ulthwe Strike Force as he explains in WD 282 (UK) Eye of Terror Designers' Notes article.
I never played as Chaos myself, but I have that first codex as part of my 3rd edition book collection. Some of the best, most evocative, and darkly gothic art i've seen for the faction. It's definitely one of my favourite codices.
This is great looking through the history. I started in 8th, but have since brought all the previous Codex's for my main army. Ill have to go through then again. Great video
3.5E CSM dex was simply perfect. Then again, 3E 40k and 6E WFB overall was the golden age of Warhammer, peak Warhammer experience, no wonder why they were also the longest editions.
I learn 5th edition when I was 12 years old....at a tournament....while participating in said tournament. First ever game was on round 1 and I had about 15 mins before the game to read the rules. My friend Al, God rest his soul, lent me a 500 pt army of Space Marines. It was a tactical squad, combat squaded, a scout squad, a rhino and a land speeder, if I remember right. I didn't even use the rhino as a transport, I used it as mobile cover that shot things but I came in 4th place. I somehow managed to beat necrons, dark eldar and tyranids. Lost to IG in round 4 but my opponent figured out he'd accidentally played with his missiles 1 higher than they actually were and gave me a tie. It was a lot of fun. I could pick up the game at 12 in 5e, probably wouldn't have been harder in 3rd, but I don't know that I could have done so as easily in 8-10th era.
It's a fantastic book, I have two copies! It's a brilliant toolbox of that allows a lot flexibility for each Legion, while remaining true to their character. GW in true money grubbing fashion, really didn't have to split up the codex when they had a winning formula, but they had dollar signs in eyes that persist till this day. Edited: The only only Codex that comes even remotely close, in my opinion is the Witch Hunters Codex. But even that suffers from a significant drop off in quality and quality of life IMO.
Thank you for this video, i bought some old books and found 3.5 in the pile. The art is amazing and i think i want to do an old chaos army to play these rules with.
I 100% agree about this whole video. I still have my third edition rules in very good condition, really good versions of 3.5 and eye of terror. Pure flavour and like you said it hits what you want as a chaos player. Details and options!, And of course flavor
The Chaos motorpool is enough to make a grown man weep. It is pathetic, old and ignored. Every time GW trys to be cool and memes on a new stupid Space Marine Lt. I always think back to the 20 year old Predator and Land Raider kit you need to buy for your Chaos army.
I will use a wrestling analogy to describe what GW has done: A monster heel (Chaos Codex 3.5) comes into a new territory (game edition) and devastates every opponent (factions with only an index) he faces in the squared circle (battle of 40K). His intention is to get a match against the reigning champion during the next pay-per-view in order to win the title. As time goes by (new codices come out for other factions) the promoter of the wrestling company (GW) decides that indeed a match between the monster heel and the reigning champion will be a good idea. So who is the reigning champion? It´s of course Hulk Hogan (Space Marines 3.0) the All-American hero. On the day of the pay-per-view the promoter (GW) decides that the monster heel (Chaos Codex 3.5) will lose to the reigning champion (Chaos Codex 3.5 turns into Chaos Codex 4.0 with zero customization options) thus elevating him into the stratosphere (Space Marine Codex 4.0 with trait options for chapters) and ensuring that he becomes the true face of the company (GW) to put asses into the seats (attract new Little Timmys each year) of forthcoming wrestling events (every new edition of the game) while the beaten monster heel (Chaos stuck forever with subpar codices in the future) loses a lot of heat and has to move to another wrestling territory to pose a credible threat yet again.
This was an era when Chaos could get 2 codexes in the same edition while Space Marines just got their 1 in 1998 for 3rd edition and the next in 2004 for 4th edition. Could never happen today.
Commenting on chaos cults and GW trying to make out they don't exist ... I brought both versions of the visions of heresy ...the original and the updated version that came out 5 years later ..there is artwork in the older one that isn't in the newer one and vice versa. The artwork left out has some of the more blurry computer made looking stuff but a fair few decent artworks as a majority. It tends to leave out pics of mainly vehicles,chaos cultists and demons ...
Agreed on all accounts, thanks for a lovely trip down memory lane! To this day it is amazing to see how much variety and player choice - in terms of both modelling AND list building - the books in 3rd edition provided. Yes, 3.5 was in a league of its own, but look at the original 3rd edition codex: it still had so many options! And notice how much focus there was on painting and converting your models, even more so in the first book! Oh and you could play a more convincing army of Death Guard, World Eaters and Thousand Sons than with todays books, go figure. It is refreshing to be reminded that back in the day they managed to offer a great deal of variety by nuanced use of general rules, plus very little special rules compared to today. It may or may not have to do with people like Rick Priestley and Andy Chambers still writing rules for GW at the time, who knows... The 4th/5th edition book - yeah we had to live with that turd through all of 5th edition - was downright insulting when it comes to gameplay, but it also butchered the lore and modelling side of things. It also achieved way less gameplay variety with actually MORE rules bloat... a trend that would only continue to get worse up until today. And today? We still get punished for the conceived "imbalance" of the 3.5 book, while todays books are not even that much more balanced anyway. All paid by an absolutely atrocious amount of "make these your own dudes" when it comes to both list building and modelling variety. Thanks for nothing GW...
That was my favorite chaos space marine book. I started playing Thousand Sons in second edition. The third edition codex was okay. But the 3.5 edition was perfection. It allowed me and my friends to create chaos armies that worked completely unique. You could customize so many aspects of your army. All of us had at least 3 armies of 3,000 points are higher back then because of this codex.
the 3.5 codex was the last time I played chaos. After they ripped away all the flavor and uniqueness to the legions the soul was gone. Iron warriors could have heavier vehicles and equipment, word bearers could have literal hundreds of cultists, night lords were actually scary. Now all the legions feel like black legion painted different colors. The game changed in 4th to 5th to lose so much soul and flavor. It feels like generations removed now. I feel sorry when i hear "I started in 7th/8th/9th" because they missed the golden age and have no idea what it used to be like.
Yeah... As someone who started in 8th I wish I could've played back in the 3.5 days... That's why I'm going back to that and importing newer units into it to have the best of both worlds!
@@Wanten-the-stormtrooper Well there is the Horus Heresy. 3rd edition was basically Space Wolves, Black Templars, Blood and Dark Angels vs everybody else as the vanilla marines pretty much sucked.
@@Kharmazov Yeah, I'll get into Heresy, too, but I'd still love to give 4th ed. 40k a go once I've gotten a hang of the rules and ported newer models' rules back into it.
@@Wanten-the-stormtrooper IMHO try 3.5 instead. 4th pretty much got rid of the ability to assault from the Rhino after disembarking which nerved basically all of the marine cc armies including the Chaos ones.
@@Kharmazov Don't worry, I've heard horror stories about the 4th ed. Chaos dex! I'm just gonna use the core rules and other codices from 4th and the 3.5 Chaos dex since it's basically a 4th edition one already!
God i loved my 3.5 ed chaos book fun times. more fluff in that for World Eaters then the current one other then giving us special melee weapons for our Berzerker squads.
Funny enough I worked at GW at the time this came out, the end of 4th beginning of 5th. CSM players where pissed right off when GW went 'minimal' for CSM and Dark Angels, then let Mat Ward out of the bag with a lot of the other codex's. IG was a neat codex but not as cool as 3rd/4th dex. Then Necrons and Grey Knights came out and wow...just wow, so many new GK players that edition.
The 3.5e codex was great, no question, loved it. But as beloved and much read as this book is said to be, to this day I've never met anyone who actually knows how the rules for mixing Marks actually works. But I really liked the 4e book too, and it's shift away from the legions to renegades
My favourite part of 3rd edition was a lot of the Chapter Traits and Legion Traits were free in White Dwarf before getting collated in the 4th or 3.5 codexes
23:04 you’d probably have less stuff on the table though with points changes. I played some 3.5 csms in 5th a couple of times (admittedly I had only ever played 5th and used the shit book) and my force was smaller.
My first kits were in fourth but I think I first played fifth? Macragge? Is the third rulebook playable without codexes? Ik its limited but I have it and it would be refreshing
God I miss the old 40k. They literally just had to put out an emergency update to 10th. The Edition has been out for two weeks and is already getting FAQ'd.
they stopped giving a shit about chaos, the 9th edition legion codices were barely bigger that the loyalist space marine supplements, hell the space wolf one is the same size as the world eater one. Then the death guard codex got smaller from 8th and the adeptus custodes one got larger. GW needs to treat chaos as the big bad they are meant to be.
Great vid, Macca. Depressing, but great. You should consider making a video about 10th edition's treatment of Chaos as a follow-up to this video. In particular, GW removing all of the awesome Forgeworld units that actually helped add a bit of uniqueness and flavor to Chaos marines. Not only have the mono-god legions been removed from the CSM codexes over the years and put in their own separate books, but they also seem to remove half of their units they used to have at the time. While only giving us a couple of new ones (with new models to buy, of course...) im return. Now they spit in our face bu moving most of the Forgeworld stuff to legends and not even giving us points? While still leaving all of the loyalist units?! Why does GW hate Chaos players SO much?
3.5 was the best. My group only played them unless there was new models that came out like space marine units or knights and titans and super massive vehicles then we just bashed them into the rules
I started on 3rd edition the stopped at 5th but ive still got these codexes and i agree these were a work of art iys a shame the direction gw went with the books and the rules 3rd edition was a brilliant game to play
I always did hate that the 'Special Rules' did not have a chart in 5th edition books (the edition I started with). I had to either flick through the damn thing to find the rules during a game (in my first day's playing) or I had to just write the buggers down to remember them. Its not a massive gripe, but something that would have made it far more convenient in-game for a beginner. Edit: double us of 'that' changed to 'hate that'.
Ah, 4th and 5th edition Chaos. Where they forgot that Daemons were the thing they'd originally added to bring CSMs to parity with loyalists in the first place, and ripped them out without compensating for it in any way. It wouldn't have been as bad if Allies had been a thing then, but they didn't really exist outside of some rules that were specific to the two Inquisition books, and maybe some Chapter Approved stuff. And it doesn't help that SMs have received way, way more content than CSMs in the 16 years or so since. And btw, a lot of the art in the 4th edition CSM book is new, but it's not amazing IMO. There's a few good pieces, but a lot of it just feels like a cheap, rushed imitation of what came before it.
I agree that Chaos 3.5 is thee best codex and 3rd edition is fantastic as I played a few games of it and it was great. 8th to 10th are just a total cluster and the game no longer has really tactics or strategy with most weapons feeling like peashooters, but the greatest travesty is that Chaos has just been gutted and effectively has nothing to work with, the mortal forces need the daemons in the same book, more daemon engines need to be added along with vehicles, traitor guard need to be added and we need renegade chapter and legion stuff. What we need is a full one-to-one Chaos version of the space marines, guard and knights rolled into one book with daemons. The best way to play Chaos now is to pretend the index/codex exists and just use the loyalist stuff and more or less paint it like Chaos.
I started 40k at 3rd Edition, the CSM codex was exciting at the time because I didn't really know any better. The artwork was great, but the models were pretty lame compared to what SM were getting. The 3.5 CSM codex blew it out of the water, a well written book accompanied by a huge revamp of the CSM range. This really was a fun time in the franchise. I quit 40k at the start of 4th edition and only recently returned at the end of 9th. Looking back through the codices in between then till now, I do think the 9th edition CSM codex was probably the best represenation of the sub-legions (Night Lords player). But the customisation of 3.5 was amazing. It was so weird coming back to 40k and seeing everyone playing special characters, but when you can't create you own there is no other option. The traits, relics and strats of 9th was pretty cool, but the freedom of customisation of 3.5 was truly special. Great video mate.
The difference vetween chaos space marines 3.5 and after is, 3.5 is immersion with the Design you get immersed while reading after that its just Information. Same for all other codexes. I started with 3rd demonhunters they got torn apart. While its cool to play grey knights, the Inquisition misses a good codex now. And no imperial angents is not the same.
GW demanding that every points is a multiple of 5 makes their lives harder to balance, it's so odd consideirng their desperation to "make balancing easier"
Well thats exactly how i felt. Started with 3.5, really fun to create my armies. Have not enjoyed an edition as much as that book, they created such a great way to create a unique force with the upgrades. Im not 100% but I think they dumbed it down to the horrendous 4th edition that gave fuck all character to your... characters and army, was because 'it was too hard with so many upgrades and options wawa' . My response to that would be GW you wankers launched countless extra supplements requiring libraries of books to play the game as well as keeping up with all the rules in so many locations.
"They can't bother to do that these days for CSM" The 9th Ed CSM book literally has several pages of rules for the legions. 3.5 is a great book, but the 9th ed CSM book from a flavor perspective had everything you could possibly want
Everything except flavor lol. Fuck all for unit options. Legions are all pretty similar to each other (even the 7e traitor legion book did a better job at differentiating them). The Psychic EVERYTHING sucked ass. Daemons as a mechanic was ripped out entirely (not even able to summon them anymore). And of course, all of the deleted unit options along with wargear being destroyed as options entirely. Fuck you if you wanted a night lords chaos lord on a jump pack.
I’m confused by your comparison of the 3rd edition legion rules and the modern incarnation of them. The 9th edition codex has a couple pages dedicated to the rules of each legion and each legion gets their own couple pages of lore. You said that GW just wants to make people believe every csm is just from a renegade chapter, but GW didn’t even put in rules for renegade chapters. From my experience playing the modern game, it’s pretty easy to make a fluffy list out of any legion you want. Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your point about legion rules, but I don’t think GW has been trying to sideline the legions (at least from what I can gather from the modern rule sets).
GW has a tendency to treat Chaos more like the Chapters of the astartes, standardised force org, standard units which crop up in every chaos warband, when Legions in 3.5 were about uniqueness and diversity of units, with radical departures rather than basic tweaks of an identical base list.
@@TheOuterCircle In my time playing modern csm, I found that the legion rules provided do allow for units to feel and play differently. For example, I wouldn’t play raptors in a Word Bearers army in the same I would play them in a Night Lords army because of differences in general army rules and stratagems. Looking back again at your video and pausing on some of legion rule, I can see how some of those points upgrades could provide another (and perhaps more impactful) way of making units feel different between the legions. I’m just not so sure that the flavor of each legion has been abandoned.
I'm not generally nostalgic to my teens but 40k was just better then. Now the company's greed permeates everything with a videogame like 'seasons' model, the hobby is devoid of any creativity with monopose models and identical terrain on every table, and somehow every other player is trans or some other kind of neuro divergent snowflake.
@@TheOuterCircle Didn't the 5th Ed books start having three pages/sections per a unit entry? Lore page (1), then Unit Stat page (2), and finally Army Entry and USR's? (3). I sware 5th Ed Orks and SM did that.
The sequel to this episode is for late August, with the changes from 6th through to 7th edition, how Forge World factored in and Imperial Armour Vol.13.
Speaking of, would love if you've got thoughts on the old Imperial Armor books vs.... campaign books now, I guess? Badab War Vol. II is one of my prized possessions I've held onto as my GW interest has waxed and waned cause that book was a work of love and it shows, definitely the blueprint/testbed for the Horus Heresy Black Books. My only regret is I didn't get Part I while it was still in print to have the proper set for a sweet coffee table duo.
@@mathewevans9706 Badab was the best, followed by Vraks, Fall of Orpheus was ok, Anphelion Project, Doom of Mymerra and The Assault on whatever were much more middling.
@@TheOuterCircle
Speaking of Vraks have you followed Wargames Atlantic and the conclusion to their "Damned" range funding campaign??;-)
I was there, Gandalf, I was there 3000 editions ago
I laughed out loud on the bus at “ my precious, my love”
Got a few odd looks, but fuck em, you’re right😂
I adore original artwork. I don’t want to see what they are already selling or in the box.
Loads of classic Wayne England stuff. Glorious.
What I loved about 3.5 are the doctrines and the chaos lord rule of being a daemon prince by just spending x amount of points on gifts.
literally explains why Doom Rider isn't the size of a bigrig.
Back then you got to know your army really well, and could memorise practically everything about it. No dipping into numerous books every five minutes and breaking the immersion.
Also infiltrating chosen w twin lightning claws were funny...thought I'd put that out there.
I like how GW decided to make the space marine problem worse by adding a whole new type of space marine with three different armour types that results in up to three variants for each HQ alongside a worse version of the Horus heresy weapons squads. Going through the index cards for space marines is such a slog, it’s almost nauseating. I don’t know how players manage it.
Not that owning index cards but even with app it's just a mess, for example Berserkers at top of unit list and Master of Execution at bottom. Since was playing demo game and don't have printer make before hand, so it's just flipping through top and bottom of datasheets, as for Physical card i guess only "saving grace" is to take only those cards that using in game.
they axe the FW stuff to "reduce bloat and the difficulty to balance" but their whole primaris range has more than tripled the number of rules necessary - made even worse by the refusal to release multi-part-HQ kits
I just dropped playing marines for this edition. Completely agree with you, primaris bloat is a joke.
@@25angel20 the order of units is really annoying. It should be broken up by unit type and you shouldn’t have vehicles separating infantry.
@@darko-man8549 so many baller models have been put on ‘rotation’ because of codex bloat. The space marine commander was probably the gold standard for an HQ kit and it’s gone to make way for primaris rocketeers and the notsquats that nobody asked for.
As a fellow veteran of the Long War, well said and great job showing the stark difference of how Codices used to look and provide value and bang for the buck vs. what they've devolved into.
i started with the chaos 3.5 Codex. I really appreciate seeing the 3.0 Codex. Still convert my vehicles like they're Demonengines and blessed by the warpsmith. I love the old artwork and the rules in 3.5 chaos so much.
3.5 was peak 40k
its how I got into 40k, it had lots of "make your own" rules like combining doctrines.
The 3.5 edition chaos codex was *perfect* and every book we’ve had since has been a sad pretender to the throne
And that's why Horus heresy is a thing;-) For good or bad it is 3.5 on steroids.
9th ed is an equivalent if not better codex
@@kingofrohan888 …no. No, it wasn’t, and it’s objectively not even close. It had nowhere near the options and nowhere even remotely close to its lore, artwork and hobby.
9th Chaos was one of the best 9th codices. It still pales in comparison to those who came before, and there’s not rose-tinted glasses involved.
It genuinely was just a higher calibre.
This'll be useful for me as someone who's eventually planning on going back to 4th and using the 3.5 codex (and porting newer units into it)!
Art used to be much better, now it’s standardised.
*sanitised
@@CTA12356 both.
I miss the over the top eclectic weirdness of the art styles that drew me in.
The stuff that's left looks like monotone Sci fi D&D art.
I stared playing 40K in 5th edition (World Eaters). I am still playing the same army to this day, but I will readily admit that it would have been more fun if I had been able to start with the 3.5 Chaos Codex. I’ll always be sad that I missed out on that era.
My daughter and I started playing 4th edition a lot lately and it’s been pretty fun to get back into.
Funny that you put this video out. My group and I have gone back to playing 3rd edition. Having alot of fun with it.
I started in 3rd for 40k and think it is much much simpler then now. Dead easy to pick up and learn. Found my love for Iron Warriors. Based off the white dwarf chapter approved. Bring back my basilisk! Miss the 3.5 dex hugely!
Those noise marine models are still the same ones we are using today.
Also I believe in this codex you could replace autocannons with blastmasters which is just amazing.
Thanks for hiring the hand model
2ed chaos codex was the best codex they ever did.
*Eye of Terror global campaign Fun Fact:* Originally, Phil Kelly wanted to write a Chaos Crone World Eldar variant army list for the supplement instead of Ulthwe Strike Force as he explains in WD 282 (UK) Eye of Terror Designers' Notes article.
I never played as Chaos myself, but I have that first codex as part of my 3rd edition book collection. Some of the best, most evocative, and darkly gothic art i've seen for the faction. It's definitely one of my favourite codices.
3/3.5 best edition, was so happy to see this pop up in my feed, I even made a meme about the 3.5 book
This is great looking through the history. I started in 8th, but have since brought all the previous Codex's for my main army. Ill have to go through then again. Great video
3.5E CSM dex was simply perfect. Then again, 3E 40k and 6E WFB overall was the golden age of Warhammer, peak Warhammer experience, no wonder why they were also the longest editions.
I learn 5th edition when I was 12 years old....at a tournament....while participating in said tournament. First ever game was on round 1 and I had about 15 mins before the game to read the rules. My friend Al, God rest his soul, lent me a 500 pt army of Space Marines. It was a tactical squad, combat squaded, a scout squad, a rhino and a land speeder, if I remember right. I didn't even use the rhino as a transport, I used it as mobile cover that shot things but I came in 4th place. I somehow managed to beat necrons, dark eldar and tyranids. Lost to IG in round 4 but my opponent figured out he'd accidentally played with his missiles 1 higher than they actually were and gave me a tie. It was a lot of fun. I could pick up the game at 12 in 5e, probably wouldn't have been harder in 3rd, but I don't know that I could have done so as easily in 8-10th era.
It's a fantastic book, I have two copies!
It's a brilliant toolbox of that allows a lot flexibility for each Legion, while remaining true to their character.
GW in true money grubbing fashion, really didn't have to split up the codex when they had a winning formula, but they had dollar signs in eyes that persist till this day.
Edited: The only only Codex that comes even remotely close, in my opinion is the Witch Hunters Codex. But even that suffers from a significant drop off in quality and quality of life IMO.
Thank you for this video, i bought some old books and found 3.5 in the pile. The art is amazing and i think i want to do an old chaos army to play these rules with.
I 100% agree about this whole video. I still have my third edition rules in very good condition, really good versions of 3.5 and eye of terror. Pure flavour and like you said it hits what you want as a chaos player. Details and options!, And of course flavor
The Chaos motorpool is enough to make a grown man weep. It is pathetic, old and ignored. Every time GW trys to be cool and memes on a new stupid Space Marine Lt. I always think back to the 20 year old Predator and Land Raider kit you need to buy for your Chaos army.
Especially now that they Legends'd practically all of their Forge World vehicles.
apparently world eaters aren't smart enough to realise that bikes get them to fighting faster
Predators? Land raiders?
Oh you don't be silly, look here's some dinobots.
I love how CSM still don't get Whirlwinds, even though they are canonically from the pre-heresy days, unlike the Razorback.
I will use a wrestling analogy to describe what GW has done:
A monster heel (Chaos Codex 3.5) comes into a new territory (game edition) and devastates every opponent (factions with only an index) he faces in the squared circle (battle of 40K). His intention is to get a match against the reigning champion during the next pay-per-view in order to win the title. As time goes by (new codices come out for other factions) the promoter of the wrestling company (GW) decides that indeed a match between the monster heel and the reigning champion will be a good idea. So who is the reigning champion? It´s of course Hulk Hogan (Space Marines 3.0) the All-American hero.
On the day of the pay-per-view the promoter (GW) decides that the monster heel (Chaos Codex 3.5) will lose to the reigning champion (Chaos Codex 3.5 turns into Chaos Codex 4.0 with zero customization options) thus elevating him into the stratosphere (Space Marine Codex 4.0 with trait options for chapters) and ensuring that he becomes the true face of the company (GW) to put asses into the seats (attract new Little Timmys each year) of forthcoming wrestling events (every new edition of the game) while the beaten monster heel (Chaos stuck forever with subpar codices in the future) loses a lot of heat and has to move to another wrestling territory to pose a credible threat yet again.
"And I'm just sick of it" - A M E N. And I've only been around for ten years...
10:11 thats also exactly that way in the 9th ed codex. I loved that book. I dont get your problem.
such great books
Black Legion?
Nah they just wanted us to play Red Corsairs
This was an era when Chaos could get 2 codexes in the same edition while Space Marines just got their 1 in 1998 for 3rd edition and the next in 2004 for 4th edition. Could never happen today.
Commenting on chaos cults and GW trying to make out they don't exist ...
I brought both versions of the visions of heresy ...the original and the updated version that came out 5 years later ..there is artwork in the older one that isn't in the newer one and vice versa.
The artwork left out has some of the more blurry computer made looking stuff but a fair few decent artworks as a majority.
It tends to leave out pics of mainly vehicles,chaos cultists and demons ...
3rd and 4th were far easier to learn than 9th. 9th was a garbage fire and a mess for anyone just starting.
I was a hella dumb 11 year old, and i managed 3rd edition just fine.
Agreed on all accounts, thanks for a lovely trip down memory lane!
To this day it is amazing to see how much variety and player choice - in terms of both modelling AND list building - the books in 3rd edition provided. Yes, 3.5 was in a league of its own, but look at the original 3rd edition codex: it still had so many options! And notice how much focus there was on painting and converting your models, even more so in the first book!
Oh and you could play a more convincing army of Death Guard, World Eaters and Thousand Sons than with todays books, go figure.
It is refreshing to be reminded that back in the day they managed to offer a great deal of variety by nuanced use of general rules, plus very little special rules compared to today. It may or may not have to do with people like Rick Priestley and Andy Chambers still writing rules for GW at the time, who knows...
The 4th/5th edition book - yeah we had to live with that turd through all of 5th edition - was downright insulting when it comes to gameplay, but it also butchered the lore and modelling side of things. It also achieved way less gameplay variety with actually MORE rules bloat... a trend that would only continue to get worse up until today.
And today? We still get punished for the conceived "imbalance" of the 3.5 book, while todays books are not even that much more balanced anyway. All paid by an absolutely atrocious amount of "make these your own dudes" when it comes to both list building and modelling variety. Thanks for nothing GW...
That was my favorite chaos space marine book. I started playing Thousand Sons in second edition. The third edition codex was okay. But the 3.5 edition was perfection. It allowed me and my friends to create chaos armies that worked completely unique. You could customize so many aspects of your army. All of us had at least 3 armies of 3,000 points are higher back then because of this codex.
Space Marines are GW, Chaos Space Marines are the customer.
the 3.5 codex was the last time I played chaos. After they ripped away all the flavor and uniqueness to the legions the soul was gone. Iron warriors could have heavier vehicles and equipment, word bearers could have literal hundreds of cultists, night lords were actually scary. Now all the legions feel like black legion painted different colors. The game changed in 4th to 5th to lose so much soul and flavor. It feels like generations removed now. I feel sorry when i hear "I started in 7th/8th/9th" because they missed the golden age and have no idea what it used to be like.
Yeah... As someone who started in 8th I wish I could've played back in the 3.5 days... That's why I'm going back to that and importing newer units into it to have the best of both worlds!
@@Wanten-the-stormtrooper Well there is the Horus Heresy. 3rd edition was basically Space Wolves, Black Templars, Blood and Dark Angels vs everybody else as the vanilla marines pretty much sucked.
@@Kharmazov Yeah, I'll get into Heresy, too, but I'd still love to give 4th ed. 40k a go once I've gotten a hang of the rules and ported newer models' rules back into it.
@@Wanten-the-stormtrooper IMHO try 3.5 instead. 4th pretty much got rid of the ability to assault from the Rhino after disembarking which nerved basically all of the marine cc armies including the Chaos ones.
@@Kharmazov Don't worry, I've heard horror stories about the 4th ed. Chaos dex! I'm just gonna use the core rules and other codices from 4th and the 3.5 Chaos dex since it's basically a 4th edition one already!
God i loved my 3.5 ed chaos book fun times. more fluff in that for World Eaters then the current one other then giving us special melee weapons for our Berzerker squads.
Funny enough I worked at GW at the time this came out, the end of 4th beginning of 5th. CSM players where pissed right off when GW went 'minimal' for CSM and Dark Angels, then let Mat Ward out of the bag with a lot of the other codex's. IG was a neat codex but not as cool as 3rd/4th dex. Then Necrons and Grey Knights came out and wow...just wow, so many new GK players that edition.
I stuck with 2nd. 2nd is lyf.
The 3.5e codex was great, no question, loved it. But as beloved and much read as this book is said to be, to this day I've never met anyone who actually knows how the rules for mixing Marks actually works. But I really liked the 4e book too, and it's shift away from the legions to renegades
@6:50 those are pre heresy world eaters fighting raven guard.
My very first codexes ever bought were Witch Hunters and Dark Eldar from 3ed.
It was during early years of 5th ed. I loved those books.
My favourite part of 3rd edition was a lot of the Chapter Traits and Legion Traits were free in White Dwarf before getting collated in the 4th or 3.5 codexes
23:04 you’d probably have less stuff on the table though with points changes.
I played some 3.5 csms in 5th a couple of times (admittedly I had only ever played 5th and used the shit book) and my force was smaller.
My first kits were in fourth but I think I first played fifth? Macragge? Is the third rulebook playable without codexes? Ik its limited but I have it and it would be refreshing
God I miss the old 40k. They literally just had to put out an emergency update to 10th. The Edition has been out for two weeks and is already getting FAQ'd.
they stopped giving a shit about chaos, the 9th edition legion codices were barely bigger that the loyalist space marine supplements, hell the space wolf one is the same size as the world eater one. Then the death guard codex got smaller from 8th and the adeptus custodes one got larger. GW needs to treat chaos as the big bad they are meant to be.
The Satya Yuga.
Great vid, Macca. Depressing, but great. You should consider making a video about 10th edition's treatment of Chaos as a follow-up to this video. In particular, GW removing all of the awesome Forgeworld units that actually helped add a bit of uniqueness and flavor to Chaos marines. Not only have the mono-god legions been removed from the CSM codexes over the years and put in their own separate books, but they also seem to remove half of their units they used to have at the time. While only giving us a couple of new ones (with new models to buy, of course...) im return. Now they spit in our face bu moving most of the Forgeworld stuff to legends and not even giving us points? While still leaving all of the loyalist units?! Why does GW hate Chaos players SO much?
3.5 was the best. My group only played them unless there was new models that came out like space marine units or knights and titans and super massive vehicles then we just bashed them into the rules
Cool
I started on 3rd edition the stopped at 5th but ive still got these codexes and i agree these were a work of art iys a shame the direction gw went with the books and the rules 3rd edition was a brilliant game to play
I always did hate that the 'Special Rules' did not have a chart in 5th edition books (the edition I started with). I had to either flick through the damn thing to find the rules during a game (in my first day's playing) or I had to just write the buggers down to remember them. Its not a massive gripe, but something that would have made it far more convenient in-game for a beginner.
Edit: double us of 'that' changed to 'hate that'.
new is bad, old is good
Ah, 4th and 5th edition Chaos. Where they forgot that Daemons were the thing they'd originally added to bring CSMs to parity with loyalists in the first place, and ripped them out without compensating for it in any way. It wouldn't have been as bad if Allies had been a thing then, but they didn't really exist outside of some rules that were specific to the two Inquisition books, and maybe some Chapter Approved stuff. And it doesn't help that SMs have received way, way more content than CSMs in the 16 years or so since.
And btw, a lot of the art in the 4th edition CSM book is new, but it's not amazing IMO. There's a few good pieces, but a lot of it just feels like a cheap, rushed imitation of what came before it.
I agree that Chaos 3.5 is thee best codex and 3rd edition is fantastic as I played a few games of it and it was great. 8th to 10th are just a total cluster and the game no longer has really tactics or strategy with most weapons feeling like peashooters, but the greatest travesty is that Chaos has just been gutted and effectively has nothing to work with, the mortal forces need the daemons in the same book, more daemon engines need to be added along with vehicles, traitor guard need to be added and we need renegade chapter and legion stuff. What we need is a full one-to-one Chaos version of the space marines, guard and knights rolled into one book with daemons. The best way to play Chaos now is to pretend the index/codex exists and just use the loyalist stuff and more or less paint it like Chaos.
Pinnacle of artwork..?
Laughs in Slaves To Darkness/The Lost & The Damned
I started 40k at 3rd Edition, the CSM codex was exciting at the time because I didn't really know any better. The artwork was great, but the models were pretty lame compared to what SM were getting. The 3.5 CSM codex blew it out of the water, a well written book accompanied by a huge revamp of the CSM range. This really was a fun time in the franchise. I quit 40k at the start of 4th edition and only recently returned at the end of 9th. Looking back through the codices in between then till now, I do think the 9th edition CSM codex was probably the best represenation of the sub-legions (Night Lords player). But the customisation of 3.5 was amazing. It was so weird coming back to 40k and seeing everyone playing special characters, but when you can't create you own there is no other option. The traits, relics and strats of 9th was pretty cool, but the freedom of customisation of 3.5 was truly special. Great video mate.
The difference vetween chaos space marines 3.5 and after is, 3.5 is immersion with the Design you get immersed while reading after that its just Information. Same for all other codexes. I started with 3rd demonhunters they got torn apart. While its cool to play grey knights, the Inquisition misses a good codex now. And no imperial angents is not the same.
3.5 EC was obscene .
the 3rd edition rulebook was what made 3rd ed difficult to learn... the rukes themselves were eay... lol GW still cant't write rules
GW demanding that every points is a multiple of 5 makes their lives harder to balance, it's so odd consideirng their desperation to "make balancing easier"
Well thats exactly how i felt. Started with 3.5, really fun to create my armies. Have not enjoyed an edition as much as that book, they created such a great way to create a unique force with the upgrades. Im not 100% but I think they dumbed it down to the horrendous 4th edition that gave fuck all character to your... characters and army, was because 'it was too hard with so many upgrades and options wawa' . My response to that would be GW you wankers launched countless extra supplements requiring libraries of books to play the game as well as keeping up with all the rules in so many locations.
"They can't bother to do that these days for CSM" The 9th Ed CSM book literally has several pages of rules for the legions. 3.5 is a great book, but the 9th ed CSM book from a flavor perspective had everything you could possibly want
Everything except flavor lol. Fuck all for unit options. Legions are all pretty similar to each other (even the 7e traitor legion book did a better job at differentiating them). The Psychic EVERYTHING sucked ass. Daemons as a mechanic was ripped out entirely (not even able to summon them anymore). And of course, all of the deleted unit options along with wargear being destroyed as options entirely. Fuck you if you wanted a night lords chaos lord on a jump pack.
Finally it's someone to stop this fart huffing in the comments (though most of the criticism is spot on)
I’m confused by your comparison of the 3rd edition legion rules and the modern incarnation of them. The 9th edition codex has a couple pages dedicated to the rules of each legion and each legion gets their own couple pages of lore. You said that GW just wants to make people believe every csm is just from a renegade chapter, but GW didn’t even put in rules for renegade chapters. From my experience playing the modern game, it’s pretty easy to make a fluffy list out of any legion you want. Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your point about legion rules, but I don’t think GW has been trying to sideline the legions (at least from what I can gather from the modern rule sets).
GW has a tendency to treat Chaos more like the Chapters of the astartes, standardised force org, standard units which crop up in every chaos warband, when Legions in 3.5 were about uniqueness and diversity of units, with radical departures rather than basic tweaks of an identical base list.
@@TheOuterCircle In my time playing modern csm, I found that the legion rules provided do allow for units to feel and play differently. For example, I wouldn’t play raptors in a Word Bearers army in the same I would play them in a Night Lords army because of differences in general army rules and stratagems. Looking back again at your video and pausing on some of legion rule, I can see how some of those points upgrades could provide another (and perhaps more impactful) way of making units feel different between the legions. I’m just not so sure that the flavor of each legion has been abandoned.
long live 5th ed 40k...
Wow this comparison really is insane. 3.5 looks like something I would pay for today, while the next edition literally looks like a cheap knockoff
The 5ed Chaos Codex was utter trash! It was the book that made me quit 40k and give al my shit away.
I'm not generally nostalgic to my teens but 40k was just better then. Now the company's greed permeates everything with a videogame like 'seasons' model, the hobby is devoid of any creativity with monopose models and identical terrain on every table, and somehow every other player is trans or some other kind of neuro divergent snowflake.
Lmao you're malding over your own lack of creativity with models and terrain while calling other people snowflakes
And.. those 5th Ed books are *thicker*... wow, lol I guess losing talent causes bloat?
When every unit entry gets a page to themselves, yes you better believe it gets thicker for less actual substance.
@@TheOuterCircle Didn't the 5th Ed books start having three pages/sections per a unit entry? Lore page (1), then Unit Stat page (2), and finally Army Entry and USR's? (3). I sware 5th Ed Orks and SM did that.
The recycling of artwork is an original peeve against GW.
The 4th ed Chaos Space Marine book was and is irredeemable trash.
4E Eldar dex was absolute trash too
3.5 was a trash codex. Absolutely ruined the game for a while.
Chaos Space Marine players will never stop cooming over 3.5 and never stop bitching about every codex since.
For a reason.
3rd Ed was easily the easiest edition - to learn and play.. eASILY.