Imperial Armour Compendium September FAQ Update - The Goonhammer Hot Take

Hot take...Tuesday? Sounds fake. Anyway, a round of updates to the Imperial Armour Compendium have been pushed out today, updating it to handle the new Chaos Space Marine Codex and tidy up a few residual issues elsewhere. Let's take a look.

Chaos Space Marine Forge World Stuff Works Now

Credit: Donald Plummer

Every Chaos Space Marine option in this book has had keywords and abilities updated so that they work with the new book. <Mark of Chaos> is gone, TRAITORIS ASTARTES is in, and Let the Galaxy Burn is applied to all units. In addition, Daemon Engines all get updated to reference the new Daemon Engine rule (duh) instead of their old abilities, and all TRANSPORT units get a rider added that Possessed take up two slots.

Most of this is as expected, but there are a few specific points that are slightly more unusual or have some meaningful impacts:

• As a CORE unit, the Chaos Contemptor Dreadnought gets the CHAOS UNDIVIDED keyword, and that means it’s eligible to be upgraded with Marks of Chaos. Potentially some nifty stuff there, especially with Slaanesh.
• All the Khorne engines keep their fixed KHORNE keyword.
• The Greater Blight Done gets a bit more shuffling around thanks to Disgustingly Resilient no longer being in the CSM book, but it’s functionally the same.
• The Terrax Drill gets the standard Transport change to count Possessed as two models, but that’s actually something of a nice surprise since it can’t transport Terminators, and being able to throw a squad of 5-6 Possessed out of one is very mean. The drill itself also has some decent play with Let the Galaxy Burn, as it means the free heavy flamers are much more of a consideration over volkite, and you have a chance to spike your melee damage upwards in the late game.
• Vehicles from here will now all technically have the Let the Galaxy Burn ability in Thousand Sons and Death Guard, but it won’t do anything because it requires a pure CSM army.

Overall, a good day for the ruinous powers - the toys are back in town.

Forge World Questoris/Abhorrent Knights Get Fixed

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Two changes to the Styrix and Magaera:

• In Chaos, these have been corrected to have the ABHORRENT-CLASS Keyword rather than QUESTORIS CLASS, so relics and Favour upgrades are back on the table. Given that “one big Knight with Blessing of the Dark Master” is a pretty common loadout currently, it would be unsurprising to see this tried with the Magaera (though it may turn out not to outvalue a Desecrator or Abominant).
• The Hekaton Siege Claw has been fixed so that its multi-roll attack is a Sweep, using the same terminology as other melee weapons in the book. This ensures it behaves correctly with abilities in both Knight books, preventing an abusive interaction with the Noble Combatants trait in Imperial Knights in particular.

Overall, good if you’re a Chaos Knight player, bad if for some reason your TO wasn’t house-ruling out the Combatants combo

Hades Breaching Drills Are Saved

Credit: BuffaloChicken

The Hades Breaching Drill is a weird special transport-like unit, which didn’t play well with the Nephilim restriction that all Transports have to start with a unit inside. These now have a special rule that ensures they do not detonate during deployment every game. Handy. We suspect most TOs, if asked, would have allowed them anyway, but this ensures there’s no argument about it, and with the current crop of Astra Militarum secondaries there might even be a place for one in some lists.

Wrap Up

Nothing too surprising overall, but good that Chaos players get their toys back, and nice to see that GW are willing to take the time to sort out issues like the Breaching Drill. See you in a few weeks for Chaos Daemons, probably.