After reading the Hordes of Chaos book from cover to cover, I sat down and tried to formulate my initial impressions. The first and most apparent point is that Chaos just took a major power hit. Nearly across the board one of two things happened. Either the stats were reduced and the points cost was held the same, or the stats stayed the same and the points cost went up. Not in all cases, but in most. The daemons got it the worst, and that was from the already weakened (as compared to 5th edition) Ravening Hordes list. One thing became clear perfectly clear to me. The way to play an effective and balanced Chaos army has changed forever.

There can be no doubt that the focus of this new edition, like it or not, is on the Marauders. The game designers have graciously left the option for making the all warrior/knight army, but make no mistake, when they were designing this army, they had Marauders in mind. You can find more commentary on Marauders here.

My second impression was that I liked the army book itself. Most complain about the decline of fluff in the newer army books, but I think Chaos got a major fluff injection with this one. Instead of rehashing the same old background and stories, they have focused on an area that has been long lacking in the Chaos fluff…their society. The layout was generally good, with the noted exception of the Army List section. There seems to be no organization there, the stats and point values just splayed across the page. I have made a chart for myself because I have such a hard time using that section. They could have at least summarized it better in the back sections (like including the points values)! The artwork is justifiably dark and ominous, but not morbid and quirky like that of the rulebook. I give it two thumbs up.

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