I'm busy trying to decide which way my Chaos forces will align. Will they be Undivided or will they serve one of the Ruinous Powers?

At present there is no problem running an Undivided group with just the core Rulebook, but I have been wondering whether or not to pick up a Tome for a more focused group. Which power I'd pick is really a choice between Khorne and Slaanesh. Mostly because the miniatures for these are cooler, both mortal and immortal, but also because the "character" of them suits my thoughts for characters.

On the one hand, a hate filled man who seek vengeance on those he feels have wronged him. He also feels he has a point to prove against the Imperial Guard recruiters who rejected him. Another character is meant to be equally hate filled, but is more geared towards manipulating others into doing her bidding.

So I'm currently torn between Khorne, Slaanesh or sticking with Undivided. Since Undivided is allied to all four Ruinous Powers, I can draw on the skills and Talents I need when I need them.

Will make my choice soon and post why here. Until then I'm curious to know what group of characters and style of games others are running.

So far our group tend to be going towards Slaanesh. This is because many of our characters are going down an agile or fellowey route. This suits many of our plans as well which involve infiltration, seduction, corruption and narcotics.

I personally though would prefer to align myself to Nurgle on some characters because then you can just end up an indestructable, never dying deliverer of Nurgles blessings.

Khorne to me just seems way too flat, it's all "kill, kill, kill". There's no true depth of character IMO because it's mostly about bloodlust and killing, there seems very little skill or subterfuge in it which is what intrigues me.

And Tzeentch, I avoid it purely since I've played way too many psyker characters lately

Exactly why I'm leaning towards Slaanesh.

Not a fan of Tzeentch.

Khorne fits some characters, but surely the desire for vengeance and the pleasure of attaining it can still be worked into a plot.

Nurgle is only let down by the lack of Tome. Hopefully something that will be remedied soon.

Slaanesh has a lot of scope for a variety of characters with more roleplaying opportunities. Not just " there's the enemy get him " or " pow you're dust ".

But Khorne is so cool. It's the choice between cool and covert. Khorne can't really be covert when you have to shed blood on a daily basis.

My group is diverse... We've had Khornates, a slaaneshi raptor, some nurglites and a few Tzeentchians played by me depending on the games. We tend not to mix "humans" with astartes.

So the players generally go to the god they them self favor, which of course can lead to some friction and player killing

Personally love Tzeentch, but getting bored with having to be subtle and smart all the time so wanna play a Khornate and just be crazy, especially since I dont wanna be the "leader" anymore. Always end up as the leader, the Rogue Trader, the inquisitor(renegade ) etc. Load that on someone else for once maybe.

I would argue that you could be covert as a Khornate operative. There are some blood cult assassins that also dedicate their kills to Khorne.

Admittedly it's the close combat monsters that are usually shown as representatives of Khorne but the fluff does mention from time to time that assassins can be aligned, even if slinking in shadows is not Khorne followers usual MO.

Seeing as you don't take any negatives to skills and attributes like stealth and agility you could certainly get these right along side your more usual Khorne abilities.

My GM has purposefully attempted to guide us each towards a separate power; I myself play a Heretek follower of Tzeentch. My party also consists of a Khorne Berserker, a Slaanesh Space Marine, a Slaanesh Renegade, an Undivided Alpha Legionnaire, and we used to have a Psyker who was leaning Tzeentch, but the player moved.

Originally my GM was pushing for me to go Nurgle, but I made it clear that was not happening. I was pushing for the one guy playing the now Slaanesh-aligned Marine to go Nurgle, but he didn't want to.

I went Tzeentch because all the skills I was using were Tzeentch-aligned, so it just made sense. That's how these things go basically, though there was a point where our Alpha Legionnaire was complaining because she wasn't seeing any kind of advantage, to which we explained to her our own individual disadvantages - she decided that it was ultimately a decent trade-off for her marine (her marine is male, obviously).

So basically, we've all chosen our own path, but not without enticements and pushes towards various ones from various sources.

I would argue that you could be covert as a Khornate operative. There are some blood cult assassins that also dedicate their kills to Khorne.

Admittedly it's the close combat monsters that are usually shown as representatives of Khorne but the fluff does mention from time to time that assassins can be aligned, even if slinking in shadows is not Khorne followers usual MO.

Seeing as you don't take any negatives to skills and attributes like stealth and agility you could certainly get these right along side your more usual Khorne abilities.

My character was going for a " Count of Monte Cristo " style of background. Basically he wants revenge against those who wronged him. Hence why Khorne seems so fitting.

By " covert " I meant more sneaky and manipulative rather than violence. But perhaps I could have a group dominated by Khorne, with a few Undivided for when killing everyone isn't an option.

I suggest that you pick up the tomes regardless, as they have stuff for ALL alignments in them and are a great source of inspiration.

Each of them also contain an adventure, info on the various planets, npcs, new enemies, gear, minions, talents, rules for mass combat, steeds, etc.

Seconded. But yes, there's a lot to be said for spreading the group's alignment around; it generally opens more doors than it closes for story options.

I suggest that you pick up the tomes regardless, as they have stuff for ALL alignments in them and are a great source of inspiration.

Each of them also contain an adventure, info on the various planets, npcs, new enemies, gear, minions, talents, rules for mass combat, steeds, etc.

Interesting. I thought they were just focused on the one power.

Seconded. But yes, there's a lot to be said for spreading the group's alignment around; it generally opens more doors than it closes for story options.

Yeah, I can see the wisdom in this.

I suggest that you pick up the tomes regardless, as they have stuff for ALL alignments in them and are a great source of inspiration.

Each of them also contain an adventure, info on the various planets, npcs, new enemies, gear, minions, talents, rules for mass combat, steeds, etc.

Interesting. I thought they were just focused on the one power.

They're themed around that power. So the Khorne book includes rules for massed battles (as in "city-wide regimental assault" massed battles, not just hordes), because murdering tons of dudes is normally (but not exclusively) khorne's thing.

Social conflicts - essentially extended political intriguing and backstabbing - is in the Slaanesh book, but anyone can use it.

The Tzeench book includes new psychic powers for every discipline, not just Tzeench.

The wargear and archetypes are the same. Yes, some of it is power-specific, but some isn't. The Tome of Excess includes the dear-unholy-gods-what-are-you-carrying 'Man Portable Ectoplasma Cannon', for example.

Finally, the elite archetypes are quite intriguing. Each book has the appropriate cult legion plus one other that you can argue has a vague logical progression with it, plus a couple of 'mortal' archetypes too.

Tome of Fate: Thousand Son, Alpha Legion

Tome of Blood: World Eater, Night Lord

Tome of Excess: Noise Marine, Word Bearer

(Tome of Decay as and when it appears will have Death Guard and Iron Warriors)

Plus, the Xuruth Frost Fathers (from tome of blood). Their starting equipment includes an armoured war dinosaur.

Yeh, dont plan to much as a GM in BC. It's a game about Chaos, let there be chaos

You really do need to improvise. When you have a team of four heretics, and a nice infiltration sneaky mission worked out - and then one of them rolls <10 on an aquisition test five times in a row, and suddenly you've got to account for a full infantry company of Stigmartus infantry...

Don't pigeonhole alignments. Lucius was an over-the-top, unsubtle, vain dickbag of a Slaaneshi, and the deathcult assassins, subtle as they are, are one step away (maybe) from being straight-up Khornate assassins.

There is no reason you can't have a stealthy Khorne or Nurgle aligned group- hell, just because one or more party members is aligned to a god doesn't mean they worship or revere him- it just means that they're in a groove (or is it a rut?) and the skills and abilities philosophically similar to those abilities come more easily because they're used to thinking that way... and oh yeah, have some favor from one of the ruinous powers.

a sneaky khorne follower is even more dangerous because like a kommando ork people don't expect them to be sneaky.

one of the quotes from tome of blood is a khorninte sniper.

Such things show up in the Gaunt's series, too. Building a proper sniper in BC while maintaining Khornate alignment would be a challenge, I should think.

I'd like to see it.

Our group is a bunch of cliche Khornate Traitor Legionnaires. I'm running a campaign dedicated to shoot first ask questions later and so far I found a worthy adversary to fight them. They stumbled upon a Tomb World and at first I debated whether I should run a Deathwatch or Black Crusade game. But find it extremely interesting in running a evil versus evil type game.

It seems that even in this game, is there an evil far worse than the evil that is present. I guess there will be some game development as to if they defeat the Necrons, maybe stealing or infusing some of their weaponry with their own daemonic infused technology is a possible start.

I dunno, I like the fact that as alignments can switch, the role playing does too. Or at least I think so. Does everyone role play their switching alignments? For example after checking alignment and their is a slight switch to another ruinous power, would you start to develop a cache of different qualities for the alignment change?

Of course, but though my alignment might change I find that I tend to play either loyal characters (such as an apostate who remains loyal to Slaanesh despite everything) or disloyal characters, who despise the Chaos Gods, regardless of alignment. Consider Uzas: he turned to the Blood God for power, but never worshiped him. It still affected him, but less so than it initially seemed.

Waiting for the Tome of Decay, then a party is going mostly Nurgle. One member plans to play an undivided Iron Warriors champion. They like the idea of slowly wearing down enemies with diseases then crushing them. They've decided it will be a game of conquest, this seems like a good way to do it.

I personally have a serious inclination toward Tzeench. I've run the gammut for the God, going from Spies seeking to sow chaos and tear down nations in the name of the Great Architect to Sorcerers looking for forbidden knowledge and power to a Soldier who fought to win, and pledged himself to the Changer of Ways in exchange for the knowledge to gain victory in every fight.

I love the Undivided game quite a bit. Done that a few times. I rather enjoy Tzeentch - which I've played as both Sorcerer/Psyker and not... preferred the latter, surprisingly. One of my favorite BC characters was a Forsaken alligned to Tzeench - real scumbag, that guy

I've done Nurgle once and Slaanesh once. Both were fun(ish). No interest in Khorne.

The group I play in is all Nurgle aligned. Our human members focus on poisoning water supplies and spreading diseases in preperation for our Nurgle aligned space marines. It ends up with weakened populations trying to fight off warriors who seem indestructable.

My character serves the Emperor in all things. She alone sees clearly what He wants and knows that His imperium has abandoned him, seeking to serve their own goals and never truly believing that He will return to lead them to glory.

She hears Him though, she understands what He needs and she knows that it may sear her soul to serve him this way, but He is the Emperor and must be served, even at the cost of her soul, even at the cost of the whole Imperium if it cannot be brought to understand His wishes and to make the sacrifices necessary for the glory of the future of Humanity.

Chaos undivided, deep in denial.

That's pretty cool. Could also be Tzeentch, because he's done that before- I remember the case of the Soul Drinkers most clearly.

Sad was the story of the Soul Drinkers.

But anyway back to the point, my group is mainly Slaanesh because the love to manipulate and seduce to get their goals. I'm fine with it though sometimes a change to Khorne would be welcome. Personally I am a true supporter of the oh mighty Tzeentch. Even though I don't like psykers.