What would be the exact type of character we will be playing, clearly a Cultist does not start out as powerful as a Chaos Space Marine.
The "Forsaken" in the picture cleary looks like a CSM but I doubt it will be just another Space Marine Game.

Will this game start out with several levels of play or will they try to balance things?

My money is on a split between Rogue Trader level renegade guardsmen, Dark Mechanicus, other sorts of cultists, and full-blown Deathwatch-power- level-Chaos Space Marines.  Forsaken is probably a Specialty of CSM. Just a thought... I could be wrong.

I expect that we will be able to play everything from a chaos space marine, to a mortal warlord of chaos. I don't see the point in playing a lowly grunt if the focus of the game is to bring about the end of the bloated Imperium of man.

I hope FFG will put the players in the position to play the movers and shakers amongst lost and the damned, the slaves to darkness.

The only slaves here are the ones who foolishly worship the corpse-emperor's decadent, dying empire.

Death to the loyalists!

...

I think I'm getting too into my character already.

They'll likely either normalize the "powerlevel" of Chaos Marines to a point where DW Marines would be in a game of DH/RT, or they will buff the normal people to make everyone loosely compatible to each other (not in combat capability but usefulness and survivability). It depends on what kind of narrative style the designers want to take this game to. This being about Chaos I could see it go either way (from DH/RT-style gritty infiltration or the pursuit of unholy quests to DW-style epic carnage against Loyalist forces), though any buffs for ordinary characters could even be explained within the scope of the game itself as "Gifts of the Gods", so to say.

I for one am looking forward to play perhaps not a "lowly grunt", but someone in the middle maybe. Ascension-level sounds about right, with one player amongst the group acting as everyone's spokesperson to a powerful patron (Cult Sorcerer or Chaos Warlord) and the entourage being a motley crew of the Lost and the Damned serving their leader. A RogueTrader'esque approach might work as well, giving the players a Traitor Warship with thousands of cultists and then letting them decide how they will want to bring ruin to the hated Imperium.

I'm certainly eager to see how this will develop.

 as a big Horus Heresy fan its Chaos Space Marines all the way for me, endless roleplaying possibilities and ghoulish OTT fun (one half of me thinks of playing a subtle, scheming Alpha Legion marine with ambiguous commitment to Chaos, the other half is thinking of Chainaxes and 'Blood for the Blood god!') given we can see a 'Forsaken' which appears to be a Chaos Space marine, and since they haven't included Ascension-type advance packages in other corebooks, I think its a safe bet that CSMs are a starting option. I'm hoping they keep CSMs at a similar level of power to Astartes in Deathwatch (thus making it more suitable as an antagonist generator for DW as well) and have either a two-tier approach or have very strong mortal characters, I vastly prefer the Black library portrayal of Astartes to that of the TT game...

Hi,

Maybe we'll see character creation on a three tiered structure in line with the other 40k titles? Something like CSM on pr with Deathwatch, Chaos Reavers to Rogue Trader and Fallen Servants to Dark Heresy. I can see the appeal on all levels, though some kind of sandbox freestyle bad guy reavers in a dark dark ship haunting the fringes of the Imperium ticks more boxes for me.

Any thoughts on the setting location for Black Crusade? Possibly the far side of the Koronus expanse (IIRC Hazeroth Abyss?).

Agreed with previous posts this reminds me somewhat of old Realm o Chaos. Hopefully with similar art...

 From the preview, it sounds like the players do have some autonomy to set up, ally with or destroy cults and generally be a thorn in the Imperium's side. This would imply at least Rogue Trader levels of power. Considering DW and RT are IIRC only 3000 XP removed from each other, maybe you'd start as a pseudo-initiate in the CSM career - or maybe the non-CSM careers are already quite experienced.

I am hoping that we will get to role-play the unseen background on Chaos held planets as well as being covert operatives on Imperial planets.  Some of the most interesting stuff in the 40K canon I read recently was the Abnett take in Gaunt's Ghosts of Guardsmen infiltrating a chaos held planet, and the way that a tainted society would work.

Even 'normal' humans can have astonishing powers should they use chaos artefacts or have access to chaos powers that make them serious malificare - again, the Ravenor series with its host of deadly chaos baddies would stand as a good example of the kinds of powers that pawns of the dark gods could wield.  nd then, of course, there are Chaos Space Marine Legionaries - what a blast to be able to play some dude that may have been around for 10,000 years nursing some serious hate (although it may not seem like that long in the Eye of Terror).

No.12 said:

Depending on the preferences of the group or individual players you could then simply skip a few levels, akin to creating rank 5 DH characters for a game of RT - or suck it up and play that rank 1 cultist as a servant to a rank 9 Chaos Marine (or the other way around, heh). Naturally, this would mean that the book needs to cover twice the range of ranks as the other core rulebooks did before, so maybe the designers will go a completely different way. A topic for a future designer's diary, perhaps?

from france

will it be the radical radical side of the empire of man or simply  hey coool i can  plau chaos. i can burn, torture , mutilate; destroy world etc etc....... but wait  isn't it what we do already at a inquisitor order or as inquisitor ourselves?

i am skeptical and hope to be wrong.  so far ffg had produce great game.

Hmmm, given the breadth of possible options I would say or at least hope that we have a diversity of careers similar to Dark Heresy and hopefully have some way of making most of them appeal to all or almost all of the chaos gods in equal measure.

Like some of the others, I hope we're given a level of some power in the inner struggles of chaos.  Maybe not Chaos Marine level but at least the ringleaders of a cell or something.  More importantly I'm hoping that there will be something to reward players who work slowly and subtly instead of just roll up some Khorne Beserkers and tearing up the underhive.  Not that it wouldn't be fun, but there needs to be more to a game then that.

Just shove me full of the Obliterator virus, and I'll be good to go.

It's really hard to say.  It's definitely a case of wishing there were a corebook even more for the system now, because this game is going to need a LOT of rules to really do it justice, things there won't be room for in a single book. 

The Rites of Battle equivalent will need to be huge.

I'm really wondering what player charater options actually compete with being a Chaos Space Marine? Yeah, I'm sure the rulebook will contain cultists, mutants, and sorcerers, but will they be viable options compared to a CSM, or just cannon fodder?

A few things to remember:

Deathwatch Marines are still seasoned Vets at rank 1 Deathwatch (Rank 9).  I could see normal Marines having some sort of advance schema from Rogue Trader startoff points as like:

Scout - > Devastator -> Assault -> Tactical.  (Or does Assault come before Devastator?  I don't recall)  Then Deathwatch makes more sense.  It would be cool to see an official ruleset for 'in depth' creation along the lines of Ascension to make Marines.  Chose planet of origin, choose original career, then get chosen, buy things from Scout on up to when you get seconded to Deathwatch (Or in Tactical, or whatever)

Also, Chaos Champions who aren't Marines can be just as strong, if not stronger than Marines.  Grey Knights has a baseline human Champion who can kick a Grey Knights Justicar's butt!  The Dark Gods' gifts can certainly be just as puissant as a Marine's implants.  So yes.  They certainly can be competitive.