Gav Thorpe:
The main shift has been to bring in the Chaos Renedages of the last ten thousand years rather than focus solely on the Traitor Legions and the events of the Horus Heresy. There is one army list, pretty flexible with the cult Marines such as Plague Marines and Berzerkers as Troops, so theming is still viable. Marks (represented by unit Icons) are available to a much wider selection of units. On the whole the aim was freedom not rules. Its Chaos, for crying out loud, it shouldn't be a mess of overlapping structures and restrictions!
Many of the more fiddly options have been removed as specific rules, allowing players to exercise their imagination in creating cool models and paint schemes rather than worrying whether that spiky bit on their Lord's helmet would cost them 5 points. In all, the viewpoint has been wound back so players are making decisions about their army on a more macro-scale, thinking about the mix of units and vehicles rather than inconsequential modeling details on individual members of their squads.
Daemons are generic, and are broken into Summoned Greater Daemons and Summoned Daemons. They have one profile for each type and can be considered almost like a spell effect. Codex: Chaos Daemons will be released several months after Codex: Chaos Space Marines for those who love their Chaos Daemons and want to field Daemonic Legions armies.
The army list represents a typical Chaos Space Marines army with a mix of Marks and Gods, although players still have plenty of options to theme if they desire. It was felt that to do proper justice to the cult armies (i.e. Khorne armies, etc) requires a specific Codex in its own right -- Codex: World Eaters, for example, just like Codex: Dark Angels for the loyalists. There's immense scope for really cool models, background and games within these armies and to reduce them to a relatively few options (not well represented by the miniatures range) and a page of background is bordering on the criminal. Why not have 20+ pages of history for Khornate warbands from and a full army list of cool Khornate-themed stuff like different types of Berzerkers squads to choose from? Now, there's no scheduled releases of this type yet, but by approaching Codex: Chaos Space Marines in the way we have, we have the option to do so without creating contradictions and confusion.
Also we've included lots of Colour schemes and background to inspire people on the painting side of the hobby, including over two dozen new colour schemes for various warbands. I'm really pleased with it. I think it's now possible to choose a Chaos army without succumbing to the madness of the warp, and the idea of creating your own warband is now as strong as the urge for loyalist players to create their own Chapters. The idea was to give that back to the players and allow them to decide what they want in their army and how it looks -- freedom not rules![/b]
