Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Renegades And Heretics (section)

==Changes Moving to 8th Edition==
8th Edition removed a lot of the customizability of the old R&H list, but improved their elite choices considerably, and gave most of your infantry squads free Chaos Covenants to boot.
*Marauders and Disciples are both 3+ BS 3+ WS, meaning they outclass guard veterans at the same price, though they can take fewer special weapons (2 for Marauders, 1 for Disciples).
*Random Leadership is now d6+2 (or +3 for Fanatics), down from +4, but Enforcers flat out deny all morale tests at the cost of d3 casualties.
*Demagogue Devotions are out, as is master of renegades (Not that you need it now that Faction Keywords exist.)
*[[Awesome|Chaos Covenants are free, and on every infantry unit other than marauders and <strike>Malefic Lords.</strike>  Malefic Lords get covenants as per the FAQ.]]
*<strike>HQ choices are all-round pretty solid, Psykers are now at par with the other armies, and</strike> As of Chapter Approved, Malefic Lords are horribly overcosted; take daemon heralds instead as they're better and cheaper.  Rogue psykers are superior to their wyrdvane equivalents. Renegade Commander is only useful for filling out HQ slots on the cheap and unlocking covenants.
*Militia training is gone, leaving your troops choices lacking on BS. All your vehicles stay BS 4+ though. It appears any in-common units from the IG codex/section of the Imperial Armour book retain their stats (BS4+, armor saves, leadership).
*Carapace armor is now a hot commodity, only available on Marauders.
*Mutants are now an all-round good assault unit, instead of a nasty variable, but they have the chance to lose d6 models from their mutations.
*As per the big FAQ, you can no longer mix '''CHAOS''' units in the same detachment. This means R&H is now an actual army list, instead of only being taken as "Codex: Malefic Lords".

Gee Dubs with their total simplification of everything on God-Emprah's Not-so-green Earth, that is 8th edition, has managed to suck out every last bit of fluffiness from the army that ''basically lived by it''. No longer can your poor doomed fucks be a marauding PDF force led by a nutjob general, a chaos doom-cult uprising on the move, an abhuman helot protest party or a misguided mini-revolution of unwashed masses. Not anymore you can't. Now you're just a bunch of murderhobos who raided a Munitorum vehicle cache and worship the Pantheon out of... sheer fucking stupidity I guess. Some people find it appalling, but to everyone their own. In addition, we pay the same price for our infantry equivalents, except they have worse BS, worse armor save, variable leadership, and no orders.

Alternate Take: It's not THAT bad, and it is almost a certainty that we will be getting our Demagogue devotions back by the time we get a proper supplement. Covenants work fine, and if you really relied on the more customizable aspects of the R&H, the only major loss has been our Grenadiers, which were ridiculously broken anyways, and the changes to the Nurgle covenant. In addition all of our units are now balanced enough that they don't '''need''' insane customization options to be viable. R&H are in a generally good place right now, with the exception of a few units' point values (Looking at you Militia!).