Renegade Warband: The 11th-Edition Chaos Space Marines Detachment That Gives Up Dark Pacts

Three parts, and the first is the one that decides whether this detachment is for you.

Slaves to None. Heretic Astartes models from your army lose the Dark Pacts ability. Their ranged weapons gain [ASSAULT]. And when mustering your army you cannot use the Cults of the Dark Gods rule, so no Berzerkers, Rubric Marines, Plague Marines or Noise Marines.

Vendetta. At the start of your Command phase, select one unit from your opponent's army as your Vendetta target until your next Command phase. Each time a Heretic Astartes model from your army (excluding Damned models) attacks it, you can re-roll the Hit roll.

Twisted Doctrine. In your Movement phase, each time you set up or select a Heretic Astartes unit (excluding battle-shocked units) to move, it can choose to Default to Doctrine. If it does, it takes a Battle-shock test first, then you select one of: eligible to shoot and declare a charge after Falling Back, or eligible to declare a charge after Advancing.

That is a genuinely different army. You give up a per-phase damage gamble and get a permanent army-wide re-roll against one target, army-wide Assault, and a per-unit movement upgrade you can take every single Movement phase at the price of a Battle-shock test.

Six, all 1CP, and one of them exists specifically to replace what you gave up.

• Never Outgunned (Shooting or Fight) — a unit just selected to shoot or fight picks either [LETHAL HITS] or [SUSTAINED HITS 1] for the phase. This is Dark Pacts without the Leadership test, for a command point instead.
• Vengeful Destruction (Shooting or Fight) — a Heretic Astartes Infantry (excluding Damned) or Mounted unit adds 1 to Wound rolls against your Vendetta target.
• Corrupted Munitions (Shooting) — a unit just selected to shoot improves its ranged attacks' Armour Penetration by 1.
• Undying Hatred (Fight) — destroyed models in a targeted unit fight anyway on a 4+.
• Renegade Claim (Movement) — lock an objective marker you control until your opponent's Level of Control exceeds yours at the end of a phase.
• Reavers' Reaction (opponent's Shooting) — a unit hit by an enemy's attacks makes a D6-inch Normal move.

Stacking Vengeful Destruction with the Vendetta re-roll gives you re-roll hits and +1 to wound against one unit, which is most of what a Dark Pact was doing, aimed where you want it.

• Weaponised Hatred (35 pts) — once per battle round, after your Vendetta target is destroyed, the bearer can select a new Vendetta target from any enemy unit visible to it. The Vendetta engine's whole problem is that killing your target wastes the rest of the turn; this fixes it.
• Empyric Symbiote (15 pts) — +1 to Advance and Charge rolls for the bearer's unit, which pairs directly with Twisted Doctrine's charge-after-Advancing option.
• Eyes of the Hunter (15 pts) — models in the bearer's unit gain Ignores Cover on their ranged weapons.
• Fratricidal Trophies (5 pts) — Heretic Astartes Terminator only: in a turn in which the unit chose to Default to Doctrine, every model in it can re-roll Hit rolls. At 5 points this is the cheapest enhancement in the faction and one of the best rates in it.

(Points come from the Munitorum Field Manual and move with updates; confirm in the app.)

• Legionaries — Assault on every bolter changes how they move, and they are the cheapest way to hold markers for Renegade Claim.
• Chosen — elite melee that gains more from Never Outgunned and Vengeful Destruction than from the pact this detachment no longer has.
• Chaos Terminator Squad — Fratricidal Trophies at 5 points is Terminator only, and a whole-unit Hit re-roll for choosing a doctrine you wanted anyway is exceptional.
• Chaos Bikers — Heretic Astartes Mounted, one of only two keywords Vengeful Destruction names.
• Chaos Lord — a character to carry Weaponised Hatred and keep the Vendetta engine running after the first kill.

Take it when you want a Chaos army that plays like a competent Space Marine one: reliable, low-variance and mobile, with no Leadership tests hanging over your damage. It suits players who dislike the Dark Pacts gamble, and lists built on Terminators or bikes where a single bad pact roll costs you the game.

Be clear-eyed about the price, because it is the steepest in the faction. You lose Dark Pacts entirely, and you cannot use Cults of the Dark Gods, so half the faction's toys are off the table. Twisted Doctrine also costs a Battle-shock test every time you use it, and a battle-shocked unit cannot use it at all, so the mobility upgrade has a failure state that compounds.

The pairing constraint is the one to remember. Any partner detachment whose rule keys off making a Dark Pact does nothing here, which rules out Cabal of Chaos and cripples the Devotees stratagem Ruination's Bounty. The clean 1-DP partner is Murdertalon Raiders, whose rule never mentions Dark Pacts.

Sample gameplan: put Fratricidal Trophies on a Terminator character and Weaponised Hatred on a Chaos Lord. Each Command phase, name a Vendetta target you can actually reach. Default to Doctrine with the units that need to move, accepting the Battle-shock tests. Spend Never Outgunned on the big attack, Vengeful Destruction on the Vendetta target, and Renegade Claim before you leave a marker.