Haha, just watched this movie for the first time a few hours ago, this made me laugh pretty hard. On a loyalist I'll call them traitor...but not Traitor assault/etc. I'll still just call it Chaos Space Marine Assault, or something like that. Legionnaire would be pretty cool.
While it's interesting that you wouldn't personally be bothered if Behaviour renamed the loyalist space marine classes to Lapdog Tactical, Lapdog Assault, etc, I suspect that this view would not be shared by the overwhelming majority of other LSM players. Indeed, I expect the idea would be loudly and violently opposed. Its also very easy to say "I don't have a problem with this, therefore you shouldn't..." when you're not being impacted by the issue. On the note of the underlying GW decision, I genuinely imagine it went something like this: Katie: We've collected some feedback from the Chaos players about their preferences for naming, and want your guys' approval as to which we can use. Here's the list and number of votes Legionnaire: 24 Marauder: 13 Legionary: 12 Traitor: 6 Renegade: 4 Raider: 3 Warrior: 3 Chaos Space Marine: 2 Chaos Marine: 2 Agressor: 2 Blackguard: 2 Reaver: 2 Trooper: 2 GW: So, for branding purposes we want the name to reflect names already used in a widespread way in 40k and Chaos lore to describe these types of units. So...okay, I see where your players are coming from with Legionnaire and Legionary, but these just aren't terms we use widely. They weren't really called that even in the 30k lore, when they were actually Legions. We'll have to rule those out. Katie: That's a bummer. GW: Okay, Marauder's not going to work either. It's not a name used anywhere in 40k for the Chaos Space Marines. Katie: So all the top three are out? GW: 'Fraid so. Okay, fourth on the list is Traitor. Well, that one's fine. It's absolutely consistent with Imperium lore. Not quite so widely used in Chaos, but they do refer to themselves as traitors on occasion. I approve that one. Katie: Okay, I'll take that back to the Founders. It's just my view, but as Legionnaire/Legionary were dropped because of branding issues, that fight is lost. If we want to push for a change, we have to select a name which is already consistent with GW's branding around the CSMs. As far as I can see, replacing "Traitor" with "Chaos" looks like the only viable option: Chaos Tactical, Chaos Assault, etc.
Which to me is just the same as what they've always had with the Models for the basic Chaos marines are called fucking Chaos Space Marines. Unless the models are wrong and every box has been mislabeled for the last however many years.
So, as a suggested call to action, I'd personally go for a poll with two simple options: 1) Keep the name Traitor 2) Change it to Chaos Space Marine I can't see GW arguing against the main tabletop name for the equivalent unit for branding reasons, so if that poll overwhelmingly rejected Traitor then I think there'd be a good case for making the change and a high likelihood that GW would be open to the change. I'm not bowled over by Chaos Space Marine either, but in this case we may have to champion the lesser of two evils
But Chaos Space Marine is too similar to Space Marine and people are easily confused or some shit like that so Chaos Space Marine can't be used. I think the general term for all of a Chaos Legion/Warband is they're Chaos Space Marines and not a single class. Regardless call the Chaos Tactical class Chaos Space Marine and I'd be much happier.
I agree entirely that Chaos Space Marine is not ideal. However, my suggestion at this point is that the only way to actually break the deadlock and get the current naming changed is to suggest replacing it with something GW categorically cannot object to, and to make this as simple as possible for fans, Behaviour and GW to say "yes" or "no". To my mind, that means a two-option poll, setting the current class names against the tabletop equivalent class names as the alternative. If the tabletop names do win by a substantial margin on a poll of a decent size, that gives a reasonable message to take to Katie, and a reasonably easy request for her (or whoever) to make to GW about brand approval for using the alternative names...which, of course, have already been approved for use absolutely everwhere else in the 40k franchise.
Well, we could always suggest both Chaos Tactical and Chaos Space Marine to GW and hope for the best. Though I must admit that I have no faith in GW what so ever, since they aren't exactly known for caring about their fanbase.
Well BE has said multiple times it isn't their decision it is GW's, I don't know if they'll speak on our behalf but Legionary already won by a substantial amount. If it was a choice between Traitor and Chaos Marine then Chaos Marine would win outright as the only people who'd vote for Traitor are ill informed idiots and trolls.
There, fixed that for you Joking aside, even most (read: some) of the Space Marine players seem to thing that "Traitor" is a stupid name.
