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Hi all.
I currently play Necrons and would like to start a csm army to ally with them, then grow into its own force.
I have a budget (for now) of about 225-250$ at retail price (I will be getting them for 20% off).
I've been thinking about the csm attack force but I hear it's not very competitive.
Any Ideas?
Thanks.

Well, mostly start with your HQ and two troops choices. It turns out that in the CSM codex, the two are rather intertwined (a khorne lord being required to unlock khone berzerkers as troops, for example). For which you should take, it depends on what you want. There's different play styles, and modelling opportunities. This part of the codex is pretty well balanced, so it mostly comes down to aesthetic taste.

If by "not very competitive", you mean it will make it harder for you to win games with your necron, then the answer is likely yes, it will make things harder. CSM isn't an overpowered codex, and won't necessarily mesh that well with necron in particular.

But if the whole point was winning games, you wouldn't be playing 40k, now would you?

the problem with the CSM attack force is it doesn't exactly give you "everything you need" in the box.
The box includes: 1 terminator Lord, 5 Chaos Terminators, 10 Chaos Marines, 1 rhino, 5 raptors, and 1 maulerfiend.

Ignoring the competiveness of this for a moment. (it DOES lack the hyper competitive elements but it has a solid assortment of stuff and doesn't make a BAD purchase) the problem with this selection is only 1 troop squad. so unless you split your CSMs into squads of 5 you lack sufficant forces to actually field a legal army. still it's a solid force and definatly worth considering as a pad out.
That said from a Point value POV, this box gives you approx 700 points of chaos. convenianly it gives you one of each type of item in the CSM FOC so for allies it's kinda nice and solid there in that you can have a little bit of everything.

BUT IMHO there IS a better option



to START with I'd buy the dark vengence starter set. the reason why is that DV contains chaos marines and dark angels. the dark angels though are marines and thus should be something you can convert easily eneugh. Assuming you bought DV and converted (gonna assume the easiest conversions). you'd have...

2 Chaos Lords,
1 Chaos Sorc
1 Helbrute,
6 Chosen
5 Terminators,
1 CSM squad,
2 Cultist Squads
3 Bikes.


That's a VERY VERY solid force. it's not perfect but it's definatly a solid force, coming in at apprixmatly 880 points. a VERY solid CSM starter army.

in addition vs the CSM attack force you are saving about 130 bucks. which means assuming you intend to spend exactly the same amount is room to buy some additional kits, including a heldrake if you're wanting one of the most compeitive toys CSMs have

That would be great!!
I also have an extra tac marine, and terminator squad from about 10 years ago that I could strip and convert

Just FYI - converting the Dark Angles to Chaos Marines isn't easy. They are covered in Imperial and Dark Angel iconography that is actually sculpted on. You'll probably wind up doing to much cutting, filing and resculpting to make it far too much of a bother for the savings, if you care about that sort of thing.

-Loki- wrote:Just FYI - converting the Dark Angles to Chaos Marines isn't easy.

Yeah, much like converting a car into an airplane. They both are vehicles that get you places, but that doesn't mean that one can just swap out to become another.

A single or two-piece snap together model is going to be very difficult to convert over, and not just because you've got to file off some iconography and glue some new bitz on. It's going to take more serious work than that, and on plastics that is going to require a lot of chopping and hacking at.

You could make some ghetto chaos marines from the dark angels, but it's going to be more trouble than it's worth if you want something that looks like it was supposed to be a chaos marine in the first place. You'd be better off if you went to eBay and waited for someone to offload a lot of CSM stuff for cheap.

How to start a Chaos Space Marine army.

1. Get some Chaos Space Marines.






Next I'll tell you how to become a billionaire.

The easy solution is just to paint red "x"s over all the non-easily removable imperial iconography and call them freshly fallen marines.

Why not ask if around if a DA player wants to buy DV as well and that you'll trade your DA stuff for his CSM minis. Alternatively, you can ask on the swap forum here on Dakka Dakka for such an arrangement. Or just sell the DA stuff off and buy cheap CSM.

If you're into your modelling and would like to give the conversion of dv dark angels into CSM a go, I can highly recommend investing in an electric rotary tool of some sort (dremel etc). It gets the icons off really quickly- leaving you with basic marines to paint as you wish. The captain might be a write-off though. The bikes on the other hand come out pretty well. It's doable to borrow a plasma gun arm from the DV marines and you got 2 plasma guns in 3 bikes- a useful unit.

If you're going the DV route find a DA player to split (if you're starting CSM you probably have masochistic friends so chances are good). Get a box each and swap the relevant armies. Chosen aren't ideal, but you can use them as champs or whatever.

DV is good, provided you get rid of the DA you don't need and don't want to convert.
Add the CSM army bundle or whatever it's called and you have a nice army, especially if you think about playing crimson slaughter.

Or really, ebay the stuff you need instead of retail?

Why can't there be chaos DAs , half the legion went chaos and they aren't hiding it from other traitors.

The real problem is that the DV is full of stuff that isn't realy worth it . power armored dudes on foot , hellbrutes , terminators with powerfists and reaper. The cultists are a good core .

The best way to start chaos is probably to buy a hellcult box , some sm bikers and a helldrake . Then buy obliterators and the crimson slaughter codex for its better relics and divination on librarians.

Ya I looked into it and saw that it would probably take a really long time and end up with some minis that would undoubtedly look converted and probably bad (my skills at converting are unfortunate not the best or even good).
Also I was looking through the CSM minis themselves and really like most of the (especially the sorcerer models).

eBay requires a GREAT deal of patience. Checking twice a day for several months, if required. It's not the place to go if you have some money and know what you want to spend it on.

I agree, how come they can't be Fallen DA? No need to shave of the iconography.

Another question is, do you really need to win? Do you play for fun?

I say grab the minis that look awesome to you or cool to you and use them as "counts as" what ever you want.

Your first step should really be to decide what kind of chaos marines these are...are they mono God or chaos undivided?

Go from there - two troop choices and one HQ that matches your choice, then build out from there with what you want...some people prefer fluff over competitiveness...if that's you then you can just basically buy whatever suits your fancy for your army...if you want to go competitive, then look up some of the army lists here...Chaos seems to mostly devolve into a helldrake fest 75% of the time though.

I was thinking Nurgle, Khorne, or undivided (word bearers, or black legion).
I'm looking for fun but at the same time I don't want to lose every match I play.
i was thinking of getting:
1) a sorcerer, 10 marines, a rhino, 15 cultists, and either a box of khorne berzerkers or raptors
or
2) a Nurgle daemon prince, 7 plague marines, a rhino, and 15 cultists (the 1 troop choice is fine because they will be allies)

Which do you think would be better ( they are roughly the same money cash wise)