First of all i understand this thread is just asking to get pretty heated but lets try and keep it to mature explanations of perspectives and opinions.

Regularly on here i see people saying how bad the chaos space marine codex is however at my FLGS I regularly see players doing very well with it and not just by summoning daemons.

I regularly see people run lvl3 sorcerers with lvl3 winged daemon princes having a lot of success because of the amount of psychic dice they have and the number of psychic dice they start with. and the familiar which allows the re-rolls means they don't even have to roll that many psychic dice. Hell drakes may not have turret any more but that doesn't stop them destroying most of a MEQ squad every turn. Maulerfiends ignoring all terrain, being untouchable to small arms fire and storming across the board to be in combat turn 2 and wrecking face hurts a lot. Ahriman being able to psychic shriek 3 units per turn is another horrible one not to mention the other chosen of the chaos gods.

They may not have the same tricks as regular marines but from an outsider's perspective they seem to have a lot going for them.

Am I doing something wrong or is the bad press misleading?

Because the 3rd edition CSM codex was soooooooo damn good/cool.

Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

You're not allowed to post uses for armies/units Dakka has deemed trash, the Dakka police will come get mad at you.

You are never allowed to field a unit that is suboptimal regardless of whether you like the sculpt, fluff or if it fits your meta or style of play. If a unit is suboptimal it is only permitted to cry about it until GW inevitably logs onto Dakka and says "by GOD, what have we been doing, this man on the internet is right we shall rectify this situation immediately!"

More than once I've posted questions like "what tactics do you use with Unit X" and I have gotten responses like "just use Wraithknights" when I was asking about a unit from a completely different atmy.

I think one of the biggest with chaos space marines are, well, chaos space marines. The base marines are like 1 point cheaper than loyalist without ATSKNF, their terminators can have at best a 4++.

Some of their cult marines can still pull their weight, and they have some decent choices, but the fact of the matter is that they're just an old codex.

Vit hets a bad rep because Eldar, loyalists and necrons exist.

Taffy17 wrote:
First of all i understand this thread is just asking to get pretty heated but lets try and keep it to mature explanations of perspectives and opinions.

Regularly on here i see people saying how bad the chaos space marine codex is however at my FLGS I regularly see players doing very well with it and not just by summoning daemons.

I regularly see people run lvl3 sorcerers with lvl3 winged daemon princes having a lot of success because of the amount of psychic dice they have and the number of psychic dice they start with. and the familiar which allows the re-rolls means they don't even have to roll that many psychic dice. Hell drakes may not have turret any more but that doesn't stop them destroying most of a MEQ squad every turn. Maulerfiends ignoring all terrain, being untouchable to small arms fire and storming across the board to be in combat turn 2 and wrecking face hurts a lot. Ahriman being able to psychic shriek 3 units per turn is another horrible one not to mention the other chosen of the chaos gods.

They may not have the same tricks as regular marines but from an outsider's perspective they seem to have a lot going for them.

Am I doing something wrong or is the bad press misleading?

Looking at your examples, there's a lot that often has problems. Sure maulerfiends are immune to small arms fire, but they're very easy to destroy with mid-range weapons and actual AT guns. They're not particularly hardy. Heldrakes aren't terrible, they're just "ok" now, they can't do things like they did in 6E where they could Vectorstrike pop a transport and then roast the squad inside all in one go. CSM Psykers are somewhat lackluster in their utility next to their loyalist counterparts.

More fundamentally, half the army is still built around 4E and 5E mechanisms, such as assaulting out stationary transports and consolidating into new combats, and as such half the army fails to function properly. For example, in 5E, my CSM army was 4 units of CSM's in Rhinos with Icons, two units of six Terminators, a Daemon Prince, and three units of 2 Oblits. The Rhino's would drive forward, turns 2 and 3 the deep striking units would arrive and DS without scatter near the icons, open up enemy transports or otherwise soften up targets, and the CSM's would disembark from their rhinos and assault. It had a very clear "one-two punch" strategy that worked very well. Unfortunately, most of these mechanics were no longer functional and the units are all still build around operating like this. A unit like Mutilators might have worked in 4th edition, where they could consolidate into new combats and hide completely out of LoS if they needed to, but in 6E/7E they just can't adequately engage anything. Likewise, the Forgefiend, while looking cool on paper, is still a very 5E paradigm unit. At 175pts with a 5++ and 8 S8 shots, it would have been a beast in 5E, but in the era of hull points and some of the other changes after that, it's simply painfully overcosted.

On top of that, there's the challenge mechanic, copy/pasted from Fantasy, that just doesn't work in 40k. It worked in Fantasy because Chaos characters were big and beefy, typically a cut above their equivalents. A Chaos Warrior unit aspiring champion can match blades with Empire heroes, and a Chaos Lord could only be matched by a very small handful of other characters and would typically butcher anything else. Part of their role was always to assassinate other characters and generally just be battering rams. In 40k however, Chaos characters are thoroughly run of the mill mediocre, and all the challenge mechanic does is make them easy to single out and kill.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

You're not allowed to post uses for armies/units Dakka has deemed trash, the Dakka police will come get mad at you.

You are never allowed to field a unit that is suboptimal regardless of whether you like the sculpt, fluff or if it fits your meta or style of play. If a unit is suboptimal it is only permitted to cry about it until GW inevitably logs onto Dakka and says "by GOD, what have we been doing, this man on the internet is right we shall rectify this situation immediately!"

More than once I've posted questions like "what tactics do you use with Unit X" and I have gotten responses like "just use Wraithknights" when I was asking about a unit from a completely different atmy.

Games workshop never comes on here to fix things

After all, it's probably the worst codex in town.
Where are the legions and rules for them.?

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

Honestly scotsman, it's hard to take you seriously at times

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.

Forgefiends are pretty bad. They aren't very durable, are very expensive, and only do small blasts with short range. It's hard to get more than 1-2 guys with a small blast unless your opponent is playing a horde or has made a serious mistake.
The problem with this unit is it really needs 3 rounds of shooting to earn it's points back. Minimum two rounds of shooting if it finds the perfect targets and the blasts end up going well for you. It's more likely to get 1 if it gets 1 at all. A front armor of 14 or a better invul save or more HP would have made this a great unit. Which is a shame, it looks beautiful.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.

These aren't great because of their speed. If you deep strike them behind enemy lines, they will spend several turns not doing anything. If you are facing the faster (stronger) armies in the game, they will just move away from the thing without raising much of a concern. I have seen some people take 2 units of 1 before, and the best that's been said is its "not terrible". Mainly because the enemy probably has to dedicate a squad to killing it before it runs into a tank, and squads cost a lot more than a singe mulitator.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

The blind radius is very small, we don't have great deep striking, it's an Init save (most armies fail on a 5+), Warp talons aren't that dangerous in melee unless facing basic marines and have pretty bad toughness. They are like melee rubric marines, way too expensive for a unit that won't kill a lot and dies to small arms fire.


To sum it up, the problems with the Dex is it doesn't support legions well, and a lot of the older chaos vets got into it for legions. The fluff and books being produced, and the games, also support the legions over small bands of random mish mash.
The other issue with the book is that chaos lords/DP aren't as dangerous as they should be. Really all marines in the chaos dex are overcosted. Marines serve chaos to get stronger or for power, yet they appear to be weaker than their regular marine counterparts.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

I always forget Defensive Grenades do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

These are units that HAVE no pros because whatever they do is better done elsewhere. ZERO pros. Count them.

Chaos Marines suffer for two main reasons...

1. They have 0 unit/army synergies.
Discounting game-wide problem children such as Invisibility being about as 'win button' as you one can get, there's no real abilities for Chaos Marines and their equipment to support eachother the way other armies can...

Our Psykers are a bright spot overall, simply because we're lucky enough to have Telepathy and a mechanic in Spell Familiars that is frankly grossly OP due to being written for an entirely different edition of the game. When it comes down to it though, there's nothing unique or special about or Psykers.
Daemons are cheaper and have better God specific lores without the added hamstring of being forced to take at least 1 power from their respective God's lore, along with their innate Malefic bonus.
Eldar get equally good casting bonuses, and much better defenses.
Dark Angels & Harlies make Slaanesh Sorcerers weep.
Grey Knights get a specialised lore in Santic that actively builds on their basic strengths.

Likewise, none of our specialist units really do anything that's unique on the whole... Oblits seem crazy good, but can't duplicate the same weapon in the following turn, leaving them about on par with what Havocs or Chosen or even Termiecide units can achieve.
Our new IC's cannot take any form of additional movement options, meaning no Jump pack or bike or even a Daemonic Steed despite being marked! The Apostle for example would honestly compete for an HQ slot alongside a Chaos Lord due to his Zealot rule, but without any form of options, (not even ****ing Termie armour!!), he's a lame duck that has no ability to offer any real supports.

Then there's the fact that our Daemonic units are often better off simply being shoved into a proper Daemons list, which will give them frankly hilarious power boosts! Those Warptalons everyone often decries? Give 'em the MoT and not only can a Daemons army easily build them to a 2++ save, but their own special Blind debuff can work with 100% accuracy through Daemonic Icons!
Forgefiends are often bemoaned as overcosted gun platforms due to their high cost and average BS. In a Daemons army though, it gets instant access to Malefic Daemonology, plus the ability to easily bring along Prescience. (as Tzeentch characters get access to Divination)

Icons that don't remove/reduce the Deep Strike risk, and often carry mediocre effects for a sizable cost... Champions who are forced to buy expensive close combat upgrades if you want them to even potentially live... Sorcerers who if they take a Mark, can never, ever gain Psychic Focus bonuses... A book full of assaulty options that have no real delivery system...

The list goes on and on! When it comes down to it, we have no identity of our own beyond, "evil Marines with spikes!"


2. The model line itself is ancient.
We have exactly 1 infantry kit that actually gives you almost all of a unit's possible options. One. Stinking. Kit!!

Overall though, our entire model line outside of the newer Daemon Engines are either;
a) Don't actually exist. (*cough*chosen*cough*)

b) Are Finecrap kits/upgrade packs

c) Are missing over half their possible options, and/or cannot be built into any form of playable unit. (*cough*havocs&terminators*cough*)

We simply haven't received any new upgrade options for going on 15+ years now! While everyone else has been showered with new options such as Grav guns, or else seen a proliferation of S5-7/high rate of fire weaponry, we're stuck with the Plasma gun & Autocannon being our 'best' upgrade options.
It's so bad, we don't even have the Heavy flamer back yet as an option for our basic grunts!! (meanwhile, Smurfs can them across Sterns & LotD, while BA's get them in every freaking Tac squad!)

What we desperately need are options. We need things like Rhino, Land Rainder & Predator variants of our very own like Loyalists have... We need upgrades that better support our assaulty nature... etc...


Basically, Chaos Marines need to stop being any army that looks and feels like it's still a 3rd edition army!

Is no one going to mention that we've had the same seven guns since the beginning? While everyone else is getting new toys, what do we have?

Flamer, Meltagun, Plasma gun, Heavy bolter, Autocannon, Missile launcher, Lascannon.

Chaos feels ancient and outdated because it literally is. We've been using pre-Heresy weapons for the past 10,000 years.

 Vaktathi wrote:
More fundamentally, half the army is still built around 4E and 5E mechanisms (...) A unit like Mutilators might have worked in 4th edition (...) Likewise, the Forgefiend, while looking cool on paper, is still a very 5E paradigm unit.

I exalted your post, and I'd like to elaborate further on those (IMO) key points.

If you have a decent knowledge of the current CSM codex, then take a look at other codices released more recently, it's not that hard to see what's so wrong with CSM nowadays. It's an army that, in terms of points costs, units abilities and overall equipment, is still stuck on pretty much 4th/5th edition. Even if the current codex is from 6th, it was released early during that edition and I believe we can say it was probably designed with 5th ed. in mind (we know GW release schedule sometimes has things sitting on the warehouse for quite a while until it's greenlighted to be released to the public, and by "quite a while" I mean years)

Actually, their current codex was already outdated the moment it was released. It simply relied heavily on one particularly overpowered unit, the Heldrake, that in competitive environments was pretty much autoinclude and autoplay. Seriously, the thing played itself alone. Arrive from reserves, crack transport open, fry the embarked unit; rinse and repeat. It's also quite durable for a flyer thanks to all the special rules it has. It was not uncommon to see two or even three Heldrakes in 1750 points games. Now that the Heldrake has been fixed... well the whole codex is in a dire state of affairs. To be completely fair, even some of the "worst" units can have their use in an appropiate context (Mutilators assaulting out of a Land Raider -> nice, although expensive too). Except the Helbrute, which is absolutely dreadful no matter how you look at it.

Compared to the 3.5 ed codex, the army offers little customization. No legions rules, overcosted marks. You could say the book even punishes you if you try to assemble a god-aligned army, and it's no surprise players nowadays simply use Nurgle's mark to try to represent everything (including freaking Iron Warriors), as it's virtually the only somewhat cost-proficient mark in a competitive environment. The Champions of Chaos rule and the Boon table are just the icing of the cake. If this were the 3.5 codex, then CoC could have a meaning, as that codex actually allowed you to assemble pretty impressive characters, including well geared Daemon Princes which were not monstruous creatures. But now? I lose more challenges than I win, and that's terrible when you're forced to be issuing and accepting challenges all the time. The Chaos Boons... urgh. Kill an imperial guard sergeant, you may become a Daemon Prince. Kill a SM Chapter Master, and you may become a chaos spawn. It can happen. Eventually, it will happen. As usual with GW, the idea was ok, the implementation is terrible.

Is it impossible to win a game with CSM? No. Specially if you're playing in a friendly, non-competitive environment. But right now they're simply rock bottom in the power scale. It's an army built around outdated mechanics, cost-inefficient units and very limited equipment. CSM are virtually still in 3rd ed. regarding equipment, while most other armies have been getting their share of new toys one edition after another. It's an army full of competent close combat fighters that most of the time don't make it to close combat.

If I were asked to draw a picture about the current state of CSM, it would probably be an ornate, menacing, intimidating and prohibitively expensive squad of Chosen being blown to bits after getting out of their Rhino.

Shouldn't there be some really heinous pre-heresy weapons, as 30K was much closer to the "Dark Age of Technology"? Oh how I hate retro-future grimdark stupidity.

Martel732 wrote:
Shouldn't there be some really heinous pre-heresy weapons, as 30K was much closer to the "Dark Age of Technology"?

Yep, that sort of thing usually turns up in Loyal books though. "Oh we had these grav guns all along."

It's a badly written Dex. So much junk. Absolute junk. However I think CSM is the most underrated Dex in the game in terms of power level. Slaanesh bikers are amazing. Heldrakes are good, the psykers are good, Belakor, princes, Tzeentch Termies, Juggerlord, Palaquin Lord with artefacts, Daemonic Possesion Landraider, Chaos vehicle upgrade table in general, Spawn are REALLY good

Some of the data slates make Helbrutes incredible.

On the flip side of the coin, it also has one Of the most overrated units ever, the Oblits.

I honestly think this Dex is being played wrong for the most part.

Its not what you have, its how you use it.....

 Ratius wrote:
Its not what you have, its how you use it.....

People will still give that argument if everything cost like 50 points more. Nobody buys it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
It's a badly written Dex. So much junk. Absolute junk. However I think CSM is the most underrated Dex in the game in terms of power level. Slaanesh bikers are amazing. Heldrakes are good, the psykers are good, Belakor, princes, Tzeentch Termies, Juggerlord, Palaquin Lord with artefacts, Daemonic Possesion Landraider, Chaos vehicle upgrade table in general, Spawn are REALLY good

Some of the data slates make Helbrutes incredible.

On the flip side of the coin, it also has one Of the most overrated units ever, the Oblits.

I honestly think this Dex is being played wrong for the most part.

Slaaneshi Bikers are terrible because getting a majority T6 for your Lords is more important than paying 35 for FNP. Heldrakes are just okay now thanks to the weapon arc nerf. Only unmarked Sorcerers are of any worth. Belakor isn't even in the main codex. Princes from the Daemon Codex are MUCH better. Lords have no mobility without bikes. Land Raiders are JUNK even for the Loyalists. Spawn do alright.

Seriously, the whole codex is one of the worst written books in ALL of table top gaming.

 SHUPPET wrote:
It's a badly written Dex. So much junk. Absolute junk. However I think CSM is the most underrated Dex in the game in terms of power level.

Doubtful. 40k is pretty straightforward and this codex has been out forever. If anything was excellent in it, you'd see it already.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Slaanesh bikers are amazing.

No, they aren't. For one, you want a nurgle lord anyway because plague marines are the best troop choice in the dex, and you want the nurgle lord in a unit of bikers.
The icon, if it dies, means you have just lost FnP on the entire unit. There is a reason nobody takes icons.
The only reason people take slaanesh anything is for their excellent weapons, which the bikers left at home. The siren on bikers would be amazing, especially with a lord thrown in there.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Heldrakes are good

Heldrakes, with the nerfs, have gone from really good to kinda meh. GW swings the nerf bat too hard. Its probably one of the best choices in the dex though.

 SHUPPET wrote:

the psykers are good

Outside of a some lucky rolls (biomancy on a DP for example), our psykers aren't that great. We don't have access to the best lore, and any psyker marked must roll on our unique and terrible tables.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Belakor, princes

Not in the dex, though he is really strong. Princes are, again, Nurgle or explode easy. DP are decent but die to dedicated combat monsters from better dexes, or can be shot off the table after they wipe a squad. They cost more than most squads too, so you are still down in points after this happens.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Tzeentch Termies

Even loyalists don't take termies and ours are worse. If you want termies in chaos they take the place of a drop pod suicide squad, except for being worse in every way. You don't upgrade them save with combi weapons.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Juggerlord

Again, compared to what loyalists get for a hero, the juggerlord isn't that great. Even at release he was only okay.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Palaquin Lord with artefacts

What equipment will make this heap of garbage worth taking?

 SHUPPET wrote:

Daemonic Possesion Landraider

...you must be joking. Landraiders are already pretty bad, and this one is worse than the loyalist one in every way. Its the worst variant and has a terrible upgrade table.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Chaos vehicle upgrade table in general

We have 2 good upgrades. The havok launcer and the no overwatch upgrade. The latter doesn't really come up and the former isn't what I would call great.

 SHUPPET wrote:

Spawn are REALLY good

Spawn used to be good, nurgle spawn specifically. Nowadays eldar can remove them without trying, as can DE or Tau. Marines with grav spam suffer against them, but still have their melee death star if needed to crush these guys. They were good before high AP high strength high RoF weapons became popular (the weapon type they fear the most, in other words).

 SHUPPET wrote:

Some of the data slates make Helbrutes incredible.

Can't comment, don't use data slates.

 SHUPPET wrote:

On the flip side of the coin, it also has one Of the most overrated units ever, the Oblits.

No one is saying oblits are amazing. There just isn't anything else that provides long range firepower in the dex that's decent. At least oblits can pop a tank or two.

 SHUPPET wrote:

I honestly think this Dex is being played wrong for the most part.

Again, doubt it. Nurgle is the best is common knowledge, outside of allying in other stuff as much as possible. This is known.

My points have all been made, but I"ll throw my two cents in anyway.

My biggest complaint about the chaos marine book is that it's very difficult to represent most of the legions well, and monogod armies aren't great either. Khorne is pretty much always better off using KDK. Tzeentch's mark is useful on terminators, evil robo-lizards (forgefiend and pals) and not much else. Thousand Sons are unimpressive against small arms fire yet unusually durable against AT shots (despite contradicting their fluff) and are forced to roll on a table that might give them the power to mutate. 'Cause that doesn't contradict huge defining parts of their backstory at all. *facepalm* Alpha Legion can spam cultists and hope they roll the roll the right warlord trait, and that's as fluff as they get really. Slaanesh potentially has some stuff going for her, but noise marines pay for melee and shooting options that actively shut one another down (can't benefit from your mark or doom siren easily if you want to use your salvo weapons or blast template). Nurgle is actually pretty okay.

Basically, you can only play Black Legion, nurgle marines, Word Bearers, and maybe Iron Warriors without feeling a severe lack of fluff representation and/or the frustration of having oddly-built units. This issue is worsened by the fact that the two supplements for chaos marines that came out both basically just let you play sort of generic god-unalligned armies (i.e. the type of army the book already sort of represented) rather than one of the factions that gets no love, but that's its own topic.

Mechanically, chaos marines can be worked into a pretty okay army for friendly games, although that's weakened a bit by the lack of ability to represent many factions in a fluffy manor. Even then however, you can really tell that it feels less well put together than newer books. And I don't mean that in the, "Grr! If I don't have scatterbikes and Decurion saves my army is useless!" sense either. Harlequins have rules that fit their fluff and let them play in interesting-if-kind-of-weak ways. Eldar have battle focus to make them feel fluid and to give you tactical options. KDK have the awesomely fun and fluffy rules set that is the blood tithe. Marines have chapter tactics to bring out their flavor and define their playstyles.

Chaos marines instead have champion of chaos which removes tactical choice (even if getting a good mutation is sometimes cool), contradicts certain factions' fluff (Thousand Sons really shouldn't be mutating), and requires lots of extra book keeping. They can also buy marks and banners which are often some combination of expensive and unimpressive (with a few exceptions).

You also can't attach your ICs to daemon squads or vice versa which removes a fair few interesting choices.

So with chaos marines often lacking the tools to bring out their own interesting, unique flavor, they end up looking sort of like space marines but with worse dreadnaughts (hell brutes; whatever), chapter tactic equivalents that are worse and have to be purchased, no ATSKNF, fewer transports, fewer guns, and a lot of options that while cool are probably too expensive or poorly designed for what they do.

Also, gift of mutation is the only piece of wargear in the game I'm aware of that has a chance to literally do nothing. Not in the sense that it's helpful in a situation that didn't come up or that you tried to use it but missed an attack roll or something. You can literally pay 10 points to roll on a chart and find out that you got nothing for those 10 points.

Honestly, I don't think the chaos marine codex is that far away from being reasonably fun and fluffy (though I'd kind of like a total overhaul personally). It's just that the combined lack of fluffy stuff and lack of stuff on par with more modern books (not even OP options; just solid units) makes them a bit frustrating. Usually if you're playing an army that isn't as strong as the newest thing, you can at least be fluffy a bout it. ^_^; The fact that it's easy to compare them to their loyalist cousins just makes things worse as every new grav gun or boost to dreadnaught and scout statlines is a reminder that you still don't have anything beyond a warlord trait and maybe cultist spam to represent your Alpha Legion.

Edit: I literally use loyalist marine Raptor tactics to represent my Alpha Legion forces.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Basically, you can only play Black Legion, nurgle marines, Word Bearers, and maybe Iron Warriors without feeling a severe lack of fluff representation and/or the frustration of having oddly-built units.

As a fairly dedicated Black Legion fan for ~20 years, I have to say the $100 DLC 'codex' was extremely disappointing. The fluff and the list are nothing alike, the fact that it's an expensive add-on to an already lackluster book is just salt in the wound. I can see Word Bearer fans being fairly disappointed too, years of 'Legions are too hard to do' from GW and then some renegade peasants appear with everything Word Bearer players wanted. These books seem to be aimed at Renegade players, when that niche is better filled by simply running C:SM anyway.

Daemonic possessed Vindicators, Hades Forgefiends, Warp Talons and Raptors. Then rubrics and cultists in troops. They are good units but rules are not good.

Autocannon havocs are good and efficient. You can take a bunker or a firestorm redoubt to them.

CSM codex has problem that there are very interesting units with bad rules. I hope new dex will fix some things.

Almost everything in the book (and supplements) just makes me ask: "Why?"

Why is this unit so expensive? Why are these upgrades so expensive? Why aren't any of these options worthwhile? Why is this even an option? Why isn't that an option? What were they thinking? Why would I ever take that?

Between GW and FW alike, it's almost as if there's this philosophy that our units, even when they're supposed to be equivalents to loyalist units, must be worse. Or we simply must be punished with silly drawbacks or randomness when attempting to take a unit or option that resembles something powerful or effective, despite other armies having options that are strong, points efficient, few drawbacks, etc. Other than Daemons, I suppose, which still have their fair share of stinkers, anything Chaos is seemingly designed to not be all that good.

Now, much of this undoubtedly has to do with the fact that the CSM book came out very early on relative to the rest of the armies we have now***. As time went on, a lot more creativity appeared to have gone into some of the books. In some ways, this creativity had the unfortunate effect of making some units/armies way too good, but at least they put some thought into doing something new and allowing some units to be very effective now and then.

Nothing we have is very effective. We're supposed to be these close combat butchers, but half the armies out there do it better, and the other half are just filled with chaff who aren't a challenge to kill in combat anyway. Everyone's done a much better job of explaining this already.

***Khorne Daemonkin is the prime example of why GW just sucks at dealing with Chaos. Yes, there are some cool and interesting things about the book such as the Blood Tithe table and the very fact that we can mix and match CSM/Daemon units. But then, they made no effort to remedy to ridiculous stats or cost of so many units, didn't add any new ones, and removed options which really should have been present in that book. Step forward the apologists who explain away those omissions or oversights after the fact as fluffy, as if that was really a consideration at all.

Whew, that felt good. Rant over. Been drinking a bit, sorry for the overly bitchy tone.

 CT GAMER wrote:
Because the 3.5 CSM codex was soooooooo damn good/cool.

Man, I miss those days. Had me a sweet daemon prince and a chaos champion who exploded into a Bloodthirster. Good times.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Its not what you have, its how you use it.....

People will still give that argument if everything cost like 50 points more. Nobody buys it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
It's a badly written Dex. So much junk. Absolute junk. However I think CSM is the most underrated Dex in the game in terms of power level. Slaanesh bikers are amazing. Heldrakes are good, the psykers are good, Belakor, princes, Tzeentch Termies, Juggerlord, Palaquin Lord with artefacts, Daemonic Possesion Landraider, Chaos vehicle upgrade table in general, Spawn are REALLY good

Some of the data slates make Helbrutes incredible.

On the flip side of the coin, it also has one Of the most overrated units ever, the Oblits.

I honestly think this Dex is being played wrong for the most part.

Slaaneshi Bikers are terrible because getting a majority T6 for your Lords is more important than paying 35 for FNP. Heldrakes are just okay now thanks to the weapon arc nerf. Only unmarked Sorcerers are of any worth. Belakor isn't even in the main codex. Princes from the Daemon Codex are MUCH better. Lords have no mobility without bikes. Land Raiders are JUNK even for the Loyalists. Spawn do alright.

Seriously, the whole codex is one of the worst written books in ALL of table top gaming.

Ok, I'll give you the LR, its hardly a selling point of the dex but although it's "worse" than the SM LR, CSM can also get a lot more out of it than SM. Now I know I didn't really have much supporting logic to my statements, but can you add a bit more detail as to why these units are as you say, because just saying "spawn do alright" doesn't do much to convince me otherwise. 12 pt's a T6 wound that moves at 12" and tears it up in CC is incredible. Slaanesh+FNP is is better for the bikers, it makes the unit tankier than Nurgle would against anything that isn't ID, and is slightly cheaper. Regardless, as you said Nurgle Bikers are practically as good anyway, this doesn't do much to detract from me saying they are a good unit


I gotta go to work for now but I'll have a better read of that long guys post when i get back

Why not play it and see for yourself. As is, you can win with csm and they have some solid units but overall it's just an outdated codex with all the problems that outdated codexes face. Fewer options that are weaker and more expensive, units that are mediocre at what they do yet cost a ton of points for no good reason.

CSM are pretty much a dedicated CC army. Pretty much everything in the book was built around this, the chaos boons, VotLW, the wargear, just everything really. The fire support elements were just that, support for the CC threats. CSM could beat the elite CC units of other armies with their CC troops. (Hatred for all Loyalists is win) But now the game has changed dramatically in a relatively short time. Now they just get shredded from a distance before they can even close in. This is bad design IMO. By all means certain elements of Chaos should be killer in CC (Khorne/Slaanesh), but Chaos should be about more than mindlessly charging into combat. Iron Warriors are siege specialists, Alpha Legion and Night Lords use stealth and finesse.

This is also probably why Ksons are so useless. They don't fit in with their own codex design.

 Delicate Swarm wrote:
CSM are pretty much a dedicated CC army. Pretty much everything in the book was built around this, the chaos boons, VotLW, the wargear, just everything really. The fire support elements were just that, support for the CC threats. CSM could beat the elite CC units of other armies with their CC troops. (Hatred for all Loyalists is win) But now the game has changed dramatically in a relatively short time. Now they just get shredded from a distance before they can even close in. This is bad design IMO. By all means certain elements of Chaos should be killer in CC (Khorne/Slaanesh), but Chaos should be about more than mindlessly charging into combat. Iron Warriors are siege specialists, Alpha Legion and Night Lords use stealth and finesse.

This is also probably why Ksons are so useless. They don't fit in with their own codex design.

Rubrics are useless because mathematically they lose to 10 Vanilla Marines with two Plasma Guns, and don't give out a lot of Warp Charges. Ten points more than the minimum squad gets me a new CAD with two units of Cultists and a Sorcerer.

So the general consensus is while it has some great units it also has a lot of useless ones and the codex doesn't properly represent how the army is portrayed in the fluff.

Is this about right?

The reason the Codex gets a bad rep is because its old, much like most of CSM in general.

I've played CSM since 5th, Love the army, but just gave up on playing them. I can still have some good games with my inexperienced friends mostly because of tactical mistakes, but once they start learning their armies, it gets harder. While i agree with everything everyone is saying here. The lack of synergy, overcosted models, poor transport options, built for an edition that isn't played, etc. Yet, we are glossing over one very big issue. Money.

CSM are supposed to be the BAD GUYS, and considering everyone in the 40k universe is technically bad guys. CSM are supposed to be THE bad guys. Which may have a contributing factor in the lack of love GW gives them. Space Marines are GW's posterboy for the game which is the main reason they get a lots of the love in forms of new sculpts, better gear, better rules, an exclusive online formation that will not be named, etc.. They're also marketed to new players.

Lore wise, Space Marines biggest enemy is CSM. If CSM is easy to beat, more new players can fight the bad guys and win. Meaning they will keep playing and buying more stuff and that means more money in GW pockets. We more or less have been reduced to the "Mob Army" for the newbies to fight. We are designed to die.

I firmly believe that the one of the main reasons that CSM is getting shafted so hard by GW is because they just are not seeing any profit in working on a codex. Hell, the ONLY reason khorne deamonkin was released was to sell the new bloodthirster model.Speaking of new models, How about a new standard CSM sculpt? I think out current on is 15 years old. I don't think i'll see one within my gaming lifetime. I mean, How long did it take for us to get cultists and helbrute kits after dark vengeance came out? Where is our Chosen kit? Dark Vengeance was released in 2012. It's been three years.

In the end, it all comes down to money. I think the cost to profit ratio to make CSM players happy is just to unrealistic for GW to commit to it. Between legion rulesets, new sculpts, new rules, etc, the amount of effort required by GW is just not something they'll put forth. By no means is CSM gonna go the way of sisters or get squatted, they're too big for that. They just won't get better. New codexes will continue to be mediocre. They are the bad guys after all, and the good guys need someone they can fight and beat.

/rant.

Edit: Spelling

Taffy17 wrote:
So the general consensus is while it has some great units it also has a lot of useless ones and the codex doesn't properly represent how the army is portrayed in the fluff.

Is this about right?

At release, yes.

Now, the codex has some mediocre units and the rest are terrible.

In general, you want to take the following;
Plague Marines
Cultists
Sorceror (no marks)
Nurgle Dp
Nurgle Bikers
Unmarked Termies with combi weapons
Nurgle Biker lord with brand
Heldrake

Everything else is pretty bad. You can make blastmasters work, but its performance will depend on enemy skill and who you are facing.

 Arkaine wrote:
Is no one going to mention that we've had the same seven guns since the beginning? While everyone else is getting new toys, what do we have?

Flamer, Meltagun, Plasma gun, Heavy bolter, Autocannon, Missile launcher, Lascannon.

Chaos feels ancient and outdated because it literally is. We've been using pre-Heresy weapons for the past 10,000 years.

Which is how it should be.

The current design studio is clueless and out of good ideas. The last time they caved in to people wanting new chaos toys allthey could manage was to give us lame "robo-space- dragon". This is 40k not Transformers...

In fact all they can seem to make these days is giant robots.

CSMs need to be made the ancient and powerful veterans of the long war that they should be: they should make modern marines crap their pants stat-wise. they should have veteran and legion abilities, they should get greater bonuses for themed l/marked armies.

They should have high points costs but be absolutly disgustingly powerful. The army should be a warband of insanse eternal killers with some associated toys. Instead we get marines with horns (cosmetic) and a collection of BeastWars Transformer rejects...

they should have dreadclaw droppods, better possessed vehicle options and a wargear/relic section that makes loyalists scream "Heresy!!!".

 CT GAMER wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:
Is no one going to mention that we've had the same seven guns since the beginning? While everyone else is getting new toys, what do we have?

Flamer, Meltagun, Plasma gun, Heavy bolter, Autocannon, Missile launcher, Lascannon.

Chaos feels ancient and outdated because it literally is. We've been using pre-Heresy weapons for the past 10,000 years.

Which is how it should be.

The current design studio is clueless and out of good ideas. The last time they caved in to people wanting new chaos toys allthey could manage was to give us lame "robo-space- dragon". This is 40k not Transformers...

In fact all they can seem to make these days is giant robots.

CSMs need to be made the ancient and powerful veterans of the long war that they should be: they should make modern marines crap their pants stat-wise. they should have veteran and legion abilities, they should get greater bonuses for themed l/marked armies.

They should have high points costs but be absolutly disgustingly powerful. The army should be a warband of insanse eternal killers with some associated toys. Instead we get marines with horns (cosmetic) and a collection of BeastWars Transformer rejects...

they should have dreadclaw droppods, better possessed vehicle options and a wargear/relic section that makes loyalists scream "Heresy!!!".

I never understood all the hate people seem to have for the daemon engine aesthetics. They're demon-possessed semi-organic death machines! How is that not awesome? Although I won't disagree about the Transformers comparisons as I am planning to literally use my dinobot toy as a maulerfiend soon.

Totally agree with the rest of your post though. "Real" chaos marines (as opposed to renegades) seem like their mechanical niche should be having unusually impressive and customizable characters and interesting/gimmicky wargear. I'm fine with the average Joe chaos marine staying pretty close to where he's at, but make that aspiring champion 2 wounds, WS5, 3 Attacks, and give him access to lots of cool purchasable gifts of chaos. A marine statline is (supposedly) still pretty impressive, but aspirin champions are, well, aspiring. They've fallen to chaos in exchange for power and/or are actively trying to earn more chaos power from their gods. The gifts of mutation thing is actually a neat idea, but I'd rather see it be the benefit for an optional formation or something rather than a core mechanic.

For competitive people it's a total failure. It's best units are mediocre and has some of the worst units in the game.
For fluffy people the dex fails miserably by not representing how chaos marines are in the fluff. No legions. Not good recent traitors. Not good ancient traitors. Just a smattering of weirdo sub groups that few people care about.

So, yeah, it has a well earned bad rep.

No legions. For any flavor at all beyond "Mark of God X" on everything, you need to buy a supplement, which is just as expensive as the codex itself iirc, or a brand new Daemonkin codex.

My answer is far simpler.


We have a close combat army, with overcosted combat troops. No reliable way to get into combat at speed. And no decent ranged support.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:
Is no one going to mention that we've had the same seven guns since the beginning? While everyone else is getting new toys, what do we have?

Flamer, Meltagun, Plasma gun, Heavy bolter, Autocannon, Missile launcher, Lascannon.

Chaos feels ancient and outdated because it literally is. We've been using pre-Heresy weapons for the past 10,000 years.

Which is how it should be.

The current design studio is clueless and out of good ideas. The last time they caved in to people wanting new chaos toys allthey could manage was to give us lame "robo-space- dragon". This is 40k not Transformers...

In fact all they can seem to make these days is giant robots.

CSMs need to be made the ancient and powerful veterans of the long war that they should be: they should make modern marines crap their pants stat-wise. they should have veteran and legion abilities, they should get greater bonuses for themed l/marked armies.

They should have high points costs but be absolutly disgustingly powerful. The army should be a warband of insanse eternal killers with some associated toys. Instead we get marines with horns (cosmetic) and a collection of BeastWars Transformer rejects...

they should have dreadclaw droppods, better possessed vehicle options and a wargear/relic section that makes loyalists scream "Heresy!!!".

I never understood all the hate people seem to have for the daemon engine aesthetics. They're demon-possessed semi-organic death machines! How is that not awesome? Although I won't disagree about the Transformers comparisons as I am planning to literally use my dinobot toy as a maulerfiend soon.

Totally agree with the rest of your post though. "Real" chaos marines (as opposed to renegades) seem like their mechanical niche should be having unusually impressive and customizable characters and interesting/gimmicky wargear. I'm fine with the average Joe chaos marine staying pretty close to where he's at, but make that aspiring champion 2 wounds, WS5, 3 Attacks, and give him access to lots of cool purchasable gifts of chaos. A marine statline is (supposedly) still pretty impressive, but aspirin champions are, well, aspiring. They've fallen to chaos in exchange for power and/or are actively trying to earn more chaos power from their gods. The gifts of mutation thing is actually a neat idea, but I'd rather see it be the benefit for an optional formation or something rather than a core mechanic.

In exchange for a loss of ATSKNF, we should get buffs out the buttcheeks on our dudes?

Because it's mediocre.

 Imposter101 wrote:
Because it's mediocre.

Mediocre implies it's in the middle. That's far too optimistic.

 welshhoppo wrote:
We have a close combat army, with overcosted combat troops.

I wish this was true. But what's close combat about our army that Space Marines aren't better at?

We have twin-linked Combi-Bolters, they have Assault 2 Storm Bolters. So our guys can't assault after firing while theirs can.
We have our Daemonic walkers, they have Dreadnoughts with Storm Shields. Feth your Daemons, I have a better Invuln.
We have Terminators, they have ASSAULT Terminators. With Storm Shields. And Thunder hammers. And Blackjack. And hookers.
We have Mutilators, they have Assault Centurions. Cents even carry a ranged weapon and their default melee is superior to every option the Mutes can choose from.
We have the Mark of Khorne on models we purchase it for, they have Chapter Tactics that apply to entire chunks of the army. For free.
We have Raptors, they have Assault Marines. Which even with Jump Packs taken (95 vs 85) are CHEAPER! (Raptors have Fear but Assault Marines have ATSKNF)
I mean granted, we have the Mark of Nurgle and Slaanesh. And we pay through the nose for both. But almost all of the Chaos benefits come from our HQ choices.

Along with the Mutation Lottery and mandatory challenge problem.

Know what we have for CC? A maulerfiend. A daemon ghost inhabited machine that pummels things with powerfists. A perfect poster boy for our entire army, surely!

Well we can also have assault terminators with lightning claws and a 4++, but no way of getting them into combat without a LR or deep striking, so no combat till turn three.

We have Khorne berserkers and noise marines, both are good at combat. Both are also too expensive, plague marines are short range combat troops too.

We have deep striking lightning claw equipped marine killers. But they are too expensive and can't attack enemy units in terrain.

Plus, combi bolters are better on charging terminators than Storm bolters.

We have a lot of things designed for combat, the best units in our army are bikes and spawn, close combat troops with a reliable way of getting into combat.

(Never mind, bad info)

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

This is definitely fun in a non-competitive environment.

Taffy17 wrote:
So the general consensus is while it has some great units it also has a lot of useless ones and the codex doesn't properly represent how the army is portrayed in the fluff.

Is this about right?

Above average at best for the good stuff out of there.

 Kimchi Gamer wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

This is definitely fun in a non-competitive environment.

I get the feeling that the book was written that way

I don't play CSMs,but from what I've seen of them they just seem to be 'marines without the best wargear, vehicles and special rules'.

And, whilst they get unique stuff of their own, it never seems to make up for what they lack - especially as marines basically one-up their stuff. e.g. Obliterators were pretty nice back in 4th and 5th, being able to switch between weapons to suit different situations. But, then marines got Centurions - which are similarly tough, but don't need to switch weapons because they have the best weapon in the game (Grav Cannons with Grav Amp). Being able to choose between lascannons, meltas and plasma cannons is pretty pathetic when your adversaries have guns that can mow down Wraithknights.

And, then there's stuff like SMs having 3 LR variants (whilst CSMs are stuck at 1), and SMs having Razorbacks and Drop Pods, whilst CSMs only have Rhinos. It might not be so bad if CSMs had their own transports to compensate, but no. They're just stuck with rhinos - which by itself denies them a hell of a lot of strategies.

Also, Marks of Chaos became less of a USP when SMs got given Chapter Tactics - which are basically Marks of Chaos that they don't have to pay for, and which don't restrict them in the same way Marks of Chaos do.

All that said, it hasn't helped that codices have been getting ludicrous buffs from Necrons onward.

GW can't decide on a design philosophy for the armies. Some are throwbacks to earlier editions and don't age well. Others are bland and average with everything. Others are mono-build or go home. And others are just bonkers super powered. The problem is that all of these codexes exist in the same game. You can have over priced Thousand Sons going up against Wraithguard and Wraithknights. It's almost like they're from completely different games sometimes.

All of this leaves CSM far behind in dust.

At least Vanilla CSM's can take two Special Weapons. It'll be their sole advantage over the Tactical Marine. Shame, as I don't WANT to use Grey Hunters.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
At least Vanilla CSM's can take two Special Weapons. It'll be their sole advantage over the Tactical Marine. Shame, as I don't WANT to use Grey Hunters.

On the other hand, the Tactical Marines can grab a Grav-gun that is likely to overperform both CSM's special weapons in many situations.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

I always forget Defensive Grenades do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

These are units that HAVE no pros because whatever they do is better done elsewhere. ZERO pros. Count them.

Clearly there are pros, even if the balance falls on the side of cons.

Are you being intentionally hyperbolic? I honestly don't understand how you could mean they have no pros.

You can't seriously say having Ap2 blasts isn't a pro? Yes, there are disadvantages to it, but taking a forgefiend isn't the same as just not using the points at all. When I use obliterators one of my favourite weapons to chose is the plasma cannon, but then I am limited to firing only every other round, so there is a pro for forgefiends off the bat!

65 points for a deepstriking chainfist that can't be killed by a single lascannon/melta wound (and odds on survives two such wounds) isn't useless, even if it has to spend 2 or 3 turns waiting to be able to assault. Being a single model unit vastly mitigates deepstrike scatter (which CSM don't have many ways to control). The only thing that competes for a cheap/throwaway sucker punch is the obliterator, but they aren't anywhere near as good in combat, not having a chain fist, extra attacks, a decent initiative to flee escape combats, are higher target priority, more competitive slot selection. I always loved using mutilators in my previous chaos army, so much so when I started a new chaos army I once again use mutilators!

Warp talons I won't defend as I have no experience with them, and haven't given them much thought.

CSM is bad because to to rise to a semi-competitive level you HAVE to really weight your choices and do some serious list building.

I like Chaos Marines but wish their book made any sense in a balance, fluff, or mechanics standpoint. It fails in all 3.

Deadza wrote:
CSM is bad because to to rise to a semi-competitive level you HAVE to really weight your choices and do some serious list building.

And ofc, the best performers my CSM mate has been throwing on the table have only 1-6 actual CSM. The Sorcerer and maybe five Chosen as bodyguards for him if my mate feels like gimping himself a bit more. The book should be called "Codex Chaos Space Marine and his friends".

 CT GAMER wrote:


The current design studio is clueless and out of good ideas. The last time they caved in to people wanting new chaos toys allthey could manage was to give us lame "robo-space- dragon". This is 40k not Transformers...

Ironic that you say that, my csm ARE transformers... I play a Tzeentch only list.

God of Change... Big Giant Robots.. Decepticon theme just makes sense...


Here's my Megatron, (Helbrute), check the kneecap yo

I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!

What I'd really love to see from a new codex would be;
1. More upgrade options. Some new chaosy guns that can fulfill the roles of things like Grav/Assault cannons/Multi-melta/etc... And the return of old school options such as a PA Heavy flamer please!

2. A Rhino & Land Raider varients of our very own. If Loyalists get Razorbacks and Crusaders + Redeemers, than we should damn well have our own unique transports as well. An assault Rhino that's loaded with twin-linked template weapons + frag launchers would be ace!

3. More Daemon engines. A re-worked Defiler would be nice, as well as a new medium sized engine that's in between the size of a Hellbrute vs. Maulerfiend.

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

Also, the Helldrake exhaust looks like a catfish.

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

Personally I think they look daemonic enough... They look a helluva lot better than the fugly as gak Soul Grinder!

Maybe they'd fit in better if the rest of our model line wasn't so damn ancient?! The Fiends look good alongside the new Hellbrute imho, though I'd still love a less mutated basic Dreadnought personally... (and make the Hellbrute itself more akin to a Possessed Venerable Dreadnought?!!)

Experiment 626 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

Personally I think they look daemonic enough... They look a helluva lot better than the fugly as gak Soul Grinder!

Maybe they'd fit in better if the rest of our model line wasn't so damn ancient?! The Fiends look good alongside the new Hellbrute imho, though I'd still love a less mutated basic Dreadnought personally... (and make the Hellbrute itself more akin to a Possessed Venerable Dreadnought?!!)

That would be nice, then maybe I could buy one squad of havocs to have all the weapons instead of only having one of each. Having to buy four boxes just to play 5 models with four autocannons is rediculous.

Instead you have ancient rank and file, then a different type of Daemonic vehicle. The fiends, drake and brute all look much different.

If GW took the models from the Dark Vengence set and worked them into the regular line, the chaos marines would be the best. I love the DV chosen. Shame about the mono load out...... So chosen squads have to be made up of regular marines if you wish to run special weapon squads.

Dinobots...IMO they're cool models and all, but they look like Dinobots. And IIRC, Dinobots were good-guys.

Leave the Helbrute as what it is (perhaps with a points drop), give me some real Chaos Dreadnought (with Hatred against loyalists by default). The Ferrum Infernus from IA13, basically.

 welshhoppo wrote:


If GW took the models from the Dark Vengence set and worked them into the regular line, the chaos marines would be the best. I love the DV chosen. Shame about the mono load out...... So chosen squads have to be made up of regular marines if you wish to run special weapon squads.

Not necessarily true. They're not the easiest models to convert, but it can be done.

 jasper76 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:


If GW took the models from the Dark Vengence set and worked them into the regular line, the chaos marines would be the best. I love the DV chosen. Shame about the mono load out...... So chosen squads have to be made up of regular marines if you wish to run special weapon squads.

Not necessarily true. They're not the easiest models to convert, but it can be done.

True, but for your average Joe blogs "gamer and basic converter" it's way to much hassle. I'm not brilliant at converting, but I can do some basic work. GW should at least release the models for the rules.

I absolutely agree. And i think the design of the DV Chosen models are very, very nice, and they should release a customizable Chosen box with similar sculpts.

And starter sets aside, IMO every box you buy from GW should have every single option listed in the codex. CSM is particularly bad about this. If they can do a decent enough job of this with Tyranids, why not with other armies?

A box of multi-component Dark Vengeance-styled Chosen would have sold like cupcakes.

I'm actually still deciding between the DV chosen and some normal CSM to build a small Chosen unit. I'm planning to build a Champion + four chosen with flamers small unit, and I'm still thinking about ways to properly convert the DV chosen. The two "standing" ones with the bolters will be easy I guess, just sawing the boltgun off and gluing a flamer there instead. The other two will be a matter of swapping the bolt pistols for flamers, although I predict those are going to be a bit more tricky. Not sure what I could do with the twin claws guy, perhaps leave him as unit champion and use the actual champion as a Dark Apostle.

Bad rules, old models, dark eldar syndrome, pre update the dark eldar suffered from all these problems and it took a major overhaul to fix them, chaos desperately needs the same.

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

I always forget Defensive Grenades do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

These are units that HAVE no pros because whatever they do is better done elsewhere. ZERO pros. Count them.

Clearly there are pros, even if the balance falls on the side of cons.

Are you being intentionally hyperbolic? I honestly don't understand how you could mean they have no pros.

You can't seriously say having Ap2 blasts isn't a pro? Yes, there are disadvantages to it, but taking a forgefiend isn't the same as just not using the points at all. When I use obliterators one of my favourite weapons to chose is the plasma cannon, but then I am limited to firing only every other round, so there is a pro for forgefiends off the bat!

65 points for a deepstriking chainfist that can't be killed by a single lascannon/melta wound (and odds on survives two such wounds) isn't useless, even if it has to spend 2 or 3 turns waiting to be able to assault. Being a single model unit vastly mitigates deepstrike scatter (which CSM don't have many ways to control). The only thing that competes for a cheap/throwaway sucker punch is the obliterator, but they aren't anywhere near as good in combat, not having a chain fist, extra attacks, a decent initiative to flee escape combats, are higher target priority, more competitive slot selection. I always loved using mutilators in my previous chaos army, so much so when I started a new chaos army I once again use mutilators!

Warp talons I won't defend as I have no experience with them, and haven't given them much thought.

AP2 Small Blasts are NOT that great, actually. There's a reason that Plasma Cannon Devastators aren't used a lot, and those have the advantage of being greater in range by an entire foot. YES, the Ectoplasma Forgefiend is useless.

2/3 Turns is enough time to runaway from the Mutilator, It doesn't matter though, seeing as he won't get anywhere afterwards thanks to being slow. YES, the Mutilator is useless. Termicide is used instead of Mutilators for a reason.

Don't bother ever trying to defend Warp Talons. The only thing they do better is charge MEQ outside of cover. Otherwise, Raptors are more durable and put out more wounds, on top of being able to take Special Weapons. YES, the Warp Talon is useless.

He's right tho it's still hyperbolic to say they have zero pros. Their is something they do better than their alternatives, even if they do everything else worse. The cons might just outweigh the pros (quite heavily too in the case of Warp Talons).

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

Personally I think they look daemonic enough... They look a helluva lot better than the fugly as gak Soul Grinder!

Maybe they'd fit in better if the rest of our model line wasn't so damn ancient?! The Fiends look good alongside the new Hellbrute imho, though I'd still love a less mutated basic Dreadnought personally... (and make the Hellbrute itself more akin to a Possessed Venerable Dreadnought?!!)

That would be nice, then maybe I could buy one squad of havocs to have all the weapons instead of only having one of each. Having to buy four boxes just to play 5 models with four autocannons is rediculous.

Instead you have ancient rank and file, then a different type of Daemonic vehicle. The fiends, drake and brute all look much different.

If GW took the models from the Dark Vengence set and worked them into the regular line, the chaos marines would be the best. I love the DV chosen. Shame about the mono load out...... So chosen squads have to be made up of regular marines if you wish to run special weapon squads.

Actually, I'd really prefer to see GW give us basic Chaos Marines + Havocs that are basically cleaned-up & modernised versions of our current grunts. Then go crazy and bling-out an actual Chosen kit + Cult Marines.
That way, we can readily cover all the bases with Chaos Marines, from the likes of Alpha Legion/Iron Warriors/Renegades up to the really carzy-pants looking Word Bearers and/or 10,000 year old mutated monsters.


@Slayer-fan: Warptalons are actually really solid units, in a Codex: Chaos Daemons army!

I've used a small unit of 5-6 with great results, as they provide my Tzeentch forces with the close combat punch they almost completely lack. Meanwhile, between easy access to Divination and Malefic, the Talons are getting all the supports that are completely missing from within their own codex.
Grimoire/Cursed Earth/Forewarning these b******* up and then nuke their intended target with Misfortune and they'll tear apart most anything short of GMC's and vehicles.

I think part of the problem is people generally want a I win button and thanks to the drake nerd which was entirely justified the army actually takes skill to play. Heck imho the Murder Sword is one of the best artefacts in the game and I hope gw Dosent raise the book above its current level so hopefully competitive players will stay away from it along with the band wagonners

Experiment 626 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

Personally I think they look daemonic enough... They look a helluva lot better than the fugly as gak Soul Grinder!

Maybe they'd fit in better if the rest of our model line wasn't so damn ancient?! The Fiends look good alongside the new Hellbrute imho, though I'd still love a less mutated basic Dreadnought personally... (and make the Hellbrute itself more akin to a Possessed Venerable Dreadnought?!!)

That would be nice, then maybe I could buy one squad of havocs to have all the weapons instead of only having one of each. Having to buy four boxes just to play 5 models with four autocannons is rediculous.

Instead you have ancient rank and file, then a different type of Daemonic vehicle. The fiends, drake and brute all look much different.

If GW took the models from the Dark Vengence set and worked them into the regular line, the chaos marines would be the best. I love the DV chosen. Shame about the mono load out...... So chosen squads have to be made up of regular marines if you wish to run special weapon squads.

Actually, I'd really prefer to see GW give us basic Chaos Marines + Havocs that are basically cleaned-up & modernised versions of our current grunts. Then go crazy and bling-out an actual Chosen kit + Cult Marines.
That way, we can readily cover all the bases with Chaos Marines, from the likes of Alpha Legion/Iron Warriors/Renegades up to the really carzy-pants looking Word Bearers and/or 10,000 year old mutated monsters.


@Slayer-fan: Warptalons are actually really solid units, in a Codex: Chaos Daemons army!

I've used a small unit of 5-6 with great results, as they provide my Tzeentch forces with the close combat punch they almost completely lack. Meanwhile, between easy access to Divination and Malefic, the Talons are getting all the supports that are completely missing from within their own codex.
Grimoire/Cursed Earth/Forewarning these b******* up and then nuke their intended target with Misfortune and they'll tear apart most anything short of GMC's and vehicles.

I've seen Talons used as a gimmick like that. Entirely unimpressive. You could just get better melee elsewhere. Blood Crushers will do the same thing AND be faster. Nobody thinks Blood Crushers are great, either.

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
I think part of the problem is people generally want a I win button and thanks to the drake nerd which was entirely justified the army actually takes skill to play. Heck imho the Murder Sword is one of the best artefacts in the game and I hope gw Dosent raise the book above its current level so hopefully competitive players will stay away from it along with the band wagonners

Not a single person in this thread (that I noticed) said anything about an "I win" button. Having stupid points costs and ineffective units has nothing to do with the player at all. I'm sure you're the Napoleon of the tabletop who manages to win tournaments against the top lists out there, though.

I'm sure you'll get your wish, at any rate. I doubt the next book will be a whole lot better or powerful in the Eldar/Necrons/Space Marines/Tau sense.

 SHUPPET wrote:
He's right tho it's still hyperbolic to say they have zero pros. Their is something they do better than their alternatives, even if they do everything else worse. The cons might just outweigh the pros (quite heavily too in the case of Warp Talons).

If the better unit has the SAME pro, it cancels out. It goes back to the statement as to what tools the bad unit gives otherwise. Chainfist? Melta Guns will give Armorbane the turn they actually come in. Worst case scenario you can always buy the Chainfist for Terminators. It isn't really a pro. Sorry. Mutilators are literally THAT much junk. Waste of paper and plastic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Champion of Slaanesh wrote:
I think part of the problem is people generally want a I win button and thanks to the drake nerd which was entirely justified the army actually takes skill to play. Heck imho the Murder Sword is one of the best artefacts in the game and I hope gw Dosent raise the book above its current level so hopefully competitive players will stay away from it along with the band wagonners

The Murder Sword is one of the worst artifacts in the game. Entirely conditional and flatout horrible in every other situation.

People are always saying that Warp Talons and gate of Infinity is great for blinding people.
First and foremost- their blind ability is only when they arrive from deepstrike reserves, not anytime they deepstrike. So, if you play by the rules- nope. GoI does nothing for Warp Talons.

Even in KDK where they get both MoK and DoK (a huge improvement) they are seriously over costed and DONT HAVE GRENADES.

Let's all stop trying to figure out how Warp Talons are good. The answer is - they're not good.

I actually like the dinobots. They aren't a reminder that our Daemons are just flat out better. Instead they actually look like vehicles made to be intimidating and weird. They represent Chaos Space Marines instead of being just another Bloodthirster.

What I would really like to see is access to a dinbot champion of some sort. Currently the craziest looking character we have is the Warpsmith. Be'lakor and Daemon Princes are just too much in the Daemon direction and remind us we're better off using our allies as the primary detachment. We could use something like those Venerable Dreadnought heroes the Space Marines get. A unique Helbrute that doesn't suck or a Possessed marine lord or even just ANY terminator dude with *gasp!* decent RANGED WEAPONS!

 KhorneontheCobb wrote:
People are always saying that Warp Talons and gate of Infinity is great for blinding people.
First and foremost- their blind ability is only when they arrive from deepstrike reserves, not anytime they deepstrike. So, if you play by the rules- nope. GoI does nothing for Warp Talons.

Even in KDK where they get both MoK and DoK (a huge improvement) they are seriously over costed and DONT HAVE GRENADES.

Let's all stop trying to figure out how Warp Talons are good. The answer is - they're not good.

They're playable when you have Divination & Malefic/Grimoire. (Shred + Rending through Misfortune makes them into scary MC hunters)
Daemon Icons also work as Deep Strike mitigation, since the Talons themselves have the Daemon USR, making their Blind ability work for once.

Within a CSM or KDK force, they're entirely pointless since the one thing we don't need is yet more close combat MEQ killing options.

CSM Get a bad rep because they are the "Bad guys" in the 40k lore and therefore every codex that has come out since 3rd ED has them crawling around on all fours trying to be as good as their imperial counterparts but failing so horrendously with Jack of all trade - master of none units. This means that to the loyalists, CSM being bad guys and GW having so many Loyalist army collectors, CSM must naturally be a terrible army and not compete in any way with the loyalists.

I don't recall a time (Even today, in which the codex is in a pathetic state) that loyalists don't complain CSM are "Too Op because them Helturkeys are scurreh to ma Muhreens". The general consensus is that CSM will never be as good as their loyalist counterparts.

If they were to be, most people think they would simply be SMs with Dinobots and inferior everything, which is basically what they are right now.. So the real reason CSM aren't competitive, played often, seen as a fun army nor in a good state Dex wise, is because GW wants to make more money on the vastly larger Loyalist player base and the galaxy within 40k clearly needing a punching bag army. Orks aren't that though because aesthetically Orks are fun to convert and play, are cheaper, numerable in bodies per points and generally dont suck so bad they make you hate having a Wallet and ever having spent money on the hobby.

/end rant

 Korinov wrote:
A box of multi-component Dark Vengeance-styled Chosen would have sold like cupcakes.

I'm actually still deciding between the DV chosen and some normal CSM to build a small Chosen unit. I'm planning to build a Champion + four chosen with flamers small unit, and I'm still thinking about ways to properly convert the DV chosen. The two "standing" ones with the bolters will be easy I guess, just sawing the boltgun off and gluing a flamer there instead. The other two will be a matter of swapping the bolt pistols for flamers, although I predict those are going to be a bit more tricky. Not sure what I could do with the twin claws guy, perhaps leave him as unit champion and use the actual champion as a Dark Apostle.

I use the DV Chosen as unit champions for regular CSM in my Khorne Daemonkin army. The sculpts are nice even if running the DV Chosen as a squad is a major fail. I am currently painting a squad of my own Chosen with plasma guns (the four regular dudes are from the CSM set, the champion is one of the DV bolter guys whose bolter I made into a combi-plasma). When I get them painted, they will look pretty good and their color scheme will work well with Cypher (in his formation).

 ZergSmasher wrote:

I use the DV Chosen as unit champions for regular CSM in my Khorne Daemonkin army. The sculpts are nice even if running the DV Chosen as a squad is a major fail. I am currently painting a squad of my own Chosen with plasma guns (the four regular dudes are from the CSM set, the champion is one of the DV bolter guys whose bolter I made into a combi-plasma). When I get them painted, they will look pretty good and their color scheme will work well with Cypher (in his formation).

Yep, I've also seen them used as regular CSM champions and they certainly look the part. Pity is I don't need more CSM champions

Guys, people will react to you better if you say "I think that x isn't very good" instead of "x isn't very good."

Just in general, you know.

When you are stuck with options like Rubric, mutilators, possessed, warp talons, forgefiends, apostles (which burns my ass as i play word bearers), incredibly expensive marked marines, and stale old weapons choices, its hard to get excited about the army.

Hell, look at berserkers. How old is their model?

Rubric and slaanesh marines are way too pricy and unuseable.

Mutilators and possessed are so god damn awful, its amazing. Compare a possessed at 30pts and a scatter bike at 27, and tell me how that isnt shameful.

I want them to be good, i really do. Word bearers are my dream army. So diverse and flavorful. They just cant work will CSM gets some legion rules and better choices.

Alcibiades wrote:

Guys, people will react to you better if you say "I think that x isn't very good" instead of "x isn't very good."

Just in general, you know.

Math can't be opinionized.

 Gunnvulcan wrote:
When you are stuck with options like Rubric, mutilators, possessed, warp talons, forgefiends, apostles (which burns my ass as i play word bearers), incredibly expensive marked marines, and stale old weapons choices, its hard to get excited about the army.

Hell, look at berserkers. How old is their model?

Rubric and slaanesh marines are way too pricy and unuseable.

Mutilators and possessed are so god damn awful, its amazing. Compare a possessed at 30pts and a scatter bike at 27, and tell me how that isnt shameful.

I want them to be good, i really do. Word bearers are my dream army. So diverse and flavorful. They just cant work will CSM gets some legion rules and better choices.

The "current" Berserker plastic kit was "new" back in March/April 1999!!

I know because the WD that featured their release I bought from the Newcastle mega mall, during my hockey team's trip to England for a series of friendlies. (because we weren't playing enough hockey back home and needed MOAR!)

Show me another current army that has a plastic kit that isn't even from this current freaking century!

Experiment 626 wrote:
Show me another current army that has a plastic kit that isn't even from this current freaking century!

Tau have some kits that are pretty old. I'm not sure if they're that old, but they're old, even if GW has changed the box art some.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Show me another current army that has a plastic kit that isn't even from this current freaking century!

Well, you're right there - my SoB Exorcist and Immolator kits should be from this century. But they're the only plastic I get.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
Show me another current army that has a plastic kit that isn't even from this current freaking century!

Tau have some kits that are pretty old. I'm not sure if they're that old, but they're old, even if GW has changed the box art some.

The Tau XV8's, Firewarriors (not the new Breachers/Strikers) and Kroot are all from 2001.

Actually, thinking about it, I do believe that the current Guardian sculpts are also from '99, though they at least still look solid and their weapon platforms are from around '08/'09'ish iirc.

The Berserkers looked goofy at the time, and have continued to age poorly.

I have to admit the guardian models despite being old are a pretty solid kit still.

Agreed. Eldar models in general are gorgeous sculpts, even though the Phoenix Lords are still 2nd ed models! The 'worst' model in that line is probably the equally old Avatar, and really, it's more or less his puny size that makes him seem like a crappy model nowadays...

I really wish that Chaos could get Jes Godwyn to overhaul our entire line.

Experiment 626 wrote:
The Berserkers looked goofy at the time, and have continued to age poorly.

I don't think the berserkers are actually innately all that goofy, I think it is more the poses of the parts available in the kit lend themselves to being assembled poorly. When Berserkers are assembled with some thought to the models momentum they look a lot better.

There were some nice berserker models on display at warhammer world (in the museum thing) last time I went. They had a much better colour scheme than out the book too.

nareik wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
The Berserkers looked goofy at the time, and have continued to age poorly.

I don't think the berserkers are actually innately all that goofy, I think it is more the poses of the parts available in the kit lend themselves to being assembled poorly. When Berserkers are assembled with some thought to the models momentum they look a lot better.

There were some nice berserker models on display at warhammer world (in the museum thing) last time I went. They had a much better colour scheme than out the book too.

Their running poses need major conversion work to look decent & more natureal, and they're still from the period of Mr.Gorilla Fists. The 'grinning' skull helm is also laughably cartoonish, and their little 'extras' such as the grenades, skull-on-a-chain & swords are pain in the arse to work with.

Compared to even the 3rd ed plastic Assault Marines they looked 'meh'. Now they just look badly out of place next to even the likes of the Space Wolf plastics & BA Death Co. kits, let alone the newest (and unneeded) Vanilla Marine kits.

I swear to the God Emperor, if Geedubs somehow read this thread...

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
I swear to the God Emperor, if Geedubs somehow read this thread...

They'd still do nothing. Space Marines are the only faction that matters. Eldar are OP because they're supposed to be Hard mode for Space Marines. Chaos is a joke because we're the Space Marine copycats. If you look at the books, only Space Marines have an answer to everything the other factions can do because they're designed to crush all opposition. Sometimes it's EASY (Orks, Chaos), sometimes it's CHALLENGING (Necrons, Tyranids) and sometimes it's HARD (Eldar, Tau). But it's always at least possible. Even when it's sort of on the fence, you can just ally in Battle Brothers.

As long as GW has it in their heads that the Xenos races are purely Fluff NPCs and the real heroes are the Adeptus Astartes, our codex will never be as good as theirs. Hence all the memories of 3rd edition being the only time Chaos has ever shone brighter than the Emperor's chosen... and ever will. Chaos even won the Eye of Terror campaign back in 3rd edition, which was meant to decide the outcome of the war, but that would have screwed the fluff over so they waved their Jedi hand and purged the heretics.

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

I always forget Defensive Grenades do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

These are units that HAVE no pros because whatever they do is better done elsewhere. ZERO pros. Count them.

Clearly there are pros, even if the balance falls on the side of cons.

Are you being intentionally hyperbolic? I honestly don't understand how you could mean they have no pros.

You can't seriously say having Ap2 blasts isn't a pro? Yes, there are disadvantages to it, but taking a forgefiend isn't the same as just not using the points at all. When I use obliterators one of my favourite weapons to chose is the plasma cannon, but then I am limited to firing only every other round, so there is a pro for forgefiends off the bat!

65 points for a deepstriking chainfist that can't be killed by a single lascannon/melta wound (and odds on survives two such wounds) isn't useless, even if it has to spend 2 or 3 turns waiting to be able to assault. Being a single model unit vastly mitigates deepstrike scatter (which CSM don't have many ways to control). The only thing that competes for a cheap/throwaway sucker punch is the obliterator, but they aren't anywhere near as good in combat, not having a chain fist, extra attacks, a decent initiative to flee escape combats, are higher target priority, more competitive slot selection. I always loved using mutilators in my previous chaos army, so much so when I started a new chaos army I once again use mutilators!

Warp talons I won't defend as I have no experience with them, and haven't given them much thought.

Really, really trying to not be a dick here.... But you're using MUTILATORS as an example of good Chaos units?!?!???!???!??

Hahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha

Worst unit in the codex.

At best they are a distraction unit that eats an elite slot.

At worst they really are a waste. Too expensive and nowhere near enough attacks.

I've been playing CSM for 4 years until recently when I ditched it for the Horus Heresy Legion list. In my opinion, it suffers from the following:

1. It has absolutely no flavour whatsoever. If you play a Traitor Legion this book really doesn't represent your army. Where are all the boarding shields? The plasma blasters? The Thunder Hammers? The Phosphex? The same goes if you play a renegade chapter, where did they dump their razorbacks and assault cannons and find some sweet new reaper autocannons?

Also, there's no way to customise the army from a rules perspective, other than the reason GW loves loyal SM, why did they take out the Legion rules? CSM players would kill for them at this point no matter how awful they could be, at least it's a start.

2. Too many completely useless units. I struggle to put up any kind of resistance with this book without using a Heldrake. Warp Talons, Mutilators and Thousand Sons are the best examples of those in the book and as stated before, do nothing that isn't done better elsewhere. The circumstances where I would want to use these units over anything else in the book are so incredibly specific that to encounter them in a game would require a measure of tactical ineptitude from your opponent.

3. Too many holes in the codex that really need plugging. I.e. transport.

4. Little to no synergy in the codex, again, this was mentioned previously in the thread.

Making lists with this codex is a pain and pretty arduous, there's so many units that I feel like I have to include just to not be slaughtered every game. I'll give it another go when the next codex comes out but I'm done with 6th edition CSM.

CSM can be competitive with a mixology of daemons, either supplemental codex and Forgeworld. For example you can easily rock an army with two Eternal Warrior Juggerlords leading a horde of 3++ Flesh Hounds. I like to run the Chaos Typhon which can get the save up to 2++... It is well costed for a Lord of War and what it can do. Of course KDK is the new hotness.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
CSM can be competitive with a mixology of daemons, either supplemental codex and Forgeworld. For example you can easily rock an army with two Eternal Warrior Juggerlords leading a horde of 3++ Flesh Hounds. I like to run the Chaos Typhon which can get the save up to 2++... It is well costed for a Lord of War and what it can do. Of course KDK is the new hotness.

This is just plugging the holes in a weak codex with a more powerful one. You could say CSM can be competitive with added Riptides or Scatbikes, both totally doable since you can ally anyone with anyone. I think you're point about adding FW is spot on though. Sadly there's still a lot of people out there pretty vehemently against FW which is another problem entirely. It really needs a Dark Eldar style shake up to me.

 KhorneontheCobb wrote:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

May I point out that there is no reason to take Warp Talons to Blind people? Like, at all? If you want to do that, use Plague Marines and throw Blight Grenades. They partially count as defensive grenades... guess what those do?

I always forget Defensive Grenades do that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nareik wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Because it isn't balanced, internally OR externally.

You have little to no reason to use units like Forgefiends, Mutilators, Warp Talons, Dark Apostles, most of the special characters, Berserker and Rubric Marines, etc. There's only TWO DT options, the Heldrake is harder to position now because screw having a 180 degree angle when you are a dragon.

Outside of that, the usable options are costly compared to what the Loyalists, Necrons, and Eldar are capable of. Remember what I said about the Heldrake earlier, Noise Marines paying 30 points for their best weapon, Plague Marines being stuck with Rhinos, etc.

Forgefiends wreck house, 3 S8 AP2 Small blasts will obliterate MEQ's and TEQ's while putting the hurt on MC's.
Mulitators are useful to some extent. If you deep steike a pack of them behind enemy lines, only a stupid person wouldnt start shooting them.
Warp talons + Gate of Infinity = everybody blinded

1. At 24" for 200 points on a platform that isn't durable for 200 points. Small Blasts suck anyway.
2. Ah yes, on the backfield where they will get to the enemy when thanks to SaP being a useful rule for a melee squad.
3. CSM's don't have accurate Deep Strike. THEN you have to roll to see if the enemy is blinded. Also, they aren't durable for the cost either. I ran numbers for them and Raptors a long while back I can show you. The ONLY thing they do better is attacking MEQ outside of cover. That's REALLY it. Plus Raptors can take Melta Guns.

Why are you replying as if he implied these units have absolutely no draw backs? Most units, have pros and cons, which really is as it should be.

If anyone wants to use these units I suggest running them on a smaller board. Makes it harder to get away from shorter range/slower things.

These are units that HAVE no pros because whatever they do is better done elsewhere. ZERO pros. Count them.

Clearly there are pros, even if the balance falls on the side of cons.

Are you being intentionally hyperbolic? I honestly don't understand how you could mean they have no pros.

You can't seriously say having Ap2 blasts isn't a pro? Yes, there are disadvantages to it, but taking a forgefiend isn't the same as just not using the points at all. When I use obliterators one of my favourite weapons to chose is the plasma cannon, but then I am limited to firing only every other round, so there is a pro for forgefiends off the bat!

65 points for a deepstriking chainfist that can't be killed by a single lascannon/melta wound (and odds on survives two such wounds) isn't useless, even if it has to spend 2 or 3 turns waiting to be able to assault. Being a single model unit vastly mitigates deepstrike scatter (which CSM don't have many ways to control). The only thing that competes for a cheap/throwaway sucker punch is the obliterator, but they aren't anywhere near as good in combat, not having a chain fist, extra attacks, a decent initiative to flee escape combats, are higher target priority, more competitive slot selection. I always loved using mutilators in my previous chaos army, so much so when I started a new chaos army I once again use mutilators!

Warp talons I won't defend as I have no experience with them, and haven't given them much thought.

Really, really trying to not be a dick here.... But you're using MUTILATORS as an example of good Chaos units?!?!???!???!??

Hahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha

Worst unit in the codex.

I'm afraid perhaps you misread so you might have succeeded . I wasn't arguing them to be 'good'.

Rather that they had some combination of Pros that another unit didn't also possess. A cheap, resilient, small foot print unit with plenty of S8 armour bane attacks that ignore cover with a moderately good initiative for breaking from bad combats. They have a niche.

So what you want is a Termicide with a Chainfist.

everything in the chaos codex is over costed and the units are gimped by random rolls and tables.

 jasper76 wrote:


And starter sets aside, IMO every box you buy from GW should have every single option listed in the codex. CSM is particularly bad about this. If they can do a decent enough job of this with Tyranids, why not with other armies?

It would be great, but you just KNOW we would end up with less options, not more bits

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So what you want is a Termicide with a Chainfist.

Maybe, but there are drawbacks to the termicide that mutilators don't have.

Bigger footprint makes risky DS risker.
Relies on squad positioning/look out sir instead of guaranteed facetanking the first wound suffered (even applies to lascannon/melta if you take nurgle).
Doesn't have as many chainfist attacks.
Costs many more points.
Forced to challenge.
Capacity to lose morale from 25% casualties
etc

The maths can't be opinionized, there are a combination of pros to mutilators that other units competing for the same niche don't have. You might find the balance of pros/cons against your personal preferences, but your assertion there are no pros to mutilators that aren't shared by a competing unit is verifiably false.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Experiment 626 wrote:
Their running poses need major conversion work to look decent & more natureal, and they're still from the period of Mr.Gorilla Fists. The 'grinning' skull helm is also laughably cartoonish, and their little 'extras' such as the grenades, skull-on-a-chain & swords are pain in the arse to work with.

I don't know, I think those legs work quite well for a modern "I'm running, leaping and jumping through urban ruin terrain to come and get you" pose, without needing conversion.

I know this model uses a mix of pieces, but the legs are un-reposed and most of the parts are from the CSM and berserker kits that get criticism

 Sheokronath wrote:

 Dozer Blades wrote:
CSM can be competitive with a mixology of daemons, either supplemental codex and Forgeworld. For example you can easily rock an army with two Eternal Warrior Juggerlords leading a horde of 3++ Flesh Hounds. I like to run the Chaos Typhon which can get the save up to 2++... It is well costed for a Lord of War and what it can do. Of course KDK is the new hotness.

This is just plugging the holes in a weak codex with a more powerful one. You could say CSM can be competitive with added Riptides or Scatbikes, both totally doable since you can ally anyone with anyone. I think you're point about adding FW is spot on though. Sadly there's still a lot of people out there pretty vehemently against FW which is another problem entirely. It really needs a Dark Eldar style shake up to me.

Look at Imperial super friend armies. It's the exact same type of thing.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:
Is no one going to mention that we've had the same seven guns since the beginning? While everyone else is getting new toys, what do we have?

Flamer, Meltagun, Plasma gun, Heavy bolter, Autocannon, Missile launcher, Lascannon.

Chaos feels ancient and outdated because it literally is. We've been using pre-Heresy weapons for the past 10,000 years.

Which is how it should be.

The current design studio is clueless and out of good ideas. The last time they caved in to people wanting new chaos toys allthey could manage was to give us lame "robo-space- dragon". This is 40k not Transformers...

In fact all they can seem to make these days is giant robots.

CSMs need to be made the ancient and powerful veterans of the long war that they should be: they should make modern marines crap their pants stat-wise. they should have veteran and legion abilities, they should get greater bonuses for themed l/marked armies.

They should have high points costs but be absolutly disgustingly powerful. The army should be a warband of insanse eternal killers with some associated toys. Instead we get marines with horns (cosmetic) and a collection of BeastWars Transformer rejects...

they should have dreadclaw droppods, better possessed vehicle options and a wargear/relic section that makes loyalists scream "Heresy!!!".

I never understood all the hate people seem to have for the daemon engine aesthetics. They're demon-possessed semi-organic death machines! How is that not awesome? Although I won't disagree about the Transformers comparisons as I am planning to literally use my dinobot toy as a maulerfiend soon.

Totally agree with the rest of your post though. "Real" chaos marines (as opposed to renegades) seem like their mechanical niche should be having unusually impressive and customizable characters and interesting/gimmicky wargear. I'm fine with the average Joe chaos marine staying pretty close to where he's at, but make that aspiring champion 2 wounds, WS5, 3 Attacks, and give him access to lots of cool purchasable gifts of chaos. A marine statline is (supposedly) still pretty impressive, but aspirin champions are, well, aspiring. They've fallen to chaos in exchange for power and/or are actively trying to earn more chaos power from their gods. The gifts of mutation thing is actually a neat idea, but I'd rather see it be the benefit for an optional formation or something rather than a core mechanic.

In exchange for a loss of ATSKNF, we should get buffs out the buttcheeks on our dudes?

Yes, With appropriate points costs.

GW needs to rethink their whole approach to chaos marines.

Instead of simply making them a spiky flavor of marines with a few minor changes and inferior choices overall (yawn).



They need to commit to chaos marines being the stone cold 10,000 year veterans of war that they are. Guys that are imbued with power by dark gods. Guys that wield forbidden relics of power and are corrupted/changed by the warp.


On the table a csm army should reflect the classic fluff: a small warband of vetran killers gathered around an individual thirsty for power who has drawn followers to him. They should be elite, powerful and flexible in what they represent (via legion rules, veteran abilities, varied wargear, mutatons/gifts. favors based upon chosen marks of chaos and a plethora of relics/artifacts).

They should be infiltrating, Raiding, attacking, coming out of warp gates or dropping on you via dreadclaws. Striking swiftly and bloodily to make up for small numbers. Formations, custom scenarios and army specific tactical objective cards would reinforce these themes.

They should be a small but uber-elite army that lends itself to old-style "herohammer" with powerfl characters leading a warband in search of power and the favor of the gods.











Automatically Appended Next Post:

 welshhoppo wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I honestly don't get the hate for the Helldrake and the Fiends... Chaos players had been crying for ages about how we're nothing more than "Marines with spikes", with no identity of our very own, and more Daemon engines has been a pretty common wish among players.
Sure the GW paint schemes make them look more toy'ish, but honestly, the models themselves really aren't that bad, especially with a proper non-GW super bright scheme. They actually look pretty damn mean when given a darker scheme!.

It's the asthetics. They just clash with the rest of the model lines. If they looked more Daemonic, they'd fit in better.

I would have preferred them to be giant/mega-chaos spawn type beasts and/or crazy giant daemon things. Dark warpy and scary.

Instead we get Go-bots...

Also, there's no way to customise the army from a rules perspective, other than the reason GW loves loyal SM, why did they take out the Legion rules? CSM players would kill for them at this point no matter how awful they could be, at least it's a start.

I think the reason loyalists get variant special rules is that thy can get people to make second and third armies of the same exact models.

pelicaniforce wrote:

Also, there's no way to customise the army from a rules perspective, other than the reason GW loves loyal SM, why did they take out the Legion rules? CSM players would kill for them at this point no matter how awful they could be, at least it's a start.

I think the reason loyalists get variant special rules is that thy can get people to make second and third armies of the same exact models.

Loyalists get variant chapter rules because they are the good guys and therefore are unique special snowflakes. CSM are the badguys and therefore are faceless mooks. This is why CSM could never work as a small elite army. 1 on 1 a space marine should always beat a CSM because they are the heroes and there's nothing heroic about dying horribly to a superior enemy. This is why chapter masters have better stats than Chaos lords even though many Chaos lords are former chapter masters.

Well you guys can dig a hole really deep in the soil and put all your dreams and aspirations for the next CSM codex, why?...

look at the new Tau codex release and wheep...

For those that don't follow the Tau's rumors, basically there is the Tau codex release and a Warzone Damocles book.

The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Yup read that right, THe book will be exactly the smae, only with the new units and formations added in it,BUT.

The new units are also in the Damocles Warzone book soooo, if you allready have the Tau codex, you only need the damocles book to play the new units, the rest of the tau codex is a reprint of the existing one.

Now let that sink in for a sec and thing about the CSM codex..., yes, we will still be stuck with the same crap, just add a few new units and formations and voila...

they're not even trying anymore..., god i hope this is all just one big misunderstanding...

 CT GAMER wrote:
GW needs to rethink their whole approach to chaos marines.

Instead of simply making them a spiky flavor of marines with a few minor changes and inferior choices overall (yawn).

If only we had the "Spiky Bits" special rule from 3.5... not even that now

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Except for formations, the Tidewall Rampart, New commander, new Crisis suits, new fire warriors, new riptide variants, XV95 Ghostkeel suit, and the XV128 Stormsurge.

Yep. They're really phoning it in.

fething lazy fethers.

 kronk wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Except for formations, the Tidewall Rampart, New commander, new Crisis suits, new fire warriors, new riptide variants, XV95 Ghostkeel suit, and the XV128 Stormsurge.

Yep. They're really phoning it in.

fething lazy fethers.

"New codex..." only adds formations

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Except for formations, the Tidewall Rampart, New commander, new Crisis suits, new fire warriors, new riptide variants, XV95 Ghostkeel suit, and the XV128 Stormsurge.

Yep. They're really phoning it in.

fething lazy fethers.

"New codex..." only adds formations

It only needs formations to be up there with the top 3 codexes atm, so no biggie. Tau are strong enough atm, the addition of a few key units and nice formation bonuses will take them to that level, the rest of the codexes however need a re haul before getting that kind of treatment

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Except for formations, the Tidewall Rampart, New commander, new Crisis suits, new fire warriors, new riptide variants, XV95 Ghostkeel suit, and the XV128 Stormsurge.

Yep. They're really phoning it in.

fething lazy fethers.

"New codex..." only adds formations

What are you trying to say here? I need more words.

The new codex add new formations, new units, and new options for existing units.

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


The Tau Codex will be EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE ACTUAL 6TH ED ONE.

Except for formations, the Tidewall Rampart, New commander, new Crisis suits, new fire warriors, new riptide variants, XV95 Ghostkeel suit, and the XV128 Stormsurge.

Yep. They're really phoning it in.

fething lazy fethers.

"New codex..." only adds formations

What are you trying to say here? I need more words.

The new codex add new formations, new units, and new options for existing units.

The new SM dex added only one new unit. The necron book didnt add any.

So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

 kronk wrote:
So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

Disappointed the other books didnt get much. Necrons could have been retweeked to a fluffier army (not army wide 4+ FnP), SM couldve gotten some newer kits (Ie Honour guard/Command Squad, Dreadnaught) and they couldve fixed terminators (because they are bad)

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:
So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

Disappointed the other books didnt get much. Necrons could have been retweeked to a fluffier army (not army wide 4+ FnP), SM couldve gotten some newer kits (Ie Honour guard/Command Squad, Dreadnaught) and they couldve fixed terminators (because they are bad)

They can "Fix" SMs when they decide to overhaul ALL the Astartes CSM and every variant in all. SMs have been the poster children of GWs bastardized 40k universe already long enough. They can bloody wait a few more years.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:
So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

Disappointed the other books didnt get much. Necrons could have been retweeked to a fluffier army (not army wide 4+ FnP), SM couldve gotten some newer kits (Ie Honour guard/Command Squad, Dreadnaught) and they couldve fixed terminators (because they are bad)

BOY you'd have hated Necrons in 3rd edition.

What else do you do to show fluff? It works fine.

Because there are people who are still butt hurt about CSM 3.5 edition.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:
So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

Disappointed the other books didnt get much. Necrons could have been retweeked to a fluffier army (not army wide 4+ FnP), SM couldve gotten some newer kits (Ie Honour guard/Command Squad, Dreadnaught) and they couldve fixed terminators (because they are bad)

Agreed on the terminators.

Speaking of a Codex in dire need of new models and rules... how about those Chaos Space Marines?

I think they biggest thing they need is mobility: Give them a dreadclaw in the codex and make a plastic kit. At the very least!

Also, as Marines, they should have ATSKNF. Why don't they have that, especially recent renegades (Huron and his Astral Claws).

Also, also: Please let their data slates not suck.

Also x3: If you don't give them legion rules, at least give them warband rules ala the Chapter Tactics. Call it Warband Tendencies or something. Or the Space Pirates' Code.

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:
So you're complaining about the tau book getting more, or are you disappointed that the other books got less stuff?

Disappointed the other books didnt get much. Necrons could have been retweeked to a fluffier army (not army wide 4+ FnP), SM couldve gotten some newer kits (Ie Honour guard/Command Squad, Dreadnaught) and they couldve fixed terminators (because they are bad)

Agreed on the terminators.

Speaking of a Codex in dire need of new models and rules... how about those Chaos Space Marines?

When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

 Tactical_Spam wrote:


When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

Make the Hellbrute a MC, and I'll take three in every list!

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:


When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

Make the Hellbrute a MC, and I'll take three in every list!

It would need like 8 toughness or a ton more wounds.

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:


When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

Make the Hellbrute a MC, and I'll take three in every list!

Maulerfiends, forgefiends, Heldrakes, helbrutes, defilers? Making Tau weep

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:


When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

Make the Hellbrute a MC, and I'll take three in every list!

Maulerfiends, forgefiends, Heldrakes, helbrutes, defilers? Making Tau weep

As Vehicles? Not at all. As MCs? Now we're talking!

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:


When the chaos get a new dex, we will have all the Monstrous creatures

Make the Hellbrute a MC, and I'll take three in every list!

Maulerfiends, forgefiends, Heldrakes, helbrutes, defilers? Making Tau weep

As Vehicles? Not at all. As MCs? Now we're talking!

Chaos got reaaaalllll competitive if that were true

Taffy17 wrote:

Am I doing something wrong or is the bad press misleading?

You're not doing anything wrong. The bad press is simply Imperial Propaganda to push the weak of will from the temptation of Chaos. I personally prefer it this way. Even at my local Games Workshop the community's collective jaws dropped when I declared I not only played Chaos, but Black Legion with only chosen. "Why would you handicap yourself like that?"

Every time I play a game and ask my opponent for advice the only advice I get is "don't play Chaos."

I honestly prefer it this way. Victory and glory as a Chaos Space Marine should be a matter of willpower, dedication and hard work. Not a given you're born into like the Space Marines, Eldar and Tau.

It is a fascinating study in just how accurate the player community is in terms of what the Chaos Space Marine zeitgeist is. The majority of bitter and unhappy veterans of long-gone times, belittling the few ambitious ones as naive fools or young and unbloodied. It brings the immersion factor to a whole different level.

You'd literally never win in my area with a Chosen list.

I've only really seen 2 chaos lists play consistently with this codex. Typhus with zombies along with daemon engines. The other is spamming suicide squads of Terminators, Bikes, and Obliterators.

The biggest liability with a Chaos Space Marine army are chaos space marinesas troops. For what they are and to make them work eats up soo many more points than they should. Chaos corrupts through the promise of dark powers... There is nothing about chaos marines that even begins to imply they've tapped into dark powers. They don't even have a sense of self delusion that they've tapped into this power.

 Kraytirous wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:

Am I doing something wrong or is the bad press misleading?

You're not doing anything wrong. The bad press is simply Imperial Propaganda to push the weak of will from the temptation of Chaos. I personally prefer it this way. Even at my local Games Workshop the community's collective jaws dropped when I declared I not only played Chaos, but Black Legion with only chosen. "Why would you handicap yourself like that?"

Every time I play a game and ask my opponent for advice the only advice I get is "don't play Chaos."

I honestly prefer it this way. Victory and glory as a Chaos Space Marine should be a matter of willpower, dedication and hard work. Not a given you're born into like the Space Marines, Eldar and Tau.

It is a fascinating study in just how accurate the player community is in terms of what the Chaos Space Marine zeitgeist is. The majority of bitter and unhappy veterans of long-gone times, belittling the few ambitious ones as naive fools or young and unbloodied. It brings the immersion factor to a whole different level.

For the dark gods!!!

I feel bad now using my 9x oblit tzeentch psychic shenanigans list with Chaos knight.

But this is a list built on hate of the purest kind.