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I'm getting back into 40k after taking a break for an edition and am looking for to put a chaos marines army together.

I've got the current codex and 5th rulebook. I've also read the 4th ed articles for chaos on dakka.

Now what differences between 4th and 5th editions in building a chaos army should I be looking out for?

There are 2 primary things that have affected my Chaos army lists.

1) Less places to hide on the board

The new TLoS rules mean that there are far fewer blind spots on a typical playing field. Be prepared to take fire nearly every turn, perhaps loosing vehicles and/or units on the first turn. Bodies on the field are your best counter to this.

2) More cover saves for enemies

The rules giving cover saves for just about everything means that your high AP weaponry won't have as many opportunities to outright kill enemies. Thousand Sons, in particular, suffer in 5th edition. Noise Marines, on the other tentacle, have become even better with high volume of fire and the Doom Siren.

Hope this helps!

3) Running

Your Berzerks, Possessed, Dreadnoughts, and so on can now run. This means that they can get to grips with the enemy sooner, hit the ground running when they deep strike, move out of the way of supporting fire, and generally be mobile.

4) No more Kill-zone Sniping

The drastic overkill of some units like Berzerkers and Bloodfeeder-wielding Chaos Lords will now be much more efficient. Instead of being limited to causing casualties in range you cause casualties to the entire unit, which means that units relying on quantity rather than quality can equalize with units relying on quality rather than quantity.

There are also a few do's and don'ts you should look out for.

1) Don't give Dreadnoughts ranged weapons, except flamers. They belong in assault, and Fire Frenzy can be a cruel curse.

2) If using possessed, place them foward and run whenever possible. They are str 5 with a MEQ statline, and the Daemonkin rules can actually be very useful in some way.

3) Bile and Huron are terrible. Don't use them, Bile can't wound for gak and Huron is just a lord with funky gear.

4) You don't have to run Lash princes. There are other, more useful options, like BoC princes or Warptimers.

I see this thread expanding a lot. I may write an article.

5) Do take Warptime.

Aside from generally adding to your Daemon Prince or Sorcerer's ability to mangle the enemy, it can be combined with other powers on Sorcerers to inflict serious damage via other psychic powers.

A Tzeentchian Sorcerer with a Familiar, Warptime, Wind of Chaos, and Doombolt can lay down some serious hurt.

A warptime/woc prince can bring the pain big time. He's also 200 points, though. Lash prince is 150. A tzeentch sorcerer can warptime and still use his force weapon. However, most things are immune to insta death these days. The gods giveth, and then they taketh away. Or turn you to spawn.

I've actually been debating running a WT prince, as I always want to get my lash prince into close combat, but he A) generally sucks at it and B) can't use lash once stuck in. Going at I6 with rerolls on everything would probably be more useful. But then now sometimes I feel like I'll have the opposite longing for something to do in the shooting phase.

I may turn to using a WT prince and a lash sorceror who sits back and supports my firebase, pushing assault units away or troops choices off of objectives and into open ground.

Spellbound wrote:I've actually been debating running a WT prince, as I always want to get my lash prince into close combat, but he A) generally sucks at it and B) can't use lash once stuck in. Going at I6 with rerolls on everything would probably be more useful. But then now sometimes I feel like I'll have the opposite longing for something to do in the shooting phase.

I may turn to using a WT prince and a lash sorceror who sits back and supports my firebase, pushing assault units away or troops choices off of objectives and into open ground.

of you are looking for something to do in the shooting phase, you can always run, if you arn't going to assault.

Lash is even more useful now in 5th since you can move pepole out of cover or removing covering units if you want free shots at something further back. If packing 2 they can team up on almost anything, dual lash it and assult it (after you get free rapid fire shots at them) and win against almost anything.

Landraiders are a new possibility in almost any army. AV14 heavy tanks are really tough these days, will usually take melta weapons to take out. This fact also only made obliterators better(they are also very nice at horde control with plasma cannons and new template rules).

All in all, there isnt that huge change in chaos, with maybe the exception of landraiders beeing a little more viable.

While the utility of lash certainly can't be argued against, I have a lot of success with my MoN, warptime prince. He's extremely resilient against small arms fire and with warptime he lays waste to most things he encounters. With wings he has great reach, I use him mostly to destroy regular squads of infantry while the rest of my army guns down the heavy hitters.

As I'm sure you read in the chaos tactica, Obliterators are a great unit. Not only do they bring some serious fire power to the field but they're a fun, unique unit to play with.

with the new chaos codex aspiring champions are no longer worth points for all units with icon or mark of korne as they will take out most units in combat and having one more attack is overkill because the leadership bonus isnt with it(they are fearless).Same goes with havocs. Now khone lords are eaven more deadly when armed with daemon weapons, as they are only 140points and can get a total of 18 attacks in combat. Every time i use my khorne army people try to keep away from the berzerker units so get a infiltrating unit of chosen with marks of khorne, arme them with power weapons to do do heavy damage to the enemys best unit ( yes they are only WS4 but they infiltrate). Now the infiltrating rules are deadly as you now appear on the flanks which makes a tooled up unit for close combat more deadly distracting the enemy from the more heavy hitting khorne lord and units of berzerkers.

Important note Kharn is worth the points but have a weak unit to act as a delivery unit to stop him from being rended or intant killed. He is the perfect anti character character due to allways hitting on 2 no matter if the enemy has a higher WS than u.

Kymera wrote:While the utility of lash certainly can't be argued against, I have a lot of success with my MoN, warptime prince. He's extremely resilient against small arms fire and with warptime he lays waste to most things he encounters. With wings he has great reach, I use him mostly to destroy regular squads of infantry while the rest of my army guns down the heavy hitters.

As I'm sure you read in the chaos tactica, Obliterators are a great unit. Not only do they bring some serious fire power to the field but they're a fun, unique unit to play with.

khorne lord gets from 5 attacks to 18 with a daemon weapon and i find that the havocs are great when armed with autoconnons when using a khorne army since worldeater armys lack fire power

worldeater4 wrote:khorne lord gets from 5 attacks to 18 with a daemon weapon

Don't you mean from 0 attacks to 18? It's entirely possible that he just doesn't swing on any given turn.

Yep, demon weapons are a bad idea in my book. The chance of having 0 attacks far outweighs the benefit of additional attacks for me.

Don't let people fool you. Lash DP is the best HQ choice chaos has. A lot of people don't like it because it is so common. It is a one trick pony (But what a trick eh?) but so are all of the other HQs that aren't special characters. Huron, Lucius, and Ahriman are horrible special characters. Also never run a Tzeentch sorcerer. The mark on the sorc costs 10 more points than on the DP. So just run the DP for the same price with better stats.

Lash is anything but a one-trick pony. It's at least a four trick pony.

Trick 1: Pull opponent into assault range
Trick 2: Push opponent out of assault range (good versus orks)
Trick 3: Bunch up enemies for templates, pulling them out of cover.
Trick 4: Push enemies off objectives

It's the most tactically flexible psychic power in the game. It has a huge force-multiplier effect, making other stuff you take even better.

DO take the Lash.

DO NOT even think about playing one of the original Traitor Legions, especially the Undivided (er, Glory?) ones.

I disagree with that assessment. I have been playing my Emperor's Children with a reasonable degree of success. The only thing I've been using that wouldn't have been in the old list is some obliterators, and when I get my forgeworld order in, they may well end up phased out of the army as well.

I don't know much about how the other legions play in the new edition, but noise marines have proven to be quite versatile, especially with the Lash princes to bunch-up/move around enemy squads as game conditions require.

Redbeard wrote:I disagree with that assessment. I have been playing my Emperor's Children with a reasonable degree of success. The only thing I've been using that wouldn't have been in the old list is some obliterators, and when I get my forgeworld order in, they may well end up phased out of the army as well.

I don't know much about how the other legions play in the new edition, but noise marines have proven to be quite versatile, especially with the Lash princes to bunch-up/move around enemy squads as game conditions require.

You're making my point!

Or is that, Emperor's Children are the exception that proves the rule?

Anyway, I did exaggerate a bit, as EC, Black Legion and/or any newer Renegade Legion are do-able with the new Codex: Renegade Marines Who Lost Their Assault Cannons and Land Speeders (But found some nifty antique Reaper Autocannons and Combi-Bolters!) on the Way to Their New Evil Hiding Places.

Here's the real question. As a long time Khorne player, will I become a chaos spawn if I switch to Slaanesh??

No but you might win a game or two now.

zing!

Warptime prince and Lash Sorcerer? I would go the other way round. Give the warptime to a biking or disc mounted sorcerer and keep the lash on the prince.

Actually, I think Khorne loves 5th edition. Berserkers that run? Rhinos that actually survive fire? It's christmas!

Yup! Without being limited to just killing the models in the kill-zone, stuff like Khorne Berzerkers can get very nasty very fast. A unit of Terminators with an Icon of Khorne and all pairs of Lightening Claws can hit with 25 attacks.

Sad that a terminator champion has as many attacks as a chaos lord....shameful, really.

Nurglitch wrote:Yup! Without being limited to just killing the models in the kill-zone, stuff like Khorne Berzerkers can get very nasty very fast. A unit of Terminators with an Icon of Khorne and all pairs of Lightening Claws can hit with 25 attacks.

Hooray, 25 attacks! It's christmas! Wait.

5 man Khorne termie squad with lightning claws is 240. Land Raider to get them anywhere is 220. So...~500 pts to dish out 25 attacks, what joy. And if you're playing against space marines, you'll run your land raider up, (with no machine spirit) run the termies out and assault a 5 man combat squad, and then stand there like a slow while the marine player decides the best way to rapid fire you to death, or if he's really sporting, he'll throw some 3+ storm shield save friends in to help you fall on your own lightning claws.

Pass.

I disagree with Lash princes being the best Chaos HQ choice. Kharn anyone? Or maybe a Tzeench DP? They can take Warptime and Bolt of Change/Doombolt for on-the-charge shooting, then start raping in CC.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I disagree with Lash princes being the best Chaos HQ choice. Kharn anyone? Or maybe a Tzeench DP? They can take Warptime and Bolt of Change/Doombolt for on-the-charge shooting, then start raping in CC.

play more. youll see

kharn is only good in combat, and it will probably take him a while to get there. a tzneetch DP is so expensive it makes children cry. its good in combat, but a lash prince is better.

a lash prince means that i can kill any non-vehicle unit the enemy has. i can pull things forward and out of cover into all of my guns, then assault it. i can push things i dont want to deal with right now away from me. i can completely destroy any tactical advantage my opponent had. i have a fast model that kick the crap out of most stuff in combat.

all of that for 155pts.

it is the best HQ chaos have. its so hard for most armies to play against duel lash its not even funny.

Bollocks. Everyone is damning Thousand Sons, and i'm poised to start a new army with them.