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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