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I've read a bit about Chaos's army lists (they are all the same, it seems), and I've just finished reading the CSM codex. I have a few questions that I'd like to sort out so that I can put what I've read in the perspective of gameplay. Understand I've never played against CSM, so I'm taking only what I have read in the forums and codex to the table. There's a lot more to be learned through the painful experience of having surprises thrown your way, and I'm sure those are coming soon.

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Obliterators - Clearly a favorite in most lists. What is the angle on these guys? At first, I misread the section on them thinking that they were able to fire ALL weapons every turn. Clearly that isn't the case, and they are only able to fire a single weapon apiece... Is that so overpowered that it deserves 675 points of your army to max them out? I can see where they have some application, such as obliterating nob bikers in a puff of sad expensive smoke with all of their lascannon fire, but aren't they a tad expensive per shot?

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Lash of Submission - In this forum, time and time again I see people referencing it as CSM's only real tactic. Lash units, make them suffer with positioning... What is the tactic though? Lash bikers and move them away so that all they can take is las cannon fire? Lash units to move them into your charge range stripping the units of the charge? Against orks I'm assuming that the pinning thing isn't a very important aspect of the lash since most groups are fearless (at least initially), so what's the big to do? It seems to me that two princes dropping lash on a group of nob bikers to keep them controlled are likely to be missing the rest of the army, which is no doubt walking in with their shoota's blasting, and is very likely to be charged and torn apart by pks before they make much of an impact on the game... Am I mistaken?

Oblits are 75 per model and can use any one of those weapons PER TURN.
They do not pay extra for the weapons.
They're so great because, at range, you can LasCannon those tanhs. Get closer and you can TL Melta or Multi Melta them. Troops harrying you? Drop a Plas Cannon blast on them.
Caught up in HtH? No prob, as you have 2+/5+ saves with 2 PFist attacks.
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Two units of nob bikers usually IS the whole army, when you're talking about A Nob Biker list.

Lash is important/strong, as you get to control where the lashed unit goes and what formation they take.
You can set them up for a charge, an ordnance blast, a blast template, lash them out of cover (very good tactic against 5+ & 6+ saves), lash them through difficult terrain (good vs bikers)... the point is control. You get a bit of control over the unit.
When you have two lashes going at once... it can be overwhelming for some lists.

Also... Pinning can be very important against Orks. Small bike units, for example, can really be hindered by pinning tests.

Eric

There are lots of things going for obliterators over other heavy choices.

Firstly they are the most versitile. Due to their weapons they can deal with any model in the game. Squad of terminators? Plasma Cannon. Right next to a big mob of orks? TL-Flamers. Deepstrike next to a vehicle? Multi-melta. MCs at range? Lascannon. Where as other heavy support choices can only deal with one or two with any easy, oblits can do it all.

Secondly they are hard to kill. Having 2 wounds and terminator armour makes they completely uncaring of small arms fire and most anti-tank weapons are in too short supply to be able to kill multiple models at once.

Thirdly they arent acutally more expensive than any other heavy choice. Two oblits will cost you 150pts. For this you get 4 wounds, a 2+ save, a 5+inv and all the weapons you could want (2 lascannon, or 2 plasma cannon or 2 multi-meltas or whatever). For the same price you get a defiler that can only really deal with infantry (battlecannon, RAC, Flamer), or a vindicator with demonic possession that can only deal with infantry (due to scatter ordnance is too unreliable against vehicles) or a 5 man havoc squad with 2 lascannon (admittedly one more wound, but worse armour and not fearless).

A dedicated havoc squad will be able to outperform the same points of oblits in one area (oblits cant compete with 4HBs against infantry or 4 lascannon against tanks) but the havocs will be unable to effectively deal with anything else, will die faster and stands the risk of breaking.



With lash all of the tactics you have mentioned are used. You lash what you want to charge towards you can what you dont away. You can lash things out of line of sight or into difficult terrain. The best thing however is to use lash to bunch up enemy units together to best take advantage of the plasma cannon shots from your obliterators. This gives you the best possible impact per blast marker and can easily reduce a large squad to ruin (even a mob of 30 orks).

Dont think that lash is the be all and end all of the codex. A list that fails to take advantage of lash will likely fail more often than not. The rest of the army must be good for lash to be effective. It is also erroneous to think that you will win if you remove the lash carriers. Lash is a support power so the main weight behind the army will be else where (oblits, noise arines, plague marines).

Lash is very good but really it shouldnt exist. There is no precedent for it in 40K and too few armies are able to deal with it. It breaks too many rules and had the latest chaos codex been written better it would not have been needed at all.

To the OP:

Obliterators are expensive because they're reasonably tough and extremely versatile as previous posters have demonstrated.

Lash, again, is insanely versatile. Players who only use Lash as a means of clumping a unit together for template weapons are missing out.

@Regwon: Pleeeease don't turn this into another argument about whether or not Lash is broken. PLEASE!

Optimal oblits is 4 at 1500. Cheap and very effective, especially w/ Lash (grouping up bikers for Plasma Cannon fire).
Lash, when spammed, lets the CSM player control the tempo of the game very effectively.

MagickalMemories wrote:Also... Pinning can be very important against Orks. Small bike units, for example, can really be hindered by pinning tests.

Are bikers able to be affected by pinning tests? I thought there was a clause in the rulebook about bikers being unable to go to ground. I had assumed that that implicitly means that they can't be pinned. Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly.

I think most has been said (Obliterators are sturdy and versatile, LoS allows you to group units for template shots), just a little note on Obliterators: They are infantry. The other two heavy support options, Defilers and Vindicators, are vehicles. Short-ranged, mostly (except the Defiler's battle cannon).

Since nobody likes dreadnoughts, they'd be the only vehicles in your army. That means they'd eat all anti-tank fire. All the time. Obliterators can easily get cover in case your opponents brings out las/plas.

ueberyak wrote:
@Regwon: Pleeeease don't turn this into another argument about whether or not Lash is broken. PLEASE!

Heh, it was more of a comment on the tedium of the current codex, but read what you will.

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Optimal oblits is 4 at 1500. Cheap and very effective, especially w/ Lash (grouping up bikers for Plasma Cannon fire).
Lash, when spammed, lets the CSM player control the tempo of the game very effectively.

I find 6 to be better. Without them i just dont get enough lascannon to destroy AV14 vehicles or enough blastmarkers to put a serious dent into hordes. While it is a lot of points they are more than worth it.

Carnuss wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Also... Pinning can be very important against Orks. Small bike units, for example, can really be hindered by pinning tests.

Are bikers able to be affected by pinning tests? I thought there was a clause in the rulebook about bikers being unable to go to ground. I had assumed that that implicitly means that they can't be pinned. Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly.

I cant find any such clause in the BGB so i think youre remembering incorretly. If such a rule did exist however then it would mean that bikes are immune to pinning as a unit that is pinned is forced to go to ground. (Its also worth pointing out for the sake of completeness that units that are immune to pinning may voluntarily go to ground.)

"Heh, it was more of a comment on the tedium of the current codex, but read what you will."

I can't argue with that. I would like some cheaper bikes and some speeders, please.

Carnuss wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Also... Pinning can be very important against Orks. Small bike units, for example, can really be hindered by pinning tests.

Are bikers able to be affected by pinning tests? I thought there was a clause in the rulebook about bikers being unable to go to ground. I had assumed that that implicitly means that they can't be pinned. Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly.

Bikers that turbo boost cannot go to ground (i.e. be pinned), probably so that they would not get 2+ cover saves.

Arbalest wrote:

Carnuss wrote:

MagickalMemories wrote:Also... Pinning can be very important against Orks. Small bike units, for example, can really be hindered by pinning tests.

Are bikers able to be affected by pinning tests? I thought there was a clause in the rulebook about bikers being unable to go to ground. I had assumed that that implicitly means that they can't be pinned. Perhaps I am remembering incorrectly.

Bikers that turbo boost cannot go to ground (i.e. be pinned), probably so that they would not get 2+ cover saves.

You are correct. It was the turbo boost rule that mentions immunity to pinning.

Not only Obliterators are good vs Nobz Bikers, but also NM with blastmasters (long range, high strength mode) that do not allow the Nobz to use FNP.