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So, after a lengthy hiatus from 40k (courtesy of those evil guys from Blizzard) Im going back to my old addiction of playing with my plastic and pewter dolls ^_^

Why am I tellin ya this in the Tactics forum? Because Im not stubborn, and I'll ask for help ^_^

So, I have a hefty play history, I have everything but a tau army at the moment somewhere in my closet. And there are a couple old school golden chicken RT trophies I use for bookends, so please dont make the assumption Im just here to paint :p

Anyhow, Im clueless to the changes of the last 2 or 3 years, specifically the 5th ed ones.

So, I'll probly be getting back into things with a CSM army of some sort. If anyone is feeling generous I'd really appreciate some pointers, warnings and general advice on tournament style play. I have no idea what sort of broken/beardy cookie cutters people are usin these days

I can probly still theory-craft effective army lists, but thats academic without knowing how/what missions look like and effect game play.

I'd ask more specific questions, but at this point Im not even sure what to ask lol

The popular cheese list for CSM is double Lashes. A common variation is a lot of Plague Marines, a lot of Obliterators, and two models who can take Lash of Submission (Demon Prince, Sorceror, etc.)

Phryxis speaks truth,the "lash list" seems to be very popular among some players,I personaly dislike it,but with the current CSM codex (which if you have not read is awful in comparison to previous CSM codex) "lash list" seem to be the "competitive players" army of choice.

Well the number one thing that got me was the removal of VP as a main rule book mission, and the fact that objective missions are 2/3 of the core missions. The other thing is the change to true line of sight, and how easy 4+ cover is to get. The biggest meta changing thing is the new vehicle damage chart. It makes even low armor transports much more survivable. With the emphasis on objective missions, and transports that aren't flaming coffins, it means mechanized has gotten big. It also means that melta guns have gotten popular. Another change over the last year is that orks and guard are good armies. This means that on top of killing tanks, you also need to be able to torrent of fire the enemy infantry. 4+ cover saves easily gotten means that its harder to do so with bolters. Flamers and esp heavy flamers are great.

As for what a cookie cutter CSM list, you start with 2 lash characters (DP or sorcerer). Then you add 6-9 obliterators. Then 3 units of whatever marine you like. Put them in rhinos.

The cookie cutter list that is kind of a test if an army is viable is the Ork Nob bikers list. It has 2 units of nob bikers fully kitted out, and due to 2 warbosses (also on bikes) they count as troops. This is all the killing power the army needs. Everything else is points filler/objective holders. The unit has feel no pain, T4(5), 2 wounds each model, 4+ armor, 5+ invul, comes with an always on 4+ cover save. They all have seperate war gear, so they can assign wounds however they want, so its not uncommon to have a unit fail 10 saves and have no dead guys. They can take however many they want of PK, and also take a +2 S weapon, and they have furious charge, WS 5, 3 attacks base, can reroll failed leadership, have a assault 3 S5 twinlinked gun, and since the warboss is T5(6), can put S8-9 wound on him to avoid instant death. Yes that is as stupid as it sounds, and costs half your army per unit. It's usually worth it.

There is the Seer bike council of doom, and the guard vet spam (with or without the new flier). I have only played against them, so I don't know much about them. For other tourney level armies you will have to ask other people. The FLGS I play at doen't play marines, because they are to vanilla. They are good now though. People were playing cookie cutter Khorne daemons, but now I see people are starting to use more fiends of slaanesh. Daemons punish people who still play without transports or tanks. There is a counter available to Imperial armies, its a simple cheap DH inquisitor with 2 mystics. Its an effective anti deep strike unit.

I hope I was some help, to really learn the new set you will need to sit down and read over the entire book, and play some games. Its hard to get how important some of the changes were until you play.

Rather than specific builds, here are some generalities;

1. Figure out how to squeeze cheap armor in your list to protect your scoring.
2. Figure out how to blow up enemy armor with melta-style weaponry
3. 66% of 5th is squatting objectives with scoring units. Your troops should be built to not die and the rest of your army should be built to kill.

So, with these 'lash lists', are people just using it to mive units off of objectives?

Or more of a out of cover or closer for assaults?

All of that really, throwing them off objectives, out of cover, into assault range, into a nice ball to be plasma cannoned to death etc.

My experience has been my opponent uses Lash to bring things out of cover or closer to assault.

Not to sound like a donkey's behind but...

My absolute first suggestion that you may have already done is to simply get a copy of the rule book and make sure you understand the way the rules work and are worded.

After that I think everyone else has started covering the lists that are popping up all over the web and such.

Then, the most difficult part is to get some game time in to work the rust out of the joints for guessing distances and such.

Enjoy!!

lol when I read the description the other day the first thing I thought of was 'come out from behind that bunker and wave goodbye to my vindicator!'


So, looks like I gotta figure out something that works thats non-lash based....

I personally like a Nurgle DP with warp time and wings. A pair of these, though expensive, can rip through an army pretty quickly. Point them at the enemies scoring unit watch the squad die.

Lash is only good against bad players with bad lists.

Against anyone competent, a more well protected, more killy HQ is much better.

I'll second Notabot's build: T6 makes a DP much more resistant to small arms fire and power weapons, and warp time makes him much killier.

Obliterators are important for Chaos lists because they are one of the only ways to get multi-meltas for Chaos, and the MM is the king if vehicle killing in 5th ed.

One of the best ways to make a troops unit more durable is to purchase it a rhino, this goes for you as well as for your enemies.

@Facet- have book, read it.

But reading rules doesnt impart how the changes have affected the game between 4th and 5th ed. Hence, my query

And I have a natural advantage at guessing distances....I know how long( or short rather) 6" really is ^_^ From there its just a matter of adding multiples of 6 and throwing in the amusing visuals for range measurement....


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So, from the looks of it, all the rhinos I didnt need to use for cover/LOS blocking in the previous edition are now useful again. And hence more converting and painting is needed

I've been seeing alot of posts on land raiders also being viable now? They used to be a 250 pt target that was lucky to kill half its own cost, I'd actually be kinda pleased if I had a real reason to finish converting mine and use it....

Well alot changed in 40k since then...
Let's see, the war? is the war over? No? Well that hasn't changed...
Ummm, grim darkness? Still grim darkness? Yep...
The future? Is 40k still the future? Hmmm, mabye...

Chaos LRs are not wonderful because they don't have the machine spirit and the alternate weaponry that loyalist land raiders have.

They are AV 14 assault transports, and can be useful in some Chaos lists. More than anything transports are better in 5th ed because:

You're no longer entangled when your transport is destroyed. You just have to take a pinning test instead.

Embarked units only take damage from a vehicle dying on a "vehicle explodes" result. The hits are Str 4, rather than being a straight 4+ to damage

The vehicle damage table is much nicer to vehicles.

I've also had success with the afore mentioned dual nurgle daemon princes and a nice core of footslogging noise marines. Add some obliterators, and voilà! You have a list that can handle anything from hordes to deathwing to mechanized lists and to power builds like nob bikers.
Chaos Marines really should focus on the things that make them unique and different from loyalists, as the new loyalist codex made all the loyalist counterparts to most vehicles and comparable units better than their chaos equivalents. But you probably already knew this.

I suggest you check out some of the GT lists that have done well in the past few years. I think you might be surprised to know that a list with Abaddon, Kharn and a bunch of berserkers in land raiders made it to top 10 at the UK GT 2009, for example.

As for the changes between the editions, I think other have already mentioned most of the important stuff but it should be noted that due to every unit being able to run, your opponent will be able to assault you by turn 2-3 if he wants to. Going to ground also makes some units ridiculously resilient to shooting. This means that you need to have a way to counter assault based armies and a way to get enemy troops away from objectives.
You only need to hold 1 objective and contest the rest to win games, so getting troop heavy isn't necessarily the way to go. You need to find a balance between staying power and killing power so that neither is hindered.

Keep in mind that there is very little terrain that blocks line of sight now. It's nearly impossible to hide units like crisis suits or eldar jetbikes, but they will almost always get a 4+ cover save or better now. It's important to note that vehicles can get cover saves as well now, so lascannons have fallen out of style and multimeltas are all the rage. The AP 1 the melta has means that even glancing hits can be deadly to vehicles, so don't worry about getting within 12" unless you need to pop a land raider.

As for the meta game, I think nob bikers and other lists that rely on an expensive non-fearless unit are about to fall out from the top due to the IG's new Psyker Battle Squad. More and more lists are also going mechanized, meaning that lash is going to lose a lot of its power. The new IG remains untested in a large tournament, however, so whatever changes to the meta game it will have remains a mystery for now. Nidzilla is no longer the power player it used to be, and falcons have been replaced with wave serpents. Daemons have had some success, but can do little against mechanized lists, so they'll probably fall out of style soon enough. Due to the influx of mechanized lists, dark eldar have gotten quite a bit better, but they are still a rare army to face. I expect that IG, Eldar, Orks and Chaos will dominate the future tournament scene. Space Marines are also a noteworthy challenger to look out for.
Witch hunters have a power build that includes as many immolators as the list can get with meltagun armed troops inside. While it may not be a common list to face, some people are convinced that the list is absolutely brutal and has very good chances of dominating tournaments.

Hope that helps!


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Oh, and assaulting has become brutal toward armies that relied simply on resilience, like necrons. Specialists with high initiative are deadly to most troops, so they are a good way to deal with troops that wont budge against shooting, like plague bearers and plague marines.

Thank you guys for the info

Mr Freeze, thank you for takin the time for a thorough post like that, thats the kinda stuff that will help save me alot of test games that I sadly just dont have time for

And I doubt I ever run 2 nurgle DP's. Aside from nurgle and DP just not sounding right in the same sentence...Im not big on modeling/converting nurgle stuff.

So, on the note of chaos LR's. Is it worthwhile to Posess it? the drop to BS 3 shouldnt be too major since all of its weapons are TL'd, and immunity to shaken/stunned seems nice since it doesnt say it cuts off transport capacity like it used to.

Read this thread:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/242720.page
(Competetive Chaos builds without Lash)

Also, peruse some of the mech Space Marine threads. Alot of the same things hold true for marines and Chaos Marines. Meltas in transports are good. 2x Meltas in transports are really good. Screening Predators with Rhinos can work well too, etc.

Thank you for the link whitedragon

Welcome back into the fold Mistress! I went to college in Arizona and will be coming down for a tournament in Mesa in September if everything works out.

5th edition really upended some players; I still have to remind people who have been playing for the last 11 months of some of the rule changes. Here is a quick rundown of what I consider some the most important rule changes & the effect on game play:

1. With the change in the vehicle damage tables you can no longer kill a vehicle with a glance unless you have some other factors at work (such as the vehicle being open toped, you are firing AP1, or the vehicle was a skimmer that moved flat out). This means that in general you either want a lot of AP1 weapons to attack enemy armor with or else have a torrent of fire to hopefully glance something to death.

2. Nearly everything gets a cover save. This again means that you need either a torrent of fire (such as 30-45 S7 shots from Loota orks at 48 inch range), the ability to remove cover saves (lash can pull units out of cover and then group them tightly for plasma cannon blasts or a vindicator shell), or the ability to get into close combat quickly (helped by the run rule and things like assault ramps for a land raider that can move 12, deploy a unit up to 2 inches away and then assault 6 giving the unit inside an effective assault range of over 20 inches)

3. Troops are required to win 2/3rds of the missions. However, in the other 1/3 of the missions you generally want as few killable units as possible so therefore you run a balance of having mobile, hard to kill, and effective troops. Also take note that in most tournaments a single unit of troops can hold multiple objectives, so watch out for a huge imperial guard squad or ork mob that can capture multiple objectives. Thankfully for you Chaos Space Marines have some of the best troops in the game.

4. Assault can be brutal. If you are on the losing end of an assault it can very easy to be taking a leadership check at 4 or 5. Thankfully there is no more consolidating into another squad. A trend I’ve seen is outfitting a unit to survive just about anything in assault, this generally means putting a power fist into most troop units or having a unit never leave it’s transport.

5. Kill points means that the 35 point Rhino is worth the same as the 250 point Land raider. One thing I tend to do poorly is focus all my fire on one unit until it is dead, unless the unit is broken or completely killed it does not count as a kill point when the game ends.

So if you are going to run a chaos army what do you have going for you in the current 5th edition metagame?
First off let’s look at what many people feel is one of the best units in the game, the Obliterators. For 75 points you get a 2 wound model in terminator armor that can shoot a ton of different weapons, though I most often see them shooting the lascannon, plasma cannon, multimelta, or twin linked plasma gun. You can take them in groups of 3 and unlike the previous chaos codex you can take a total of 3 units, instead of just 1. Being infantry you can stick the them in cover for a 4+ cover save, that alongside the 2+ armor save means they can be a hard unit to get rid of. However, the true synergy occurs when combined with the chaos psychic power of lash.

In the US tournament scene you will most often see two HQ choices both with the Lash psychic power. Most of the highly completive players I’ve seen field both their lash units as daemon princes. The lash daemon prince has a lot going for it, with the addition of wings you have a fast moving monstrous creature that can be hard to kill while it lashes your army around the table. The daemon prince has the eternal warrior special rule meaning that you have to take off all 4 wounds before it dies. A daemon prince can easily wreck stationary vehicles, destroy troop squads without power fists, and take a wound from a vindicator and keep coming. All of this for only 155 points is a super bargain.

The Lash power itself is worth a quick rundown. You pick any non vehicle unit within 24 inches of your lash equipped unit and if you make your psychic test you can then move the unit 2d6 inches. This means that you can bunch up a unit very tightly for 3 plasma cannon shots from obliterators or a demolisher round from a vindicator. You can move a unit closer to a khorne Berzerker horde so the Bezerkers can get more blood for the blood god. Or you can move that scoring unit off an objective at the bottom of turn 5. Also, any unit moved by lash much take a pinning check, something kroot with leadership of 7 always tend to fail for me. So while it is possible to run lists without lash (warptime daemon princes can be pretty brutal in combat), you will find that the most competitive lists tend to have two lash HQs.

While most people like using obliterators with the lash princes I’ve seen an army with a pair of possessed vindicators tear through whole units. Another option is plenty of assault based units that get to assault whatever is lashed forward. One scary thing to see is landraiders full of khorne Bezerkers.

Chaos space marines also have some of the best troop choices out there. The first thing to keep in mind is that all chaos space marines(excluding thousand sons, they get AP3 bolters) come equipped with a close combat weapon & a bolt pistol meaning that instead of 1 attack for a troop choice, they have two. Regular chaos space marines cost fewer points per model then a space marine tac squad for double the close combat attacks. Although they don’t have some of the space marine special abilities chaos is allowed to take squads up to 20 marines strong! While there are others who can talk about the virtues of the Thousand Sons & noise Marines I’ll talk about the Plague Marines & Bezerkers.

The Plague Marines are what most people field in the twin Lash with Obliterators list for their troop choices. With a mark of nurgle the toughness becomes 5, meaning that nurgle marines are harder to wound then a normal marine. However, not only do you get the toughness boost but you also get the feel no pain special ability, meaning that you have a 50% to save any wound that gets past you armor save. This ability combined with the blight grenades means that when models attack they will have a hell of a time wounding a plague marine unless they have high strength power weapons or are shooting with AP1 & AP2 shots. The ability to take a rhino transport alongside two melta guns means that you can send off your plague marines to capture objectives and tank hunting with less fear that they will be killed by most units your opponent will field.

Khorne Bezerkers are another effective troop choice. While plague marines will not move when you try to push them off an objective, the Bezerkers are what you send after something when you want it to move. The Mark of Khorne, given to all Bezerkers, combined with the bolt pistol & close combat weapon means that they have 3 base attacks, when charging this is raised to 4. Another special rule is the furious charge, giving a boost to both strength and initiative. Suddenly is becomes easier to glance & penetrate vehicles, the entire unit is striking before most armies, and rolling 3’s & 2’s to wound instead of 4’s & 3’s. Furious charge, along with the weapons skill increase to 5 makes Khorne Bezerkers my most feared close combat troop unit. A local player almost always has a unit of Khorne Bezerkers in a landraider as a dedicated countercharge unit. I’ve lost a LOT of models to that unit.

Hopefully that helps give you a brief overview of what is going on with both 5th edition & chaos space marines on a competitive standpoint.

asugradinwa, thank you for that. Helpful posts like that are why Im happy I came back to Dakka

So, my history/preference for chaos play looks like it will fit well with the current changes. I was always the weirdo in 3rd & 4th edition that ran at least 4 squads of troops, and then backed that up with elites/heavy support. This holds true for my Black Legion, Iron Warriors, and Night Lords (yes I have 3 playable CSM armies and stuff for another).

So, other than needing a few more rhinos to mount everyone up, it looks like Im pretty well set for trying some 5th ed games. I'll be able to start putting the info you guys are providing to good use ^_^

And I'll have to break out the GS and start workin on my LR too....

Oh, and read over the rules for wound allocation. That is something that many have found very confusing at first. Now any model from the unit can be removed when a model in the unit is destroyed. If you have multiple wounds you must first allocate one to each available model before they start to overlap & then roll seperatly.

Lets say I have a 10 man marine squad that has a sgt, a flamer, & a multimelta. If a squad inflicts 12 wounds I have to assign 1 to each model, because 7 have the same equipment each gets they count as one group while the flamer, multi melta, and sgt are each seperate groups. If I had more wounds then models I could then start overlapping, until every model has two wounds assigned and so on. So in this case I'm going to take the final 2 wounds on the regular space marines, so that group's dice is now 9.

So when rolling my saves I roll the 9 dice for the 7 regular marines, and then 1 for the flamer, one for the multimelta, and 1 for the sgt. If I fail a roll for the flamer, multimelta, or sgt they are removed no matter how many saves I made on the regular troops. On the other hand if I failed 9 saves on the regular troops but passed the tests for the other three groups then the special weapons & sgt would survive.

This is one of the big reasons why the Nob Biker squad can be a handfull as every model has different equipment so you have to cause a ton of wounds before they lose a model.

If you've got a load of armies in your closet, why not start up two? There are some which haven't changed in years (most noticeably the DH), so why not take two different armies, and see which one works best?

MC

Mistress of minis wrote:So, after a lengthy hiatus from 40k (courtesy of those evil guys from Blizzard) Im going back to my old addiction of playing with my plastic and pewter dolls ^_^

Why am I tellin ya this in the Tactics forum? Because Im not stubborn, and I'll ask for help ^_^

So, I have a hefty play history, I have everything but a tau army at the moment somewhere in my closet. And there are a couple old school golden chicken RT trophies I use for bookends, so please dont make the assumption Im just here to paint :p

Anyhow, Im clueless to the changes of the last 2 or 3 years, specifically the 5th ed ones.

So, I'll probly be getting back into things with a CSM army of some sort. If anyone is feeling generous I'd really appreciate some pointers, warnings and general advice on tournament style play. I have no idea what sort of broken/beardy cookie cutters people are usin these days

I can probly still theory-craft effective army lists, but thats academic without knowing how/what missions look like and effect game play.

I'd ask more specific questions, but at this point Im not even sure what to ask lol

Read the article in my sig.

Cannerus, nice article. It pretty much validates my ideas of CSMs as a core with a couple cult units to fill in tactical gaps.

Should have some prelim lists once I find out what hte local tourneys have their pts set for.

Well, I'm not sure how tournament worthy it is, But I do know first hand (Having been on the receiving end) that a CSM Lord on a bike with MoN, escorted by bikers with an IoN is a huge pain to deal with. I know you're looking more for tactics than actual units suggestions, but this kind of load out can be scary enough to invent tactics just by being there. :-)

As you were looking for options to Lash spam, I think bike spam is a good place to look. Where lash is 'mobile' by moving your opponents to suit your own needs, bikes are just mobile in the conventional sense. Where lash is resilient by moving your opponents to suit your own needs, bikes with IoN are just rocks. The benefits of playing a list not seen very often are greater than it would seem at first glance. Having unfamiliar units that work differently than they normally do (increased toughness) means that the tactics that ARE out there don't work quite as well. (Believe me, MULTIPLE T6 models are a giant PITA even when you CAN inflict ID with regularity [melta, krak, LC's etc.], especially when you're diverting that fire away from the stuff it's usually reserved for: transports full of scoring units.)

I think one other thing needs to be mentioned about the new meta game: Objective placement.

At the very beginning of the game after placing terrain, but before dropping objectives, walk all the way around the table a couple times (if possible). See it from all the angles, and try to decide not only where you'd like to deploy if you go first, but where you want the objectives to be, and how you'll best be able to take them. Knowing you have more than one "golden turkey" on your shelf, the previous statement is probably not necessary but, with the way first turn is decided now, this part is more critical than ever. If you DON'T go first, either by not rolling high enough or by choice, (discounting seizures) you also won't get to pick your deployment zone, so having a general idea of what you want to do before you place objectives is key.

Marines of all flavors tend to be outnumbered in their games (no big surprise there). So when placing objectives it seems to benefit them to make sure that at least 2/3 of them are as close to each other as possible. This way you can 'swarm' the objectives with your ENTIRE army, forcing your opponent to deal with you all at once, instead of blasting you off one objective at a time, one unit at a time.

Minimum distance between objectives is 12" or 18" depending on the scenario, not too hard to cover, even on foot with the run rule. Use your faster movers to blast onto enemy held objectives during the last turns of the game, and your hard hitting assault units to clear enemies off the ones you intend to claim as 'yours'. Seeing as how my armies tend to have fewer units than my opponents, I tend to ignore the 'flyers' (Objectives that an opponent will place REALLY far away from the rest) altogether and just concentrate on those that I have grouped together. (All this means is that I have to take two objectives rather than one to win. Not hard when they're within 12" of each other, and I'm dropping my WHOLE army on them in turn 3 or 4.) Also by doing this, I take away the advantage most people seem to find in deploying across their entire deployment zone; Objective driven refused flank.

Now, to elaborate on Objective placement, brings up scoring units.

The book just says troops units, that arent falling back, a vehicle, or have a specific rule that they cant score. Does the number of surviving models count? Like if I have one CSM(thats not falling back) standin there all by himself- does that work?

Mistress of minis wrote:Now, to elaborate on Objective placement, brings up scoring units.

The book just says troops units, that arent falling back, a vehicle, or have a specific rule that they cant score. Does the number of surviving models count? Like if I have one CSM(thats not falling back) standin there all by himself- does that work?

Scoring units continue to score to the last man.

Thank you Willy.

Im guessing the same holds true for 'contesting' objectives? (this is 40k- its better to ask! )

Mistress of minis wrote:Thank you Willy.

Im guessing the same holds true for 'contesting' objectives? (this is 40k- its better to ask! )

Yes, but vehicles and other non-infantry models may contest as well. A vehicle will contest an objective until it is wrecked or exploded, for example. Even an immobilized enemy vehicle within 3" of an objective will prevent you from claiming it.