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Hey, so I'm starting to get more experience and have only played against blood angels and nids. I do so so against BA but against nids I just get crushed by things I think are smart but turn out to be mistakes (for example genestealers and defiler assault or assaulting warriors etc...). For someone like me how should I go about playing different armies? IG/SM/Orks etc... I'd really love any indepth help you can give. Thanks.

those are tough armies to start against.


Nids are vulnerable to shooting. use your bolters to wear them down at range and once they ar ethen assault them.

try to ID the big bugs, Carnifexs, Hive tyrants, warriors.

Plague marines will be good against nid gribblies as they can dish out their attacks while shrugging off the normal nid attacks.



against BA you want alot of Power weapons as they will have FNP on practically every unit.

Bezerker spam is a good tactic. lots of close combat attacks.

If Mepheston shows up avoid close combat with him. shoot him with AP2 weapons at range as he has no invuln to fall back on.

Beware Dreadnoughts with Blood talons. they can wipe out your units, of any size, before you get to strike. shoot with lascannons.

Beware Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts. those things can have an 18" threat range(12" move, 6" charge) shoot with lascannons or if your close and not in CC a Melta gun to the face is good.

Vindicators will take care of tyranids for you. You can easily destroy the majority of a gaunt unit with the demolisher cannon.

With three of them and some melta plauge marines,you should be able to handle any carnifexes or trygons (maybe not trygons) or hive tyrants pretty easily. I don't recommend engaging them in CC,if you can avoid it. They fall apart if they're out of range. To that extent,you might consider obliterators,since they deep strike and have massive weapons to handle MCs.

Grey Templar wrote:those are tough armies to start against.


Nids are vulnerable to shooting. use your bolters to wear them down at range and once they ar ethen assault them.

try to ID the big bugs, Carnifexs, Hive tyrants, warriors.

Plague marines will be good against nid gribblies as they can dish out their attacks while shrugging off the normal nid attacks.



against BA you want alot of Power weapons as they will have FNP on practically every unit.

Bezerker spam is a good tactic. lots of close combat attacks.

If Mepheston shows up avoid close combat with him. shoot him with AP2 weapons at range as he has no invuln to fall back on.

Beware Dreadnoughts with Blood talons. they can wipe out your units, of any size, before you get to strike. shoot with lascannons.

Beware Furioso Librarian Dreadnoughts. those things can have an 18" threat range(12" move, 6" charge) shoot with lascannons or if your close and not in CC a Melta gun to the face is good.

Maybe you should focus on actual gameplay tactics. I can't say anything about these advices as I don't play chaos but aren't zergs and plaque marines in same FOC slot? People cry cheese over the strangest things but list tailoring is something I'm really against. Advices should be for a all comers list, not something that changes all troop choices for every game.

you can't give Game play tactics when you don't have an Army list and a good idea of what it will be facing.



Plague marines are good for Plasma spamming. having FNP to make a death to Gets hot only 2.5%.

Bezerker spam is good because many opponents can't deal with 60+ marines coming at them, and thats with every one of them having a PF, Melta Bombs, and 3 plasma pistols.


I second that Vidicators are good against the Nids

So my list was as follows:

2 DP wings/lash

3 KB Squads in rhinos (1 w/ plasma pistol, 3 champs with power weapons (need to be fists))

1 PM Squad in rhino w/ 2 melta and on Plasma pistol and Power Fist champ

2 Defiler

1 squad of obliterators

2k points.

thats a Decent list.

Lash them into nice little circles for the Defilers to Template OR use Lash to keep the enemy away from your units to buy you a turn or 2.

Bezerkers should Gangbang units together. 30 Bezerkers will mutilate pretty much anything on its own.

Oblits can DS and take something nasty out(LRs, MCs)

I don't DS the oblits against them cuz i want the lascannons turn one. I think I just make bad play mistakes and have bad cluck, I wanted to assault a squad of zerkers to a prime cuz I would have had 41 attacks and putting on the last 3 wounds should have happened, but it turned out i had to take a terrain check and needed 3 and got a 1 and a 2 lol.

thats just luck for you.

the Dice gods, Ran and Dom, like to mess with mortals.



just keep playing and the law of averages will help you.

Against Nids:

Noise Marines are your friends. Give them all sonic blasters, and watch a unit of ten of them get 30 shots, enough to pull down almost any Nid unit (In my humble experiance) in a turn.
Lesser daemons are a nice screen. If you have a unit with any Icon, summon up some daemons as a screen when the Nids get too close. Daemons being fearless means they will stay there for a round or two, perfect for allowing you to get either another shot, get away, or get a charge.

I don't play against Blood Angels that much, but against Ultrasmurfs I usually put Power weapons on all my champions and am golden.

Grey Templar wrote:the Dice gods, Ran and Dom, like to mess with mortals

Lol, I am going to sig this.

Against Nids, you have to have a contingency plan against the MCs/elite nid units and the horde based units. You will want to try and maximise your plasma cannon, lascannon and battle cannon every turn as these weapons helps against both elite units and hordes. You will want to spearhead your zerkers into horde units once they have been softened up by template and bolter fire. Your plague marines should stay mobile and try and maximise their bolter fire. You should also try and keep your DPs alive as long your template weapons are still active so you can lash synchronise.

Noise marines are.....meh.The sonic blasta is the same thing as a storm bolter,so that's great,but they still lack something....idk.

Noise marines with blasters shootiness is excellent and with the extra I they can do well in CC too

Expense really the only way they not better than vanilla CSM IMO

yeah. Aren't they 23 points each? Christ, that's almost 5 guants!

Thats without any sonic weapons also

The price on noise marines is wrong. They are 20 points each and are the cheapest of the cult marines. 5 points per marine to swap a bolter with a sonic blaster (which basically is a storm bolter with a heavy 3 option). You can only get 1 blastmaster per squad and it costs 40 points. A Doom siren on a champ costs 15 points

Noise marines can be good value if you don't give them everything. It is usually sonic blasters, 1 blaster master or a doom siren champ but never all 3.

Um, candyman, you may not want to put full point costs up. Same rules as squad building, I believe.

310 for a fully loaded 10 man squad. I was thinking about it cuz they sure do lay down the pain shooting wise. Throw them in some cover and they'll do some nasty stuff to your opponent.

I agree with candy.man that a squad of Noise Marines should never have every option available to them, merely because their equipment is divided between two roles, either close combat or long-range. Luckily, each of these roles works well for precisely the armies you usually face.

The Sonic Blaster and the Blastmaster are both weapons that have both Assault and Heavy modes. They are most effective in Heavy format, though, and as such, I run my Noise Marines in teams of six, with five Blasters and one Master, camped out on an objective in cover and letting their Fearless status keep them there all game. 18 bolter shots and a miniature, Pinning battlecannon from across the board will wipe out Gaunt swarms like a charm.

Alternately, Noise Marines also make pretty good Assault troops, thanks to their high Initiative. In this case, take the Doom Siren for AP3 template goodness, a Power Weapon, and Sonic Blasters if you think that doubling up your pre-assault pistol shots is worth the cost (I do). This is the method you should use to take care of Blood Angels, or any other MEQ force.

The nice thing is that each of these loadouts end up costing about the same, barring the selection of any transports, of course.

For me, Noise Marines are something i don't leave the house without. My squad is usually kitted out w/ 8 Blasters and a Champ w/ Doom Siren, and PW. Yeah it's an expensive squad, however it can take on any army. The massive amount of shots is excellent versus hordes (IG, Orks, Nids, etc), and the assault profile of the blasters along with the Doom Siren makes them great against anything really (barring Termies). But this is just personal taste. Ever since this edition of the Chaos Codex came out I've used a squad of NM, and so it has always been apart of my strategy.

I've also built some form of an all-comers list. Which, IMHO, is just a blanaced list. In your case you have a fairly solid shooting base, and a very good assault base. The longer you play test the better you will understand how your units interact and how you build synergy though out your list.

As far as suggestions go:
-The Zerker Champs should have Fists. Its just been my experiance that if you really want the squad to be able to take on anything then Fists really help, esp when it comes to TMC.
-I always gave my Plague Marines Plasma, personal choice really. But also because I really don't feel that comfortable with my PM having to be 6-12" away from something to really be effective. I like driving up in a Rhino, stopping and shooting 2 PG out the top for the rest of the game. As a side note, in one game I played against Nids the only reason I won was because my Plasma Guns from my PM took off the last 2 wounds on a prime.
-I hope you gave the Defilers RACs. I think it's a better option for an all-comers list because the BC is ALWAYS the first weapon to be blown off. Also this is the one thing in your army that is immune, more or less, to gaunts, so make sure you match them up against those hordes of tiny bugs who can only chip some paint off these guys.
-consider Noise Marines and/or CSM. One or the other, or a squad of each. Neither are as effective in CC as the Zerkers, or as resiliant as the PM, but are kinda like a middle ground in between these 2. Both NM and CSM squads, depending on how you kit them out can be very veritile, and effective in every phase of the game.

Anyways I hope some of that helped, good luck.

Hmm, thanks for the help. So now the next time I play I'll play an army that looks like this:

2 DP with lash
1 SGD

2 Squads of 9 Berzerkers, one champ w/ PF one naked Champ
1 Squad of 9 PM, 2 Plasma Gun, 1 Champ
1 Squad of 10 NM, 8 Sonic Blaster, 1 BM, 1 Champ w/Doom Siren (figure I have the 15 points might as well as give him the DS)

3 Defilers

Seems interesting on paper, gotta see how synergistic the 2 squads are with zerkers (yay for pinning lol!)

Large amounts of a nids army are defenseless against walkers in CC, such as the dreaded lash whip and bone sword warrior. Defilers will also insta kill them in CC. The thing is defilers also need to avoid CC with TMC, and avoid short range tyranid shooting from zoenthropes or hive guard.

Your 2 Lash princes work great against nids, the trick is lash has a 24" range and shadow of the warp has a 12" range.

Zulander wrote:
1 Squad of 10 NM, 8 Sonic Blaster, 1 BM, 1 Champ w/Doom Siren (figure I have the 15 points might as well as give him the DS)
(yay for pinning lol!)

So you're going with both the Doom Siren and the Blastmaster? As I said before, the Sonic Blaster works well with either the Siren and the Master, but the Siren and the Master don't pair well with each other, since they operate at different ranges and have different jobs. Also keep in mind that for the cost of the Blastmaster, you could be giving both your Princes wings...

If you really want to use both in this list for the sake of experimentation, might I suggest splitting those NMs into two units of five? It'll cost the same, and yet you can have one unit charge forward with their Assault guns while the other one hangs back and shoots. Unit size doesn't matter for cult Marines, what with their being Fearless and all, so five-person squads aren't a big weakness.