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Outnumber does nothing in the 5th ed rulebook. No retreat is only how much you loose combat with.

Also, please stop this mumbojumbo about CSM beeing allround. They are not, you have to equip them for the job they are to do. They are only a little bit cheaper then cults.

Sushikaddy... please.... stop... it....

I asume that you either know how much ** you talk when comparing CSM to SM on your terms, in which case I'd better not fall for the bait, or you play 40k on another planet where games work out differently from what I experienced so it won't matter what I say anyway but...

Did it ever occur to you that it is NOT A POSITIVE gain to your chaos marine force to have the ABILITY (read: CSM don't come with this stock!) to pay like 100ish points simply on the overall morale of your force to get them to a level where they can arguably compete to regular marines (arguably because I'd still say ATSKNF > fearless > rerollable ld X, but at least this comes down to personal preference and is thus arguable) who come with a great morale through ATSKNF for free?

Do you really think it is sooo poor a choice for a marine player to pay 15 points less on his HQ (yep, LESS, compare any given Chapter Master to the corresponding Chaos Lord from the new book) to further up that basic morale by a whopping 2 points for the whole force?

No really, CSM can never ever compete with regular Marines in terms of morale. They never could to begin with, even in the old book where they tended to have that reroll for the same overall cost of a basic marine w/o the ability to completely loose it through torrent of fire.

Leaves us with the additional cc weapon that CSM get. Well, this one is indeed awesome, I'll give you that. Though it loses its appeal as soon as one realizes that a 6 inch slogging troops choice will never catch anybody in the game of 40k to do an assault. Chances are that if you are getting assaulted, your enemy could have noticed the bp in the profile and simply took enough stealers/harlies/roughriders/assaultmarines/boyz whatsoever with him to win the assault anyway. After quite some years of 40k I guess I can still count the number of times where a handful of 'WS4 S4 Armor Save allowed' attacks saved me the day with the fingers of my own hands. Then again, YMMV of course.
Not so sure about 5th as well as I lack experience with that though I can't imagine that 'run' will change a whole lot in the old 'cops and robbers' game that 40k assaults are.

-Khorneflakes

P.S. aka Contribution to the thread:

Comparing CSM to Cult Marines, where the CSMs base cost is upped by a lot of points to reach some amount of 'flexibility' in terms of weaponry and morale, cult troops already come with a useable morale as they are fearless and can, almost out of the box, do certain things other troop choices can't (like 'sty on the board and score' for pm, or 'kill 3+ saves' like 1ksons).
Short version:
Paying for CSM is like paying for another spot in your force org who has a further demand of points until it can be deemed useful, where paying for cult troops is paying for added utility.
It's quite like the decision between cyborgs and havocs: You buy some havocs, then you buy a lot of icons, weapons, rhinos and so on to compensate for their weaknesses and result in a mediocre sqaud that sometimes earns it's points back and more often doesn't.
OTOH you can pick some oblits and neither need to care for their morale nor their flexibility, as both are inherent.
The chaos dex has sooo many (potential weak) spots where one has to put effort and points into to make them worthwhile that I can just hold myself back from opening up one more in the troops section...

My point really was whether Chaos Marines with a mark are more cost effective than the cult marines who come with non-synergistic choices. For example, Plague Marines seem great, bolt pistol, T5, blight grenades...until I look at that I3. Ouch. You don't fight if you are dead. And, the T5 will not save you against missle launchers or las cannons. Feel no pain doesn't work against plasma, and I don't have my codex with me but if you are T4 against a missle launcher, you are doubled, doesn't that mean no armor save and hence no Feel No Pain?

So, am I really better off with the plague marines, or would I be better off with a Mark of Nurgle (Stelek was recommending 14 man squads.)

Similarly, the increased initiative for Noise Marines is not terribly synergistic with what is essentially a long range firepower unit, compared to say having a mark of Slaneesh for a Raptor squad.

I have to sit down and crunch the numbers, but if you can get 20% more marines with marks for the price fo the Cult Marines I would wonder if the CSM with Mark would be worth it.

Fearless may be too huge though.....

Thanks everyone for your input. The discussion was most civil.

CSM definately have their place. I use them extensively in battles of 750 points or less. They dominate the 500-point battles where number of bodies is very important.

10-15 CSM with a mark of Khorne is the perfect counter to a small Blood Angels force (for example). If if they get the charge you you will outnumber them and get the same number of attacks back at the same initiative.

For players who never go below 1500 points CSM may often seem like a bad deal. With plenty of points to throw around the cult troops become more viable.

@ mikeguth:

PlagueMarines offer more synergy than one might notice at the first look. You are right in that they die to AP2 and/or S8+ fire, but in contrast to nurgle marked CSM won't do so when confronted with lighter fire. Synergy now arises when you take the rest of a 'common' CSM list into account. Most likely it will be comprised of Kyborgs and Deamon Princes, both of which tend to need 'anti tank - level' fire as well to be neutered. As it stands every PM that dies to a Lascannon is one less wound on your Lash DP, whereas nurgle marked CSM will probably eat simply 16% more bolter fire and die normaly or loose the icon in the process and die even quicker. Or...

Well, you said for yourself: Fearless is huge, esp. on small squads (given the price tag per marine). Option 3 would be seeing 6 out of your former 14 nurgle marked marines taking a LD test and beginning to run, including the +40 Pts champ and both plasmas / meltas.

Getting to I3, this really isn't as big a deal due to the fact that I4 is ubiquitous throughout the game. Any assault unit worth its salt in this game offers I > 4 for just that reason archieve the big kills with a fist or eq, swinging at I1 anyway. Beeing a Plague Marine, I3 wont let you lose the combat against 'normal' I4 swingers like silly marines as you take very few casualties anyway. You might occasionally miss out 2 S4 attacks on your own for beeing I3, but then again you are also bound to win CCs through a fist, not the swings of your ablative marine fellows.

Last but not least, Noise Marines and I5... well, I don't personally like them much, so I can't really oppose you on this, I'd take the IoS on those raptors as well. Then again, when talking about init and raptors you are taking the raptors for the extra movement speed to reach combat. So a comparison between jump troops and footsloggers is flawed to begin with. Forget about the ini thing and rather ask yourself: Can 7 NM with a blastmaster which don't run, ever, do me a better job than 10 non-fearless CSM with a lascannon?
The price tag is almost the same (NM are 180ish points, common CSM are between 170 (Ld9, no reroll) and 195 pts (ld 10 with reroll)), the noise marines have 3 less wounds going for them but are not prone to have the last 4 wounds run from the table. Noise marines are more flexible in deployment as the blastmaster at least has some sort of assault setting, I5 is just a small added gift on top and if it's only the heavy weapon + ablative wounds you want, you might as well save another 40 pts on the noise marines, take 5 and sit back.
As I said, I don't really like them for myself, though I bet there are situations where NM work without even figuring the (granted not too synergistic) I5 in.

-Khorneflakes

mikeguth wrote:Feel no pain doesn't work against plasma, and I don't have my codex with me but if you are T4 against a missle launcher, you are doubled, doesn't that mean no armor save and hence no Feel No Pain?

The missle launcher being double your base toughness does mean that you won't get feel no pain, but it's a common misconception that double toughness ignores a save. The plaguemarine is a bad example because the krak missle is AP3 and ignores his save anyway, but the same missle being shot at a T4(5) TERMINATOR, or other 2+ save model, is very likely to bounce off because they get their armour save. And should a multi-wound, 2+ save character roll a 1 and fail that save, the S double weapon will kill them instantly.

But S 2x T doesn't ignore armour saves by default. Gotta look at AP or other abilities.