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I still play CSM as my main army. They do well against other codices from the same era (and I even get fairly regular wins against Mech IG), but unfortunately the book lacks enough flexibility to deal with some of the newer books.

The biggest issue for me, competitively speaking, is that Chaos lacks any capacity to effectively deal with mobile firepower. I can crack Mech IG because their sheer numbers mean that they are still relatively static and clustered, but other mechanised armies are a stretch for me.

For example, one of my regular opponents who plays Space Wolves has started building an army focused on firepower. In 2000pts, he can kick out 11 lascannon shots, 6 of which are twin-linked, and 5 missiles per turn, plus has a bunch of melta-armed Grey Hunter squads to pop any big tanks that get through the wall of firepower, and has Thunderwolves to mop up anything else. And I know that this isn't the most optimised build that his codex can make; that's the depressing part. As a Chaos player, I can't hope to match this firepower, nor can I hope to punch through the wall of armour, even if I manage to survive long enough to reach it.

Lets not get started on Grey Knights, either.

I know, this sounds like a good whinge, and it is. My (non-Chaos) buddies and I have poured over the codex many times for good combinations, and even when we come up with something that looks good on paper, we all start to cringe when we compare it to their (SW and GK) lists. You can imagine the despair when you feel like you just can't do anything interesting with the army that can't already be done better by others.

But I persevere and stubbornly refuse to "counts-as" with another codex. That's gotta count for something, right?

I'm with sennacherib and Chaoticbob

I play chaos because I love the flavour of it, and my army is built around flavour rather than competitiveness. No I don't win much but I do have lots of fun, for maximum chaosy-randomness I run possessed marines and a dreadnought. I run Nurgle as much as I can get it, which means Plague Marines and Mark of Nurgle on everything that can have it. Still not pure Nurgle as I do have bikers and raptors but they both have the icon so I figure ol' Pappy Nurgle will let me off.

as I understand it if you really want to win with CSM you need two slaaneshi daemon princes with wings and the lash of submission, and a bunch of vindicators. Round all the enemy troops up then shell the crap out of them. I'm told this works a treat. Personally I'd rather run a decent looking army and have some fun win or lose.

My brother has been playing CSM since third, and still loves them. Sure they are not as OTT of some of the new armies, but that's life.
We had a small (19 player) local fun tournament just after the necron codex came out and my brother placed second with his chaos marine, first place was a GK player, third was our friend playing necrons, fourth was myself with DA, and 5th was a tau player, lol.
Sure they might not do well in super competitive large tourneys, but my brother and I are are fairly competitive, and he seems to do all right.

Still playing them. We are pretty terrible at the moment, and certainly the worst MEq army, but one can always dream, considering the rumours of an update.

I pretty much gave up once GK came out and GW destroyed Warptime with an FAQ.

Eagerly waiting on our new codex as I don't own multiple armies!

I do and have only ever played with their current codex, hell i thought it was good until i got online...

I only own the one army due to cost and time restraints so their will be no codex jumping for me. (cost especially here in Australia)

Testify wrote:Aren't most chaos marines fearless? Other than the "generic" Chaos Space Marines, who're supposed to be "newer" converts.
Now you could argue that Fearless is actually a nerf...and you'd be right. But that's not the codex's fault.

Generic Chaos marines are not fearless. They have no special rules.

Skriker


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Raumkampfer wrote:I pretty much gave up once GK came out and GW destroyed Warptime with an FAQ.

Eagerly waiting on our new codex as I don't own multiple armies!

How did they *destroy* warptime? All they did was make the rule clearer in the FAQ and after you read the FAQ and go back to the CSM codex the rule is even clear there as well.

Just because people were playing it wrong doesn't mean the FAQ destroyed it. It just means that the FAQ pushed people to play it correctly. BIG difference...

Skriker

I play csm and always take a unit of 5 raptors with dual meltas to fly around with my winged dp's. I'd be the first to say that I'm not the best player (I hardly play) but I do enjoy playing my CSM. Even won with them a few times

I still play my CSM and Daemons, even in tournaments. I don't have to max out battle points and table all my opponents to have a good time, I don't even have to win as long as it was a good game. Play what you like and you will be rewarded with more than wins. I use bikers, raptors, and havocs occasionally... I don't even use PB's in my Daemon army because they are boring (and not in plastic yet). If your intent is to field a cool army and bring a great game to your opponent you will never lose or have a bad time, no matter what you play or the outcome of the battles.

It's not that much fun if it feels hopeless from the start, though. But then again, I've only played vs Space Wolves and Grey Knights. Once I beat them I can probably beat anyone.

It isn't so much that they're bad that annoys me, it's really only the fact they have nothing fluffy. If they came up with some unique special rule for the generic Marines that is fun and interesting without being OP (like Know No Fear for regular SM) or gave the Raptors something... raptory, then I'd be happy even if their stats didn't change. The crazy dreads are what's keeping me in the game right now! More of that, please!

You can beat GK with shooting, and SW with anything that gets rid of their longfang spam fast. Just remember, no psychic powers since both armies won't let you get them off.

You can still use psychic powers; you just have to do it from outside 24" of a hood/rune weapon if you want to do it with better than a 55%/50% (33% for Njal) chance of success. Lash can often be used this way. GK very often don't bring a hood at all, since they usually don't want to spend 150pts base on a librarian who's always in terminator armor, and takes up a slot you probably want for Crowe, Coteaz, Draigo, or a Grandmaster.

How did they *destroy* warptime?

By making it a 25pt power which is just an insurance policy against a crappy roll, rather than actually enhancing you in every round of combat, and at the price of having to cast it every player turn and eat Perils every once in a while. If you compare the actual benefit you get from post-FAQ Warptime vs. any other power in the game of comparable cost you can easily see that it's now got a really marginal use.

All they did was make the rule clearer in the FAQ and after you read the FAQ and go back to the CSM codex the rule is even clear there as well.

The main rulebook says "pick up the dice you want to re-roll", indicating that the default state for re-rolls is you choose which dice. I can certainly see why folks would feel the wording for Warp Time clashes with that, but it's at least a little bit ambiguous. And since the "re-roll the ones you want" interpretation actually makes the power good, and the "all or none" interpretation makes it crap except for giving you two chances at five dice to hit a vehicle moving over 6" (where you need 6s), there was really no need for GW to make it so much worse.

I still play CSM in friendly games and I still love them, takes more tactic then GK and SW im most cases (you don't need to cheese with GK/SW )
And have another friend who also play CSM and he even use the dreadnought and they do pretty well from time to time.

CSM is for me the codex I usually get the most fun out of and with 5 viable Troop choices they are really open for alot of fun/themed lists.

Play what you like, have fun and don't bother if people laugh, and soon we get a new codex and hopefully we get to laugh

I've had my Chaos army since I first started playing, and regularly use them. I was extremely peeved when the current codex came out because we lost a lot more than we gained. I don't play in tourneys, just with a couple of friends, and I have a 50% success rate. My friends play Nids, Blood Angels, Thousand Sons and Tau....As you can imagine there's a lot of whinging that goes on.XD

Mannahnin wrote:The main rulebook says "pick up the dice you want to re-roll", indicating that the default state for re-rolls is you choose which dice. I can certainly see why folks would feel the wording for Warp Time clashes with that, but it's at least a little bit ambiguous. And since the "re-roll the ones you want" interpretation actually makes the power good, and the "all or none" interpretation makes it crap except for giving you two chances at five dice to hit a vehicle moving over 6" (where you need 6s), there was really no need for GW to make it so much worse.

Doesn't matter what the main rulebook says about rerolls. ALL of the codex books are full of things that break those rules and the wording for the power in the codex says to reroll all of your dice, not just those that missed. The FAQ just made people notice that fact. The power isn't necessarily great the way it is supposed to work, but it is very Tzeetch like just the same. Either way the FAQ still didn't change anything, just made people read the power the right way in the codex.

Trying to use the main rulebook as your evidence for how you think it should work, doesn't change the way it was clearly intentionally worded and planned for it to work.

Skriker

I do play CSM still, And as far as I am concerd they are a solid army, althou we are a bit restricted in effective builds at the moment.

Finally learned how to use Rhinos, Berzerkers, and Princes properly.

Never had this much assurance in my Marines before hand though.

I play Chaos because I love the fluff, I am a gamer but not a competitive one. If I win great, if I lose great, as long as I had fun playing that is all that matters to me. But this is just my perspective. This is a hobby. A hobby is supposed to be fun. Right?