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I was hoping to take CSM allies for my renegades, but the problem I'm finding is that there's not much that the CSM codex offers that I can't get from the renegades list or from taking Daemon allies instead. Daemons have fast CC units and psychic support, renegades have cheap infantry and lots of shooting options, but what do CSM have that isn't overshadowed by other options? Sorry if this sounds a bit negative, I'm genuinely interested in making a reasonably competitive chaos army, but I'm not great at theorycrafting and I'm not quite sure what the strengths of CSM are.

I have been thinking about what chaos marines allies to take with my renegades also. I think Purge is the only option I can think of to squeeze in a Typhon or Chaos Knight, with Chosen or Plague Marines in Arvus Lighters / Valkyries as the Mandatory elites.

I've had good success with a Crimson Slaughter allied detachment for my Renegades

Sorcerer
+ Balestar of Mannon
+ Lvl 3

10x Cultists

3x Rapier Batterys
+ Hades Autocannons

The Balestar Sorcerer brings a unique thing to renagades which is it's the only Divination psyker that can join renegade units so its the only way to give Ignore Cover to your artillery units. Plus its a low investment way to get a couple divination buff because of the reroll psychic tests from the Balestar.

Also the Hades Autocannons Rapiers out shoots most of the renegade units in autocannon rolls (being BS4 and S8). And they can get supported by a Tzeentch Arch-Demagogue with prescience from the Sorcerer for 5+ rerollable snapfires to be come an excellent Anti-Air unit (which is another thing renegades are lacking in).

Sprinkle with a Heldrake or Hell Blade if you so desire as well.

How do you model your Hades Rapiers?

 Intercessor wrote:
How do you model your Hades Rapiers?

I made mine with taurox tracks and the hades autocannon from forgefiends

 dameanone wrote:
Using IA13 is a biggie. The sicarin is great, and the fire raptor is insane in most games.

Rapier weapons are also a wonderful unit to consider. They can bring some serious firepower and also have access to anti infantry or long range anti armor weapons.

That being said, Belakor is sitiuational good. He needs to be buffing something big with invis.

I sometimes use a Chaos Knight. He is hit or miss most games.

Obliterators are still good as long as you taking them MON.

Even with IA13 CSM are not going to compete against top tier lists at all.

Agreed, Forgeworld gave CSM many cool toys that both look good and play well on the table. I just got into CSM a little while ago, and have been having pretty good success using the Fire Raptor, Dreadclaw, and Contemptor Dreadnought. I even proxied in a few games using the Typhon, and that thing is a beast as well.

Forgeworld is a very expensive crutch to have to rely on just to play your main Chaos Marine army. I agree FW make them playable, but I can't afford that sort of fix :(

With so much stuff that can ID T5, or can wound T5 as easily as T4, might MoTz now be the way for obliterators (or the occasional lone mutilator )?

Speaking of Tz, you can give this mark to your autocannon havocs and sit them on a skypad to protect against strong ap/ignore cover.

Another Tz thing; especially with the nerf to Heldrake, I've found a Tz character on disc with burning brand can be handy for torrent AP3 template. Don't forget being a jetbike makes the character T5!

I dunno. a Mark of Tzeentch is pretty expensive for a 6++. If your unit has an invuln save already, I'd go for it.

MoT is the second best mark when it comes to Obliterators. However, MoN not only makes them more durable to small arms fire (compare the original 70 points to two Loyalist Terminators), and significantly reduces what is going to be capable of inflicting instant death.

Plus, when you have a character plausibly joining them that has no mark, Majority T5 helps with durability.

TL;DR MoT is okay bur MoN is more practical.

Side note: MoK is hilarious.

Also, make sure you give obliterators veterans of the long war, because it helps with the morale checks they will have to take at some point. And it once helped me beat Calgar into bloody paste with all those re rolls.

 Iur_tae_mont wrote:
I dunno. a Mark of Tzeentch is pretty expensive for a 6++. If your unit has an invuln save already, I'd go for it.

You're forgetting the skyshield landing pad gives them a 4++ (3++ with Tzeentch) when the shields are up. It also gives them an elevated firing platform.

The Landing Pad isn't exactly great of an idea. Obliterators need to be in the thick of it so that ANY of their options for shooting can be used. Otherwise, you're paying WAY too many points for Lascannons and Plasma Cannons. For three MoN Obliterators, you can get about two squads of Lascannon Havocs, or two Autocannon squads.

They have an advantage of being much more versatile.

I've found mutilators doing good for csm. Think they'll be even better with daemon allies as they have means of mitigating scatter - the biggest issue i have with both mutilators and obliterators.

From trying to camp them in long range, you don't get a lot of weapon choices and therefore having to switch it up will make them too expensive for what you would want.

If you want something to camp in cover, just leave it to Havocs, who will have a consistent weapon to fire each turn.

I've run my lord on a steed with fist/claw and sigil the last couple of games in a unit of 5 spawn with pretty good effect, nobody got warlord against me in those games and they got their points back in every game

IMHO the main problem with CSM, based on the games I have played, is the lack of a reasonably priced assault transport. If they had a Battlewagon equivalent (or maybe even a land raider crusader equivalent) then you would see a lot of their underused but iconic units making a comeback, e.g. Khorne Berzerkers, but 250 points for a normal land raider with expensive lascannons you won't use for a turn and underwhelming capacity is way too much. Other than heldrakes, obliterators and maybe Typhus they are basically normal marines without the toys unless, as others have suggested, you take Daemon allies.

One tactic my friend uses very well is camping Nurgle obliterators in the upper floors of ruins, which makes them very hard to kill. At least for my boyz.

After reading another thread on how bad Mutilators were, I naturally had an idea to run a unit of these guys. I thought of taking three Mutilators with the Mark of Nurgle, and a Chaos Lord with the Demonheart Armor, Slaughterer's Horns, Powerfist/Lightning Claws, and Mark of Nurgle, and putting them in a Fast Attack Dreadclaw. The unit comes down turn one, stays in the pod, and uses the pod to assault from turn 2. The pod helps them get over how slow they are by giving them an extra 6" of movement toward their target. Anyone else try anything similar?

Obliterators, chosen and termies would work too. I'm not sure if mutilators in packs would work all that great, to be honest. I'm having success with a bunch of solo mutilators simply cause one is allready enough for their intended purpose. But maybe it'll work. I'd rather take oblits in that situation, though. Dreadclaw can be shot down pretty easilly and you could be stuck in a not very good place with a very expensive squad. Oblits will at least shoot a bit.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
The Landing Pad isn't exactly great of an idea. Obliterators need to be in the thick of it so that ANY of their options for shooting can be used. Otherwise, you're paying WAY too many points for Lascannons and Plasma Cannons. For three MoN Obliterators, you can get about two squads of Lascannon Havocs, or two Autocannon squads.

My apologies, as I've had to repeat and rephrase myself three times now I am clearly having communication difficulties.

The part of my original post referring to the Landing Pad was commenting on the synergy it has with AUTOCANNON HAVOCS with Mark of Tzeentch, in that their +1 to invulnerable save is very cheap and synergises nicely with the landing pad's shields, especially as the landing pad gives them a vantage point for them to leverage their shooting from. People always talk about how less valuable cover is now, and the landing pad and cheap MoT is a nice workaround.

To clarify any confusion caused earlier, my discussion of Obliterators with Mark of Tzeentch was a separate point. I was mentioning how T5 has less value than it did when the codex dropped, but a 4++ save will protect against threats which weren't around when the codex dropped.

@koooaei: I agree on your reservations about packs of Mutilators. When they came out and people experimented with them, the tendancy was to take a pack with a lord and a land raider (or deepstrike) but they wouldn't perform well. I think these early experiments is a big part of the bad reputation mutilators have now; their strength is certainly not deathstar; it is in being a relatively cheap drop (single model) in non-killpoint games.

nareik wrote:
To clarify any confusion caused earlier, my discussion of Obliterators with Mark of Tzeentch was a separate point. I was mentioning how T5 has less value than it did when the codex dropped, but a 4++ save will protect against threats which weren't around when the codex dropped.

Truth.

The amount of high strength weapons that have come into the game since then is ridiculous.

This is all so sad to read.

I'm actually having great results with a combination of mutilators and obliterators with some spawns + sorcs and daemon allies to reduce scatter and add masque to the mix.

 Filch wrote:
This is all so sad to read.

It's just the power wave cycle of 40k.
It was not that many years ago when "Helldrake did what helldrake pleases"

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Filch wrote:
This is all so sad to read.

It's just the power wave cycle of 40k.
It was not that many years ago when "Helldrake did what helldrake pleases"

Back when the heldrake had a 12+ bubble of "feth you, anything not in Termi armor". I wish I was playing Chaos then instead of oldTau.


It's been said before, But Chaos is one of the Big 4 in FW( I think it's Chaos, IG, Eldar and Tau?) So if you can, totally pick up some resin toys to beef up your list.

Sicarians are awesome for that Anti-jink 6 shot autocannon, The Chaos Knight (You can get those rules for free and use your existing Knight if you want) gives us a Paladin and an Errant knight that doesn't have to be super far away.

I personally like the Typhon Siege Tank too.

If you run Nurgle( or markless) and don't use your Fast Attack Slots, you can always use the Purge Detachment. Get Shred Flamers and Shred frag missiles and Mandatory Elites instead of Troops and extra heavy slots.

Most of the FW Dread are MILES better than our Helbrute( I'm not completely sold on the Decimator though).

Sure it sucks that to up our game we need friends or FW, but it's cyclical. It happens to everyone, except Vanilla Marines.

 Iur_tae_mont wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Filch wrote:
This is all so sad to read.

It's just the power wave cycle of 40k.
It was not that many years ago when "Helldrake did what helldrake pleases"

Back when the heldrake had a 12+ bubble of "feth you, anything not in Termi armor". I wish I was playing Chaos then instead of oldTau.


It's been said before, But Chaos is one of the Big 4 in FW( I think it's Chaos, IG, Eldar and Tau?) So if you can, totally pick up some resin toys to beef up your list.

Sicarians are awesome for that Anti-jink 6 shot autocannon, The Chaos Knight (You can get those rules for free and use your existing Knight if you want) gives us a Paladin and an Errant knight that doesn't have to be super far away.

I personally like the Typhon Siege Tank too.

If you run Nurgle( or markless) and don't use your Fast Attack Slots, you can always use the Purge Detachment. Get Shred Flamers and Shred frag missiles and Mandatory Elites instead of Troops and extra heavy slots.

Most of the FW Dread are MILES better than our Helbrute( I'm not completely sold on the Decimator though).

Sure it sucks that to up our game we need friends or FW, but it's cyclical. It happens to everyone, except Vanilla Marines.

Unfortunately, FW is the only way to make CSM competitive right now. I've recently started an Alpha Legion and I've had to stack FW in the list to keep things somewhat level. The Typhon is awesome, and gives a ton of board control. The Sonic Dreads and Contemptors are pretty awesome as well. The Fire Raptor dominates the skies and crushes infantry on the ground. I think the Dreadclaw is overpriced, but is still within enough reason to take one or two in a list.

On the Codex side, CSM has a few goodies that work well with FW. Chaos Lords and Sorcerers are pretty awesome; the Lords are beatsticks in cc, and CSM Sorcerers can all bump up to lvl 3. Heldrakes are still good, they just aren't ridiculous. Obliterators are pretty boss as well, though expensive. Chaos Termies in general are very customizable and affordable. Maulerfiends and Forgefiends are pretty good, although Forgefiends are overly expensive for what they do.

I'm not sold on Chaos Contemptors (or their Loyalist Scum cousins) until we all get 4 base attacks like the regular dread or Ironclad.

If it wasn't for the fact that my heavy slots are filled to the brim, I'd totally take a fire raptor( IIRC it's a heavy, right?)

I've heard people say the Chaos Knights are better if you can afford to sink some points in for Upgrades, but the Typhon's Dreadhammer cannon is just SOOO satisfying.

The Giant khorne walker guy (Not the Lord of Skulls, the big FW one that's not the Brass Scorpion) is pretty good too.

If your Heavy Support slots are filled, The Purge exists for a reason.

Raptors look quite useful. They're one of two units in the codex that can take more than one special weapon in a five-man unit, the other being chosen. The biggest problem I can see is that they compete in the FA slot with spawn, bikes and drakes, but I think they can do well in small to medium sized games. What's your experience with raptors, are they good for their cost, or do they generally underperform?