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 Drasius wrote:

nareik wrote:

 Drasius wrote:
5 Chosen with 2 specials in a rhino are 7 points more than 5x plague marines with the same 2 specials in a rhino.

90 + 5*2 < 120

Did you even read the next sentance?

 Drasius wrote:
5 Chosen with 2 specials in a rhino are 7 points more than 5x plague marines with the same 2 specials in a rhino. To get the chosen to be troops, you have to pay the VotLW tax (which is already included on the plague marines) and miss out on the good relics like AoBF, Black Mace and Balestar.

Yes, I did. I chose to skip over the fact that VotLW is not included in the plague marines cost. And skip over the fact that there are ways you can use chosen as 'mandatory choice tax' without having to pay for VOTLW as I didn't want to seem like I was picking a fight. (You can use The Purge or have Abaddon as warlord, even in Crimson Slaughter, to keep access to those things. Okay, you are still making sacrifices, but it doesn't have to be the ones you listed).

I merely wanted to point out chosen are (marginally cheaper) than equivalently equipped plague marines. If all you are looking for is two specials in a rhino to fill mandatory choice tax then plague marines might be the most effective method, but they are not the cheapest. Even VotLW chosen are cheaper than unupgraded plague marines.

The issue with Chosen is that they're very expensive and as durable as T4 and a 3+ save get you nowadays, which isn't far. Without a decent assault transport option, it's unlikely they'll ever make it to close combat. They are actually the personification of most issues with the current CSM codex: decent melee unit with a bunch of (too expensive) special weapon options, unlikely to ever make it to a proper melee, and likely to get vaporised as soon as they step a foot out of their transport.

Basic Chaos Space Marines aren't any better, but at least a little cheaper points-wise.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
One of the problems with the CSM codex is that the other three marks are so all over the place that the MoN basically trumps everything since +1 Toughness is HUGE compared to a pitiful invul save, an extra attack, or even +1 Initiative (initiative is all or nothing since you're either higher than them or no. Toughness at least helps against different types of strength).

autumnlotus wrote:
Mark of Slaanesh is used for only one thing: to get that delicious icon of FNP. It's a tax for a good item, just as the chaos lord tends to be a tax for good troop choices

+1 I is VERY good. You can have Cultists striking at SM I, or your own CSMs before. Mathematically, this almost always works out better, as your CCW Cultists can actually mow down SMs with a full range of attacks, or your CSMs can avoid a serious amount of attacks. For Cultists, MoS generally results in more extra attacks than MoK. The FnP is a no brainer for larger squads too - mine always makes back its points.

Honestly I've tried to like chosen, but I find everytime I want to use them I just take terminators similarly equipped anyways.

I break out the Black Legion Chosen army when I'm feeling froggy, but almost always as a complimentary force to my KDK. Or I use them in the Cypher detachment so I don't have to bring Rhinos for them. Generally I use them as Plasma Gun death squads, with 5 plasma guns and a plasma pistol champion. Provided you can get the full volley off in a turn at 12" you get 11 Plasma shots for your trouble. Which I think is awesome. It's really too bad Chaos doesn't get their own natural drop pods, as it would boost Chosen into almost auto takes.

That squad will run 210 points without a mark or a transport, which is extraordinarily high for 6 T4 3+ dudes. But I've had fair success with them. I find that the huge number of specials is too good to ignore.

Remember back in the day where a Chaos Lord could be a sorceror lord or be upgraded to a daemon prince while retaining that sweet benefit of converting useful troops?

Those were the good days.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Remember back in the day where a Chaos Lord could be a sorceror lord or be upgraded to a daemon prince while retaining that sweet benefit of converting useful troops?

Those were the good days.

I still think every HQ should open the options, and things like dark apostles in terminator armor and biker warpsmiths should be allowed

autumnlotus wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Remember back in the day where a Chaos Lord could be a sorceror lord or be upgraded to a daemon prince while retaining that sweet benefit of converting useful troops?

Those were the good days.

I still think every HQ should open the options, and things like dark apostles in terminator armor and biker warpsmiths should be allowed

But how often do you hear about them in the fluff?

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

autumnlotus wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Remember back in the day where a Chaos Lord could be a sorceror lord or be upgraded to a daemon prince while retaining that sweet benefit of converting useful troops?

Those were the good days.

I still think every HQ should open the options, and things like dark apostles in terminator armor and biker warpsmiths should be allowed

But how often do you hear about them in the fluff?

How often do you hear about dark mechanicus period? And what's stopping them from using resources that a chaos lord can have? They are all able to be the leader of a warband

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

autumnlotus wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Remember back in the day where a Chaos Lord could be a sorceror lord or be upgraded to a daemon prince while retaining that sweet benefit of converting useful troops?

Those were the good days.

I still think every HQ should open the options, and things like dark apostles in terminator armor and biker warpsmiths should be allowed

But how often do you hear about them in the fluff?

Daemon Princes were mentioned pretty often. Sorc Lords sit in a weird position in that all of the references to Sorcerors use to point at the lord, but in 4th edition the Chaos Lieutenant was removed and Sorceror was placed into it's own entry.

If the Chaos Space Marine army list was based on how often things were heard of in the fluff it'd consist solely of Chaos Lords, Sorcerers, DPs, Terminators, Cultists, Possessed and basic CSMs (with maybe a Rhino or Land Raider).

 Ignatius wrote:
I break out the Black Legion Chosen army when I'm feeling froggy, but almost always as a complimentary force to my KDK. Or I use them in the Cypher detachment so I don't have to bring Rhinos for them. Generally I use them as Plasma Gun death squads, with 5 plasma guns and a plasma pistol champion. Provided you can get the full volley off in a turn at 12" you get 11 Plasma shots for your trouble. Which I think is awesome. It's really too bad Chaos doesn't get their own natural drop pods, as it would boost Chosen into almost auto takes.

That squad will run 210 points without a mark or a transport, which is extraordinarily high for 6 T4 3+ dudes. But I've had fair success with them. I find that the huge number of specials is too good to ignore.

You know you can put a plasma gun on the champion in the chosen squad due to the way it is worded (may upgrade 'models' instead of 'chosen').

The main problem with the CSM codex is the fifth edition book by Jervis took it back to the third edition book which he wrote.

No, the main problem is that it was written by Phil Kelly.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
No, the main problem is that it was written by Phil Kelly.

To be fair, outside of badly undercosting and/or super OP'ing absolutely everything in the book, there's no way to really do anything relevant rules wise with CSM's right now, because the model line itself is still entirely a 3rd edition crap-shoot outside of the newest Raptors/Fiends/Helturkey/Helbrute kits... (for feth's sake, Berserkers aren't even from this century!)

GW won't allow anyone to write rules for models and/or options that don't exist in physical model form.

Our entire model line beyond those 4 kits is at least a decade or older at this point! Only Sisters can claim to be older than us, but at least they don't have to loot both Loyalist Marine & Guard ranges to just build their basic wargear options!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
No, the main problem is that it was written by Phil Kelly.

You mean we're codex written by Phil Kelly, that isn't Eldar or Space Wolves

The 5th Space Wolves codex had gak internal AND external balance (Grey Hunters having absurdly cheap guns because, and they still somehow did better than Blood Claws in melee...) and Eldar have the same exact issue (why take anything outside Wave Serpents, Guard, and Knights?).

Experiment 626 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
No, the main problem is that it was written by Phil Kelly.

To be fair, outside of badly undercosting and/or super OP'ing absolutely everything in the book, there's no way to really do anything relevant rules wise with CSM's right now, because the model line itself is still entirely a 3rd edition crap-shoot outside of the newest Raptors/Fiends/Helturkey/Helbrute kits... (for feth's sake, Berserkers aren't even from this century!)

GW won't allow anyone to write rules for models and/or options that don't exist in physical model form.

Our entire model line beyond those 4 kits is at least a decade or older at this point! Only Sisters can claim to be older than us, but at least they don't have to loot both Loyalist Marine & Guard ranges to just build their basic wargear options!

I don't think the issue truly lies with how old the models are.

The basic chaos marines and the berzerkers are usually used as examples of this, with Abaddon being employed as the ultimate example. Well, call me an oddball, but I actually believe the basic chaos marines and the berzerkers are pretty decent models, although it's true the kits are simply outdated and lack options. Regarding Abaddon, his metal model is nowadays a living relic, and probably one of the best models GW has ever released for 40k. Being a victim of the scale creep is not his fault.

It's even infuriating to see way newer kits lacking options the same way the basic chaos marines box does. The Chaos Terminators have very limited options. Even the relatively new Raptors/Warp Talons kit has only one special weapon option each (one flamer, one plasma gun, one meltagun) but on the other hand includes three plasma pistols

You can always pretend that the Plasma Pistols are super powerful and are therefore Melta Guns; it isn't like they exchange the pistol for it.

That said, they should still have all the options.

 Korinov wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
No, the main problem is that it was written by Phil Kelly.

To be fair, outside of badly undercosting and/or super OP'ing absolutely everything in the book, there's no way to really do anything relevant rules wise with CSM's right now, because the model line itself is still entirely a 3rd edition crap-shoot outside of the newest Raptors/Fiends/Helturkey/Helbrute kits... (for feth's sake, Berserkers aren't even from this century!)

GW won't allow anyone to write rules for models and/or options that don't exist in physical model form.

Our entire model line beyond those 4 kits is at least a decade or older at this point! Only Sisters can claim to be older than us, but at least they don't have to loot both Loyalist Marine & Guard ranges to just build their basic wargear options!

I don't think the issue truly lies with how old the models are.

The basic chaos marines and the berzerkers are usually used as examples of this, with Abaddon being employed as the ultimate example. Well, call me an oddball, but I actually believe the basic chaos marines and the berzerkers are pretty decent models, although it's true the kits are simply outdated and lack options. Regarding Abaddon, his metal model is nowadays a living relic, and probably one of the best models GW has ever released for 40k. Being a victim of the scale creep is not his fault.

It's even infuriating to see way newer kits lacking options the same way the basic chaos marines box does. The Chaos Terminators have very limited options. Even the relatively new Raptors/Warp Talons kit has only one special weapon option each (one flamer, one plasma gun, one meltagun) but on the other hand includes three plasma pistols

Honestly, I can live with the likes of the Raptor kit as things like the basic flamer/melta/plasma guns are easy as pie to get a hold of... Overall it's a great kit as the only things that are truly 'missing' are the 3 Combi-weapons, (which are Champion only and don't mesh well anyways with your typical unit builds), a power maul, power axe, power lance and a second flamer/melta/plasma gun.
However, each kit comes with 5 sets of Lightning claws! Plus some absolutely kick*** looking chainswords and extra pistols. The Warptalon feet & helmets are also super handy for blinging out Aspiring Champions across the entire army, so overall, there's a huge amount of utility within the kit.

IIRC, not even the Sternguard kit - widely agreed to be one of the single best newer Marine kits contains 2 flamer/melta/plasmas, so the Raptor/Warptalon kit not having doubles really isn't a case of Chaos getting screwed over yet again.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Honestly, I can live with the likes of the Raptor kit as things like the basic flamer/melta/plasma guns are easy as pie to get a hold of... Overall it's a great kit as the only things that are truly 'missing' are the 3 Combi-weapons, (which are Champion only and don't mesh well anyways with your typical unit builds), a power maul, power axe, power lance and a second flamer/melta/plasma gun.
However, each kit comes with 5 sets of Lightning claws! Plus some absolutely kick*** looking chainswords and extra pistols. The Warptalon feet & helmets are also super handy for blinging out Aspiring Champions across the entire army, so overall, there's a huge amount of utility within the kit.

IIRC, not even the Sternguard kit - widely agreed to be one of the single best newer Marine kits contains 2 flamer/melta/plasmas, so the Raptor/Warptalon kit not having doubles really isn't a case of Chaos getting screwed over yet again.

It's a nice kit overall, I didn't pretend otherwise. Specially for the 15€ that costed me, second hand, on sprue Basically I have enough lightning claws for a lifetime. And yup, the Warptalon feet and helmets do come in handy for conversions, not to mention they are great to make your raptor champion more distinguishable.

However however however, still, if you buy a kit for an unit that lets you field two special weapons of the same kind, the kit should allow you to assemble two models with special weapons of the same kind. And in the case of CSM, it's not that easy to get your hands on extra special weapons if you stick to official kits only (i.e. bikers come with no special weapons on their own).

the entire CSM line is suffering from the same problem as DE from before their 5th edition update. We probably won't see another codex update unless they can do a massive overhaul of the kits.

Here is how I feel about Chaos in general...

There are some really good things and yah there are some bad things. If you want one codex that has all the answers who knows when and if that will occur. The really good things are top tier if you mix it up.

The pity party will never get you where you want to be. There are just a few really good things now in the CSM codex. Of course Chaos Space Marines should be a lot more viable. Focus on what is strong and you'll be okay.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

autumnlotus wrote:
I still think every HQ should open the options, and things like dark apostles in terminator armor and biker warpsmiths should be allowed

But how often do you hear about them in the fluff?

Marduk (Dark Apostle) appears in terminator armour in the third book of the (awesome) Word Bearers trilogy. He leads all of the (present) Word Bearers terminators (and a dreadnought) in a teleporting attack on a Necron army and their C'tan leader.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the entire CSM line is suffering from the same problem as DE from before their 5th edition update. We probably won't see another codex update unless they can do a massive overhaul of the kits.

And considering how awful CSM's as a line must be selling at this point, I have the sinking feeling that GW isn't wanting to take any kind of financial risk investing in Chaos - especially the Marines.

We're pretty much being relegated to becoming the 'new' Sisters of Bitter army at this point.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the entire CSM line is suffering from the same problem as DE from before their 5th edition update. We probably won't see another codex update unless they can do a massive overhaul of the kits.

And considering how awful CSM's as a line must be selling at this point, I have the sinking feeling that GW isn't wanting to take any kind of financial risk investing in Chaos - especially the Marines.

We're pretty much being relegated to becoming the 'new' Sisters of Bitter army at this point.

Nah I bet they aren't doing anything to update the models because they are still selling well. So they aren't going to go to the trouble of redoing the line when people are buying them anyways.

 Ignatius wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the entire CSM line is suffering from the same problem as DE from before their 5th edition update. We probably won't see another codex update unless they can do a massive overhaul of the kits.

And considering how awful CSM's as a line must be selling at this point, I have the sinking feeling that GW isn't wanting to take any kind of financial risk investing in Chaos - especially the Marines.

We're pretty much being relegated to becoming the 'new' Sisters of Bitter army at this point.

Nah I bet they aren't doing anything to update the models because they are still selling well. So they aren't going to go to the trouble of redoing the line when people are buying them anyways.

Devil's Advocate: they did redo with space marines(tac marines especially).

That said, I do agree with you, and suspect Chaos Marines are far more popular than the internet gives them credit for. Almost half of the chat on this sub forum seems to be related to the faction.

nareik wrote:

 Ignatius wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
the entire CSM line is suffering from the same problem as DE from before their 5th edition update. We probably won't see another codex update unless they can do a massive overhaul of the kits.

And considering how awful CSM's as a line must be selling at this point, I have the sinking feeling that GW isn't wanting to take any kind of financial risk investing in Chaos - especially the Marines.

We're pretty much being relegated to becoming the 'new' Sisters of Bitter army at this point.

Nah I bet they aren't doing anything to update the models because they are still selling well. So they aren't going to go to the trouble of redoing the line when people are buying them anyways.

Devil's Advocate: they did with space marines.

That said, I do agree with you, and suspect Chaos Marines are far more popular than the internet gives them credit for. Almost half of the chat on this sub forum seems to be related to the faction.

Well, considering they're phasing out Finecrap entirely, it'll be hilarious when half the entire CSM line up and disappears from existence!

I figure at that point, GW's solution will be to simply remove every one of those units/characters from our codex, because it'll be too much effort to give us proper kits...
Preview: Codex Where'd They Go Marines?!

They might just "Grey Knight" us, giving us a Power armor kit that contains 5 guys and a Terminator armor kit that also doubles as Obliterators/Mutilators (I know they're not technically the same scale but hey, it's not like they didn't shrink people before).

Then just clampack characters. Clampacks everywhere!

Clampacks are one of the worst things to happen to the model line. The models always look good, but I shouldn't have to put so much work into using bitz from it.

I mean, I love the Necron Warscythe that looks like a Scythe, but the work to use it isn't worth it.