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 kronk wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
If our next codex is just a rushed re-jiggling of our current, and our model doesn't see an overhaul, then screw it, I'm done "playing by the rules."

I'll just go ahead and model the Tzeentch + Khornekin armies I'm currently holding back on they way I want to... That'll include fluffy things such as Heavy flamers & Hand flamers out the wazoo, Sorcerer Cabals, Kai guns, flamer-armed Predators/Land Raiders, etc...

My feeling & personal reasoning? It's Tzeentch - he burns EVERYTHING!, with the entire rainbow to boot!!
Because that's what happens when he's contemplating where to hide his Lucky Charms between breakfasts.

Just play them as Space Marines.

HERESY!

It is because of gak internal and external balance.

ITC makes it so that they gut the core rules to help make the armies more balanced. CSM's STILL don't make a large showing, both in terms of players AND those reaching the Top 50.

The really disappointing thing with CSM is that a list that actually works will probably not have very many of the models called Chaos Space Marines. Seeing as so many players call Troops a tax you'd be a fool to not consider the cheap Cultists instead of CSM and then load up on the goodies, which sadly are not CSM either except for the LvL3 Sorcerer HQ.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:
Finally 6th came into being. And we got our new book. And lo, it was full of overcosted units, random tables and a complete lack of free rules. And the books that followed...the Dark Angels and Daemons were similarly...bland.

Once again we accepted our lot.

What?
Don't you remember the entire phase of "Helldrake does what helldrake pleases?"

When the 6th codex came out CSM were on the top with the helldrake, plague marines, 13 point CSM, and zombie cultists. The codex had some hard counters, but was overall awesome.

The reason the codex fell was when the Necrons and Eldar came out giving enough high STR weapons to make the nurgle marines not point efficent, and the helldrake being FAQ'ed back into reasonable levels (IE, not having a 360 degree breath)

CSM have had their day on the top, and they will again.

 welshhoppo wrote:
We have quite a few poor units (Mutilators, Warp Talons etc.)

Mutilators are good. Proven multiple times.

Taffy17 wrote:
So why are they always referred to as a terrible army?

To answer this question, you need to think about ratios.
The cost of specific units in the CSM codex does not match what is in the meta today. Take plague marines as a good example.

Back when the codex was released, they were amazingly effective models. They were very point-effective for durability, with a nasty punch in assault as well.
Now, in a game filled with scatter lasers, tesla weapons and grav guns, they just are not worth 24 points a model.

Asura Varuna wrote:
1) High costs

This is the core reason, as I mentioned above.

Asura Varuna wrote:
5) Weak, expensive characters

Uh....no. They have some of the best characters in the game. Abbadon, Fabius, and Typhus are absolute boss. The trick is getting them into combat where they can be boss.

There are still good combos but they require more effort to work out than top armies get. And it's still not broken.

Assault army that can't assault / thread

 labmouse42 wrote:
Uh....no. They have some of the best characters in the game. Abbadon, Fabius, and Typhus are absolute boss. The trick is getting them into combat where they can be boss.

Not really. Typhus has an Unwieldy weapon that's a measly S6. Like, it's not even poisoned or Fleshbane. He is a mastery level 2, though can only take from the terrible Nurgle powers. His warlord trait is Fear. Yes, he has T5 with 4 wounds, but he's also, what, 230 something points? Good lord. Point is, I could make a CC Overlord that's better than him for less points.

Abbadon is also meh. Doesn't really buff anything he's in except for adding Fearless. He has a decent statline, I'll give him that, but other than a kind of okay weapon, what else does he have? He's not worth the 250 some odd points he's at.

And Fabius? Really?

 labmouse42 wrote:
Don't you remember the entire phase of "Helldrake does what helldrake pleases?"

When the 6th codex came out CSM were on the top with the helldrake, plague marines, 13 point CSM, and zombie cultists. The codex had some hard counters, but was overall awesome.

The reason the codex fell was when the Necrons and Eldar came out giving enough high STR weapons to make the nurgle marines not point efficent, and the helldrake being FAQ'ed back into reasonable levels (IE, not having a 360 degree breath)

CSM have had their day on the top, and they will again.

The CSM codex was deemed "meh" on arrival, bar the heldrake and oblits and that lasted roughly a month until the Tau dex came out and had skyfire and interceptor available on everything in combination with rapetides and missilesides that rocked everyones face before the Eldar dex came out and suddenly heldrakes were the least of anyones problems. If you'll remember, the 5th ed Crons dex was out before the 6th ed CSM and flying bakery made a mockery of the heldrake. 13 point CSM's were gak then and are even more gak now. PM's were not great because they were super resilient, they were great because they could bring 2 specials at 5 men in a rhino on the cheap. The codex was definately not awesome unless all you faced were marines outside of metal boxes who refused to change their lists.

 koooaei wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
We have quite a few poor units (Mutilators, Warp Talons etc.)

Mutilators are good. Proven multiple times.

Mutilators are absolute trash beyond providing target overload against bad armies. No-one cares if a bad unit is OK against bad armies, because those armies are bad and most things would give them trouble.

Asura Varuna wrote:
5) Weak, expensive characters

Uh....no. They have some of the best characters in the game. Abbadon, Fabius, and Typhus are absolute boss. The trick is getting them into combat where they can be boss.

 koooaei wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
We have quite a few poor units (Mutilators, Warp Talons etc.)

Mutilators are good. Proven multiple times.

Mutilators are situational at best, and utterly useless at worst.

I do well enough with this vanilla chaos list.

Hq - Lord, MOK, Juggernaut, Axe of Blind Furry, Aura of dark glory

TR - 10 CSM, 2 meltagun, combi-melta, meltabomb, Rhino, dirge caster, havoc launcher
TR - 10 CSM, 2 plasmagun, combi-plasma, meltabomb, Rhino, Dirge caster, havoc launcher
TR - 10 Cultists

FA - 5 Nurgle Spawn
FA - 5 Spawn
FA - Heldrake

HV - Sicaran, side heavy bolters, Perdus Rift Anomaly
HV - Vindicator Laser Destroyer

LOW - Typhon, Ceramite, Dirge Caster

Nothing special about this list. It doesn't do any one thing really well. Just try to outdo the enemy in something. I would like a 2nd Vindicator laser destroyer. Those things are brutal on Imperial Knights.

 krodarklorr wrote:
Not really. Typhus has an Unwieldy weapon that's a measly S6. Like, it's not even poisoned or Fleshbane. He is a mastery level 2, though can only take from the terrible Nurgle powers. His warlord trait is Fear. Yes, he has T5 with 4 wounds, but he's also, what, 230 something points? Good lord. Point is, I could make a CC Overlord that's better than him for less points.

Typhus has a daemon weapon, which means his has 5-9 STR 6, AP2 attacks. What kind of opponents are you fighting where STR 6, AP2 is 'measly'? Does your opponent bring nothing but wraithknights? He also gives an armywide buff with plague zombies.

 krodarklorr wrote:
Abbadon is also meh. Doesn't really buff anything he's in except for adding Fearless. He has a decent statline, I'll give him that, but other than a kind of okay weapon, what else does he have? He's not worth the 250 some odd points he's at.

Abbadon has more than just a good statline, with his weapons and marks he absolutely murders nearly any other IC in a challenge. On the charge he has ~11 attacks!

 krodarklorr wrote:
And Fabius? Really?

Run the numbers. Fabious is a good mid-point IC. He is 165 points and gives you two blobs of fearless marines, the ones he buffs and the squad he joins (which do not need to be the same squad). If you make those 20 man blobs, you can maximize the effect. He is also decent in assault. He gets 6 attacks, and will likely hit with 4 of them. At STR 5, he will be putting on some wounds, and they are ID. This can actually kill models with a 3+ armor save like Ghostkeel.

Go look at the eldar Phoenix Lords, it's the "Top Codex"tm right now, right? Those three IC's beat the pants out of all of the Eldar named characters, which maybe the exception of Eldrad. Those IC's can take the Pepsi challenge with nearly any other IC in any other book and come out on top.

What is your measuring stick man? A wraithlord?
The CSM codex has lots of problems. A lack of delivery system. Inability to handle GMCs. Cannot ignore cover. It's issues are not with a lack of excellent named ICs.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:
Finally 6th came into being. And we got our new book. And lo, it was full of overcosted units, random tables and a complete lack of free rules. And the books that followed...the Dark Angels and Daemons were similarly...bland.

Once again we accepted our lot.

What?
Don't you remember the entire phase of "Helldrake does what helldrake pleases?"

When the 6th codex came out CSM were on the top with the helldrake, plague marines, 13 point CSM, and zombie cultists. The codex had some hard counters, but was overall awesome.

The reason the codex fell was when the Necrons and Eldar came out giving enough high STR weapons to make the nurgle marines not point efficent, and the helldrake being FAQ'ed back into reasonable levels (IE, not having a 360 degree breath)

CSM have had their day on the top, and they will again.

CSM were at the top for about a year, and that was pretty much entirely down to Heldrakes, when most armies lacked AA and some armies still had 4E codex books. CSM armies without Heldrakes, even with all the other elements listed, never did spectacularly well.

CSM's have been like that aince 2007 pretty much. Before Baledrakes it was the Lash of Submission, but wither way, reliant largely on a single mechanic (that soon waned in utility) for tournament success.

Honestly, the bog-standard Tactical Marine is not a competitive unit either. Vanilla marines get a free pass due to Bikers and Gravcents (or free transports), while Wolves can do Thunderstars. I never liked Drop Pods myself, mostly because I used to play Orks and Tau in 5th ed and found Pods faltered against a properly bubblewrapped castle.

The moment they make an Auxiliary Formation that lets Chaos take 2-5 units of Spawn, or some other similar "it's fluffy and not spam" formation, you will see the popularity of Chaos marines go up quite a bit. Then again, they could do like Daemonkin and create formations like that one where you have to take Warp Talons before you can take a Heldrake. Because FUN*! (At least they get Gorepacks; I love how due to RAW, Flesh Hounds from Khorne Daemonkin can serve as an escort to a Sorcerer of Slaanesh, among other things).

 Vaktathi wrote:
CSM were at the top for about a year, and that was pretty much entirely down to Heldrakes, when most armies lacked AA and some armies still had 4E codex books. CSM armies without Heldrakes, even with all the other elements listed, never did spectacularly well.

CSM's have been like that aince 2007 pretty much. Before Baledrakes it was the Lash of Submission, but wither way, reliant largely on a single mechanic (that soon waned in utility) for tournament success.

A year is a long time man. DarkStarSabre wrote in a way to present CSM like SoB or Orks. When one of those players says "Man, my army has always been at the bottom", I feel em. CSM have had far more highlights than some armies. Their codex is now long in the tooth and needs a revamp to deal with the new elements of the game, and when it is added I expect them to be decent or good again.

Also, don't forget about plague marines. I ran a plague marine army in early 6th and rocked many events with them.

DarthDiggler wrote:
I do well enough with this vanilla chaos list.

Hq - Lord, MOK, Juggernaut, Axe of Blind Furry, Aura of dark glory

TR - 10 CSM, 2 meltagun, combi-melta, meltabomb, Rhino, dirge caster, havoc launcher
TR - 10 CSM, 2 plasmagun, combi-plasma, meltabomb, Rhino, Dirge caster, havoc launcher
TR - 10 Cultists

FA - 5 Nurgle Spawn
FA - 5 Spawn
FA - Heldrake

HV - Sicaran, side heavy bolters, Perdus Rift Anomaly
HV - Vindicator Laser Destroyer

LOW - Typhon, Ceramite, Dirge Caster

Nothing special about this list. It doesn't do any one thing really well. Just try to outdo the enemy in something. I would like a 2nd Vindicator laser destroyer. Those things are brutal on Imperial Knights.

It's a nice list, but it is special in the fact you need a forgeworld book and a PDF to put it together.

Which is my biggest issue with the CSM codex, it really needs forgeworld to have more than one build.

Plague marines weren't any different in 6th than in 5th except I think 1pt cheaper? They werent ever on anything like the piwer level of stuff we see now. They were good, but the big thing was they min max'd really well, not that they were ultra strong units.

CSM's have bee fighting something of a losing battle since 4E where their fluff is increasingly caricaturized and the army increasingly reliant on a small number of gimmicks to function well with internal balance basically completely thrown out the window, and if youre trying to play to any fluff it just doesnt work (e.g. you cant run Plague Marines if you want to play World Eaters).

Sure, Sisters have never been great, but thats another issue altogether. CSM's have bad it bad for 4 editions now, particularly for non-bandwagon players that dont want to run the one silly gimmick that kinda works.

I always forget about the fun that was Fzorgle.

If an army wins games because of a single good unit, then that itself makes it a bad army. Since 3.5 the CSM dex has only been various shades of meh.
When we got the 6th ed chaos dex it was servicable and felt ok. But only because we've had even worse the two editions before that and have gotten used to being the redheaded stepchild.

The main problem with the CSM dex is that there is basically 1 or two builds if you wanna stand a chance against anything, and that is basically spamming nurgle troops, heldrakes, flying shrouded princes, the occasional biker melta squad, and so forth. What makes this horrid is that chaos has one of the most glorious fluffs in the game, and there's no way to even represent that on the battlefield, let alone make it effective, with the current dex. You want Iron Warrior Siege Armies? You're better off buying the vanilla SM dex and using Armored Taskforces. You want a fast assaulting Nightlords army? You got maybe ONE detachment that goes towards it, and it's in the KDK rather than the actual CSM dex. Thousand Sons Sorceror Covens? Vanilla Space Marines and even Grey Knights can spam more effective (and number of) psykers than you. Want blood-crazed melee troops that has a single model that can murder the crap out of enemy troops, backed by more warriors mounted on heavy cavalry? Space Wolves say hello.

It's quite telling that a codex is bad when it can't even field fluffy forces better than using another dex, much less fielding effective fluffy forces.

 koooaei wrote:

 welshhoppo wrote:
We have quite a few poor units (Mutilators, Warp Talons etc.)

Mutilators are good. Proven multiple times.

Any unit performs well when you face garbage opponents with garbage armies. That's literally ALL that thread proved.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 labmouse42 wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:
So why are they always referred to as a terrible army?

To answer this question, you need to think about ratios.
The cost of specific units in the CSM codex does not match what is in the meta today. Take plague marines as a good example.

Back when the codex was released, they were amazingly effective models. They were very point-effective for durability, with a nasty punch in assault as well.
Now, in a game filled with scatter lasers, tesla weapons and grav guns, they just are not worth 24 points a model.

Asura Varuna wrote:
1) High costs

This is the core reason, as I mentioned above.

Asura Varuna wrote:
5) Weak, expensive characters

Uh....no. They have some of the best characters in the game. Abbadon, Fabius, and Typhus are absolute boss. The trick is getting them into combat where they can be boss.

Only Typhus is of any value because of his Daemon Weapon being Force. Fabius is junk for the points and Abbadon is nearing 300 points AND brings no benefit to the army, on top of Typhus being better against targets that matter (and he's more durable to anything not ID or S10).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Any unit performs well when you face garbage opponents with garbage armies. That's literally ALL that thread proved.

Actually that thread didn't even prove that. It just proved that some people's glasses are so rose-tinted that they skew actual BatRep data to their own cause. If I remember the Mutilators actually forked over the only two points the enemy got.

But let's not get back into that. We don't need another thread locked by the mods for unkind words.

I never particularly understood the bad rap CSM have. I keep on losing to a Chaos player who utilizes Noise Marines, Nurgle Mace Princes and Obliberators very effectively, despite using armies like Space Marines and Eldar against him. Blastmasters typically crack open my vehicles and the copious amount of AP2 and AP3 usually take out most of my army. That and he always seems to dominate the psychic phase with his spell familiars and twin Level 3 Psykers.

Similarly I've beaten Ravenwing with Chaos Marines before on a couple of occasions.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
CSM were at the top for about a year, and that was pretty much entirely down to Heldrakes, when most armies lacked AA and some armies still had 4E codex books. CSM armies without Heldrakes, even with all the other elements listed, never did spectacularly well.

CSM's have been like that aince 2007 pretty much. Before Baledrakes it was the Lash of Submission, but wither way, reliant largely on a single mechanic (that soon waned in utility) for tournament success.

A year is a long time man. DarkStarSabre wrote in a way to present CSM like SoB or Orks. When one of those players says "Man, my army has always been at the bottom", I feel em. CSM have had far more highlights than some armies. Their codex is now long in the tooth and needs a revamp to deal with the new elements of the game, and when it is added I expect them to be decent or good again.

Also, don't forget about plague marines. I ran a plague marine army in early 6th and rocked many events with them.

Not really... Since the beginning of 3rd edition we've had:
1. The single worst codex of early 3rd. Chaos was so laughably awful, that mid cycle GW went and gave us the first 'newer age fluffy' codex.

2. 3.5ed codex. The single greatest (and in other ways single worst) codex Chaos has ever had.
Parts of it were beyond obnoxiously OP as all gak... IW's spam, Siren Daemonbomb, 1st turn Bloodletter auto-assaults/consolidating through entire battle lines...
Parts of it were also inexplicably restrictive, such as no MoK for Havocs, Raptors being forever undedicated, etc...
Mostly though, it was amazingly fluffy & true to the established background of the various Traitor Legions.

3. 4th ed codex. The grand gutting of everything that made Chaos Marines special... Only to see literally every unique toy & rule we used to have, suddenly be handed out like candy from this point on to damned Loyalists!

4. 6th ed codex. It was "top dog" for a couple months. Then Daemons/Tau/Eldar came along. And we went strait back to the dung heap alongside Dark Angels.

Overall, Chaos has been a massive 'have not' army for well over 18 years now! We had one very glorious period between 2001-2006 where Chaos Marines were the army to rage over alongside the other big boys of Eldar and SW's, with the occasional 'usurper' for Nidzillas, 'Fish of Fury Tau', etc...

I don't really ever rate codex's by their power level. I rate them by their internal balance and ability to make a fluffy army.

That being said, CSM is pretty pathetic on all fronts. Competitively and fluff wise.

I personally think that the 6th ed. codex is worse than the 4th for the simple fact that they already had a whole 5 years to see what they did wrong, and still we got the same garbage.

It's pretty obvious that most of the stuff is bad on the table top for the exception of a few units, but you can't even make a decent dedicated army.

Why do Cult Marines have all their fluffy special rules, but the elites and HQ in the army can't take them? Why can't a Death Guard Chaos Lord have feel no pain? Why can't Berzerkers take Terminator armour?

This is the kind of stuff that drives my OCD absolutely nuts. This codex is a travesty, with absolutely no effort put into it by the writer. Phill Kelly frankly has no concept on how to write a proper codex.

The only codex worse out there is Dark Eldar which I think might be the worst codex of all time.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I don't really ever rate codex's by their power level. I rate them by their internal balance and ability to make a fluffy army.

That being said, CSM is pretty pathetic on all fronts. Competitively and fluff wise.

I personally think that the 6th ed. codex is worse than the 4th for the simple fact that they already had a whole 5 years to see what they did wrong, and still we got the same garbage.

It's pretty obvious that most of the stuff is bad on the table top for the exception of a few units, but you can't even make a decent dedicated army.

Why do Cult Marines have all their fluffy special rules, but the elites and HQ in the army can't take them? Why can't a Death Guard Chaos Lord have feel no pain? Why can't Berzerkers take Terminator armour?

This is the kind of stuff that drives my OCD absolutely nuts. This codex is a travesty, with absolutely no effort put into it by the writer. Phill Kelly frankly has no concept on how to write a proper codex.

The only codex worse out there is Dark Eldar which I think might be the worst codex of all time.

Admittedly, our current codex isn't really Mr.Kelly's fault...

For starters, the codex really does read like it was a 5th edition book. Unfortunately, 6th happened, as overall the codex reads & feels like it simply hade a handful of new edition rules bolted on to it at the very last minute.

Secondly, and more critically, our model line was yet again almost entirely ignored!!
We're the single oldest & crappiest model line you can find in actual GW stores. Half of our units require ordering through the web store for feth's sake, and we're the one and only army in the entire game that's still using the exact same list of basic upgrades since 1998!!!
because of the Chapter House ruling, GW won't make options/units unless they have a model ready to go for it, and/or ready & waiting in the pipeline. While everyone else gets new toys & options, we get stiffed and left to rot with Plasma guns and Autocannons as our only tools.


On the other hand, look at what Phil did with Orks in late 4th ed, Dark Eldar in 5th, and Daemons in 6th. ALL those books were/are great books that overall stood the test of time. Only Dark Eldar got hosed badly, and that was entirely due to the changes in the core rules from 5th --> 6th/7th.

You go and look at the Proposed Rules subform, and every time someone tries their hand at fixing Chaos Marines, it's only ever at best a decent Band-Aid, because the model line is massively lacking in any kind of options!

Until the model line itself is addressed, our army will continue to suck rank monkey balls.

Gree wrote:
I never particularly understood the bad rap CSM have. I keep on losing to a Chaos player who utilizes Noise Marines, Nurgle Mace Princes and Obliberators very effectively, despite using armies like Space Marines and Eldar against him. Blastmasters typically crack open my vehicles and the copious amount of AP2 and AP3 usually take out most of my army. That and he always seems to dominate the psychic phase with his spell familiars and twin Level 3 Psykers.

Similarly I've beaten Ravenwing with Chaos Marines before on a couple of occasions.

Aside from the Noise Marines (which are still pretty decent in of themselves), those are some of the bluechip units Chaos has left. Try asking him to build a Khorne-themed army without KDK and then see how well he fares

(yes I use to be a Khorne player. The successive nerfs to the blood balls have not been kind to us)

EDIT: Also, Experiment 626, we're not THAT bad yet. It could be worse, we could be SoBs

Experiment 626 wrote:

Until the model line itself is addressed, our army will continue to suck rank monkey balls.

Unfortunately true. And worse yet, even when we do, there is no guarantee that we won't still stink lol. Though at least it will be a different fragrance of fail. I'm kind of scared that by the time we do get a dex, it will be either with the next edition in mind (which has always been a recipe for failure) or it will be the start of yet another design cycle that will invariably have a different concept of power yet again.

There are a few ways to rate a codex such as

1. Complain that it is bad based on your feelings. Most "my army is bad" discussions are based on this.
Yeah sure you think it is bad boo fething whoo. We should not really care about that that since these statements could not be more subjective.
Tthis shifts the discussion from Army x does y to "I think army X sucks" vs "But I don't".
There is noting to win here since both statements are true form the players perspective.
.

2. Compare it with top tier armies.
-> The fun thing about this is that there are hard numbers. Just take the rankings of a big a tournament and you are done.
Spoiler CSM are not top tier they are clearly worst then the top armies (Eldar, tau, necrons, space marines, skreamer star, mech war convol ) but also not the worst army around there.
They are kinda upper/mid tier of the lower tier armies. Being around or above Dark eldar, orks, tyranids, inquisition and sisters. So they are not fitted for cut throat tournament play but they should work great in casual play and or vs other lower tier armies. If you don't believe me check the LVO results CSM are not the lowest scoring army at all.

3. Look at the diversity of options on the codex.
CSM actually have tons of options. CSM players might disagree but damm they have tons of options in thee book. Really most ork warbosses would murder or this diversity of units, equipment and rules.
Sure you aren't sm but that isn't the point. It is proven that the army is a decent mid / low tier army and the huge diversity of options should make it fun to play.

Face it your army doesn't suck and has lots of unique and fun units it just isn't as good as SM Eldar necon or tau.