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Yoyoyo wrote:
It is gonna be glorious seeing half of an IH gunline go up in a single 3+ vehicle explosion.

That's what you get for turtling for 200 re-rolls!

Alphalaughter.avi

The biggest drawback no one has mentioned so far is the cost of the books. You could literally spend more on books than models. For good reason people are saying you need to run them with Demons, but are also mentioning a whole host of things that you won't find in the "updated" (lol) Chaos Codex. So to build a semi "competitive" list you need.

Codex Chaos Marines
Codex Demons
Vigilus Ablaze (Black Legion and other Legion rules behind paywall)
Phoenix Awakening 2 (Night Lords Strats, Alpha strats, IW, WB, EC that have already been mentioned)

Optional (but likely)
Chaos Knights (Assuming you want to run some Knights, one of the stronger Chaos builds at the moment)
Imperial Armor (Extra rules behind a paywall, try to find a Chaos list that does not include some FW Dread)

Make sure you download and print the FAQ and errata for all of the above.

You should now be in a position where you have the info to build a typical list you'd read about for example in the CSM Tactics thread.

The way Demons and CSM interact is pretty complex with all the various Mark Of Keywords. There's also Spell lists for each type of Chaos God and more rules in Vigilus Ablaze and PA2.

If you just buy the Codex, then mostly what you've got are terrible Legion Traits like re-roll Morale, Predators, Vindicators, Termies, Marines etc. If you're happy running a 2017 style Space Marines type army you could save a lot of time and money on books. This is what I'm doing now and focusing on the hobby aspect, I just assume 9te Edition will be around next summer since it will be the only way GW can keep the sales momentum for its shareholders.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Fine, I'll be more specific. If someone tries to sell you Raptors or Warp Talons you should walk out with a hearty 'Good day, sir!', because they're just trying to clear excess inventory at your expense.

I'm really curious about your ideas of tactics and strategy

What, you can't infer it from: "Cultists, Daemon Princes, Character models are good. " preceded & followed by the advice to avoid everything else??

ccs wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Fine, I'll be more specific. If someone tries to sell you Raptors or Warp Talons you should walk out with a hearty 'Good day, sir!', because they're just trying to clear excess inventory at your expense.

I'm really curious about your ideas of tactics and strategy

What, you can't infer it from: "Cultists, Daemon Princes, Character models are good. " preceded & followed by the advice to avoid everything else??

I've concluded some people don't bother developing stragety and instead just jump straight into excuses why they lost

I didn't get a whole lot of what people were just arguing about...

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I didn't get a whole lot of what people were just arguing about...

You unwitting triggered the unholy seething salt avalanche known as CSM vs loyalist marine 2.0

Well, that is indeed unfortunate

It's not really a salt avalanche, it's just the state of the game. CSM are simply not as good as the new Loyalist Marine release, so a huge gulf exists between their capabilities. That's just a fact that people will have to deal with for a while until something changes. CSM are not alone in that gulf, but they're the easiest to spot because of the similarity in unit and army composition.

CSM are fun enough to play with a diverse army list.

Competitive CSM are just a part of Chaos Soup (more or less the only competitive thing going right now).

CSM will serve you fine, but just understand you'll be outperformed heavily by a Loyalist Marine force of similar point value.

I was looking at some of the different subfactions, and The Purge Legion caught my eye, any recommendations for these guys?

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
I was looking at some of the different subfactions, and The Purge Legion caught my eye, any recommendations for these guys?

It's a warband/ deathcult.

Msu is the name of the game there, further it's pure nurgle which means no double shooting or figthing.

Havocs, obliteratos and combiplas terminators profit massively from them.

Further cultist blobs and the ability to shoot into melee is really usefull.

No votwl means you need to bring some heavy guns for AT duty.

@ OP:

You need to know that Night Lords have the best paint scheme.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
As a guy who has only ever played with Tau and Guard, I have little experience with anything Space Marine (Chaos or otherwise), so what should I know or keep in mind while attempting to build/play a Chaos Space Marine army?

Keep in mind that thanks to CSM Codex 1.5 and Space Marine Codex 2.0+Supplements, all of your things are the same base unit as Space Marines, but costs more and doesn't have a gigantic stack of game-breaking special rules on top of it.

That said, once you're past that hangup, you're probably going to have multiple <LEGION> lists, and probably also going to be adding in DAEMON units as well.

 Elbows wrote:
It's not really a salt avalanche, it's just the state of the game. CSM are simply not as good as the new Loyalist Marine release, so a huge gulf exists between their capabilities. That's just a fact that people will have to deal with for a while until something changes. CSM are not alone in that gulf, but they're the easiest to spot because of the similarity in unit and army composition.

CSM are fun enough to play with a diverse army list.

Competitive CSM are just a part of Chaos Soup (more or less the only competitive thing going right now).

CSM will serve you fine, but just understand you'll be outperformed heavily by a Loyalist Marine force of similar point value.

Cant say it any better. Fricken loyalist always get better stuff. It will always be like that every edition you play. The loyalist will always have better stuff for less points some times even +500pts free in transports vehicles. (Gladius formation from 7th ed).

Chaos soup is often the only competitve way to play CSM. You dont even take marines, no you take the disloyal 32 (2hqs, 3x10 cultists) for the 5 cp it gives you. After that you take chaos knights and or daemon princes or greater daemons (LoC, magnus, mortorian).

Mean while loyalist take cheaper smash captains to rekt your big guys.

BrianDavion 782546 10633939 wrote:
I've concluded some people don't bother developing stragety and instead just jump straight into excuses why they lost

yes, because why do the things that clearly help people win, when you first can explore all the way you can not win. The models alone one would need for that would make any store owner happy.

plague bearers, DPs, ahriman seem to be a staple in any chaos list played under ITC or ETC rules.

Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

 Gareth_Evans wrote:
Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

One thing to keep in mind is unlike vanilla marines chaos loses NOTHING by souping, so you might wanna consider a chaos knight as a centerpiece.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gareth_Evans wrote:
Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

One thing to keep in mind is unlike vanilla marines chaos loses NOTHING by souping, so you might wanna consider a chaos knight as a centerpiece.

As bad as it sounds the best advice to playing CSM is actually play another army. It is fine to sprinkle in CSM for the best hits but generally they will be the support and other armies will do all of the heavy lifting.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gareth_Evans wrote:
Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

One thing to keep in mind is unlike vanilla marines chaos loses NOTHING by souping, so you might wanna consider a chaos knight as a centerpiece.

I'd like to avoid knights, for me those are more of an apocalypse-only unit

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gareth_Evans wrote:
Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

One thing to keep in mind is unlike vanilla marines chaos loses NOTHING by souping, so you might wanna consider a chaos knight as a centerpiece.

As bad as it sounds the best advice to playing CSM is actually play another army. It is fine to sprinkle in CSM for the best hits but generally they will be the support and other armies will do all of the heavy lifting.

I think CSMs can be fine as the core of an army but it's worth remembering that CSM unlike vanilla marines aren't given bonuses for being pure so things like adding a knight deamon primarch etc are worth considering.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Gareth_Evans wrote:
Well one thing to think about before you make the plunge. Your Old guy with an antique bolter will need about 36 bolter shots to kill 1 Primaris marine in cover - assuming your within 24 inches. Regular bolters are pretty much pop-guns at this point.

The Primaris Marine in tactical doctrine only needs about 6 shots from 30 inches to kill your CSM in cover.

For this reason Chaos Marines are often *avoided* when playing Chaos Marines, unless it's for a Red Corsair CP Battery.

One thing to keep in mind is unlike vanilla marines chaos loses NOTHING by souping, so you might wanna consider a chaos knight as a centerpiece.

I'd like to avoid knights, for me those are more of an apocalypse-only unit

fair eneugh, I just used that as an example of a common element of soup even mono-faction purists are often willing to consider. still Magnus or Morty are likewise comparable things, big units that you can slide a single one in as a LOW etc.

Fair enough, I'll have to look into some possible big boys to use

Disregard all posters. To win as CSM here’s what you do

1) put a squad of 3 iron warriors Obliterators into your list

2) deep-strike your Obliterators.

3) find all the buffs you can which affect Obliterators, than dump all the resources you have on your squad when it teleports in.

4) Obliterate your opponent.

5) maybe add a chaos knight for added destruction.

In all seriousness, we really don’t know what kind of play style will work best for CSM in the coming months. “Faith and Fury” is still brand new and chapter approved is right around the corner.

Right now I’d recommend you look at some of the faith and fury / Vigilous ablaze army sections and try things that sounds fun to you. Do you enjoy messing with your opponent’s strategy? Alpha legion fits that bill to a T. How about swooping in and causing a bunch of mayhem in your opponents lines? Night lords might be what you’re looking for. Do you like pitched ranged battles where you can out shoot your opponent and still take hits in return? Iron warriors have got you covered.

And yes I know this sounds somewhat similar marketing blip in a warhammer community article, but right now it’s the truer than it’s ever been in the past. Really just be patient and realize that about 75% + of the whining here on dakka is either completely wrong or heavily exaggerated. Case in point

“plague bearers, DPs, ahriman seem to be a staple in any chaos list played under the ITC or ETC rules”

plaguebearer spam with pysker support hasn’t been good in months, yet this post is still more accurate than close to 90% of the other things said in this thread.

The problem is many here aren’t looking for solutions to difficult problems like space marines, they just want to complain to complain or to justify losing.

You know you can listen to the above posters vague advice on how to play CSM well which is essentially not advice but a pitch about the fluff expectations of the army.

Or you can understand that CSM as an army are not in a very good place if you intend to play a fluffy list. To play CSM semi-competitively you have to run a soup of a few different flavors of Chaos to be on the same level as some other armies fluffy list. This is not unique to CSM as 8th edition has become just as bad as 7th as far as balance goes but we are not talking about other armies. In my anecdotal story that same 1000 point CSM list I brought walked over a Grey Knight list while barely losing 25% of my army but was tabled in two turns of shooting from Imperial Fist.

The swings in power level in this game ultimately leave you in a place that you will find yourself gravitating towards more powerful list to avoid getting rolled by the list you come up against. If you play the same people over and over you will find a common ground with most everyone in the group and end up having some nice games. If you play pick up games you are in for a rough time of figuring out how to compete with any list you might come up against, then you will find that CSM can not build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies. You will notice that some armies CAN build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies.

If you listen to people who say that you just need to look for a solution to the problem you will find that sometimes finding the solution to one critical problem in your army leaves you exposed horribly to three new critical problems. This is a game with points, you only have so many points to work with and sometimes the investment that your opponent makes is minuscule compared to the investment you have to make in order to challenge them.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
You know you can listen to the above posters vague advice on how to play CSM well which is essentially not advice but a pitch about the fluff expectations of the army.

Or you can understand that CSM as an army are not in a very good place if you intend to play a fluffy list. To play CSM semi-competitively you have to run a soup of a few different flavors of Chaos to be on the same level as some other armies fluffy list. This is not unique to CSM as 8th edition has become just as bad as 7th as far as balance goes but we are not talking about other armies. In my anecdotal story that same 1000 point CSM list I brought walked over a Grey Knight list while barely losing 25% of my army but was tabled in two turns of shooting from Imperial Fist.

The swings in power level in this game ultimately leave you in a place that you will find yourself gravitating towards more powerful list to avoid getting rolled by the list you come up against. If you play the same people over and over you will find a common ground with most everyone in the group and end up having some nice games. If you play pick up games you are in for a rough time of figuring out how to compete with any list you might come up against, then you will find that CSM can not build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies. You will notice that some armies CAN build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies.

If you listen to people who say that you just need to look for a solution to the problem you will find that sometimes finding the solution to one critical problem in your army leaves you exposed horribly to three new critical problems. This is a game with points, you only have so many points to work with and sometimes the investment that your opponent makes is minuscule compared to the investment you have to make in order to challenge them.

Yeah you’re right. Accepting that the situation is hopeless, and doing nothing to change or challenge it is the kind of great advice I expect from dakka.

Sarcasm aside I will agree that before faith and fury, chaos was in a worse position relative to marines (like essentially ever other army). You could still win as CSM in that matchup, but that usually required the CSM having more skill of luck than the SM player. This means that at a tournament, CSM players reasonable couldn’t couldn’t expect to win all 6 of their games.

So why is the post not helpful in the slightest? Mainly because it is incorrectly pessimistic. I’m willing to admit that marines where better than CSM before F&F because the facts pointed that to be case. Data collected on 40k tournament stats showed marines winning more games against CSM than CSM winning against marines. However, it also showed that CSM could still win against marines and there are no tournament results showcasing CSM lists that use F&F. There are also no stats showcasing CSM vs Marines stats with chapter approved release, nor are there any results with any other future updates.

This may sound obvious, but you arguing a position that has no facts to support it other than , marines are great right now and historically CSM
have been bad. This leads to lot of assumptions on your part.

1) you are assuming that faith and fury won’t do much to help CSM, despite it giving us a ton of great options.

2) you are assuming that chapter approved won’t help CSM much either, despite the high chance a lot units will drop in points.

3) you are assuming that good play doesn’t matter much in 40k, when the opposite is true. I may not believe I can beat the best SM at a tournament with CSM, but I can likely beat most of the people who just jumped ship to win with marines.

4) this assumption combines all of the above together. You are assuming that chaos marines can’t become top tier.

5) you are assuming the OP will care a lot about winning, despite him claiming the opposite.

All of your assumptions could be correct, but you are giving advice as though they absolutely will be correct. That’s why my advice is somewhat vague vs yours being very direct. I know that I do not know what the future holds for CSM. I have my own assumptions, (which involve Obliterators and Disco lords), but right now these are just assumptions.

Once we get to a more stable meta, I’ll be more willing to give direct advice, but right now saying anything beyond “play what sounds good to you.” Seems like bad advice

Getting alpha striked off the board on T1 is what happens when you don't put enough terrain on the table. That isn't an issue that only affects CSM.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Getting alpha striked off the board on T1 is what happens when you don't put enough terrain on the table. That isn't an issue that only affects CSM.

TBF CSM armies are brittle as hell though, so it exemplifies the issues even more.

But with all the possible shenanigans you can pull out some victories.

I imagine we just have to copy the tourney players -- stack 3-4 defensive buffs on the one unit the enemy can shoot at, and hide everything else behind terrain or in reserves.

Lols, best advice i heard is to not even play csm.

 CadianGateTroll wrote:
Lols, best advice i heard is to not even play csm.

Well, on average it's for casual use a decent army until you run into loyalist marines with their AP everything. (it's also not point and click, meaning that a bit off experience is not bad before you start csm)

And there's the crux, Loyalist marines are numerous and plenty even on casual tables and atm the natural predator to any elite 1w overpriced armies.
And guess what army is said thing most of the time.

Salt donkey wrote:

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
You know you can listen to the above posters vague advice on how to play CSM well which is essentially not advice but a pitch about the fluff expectations of the army.

Or you can understand that CSM as an army are not in a very good place if you intend to play a fluffy list. To play CSM semi-competitively you have to run a soup of a few different flavors of Chaos to be on the same level as some other armies fluffy list. This is not unique to CSM as 8th edition has become just as bad as 7th as far as balance goes but we are not talking about other armies. In my anecdotal story that same 1000 point CSM list I brought walked over a Grey Knight list while barely losing 25% of my army but was tabled in two turns of shooting from Imperial Fist.

The swings in power level in this game ultimately leave you in a place that you will find yourself gravitating towards more powerful list to avoid getting rolled by the list you come up against. If you play the same people over and over you will find a common ground with most everyone in the group and end up having some nice games. If you play pick up games you are in for a rough time of figuring out how to compete with any list you might come up against, then you will find that CSM can not build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies. You will notice that some armies CAN build list that can reasonably compete against the majority of other armies.

If you listen to people who say that you just need to look for a solution to the problem you will find that sometimes finding the solution to one critical problem in your army leaves you exposed horribly to three new critical problems. This is a game with points, you only have so many points to work with and sometimes the investment that your opponent makes is minuscule compared to the investment you have to make in order to challenge them.

Yeah you’re right. Accepting that the situation is hopeless, and doing nothing to change or challenge it is the kind of great advice I expect from dakka.

Sarcasm aside I will agree that before faith and fury, chaos was in a worse position relative to marines (like essentially ever other army). You could still win as CSM in that matchup, but that usually required the CSM having more skill of luck than the SM player. This means that at a tournament, CSM players reasonable couldn’t couldn’t expect to win all 6 of their games.

So why is the post not helpful in the slightest? Mainly because it is incorrectly pessimistic. I’m willing to admit that marines where better than CSM before F&F because the facts pointed that to be case. Data collected on 40k tournament stats showed marines winning more games against CSM than CSM winning against marines. However, it also showed that CSM could still win against marines and there are no tournament results showcasing CSM lists that use F&F. There are also no stats showcasing CSM vs Marines stats with chapter approved release, nor are there any results with any other future updates.

This may sound obvious, but you arguing a position that has no facts to support it other than , marines are great right now and historically CSM
have been bad. This leads to lot of assumptions on your part.

1) you are assuming that faith and fury won’t do much to help CSM, despite it giving us a ton of great options.

2) you are assuming that chapter approved won’t help CSM much either, despite the high chance a lot units will drop in points.

3) you are assuming that good play doesn’t matter much in 40k, when the opposite is true. I may not believe I can beat the best SM at a tournament with CSM, but I can likely beat most of the people who just jumped ship to win with marines.

4) this assumption combines all of the above together. You are assuming that chaos marines can’t become top tier.

5) you are assuming the OP will care a lot about winning, despite him claiming the opposite.

All of your assumptions could be correct, but you are giving advice as though they absolutely will be correct. That’s why my advice is somewhat vague vs yours being very direct. I know that I do not know what the future holds for CSM. I have my own assumptions, (which involve Obliterators and Disco lords), but right now these are just assumptions.

Once we get to a more stable meta, I’ll be more willing to give direct advice, but right now saying anything beyond “play what sounds good to you.” Seems like bad advice

All you are doing is assuming that all of these things will add up to changes that will make CSM viable in a competitive sense. I have seen this argument for the past 20 years that if we just wait for the next release that things might get better and when those release come and go without affecting a thing you will argue we just have to wait until the next thing to come.

Faith and Fury did not and will not shake up the meta at large, it is a list of artifacts and warlord traits which each effect one model in your army. The stratagems are a bit better but I can't remember a time when a single stratagem was responsible for an army becoming competitive, MAYBE the 3++ for Knights but the Castellan still backed a lot of that.

Playing well in 40k only really matters when you are against a new player, the game is not very deep and is absolutely focused on a narrative sense meaning that the actually involvement you have boils down to target priority. In my game example I was winning on VPs 7 to 1 by the end of turn two but at that point he had at minimum three turns to accumulate what ever VPs he could get. I played about as best I could but it doesn't matter when some armies are so deadly that they can do that kind of damage.

You can not discount people as pessimistic as if that is some sort of valid argument, it is just as unreasonable to be optimistic so what leg do you have to stand on? If you look at the history of 40k and the trend that it is on now we are seeing that new GW is the same as old GW when it comes to rules writing and we are seeing a laundry list of extra free rules that are handed out with no factor to balance them.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:
Playing well in 40k only really matters when you are against a new player, the game is not very deep and is absolutely focused on a narrative sense meaning that the actually involvement you have boils down to target priority.

You can watch this video of a Ynarri army versus a Knight Castellan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy4EpIiJzIc

That's one example of a fast assault army taking apart a pure gunline. I'm sure there's more.