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I absolutely love my CSM, but I can't seem to achieve what I want to with them. I think I'm just not playing them tactically. Help!
My favorite playstyle is total frontal assault with supporting fire, usually in the form of obliterators. All my squads go in rhinos and are usually packing melta or plasma since most of my play group is marines. My play group usually doesn't go higher than 1,500pts, as a reference.
I'm not looking for cheese tactics like Lash/template spam; just advice that changes my perception of my army for the better. PLZ and THANK YOU!

be sure to keep your rhinos in cover as much as possible, since you rely on them for your mobility in that book, and if they die the squad inside gets stranded and becomes alot more vulnerable. in fact try to keep everything in cover as much as possible. take a combi weapon everywhere you can. get rid of the fire support elements in order to reinforce your charge. chaos has enough short ranged firepower to deal with almost anything up close; however if you charge with only half your force you won't succeed. you want to hit them with as many points worth of your stuff as possible, so having guys hanging out in the backfield, even if they're shooting heavy weapons, is rarely a good play. stay in your rhinos as long as possible - they're a protection for the squad inside, and you can shoot your best guns from inside them anyway. for that matter dont run heavy weapons in your tactical squads; 2 assault weapons, 2 combi weapons.

Well, what does your list look like? You say you have melta and plasma, what is it on? Plagues? Vanilla CSM?

well I dont play this book anymore because I believe in play balance, but the last time I did the list was basically....

2 demon princes mark of slaanesh lash wings
6 tactical squads sergeant power fist 2 combi melta 2 meltaguns rhino combi melta
1 vindicator

upon reflection plague marines are the better platform for special weapons..... but I didnt know that at the time. the other component to the traditioanl plague lash oblit list is of course the obliterators. It always struck me as a horrible bastardization of the fluff to run a ton of obliterators (to say nothing of slaaneshi demon princes leading an army full of plague marines) so I never bothered.... then there's also instant death, and that alot of the obliterator's guns are redundant. so I just opted for more melta-toting tactical marines.
AF

Mech is good.
3 Troops minimum.
Oblits are fine, just don't go over board at 1500.
2 DPs or only 1 IC.

That's basically it. Chaos is not a mystery and is more of a sledge hammer in terms of usage.

In addition, don't mind 'play balance' because Chaos is still strong in that all the useful elements are there and every local meta is different.

As for bastardization of fluff, it's what you make it, hence DIY-ness that even GW will push.

agree that its a sledgehammer. not really a whole lot to it. you'll just have to decide for yourself how you think the book stacks up to the newer stuff. I'm just a guy with an opinion : )

When I played my ultramarines buddy I remember he had a heck of a time trying to kill my terminators. So I'd suggest running some terminators.

I usually just run vanilla csm with either two plasmas or a plasma and a melta in a rhino. PM are cool but I usually only run them in 1500 lists. I'm really starting to think about just loading a bunch of zerkers in a land raider and using that as mobile terrain to cover my rhino train behind it.
Termicide has worked well for me in the past, but not a full squad of terminators, just the bare minimum squad number with 3 multi-meltas.
And I'm really trying to avoid lash cause I'm not big into cheese even if it is super effective.

defilers can also pwn a whole squad of tactical space marines. I run two of those which is really fun.

Defilers are cool but I keep them in reserves if I do play with them because they're too big of a target on the first turn.