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I'm looking at picking up CSM for my second army, and was looking at a mount of Slaneesh for the HQ units (mostly because it'd look cool), but as far as i can tell, I'd be screwing myself over by making an IC cavalry in an army that has no other cavalry units, since I wouldn't be able to take the model on a transport, and would lose all of the cavalry benefits the second it joined a unit.

Is there some trick to pulling this off that I'm missing?

Cant you join another unit not in a transport, then when you need to use him to assault, you disengage from the unit during your movement, fleet, then assault your own target?

Your right though, if all your other stuff is in rhinos, its makes for a sad panda.

There is essentially no useful reason to put a lord on a mount of Slaanesh.

The mount option exists only because they had a model for it in production once upon a time, and that section of the codex would look funny without it.

Just to edit in more pessimism...

What's the character going to do? Move his 19-24" in one turn, roll a one on the cool and overpriced daemon weapon, and get instant deathed by some power fist guy?

That leaves it as an option costing one third of his base cost for a unit type no one else in the army has, a bonus attack, and the inability to ride in transports. You don't even get to make any rending pony jokes about the guy.

DakkaDakka wrote:

"What, your HQ option isn't so great? Just play a different army."

Here's a better idea, along the same lines. Mount him on a Steed of Slaanesh. Then build like 5 more like him. Now call them Thunderwolves, and say the lord has a thunderwolf mount. Now you're T5 base and can only be instakilled by S10, you're stronger, can get way more attacks than even the daemon weapon can get you, the list goes on. And you're with a unit of cavalry. And you can buy wolves [fiends of slaanesh] to go along with it.

Problem solved. Play space wolves. They gave everything cool chaos used to have to them.

In answer to your question though, it's purely for modeling and might be useful in apocalypse. Flank marching a few fast chaos lords to deal with heavy weapon teams and such works well.

The more I read the codex, the more I think I shouldn't be bothering to use CSM for an army I actually want to win with, and just take the mount for display purposes.

DakkaDakka wrote:

The mounts make for great-looking conversion ideas, but aside from the Disc of Tzeentch, none of them mesh with *anything* else in the army. It's too bad that they took Daemonic Beasts out of the codex. In the end, Daemonic mounts are just another Chaos Marine unit that doesn't really work. I came up with what I thought was a swell Lord on a Steed of Slaanesh, but he's been re-purposed as a herald for an eventual Daemon army.

I still manage to stay competitive with my csm army, but the newer codices do seem to have the legup, especially wolves which have better troops, blood angels that have better characters, and dark eldar that have better guns.

CSM has its strengths- good troops, Oblits, Daemon Princes, etc. but lacks alot for effective alternatives in a given category. And it has alot of junk, the steed being one of them. However, you could use the mounted lord as a "counts as" Daemon Prince.

It is plenty competitive, if a bit bland. I would not recommend it if you are just starting, though, and would pick a loyalist chapter with a playstyle you like and "counts as". As Spellbound points out, it could easilly work as a Thunderwolf lord, or even a counts as bike.