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hey everyone, i'm working on a CSM army right now and I'm not sure what guns to give my marines. right now a lot of them just have bolters, one guy has a heavy bolter, and one has a flamer. pretty standard stuff.

but i have a bunch of other guns... a melta gun, some plasma guns, etc. are they worth it? i'm still really new to 40k so I don't exactly know what's good, but I do know that just keeping the bolters is a safe choice... but would it be in my best interest to give a guy a melta or plasma gun?

thanks for any advice!

It depends.
If you wanna go close, use meltas and plas.

If you just wanna frag them from a distance, just use the HB.

A Plasma gun is a nice weapon, it fits good with the bolters for anti-infatry duites as it has the same range, and its rapid fire. But its much stronger. Use them against medium and heavy infantry.
A meltagun is also a nice weapon, but it is made to destroy tanks at close range. Try them out and see how you like them for yourself.

CSM are not like loyalist Marines. Loyalists are designed to evade close combat and shoot the enemy. We are strongest in close combat so will naturally be positioned close to the enemy. Heavy weapons don't help us here. Plasmaguns are dubious due to being rapid fire, preventing us from charging. Generally you want to take double Meltaguns so your squad has the ability to kill tanks and infantry effectively.

There are situations where taking Plas/AC CSM are viable, but that's almost always because the player has nothing else in their collection.

I recommend against Flamers since your melee is already so strong. If your local meta is into horde infantry, Noise Marines are better. Still, if you can't or won't take other things, Flamer CSM are perfectly viable.

For infantry squads, take melta and/or flamers. Static infantry, or non-melee focused infantry should take plasma. Your havocs should be the ones taking the heavy bolters and missile launchers.

A good composition would be a 2 units of havocs, one with 4 heavy bolters, one with 4 missile launchers, then some standard CSM with... mark of khorne, slanessh, nurgle and flamers/melta with either a power weapon or power fist sergant. Some long range infantry with the mark of chaos glory or nurgle work well with plasma, and chosen are some of the best plasma users, as are plague marines.

Sorry, too much info!

Don't take Icon of Nurgle or Tzeentch. They are mind-numbingly inefficient.

DarkHound wrote:Don't take Icon of Nurgle or Tzeentch. They are mind-numbingly inefficient.

Unless your taking large blocks of infantry (10+) then it's crazy good.