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Im restarting guard again ater a year, as chaos allies. Without going into the fluff of what may allies look like i need some advice for vetrans i know people melta spam vets in chimeras but since i dont have any chimera's yet i have plently o plasma and meltas with my chosen and regular csm's. I have been thinking of using vetran sinpers to try to pick off charaters and potentionlly dangerous models. what would people suggest for some units that will synergize well as support troops for chaos.

Could you give some more info as to what your chaos part tends to run? Also, how many points are you planning on devoting to allies?

Sniper vets feel like a wasted potential though. If you're looking for snipers, other armies are much better at it than IG. What IG can provide is really solid shooting with tons of heavy/special weapon and tons of cheap bodies as well as awesome tanks. For example, you could take a couple vet squads with plasma or sniper rifles, with a heavy weapon (AC or LC usually) give em camo cloaks, and hide them on objectives. Then you could buy a russ variant to back up your chaos units, and maybe Marbo or some stormtroopers as backup as well. A CCS would also work well for a little group like this to provide orders for the vets.

Your other option would be an infantry platoon, which is basically an upgraded version of the cultists that you guys are about to get soon. Guardsmen will essentially be better equipped meatshields that can take far superior weapons. However, they will cost a bit more more than likely.

Well with chaos lists before i started becomeing predictable was two havoc squads with 2 missles/autocannons. or 2 melta chosen squads. It seems once my force reaches the middle of the table trying to push into my oppenets support units they are already depleted and lost effeciveness. i think most of the time im going to be using guard as allies. though that dosnt stop me from building a sizeable force.

Veteran snipers are a waste. The only hits you care about are 6s, so whether or not a 3 hits is irrelevant. Take them on a cheap PCS, or take ratlings (sigh) if you really must have snipers.

As for how to run your vets, you have two questions to ask:

1) What weapon? Melta or plasma are your choices for the primary weapon (three of the same weapon), all of the rest are too weak to be useful or waste BS 4. Both are very solid options, the only question is whether you're more worried about vehicles and multi-wound T4 or MEQs/TEQs. Additionally you have to choose whether to take a LC/AC (other heavies suck) or a demo charge (expensive but potentially awesome).

2) What delivery system? Your choices are a Chimera or Vendetta. A Chimera is cheap and acts as a mobile bunker to get your melta/plasma into range and protect it from return fire, while the Vendetta, in addition to being an awesome unit itself, gives you a one-shot deployment anywhere on the table (often next to a priority target you're willing to sacrifice the unit to kill). Both are good choices depending on the rest of your army, but "none of the above" is not an option. Taking vets without a transport gives you a small and expensive T3/no save unit that will usually die before it manages to do anything.

Vets can be made to work on foot, it just takes a bit more careful deployment. For example, camo cloaks let them hide in ruins or behind an aegis with a +3 cover save. amore mobile unit can take carapace, and it works better than you'd expect. It's definitely not the most hardcore solution, but it is viable if you want to keep all infantry or just don't like or can't afford chimeras. I've used them a couple times now and they're a ot of fun to play with.

Everything else though I agree with, anything other than plasma/ melta and AC/LC is kind of a waste for them

Well i cant afford chimeras for a bit, i run plenty of meltas already and meq killing 1k sons, within normal lists. doing vendetta drops wont be an option for awhile.

Cyvash wrote:
Well i cant afford chimeras for a bit, i run plenty of meltas already and meq killing 1k sons, within normal lists. doing vendetta drops wont be an option for awhile.

TBH, if you can't afford a proper transport, don't use vet squads. A MEQ army doesn't have the target saturation of foot IG to that makes vets without a transport even remotely viable, so all your squad will do is eat up points and die before it gets to deliver its melta/plasma. Until you get Chimeras or Vendettas (and if you're not using Vendettas, you're throwing away the best part of allied IG), basic infantry platoons will do the "sit on the objective and catch bullets" job a lot better.

Also, there's no such thing as "plenty of melta" or "plenty of plasma" when the alternative is snipers/GLs/flamers. No matter how much melta/plasma you already have in your list, vet squads always get melta or plasma.

Umm... I'm pretty sure you don't ally guard for their TROOPS choices. The best thing to ally to your CSM is going to look much more like a primaris psyker, a squad of vets with as few upgrades as you can reasonably get away with and then a squadron of three leman russes.

Regular LRBTs would be a nice touch, since the chaos equivalent is much, much worse, and you might also want to consider 3 bolter-boat punishers for 600 points. 87 S5 shots per turn would go well in any chaos codex.

If you're really wanting to make a go of it with troops, it's going to be tough, since guard troops options have been relegated to somewhat mediocre, while CSM troops choices are amongst the best in the game (and likely to get better when their new codex comes out soon). I guess I'd be tempted to use them as cheap scoring units and nothing more, but given that you can already do this with SLDs and are soon going to be able to do this with cultists, I don't know if I'd bother even for that.

 Ailaros wrote:
Umm... I'm pretty sure you don't ally guard for their TROOPS choices. The best thing to ally to your CSM is going to look much more like a primaris psyker, a squad of vets with as few upgrades as you can reasonably get away with and then a squadron of three leman russes.

Err, really? Allying with IG for troops is an awesome choice for many armies. I know my Tau would rather have a meatshield platoon than Kroot, and I can think of a lot of roles for a cheap melta delivery squad that happens to score if it survives.

Also, a melta CCS is a much better choice than throwing away points on a primaris psyker, as long as you have the cash to buy a transport.

If you're really wanting to make a go of it with troops, it's going to be tough, since guard troops options have been relegated to somewhat mediocre, while CSM troops choices are amongst the best in the game (and likely to get better when their new codex comes out soon).

I don't really understand why you'd say that. CSM troops will probably be good in the next codex, but I don't see what's so impressive about them right now. Basic CSM aren't the worst troops you could get, but all of the other choices are really expensive and kind of disappointing for that price. Meanwhile IG vet squads are just as awesome as they were in 5th and platoons are still very good objective holders. I know you're not happy that power blobs were removed from the game, but most of the IG troops suffered no loss in 6th.

The primaris psyker is a proper support unit. The CCS is really only that useful to just the guard allies. Why bother with a chimera full of melta CCS when you can have chosen do the same job better?

As for troops being great, fine, if you're tau they are. Ask any foot guard commander right now how highly they're rating their troops choices, and you'd get a very different impression of their quality in 6th edition.

As for CSM...

Ailaros wrote:- chaos space marine squads. There are lots of really good troops choices in the CSM codex, but I'm going to have to go with the basics. You can take a 20-man squad with 20 boltguns, AND 20 bolt pistols/CCW, along with the special and heavy weapons, and hidden power fist. This is pretty good on its own, but then you add to it the icons. If you want, you can take this monster squad and just pass out a 5++ save to everyone, or to make it a 20-man marine squad where everyone is T5, or make it so that they almost always strike first in close combat, or become THREE TIMES better than tac squads in assault after the charge. There is just so much you can do with them that you can easily make an entire CSM army with nothing but a compulsory HQ choice and a ton of regular CSM squads. The only reason I don't take them myself is because I love me my berzerkers so much.

... which ends with another point - the god soldiers. Plague marines and 1ksons are still great. Berzerkers got broken, but I'm sure that will be fixed soon.

 Ailaros wrote:
The primaris psyker is a proper support unit.

How exactly does the primaris psyker support anything when its default power is just another gun and it can't take divination, the only discipline that consistently gives you support powers instead of a 1/6 chance for a support power and a 5/6 chance for a gun that's worse than what you gave up to take it?

Edit: also, how does the primaris psyker support anything when it can't join a CSM squad or target a CSM unit with its psychic powers (since IG and CSM are only allies of convenience)?

The CCS is really only that useful to just the guard allies. Why bother with a chimera full of melta CCS when you can have chosen do the same job better?

Because the melta CCS is cheaper and has the same firepower (before orders).

Because the melta CCS can take a Chimera instead of a Rhino.

Because the melta CCS can ride in a Vendetta.

Because the melta CCS can give itself BiD or FOMT to give it even more firepower than the chosen.

As for troops being great, fine, if you're tau they are. Ask any foot guard commander right now how highly they're rating their troops choices, and you'd get a very different impression of their quality in 6th edition.

Yeah, but that's because playing foot guard is a bad idea, not because IG troops are bad. If you play mech guard or use your foot IG in a supporting role, IG troops are awesome.

Ailaros wrote:- chaos space marine squads. There are lots of really good troops choices in the CSM codex, but I'm going to have to go with the basics. You can take a 20-man squad with 20 boltguns, AND 20 bolt pistols/CCW, along with the special and heavy weapons, and hidden power fist. This is pretty good on its own, but then you add to it the icons. If you want, you can take this monster squad and just pass out a 5++ save to everyone, or to make it a 20-man marine squad where everyone is T5, or make it so that they almost always strike first in close combat, or become THREE TIMES better than tac squads in assault after the charge. There is just so much you can do with them that you can easily make an entire CSM army with nothing but a compulsory HQ choice and a ton of regular CSM squads. The only reason I don't take them myself is because I love me my berzerkers so much.

First, hidden power fists no longer exist. If you want to use it, you have to expose it.

Second, why would you ever want to take this unit? A 20-man squad with the same weapon upgrades as a 10-man squad is a terrible idea. Once you scale back to something more sensible, you find that you've got effectively a grey hunter squad without counter-attack, good transport options, or a CML sergeant. Again, it's not the worst unit in the game, but it's really not all that impressive.

Finally, who cares if it's better than a tactical squad in assault? Tactical squads suck, and they really suck in assault. You might as well be saying that your "monster squad" is better than fire warriors in assault. And, in the end, it's still worse than dedicated assault units, so you just spent a ton of extra points on overkilling tactical squads and fire warriors.