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Hey all, I have a crazy comparison issue, and that is the cult marines vs. your normal run of the mill chaos space marines. the question comes at what is better to run, more basic squads of chaos marines or less of the cult troops. this comes as a buddy of mine was running two squads of thousand suns in rhinos the other day and i was thinking he would have been better off with three of your normal chaos space marines instead as that would be tougher over all give more targets and lay down more fire that is still decent, but what do you all think?

I am not sure on this that is just my initial reaction to the situation, so I will let you all be the judge.

You're right, especially in the case of Thousand Sons. They pay a massive premium for a small increase in survivability and specialising at killing on-foot marines who have nothing more than their 3+ save to protect them. Pretty much any of the other troop options are going to be more flexible, survivable and effective than the Thousand Sons, while being cheaper to boot.

As a huge fan of the Thousand Sons I completely agree with Chrysis' assessment. They can be AMAZING in the right circumstances, however the situation does not arise often and once an opponent understands the limitations of the Sons, you will be fighting an uphill battle from then on. Regular CSM can be quite flexible and give you a lot more bodies on the ground to mess people up with and hold objectives.

All that being said I always run 1k Sons in all of my lists, but I don't play in tourneys, just with my friends and family. My advice is if your friend wants to become competitive then introduce him to other potential troops, but if he just enjoys that particular group then just let him play them.

Well how about putting the 1k Sons in a Land Raider and outflanking them per Ahriman's special ability. The Landraider will give them extra bit of cover and fire support while they wait to get out and charge.

Also puts a big threat behind enemy lines while your main force moves up from the front.

I dont play CSM, but have been reading the codex and trying to figure out some ideas to ally them with my orks. I like the 1k Sons models and their fluff, so I was trying to think of viable ways to use them. Orks dont have much in the way of tough infiltrate or deep strike. In fact all they have are kommandos, which are pretty much just boyz that can take burnas.

@ Icculus, unfortunately you can only infiltrate dedicated transports. if you want to infiltrate a landraider you need to take terminators. If you are tying them up with your orks you could take the CSM as the primary force and use Hurons ability to infiltrate orks, mega-nobz in a trukk or in a deff roller battle waggon. I'm currently going down similar lines.

The problem with 1Ksons is they die just like normal marines to small arms fire and they cost a fortune.

Beserkers lack a good delivery system unless you are willing to invest in a landraider, or a big unit to infilrate (via Huron, but see below).

Noise marines are okay but people get tied up on making them uber shooty and their forces tend to seriously lack heavy fire power nor serious assaulty units.

Plague marines are solid, access to assault weapons and have the plague knives to make short work of wraithlords and other toughies. Too expensive to spam and usually end up in small rhino based units which turn into plasma waggons

The problem is you do need a lord to really unlock their potential, particularly at the 1500pt and lower battles. They don't earn a place in a side unless they are troops. If you want to then do things out of the ordinary with Huron's infiltrate, a warpsmith or a demon prince suddenly you have spent too much on HQs.

I'm a bit fan of the humble CSM. The point reduction lets you spam them a bit better. They can get some benefits of the cult marines via marks (MoN and charge anything S3!) They're not fearless but with the champions LD9 chances are they will not run from firing and they should be able to hold their own in combat.

And we still don't have cult terminator and dreads. Damn it.

This is something I've struggled with since the new codex came out. My answer after many many games was "Neither". The Cult troops are typically too expensive with many drawbacks. Plague marines are probably the one exception, but they are still costly and, as mentioned, you have to dedicate your Lord to Nurgle to really get the full use. On the other hand, I've found that basic, bare bones CSM almost always under-perform. You can upgrade them to make them better, but then they start to have the same issue as the cult troops. I've had much more success taking many cultist blobs (cultists are probably also too expensive for what they give you but are at least cheap compared to the other options) and even some bare bones cheap IG allies for my troops choices and then using the saved points to really go to town on the super killy special units.

Cultists too expensive? They cost the same as grots!

If I had to rank the CSM troops considering their respective lords I'd go

Plague Marines > Noise Marines > CSM > cultists > Khorne Zerks / Rubric Marines

Plague Marines and Noise Marines (w/o the FnP) are pretty solid troops mainly due to fearless and access to special weapons, the PM obviously are a lot tougher but they are also more expensive. Sadly a 10man CSM with the fearless icon comes pretty close to the cult troops costs (if you are running 2-3 troops on a 1750-2000 game you want your scoring units to stay no matter what so go fearless).

CSM in numbers or with fearless icon would be my 3rd choice they can hold objectives good, they got access to special weapons and don't need a MoN/MoS lord. Tzeentch and Khorne cult troops unfortunately are way too expensive for what they bring imho, the lack of special weapons and actually anything shooty besides plasma pistols on the zerks makes them weak compared to a MoK CSM squad and the rubric marines are really expensive but whenever they manage to shoot at marines out of cover they are great.

 chaplaincliff wrote:
What is better to run, more basic squads of chaos marines or less of the cult troops.

They fill different roles. Plain CSM can still be pretty good, they just need a little bit more support to make them so.

1k sons are a specialty unit, meaning they are very good against specific targets and weak against others. In the case of 1k sons, they extremely good at killing marines. They also have some flexability with the lvl 1 psyker leader.
However, your paying a premium for this functionality. Min squads will have a per-model cost of 30 PPM -- double the cost of a grey hunter.

Normal CSM, on the other hand, can be very good for their cost. I have discovered mixing up some bolters with additional CCWs is an excellent way to run them. The biggest drawback of CSM I have discovered is their lack of fearless -- and to help combat this I have been using Fabius Bile and two squads of 20 CSM. Fabius boosts one squad to make them fearless, and joins the other squad, making them fearless.

I find the ksons are actually fairly decent with some good support i run squads of 8 myself and i have had a unit weather a cadre fireblade boosted volley with maybe 1 dieing then cuase a morale check the next turn however i tend to infiltrate and outflank with a 5 man termie unit with with a mot termie sor with either mainly bio or telep love the look on the faces when a dirge caster rhino pulls up in front of a firewarrior unit and some nurgle spawn rip them appart in melee right now im using ahirman for the warlord but planing on switching to huron to save points that lvl 4 rreally isnt worth 230 points when he gets hit with a strength 8 weapon from a precioned melta
however i have a fairly abstract playstyle haveing learned the game with eldar and nids and dont really like the feel of standard csm squads

 labmouse42 wrote:

 chaplaincliff wrote:
What is better to run, more basic squads of chaos marines or less of the cult troops.

They fill different roles. Plain CSM can still be pretty good, they just need a little bit more support to make them so.

1k sons are a specialty unit, meaning they are very good against specific targets and weak against others. In the case of 1k sons, they extremely good at killing marines. They also have some flexability with the lvl 1 psyker leader.
However, your paying a premium for this functionality. Min squads will have a per-model cost of 30 PPM -- double the cost of a grey hunter.

Normal CSM, on the other hand, can be very good for their cost. I have discovered mixing up some bolters with additional CCWs is an excellent way to run them. The biggest drawback of CSM I have discovered is their lack of fearless -- and to help combat this I have been using Fabius Bile and two squads of 20 CSM. Fabius boosts one squad to make them fearless, and joins the other squad, making them fearless.

Can't the sorcerer end up rolling Iron arm for all the hilarity an S5-7 T-5-7 force weapon wielder can bring?

Indeed but not reliably as its a roll of 1 on the bio chart

 Kain wrote:
Can't the sorcerer end up rolling Iron arm for all the hilarity an S5-7 T-5-7 force weapon wielder can bring?

No because being a marked pskyer in the book he needs to roll at least one time on the Tzeentch chart. Otherwise kson spam would actually be decent just to get biomancy rolls for things like endurance and enfeeble to support your other units.

So unless you are running more that a level 1 sorcerer, it does not work that well.

Breng77 wrote:

 Kain wrote:
Can't the sorcerer end up rolling Iron arm for all the hilarity an S5-7 T-5-7 force weapon wielder can bring?

No because being a marked pskyer in the book he needs to roll at least one time on the Tzeentch chart. Otherwise kson spam would actually be decent just to get biomancy rolls for things like endurance and enfeeble to support your other units.

So unless you are running more that a level 1 sorcerer, it does not work that well.

Aww, an army of Iron arm sorcerers would be hilarious though.

Having played against Thousand sons quite a bit, i can say that they are quite a threatening and durable unit. On the whole, since MEQ armies are the most prevalent, most TAC armies run quite a lot of weapons that are very good at taking down MEQ's. The advantage of the Thousand sons is that they can shrug off quite a lot of the firepower due to their invulnerable save, so Plasma, Melta, Battlecannons, demolishers and earthshakers do a lot worse against them than they do regular marines. At the same time, they themselves are optimised to gun down MEQ's. against basic weapons, they are just as easy to kill as normal marines, and against armies like Guard, the AP3 is somewhat wasted as they will perform as well as normal marines.

What you get point for point is probably not worth the extra you will spend, but they are a durable unit, thats very good at what they are supposed to do, which is killing marines and generally ignoring special weapons and other marine killing hardware. but bad at taking out anything isn't a marine (or at least only as good as normal marines) have to rely on the psyker to stand much of a chance against vehicles.

YMMV but they are a fairly strong unit, if overcosted, but you do need to tailor your list around them more than you do other cult troops or normal marines

I've been working with dual special naked champ VotLW CSMs. Sometimes in a rhino, sometimes not.

Utilize them as short range anti infantry squads primarily.

Thousand Sons can:

- Camp deployment zone objectives while ignoring barrage weapons
- Become Terrible Gods on that one crappy board at the FLGS without any terrain
- Tie up walkers and monstrous creatures all game
- Cause more damage piling out of a land raider than any other troop choice with rapid fire + psychic attack + assault
- Weather a heldrake better than any other troop choice in the game
- wear the very biggest most elaborate helmet ornamentation of any chaos unit, putting even khorne rabbit ears to shame
- Offer a firsthand opportunity to see how awful soul blaze is

Thousand Sons can't:

- Weather enormous amounts of small arms fire
- Make their points back
- Roll the psychic power you wanted
- Attempt and fail Defensive Fire
- Live up to the hype from A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns without using someone else's codex