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Hey everyone!

New 40k player, and did some Fantasy stuff a few years ago. I've been looking into which army to pick up for a few weeks now, and I have narrowed it down to Chaos Space Marines and Tau.

I like the Chaos Marines because they look awesome and I feel I would have a blast painting and assembling them. However, I can't seem to find much about their actual play style. And I like Tau because of how I feel they will play. If Tau, I would go for an infantry heavy list, and it just seems like a cool way to play in my opinion. Though they look impressive when completed, I don't feel I would enjoy painting them as much.

Any insight on these 2 armies, and what you'd play based on what I mentioned?
Also, how do Chaos Marines play, anyways? I may even like the sounds of their play style, and then that's 2 to 1 against Tau.

Thanks

It just so happens I play both these armies

CSM:

The main appeal to CSM is the fluff behind the traitor legions. Some people prefer a balanced approach and build a chaos undivided traitor legion that uses a little bit of everything, but I think it is more interesting to pick a specific traitor legion - a legion with a unified theme will look awesome and the play style will be unique to your army.

Regular space marines are to be considered the middle ground where CSM can fall on either side of the spectrum: small elite armies of 10,000 yr old traitors or hordes of expendable cultists/cheap standard CSMs.

Overall, they play like marines with some flavourful choices to differentiate them.

Tau:

Their play style is very interesting - the best way to describe their feel is that they play like our modern military forces: lots of shiny/expensive firepower that needs to be constantly maneuvered and deployed optimally.

Tau are actually fairly durable compared to other non-marine races and you'll definitely want to take advantage of drones in each of your squads to some degree. An infantry based Tau gunline army could work quite well in 1500 pts or less, but you'll definitely want to start adding battlesuits and devilfish for your squads in larger games.

Tau is one of those armies where you need a bit of everything to really have an interesting and competitive army, if you are just going to spam FWs and max your heavy support slots then it could get old pretty fast. In that case you'd be better off with a CSM plaguemarine army support by obliterators and havocs.

Get both Chaos Tau!

As a CSM player who regularly plays against a friend's Tau army, I heartily endorse throwing your lot in with the chaos gods.
Not only do they know how to throw a party, they've got the coolest looking models (as you've noticed) and you can alter their playstyle to suit your personal tastes, all within one excellently fluffed-out codex. You can focus on CC with some heavy ranged support, you can go ranged with the ability to hold your own in melee (unlike Tau!), you can build a mechanized army, you can build a power-armour wearing horde army, and more.

Best of all you can mix bits and pieces of all of the above as you please, with the fluff AND stats to hold it all together. And if you're worried about getting bored with one play style? Swap out one or two units and run your army completely differently.

I was leaning towards Tau or Tyranids originally. Got into Chaos Space Marines as a way to start playing affordably due to the value in the Dark Vengeance starter kit split with my buddy, and was instantly converted as a Heretic of the Dark Gods.

I haven't looked back since.

Go with chaos. The army is so much fun play wise and sorry wise.

neither, go orks

Seriously though, it depends want you want. To you want to use magic? Go CSM. Do you want to use hi-tech gadgets? Go tau.

I would say let Grandfather Nurgle fill your soul with the blissful joy of eternal life and your enemies with the flesh sloughing pestilence and pain of a million plagues.

In short: Play Nurgle CSM

Chaos ! I had both armies and ended up selling both because i needed the money but now i am finding my self buying chaos sets on ebay not because i need or can afford them but because the are just great! when i played Tau (old codex) i feel i was playing a a static gunline .

Mrpinchy wrote:
I like the Chaos Marines because they look awesome and I feel I would have a blast painting and assembling them. However, I can't seem to find much about their actual play style. And I like Tau because of how I feel they will play. If Tau, I would go for an infantry heavy list, and it just seems like a cool way to play in my opinion. Though they look impressive when completed, I don't feel I would enjoy painting them as much.

This is generally where I say 'you already made your choice' if you actually intend to paint your stuff. Something you need to remember is painting an army is a long term goal, it's not going to just happen over night and you need to be sure you're going to enjoy painting what you have, otherwise you just won't be motivated to do it.

Chaos has the most eclectic bunch of play styles of any army, thanks to the mark and icon system, cult troops and other bizarre troops. If you want to build as an assault heavy army, you absolutely can. If you want to build as a shooting heavy army, you absolutely can. If you want to build as a high model count foot army, you absolutely can. If you want to build as a low model count elite army, you absolutely can. If you want to build as a slow, super tough army, you absolutely can. And it goes on. Basically, Chaos playstyle depends on how you want to build your army.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/6th_Edition_Tactics/Chaos_Space_Marines

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/6th_Edition_Tactics/Tau