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Hello everyone, after reading Henry Zou's Emperor Mercy, and Flesh and Iron; I have decided to start up a Blood Gorgons CSM army. However I am new to this, and after reading through the codex, I figured this would be a good starting list. All help and advice from Chaos users is greatly appreciated! So here is the starting list I have so far:

Chaos Lord: term armor, power weapon, combi bolter. Mark of Nurgle, daemonic steed, veterans of the long war, Dimensional key-190pts.

Daemon Prince: DoN, lvl 2 mastery, power armour, ichor blood-210 pts

10 man CSM squad: meltagun, autocannon, MoN-180pts

5man CSM:ccw, plasma pistol, MoN-115 pts

7 Plague Marines: icon of despair, chain axe, gift of mutation-196 pts.

5 Chosen: power fist, power weapon, combi plasma, MoN-155 pts.

20 Cultists/ mixed chaos guardsmen (for looks): heavy stubber, MoN-135pts

Chaos Spawn(2): MoN-78pts

forgefiend: 175pts.


It will be awhile before I have all of these, and of course I can't copy the blood gorgons exactly from the books since they are chaos undivided, but I figured this would be a fun army to play with, and was just seeing what advice you all had before I buy the models. Thanks again.

Hey! Im starting an army as well. Im not sure why youre taking CSM when you can take plague marines! Maybe you want a diverse army? But plagues are pretty good. Also too many upgrades. Heard icons arent that useful and im nit sure if youd want GoN on that squad either.

Also look into getting rhinos. Theyre pretty good and your army wont get dwindled down before even getting in range

Also put what point leve you want to get started at so people can help you better

Yea after reading some more, I think I might leave out the CSM squads and add more plague marines. I'm thinking maybe 1500pts to start.

So i could add two rhinos for 70-90 pts, more plague marines, and more vehicles, blow stuff up and what not >

Yea idk if i'll have all of them with MoN, especially if i want Blood Gorgons b/c they are chaos undivided. I'm also thinking about some bikes, never used them with my BT but am willing to give them a chance.

What army are you starting up?

I am not sure which book of the blood gorgons, but it was about a sorc betraying lord, sold out chapter to plague marines, while one marine from a squad of 6 is the survivor as he tracks down his partner. He enslaves a dark eldar, betrays a human, frees a homocidal psychic kid who thought he was death.

Anyways, I think you need to make a major choice, fluff or competitive. U try hard to make s fluff list as competitive but it can not be.

Yes I cannot argue with that: Fluff or competitive.

That is why I went with the MoN with my lord and units. and the daemonic steed adds like 2 W and 1 A i think, don't have the codex at hand. From what i've read, and seen others play, Nurgles blessings does pretty well with CSM, and Typhus as HQ...

Couple things:
-cant take terminator armor and a palaquin (which is the nurgle demonic steed) I also think the dimensional key is very very situational, and a waste of points, you will almost never be able to use it.
-Daemon Prince, since you have to take 1 power from the nurgle discipline, it really isn't worth it. I would recommend either using a black mace, or a Burning Brand. Always take wings as well.
-The CSM squads are pretty good
-I wouldn't waste points on the icon of despair, as it only grants fear, and I would take a power axe instead of a chain axe. the AP2 is totally worth the 7 extra points.
-Chosen are really good, but I would definitely kit them out for one purpose, melee or range. and if you're going with range, go with actual plasma guns.
-Cultists=good, but I would recommend the heavy flamer to try and deter charges.
-Spawn, these guys are great, but I would go with 5 if you have them!


These are just my thoughts from my experiences trying to make chaos work.

Thank you! See I have no idea how to use chaos, so your feedback is greatly appreciated, I will probably use chosen for close combat.

So do you think the 2+ save is worth losing the extra wounds and attack? B/c I may just lose the term armor, cut those points out and keep the steed.
After reading some more, I'm not sure if I will use Nurgle for my troops entirely either. Plague marines do seem like a convenient troop however.

The blood gorgons I read about were nearly slaanesh, if not csm marked of slaanesh not nurgle. They frequently train and drilled themselves in combat practice with feral tyranids they capture. They pair themselves up in a squad of 6 with a parasite worm. They also have sex slaves. Their armor is encrusted with corral. They are described to act on muscle memory from constain training to attain +1 initiative, often surprising I5 dark eldar in combat. The main character would tactically use his vox caster at max volume to diabilitate his enemy for the split second he needed. All of these examples lead me to believe they are most likely I5 csm with MoS.

If you want something closer to fluff try this list

Lord, MoS, lightning claw shaped like a daemonnete crab claw

Squad Behesda Csm+1, 1 flamer, champ with combi flamer, rhino, dirge caster, combi-melta

Csm+1, 1 meltagun, champ with combi melta, rhino , dirge caster, combi-flame

Just to start following fluff

I did not read the other books so I do not know their favorite elite, fast attack, and heavy support.

Otherwise I would just make a slaanesh noise army to be competitive.

Yea I haven't read the new book on the Blood Gorgons, the two I have read make it hard to pick what they are.

Are the noise marines pretty good? I haven't seen or played any games with them.

Noise are pretty good considering all the cowering Tau and Elder out there...mix them with a few ranged hitters from the chosen, and you can be real competitive...

I modelled my steed as a four legged lictor from the nids...he's my Lord's steed of Slaanesh

I win about 80% of the time in casual games with a heavy noise list in varying degrees...I haven't even fielded the drake yet...but I use lots of cultists

Thanks for the tips, I will really consider that. I'd love to see that lictor steed, that probably looks awesome!!
Would noise marines be good against SM, and Necrons? The main armies that I play against are tau, SM, Necron and Orks.

If you want to get a feel for your play style too you should play with a friend and proxy the army, depending on what type of army you want to play, then you can buy the appropriate model or be like me and buy everything for the armies you have anyway and spend way too much money with gw and never play some of the crap you bought, but man it looks cool painted on your shelf... lol

Oh yea I made that mistake with my IG, gw definitely overpriced, but that's another topic haha.
Yea ill probably get a chaos lord, some spawn and 2 regular csm squads for sure (already own 5 chosen with ccw). I could take ten or two squads of five and try them out as plague, noise, thousand sons, whatever the day needs.

Blastmasters pop space marines like a teenager pops spots...

Double SM toughness penetrates power armor ignores cover small blast..1 allowed per 5 noise marines

id drop the dimensional key, the icon of despair, and the chosen, try and fit in a helldrake, and i also agree to take more plague marines than regular csms.

That blast master sounds pretty nifty...

And I am considering a Helldrake, they get that per game attack right? But I think I will keep the chosen and use them for melee action, maybe jumping out of a rhino or something.

Are demon princes even worth the points? They seem like they'd be good, and I am really curious about them as well.

They are good for getting that 66 roll on a challenge win...just sayin'

The drake is your flyer of choice, the DP can be popped out of the air and its ground game is marginal for the value...

You'd be rushing mobs or better monstrous critters with it, where most of the time it will lose or get bogged down

A good chaos list that can even compete with necrons or eldar should consist of.

Nurgle spawns
Plague marines in rhinos
Heldrakes
Havoc with auto cannons.
Nurgle lord on bike with the mace.

Ok, thanks for letting me know about the DP.

If I have a lord on a bike wouldn't I want other bikes with him? Like a squad of three? Because single bikes are just thrown into the meat grinder from past experiences haha. That does seem like it'd be an effective list though.

Would replacing a rhino with a land raider be a good idea? The support would be great I'd imagine, but the points might not.

I take the lord on bike with spawns, it makes a scary unit to deal with.

So you just have the single bike, with spawn. Interesting. Does that work pretty well?

You need more spam, choose the best type of unit for each category and spam it. Daemon prince and chosen are bad compared to other options BTW.

The Spawn with a lord is okay, but 3 Heldrakes with baleflamers is extremely devastating and the spawn often just get stuck in combat. The Heldrakes make their points back quick. Each one can decimate a unit every turn with its baleflamer and vector strike.

 That-Black-Templar-Guy wrote:
Ok, thanks for letting me know about the DP.

If I have a lord on a bike wouldn't I want other bikes with him? Like a squad of three? Because single bikes are just thrown into the meat grinder from past experiences haha. That does seem like it'd be an effective list though.

Would replacing a rhino with a land raider be a good idea? The support would be great I'd imagine, but the points might not.

I made a nurgle lord on a bike escorted by 3-5 chaos bikers as HQ group. The awesome thing about chaos bikes is that they are cheap and grant toughness 5. With Mark of Nurgle that becomes Toughness 6, which really makes it hard for anything that isn't a heavy special weapon to scratch you. The bikers are not as strong as chaos spawns in melee, but even standard chaos bikers have two attacks each, one in the profile, one bonus for two melee weapons standard equipment. Add one for attacking and of course the champ gets his bonus attack and you are well underway. The main weakness of spawns is that they don't have an armor save or an invulnerable safe. If something hits them out of cover, they take wounds. If something strong hits them, they are insta-fried with no saves. The bikers get their servo armor 3+ at least and always have a 5+ cover from bike movement until they get into melee.

Give your chaos lord a power claw and a power fist. That way you can either hit at your normal initiative with the claw or hit at ini-step 1 with the stronger power fist, depending on what appears prudent with regards to your opponent. You also get a bonus attack from having two special weapons. Grab the Sigil of Corruption from the wargear for your portable 4+ saving throw. Always useful when someone hits you with a DS1/2/3 weapon.

To distill all that Nurgle awesomeness into a model, I made my own. More info here: http://stephanius40k.blogspot.de/2013/07/nurgle-general-on-trike.html

My typical list is two plague marine squads with rhinos, two culists squads to hold uncontested objectives, a heldrake, a bunch of obliterators and whatever else I'm in the mood for.
I would advise you to stay away from any regular CSM or Possessed, unless you really want them for fluff reasons.

Edit:

#1 on your list.
Buy 3 Heldrakes.

Your just going to be torn into a billion different directions with 'advice'. You mentioned you have BT and IG, so you know how to play and what works and what doesn't for the most part already. As Eiluj mentioned, proxy some stuff and play a couple of 1000pt games to get the feel for what you want to play and to fit in your play style. Remember, these people are not you, they do not roll your dice or place your figs or choose who to shoot. You do all of that. You could be told someone's best list that they have won 20 games with it, but that doesn't mean /you/ will win with it or even have a good time playing it.

I like the bike lord!

And yes that is a valid point I could be destroyed using their lists, but I think it is good to hear from people who use the army what is worth the points or not. That way I can get a feel for what to try before I buy it all and have it sitting on a shelf if it doesn't fit well.

Thank you again for all the replies and feedback! It is greatly appreciated!