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I bought a few stuff for CSM, and the codex. I haven't had time to read the codex yet so not very familiar. I did buy the 3.5 dex, read it and liked the fluff behind it. Never bought any minis for it, but got it for the fluff. Now on a whim, I bought a bunch of minis of CSM, the boxset, the Helldrake, I think it's called, the other MC kit and maybe a few other things, I can't remember what yet.

When I finally get to it, still have DA, and Tyranids to put together and finish, what I would like to know, is for those who play and/or collect CSM, what did you do? Did you make a certain faction? Why did you pick them? What do you guys/gals love about CSM? How do you play, fluffy, to win or what ever?

I want to see why you guys are passionate about CSM, and why and see if I can get my arse in gear to start the CSM minis I have.

I don't know if I can really tell you how to paint or play them - that's up to you. The codex is maligned here for whatever reason, to the point where some people prefer the previous one from 4th edition, which was blander than white bread (with water for dippin'!) and had all of one decent build. The Heldrake is the go-to unit in the codex, since it's fast, stupidly durable, and just nukes Marines like nobody's business. Plague Marines are tough and great, Obliterators are still good, the Dinobots (Forgefiend and Maulerfiend) are kinda good, with the edge going to the Forgefiend, and Marines are decent. The only units to flat out avoid are Mutilators since their models are gross and Terminators do the job better. Warp Talons and Possessed are questionable, but you can fit them in somewhere. Bikes are the secret winners of the codex, since they're cheap, tough, and can be made tougher or meaner.

Personally, I run Iron Warriors with lots of unmarked Marines and Vindicators. I play for the fluff/story aspect of it, and my champions challenging (and occasionally beating) every character on the table is pretty cool, especially when they get really good boon rolls. The army as a whole is pretty brutal and close-ranged, and Chaos has a number of close combat units that are pretty good. Veterans of the Long War is a fun upgrade and really fluffy.

So there's my disjointed thoughts on the codex. I like it. I don't think it's the be-all-end-all of competitive codex writing or anything, but then again I don't really care. There's some flavorful rules and units, and I like the models a bunch. Chaos is neat.

There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

That was an awesome post. Pretty much sums it up for me as well. Hot damn.

I started playing CSM after reading the general fluff about the Imperium and the first few Horus Heresy books. The anti-technology, xenophobic reality of the current Imperium always drove me nuts. So I chose to play a faction that directly opposed them.

I play Iron Warriors. Their technological and scientific leanings always interested me since I work in science. The background for my Warsmith has him lose faith in the Imperium right before the Heresy as his desire to conduct scientific research is suppressed as he is forced to squash civilizations that could have been learned from. As he conducts secret experiments and hoards forbidden tech, he does not need too much convincing to join the rebels. Plus the Index Astartes entry for Iron Warriors made them seem like total bad asses.

Now my Iron Warriors are free to do whatever they please and fulfill their own personal goals. And I remove myself from the Imperium in which the secrets for even pants manufacturing is an art forever lost to history.

Fluff is awesome.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage

Who all have to walk/deepstrike with a widefootprint and are very vulnerable getting places.

Aileros, if I wasn't already a solid, balls to wall, madly passionate Chaos player, I would be now. Exalted post.

As soon as I read the Death Guard fluff, I was in love. OP I suggest you read the horus heresy books/audiobooks and then you will be hooked on chaos, one faction or another

Ailaros wrote:There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

I might make another account to exalt that post again. and again. AND AGAIN.

I was to, you know, DO THINGS with that post... Like seriously dude, that was the most chaotically beautiful thing I have ever read...


OP, just ignore everything except that post... No one can say it better


Von Chogg

Agreed. That's the OP's answer right there.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

Have another Exalt ^^

I chose mine for the fluff as well. I love reading the HH books and they got me hooked. I want to play Alpha Legion with their subtifuge and what not, but in reality anything does. Knowing your commanders will use any tool available to the point of damnation to bring down the tyrants you have steered the Imperium away from the Truth and utopia is a rush. And it is a lot of fun.
Also characters like Kharn who has a tendency to chop down his own squad mates as much as the enemy make the army worth while.

I'm new to CSM as well. I had an idea in mind for a while. I'm building an army bases on the army Loki leads in Ragnarok. I'll be running Thousand Sons, with some Khorne Daemon allies eventually, to counter my Space Wolf army. I love the modeling possibilities with Chaos, really anything goes. Some of my units will have to be heavily converted to fit my Norse theme, and Chaos supports that amazingly.

I haven't gotten into the fluff much yet but love what I have found. They're very complex. I love armies with rich characterful fluff, as I prefer a fluffy army that is also effective, or can be with tweaking. All my games are casual/pick up so the freedom of that matches that of the CSM.

I agree with what was said above about an army of gods. To me, in addition to the almost unthinkable power, CSM in many ways is about freedom. Sure, many are slaves, but they are about breakin the bonds of an oppressor theocracy, looking for knowledge, power, and really seeing how far you can push yourself, the freedom to maximize your full potential.

Heh, or, to put it another way, slaves or no, you get to CHOOSE your masters, dammit.

Also, I'd add in that space marines exist to achieve the peak of unadulterated human martial perfection. CSM exist to achieve the peak of actual human perfection. Even if that involves a symbiosis of human, machine, and spiritual essenses.

I guess you could say that space marines are the perfect humans while CSM are the perfect beings. Or, at least, an attempt at that.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

Ex- -alted!

That was inspired and it moved the dark depths of my Chaos-loving soul.

 Ailaros wrote:
There are two things I really like about them.

The first thing is the fluff. They've done a bad job with the current codex, but if you branch out, there's some wonderful stuff there.

I mean, we're talking about a spiritual realm made of liquid id, that space marines need to completely supress to the point where they become inhuman automatons. Then, the absolute peak of humanity - strongest, best trained, best equipped, gods among men - have the faintest glimmer of what it's like to be human again, and instantly they rebel. They use their incredible power to explore what being human really means. They spend the remainder of their possibly immortal lives discovering the extent of human knowledge or experience, or they are allowed to continue on their path of the warrior, but to do so with the ameteur zeal and personal joy that comes with being able to try things out, and improve your skill in your own creative way. You get to be the best YOU can be, not the best someone else trains you to be, and no further.

... and spending your free time butchering those who castrated your humanity, and engaging on a never-ending quest to liberate the rest of mankind from the most brutal, oppressive regime in its history. They're the only civil liberty revolutionaries in the fluff.

Also, there are some other neat tidbits. Like, read the current fluff for The Scourged (p.15). They were a chapter of space marines working with the inquisition. Their job was to rout out heretics and burn them alive. The chapter master thought is problematic (or at least inefficient) that they might be burning tens of thousands of innocent people, and so, while meditating on a solution, Tzeentch bestowed upon his whole chapter the magical ability to always tell when someone was lying. The next day, they show up for their briefing with the inquisitor, and he says "Hey, great job yesterday, everybody. We killed a lot of guilty heretics, and have made mankind much safer. Keep up the good work, and remember that you're making a big difference".

... and they all immediately understand that 100% of what the inquisitor just said is a complete lie. And they instantly flipped over to chaos. The fluff contains several examples of the idea that all you need to do to make a space marine switch over to chaos is make them just a little bit better at their jobs. It's all you need for them to take matters into their own hands and apply their own genius and creativity, and take their own initiative. And that, really, is the core of what separates a regular marine from a chaos one. That and eventually they get mutations and start praising gods that exist, rather than ones that don't.

The second thing I like about CSM is how they play on the table. They are 100% aggressive, 100% of the time. Going through their current codex and looking for units that exist only to engage in long-range shooting, and you have certain (but not all) builds of havocs, and predators, and... umm... sort of vindicators and sort of autocannon forgefiends and.... that's pretty much it. Everything else is either geared towards close combat or 12" shooting.

They're also a marine army, which means that you get the kind of basic durability required to actually make it to your opponent, and the kind of damage that they can put out is shocking.

For the price of 10 THSS terminators, you can get 20 khrone berzerkers with veterans. On the charge, those berzerkers get 80 attacks that hit on rerollable 3's, and wound on 3's. That's 47 armor saves, which means 8 dead terminators. The few hammers swing back, and the survivors are pulped the next turn. I bet you've never seen THSS terminators disappear in close combat like that, much less to nothing more than a bunch of lunatics with chainsaw swords.

And that's just one example. 10 combi-plasma terminators with power axes and MoK can do hideous damage, and even when you scale down, you've got things like maulerfiends (which I've seen take down land raiders on the charge with a single round of attacking) and khorne lords with axes of blind fury. It's really not that hard for most properly kitted chaos squads to completely pulp something they come across in a single action.

They're an army of going over to your opponent's side of the board, at land raider, jump pack or infiltrator speeds (or just on foot) and beating them up like a bunch of thugs. Stone cold gangster.

If I had to say a third thing about them, I'd also note that there is the most possible modelling opportunities second maybe only to orks. If you run a nurgle army, you get to spend a lot of time with greenstuff if you want, and if you're skilled, make some really stunning work. There's a lot that you can do and still have it look chaosey.

Anyways, I guess the short pitch for CSM is to imagine that you had semi-immortality, and semi-invincibility, and all the power you can use. What would you do with that kind of godlike ability? What would you do after that? What would you do 1,000 years after that after your initial petty goals were accomplished? What would it be like to really be a god? What if you fielded a whole army of them?

That's what CSM is about.

Wow that was great, thank you for taking your time writing that out.

For all the others thank you as well for your comments as well. Keep them coming, will start reading the codex this weekend when I have time.

 Ailaros wrote:


....snip....That's what CSM is about.

EPIC....Exalt!