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ok, i play chaos marines and daemons.i generally play csm as the primary, but have found lately all im doing is taking the minum needed to get 2x heldrakes and then fill the rest with demons. and i dont know why, but that irritates the piss out of me. i am generally unhappy with the csm dex, and find that it frankly sucks. but there is the heldrake. its an amazing unit in an otherwise lackluster book. the daemons have alot more going for them i think. the greater demons, fateweaver, plaguebearers, horrors, heralds, demon princes, fleshhounds, seekers, soulgrinders.

i mean they have TONS of useful good units. csm have what? demon princes and heldrakes?? oblits can be useful, and bikes too, but what else? yes cult units and cultists are ok, but generally only taken for heldrakes.

so im asking, is the heldrake good enough to take csm as the primary, or only codex in an army?

I had 4000 points of CSM... After playing the new Dex for a few months I now own zero points of CSM and 3000 points of Daemons.

The daemon book is better in almost every aspect, the fluff is amazing, tons of viable builds, and I mean TONS.

Better models, cooler units. The Heldrake is great, but it's not as game breaking as it once was. I was fortunate enough to get rid of my CSM real estate before the Heldrake's decline.

I'm with you bro, I love Daemons to the fullest. They're the true Chaos anyway...

my only issue with straight daemons is they seem to be hellbent on luck more than any other army.

i dont play them, but a few guys at the store do. Ive never seen them have a good game. its either they stomped their opponent, or they got stomped. No close calls, no challenging victories, nothing. All depends on the spells they get.

That alone is why i dont have daemons. I love the models, but orks are random enough for me lol

i agree, gw has just cut the teeth of the csm too much, they've lost so much character and clas, but they were my first army, way back in 3rd edition. but i love me some daemons too!!

i have the CSM dex. primarily nowi play them as a custom force. not tied to a specific marine dex so i can mostly just change it how i want it.

thats my solution to how bad the CSM dex is

what does that even mean?? what are you talking about, can you give any examples?

Csm with khorne mark better than zerkers
Deflier has to snapshot after firing main cannon
Thousand sons
More things need EW IMO. Like the space marine shield
Mutilators
Helbrutes
None of our new units are that great

 Vineheart01 wrote:
my only issue with straight daemons is they seem to be hellbent on luck more than any other army.

i dont play them, but a few guys at the store do. Ive never seen them have a good game. its either they stomped their opponent, or they got stomped. No close calls, no challenging victories, nothing. All depends on the spells they get.

That alone is why i dont have daemons. I love the models, but orks are random enough for me lol

Then they don't play fateweaver. My record with Daemons as it stands since June is 27-3. Fateweaver smooths out the codex, and makes things predictable. I've won very close games and have blown out my opponent. My losses have all been very close. So maybe your friend is building his list incorrectly. It's a complicated codex if you want it to be competitive in a TAC tourney setting.

I don't particularly hate the CSM codex and play multiple CSM lists that don't involve Heldrakes. My view is that most CSM players are too fixated on the Heldrake and ignore other options the Codex gives you. I wouldn't say I have more or less success with Heldrake lists, it's about the same.

While the Heldrake is a good unit, I get a lot more traction out of builds that include large numbers of Noise Marines in Rhinos and / or Bikers. I fill out the heavy weapons slots with laspreds, havocs and Oblits. Every once in a while I get a Helbrute just for the heavy weapons (and am starting to look at forgefields now as well). I bring a powerful HQ or two and surround them with enough models to ensure they get there. The Black Legion codex opened up a lot of options involving Chosen, artefact-laden Chaos Lords and Sorcerers that I rely on heavily.

Part of the reason I say this is I have been going up against a lot of Tau and Eldar recently, both of whom have the tools to take out flyers pretty effectively. I think they expect Chaos players to come in with Heldrakes and end up having problems with multiple 10 man MoS biker units. My tactics are a factor here as well, one of the things I like to do is create a wall of Rhinos with a bunch of squads of Noise Marines lined up behind them. Situations where I have an opponent wondering if it's really a good idea to shoot at something on my side, for fear of what's behind it, are part of my game.

But, I mean, when I can get a force together that features 10+ lascannon shots and 10+ plasma shots per turn, what's the problem? I don't need Heldrakes when I am one-shotting enemy commanders and tanks from across the board, and my infantry is generally tough enough to deal with a round or two of footslogging when they need to.

In regards to daemons, I have the Codex and do like the models. I haven't gotten around to painting any or planning a force. I would likely want to have the Daemon's army as a primary detachment just to get access to the Heralds. I would like to see what happens when I drop a Bloodthirster into the backfield on some Tau while my infantry advances. It's just kind of alien to me, I am not sure how long it would take me to adjust to the tactics.

 zachwho wrote:
so im asking, is the heldrake good enough to take csm as the primary, or only codex in an army?

The CSM codex has a few things that are still decent in it.

* Spawn
* Abbadon
* Typhus
* Kharn
* Plague Marines
* Noise marines
* Cheap terminators
* Cheap bikes
* Helldrake
* Autocannon Havocs
* Obliterators
* Slightly cheaper land raider
* 2 Fearless CSM blobs with Fabius
* Cultists
* DP w/black mace

They may not be tau/eldar, but they are much better than a lot of the codex's out there right now. Look at the torrent of fire report for FoB. You will see some CSM doing well in bracket 3. How many BA, DA, GK, DE, Orks, SoB do you see in those brackets?
http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/Feast-of-Blades-Invitational/2/leaderboard

So yea, CSM are still an army that you can take to a tourney and not be laughed off the table, but your probably not going to take home first. If your digging the spikey marines, keep playing them.

I agree, they do merge well with daemons. I really enjoyed my plague marines with nurgle daemons. I still used the CSM as primary in those games.

I am sorry that others hate the CSM book so much.

I take 2x Heldrakes at 2000+, and with good reason. My allies help my Reserves to arrive most of the time and since I always have a good chance of getting Scryer's Gaze, why not take a CSM Master of Deception Warlord? So that's 1-3 Outflanking units and 2x Heldrakes that can get help via Scryer's Gaze (if you roll it) or Fateweaver's single D6 roll for that critical unit arriving if you take him instead of a Lvl 3 Herald of Tzeentch who will probably be spamming Divination. Absolutely- Heldrakes are great in a Primary Detachment, especially when you can help them arrive. They are that good.

I wonder how many games I would have won if I had remembered to use It Will Not Die.

I actually quite like the CSM book.

Granted I have only played a few games with it and they have all been small ones, but I think a lot of the units have potential.

Sure there are the obviously better ones like oblits, helldrakes and the noise/plague marines, but even the basic csm have their uses.

Shockingly, even the mutilators could be good when used properly. Either in a land raider with a termi lord as a shock troop or deep strike solo into the enemy lines as a distraction, they are not necessarily as useless as people make out.

Because a lot of the units have minor weaknesses (i.e. warp talons not having grenades which admittedly they should have) they get dismissed as useless when all they need is a bit of thought to get use out of.

For example, warp talons. Sure they are expensive, but they shred marines in the open like nobodies business. And you will catch marines in the open sometime.

I mostly field them as allied detachment to Daemons. Black mace daemon prince is on par with a Daemons one so there's no sacrifice in the HQ slot. Then you just have the obligatory Troops slot which is 10 cultists who can wander onto the board on turn 3/4 and hope to pick up an objective. So the cost of bringing csm allies is low. The down side is the 1 drake limit.

What about the cost of bringing them as primary? Well you can't take more than 1 herald which means you can't build around any of the Divination powers or herald spam play styles. You can only take 1 greater daemon so flying circus will be less powerful with CSM primary. You can't have fateweaver and grimoire unless you want a daemon prince carrying it (which is a bit risky). This leaves khorne dog + spawn rush list. Could be fun to take 20 dogs + jugger herald + 10/15 spawn + couple of lords but would it be more effective than 60 dogs and more khorne heralds? not sure.

The best option if you want CSM primary is probably just to take 10 pink horrors and a herald who sit behind an aegis with a 2+ rerollable cover save (go to ground) and hand out divination powers to the rest of your army. Cheap and reasonably effective if unexciting. As soon as you want something more exciting from your Daemons (flying circus/herald spam etc) you have to ditch the idea of CSM primary.

I've been toying with the idea of playing allied daemons with 35 cultists with MoT lead by Abaddon and then buffing them with forewarning from the rest of the Tzeentch spam list. I tend to have quite bad luck with daemon princes falling out of the sky.

 zachwho wrote:
ok, i play chaos marines and daemons.i generally play csm as the primary, but have found lately all im doing is taking the minum needed to get 2x heldrakes and then fill the rest with demons. and i dont know why, but that irritates the piss out of me. i am generally unhappy with the csm dex, and find that it frankly sucks. but there is the heldrake. its an amazing unit in an otherwise lackluster book. the daemons have alot more going for them i think. the greater demons, fateweaver, plaguebearers, horrors, heralds, demon princes, fleshhounds, seekers, soulgrinders.

i mean they have TONS of useful good units. csm have what? demon princes and heldrakes?? oblits can be useful, and bikes too, but what else? yes cult units and cultists are ok, but generally only taken for heldrakes.

so im asking, is the heldrake good enough to take csm as the primary, or only codex in an army?

CSM have plenty of good things, the problem is they are all in the FA slot.

It is kind of sad that a codex came out and within 6 months was relegated to "it has a few bright spots in an otherwise mess"

 Brometheus wrote:
I am sorry that others hate the CSM book so much.

I take 2x Heldrakes at 2000+, and with good reason. My allies help my Reserves to arrive most of the time and since I always have a good chance of getting Scryer's Gaze, why not take a CSM Master of Deception Warlord? So that's 1-3 Outflanking units and 2x Heldrakes that can get help via Scryer's Gaze (if you roll it) or Fateweaver's single D6 roll for that critical unit arriving if you take him instead of a Lvl 3 Herald of Tzeentch who will probably be spamming Divination. Absolutely- Heldrakes are great in a Primary Detachment, especially when you can help them arrive. They are that good.

I wonder how many games I would have won if I had remembered to use It Will Not Die.

How are you getting help from allies for reserve? I thought allies don't affect the reserve roll?

 Exergy wrote:
It is kind of sad that a codex came out and within 6 months was relegated to "it has a few bright spots in an otherwise mess"

The "problem" is that the 6th edition releases have been an a historic high for GW. The 'power codex' of today will be an mid-teir codex 12 months from now.

How many codex's have been released since GW did CSM?
- DA
- Eldar
- Tau
- C:SM
- SoB
- Nids are rumored to be released in November.

Harken back to the days of 3rd-5th edition, and that is the same release schedule for ~3 years.
So if the release schedule was still as slow, the CSM would have enjoyed a 'top dog' position for 12-16 months before being relegated to obscurity.

So the problem that people are feeling with the GW releases is that they are being regulated to playing a mid-teir codex until the next release. I think meta chasing is going to be prohibitively expensive and your probably better off just playing the armies that you have and waiting for the next release.

 Makutsu wrote:


How are you getting help from allies for reserve? I thought allies don't affect the reserve roll?

Pardon? Fateweaver's re-roll or Divination Powers don't say anything like "these abilities only work on units from the model's detachment" or anything like that.

Why wouldn't allies affect Reserve rolls?

 labmouse42 wrote:

They may not be tau/eldar, but they are much better than a lot of the codex's out there right now. Look at the torrent of fire report for FoB. You will see some CSM doing well in bracket 3. How many BA, DA, GK, DE, Orks, SoB do you see in those brackets?
http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/Feast-of-Blades-Invitational/2/leaderboard

What's more important is to look at battle reports from Feast of Blades and see why Chaos is losing. You will notice the CSM players in bracket 3 have 2 or 3 losses, and they tend to be because of a failure to achieve VPs. They are losing first blood, linebreaker, slay the warlord, and in-game objectives in otherwise close games, which is costing them about 1 game each plus cumulative VPs throughout the tournament.

I don't look at this as codex failure so much as focusing on the wrong things in your army. I mean, Heldrakes are nice, but they can't capture objectives. Bring enough troops to cover victory points. Get some lascannons to one-shot enemy commanders and give you a chance for first blood. Make sure you always have something that can deep strike near the enemy's deployment zone and get linebreaker.

All this debate about whether or not the CSM Codex is good really obscures people's focus on the fundamentals. I see so many 'competitive' lists that have like 2 scoring units (generally large blobs of cultists) and a bunch of things with big damage potential. It's like CSM players are overcompensating for perceived defects in the Codex by putting together lists that are powerful but can't win. I hate that.

 Brometheus wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:


How are you getting help from allies for reserve? I thought allies don't affect the reserve roll?

Pardon? Fateweaver's re-roll or Divination Powers don't say anything like "these abilities only work on units from the model's detachment" or anything like that.

Why wouldn't allies affect Reserve rolls?

Well, they actually FAQd some of the abilities to only affect the specific branch.
I didn't see using Daemons as allies, also I thought fateweaver only gets 1 roll on the div table, getting scrier's gaze is actually not very likely.

I guess it does make it more reliable to bring Heldrakes in, might have to try it out first though to comment if it's effective first though.

I speak of Scryer's Gaze because I roll it up almost every game with a Herald since I've stopped using FW. Your mileage may vary of course! : [

 techsoldaten wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:

They may not be tau/eldar, but they are much better than a lot of the codex's out there right now. Look at the torrent of fire report for FoB. You will see some CSM doing well in bracket 3. How many BA, DA, GK, DE, Orks, SoB do you see in those brackets?
http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/Feast-of-Blades-Invitational/2/leaderboard

What's more important is to look at battle reports from Feast of Blades and see why Chaos is losing. You will notice the CSM players in bracket 3 have 2 or 3 losses, and they tend to be because of a failure to achieve VPs. They are losing first blood, linebreaker, slay the warlord, and in-game objectives in otherwise close games, which is costing them about 1 game each plus cumulative VPs throughout the tournament.

I don't look at this as codex failure so much as focusing on the wrong things in your army. I mean, Heldrakes are nice, but they can't capture objectives. Bring enough troops to cover victory points. Get some lascannons to one-shot enemy commanders and give you a chance for first blood. Make sure you always have something that can deep strike near the enemy's deployment zone and get linebreaker.

All this debate about whether or not the CSM Codex is good really obscures people's focus on the fundamentals. I see so many 'competitive' lists that have like 2 scoring units (generally large blobs of cultists) and a bunch of things with big damage potential. It's like CSM players are overcompensating for perceived defects in the Codex by putting together lists that are powerful but can't win. I hate that.

I've seen this mentality as well and it caused me to borrow my friend's CSM dex a few weeks back. Seeing lists with just Heldrakes and cultists with a DP thrown in just looked so damn imbalanced to me that I wanted to take a closer look at the codex. From such I noticed that Forgefiends and Helldrakes both have daemonforge and can reroll to wound. I've never seen a CSM player use such. I also began to wonder what would happen if CSM was played more like orks with more aggressive troops and rhino spam instead just sitting cultists out and hoping the rest of the army can table the opponent.

My friend went form being one-sided to an extremely close game. Using a forgefiend and havocs, my friend was able to take out 1 AB before I even went (he stole initiative). Top of turn 2, his Heldrake came on and took out the 3 remaining AV13 I was running. He loss only because his marines couldn't kill my troops in close combat.

So we went back to the book and began looking at black legion for chosen and also more aggressive cc units like Possessed. In addition, we began to look at using daemon allies to get Tzeench heralds to prescience the forgefiends and havocs and grimoiring warp talons or possessed. Throw in Fabius for instant death and fearless and we're both looking forward to the rematch.

In both of the lists that we're working together on. He went from 2 cultist units for scoring to 3-4 units that have power armor and can actually defend an objective or push a unit off of one.

I think the CSM book is not as powerful as Eldar or Tau; however, the mentality of "just trust in the heldrake" and running cultists is toxic. Call it expensive. Call it less effective than others but that doesn't necessarily means that the entire book only has 1 or 2 good units.

Grimoire'd Tzeentch Warp Talons with VotLW are hilarious against Purifiers. I imagine they'd be fun against anyone else.

 Brometheus wrote:
Grimoire'd Tzeentch Warp Talons with VotLW are hilarious against Purifiers. I imagine they'd be fun against anyone else.

Daily reminder that the Mark of Tzeentch is useless here because it is limited to a 3++ Invul at best. You gain nothing from the Mark unless you fail the Grimoire and so you're much better rolling Slaanesh for Marine-killing, Nurgle for utility or Khorne for not-Marines.
Even so you'd probably get better mileage just by putting the Grimoire to work on some actual Daemons. Better to make a good unit outstanding, than a poor unit to become average.

Mozzamanx wrote:

Even so you'd probably get better mileage just by putting the Grimoire to work on some actual Daemons. Better to make a good unit outstanding, than a poor unit to become average.

Sadly true for the warp talons, though Grimoire on Nurgle Obliterators can be very nice if you need to send them in to do some punching in a tight spot. A squad of 3 firing twin linked plasma guns then charging in should be able to take out a squad of hamernators.

I like to have several things I can grim depending on what needs it at the time. I'd happily grim up a heldrake if my opponent is about to unload a skyray into it.

helldrakes op

 Unholyllama wrote:

I've seen this mentality as well and it caused me to borrow my friend's CSM dex a few weeks back. Seeing lists with just Heldrakes and cultists with a DP thrown in just looked so damn imbalanced to me that I wanted to take a closer look at the codex. From such I noticed that Forgefiends and Helldrakes both have daemonforge and can reroll to wound. I've never seen a CSM player use such. I also began to wonder what would happen if CSM was played more like orks with more aggressive troops and rhino spam instead just sitting cultists out and hoping the rest of the army can table the opponent.

My friend went form being one-sided to an extremely close game. Using a forgefiend and havocs, my friend was able to take out 1 AB before I even went (he stole initiative). Top of turn 2, his Heldrake came on and took out the 3 remaining AV13 I was running. He loss only because his marines couldn't kill my troops in close combat.

So we went back to the book and began looking at black legion for chosen and also more aggressive cc units like Possessed. In addition, we began to look at using daemon allies to get Tzeench heralds to prescience the forgefiends and havocs and grimoiring warp talons or possessed. Throw in Fabius for instant death and fearless and we're both looking forward to the rematch.

In both of the lists that we're working together on. He went from 2 cultist units for scoring to 3-4 units that have power armor and can actually defend an objective or push a unit off of one.

I think the CSM book is not as powerful as Eldar or Tau; however, the mentality of "just trust in the heldrake" and running cultists is toxic. Call it expensive. Call it less effective than others but that doesn't necessarily means that the entire book only has 1 or 2 good units.

Yes. This.

CSM players don't always understand the rules for their units or how to really get the most of them. Forgefiends are one of the best example of this, I am always hearing about someone forgetting their It Will Not Die USRs throughout a game. They will complain about a Warpsmith being useless without understanding what Master of Mechanisms actually does and how to work it. Combined with other blessings from Sorcerers and Daemon allies it can make Forgefiends one of the most powerful units on the board.

The only reason I can find for this is that people are too fixated on a small number of useful units. They understand everything about Heldrakes and DPs while knowing nothing about how to use Possessed and CSMs. Winning a game is not really about tabling your enemy, it's about ending the game with more VPs than your opponent has. That does not directly relate to the power of a particular Codex so much as knowing how the mechanics of the game work with your army.

Mozzamanx wrote:

 Brometheus wrote:
Grimoire'd Tzeentch Warp Talons with VotLW are hilarious against Purifiers. I imagine they'd be fun against anyone else.

Daily reminder that the Mark of Tzeentch is useless here because it is limited to a 3++ Invul at best. You gain nothing from the Mark unless you fail the Grimoire and so you're much better rolling Slaanesh for Marine-killing, Nurgle for utility or Khorne for not-Marines.
Even so you'd probably get better mileage just by putting the Grimoire to work on some actual Daemons. Better to make a good unit outstanding, than a poor unit to become average.

how is it limited?

Codex: Chaos Marines, page 30. The Mark of Tzeentch confers +1 to Invulns, to a maximum of 3++. The Grimoire already pushes it to a 3++ and so the Mark of Tzeentch cannot increase it any further.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
my only issue with straight daemons is they seem to be hellbent on luck more than any other army.

i dont play them, but a few guys at the store do. Ive never seen them have a good game. its either they stomped their opponent, or they got stomped. No close calls, no challenging victories, nothing. All depends on the spells they get.

That alone is why i dont have daemons. I love the models, but orks are random enough for me lol

Then they don't play fateweaver. My record with Daemons as it stands since June is 27-3. Fateweaver smooths out the codex, and makes things predictable. I've won very close games and have blown out my opponent. My losses have all been very close. So maybe your friend is building his list incorrectly. It's a complicated codex if you want it to be competitive in a TAC tourney setting.

Thing is theres 4 of them lol, and one of them has been playing Daemons for ohh 5-6 years i think (he has some ancient models in that army sheesh). I dont recall any fateweavers though. Then again ive yet to face one lol since my army finally came in the mail (i moved from Korea when i got out of the military) i havnt seen them

Mozzamanx wrote:
Codex: Chaos Marines, page 30. The Mark of Tzeentch confers +1 to Invulns, to a maximum of 3++. The Grimoire already pushes it to a 3++ and so the Mark of Tzeentch cannot increase it any further.

Doesnt the MoT happen before the Grimoire?

So it goes to 4++ and then to 2++ if successfully Grimoire