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My friend says that chaos marines cannot be armed with a bolter/pistol and melee weapon even though its in the list!
He says that you cant pick and choose what weapons to use..ie bolt pistol and chainsword and leave the bolter on his back!!!!
I say the opposite...whos right?

You are.

Indeed. Ask him how grey hunters work then...

I am not at my library at the moment so exact page quotes are not possible.

You need to find the section 'More then One Weapon' in the Weapon section of the Basic Rule Book and show it to your friend. This will clarify that a model with more weapons gets to choose which weapon it is firing during the shooting phase, and highlights that they are forced to make this choice so they can not shoot every weapon they possess. There is no 'order of preference' given, or any other rule that can force you to choose a different weapon then the one you wish to use, so it should be enough to satisfy your friend.

As for what a model is equipped with, that is all up to the Army List section of the codex. As long as the model starts the game with the required war-gear, or has the option to upgrade to the combination you wish, nothing short of 'lack of points' can stop you from selecting that combination of war-gear. Keep in mind that the Chaos Marine Codex was a little misprinted, certain units do not start with the war-gear needed to 'swap' for the upgrades, but this was corrected via Errata that can be found on the Game Workshop main website.

I do so love that Errata by the way, Noise marine now have a way to take 2 blast-masters and that's just grand!