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So the Spartan landraider gives chaos Marines a transport option with some serious firepower and resiliency as well as a transport capacity of 20!
It costs somewhere around 300 points. It will definitely deliver the unit inside where it needs to go, but what is actually worth investing that many points into it? Berserkers? Faux-zerkers (CSM with Mark of khorne)? Kharn or a generic kitted out lord? Or even Abbaddon and chosen!?!

No matter the choice it's going to be a deaths tar unit taking up a ton of points, so it has to be devastating. And the rest of the list has to be able to function around it as well.

So what would you do?

Cultists. No one would expect it!

Or berserkers. Get them into close combat and stuff, obviously.

lol. Cultists! Now there's an idea. Give them Mark of Khorne with a Dark Apostle and let them rip!

I'd probably go with ccw marines. Maybe toss a cheap lord in there. 20 bodies in an assault transport is still not enough to make me want to take a dark apostle. Keep it as cheap as possible. 20 bzerks are just way too many points to do basically the same thing as the marines will. Plus the marines don't tie your hands as far as hq choice.

I wish I could afford the models, because I would load it up with cultists. I believe it is actually a capacity of 25. Anyways, 24 Naked cultists would cost 106 points. Add in either a power armored AoBF Khorne Lord or a Nurgle Black Mace lord and you have an awesome delivery system.
Keep the culists cheap and naked. The cultists should not be underestimated, as they alone will put out 73 S3 attacks on the charge (not to mention their 24 S3 pistol shots going in). Not much can survive even that. Anyways, they are a giant tide of ablative wounds for the Lord in their midst. And the cultists can make it easy to keep the Lord out of fight before the pile-in to avoid a challenge.
Overall, I would say this is probably the most competitve option. Loading it up with CSM is just not worth it.
Loading it up with

Couldn't it fit 20 Chaos Terminators?

That sounds like an amazing option. Or go with 18 terminators, cypher, and a lord. unload, shoot, charge. Hit and run, shoot, charge. Hit and run, shoot.....

20 CSMs with MoK and Icon of Vengeance.

I have been proxying this for about a month with a Land Raider and found fearless CCW marines with flamers are very effective against most things.

Also, with the Spartan, you can give it a havoc launcher, a hunter / killer missile, and an extra weapon. Take them. Large CSM blobs work better when they have a large firing platform sitting beside them.

herpguy wrote:
I wish I could afford the models, because I would load it up with cultists. I believe it is actually a capacity of 25. Anyways, 24 Naked cultists would cost 106 points. Add in either a power armored AoBF Khorne Lord or a Nurgle Black Mace lord and you have an awesome delivery system.
Keep the culists cheap and naked. The cultists should not be underestimated, as they alone will put out 73 S3 attacks on the charge (not to mention their 24 S3 pistol shots going in). Not much can survive even that. Anyways, they are a giant tide of ablative wounds for the Lord in their midst. And the cultists can make it easy to keep the Lord out of fight before the pile-in to avoid a challenge.
Overall, I would say this is probably the most competitve option. Loading it up with CSM is just not worth it.
Loading it up with

cultists+beatstick is ok, but at that point why not just use a cheaper variant with smaller capacity? The cultists won't do much except give ablative wounds to the lord. Those 73 attacks + 24 shots amount to about 5 dead marines. And that's discounting any overwatch losses and deaths from anything higher than I3. Cultists are 4 pt scoring bodies that can't kill anything and die to most everything. The only job they are even passable at is hiding until its time to grab objectives.
Not that chaos marines are much better of an option mind you. They still require a lord to make them fearless (not necessarily kitted to the max) and they'll be a lot more expensive, but at least they'll have a strong presence wherever they disembark.

Is the spartan really worth it compared to just throwing your AoBF lord on a juggernaut and slapping some spawn down with him? Assault vehicles are fun and all but since our marines decreased in relative power with the new dex, there's just not really a good option to use one because bikes and spawn are better (except against that pesky DE player, ugghhh)

Really, I'm thinking that the way to go would be 19 khorne marked CSMs with CCW and icon escorted by Kharn or a generic lord with the axe of blind fury. Probably give the champion a power weapon or power fist at that point.

I can't see it being a very competitive option, but it would be fun.

I stuck a squad of 20 Plague Marines in mine. Expensive? Hell yeah. But the look on my opponents face when 20 PMs jumped out and charged a 2 40 man IG squads was awesome.