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I'm leaving home in a couple of months for uni and so thought it would be a good excuse to start a small army. I've been playing guard for a few years now and wanted a bit of a change, not to mention something slightly easier to transport. I eventually decided to make a 750 points list of csm, but wanted to make a plan of what to add to the army before buying anything having made that mistake once to often before. However i've not reached the points amount and was wondering if anyone could give me any advice on what to add, and if there was anything they would change about the current list.

So far it is:

Chaos lord - power armour, power axe, multi melta - 90
Possessed x5 - mark of nurgle - 150
Chaos space marines x10 - autocannon, flamer - 155
Cultists x10 - 50
Vindicator - daemonic possession - 135

Total -580

This leaves 170 points left over
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

170 points is perfect for a Heldrake (who needs friends anyway.)

Although you could do with some more troops. Maybe another unit of cultists or regular marines who could be equipped to fill out the remaining 170.

Drop possesed. N lords can not take multi melta. Dont bother with combi melta either.

Consider Nurgle biker lord with pfist+lclaw. Put him with nurgle bikers or nurgle spawns.

With a nurgle lord, you can take msu of plague marines with pairs of plasmaguns.

At only 750 you are going to have to go with bare minimums.

Lord, MoN, pow sword@95

Plague Marine, 2 plasmaguns@150
Plague Marine, 2 plasmaguns@150

Cultist@50

That blasted fire spitting turkey@170

Vindicator, dpossesion@135

Aegis defense line@50

750 total.

Advice on upgrade

Add a quad gun to the adl, have cultists man the guns.

Buy termi but convert to obliterators. Get 2 at first since you hav a vindi. I dont like the vindi. If you did not buy it, get 9 termi and have 3x3 squads of oblits.

Your standard csm squad can be painted green n called plague marines.

If you get typhus then you can have large blobs of fearless fnp zombies instead of cultists.

Never buy defilers, possesed, warp talons, chosen, thousand sons, khorne beserkers.

Dont buy plague marines but do buy csm n convert them into it. Noise marines are good n comparable to plague marines. Nurgle bikers n spawns are good if dont plan on taking 3 heldrakes. I think 3 oblits are better than fiends or havocs, or any pred or vindi.

Helbrutes are a bit of a mix up but i still think they are a waste of points. The data slate give great options for a horrible unit.

A couple classic mistakes here:

The vindicator seems like a bargain but you really don't want to take just one. Take 2, or take none. Armor saturation and redundancy is key to mastering the CSM codex, in addition to knowing what squads need upgrades, and which are better to take naked. Good job taking possession on the vindie, you need that.

You should be very, very careful about taking any reserves in sub 1000 point games. I know its really easy on the brain to say TAKE 6 HELDRAKES!!111 but you should consider the advantage you're giving your opponent by starting the game with 20% of your army off the board. 1 Drake at 1000 pts is no big deal but at 750 is where you will want to think about this.

You shouldn't give tactical squads heavy weapons for the most part because they're going to be moving around as tactical squads are supposed to do, and then they will only be able to snap fire their heavy weapons. Unless you really know what you're doing, the general idea is to take 2X special weapons on these squads.

RHINOS! CSM pretty much require rhinos. We are like 12" the army. The codex is all about close range weapons, rapid fire bolters, and close combat.

A 750 point list I'd suggest:

Lord- MoN, AoDG, PF, LC, BBoS
5 Possessed- MoN, Rhino (Lord goes here)
10 Cultists
10 CSM- 2 Meltaguns, Rhino
Helbrute

This gives you a nice little deathstar of T5 3+/5++ close combat guys led by your warlord, a supporting tactical squad with dedicated anti-tank, and the helbrute is there for heavy support. Although they suffer at higher point games, I've found the naked helbrute to be effective in lower point games in my area.

Sorry but what's AoDG and BBoS.

Apart from that i'm not sure about the helbrute, more from a model perspective, but i'll think about it.

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