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I know the points can definitely add up for the basic troop selection for CSM. I want to know in your opinion what the best out load for the points.

"Blood for the Blood God!"

10x Cultists.
10x Cultists.

 McGibs wrote:
10x Cultists.
10x Cultists.

Need something more than a meat shield in my opinion

10 - 15 CSMs with dual special weapons. But really there is no right answer because its a poorly written and balanced codex.

You could try MSU Plague Marines. 5 dudes, 2 Meltaguns and a Rhino is 175 points. They're not unkillable by any means, but they pack a pretty decent punch for a Troops unit, cost about the same as a unit of Melta Vets and is pretty tough for an Obsec unit.

What really kills regular CSM is the lack of Fearless or ATSKNF. Watching a 200 point unit run away is pretty sad...

pusharemark wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
10x Cultists.
10x Cultists.

Need something more than a meat shield in my opinion

They arent a meat shield. Theyre to fulfil minimum troop requirements and MAYBE grab some backfield objectives. You then use the rest of your points to buy units that aren't crappy troops.

 McGibs wrote:

pusharemark wrote:

 McGibs wrote:
10x Cultists.
10x Cultists.

Need something more than a meat shield in my opinion

They arent a meat shield. Theyre to fulfil minimum troop requirements and MAYBE grab some backfield objectives. You then use the rest of your points to buy units that aren't crappy troops.

I agree on the objective portion of your post but besides that they are a meat shield.

pusharemark wrote:
I agree on the objective portion of your post but besides that they are a meat shield.

They are not a meat shield as they will never be used to shield anything. They are however the prefered troops choice in my experience.

Some of the other troops choices that I have found to be useful;
*8-9 CSM to go inside a landraider and act as ablative wounds for Abadon or Kharne
*Multiple 20-30 strong zombie units in either a heavy reserves list (used to be Oblits and Heldrakes) or to act as meat shields for a warhound, etc. they have to be unlocked though
*Rhino with 5 Plaguemarines w/ 2 special weapons, the champ will either have melta bombs or a powerfist
*7 Plaguemarines w/ 2 special weapons, the champ will either have melta bombs or a powerfist. This unit works best with a source of infiltrate in the list such as Huron.

With the helcult formation cultists can actually become pretty decent too. Possessed also make a good bunker for a prophet of the voices sorcerer who will specialize in summoning.

^+1 on the Helcult. Fearless cultist and a scoring dread. Its slow but two 20 man cult blobs makes huge ablative wound pools for scoring armor.

A base cult squad attached to a sorceror behind a quad gun isn't horrid.

10 man with 2x plasma and a combi plas, or double flamers for a cheap sweeper team. Play to cover and they aren't bad. Rhinos with Havocs if you have the points.

Above nurgle load outs rock. Slaanesh has some MSU shooty builds that are good, but slaanesh lord is required, and several options outperform a slaanesh lord, nurgle lord being the real deal killer there.

I like 5 csm with plasma/melta + combi in a rhino. Or 10 with 2 specials and combi in a rhino. They're well-priced for what they do and with maelstorm missions, can often become MVP for point grabbing and screening your more important stuff. Yep, loyalist tacticals are better due to atsknf and chapter tactix but these guyz are still good. And, i'm sure, they'll get some minor buffs in the new dex to bring them in line.

Another viable option is a csm deathstar:

1. Most obvious and stable build is 8-9 with ccw in a land-raider accompanying your indep. Be it Kharn, mellee-oriented sorc or generic lord. They can take stuff depending on the indep you use - marks, icons. That's a bit cheaper alternative to chosen in a landraider without hidden fists but when you bring someone like Kharn or AoBF Lord, you really end up with an overkill anywayz.

2. 20 ccw or bolter guyz with Cypher. Infiltrate + shrowded.

3. 20 ccw guyz with a slaanesh lord on a steed and (surprise) Fabius Bile. Now before you think - who the hell is Fabius Bile, he's not a heldrake, i don't know him - note that he makes 1 squad of marines str5. Slaanesh lord on a steed provides outflank + accute sences.
I've tried them out as 20 slaanesh marines with fnp icon, 2 meltas + combi-melta, slaanesh lord on a steed with a melta bomb and Fabius Bile. And when i faced orks and ig gunline - they were truly devastating. Basically, won me games. I'm sure they won't work vs eldar but the guyz clearly have potential. Fabius is optional though, i just wanted to use him and found this way.

 koooaei wrote:


3. 20 ccw guyz with a slaanesh lord on a steed and (surprise) Fabius Bile. Now before you think - who the hell is Fabius Bile, he's not a heldrake, i don't know him - note that he makes 1 squad of marines str5. Slaanesh lord on a steed provides outflank + accute sences.
I've tried them out as 20 slaanesh marines with fnp icon, 2 meltas + combi-melta, slaanesh lord on a steed with a melta bomb and Fabius Bile. And when i faced orks and ig gunline - they were truly devastating. Basically, won me games. I'm sure they won't work vs eldar but the guyz clearly have potential. Fabius is optional though, i just wanted to use him and found this way.

I've done the max CSM and Fabius with mark of slaanesh and an icon of excess which was great fun. Getting 3 attacks on the charge at strength 5, initiative 5, and having feel no pain was awesome.

The next one I'm going to try is giving them mark of khorne and using be'lakor to invisibility the unit. They'll get 4 attacks each at strength 6 on the charge.

CSM's are very underrated troops in my opinion. A unit of 10 with a PW on the champ and maybe a mark is a pretty dependable unit. Now of course they arent going to kill that squad of incubi or beat up on that flyrant. But they WIIL get assaulted by a 30-man unit of gaunts and survive to mop the floor with them when they get to swing.

Me personally, I like x10 csm in a rhino with a power sword on the champ. Sometimes I will add a sorcerer or warpsmith to the unit making it that much more killi.

Unfortunately CSM probably has the worst troop options in the game. Cultists are the way to go most of the time, either in a minimum squad or as maxed out to escort a fearless HQ. Plague marines are good sometimes, but really aren't competitive.
Standard CSM suck no matter how you slice it. With no drop pods, morale boosts (without paying points out the rear), or generally any good way to get across the board there really is no role that CSM can fit.

 herpguy wrote:
Unfortunately CSM probably has the worst troop options in the game. Cultists are the way to go most of the time, either in a minimum squad or as maxed out to escort a fearless HQ. Plague marines are good sometimes, but really aren't competitive.
Standard CSM suck no matter how you slice it. With no drop pods, morale boosts (without paying points out the rear), or generally any good way to get across the board there really is no role that CSM can fit.

Have you read the posts above? That's 6-th ed min-max tournamant approach where only deathstars and killing power did matter cause you didn't need to controle the field untill turn 5. Maelstorm missions alone have made csm in rhinos viable. And there are some great ways and combinations to run them. Please, don't start: "But wave serpents...". It's gona lead nowhere. Chaos marines can be fielded with good results. Not 100% of the time but it doesn't automaticaly invalidate them. You got to play the list - not the opposite.

 Musashi363 wrote:
10 - 15 CSMs with dual special weapons. But really there is no right answer because its a poorly written and balanced codex.

4 x 8 man CSM units with IoV and a Rhino might be the best basic CSM troop load out at this point, at least for Maelstrom of War games. You technically have 8 units on the board that can seize objectives, and it's something you can build around. Really, in MoW games, it's more about how many scoring units you can field - the Rhinos almost become force multipliers.

Some of the other posters have talked about buffing them with HQ options, which is the point of the IoV (any independent character can join them and they won't break).

 koooaei wrote:

 herpguy wrote:
Unfortunately CSM probably has the worst troop options in the game. Cultists are the way to go most of the time, either in a minimum squad or as maxed out to escort a fearless HQ. Plague marines are good sometimes, but really aren't competitive.
Standard CSM suck no matter how you slice it. With no drop pods, morale boosts (without paying points out the rear), or generally any good way to get across the board there really is no role that CSM can fit.

Have you read the posts above? That's 6-th ed min-max tournamant approach where only deathstars and killing power did matter cause you didn't need to controle the field untill turn 5. Maelstorm missions alone have made csm in rhinos viable. And there are some great ways and combinations to run them. Please, don't start: "But wave serpents...". It's gona lead nowhere. Chaos marines can be fielded with good results. Not 100% of the time but it doesn't automaticaly invalidate them. You got to play the list - not the opposite.

My bad, you must have figured something out that every competitive player hasn't. Carry on and keep winning those adepticons in your mind.

 herpguy wrote:

 koooaei wrote:

 herpguy wrote:
Unfortunately CSM probably has the worst troop options in the game. Cultists are the way to go most of the time, either in a minimum squad or as maxed out to escort a fearless HQ. Plague marines are good sometimes, but really aren't competitive.
Standard CSM suck no matter how you slice it. With no drop pods, morale boosts (without paying points out the rear), or generally any good way to get across the board there really is no role that CSM can fit.

Have you read the posts above? That's 6-th ed min-max tournamant approach where only deathstars and killing power did matter cause you didn't need to controle the field untill turn 5. Maelstorm missions alone have made csm in rhinos viable. And there are some great ways and combinations to run them. Please, don't start: "But wave serpents...". It's gona lead nowhere. Chaos marines can be fielded with good results. Not 100% of the time but it doesn't automaticaly invalidate them. You got to play the list - not the opposite.

My bad, you must have figured something out that every competitive player hasn't. Carry on and keep winning those adepticons in your mind.

No sir, our bad. We were not aware that dice work differently for you COMPETITIVE players. Sorry if it offends you that our terrible csm builds have had success.

Come on guys just relax. There are 3 different players here that are judging these units by completely different metrics.

One of you is talking about winning at a top GT. This is where CSM has not done well at all largely due to their poor troops choices, relatively one dimensional units, and lack of flexible mobility options, At this level minimizing points spent in troops has been the widespread strategy. Though in all honesty CSM still have not been seeing success as a stand alone army and has only really been a decent ally for Chaos Daemons,

Then there are the local RT and club house players which have a lot more options they can look at that work well. Plague marines, plague zombies, CSM w/ character attached, hell cult, and noise marines have all been doing reasonably well at this level with good player behind them. CSM has still been an underdog but it is not something that cannot be overcome.

Then there are the players who are just talking about pick up games and their friends. This is almost any unit that is used well.

None of these are right or wrong but each of you has a totally different metric of "best setup for CSM troops".

 ansacs wrote:
Come on guys just relax. There are 3 different players here that are judging these units by completely different metrics.

One of you is talking about winning at a top GT. This is where CSM has not done well at all largely due to their poor troops choices, relatively one dimensional units, and lack of flexible mobility options, At this level minimizing points spent in troops has been the widespread strategy. Though in all honesty CSM still have not been seeing success as a stand alone army and has only really been a decent ally for Chaos Daemons,

Then there are the local RT and club house players which have a lot more options they can look at that work well. Plague marines, plague zombies, CSM w/ character attached, hell cult, and noise marines have all been doing reasonably well at this level with good player behind them. CSM has still been an underdog but it is not something that cannot be overcome.

Then there are the players who are just talking about pick up games and their friends. This is almost any unit that is used well.

None of these are right or wrong but each of you has a totally different metric of "best setup for CSM troops".

Let's hear it for reason everybody.

The original question was about the best troops loadout for CSM, not about how good they are relative to the rest of the game. Saying they are horrible is OT.

I honestly believe vanilla CSMs have an advantage in Maelstrom of War missions over troops from some other armies. Time will tell, but they are definitely better than cultists.

Huron + cypher + 3 CSM/havoc + 3 chosen units all infiltrating = massive initital advantage in maelstrom missions.
Aside from scorpions containing a scorps claw, there are not many opposing infiltrating units that can seriously mess with CSM. By the time other units arrive, you've already established defensive positions around objectives, with multiple units.
Just an extra arrow for a weak bow.

 herpguy wrote:

My bad, you must have figured something out that every competitive player hasn't. Carry on and keep winning those adepticons in your mind.

Well, tournament-hammer is a bit different world. And the results are showing csm on the whole being ineffective as a standalone army against all the stuff that inhabits this game layer. Besides, the ones who tried going there brought exactly what u've suggested: min cultists. And they failed. Who knows, maybe they'd be better off with csm + rhinos since they've recieved buffs due to maelstorm and vehicle damage table.

But stating that csm troops are worthless is completely wrong.

 koooaei wrote:

 herpguy wrote:

My bad, you must have figured something out that every competitive player hasn't. Carry on and keep winning those adepticons in your mind.

Well, tournament-hammer is a bit different world. And the results are showing csm on the whole being ineffective as a standalone army against all the stuff that inhabits this game layer. Besides, the ones who tried going there brought exactly what u've suggested: min cultists. And they failed. Who knows, maybe they'd be better off with csm + rhinos since they've recieved buffs due to maelstorm and vehicle damage table.

But stating that csm troops are worthless is completely wrong.

I second this

I won't jump on board any opinions on the worth of CSM troops but I will add my build to the list. Personally I run 10 marines (or 5 depending on what points limit I'm playing at) but always with a rhino. In a 5-man squad I will run a plasma gun and in a ten I typically run plasma and autocannon. In both cases I always give the rhino a havoc launcher. aspiring champion will often get a power weapon but I skip on this quickly somewtimes because I have terribly luck with him in challenges. Don't forget VotLW, it's +1 Ld and quite valuable if you have points to spare.

After that I sometimes toy with marks if I have spare points, nurgle has been helpful (T5 rocks for objective grabbers), tzeentch is mostly meh IMO but khorne and slaanesh are both ok if you spend the points to give them CCW (either as an extra or swap the bolter for it for free) and use them to get in CC with a non-CC army (like Tau, you know, if they don't run away first). Sadly there's not much good delivery method for them as a CC unit so I tend to steer clear of the CCW build.

The interesting thing about a CSM unit is it can be either fairly cheap or very expensive and it can be equipped to do almost anything to varying degrees of success.

I used to run 2 squads of CSM but as of late I have been running one CSM squad and 1 cultist squad of 20 cultists, for backfield objective holding and as an HQ escort unit if he isn't already with a different squad. Don't write the cultists off at all, if fielded properly they can be pretty awesome.

Hope this helped.

Disclaimer: I don't play competitively at all, just friendly games for fun. I've had great success with my CSM builds but they may not hold up against hyper-optimized armies in competitive play. YMMV

For me, the best troops selection for CSM has worked out to be something like this;

4x Thousand Sons, Aspiring Sorcerer (Gift, staff)
4x Thousand Sons, Aspiring Sorcerer (Gift, axe)
4x Thousand Sons, Aspiring Sorcerer (Gift, sword)
4x Thousand Sons, Aspiring Sorcerer (Gift, staff)

Two of them Infiltrate with Ahriman's power. The other two advance slowly onto home-field objectives. The heavy lifting is done by my HQ Sorcerers, Warpsmith and Daemon Prince.

Principally I use two loadouts for my CSMs. One is rather more defensive and the other is for an aggressive play. My cultists loadout is always 10x stock, if I have some points left I usually buy 1-2 more per squad.

a) 10x CSMs with a Lascannon and a flamer, in a Rhino with a Havoc Launcher. Excellent objective camper, packs a punch at long range too. That flamer there is for the occasional overwatch and can be dropped or replaced depending on the opponent.

b) 10x CSMs with two meltaguns in a Rhino with a combi-melta. Use this setup to move upfield and contest enemy objectives and pop enemy armour. Take additional CCWs or, better yet, replace bolters with CCWs if you intend to assault. In which case, bring along a Dirge caster on the rhino.

I agree that without ATSKNF, Combat Squads, Drop Pods or an Assault transport, CSMs will never equal most troops from other codexes but we gotta try working with what we have here until we get an updated codex, whenever that might be.

I run them in big ass 15-20 man blobs, make them fearless with either an icon or an IC, then infiltrate them with Huron or something.

But I generally play assault lists with CSM. Taking MSU squads in Rhinos seems effective, but I just can't stand looking at "10xChaos Space Marine, Rhino" listed like 6 times on my lists. It immediately makes me bored.

x10 csm
power sword on the champ
+
Rhino Transport
dozerblades

Comes in at 195 points. Cheap, Tough, Dependable troop choice

Add marks and shake well

Normally I run 5 men Plague Marines with two plasma guns and a combi-plasma on the champion. 160 points and a potential six plasma shots is brutal.


But 20 men with the Mark of Slaanesh can hold an objective against pretty much anything.

I struggle with the same question. I've been experimenting with a few things and have had mixed success. The first thing is to ask what is their real job. If you have a lord with a squad of noise marines and a doom siren and need support, I personally like replacing the bolters with ccw and adding 2 meltas or flamers. 2 squads like that in Rhinos are a great base to accompany a lord/scorcerer with either raptors, bikes, noise marines or chosen. They add bodies and special weapons that might not be carried by your heavy hitters. Noise marines can't take melta guns and bikers don't usually take flamers as their specials.

10 marines with 2 plasma guns are a great midfield unit for 170 points, as long as you have a lot scarier stuff and your enemy can make them a target priority with their big guns. Mark them Nurgle and you have a tough unit that is hard to dislodge without real effort. Or, something I'm looking into trying is skiping the special wapons. Then you can easy afford to take marks. Without any special weapons, you have stuff that's going to be more threatning than those plain marines, 2 squads of them are a great firebase to advace behind your main attack and secure the objectives your bikers and other fast assault units have cleared. Bolt gun, pistol and ccw with MoN might not seam terribly scary, but if 2 squads of them march up the line behind your hard hitters then they'll cause a mess when they finaly charge something or sit on an objective or in a strategically important terrain piece. 10 marines with no special weapons and MoK can charge anything not geared for cc and make a pleasant mess. The only mark I wouldn't use on basic marines is MoS. But that's only because 10 noise marines with bolters, pistols and ccw basically pay 10 points for fearless. If I'm not looking for an objective secured, then I use Havoks instead. You can go very fluffy unbound by replacing choas marine squads with havoks. I know you asked specifically about chaos marine squads, but they're almost exactly the same, except you're capped at 10 models and you have to buy extra weapons instead of swapping. The main benefit is if you take less than 10 models you can still have up to 4 heavy OR special weapons and you can use them exactly as chaos marines squads only with more firepower and without objective secured.

I'm going to continue to test out different combinations to see what gives the best bang for the buck. The thing I've noticed most about chaos marines is that there is a delicate balance between offensive power, staying power and points. Unlike many other codexes where you pay directly for a units power, with choas marines you pay for the ability to customize them. Many other units in the codex like the lords, sorcerers, bikers plague marines and noise marines are cheaper than a regular chaos marine squad for what they bring to the table. What attracted me to the choas marines as a troop choice is the cost. I think the ability to take the same squad and thrn decide to give them quite the variety of roles for 2 or 3 eztra points a model can be utilized to great effect.

I for one would have to give a good think what to shoot at if 3 Rhinos pulled up and unloaded 30 marines in front of me, 10 with T5 and bolters, pistols and ccw and had 2 groups of 10 with Rage, pistols and ccws and power weapon champions right there too. That runs around 650 points. Is that expensive? Absolutely, but for a base cost of 110 points you can have 5 bikers. Maybe with the bikers making a mess of your opponent's plans, or at least distracting them, those 30 marines can hit the enemy lines and get about the business of deathdealing.

I've had good luck in the past with two 20 man blobs and Fabius Bile.
Fabius makes one squad fearless, then joins the other, making them fearless.
I'll give each squad a melta gun so I have the option to use it if I wish.
Everything else is bare bones.

Its not as good as chapter tactics, but its more durable than cultists.