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Hey all, I decided I want to start a CSM army as my first army and my friend gave me his because he bought them and doesn't like the game. I have 20 cultists, 6 chosen, a lord, a hellbrute, Lucius the Eternal and 10 noise marines. I also have the codex and rule book. I haven't read the whole rule book yet. Are those units any good competitively?

Depends on your definition of competitive. If you mean the easiest way to win a game, then no, nothing on that list is going to do that. Neither is CSM in general.

If your definition is one of if it's possible to win a game with any of those units included in your list, then yes, if you build the rest of your list well.

What you have is a pretty good base for any direction you want to go in while not being an overly good force currently you can expand it rather easily. All the units you listed are pretty good with the exception of chosen who in general are to expensive but can be used as pretty sweet stand ins for squad leaders in your normal csm squads. Also while i have run lucius before consider using him as a standard lord instead they're generally better.

edit: I have used chosen with mok and to pretty great effect as they pump out more attacks than berserkers for a similar cost.

I recommend trying to get your hands on the Crimson Slaughter supplement. 1 squad of Chosen can really get a boost via Preferred Enemy: Everything and you also would get access to 2+ Armor Save along with IWND.

Also, the Helbrute dataslate might be nice considering what you can do with cultists.

Chaos has the coolest looking models in the whole game. Period. (this may depend on personal taste though)

But CSM isn't a top tier army.

PotatoLord666 wrote:
Hey all, I decided I want to start a CSM army as my first army and my friend gave me his because he bought them and doesn't like the game. I have 20 cultists, 6 chosen, a lord, a hellbrute, Lucius the Eternal and 10 noise marines. I also have the codex and rule book. I haven't read the whole rule book yet. Are those units any good competitively?

Can you win games with them, yeah, sure.
But you'll work for it.

First off - I'm going to make the assumption that the items other than the Slaaneshi stuff are the plastics from the Dark Vengeance set. Am I correct?

In which case, I have the following comments:

Cultists
Cultists are more or less equivalent to guardsmen but the problem is 'more or less'. An autogun-armed cultist squad is not as good as the same price of Astra Militarum guardsmen because they only get improvised armour, haven't got grenades and lack the ability to use Front Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!. Cultists without autoguns are basically gun fodder.

That said, a cheap expendable unit has its uses - digging into cover on an objective, or advancing in front of a unit you give a toss about to provide it with a cover save.

I'd personally get the Black Library Helbrutes dataslate - the Helcult is a standalone detachment of one Helbrute and 2 cultist units - and makes the cultists fearless. Suddenly, the annoyance becomes a genuinely useful game-piece because a blob of cultists can tie up something important for a couple of turns as they have to be killed to the last man. GW sells boxes of cultists for quite cheap (by their standards) and you can bulk the squads up to 35 strong.

Aileros - who posted above - has plenty of experience with infantry-heavy guard armies; ask him how hard it is to shift a fearless 30+ strong squad when it doesn't wish to be moved.

Helbrute
If you put this guy in a Helcult formation, he gets a 3+ cover save from the cultists. Since he has armament which means you want him to get to close range, this strikes me as a good deal. Have him follow the melee cultists up forwards to smash someone, whilst the autogun cultists are a free agent to use wherever you need some stubborn small-arms infantry.

chosen
Chosen are an awesome unit. Unfortunately, the chosen models you have are not. Chosen work well as a veteran special weapons team - a small squad of Chosen can pack nearly half a dozen assault weapons (flamers, meltaguns, plasmaguns), which is a truly terrifying amount of firepower, and still have enough attacks to be half-competent in an assault. By comparison, loading them out with power swords and lighting claws isn't the best idea; much like Space Marine Vanguard Veterans, by the time you've issued enough to really affect their combat power, you could have bought a terminator, warp talon or mutilator squad instead.

The Dark Vengeance chosen are gorgeous models, though, so I'd be loth to ignore them. My personal recommendation is to use them as aspiring champions in other squads. They stand out, and arming your aspiring champions with melee weapons is generally a good idea because the Champions of Chaos rule means you have to step up to the plate and take challenges whenever you have the opportunity to.

Noise Marines
Depends. Noise marines are good. They are literally a straight upgrade to regular marines - a four point buy that gets you I5 and Fearless. As to whether they're good.... it depends. They are much more flexible than other cult troops, which means they can do many jobs. A common mistake people make is to try and make them do many jobs, rather than picking one job for each squad and focusing on that - cult units are expensive and throwing many "just in case" upgrades into a unit is a quick way to break the bank. Not knowing what the models you've got are armed with, my thoughts on some uses which work.

The Dakka squad.
Sonic blasters (the rifle-sized sonic weapons) are salvo 2/3 - meaning a noise marine with one is equivalent to 3 'normal' marines at 24" range, and comes with ignores cover to boot. It does make them very static, though, so you want to deploy in cover as far forwards as you can (or run forwards into a forward position on turn one) then spend the rest of the game gunning down infantry. Few other upgrades are worth it.

The Blastmaster squad
The BIG sonic weapons are blastmasters. A unit of ten packs two (check the FAQ), and they're in the same league as man-portable plasma cannons for lethality. Only AP3, so no use on terminators, but S8 so able to kill marine characters outright and take away feel no pain. Ignore cover on a powerful blast weapon is truly scary - putting two shots into a packed floor on a ruined building can devastate a dug-in marine squad. Against an opponent who didn't realise what they were capable of, I've seen this unit rack up 4 victory points in a single shot - warlord kill, first blood and two kill points - after obliterating a captain and command squad in a ruin, with night fighting rules in play. Other weapons for this squad are kind of so-so. Sonic blasters.... you should be firing at targets at long-ish range, so you may find the sonic blasters out of range. Sonic blasters aren't a bad buy if you have points free, but since most of the firing power is in the two big guns, your first priority is bolter-wielding bodies to catch incoming return fire.

The 'tactical squad'.
Bolter, bolt pistol, close combat weapon. Mobile and flexible. You might want some weapons for the champion , but that's about it. I don't mind this unit, but it's not really taking advantage of your special abilities.

The 'assault squad'
The other good use is a complete reverse. Swap bolters for blades and stay cheap - capitalise on your I5. Take a power sword or maul for your champion - you don't want an unwieldy weapon - and meltabombs so you can handle a walker if you have to. The ticket item is the Doom Siren. It's like a flamer but better in every way.

If you want to field lucius, attach him to a squad like this and get them a rhino (you don't want to be walking). That gives you two doom sirens - squad-shredding firepower. An Icon of excess is also a decent price buy when you have an expensive slaaneshi character in the squad to protect.

Lucius The Eternal
Ah...Lucius. Competing with Erebus in the Horus Heresy books as the traitor legions' original unreconstructed arse-hat, there is very little to like about him as a character.
As a game piece..... he's still not great. He's cheap (ish) and comes with a second doom siren - the only way you can get two in a squad - and for that plus the ability to punch noise marines over to troops he's worth looking at. His biggest, biggest weakness is that he's armed with what's essentially a single lightning claw - so he lacks the ability to pierce a 2+ save.

That said, he's better than you might think. Put him up against a captain with a relic blade and artificer plate, and he still does more damage to his opponent per round of combat than his opponent does back to him. Higher WS, many, many more attacks, the lash and feel no pain from the icon goes a long way. Add to his striking first, and he [should] be the one left standing after the fight. More importantly, Veterans Of The Long War makes him a chaplain (effectively) when fighting other marines. Many I5 attacks with Hatred can end a fight before the defenders get a chance to swing.

More importantly, on those occasions where your opponent isn't in artificer plate or wielding a storm shield, he's got a decent chance to ginsu them before they so much as twitch.

Not going to beat around the bush but for the most part yes. You have a good infantry base to build your army off of