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I'm tired of the false emperor and his sniveling minions, so I've decided to turn to Chaos. The core of my army is going to be some sort of CSM build with Chosen, CSM, Noise/Plague Marines, and Terminators. Very high probability of Daemon allies as a CAD or formation.

What I'm having trouble with is the landscape of the CSM supplements that have been steadily coming out. I don't have the models and am not particularly interested in Khorne, so I'm excluding KDK and Crimson Slaughter. That leaves the CSM codex, Black Legion, and Traitor's Hate. I actually like the idea of Black Legion since it can be run with or without Abbadon, but it also seems that Black Legion (at least fluff-wise as a unit) also fits into Traitor's Hate Decurions.

Can somebody who is more familiar with 7th ed army building give me some guidance on how, if at all, Black Legion and Traitor's Hate work together, or if/how they can be allied? If I build a "Black Legion" Decurion using the Traitor's Hate rules, am I done, or is there some way I can also use the Black Legion supplement in the army?

So, pick Vanilla, Black Legion, or Crimson Slaughter. These are your flavors. Since the rules in traitors hate came out, you can pick and choose any chaos formation can be of any flavor. So whats the difference? wargear and special rules, basically.

Vanilla gets the Black Mace, which is awesome for a Daemon Prince but only decent for a non-MC. Otherwise, well, vanilla.

Black Legion wargear isn't the best, but they can give a character eternal warrior. Every has to pay a small tax per model but gets hatred space marines. On the plus side, they have several new formations that unlock a ton of options and customization, particularly noteworthy is the cabal of up to 5 lvl 3 chaos sorcerers on bikes. They can give a forgefiend BS 5 if you buy a Mauler and Warpsmith to go with. They get chosen as troops, but generally this is a bad thing.

Crimson Slaughter gets hands down the best wargear, with 2+ armor that isn't terminator, psykers that can roll on Divination for prescience forgefiends and oblits, and a sword that charges up per kill, and gets insanely good if you can feed it properly. They get possessed with better abilities and as troops, but they still aren't a cost effective unit, although they are scarier.

Outside of those choices, Belakor is a great HQ for any of them. He's a flat pt cost, he's a god tier psyker, he gets fleshbane armorbane flying stealth and shrouded and is a huge daemon. Here are the reasons not to take Belakor:

Now we can also look at Cypher, but honestly he's just fun. Take some of those BL chosen troops, infiltrate a plasma squad into your opponents face then boost a beatstick lord and 5 lvl 3 psykers on bikes rolling biomancy and telepathy with force axes up to join them turn 1. Then shoot and shriek the holy schlitz out of anything in the middle of the board. Note heavy cover prefered for this. You get shrouded.

You have a few Helbrute formations that are okay, I like the one that comes with two units of fearless cultist, but they aren't obsec so you lose some of what you'd take em for anyway.

Daemon allies make for great psychic dice batteries, mini deathstars, or FMC's. That's it. Try and get all creative with it and you quickly realize that half of the Daemon codex is awesome, and the other half is trash.

KDK make less effective allies, as the main benefit, the tithe, gets better and better the more KDK units you have out killing and dying. That said, you can ally in a chaos lord that turns into a GD D-Thirster when he dies, so that is something.

Renegades and Heretics. Full disclosure, I love R&H. It's possibly the most under rated, under used ally or CAD army out there. If Laser Rapier Destroyers aren't the most criminally under costed unit in the game, I have no idea what is. These guys can put out templates of any size, and any strength, and basically any range. They can provide blobs of bodies or Astra Militarum tanks and Arty carriages. They can get cheaper Chaos Spawn than CSM!!! There is gold here, dig around.

Finally, Chaos Knights are a great LOW addition to any force. We have ways of getting double battle cannons and can dedicate knights to Chaos Gods. Most other LOW for Chaos tend to be over costed for the return, especially when Daemons have such amazing HQ's, but the Greater Brass Scorpion is a nightmare and will usually earn it's points back reliably as it has tools to deal with essentially everything.

Traitors Hate isn't a flavor, it's a supplement that gives us some updates, formations, and psychic powers. Youtube has some reviews.

Death the zombie god. Burn the idolators. Raze their fields and drive them from their lands. Split the mountains and drain the oceans. Rain fire into their midst and bathe in their lamentations. Welcome, brother.

Quick nitpick, the Daemonkin axe summons a regular bloodthirster, not an Insensate Rage one.

cod3x wrote:
So, pick Vanilla, Black Legion, or Crimson Slaughter. These are your flavors. Since the rules in traitors hate came out, you can pick and choose any chaos formation can be of any flavor. So whats the difference? wargear and special rules, basically.
(snip)

Death the zombie god. Burn the idolators. Raze their fields and drive them from their lands. Split the mountains and drain the oceans. Rain fire into their midst and bathe in their lamentations. Welcome, brother.

Good stuff! Trying to adjust to the whole detachment/formation list building thing is a pretty big change from when I last played competitively near the end of 5th. Pretty sure I'm going Black Legion. I have some Terminators that will get used, and black and gold/(brass) is one of my favorite color schemes. Daemon allies are going to happen. The Soul Grinder is my favorite model that I've never used, so one or more will get thrown in one way or another. I'll have to look into R&H if I can find a copy of IA:13.

I'm not going for power/WAAC list building, but I do at least like to play tournaments. It looks like there is at least enough power still in Chaos to not get run off the board any more.

 WhiteBobcat wrote:
I'm tired of the false emperor and his sniveling minions, so I've decided to turn to Chaos. The core of my army is going to be some sort of CSM build with Chosen, CSM, Noise/Plague Marines, and Terminators. Very high probability of Daemon allies as a CAD or formation.

What I'm having trouble with is the landscape of the CSM supplements that have been steadily coming out. I don't have the models and am not particularly interested in Khorne, so I'm excluding KDK and Crimson Slaughter. That leaves the CSM codex, Black Legion, and Traitor's Hate. I actually like the idea of Black Legion since it can be run with or without Abbadon, but it also seems that Black Legion (at least fluff-wise as a unit) also fits into Traitor's Hate Decurions.

Can somebody who is more familiar with 7th ed army building give me some guidance on how, if at all, Black Legion and Traitor's Hate work together, or if/how they can be allied? If I build a "Black Legion" Decurion using the Traitor's Hate rules, am I done, or is there some way I can also use the Black Legion supplement in the army?

The formations in the two books are separate. Traitors hate gives you free Veterans of the long war if you use the crusade detachment. That would be awesome to use with the Black Legion formations but you can't do that.
The only difference between the the Black Legion supplement and just buying VotLW is that it allows you to buy new relics. Unless of course you are using the BL formations.
So if you are using the vanilla codex relics and the formations from traitors hate, there really isn't any difference. You can use the black legion rules with the crusade and the individual formations though, no problem there.

Now whether or not you can use the supplements on formations that make up part of a crusade is point of discussion going on right now in a different thread (traitor's hate questions).
To me it seems clear that you can, others aren't so convinced that you can. Might want to give it a read and decide for yourself.

Welcome to the dark side, please leave your Centurion armour, Drop pods and Grav weaponry at the door.

I would suggest starting with just vanilla CSM since lugging around 4+ books is a pain. Otherwise the differences in the factions (Black Legion, Crimson Slaughter etc) are quite minor at least until you have a few games under your belt and know how the army plays.

Just don't buy any Mutilators or Warp Talons

Or Rubrics. They're garbage.

Also the Black Legion is the worst off. Stick with the regular book and then have the Crimson Slaughter on hand for various formations or a CAD.

Actually with traitor's hate they're better off. Free Hatred and +1 leadership, CS get... one less formation.

 Roknar wrote:
Actually with traitor's hate they're better off. Free Hatred and +1 leadership, CS get... one less formation.

In their own supplement they're forced to buy it though, and one EW relic is good, but the rest are garbage compared to even the regular relics. Mace, Axe, and Brand ARE still solid choices.

You're dismissing the yuranthos relic too easily but otherwise no argument there.

 Roknar wrote:
You're dismissing the yuranthos relic too easily but otherwise no argument there.

The Nova is alright but not worth the price of admission.

The vanilla relics are also available to both subfaction books, it should be noted. If you are using the detachment/formations from Traitor's Hate, there is really no reason NOT to be something besides Vanilla.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
You're dismissing the yuranthos relic too easily but otherwise no argument there.

The Nova is alright but not worth the price of admission.

It's a 36 inch diameter. That's almost two thirds of the entire game board if you center it right. Plus it gives you another mastery level for denying or warpcharges. That alone makes it worth it me.

2D6 automatic hits is roughly the equivalent of a 6 man CSM unit in rapid fire range, except this gets ignore cover and soul blaze. Per unit in that range. And as a bonus you get to shoot into close combat.
Sure if you're facing a mechanized list it won't do an awful lot, but it's very hard not to make it's points back and then some.
It's not on the level of an AoBF, but it's pretty good for 30 points.

Of course if you're meta is all knight equivalents, then yes it becomes garbage.

 WhiteBobcat wrote:
I'm tired of the false emperor and his sniveling minions, so I've decided to turn to Chaos. The core of my army is going to be some sort of CSM build with Chosen, CSM, Noise/Plague Marines, and Terminators. Very high probability of Daemon allies as a CAD or formation.

What I'm having trouble with is the landscape of the CSM supplements that have been steadily coming out. I don't have the models and am not particularly interested in Khorne, so I'm excluding KDK and Crimson Slaughter. That leaves the CSM codex, Black Legion, and Traitor's Hate. I actually like the idea of Black Legion since it can be run with or without Abbadon, but it also seems that Black Legion (at least fluff-wise as a unit) also fits into Traitor's Hate Decurions.

Can somebody who is more familiar with 7th ed army building give me some guidance on how, if at all, Black Legion and Traitor's Hate work together, or if/how they can be allied? If I build a "Black Legion" Decurion using the Traitor's Hate rules, am I done, or is there some way I can also use the Black Legion supplement in the army?

Heres soem of my perspective on it. http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2016/10/traitors-hate-core-units.html

The Traitors hate really helped Chaops a lot. your favored choices will work very well wit hthe new Core Formations i nthe Black Crusade Detachment.

I will say this: Nurgle is the strongest as far as competitive builds go because toughness is just always good. The Chosen and posessed both get love i nthe Black Legion and when they are inside of a Black Crusade Detachment, you save a ton of points going Black legion because Veterans of the long War becomes free. Having Obsec Elites is really awesome also. So there's just a lot of good things to say aboutTraitors Hate. Go git 'em.