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Hey guys! I am very, very new to this, and I am building my first army. I have chosen Slaanesh CSM, because I enjoy the fluff and models- I know they aren't considered overly competitive.

While choosing my HQ, Lucius the Eternal and the Chaos Lord both offer a similar boon- that Noise Marines are considered Troop choices rather than Elite. What does that mean?? For the life of me, I cannot find an explanation anywhere. What advantage does this give you?

Thank you for any feedback!

Many armies, though not all, are built using a Combined Arms Detachment. It's a way of organising your forces to have a legal army. The Combined Arms detachment, as well as some other detachments, ask that it have certain unit choices selected, and those choices are based on the Battlefield Role of the unit. These are the Battlefield Roles:

HQ (represented by a skull in the top corner of the dataslate)
Troop (represented by a triangle in the top corner)
Elite (represented by a cross)
Fast Attack (lightning bolt)
Heavy Support (explosion)
Lord of War

A Combined Arms detachment, for example, requires 1 HQ and 2 Troops, with an optional 1 HQ, 4 Troops, 3 Elites, 3 Fast Attack, 3 Heavy Supports, and 1 Lord of War in addition to this. Since Lucius and the Slanneshi Chaos Lord allow you to take Noise Marines as Troops rather than Elites, you can take more units of them than normal, and it'll free up your Elites slot for other things that you might want instead. Additionally, Troops in a Combined Arms Detachment have a bonus rule (Objective Secured) that they wouldn't get if they were an Elite in a Combined Arms Detachment.

Combined Arms Detachments used to be the only way you could build an army, so this rule used to do a lot more than it does now. Nowadays there are many detachments that don't use these battlefield roles at all, meaning that it's not always necessary to pay attention to them. However, some things still will care about that battlefield role. Deathwatch, for example, have special rules depending on the Battlefield Role of the unit they're shooting at, and the unit will have that role no matter what army they're a part of.

Thank you, very, very much for the explanation! I kept rereading the same things trying to find it, I knew I was missing something. Thanks again!

Slany warbands are not really bad per say as noise marines are a solid unit thanks to blastmaster, doom siren and sonic weapons as they ignore cover. Salvo 2/3 kinda sucks but the blastmasters more than make up for it. We are getting a legion codex soon and im sure we get more noisy goodies with that. But yea, we are not in the same camp of the big 4 but we sure as hell can put a competitive list together. Dont fall for the internet hyperbole about CSM, its outdated. But you will need 5+ books however, so get that wallet open and grab a back pack! I like the idea of a Slany lord on a bike with a sigil and a spineshiver blade for a super high init blender. Stick him in a unit of bikers with some sorcs for flavor and give them the icon of excess for FNP (altho if you want to gamble on biomancy and endurance you can get rid of the icon and MoS). Its a damn decent unit with some great fluff. Cocaine Riders assemble!