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Greetings folks.

I'm currently in a bit of a quandary, and I find myself seeking information (and, wisdom) from my fellow dakkaites.

As many of you know, I play Blood Angels (Shocking, I know) and I also have a fairly sizable Imperial Guard army as well (Vostroyans).

I now seek to perhaps branch out in the new year and maybe, just maybe, try my hand at painting up some Chaos Space Marines, specifically starting with a Kill Team and then moving on to/branching out toward a larger force.

Herein lies the rub, as it were. I don't know which Legion I want for sure (mostly decided but not 100% chosen yet, see below). I've got a few personal favorites, and each is a favorite for a different reason. They are as follows, in no particular order:

Death Guard
Alpha Legion
Thousand Sons

Of course I also like a few of the other traitor legions (Night Lords are very cool), but they don't grab me like the ones above because they play very similarly to Blood Angels from what I've seen.

If I had to pick one of the three listed above right now, it would be Alpha Legion. I love the metallic green/blue hue of their armor coupled with the cold silver colors and feel like that would be a lot of fun to learn how to paint after painting so much red (and black) for my Blood Angels. It's a completely different style of miniature as well which appeals to me.

That said, what advice do folks have for starting out down this path, and could those more knowledgeable with Chaos be willing to offer me some advice on a Kill Team build perhaps? I don't mind running cultists but would rather focus on the power armored models starting out.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts, and take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

Death guard would be the easiest as they're resilient and yet still pack some punch - especially when you take the spawnstar which counters low ap and grav. Regular marines are now suddenly good as they get t5, fnp, possibly re-rolling ones, and stealth when shot from 18"+ away. Also, fearless and relentless. And all for just 3 pts above regular chaos marines. They get their ini lowered by 1 but it's not such a huge problem usually. Bikers, oblis...basically nothing changed - slap a mark of nurgle on something and it becomes better. Even more so with the new legion rules.

Alpha are an interesting army. And it's probably supposed to revolve around infiltrating double-respawning cultists. Warband is the only core choice there and it's...not amazing but infiltrating marines and chosen still have some place with possibly double-tapping plazma from the first turn. Also, shrowded 1-st turn is neat. Not that it's so great but kinda ok. The great thing about them is that you get infiltrating cultists! And if you also take a warband, which can be ok-ish with a couple of min units - you can get 2 squads of cultists for every one destroyed. The rules stack and you get two 4+ rolls. But you got to keep track of who rolls what cause if you fail the 4+ on the Lost and The damned Tide of Traitors special rule, you will no longer get to roll on it even if the unit still manages to return on the other roll of 4+ granted by Cultist's uprising from AL special decurion rule. Anywayz, that's gona be a lot of respawning cultists that would last the whole game. Don't forget to get them some flamers. The mindveil relic is awesome - basically unfailing hit and run at the start of every movement phase you want. Can even fasten your slow squads as it's not necessery to be in combat. Ah, and the opponent ain't gona kill your warlord. Ever. Cause when he kills your current warlord, you can emidiately nominate another character from AL detachment to be your warlord. Cause he's Alpharius. When this one gets killed too, you nominate another one. Cause he happens to be Alpharius too. When this one's dead, another Alpharius hops out of shadows. Only when he kills all your endless characters there's no Alpharius left you reveal that you're Alpharius. Hail Hydra!

1000 sons have some neat combinations but they boil down to a bunch of wizards with expensive relatively tough but low damage output meetshields.

Also, night lords are not quite like blood angels. More like old ravenwing.

Well the obvious choice would be to play Thousand Sons. The few good melee choices they have will be very different from Blood Angels and even that revolves around the psychic phase. An on top of that you get to "choose" your powers each game, so if you go up against a wall of armour you could opt for heretech, or mass psychic shriecs vs nids. So each game could even be different.
I'm still not convinced they are a strong choice, even after Wrath of Magnus, but they certainly play differently. A pure TSons force probably has more in common with grey knights than they do with other marines.

The second choice would be alpha legion due to all the cultists and infiltration. Deathguard aren't as different compared to the other two. Except on the model front. Nurgle isn't really my style, but I can't help but appreciate the models and aesthetic. They are super easy to convert to, even a novice converter can get good results. That would be their biggest draw imho.

No idea about kill team though. I don't really like it. At that scale you should be able to set up killzones and that kind of stuff, rather than playing a really low point game of 40k. Customize individual models...etc.

Roknar, your avatar bothers me greatly, I'm not sure why.

On topic I would go with the either Alpha Legion. They have a fancy, and different colorscheme and an interesting playstyle. That said, they don't get fancy stuff of chaos like marks, so on the other hand I would go Death Guard, basically necron marines

People either love it or hate it ^^ I wish it would loop smoother, but I'm not gonna change it, sorry

 Roknar wrote:
Well the obvious choice would be to play Thousand Sons. The few good melee choices they have will be very different from Blood Angels and even that revolves around the psychic phase. An on top of that you get to "choose" your powers each game, so if you go up against a wall of armour you could opt for heretech, or mass psychic shriecs vs nids. So each game could even be different.
I'm still not convinced they are a strong choice, even after Wrath of Magnus, but they certainly play differently. A pure TSons force probably has more in common with grey knights than they do with other marines.

The second choice would be alpha legion due to all the cultists and infiltration. Deathguard aren't as different compared to the other two. Except on the model front. Nurgle isn't really my style, but I can't help but appreciate the models and aesthetic. They are super easy to convert to, even a novice converter can get good results. That would be their biggest draw imho.

No idea about kill team though. I don't really like it. At that scale you should be able to set up killzones and that kind of stuff, rather than playing a really low point game of 40k. Customize individual models...etc.

On their own the are good. But add in magnus and some demon allies and boom. Im betting Magnus + fateweaver will be a new top tier tourney list soon. And while it would probably be better as a daemon list with 1k allies, you can certainly run it 1k sons with daemon allies. Tz will be running strong until the end of 7th. As it should be.

To me, it seems like you need to mix in daemons with TSons to make them viable. TSons on their own are still too expensive for their own good. You're average exalted sorcerer will cost you about as much as a daemon prince after adding a jetbike and artefact. I mean, I haven't follow the tactics thread on TSons, so I might be wrong, but their units and formations seemed very costly to me.
That said, I've won games with pre-legions TSons too, so how bad could it really be?

 Roknar wrote:
To me, it seems like you need to mix in daemons with TSons to make them viable. TSons on their own are still too expensive for their own good. You're average exalted sorcerer will cost you about as much as a daemon prince after adding a jetbike and artefact. I mean, I haven't follow the tactics thread on TSons, so I might be wrong, but their units and formations seemed very costly to me.
That said, I've won games with pre-legions TSons too, so how bad could it really be?

Yep, very expensive legion to field. That part was a total bust. I would have rather their psyker tricks have gotten a nerf and had rubrics cut by 30-35%. But you gotta work with what you have. It also erked me that ther eis no heavy heavy weapon option for 5 man units.

Well seeing as you are a Blood Angels player, why not the Black Legion? Those two have had some great fun in the past.

I'm looking forward to the P&M blog for this army Red

Thanks for the feed back so far folks.

I'm currently considering doing a kitbash test model in the near future (after the first of the year) using a blend of Chaos Space Marine bits along with a few parts from my Betrayal at Calth set.

My main point of contention is finding a way to paint the armor metallic blue/green. I saw a tutorial a long while back using inks to achieve the desired effect but my search-fu is weak. I'll keep looking and start sourcing parts in the mean time in preparation for a test model.

Thanks for the input & feedback guys. Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

If you want to paint alpha legion, I think Duncan has a video out with mixing ironbreaker and Konrad Kurze (from the artificer tint set) together.

I just found the video finally. I'll be trying that method out, as I very much enjoy that metallic armor look.

Next step will be sourcing parts and figuring out what I want the test miniature to look like/be armed with. I'll likely build an Aspiring Champion as that'll be a fun place to start for an eventual squad.

More info to come. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:
Greetings folks.

I'm currently in a bit of a quandary, and I find myself seeking information (and, wisdom) from my fellow dakkaites.

As many of you know, I play Blood Angels (Shocking, I know) and I also have a fairly sizable Imperial Guard army as well (Vostroyans).

I now seek to perhaps branch out in the new year and maybe, just maybe, try my hand at painting up some Chaos Space Marines, specifically starting with a Kill Team and then moving on to/branching out toward a larger force.

Herein lies the rub, as it were. I don't know which Legion I want for sure (mostly decided but not 100% chosen yet, see below). I've got a few personal favorites, and each is a favorite for a different reason. They are as follows, in no particular order:

Death Guard
Alpha Legion
Thousand Sons

Of course I also like a few of the other traitor legions (Night Lords are very cool), but they don't grab me like the ones above because they play very similarly to Blood Angels from what I've seen.

If I had to pick one of the three listed above right now, it would be Alpha Legion. I love the metallic green/blue hue of their armor coupled with the cold silver colors and feel like that would be a lot of fun to learn how to paint after painting so much red (and black) for my Blood Angels. It's a completely different style of miniature as well which appeals to me.

That said, what advice do folks have for starting out down this path, and could those more knowledgeable with Chaos be willing to offer me some advice on a Kill Team build perhaps? I don't mind running cultists but would rather focus on the power armored models starting out.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts, and take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-

I think Alphas would be a fun army, though I don't know how differant you're looking for. But hordes of fanatic cultists backed by super spy super soldiers sounds like a fun army.

So when are you going to give us that Chaos P&M blog Red?

Table wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
Well the obvious choice would be to play Thousand Sons. The few good melee choices they have will be very different from Blood Angels and even that revolves around the psychic phase. An on top of that you get to "choose" your powers each game, so if you go up against a wall of armour you could opt for heretech, or mass psychic shriecs vs nids. So each game could even be different.
I'm still not convinced they are a strong choice, even after Wrath of Magnus, but they certainly play differently. A pure TSons force probably has more in common with grey knights than they do with other marines.

The second choice would be alpha legion due to all the cultists and infiltration. Deathguard aren't as different compared to the other two. Except on the model front. Nurgle isn't really my style, but I can't help but appreciate the models and aesthetic. They are super easy to convert to, even a novice converter can get good results. That would be their biggest draw imho.

No idea about kill team though. I don't really like it. At that scale you should be able to set up killzones and that kind of stuff, rather than playing a really low point game of 40k. Customize individual models...etc.

On their own the are good. But add in magnus and some demon allies and boom. Im betting Magnus + fateweaver will be a new top tier tourney list soon. And while it would probably be better as a daemon list with 1k allies, you can certainly run it 1k sons with daemon allies. Tz will be running strong until the end of 7th. As it should be.

Faced this in a recent tourny and I was unimpressed. I ignored fateweaver, blasted Magnus out of the air and a callidus pretty much neutered the horror units. Opponent conceded on turn 4.

It'll be some time after the new year. No idea exactly when to be honest. I've still got to source some parts, then get the artificer Tint set to get the desired metallic blue/green shade I'm going for.

I'm thinking of possibly using a green wash over the blue armor to give it a kind of blue/green glaze. Will be experimenting off and on once I get started.

I appreciate the feedback for sure, I'll also likely be building at least one squad of cultist too, but that'll be after I at least get some power armor painted up.

Take it easy for now.

-Red__Thirst-