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I was recently gifted a small CSM army. It consists of, a Daemon Prince, about 15 Chaos Space Marines, a Land Raider, a squad of Havocs, and a Rhino. I was wondering if I could get any suggestions on where to go next in terms of improving my army. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Are you looking for a theme, want to make it competitive, or both?

I am not super familiar with the themes available, I'm not looking to make it super competitive but I still want it to be decent.

You've got 15 men (not counting the Havocs) and 20 transport capacity, so I'd consider bumping the second unit of CSMs up to 10 as well to take advantage of that.

Cultists can be found dirt cheap online (since they're in the starter box) and can help increase your numbers since you'll have a pretty small force if you're fielding the Land Raider in 1,000 point games.

Like the poster above, we can give better advice if we know more what you're into as a player.

Are you new to the game, or just the army? Do you like collecting lots of models, or do you want a few big ones?

As an example I like lots of troops, so my first advice would be to get some more Chaos Marines. The new "mechanized" box sets are a really good deal. You can get ten guys and a Rhino for an excellent price.

Competetive-wise and for flexibility, I think Sorcerers are really useful. But it all depends on what you're looking for.

I am fairly new to the game although I already have a small necron force. I generally like a mix of bigger and smaller units. While I understand if units like cultists are necessary I like the meaty space marine armour and weapons along with the demon summoning and aesthetic of the CSMs.

I'd say get the traitor Legions book and choose a Legion. It has rules that allows the army to get a chance of fighting back when facing newer codexes, which are pretty much any codex since CSM is the oldest if I'm not mistaken.

Black Legion - vanilla Legion you are able to use most of the stuff in the codex
Alpha Legion - heavy on cultists and characters
Iron Warriors - heavy con long range and tanks
Night Lords - assault and speed
Word bearers - psykers (conjuration) heavy with some bonus to cultists
World Eaters - heavy assault
Death guard - medium range army
Emperor's Children - long range with some cc
Thousand sons - heavy on psykers with medium range firepower

Ill give my take on this. First and foremost grab both the base codex and traitor legions. Flip through them and look for what grabs you. Keep in mind you do not need to go mono legion. You can mix and match and by lore, it would be fine since most legions are now fractured and will fight alongside any warlord who offers them the most.

The Black Legion are the base go to traitor legion. They have good relics and have the most options of all the legions. Their decurion offers heavy alpha striking or you can go with a black crusade detachment for basic gameplay if alpha striking isnt your thing. They offer terminators as troops in a CaD.

The Alpha Legion are insurgents and offer lots of of infiltration and has double respawning cultists. Im not to familiar with this legion myself and I would rate it an advanced difficulty in playing.

The Iron Warriors are a bit simple to play. Lore wise they are heavy vehicle based (not so much by rules) and can field tank hunting havocs and Obits. A decent way to start with them is to run the legion detachment and grab a warband and a few forts to put them in. If you want to focus on the vehicle side of things you pretty much need to pick up Imperial Armor 13 from forgeworld.

Nightlords are a bit tricky for a newer player but offer several ways to play. The double raptor talon detachment is rather nasty versus eldar and tau (watch out for interceptor fire with Tau). The legion provides auto night fighting and stealth. Great with bikers and other fast moving units. Also, fear. Marines dont care but both Tau and Eldar certainly do. Take advantage of this.

Word Bearers : Imho this legion is a bit borked out of the gate since the detachment wants you to summon demons but gives no protection to psykers for malefic. Meaning you are going to peril often. If you really want to run them I think haivng Imperial Armor 13 is 100% needed since one of the options you can take on your tanks is to re-roll malefic rolls.

World Eaters: This is a powerful assault based legion. It looks to circumvent a base weakness of CSM in that our transports suck for assault. They offer some of the best relics in the book for assault and can, if your luck holds and you build correctly, assault in turn one. Stay away from Zerks, they are the worst cult unit in the game and are over priced. Once more, Imperial Armor 13 helps this legion out.

Death Guard looks to be our "power" legion atm. And for good reason. Army wide FNP (except on cultists and vehicles) and re-rolls on 1's for FNP and enhanced cover saves for shooting attacks at 18 inchs and further out. But one of the best things they get is relentless. That means your havocs can move and shoot and your marines can rapid fire and charge. Plague marines are outdated now that basic marines get FNP and relentless but they do offer poison melee attacks. All in all a great package if you are into nurgle.

Emps Children offer str 5 ignores cover basic infantry firepower BUT its salvo based so that means to get the most out of your shooting you are going to lose mobility. Blast Masters are vicious as well as doom sirens. Everything gets FNP +6 but it increases to +4 when marked and your unit has a icon. A solid mix of shooting and resilience with some very very very nasty relics. Another winner legion.

Thousand Sons are another advanced army and I would steer away from them unless you REALLY like the models/fluff. You can field fluffy lists with rubrics and scarabs or go for Magnus and friends for more competitive games. A problem legion in that our coolest models are over priced to the point of broken and the formations are so bloated you wont be taking anything but a War Cabal in sub 3k games. Overall a mixed bag. If you dont mind mixing in demons and go psyker heavy you can dominate the psychic phase. Also, everything is AP 3 so marines go bye bye quicker than normal. If you care about such things.

Stay away from Mutilators, one of the worst units in the game.

For your demon prince, nurgle DPs are probably our power option in that regard as they have shrouded offering a 2+ jink. Combine with the Black Mace and you have a heavy hitter.

Land Raiders are pretty bad imho. There is far to much melta/lance in the game and av14 isnt what it used to be. However they get better the lower point totals you play with since your opponent has less melta to bring. In standard games I would shelve the model unless you have fun with it. Be ready for it to die very quickly. Perhaps 8th will make av14 vehicles tougher, but until then its a soft take.

While I am not a new player I am a recent convert to Chaos (from necrons) so be sure to read other posts. Take a look in the tactics sub forum as it currently has quite a few legion threads going.

Welcome to chaos.

Get a heldrake it makes the whole army a little bit scarier. makes ravenwing bikers literaaly poop in their soft undies

Obliterators! Then, more obliterators! Then, a third box of Obliterators!

Barring that, I would just buy:

1. Codex: Chaos Space Marines
2. Traitor Legions Supplement

Figure out what models, legion, paint scheme, etc you like. Make a few 1,000 and 1500 point lists. Make a few more, think about it, post about it, get feedback,

3. Buy the new Vehicle + Squad kit: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Chaos-Space-Marines-Chaos-Desolator-Squad

4. Go from there.

 kronk wrote:
Obliterators! Then, more obliterators! Then, a third box of Obliterators!

Barring that, I would just buy:

1. Codex: Chaos Space Marines
2. Traitor Legions Supplement

Figure out what models, legion, paint scheme, etc you like. Make a few 1,000 and 1500 point lists. Make a few more, think about it, post about it, get feedback,

3. Buy the new Vehicle + Squad kit: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Chaos-Space-Marines-Chaos-Desolator-Squad

4. Go from there.

I agree with everything here except for the blind purchases of CSM squads. Some legions dont have rules good enough to bring them and make them anything but dead weight. Some times cultists are a better choice. I would figure out what you want to play and how it plays before making any purchases, even basic ones.

Table wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Obliterators! Then, more obliterators! Then, a third box of Obliterators!

Barring that, I would just buy:

1. Codex: Chaos Space Marines
2. Traitor Legions Supplement

Figure out what models, legion, paint scheme, etc you like. Make a few 1,000 and 1500 point lists. Make a few more, think about it, post about it, get feedback,

3. Buy the new Vehicle + Squad kit: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Chaos-Space-Marines-Chaos-Desolator-Squad

4. Go from there.

I agree with everything here except for the blind purchases of CSM squads. Some legions dont have rules good enough to bring them and make them anything but dead weight. Some times cultists are a better choice. I would figure out what you want to play and how it plays before making any purchases, even basic ones.

what legions don't benifit from CSMs as their basic troops? remember that cultists don't get VOTLW

Alpha Legion, Thousand Sons, Nightlords and Black Legion. To name four. However you will need one squad if you want to take the hounds of abbadon to avoid the terribad black legion warband in the legion detachment.

Assault from deep strike raptors for the win.

BrianDavion wrote:

Table wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Obliterators! Then, more obliterators! Then, a third box of Obliterators!

Barring that, I would just buy:

1. Codex: Chaos Space Marines
2. Traitor Legions Supplement

Figure out what models, legion, paint scheme, etc you like. Make a few 1,000 and 1500 point lists. Make a few more, think about it, post about it, get feedback,

3. Buy the new Vehicle + Squad kit: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Chaos-Space-Marines-Chaos-Desolator-Squad

4. Go from there.

I agree with everything here except for the blind purchases of CSM squads. Some legions dont have rules good enough to bring them and make them anything but dead weight. Some times cultists are a better choice. I would figure out what you want to play and how it plays before making any purchases, even basic ones.

what legions don't benifit from CSMs as their basic troops? remember that cultists don't get VOTLW

CSM, many of our units are overpriced relative to our Loyalist counterparts. While the Legion rules improve this imbalance by throwing us more benefits they don't completely address that underlying over cost and relative vulnerability problems.

Take Alpha Legion for instance, yes you get VotLW for free, but otherwise its just infiltrate and maybe first turn shrouding if you take the formation.... Raven Guard loyalists can have that and much more for only a single point more. With the free VotLW that cost imbalance at best addresses the loyalist advantage of Chapter Tactics. The biggest imbalance is that Loyalist have ATSKNF and Chaos doesn't have anything that significant. Statistically a CSM squad would need to have roughly 3 more marines to perform evenly to a loyalist tactical squad in the absence of all other special rules... its something like a 45 pt advantage to Loyalist. At the end of the day basic CSM are still a tax on the rest of the army, that should be minimized and mitigated as much as possible, or avoided all together.

Regardless of Legion choice, your best bet is still to keep CSM squads to a minimal squad size, taking a special weapon and a rhino.

CSM excel at assault if you're Khorne... I think if you finagle it right you can get 5 dice per unit in assault. We play at 1000 points, so squads of CSM in Chaos Rhinos, supported by a helldrake and some psychic powers, is the general plan. It might not be tournament competitive but it is aesthetically awesome.

FWIW the Helldrake looks sick. Picked one up last night*. The Baleflamer is great because the low BS doesn't matter and it has good range, hits hard.


*the faith and heresy box is great if you want a stormtalon and a helldrake. it comes with all the options for a storm talon, and both of the options for a helldrake (although i can't imagine not using the baleflamer). save some cash, get a cool book, and some dice.

 Marmatag wrote:
CSM excel at assault if you're Khorne... I think if you finagle it right you can get 5 dice per unit in assault.

SOMEONE SAY KHORNE IN HERE!?

Chosen and Possessed by default and termies with double (dragons) lightning claws will bust out 5 attacks per model. Two base, one for charging, one for rage, one for duel combat weapons. Regular CSM and variants like Bikes, Havocs, and Raptors have one attack base, meaning their max is four attacks on the charge (the champs always get two attacks base, however). Then you get things like Spawn's D6 attacks, Lord's/Kharn's base four attacks, and Deamon Prince's base five attacks. Basically, if you want to throw handfuls of dice at the table in close combat, World Eater's are your army.

Their main draw is also their main flaw, however, since if you kill your target in assault you are now out in the open with your pants down. Oh well, Khorne cares not how the blood flows.

Table wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Obliterators! Then, more obliterators! Then, a third box of Obliterators!

Barring that, I would just buy:

1. Codex: Chaos Space Marines
2. Traitor Legions Supplement

Figure out what models, legion, paint scheme, etc you like. Make a few 1,000 and 1500 point lists. Make a few more, think about it, post about it, get feedback,

3. Buy the new Vehicle + Squad kit: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Chaos-Space-Marines-Chaos-Desolator-Squad

4. Go from there.

I agree with everything here except for the blind purchases of CSM squads. Some legions dont have rules good enough to bring them and make them anything but dead weight. Some times cultists are a better choice. I would figure out what you want to play and how it plays before making any purchases, even basic ones.

Fair enough. The cam squad is also more bodies for chosen, havocs, or more csm to fill the squads he has.

Table wrote:
Alpha Legion, Thousand Sons, Nightlords and Black Legion. To name four. However you will need one squad if you want to take the hounds of abbadon to avoid the terribad black legion warband in the legion detachment.

Well you can always build the vanilla CSMs as other army list entries. I wouldn't have a problem with them being used as Rubrics or chosen, provided the poses/pieces used worked towards that look with posing and so on. GW even sells sets of 5 jump packs if you want raptors.

The rhino + csm + 2 sets of jump packs costs about the same as 2 boxes of raptors. I guess the choice here is between the aesthetic/bits of the raptors versus the 'free' rhino.

The rhino could easily be turned into a predator, the rhino kit includes a turret ring, some hatches and weapon nozzles, so you'd just need to create a basic turret shape from card/foam/whatever and use some straws/tubes to put some space between the turret and weapon nozzles... if that kind of thing is your idea of fun.