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After many years of being a Tau and Ork player I've been reading some heresy and thinking of turning to Chaos. I've always thought that the Dragon Warriors had the best looks and playstyle ever since I first saw them in 4th edition. So before I properly start collecting them I've got three questions:

Which is the best way to represent their scale armour? You could paint it of course, but that sounds like something which you should either do really well or not do at all as they may end up looking like spots or wavey lines rather than scales. There is Green Stuff, which I've never tried before but it could work in some areas. I guess I'll do painted scales for the majority of the armour and then use Green Stuff for a few detailed areas. There's also AoS bits to consider, and Green Stuff robes.

Apart from the clear fire affinity what's your stance on their fluff? What kind of Chaos warband do you see them as? As they're a relatively minor warband there's not much canon fluff about them, which is good in a way as it makes them more unique and customisable. From what I've read, they seem to be an Undivided warband which leans towards Khorne but aren't pure World Eater style Khornites. They have red armour and like to close with the enemy, but they also have sorcerers and their sigil looks like a Thousand Sons serpent curling itself into a Khorne number 8.
They can basically be called Chaos Salamanders, however I wouldn't take that too literally as I imagine that their relationship with the Salamanders is similar to that of the Iron Warriors vs Imperial Fists; they have similar combat doctrines but they don't share a primarch.

How competitive is the normal CSM codex? And by 'normal' I mean without any of the Deamonkin or Legions supplements. I'm not an obsessive powergamer but after having a bad run with Orks it would be nice to win sometimes.


Thanks for any advice!

It's pretty bad.

Traitor legions was a real boost.

 SDFarsight wrote:

How competitive is the normal CSM codex? And by 'normal' I mean without any of the Deamonkin or Legions supplements. I'm not an obsessive powergamer but after having a bad run with Orks it would be nice to win sometimes.

How competitive is the CSM codex without dipping into dataslates, supplements or Daemons?

Let me put it this way for you.

Stick with the Orks. You'll win more.

NivlacSupreme wrote:
It's pretty bad.

Traitor legions was a real boost.

On that, I was thinking of using them with either the Alpha Legion or Night Lords rules.

Use them with Salamander rules. Not only does it seem fluffier to me (I only read one short story with them though) it also will let you win more games.

Like other people have mentioned. I would just use the Salamander rules from codex space marines and just say they are chaos in fluff. There will be absolutely no problems there as long as you don't try to ally in actual chaos stuff as BB. The benefits of using loyalist codexs for chaos is you can ally in guard as BB

Painting and modelling wise. Why not leave the armour as just painted red and GS on some dragon scale cloaks and things. You could even just straight up us Salamander miniatures for your army with a few chaos icons here and there. Try to procure some dragon skulls to top off banners etc.

Ashiraya wrote:Use them with Salamander rules. Not only does it seem fluffier to me (I only read one short story with them though) it also will let you win more games.

vim_the_good wrote:Like other people have mentioned. I would just use the Salamander rules from codex space marines and just say they are chaos in fluff. There will be absolutely no problems there as long as you don't try to ally in actual chaos stuff as BB. The benefits of using loyalist codexs for chaos is you can ally in guard as BB

Painting and modelling wise. Why not leave the armour as just painted red and GS on some dragon scale cloaks and things. You could even just straight up us Salamander miniatures for your army with a few chaos icons here and there. Try to procure some dragon skulls to top off banners etc.

That is an interesting idea using Salamander rules especially as I don't imagine my undivided Dragon Warriors to be really big on deamons, Khorne Berserkers etc. The Guard could give it a LatD feel. Yet the idea of having lots of winged Raptors as Troops plus having Fear is something I'm looking at as well. The nice thing about there being so little canon attached to the 'Warriors is that you could legitimately give them the rules of any Undivided legion and still make it fluffy.

As for the modelling, I think I'll do something close to your first suggestion; painting them red and adding some scales and other draconic details with GS.