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I've been reading the Hors Heresy novels for awhile now and decided I really want my own army to play with but have got some questions before I start building my force. If you have the time I would really appreciate it if you can answer these questions to help me get a better understanding of the game and how things work.

I have already decided that I want to play both Chaos Space Marines and Necrons. Chaos has always been my favorite and I love them purely for the models. I plan on making a fluffy list just for casual play, using whatever models look cool (not decided on a Legion yet) and will probably play Necrons as a more "serious" force with more strategy.


A) I understand that there are different types of playing. You can run an unbound army where you are free to take whatever you want. Then there are formations or detachments and you have to have certain units and you get special bonus rules and buffs. I think Necrons have their own special kind of detachment called a decurion but I'm not 100% sure.
How important are these detachments/formations? There's 2 things I'm afraid of. 1) I don't use a formation and my army really suffers from not gaining the special bonuses. or 2) I buy a bunch of models for a formation, then the next codex comes out and I have to buy all new stuff because the old formation is useless. I like the idea of picking what I like and I also like the idea of getting buffs. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot when building my first list,especially because on different forums I see that (apparently) Chaos is in the lower tier of playable armies.


B) Okay, suppose I want to paint my CSM army using the Thousand Sons colors. Are you allowed to take a special character like Kharn, paint him in Thousand Sons colors, and use him in your army? Now, I can understand if you are not allowed to put X character in a Y army. What I mean is, "Hey I know my army is painted like Death Guard, but they all have marks of Slaanesh and I have Fabius Bile as my HQ painted in Death Guard colors."


C) Can you buy Chapter/Warband icons? Like if I were playing Blood Angels and wanted their symbol on my armor and banners or maybe on tanks. Do they sell stickers or stencils for this?


D) There are a ton of different weapon options for your models it is a little intimidating for a new player because I don't know what is "good" or not for how I want to play. Is magnetizing weapons easy for most models, including HQ's?


I think those are the major questions I had. I am thinking of starting with Necrons first. Their detachments seem a little simpler and with Chaos there are just so many options it's a bit overwhelming. From what I hear the Necron detachments are good(although this was told to me in 7th ed) and maybe following a detachment outline might make army building easier for a new player because there's already a rough guideline to follow rather than, okay just go buy stuff!

I know I need to pick up the Necron (and Chaos)codex but are there any other sources you would feel that would help me plan out my force? Ive tried reading army lists online but it's hard when you don't really understand how good those weapons are or their matchups I should say.

I am really, really excited to get started playing. I currently play Warmchine and Hordes with some friends but we were talking about starting 40K (some of them also play Age of Sigmar but it never interested me) Work has me running long 12+ hour shifts so I'll try to check back on here when I have time.

a.) Kinnda, there are FoCs (force organization charts) now not formations, FoCs roughly correspond to Rites of war. The necron decurion was a 7th ed thing, now we use the same FoCs as everyone else. As for how important, very important to select one otherwise you won't be battle forged, less important which one you select. Being battle forged gives you command points which you spend to various effects, like re rolling a die, striking out of order in CC, or automatically passing a morale check. Jury is still out on their importance, but some is definitely better than none.

b.) 40k armies have specific faction keywords, but in the example you gave both Kharn and the 1k sons have the heretic astartes and chaos keywords in common so they could be in the same army. You couldn't take roboute guilliman with your 1k sons because they don't have any faction keywords in common, no matter what his paint job is.

c.) They have transfers for sale (think of them as wet apply stickers) which should get you most of the way. There are vectors of just about every 40k symbol, so you can print your own transfers.

d.) For necrons magnetize the vehicles weapons, but the infantry only have one option each. For Chaos, that's more difficult, because it's hard to say that there is one good comp. Most people outside of GTs are pretty proxy (the weapon on the model is X but I'm playing it as Y) friendly so if you make some choices later that turn out to be not what you want you can just ask your opponent if proxies are cool, and I have as yet to hear someone say no.

Anyway welcome to the hobby, it's a great time to get in. The necron start collecting box is 100% awesome stuff you will need, so that would be my suggestion for a starting point for necrons.

Yeah the Start Collecting box for Necrons looks pretty nice. Now I see you said the decurion is no longer around, that's okay. But now with these force organization charts, do they still operate in the same way as "if you have x y and z you get a special rule"?

I assume all this info would be in the codex which I really need to get a copy of.

You don't have formation bonuses any more - everybody picks from the same 12 detachments, with those detachments that are most troop-focussed or have more mandatory slots giving more command points, which can be used to re-roll dice, automatically pass morale tests or counter-attack in the fight phase before your opponent has fought with all his charging units. In general, almost any combo of units can be made into a legal force - but the trade-off is that more balanced forces will get more CP to pay with.

The codexes have been superseded in 8th Edition temporarily by multi-faction indexes - I think you want index Xenos 1 for Necrons, which also contains rules fir the various Eldar factions. Index Chaos had rules fir the various chaos units.

Yup, what eldar vampire hunter said. In addition, a few paths forward,

For Necrons grab the start collecting box and then the Necron warrior phalanx if you can find it (it's out of stock online but a lot of stores still have them). That will get you all of the models required for a patrol, plus you build the ark as a doomsday ark for firepower, and scarabs for a fast attack choice.

For chaos, if you are willing to go deathguard, you can get 1k points for around 50 or so bucks with buy it now on ebay, and it will probably be less in a week since so few players want deathguard. Deathguard will receive some love here soon, but for now their problems are your discount.

for a start, I'd reccomend choosing ONE army and going with that. if I was going to start a new CSM army, I'd reccomend you find a copy of the betrayal at Calath boxed set. this'll give you a decent force, 30 suits of MK IV armor (perfect to convert to just about any traitor legion) as well as 5 cataphracti terminators (no there aren't any rules for chaos cataphracti termies but you can sue em as standard chaos termies easily eneugh) and a contempotr dreadnought that could make an intreasting helbrute.

Burning of Prosperio is also not tooo bad a start, as it'll net you 30 mk 3 suits, a sorcrer, but it'll set you a verious obviously space wolf mini, and a sqwuad of custoes and sisters of silence that won't be terriably useful for your needs. although you might be able to sell/trade away what you don't want in both of those boxes.

if you;'re not intreasted in those boxes the start collecting sets are also fantastic, the chaos marine one is 10 chaos space marines, a helbrute, and a terminator clad chaos lord. for about a hundred bucks. that'd be eneugh to plunk down in a small game as a patrol detachment

Alright so I decided I'm going to start with Chaos. I just ordered a "start collecting" set from my FLGS. I'll try to pick up the Index for Chaos soon and if I have questions (which I will lol) I'll post them on the forum.

Enjoy and good luck!

Yeah, I would try and stick with one army when you start. This is much easier said than done (I've gone from the Dark Vengeance set to Orks to Skitarii to Scions to Grey Knights and now I'm starting GSC), and I've only been collecting for about a year. It takes quite a bit of time to build and paint, so plan for that while you wait. Seems like you went the smart route too and choose the more interesting army for you. Chaos also has a wide variety of units, which is nice when you're staring at a sea of gray plastic.

You can always create your own paint schemes too if you find the set ones lacking. They would still fall in with a particular chapter, but they would look a bit different. Good luck!