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Just wanted to get some advice for starting with chaos for the first time.

The reason for the question is I love the new thousand sons and death guard models and was wondering if mixing the two was viable? Might be that at 2000 points it's just not really an option due to the prices of units. Annoying that death guard can't take things like maulerfiends and heldrakes.

Is there an option to just go generic chaos, perhaps my own legion, and just take whatever I want?

If you want to benefit from a legion trait, you will typically have to take 2 different detachments. One of DG / One of TS. I'm not sure how well it would work, but it can be done.

If do just go for a "chaos" detachment, you won't be getting any of the bonuses for just being TS, Or DG (when the codex comes out).

It's easy enough just to make 2 seperate detachments, so at least they get there unique legion rules.

I'm planning to be able to field detachments from all legions, it's definetely doable.

For instance, Patrol Detachment of World Eaters - let's say Kharn + 3 units of Berserkers (who count as Troops as they are World Eaters) + a Battalion detachment of Black legion.

Totally acceptable.

You can take anything that has the Chaos keyword, so yeah, you can mix 1k sons, DG; daemons and renegades in one detachment. Only downside is that you'll lose potential Legion traits, but since DG/1ksons don't have any yet, you have nothing to lose

There's a reason for why you see so many Imperial Soup lists, with Celestine, Guilliman, Conscripts, Assassins and so on in one army: until Stratagems and faction bonuses are a thing for everyone there's no reason not to mix and match how you want.

Actually most imperial soup armies keep RG and his marines in a separate detachment from everyone else. The actual need to use separate detachments for different armies isn't a big deal unless your are burdened with particularly expensive and ineffective HQs.

For example, I'm currently running two battalions as CSM, one is iron warriors (almost entirely for the warlord trait) and one is EC (best CT for slaanesh terminator deathstar imo).

Considering I'd want to run at least two or three detachments for cp regardless, it isn't a big deal.

The problem you will run into will be with the release of the Death Guard Codex (and the eventual release of the Thousand Sons Codex) everything in your army will need to have Keyword Death Guard or Keyword Thousand Sons to be able to benefit from the stratagems within each codex. From what we have seen so far these stratagems are pretty powerful and seem to be GWs way of giving people an incentive not to build the "soup" lists.

You can build a "Death Guard" and "Thousand Sons" mixed army using the Chaos Space Marine codex by giving all your units from the detachments the Nurgle or Tzeetch keywords. This will unlock warlord traits and wargear for whatever legion (or legions) you choose as well as allow you to use the stratagems found in the Chaos Space Marines Codex.

 greenterror88 wrote:
The problem you will run into will be with the release of the Death Guard Codex (and the eventual release of the Thousand Sons Codex) everything in your army will need to have Keyword Death Guard or Keyword Thousand Sons to be able to benefit from the stratagems within each codex. From what we have seen so far these stratagems are pretty powerful and seem to be GWs way of giving people an incentive not to build the "soup" lists.

You can build a "Death Guard" and "Thousand Sons" mixed army using the Chaos Space Marine codex by giving all your units from the detachments the Nurgle or Tzeetch keywords. This will unlock warlord traits and wargear for whatever legion (or legions) you choose as well as allow you to use the stratagems found in the Chaos Space Marines Codex.

Are you sure? I haven't read anything that says you can't use Death Guard stratagem on a Death Guard detachment. You just need your army to be battleforged. Where did you read that it'll be impossible?

Bluebeard wrote:

 greenterror88 wrote:
The problem you will run into will be with the release of the Death Guard Codex (and the eventual release of the Thousand Sons Codex) everything in your army will need to have Keyword Death Guard or Keyword Thousand Sons to be able to benefit from the stratagems within each codex. From what we have seen so far these stratagems are pretty powerful and seem to be GWs way of giving people an incentive not to build the "soup" lists.

You can build a "Death Guard" and "Thousand Sons" mixed army using the Chaos Space Marine codex by giving all your units from the detachments the Nurgle or Tzeetch keywords. This will unlock warlord traits and wargear for whatever legion (or legions) you choose as well as allow you to use the stratagems found in the Chaos Space Marines Codex.

Are you sure? I haven't read anything that says you can't use Death Guard stratagem on a Death Guard detachment. You just need your army to be battleforged. Where did you read that it'll be impossible?

He's mixing up 'army' and 'detachment.'

An army is the entire list. You can make it battle-forged (and must do to use it in matched play) by sharing at least one key word. Thousand Sons and Death Guard both share 'Chaos.'

A detchment is the building block of the army. You can have a number of different detachments. Abilities like Chapter Tactics, Legion Traits etc. require the detachment to share a specific keyword - e.g. in this case a 'Death Guard' detachment is one entirely made up of units with the 'Death Guard' keyword. If the detachment is like this it can use the bonus Death Guard rules, stratagems etc. There's nothing stopping you from mixing and matching 'Chaos' units in the detachment but if it's not all Death Guard it doesn't get the extra stuff.

The best way to do what OP wants is to have two separate detachments, one TS and one DG. That way:

Each detachment benefits from its own special rules (but they aren't usable for the other detachment i.e. you can't use DG stratagems on TS units).
The army itself is battle-forged because all units share the 'Chaos' key wordg.

Yeah stratagems require a battle forged army which requires a detachment of death guard or tsons, not an entire army. Their is no penalty currently in the game for having an army which consists of detachments from different factions, only for mixing within detachments.

Technically I guess the need to take multiple detachments is the "penalty" but unless you find an army that actually benefits from using a brigade due to having that many affordable and useful units in every slot, you'll be taking 2-3 detachments regardless.

The advantage is (I think ) that with a brigade detachment you get more CP than by using many detachments

Bluebeard wrote:
The advantage is (I think ) that with a brigade detachment you get more CP than by using many detachments

It is, but it's generally cost prohibitive or involves spamming cheap units of questionable value in multiple slots. Even if you don't want to mix legions or the equivalent, two battalions is generally more competitive.

Tzeentch and Nurgle flipping hate each other too. Obviously do what you want with your hobby, but brace yourself for people side-eyeing you for ignoring the fluff.