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I have been collecting and painting for a bit over a year and once the kid’s basketball season is over I will finally have a few free nights to hit up the local store and play my first game. I want to be prepared for a friendly game and would like some basic direction on what I need to fill out my army for casual play. I have ideas and a sense of direction but could use help on details. Not looking for a point by point breakdown or anything, just a couple basic layouts to fiddle with. Thanks!

My army is Chaos Space Marine and is comprised mostly of Dark Vengence and one craigslist haul. So I have..

20 cultists, 15 Khorn Zerkers (all with bolster/chainsword), 30 CSM with various weapons, 5 chosen, 5 havocs, 5 warp talon, 2 helbrute, one dark apostle, 1 chaos lord, 1 sorcerer. I also have the ability to convert 3 Bikes and 5 terminators but weapons would be limited.

The play style I would like to play is ground based with troops, not vehicles. Also not a huge fan of demons. I would love to center on melee and the zerkers and was thinking World Eaters for that reason ( every unit in my army is painted differently with only the right shoulder staying consistent).

I know I need a rhino or two but outside of that what am I missing AND how would you put these pieces together?

-What would you leave off completely and what is must use?
-What weapon load would you use, specifically on the havocs and CSMs?
-Finally, on the havocs, all I have are old metal models and the original owner put a lascannon or rocket launcher on all of them; can a chosen model be used as the unit champion or do I need to find an extra havoc model somewhere?

I thank you in advance, excited to finally get into the gaming aspect of this hobby.

Have you ever played Warhammer before this? If not, it might be best to just take in what you have and ask the Manager or someone else at the store to take you through an open play or power level game. You'll get to grips with how to play, get a feel for how different units play and generally have a better idea of how to put together a good 40k list.

The havocs are 4 special/heavy weapons and a champion, but lascannons/missiles are all ok.

I can only advise in a casual mindset but I've found world eaters a little... one dimensional. I've found I can work them with some ranged units but psyker heavy armies punish them hard.

Zerkers in rhinos are a blender and will do a lot of heavy lifting for you, but they are more fragile than you'd think. If you can get them some chainaxes that'd be good too.

You might benefit from an exalted champ for juicy reroll 1s to wound and then perhaps more cultists to run as blobs for screening/tide stratagem.

Alpha legion are the best competitively I think due to the infiltrate if you wanted an alternate legion and don't make too much use of daemons.

Close combat armies have to have a few things for them to work properly.

They gotta be either:
-Fast
-Hard to Kill
-Numerous

or some kind of combination of all 3.

Chaos Marines aren't really any of these, thats why transports are so important for things like Berzerkers. You really need lots of transports or become Alpha Legion for the ability to infiltrate. You need to close in on the enemy as quickly as possible. If you don't have a strategy for getting into assault by at least the second turn you are going to lose badly.

I would drop the chosen and the dark apostle. They don't really bring much to the table to be honest.

I would also consider a Daemon Prince with wings.

mrhappyface wrote:Have you ever played Warhammer before this? If not, it might be best to just take in what you have and ask the Manager or someone else at the store to take you through an open play or power level game. You'll get to grips with how to play, get a feel for how different units play and generally have a better idea of how to put together a good 40k list.

Never played except on the table at home. So I am fairly comfortable with rules and turn progression but not on list making or playing against anything other than other CSM. I may try what you suggest, I was just hoping to be a bit prepared going in.

Dudeface wrote:The havocs are 4 special/heavy weapons and a champion, but lascannons/missiles are all ok.

I can only advise in a casual mindset but I've found world eaters a little... one dimensional. I've found I can work them with some ranged units but psyker heavy armies punish them hard.

Zerkers in rhinos are a blender and will do a lot of heavy lifting for you, but they are more fragile than you'd think. If you can get them some chainaxes that'd be good too.

You might benefit from an exalted champ for juicy reroll 1s to wound and then perhaps more cultists to run as blobs for screening/tide stratagem.

Alpha legion are the best competitively I think due to the infiltrate if you wanted an alternate legion and don't make too much use of daemons.

I have no issue switching to alpha; it fits my army design just fine. I’ll look into their rules a bit.

Skynjay wrote:

mrhappyface wrote:Have you ever played Warhammer before this? If not, it might be best to just take in what you have and ask the Manager or someone else at the store to take you through an open play or power level game. You'll get to grips with how to play, get a feel for how different units play and generally have a better idea of how to put together a good 40k list.

Never played except on the table at home. So I am fairly comfortable with rules and turn progression but not on list making or playing against anything other than other CSM. I may try what you suggest, I was just hoping to be a bit prepared going in.

I've written lists for people before but I've never found that helped them learn that much about list building. I got where I am now by simply spending hours putting random units together that I thought would work in an army, then making the points fit afterwards. List building works a lot better if you chop down or add to from an army that you want to take rather than building an army specifically to fit the points. And as for deciding which units you want to use; just go with trial and error, keep playing with different units and get a feel for whether you like how they play or not.

The problem with getting others to build your list for you is that you won't get to organically discover what works in todays meta and what doesn't. It also helps when new rules come out so that you can immediately start thinking about what units work and what don't.

I say, build a list or two with what you have by just putting together an army that you think will look cool, make the points fit and then try it out. Don't get too hung up about power gaming yet, savour those first few years of 40k gaming where you don't care if your army is optimised.

So, one question that hasn't been asked: how many points for the army?

For about 600 points, you could have a tough core that looks like this:

- Chaos Lord
- Sorcerer

- 2x cultists
- 1x CSM (with plasma or lascannons)

- 1x Warp Talons
- 1x Terminators with Combi Plasma

... and then kit it out with Havocs / Helbrutes / Zerkers to your liking. My 1k list looks similar, but for the Warp Talons.

 techsoldaten wrote:
So, one question that hasn't been asked: how many points for the army.

I didn’t really specify because I am really not sure what the norm is. I watch battles online occasionally but they tend to be huge. Is 600 or 850 a typical game at local stores? I realize everywhere is different but I wanted to have a base ready so I could just play with weapons and marks and be ready to go.

Thank you for your input, I notice no transports. Are you relying on termies to provide a scare while moving to position.

I would go to your local store (probably bring all your models) and ask the store owner or the people there who would be best to play some intro-games with. Most groups have a couple of people who are the "go to" for introducing new players. What you have access to is a fine small CSM force, and you could have some good games with it - but not if you run into some power-gaming tournament player who has a netlist full of spam.

Hell, if you run into that guy you might never play 40K again.

I run a lot of intro games - and I always try to create balanced and fun lists which feature lots of different units, etc. It sounds like you could do a simple 750-1000 point game (or 35-50 power). The biggest thing is what I mentioned above; finding the right person. You'd be better off getting in 4-5 smaller games to start to understand your own army.

Skynjay wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
So, one question that hasn't been asked: how many points for the army.

I didn’t really specify because I am really not sure what the norm is. I watch battles online occasionally but they tend to be huge. Is 600 or 850 a typical game at local stores? I realize everywhere is different but I wanted to have a base ready so I could just play with weapons and marks and be ready to go.

Thank you for your input, I notice no transports. Are you relying on termies to provide a scare while moving to position.

I guess typical varies from store to store. It's been years since I played anything less than 1,000 points. Maybe call the store manager to ask?

Not sure it's a good idea to build an army to match the stores rules. You might want to build a number of lists at different points levels so you have the right one when you need it.