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I've been recently peeking how people build chaos armies for curiosity and fun. And there is something that actually feels a bit off for me.

I understand that for shooting units usually the Mark of Slaneesh (rolla 5+ to ignore a wound) is better than the Mark of Nurgle (-1 to enemy hit rolls). But with the Legion Trait of the Alpha Legion (substract 1 from hit rolls to Alpha Legion units), why choose the Mark of Slaneesh still? Couldn't you with the mark of Nurgle make the enemy roll hit rolls of -2?

Uhm... What page/s of Codex: Chaos Space Marines are you referring to?

I assume you are referring to the two mark-specific psychic powers? The main reason people go for Slaanesh marked units over Nurgle is to exploit the Endless Cacophony stratagem and shoot twice.

 Dampyr Blackblade wrote:
Uhm... What page/s of Codex: Chaos Space Marines are you referring to?

Page 161. When people do Chaos Army lists they specify the unit Mark, I assume they mean what is in that page.

I assume you are referring to the two mark-specific psychic powers? The main reason people go for Slaanesh marked units over Nurgle is to exploit the Endless Cacophony stratagem and shoot twice.

And thanks! It must be that, makes sense.

Which is better depends on two things: the BS of the firing unit/whether the firing unit can ignore the penalties to hit and what the damage of the firing weapon is.

If the firing has good BS and/or has ways of ignoring the negative to hit, then the Slaanesh power is better. Whilst if the firing weapon has multiple damage then the Nurgle power may be better.

Another thing to remember is that the Nurgle power can cause Overheating weapons to devastate their users and the Slaanesh power lets you ignore Mortal wounds.

Which is better really depends on what you think is more important in your army and what kind of armies you think you'll be playing against.

No only that, but if you check at the math (i'm going of the top of my head so tell me if logic is wrong) :
if we consider weapons that do 1 damage agaisn't a model with 1 wound
a -1 to hit makes one result out of 6 fail when it should have hit, resulting in a 16% decrease in efficiency. However a 5+ FnP will negate 1/3 of incoming damage, resulting in 33% more survivability.
Thus, the best way to stack these bonus to survive would be to have -1 to hit (alpha legion) + the slaanesh power 5+ FnP.

But that math changes agaisnt multiple damage attack (-2 to hit becomes better as a single failed attack could potentially mean 6 less damage) or with multiple wound on your model. So it's a matter of calculating what you need.

VoidSempai wrote:
No only that, but if you check at the math (i'm going of the top of my head so tell me if logic is wrong) :
if we consider weapons that do 1 damage agaisn't a model with 1 wound
a -1 to hit makes one result out of 6 fail when it should have hit, resulting in a 16% decrease in efficiency. However a 5+ FnP will negate 1/3 of incoming damage, resulting in 33% more survivability.
Thus, the best way to stack these bonus to survive would be to have -1 to hit (alpha legion) + the slaanesh power 5+ FnP.

But that math changes agaisnt multiple damage attack (-2 to hit becomes better as a single failed attack could potentially mean 6 less damage) or with multiple wound on your model. So it's a matter of calculating what you need.

Not quite. It negates 1/X hits, where X is how many faces of the die they hit on.

So, if they hit on a 4+ (4, 5, and 6) it negates 1/3rd of the damage, or the same against 1 damage and better against multi damage.

Since you're Alpha Legion for the initial -1, it's equal against BS 3+, worse against 2+, better against 4+, and RIDICULOUSLY BETTER against 5+.