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Hey,

My army is growing and i've purchased my second box of 10 Chaos space marines. i'm building a melee focused army however the first 10 i built very much like the box art:

5x bolt guns
2x bolt pistol plus chain sword
1x missile launcher
1x heavy bolter
1x aspiring champion with plasma pistol and power axe.

For the second 10 should i focus them to be melee/ ranged to end up with a squard of 10 with bolt guns and a squad of 10 with melee weapons? It would be great to hear your recommendation.

Thanks!

Building them so that you have a squad of melee and squad of ranged makes a lot of sense. Typically, mixed units of ranged and melee tend not to do either job very effectively.

Unfortunately, CSM are not very strong units right now but that could change with a new edition right around the corner, so don't worry too much about that for now.

What legion/warband are you going to be playing?

Thanks for your responses guys!

Playing Black Legion. I suppose if i wanted a melee unit I should look at getting a squad of Beserkers/ Hounds of Abaddon?

I don't have much playing experience so it's hard to understand exactly what role i want the new unit of CSM's to carry out!

Hiya! Using multiple CSM kits to build a pool of butchers and a pool of rifles is absolutely a good way to get a solid army inventory together.

The stabby variants make for perfectly fine Berzerkers, which significantly outperforms the Heretac unit in melee. The power fist is an outstanding performer, here, but by no means compulsory. If you can get some axes to swap out the bolt pistols, even better - both in terms of hitting power and giving your opponent WYSIWYG.

Small Heretac units with a heavy weapon are presently ok. The only issue that gets raised is that Cultists are currently a more efficient way to fill up a battlefield and a detachment, but that could all change with the 9th edition points revisions. Black Legion can take them alongside Abaddon, which makes their big gun significantly more effective - especially if it’s a strong anti-tank weapon - so those Missile launchers certainly look like a perfectly safe bet for you.

Preferentially you want to split 10 man squads from the get go into 2 x 5 man ones especially for the ranged ones.

Melee ones are a bit more tricky and instead i'd go directly for khorne berzerkers.

that said, you could make a 5 man csm squad and use the bits left over in conjunction with an AoS bloodwarrior box to make some nice khorne berzerkers.