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I just got the new csm codex and after looking through and forming my list I was having a hard time deciding which troop setup would work the best for fighting against Dark Eldar. In your opinion which one would be the most effective in 1500 point games?

Medium sized squads of cultists with autoguns, 10-man squads of chaos space marines, or many squads of 5 plague marines with special weapons (flamers?)

any help is appreciated, thank you!

Whichever you want, man.

3+ saves are nice because most of the anti-infantry weapons that DE sport only have AP 5. Feel no pain on the plague marines is even more bueno, but their extra toughness doesn't mean jack squat to poison weapons.

Cultists aren't half bad either, because you can get a dozen times as many bodies for the same price tag, more than enough to withstand 72 or more splinter cannon shots a turn. Plus, toughness 3 doesn't hurt you as badly as it normally wound since they all wound on a fixed number which is better than getting wounded on a 3+ when bolters start showing up. Or a 2+ when the heavy bolters start their death rattle.

I'd go for Basic Marines, as the Boltguns can glance the Skimmers to death and the 3+ will keep 'em pewpewing for longer.

Plauge Marines would be too expensive for this "mission"

Cultists'd be good, but their Autoguns at s3 would be unable to touch their skimmers...

Nurgle Obliterators is just wrong*, man. If you do go Cultists, I hope that by "medium sized" you mean "25 or more". I just played a game today against a CSM player and he had one squad of 30 and one squad of 10. Guess which one gave me a headache and which one gave me first blood (so to speak).

* No instant death from Bright/Dark Lances.

Watch out for raiders. They can carry a squad of kabalites who can fire in any direction. They also get to rerole failed to wound while onboard the raider. Then theirsmy personal fav, the Talos (check it out in my gallery), the Talos gets 16 garenteed attacks per turn + 1D6 extra attacks. 12 of these attacks ignore toughness and wound on a +4. These attacks are ranged at 36 inches.

 Archon Tobias wrote:
Watch out for raiders. They can carry a squad of kabalites who can fire in any direction. They also get to rerole failed to wound while onboard the raider. Then theirsmy personal fav, the Talos (check it out in my gallery), the Talos gets 16 garenteed attacks per turn + 1D6 extra attacks. 12 of these attacks ignore toughness and wound on a +4. These attacks are ranged at 36 inches.

What?

No.

You are wrong in almost every statement in that post. Splinter racks, an upgrade for Raiders, allows splinter rifles and pistols to reroll to-hit rolls.

Talos do not get 16 attacks. They get 1d6 attacks in close combat and have a twin linked splinter cannon built into their tail that can fire 6 poisoned 4+ shots a turn and rerolled failed to hit rolls. This is if you don't upgrade it to any of the other options.

What do you think about khorne berzerkers viability vs eldar?

Not listed but noise marines with a blast master ignore cover saves.

grimgunman wrote:
What do you think about khorne berzerkers viability vs eldar?

if they get into combat against something other than banshees or incubi they will win, likely in one round leaving them open to counter fire the next turn.

if they get into combat with incubi or banshees they are likely toast. bezerker chain swords wont save them against incubi one bit.

Make sure and take some Havocs so that you can las the vehicles and make em walk. Then they're not so hard.

I've played against them a lot this year and as long as you can absorb the initial firepower (Decent dice in turn 2), you'll eventually take em out with your bolters.

then they're just kinda squishy.

Khorne's always been a favourite, but so short range. Just remember the old assault vehicle disembarking rule as it effects all the Deldar vehicles too. But I usually have to go gunline against the Deldar, they come right at you usually anyway. Larger games I'd start taking the Khornies. but at 1500 I'd just go for the vanilla.

G

 Grumzimus wrote:
Make sure and take some Havocs so that you can las the vehicles and make em walk. Then they're not so hard.

You don't even need guns that big. Havocs with Autocannons are extremely economical. A squad of 10 Havocs, champion, and 4 Autocannons costs like 25 points more than 5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons in the last codex.