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I was thinking about starting out with the hobby with a CSM army. Out of curiosity, to save cash, I would buy dark vegeance which also gives me a lot of essentials I need. Somone suggested to me that I could remove or defile the dark angels in the set and they would count as CSM? How does this work? Would I just paint them my army colours? What units would they count as? Would this involve proxying?

Or would it be better to just shell out the cash for the battleforce?

If you are planning on playing in tournaments, the models must be WYSIWYG (I've yet to see a tournament that does not require this). Amongst friends, people are generally pretty lax, as long as you distinguish models differently that have different gear. It would involve some proxying (based on what they have) but as long as they are close approximation (such as Ravenwing bikers as Chaos bikers) you won't have too many problems.

Lawlet wrote:
I was thinking about starting out with the hobby with a CSM army. Out of curiosity, to save cash, I would buy dark vegeance which also gives me a lot of essentials I need. Somone suggested to me that I could remove or defile the dark angels in the set and they would count as CSM? How does this work? Would I just paint them my army colours? What units would they count as? Would this involve proxying?

Or would it be better to just shell out the cash for the battleforce?

The entire DA part of the box can be easily converted to WYSIWYG Chaos equivalent. I'd go with the DV box opposed to the BF

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

Lawlet wrote:
I was thinking about starting out with the hobby with a CSM army. Out of curiosity, to save cash, I would buy dark vegeance which also gives me a lot of essentials I need. Somone suggested to me that I could remove or defile the dark angels in the set and they would count as CSM? How does this work? Would I just paint them my army colours? What units would they count as? Would this involve proxying?

Or would it be better to just shell out the cash for the battleforce?

The entire DA part of the box can be easily converted to WYSIWYG Chaos equivalent. I'd go with the DV box opposed to the BF

Thanks, so I would just file and paint them and give them more of a chaos look? Theyould all have chaos equivalents right?

You could run the converded DA models as pretty much anything in power armor.

Just file off the icons (Or defile them) and paint them like your other marines of the same type (Painted like your berzerkers if you want them as zerkers etc).

The important things for wysiwig are ARMOR and WEAPONS


As long as the DA Marines are being run as something in Power Armor that has Bolters you are fine. (make sure the upgraded weapons are correct too)


Painting really has nothing to do with Wysiwyg really. You could paint the DA guys as DA guys if you really want to, though some people might find it confusing.

[fluff wise, the Alpha Legion will Often re-paint their armor to look like loyalist marines so they can sneak past Imperial Forces.]

 svendrex wrote:

Painting really has nothing to do with Wysiwyg really. You could paint the DA guys as DA guys if you really want to, though some people might find it confusing.

This is true, I only said to paint them like similar marines in the chaos to reduce confusion.

There are two models you will have issues with, I fear. I don't remember anyone in the Chaos Marine Codex being able to take the plasma cannon in the power armour squad...if they can, it'll be a very limited number of units. You could easily run the other 9 in the squad without him, though.
The other is the Terminator armed with assault cannon - Chaos Marines definitely can't take this. You'll need to convert this to another weapon - I'd suggest a Reaper Autocannon, but have a look at the Chaos Terminator entry in the Codex and see what you think.

 Super Ready wrote:
There are two models you will have issues with, I fear. I don't remember anyone in the Chaos Marine Codex being able to take the plasma cannon in the power armour squad...if they can, it'll be a very limited number of units. You could easily run the other 9 in the squad without him, though.
The other is the Terminator armed with assault cannon - Chaos Marines definitely can't take this. You'll need to convert this to another weapon - I'd suggest a Reaper Autocannon, but have a look at the Chaos Terminator entry in the Codex and see what you think.

Hmm yea guess so. Regardless though if you're kinda handy with an exacto blade those are fairly easy converts to a Lascannon and Reaper Autocannon Respectively.

You could just paint the DA black and defile the icons a bit. Traitor DA have been part of the fluff for years, maybe cypher isn't a model with a profile anymore but traitor DA are part of the fluff and renegades are there to be represented too.

Alternatively, if you could get away with using a friends templates and rulebook, you could just go on ebay and buy 2 lots of the chaos models for about the same price as the full box.

Check out this post I did for these guys a few months back if you are starting out and want to get an army on the cheap.
It's notionally about space wolves but it does work for any army: http://space-wolves-grey.blogspot.ie/2012/05/4-simple-rules-to-help-start-your-space.html

 Super Ready wrote:
There are two models you will have issues with, I fear. I don't remember anyone in the Chaos Marine Codex being able to take the plasma cannon in the power armour squad...if they can, it'll be a very limited number of units. You could easily run the other 9 in the squad without him, though.
The other is the Terminator armed with assault cannon - Chaos Marines definitely can't take this. You'll need to convert this to another weapon - I'd suggest a Reaper Autocannon, but have a look at the Chaos Terminator entry in the Codex and see what you think.

The plasma cannon dude is pretty much the same as any other marine, if he buys a box of CSM which he would probably need there are enough bits to make it another normal marine as the backpack and cannon are independent from the marine body.

I'll agree with the termies thou, besides the assault cannon the loyals all have stormbolters, maybe not a huge biggy but for me it seemed weird looking at all my termies with combi-bolters and then one non spikey dude with a different weapon. At the end I used an extra combi-bolter I had from the chaos lord sprues and replaced the shoulderpads to give them a more chaosy look. Still they take a lot more bits that the normal marines/bikes to get the right look

Stormbolters are close enough to Combi-bolters from a modeling standpoint.

Defile those DAs into Chaos. Only the Plasma cannon will be an issue, and you can just do a weapon swap when you buy a box of CSMs.