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Hey all, I just started getting into Warhammer 40K a week ago and split the Dark Vengeance box with a friend who decided to run with the Dark Angels.
So far, I only have the following units:

DV:
1x DV Chaos Lord
6x Chosen
20x Cultists
1x Helbrute

1x Chaos Space Marine Sorcerer

What I've learned so far from my first game today:
It seems like running 2 separate units of 10 Cultists was a bad idea as they seem to be horribly underwhelming and squishy and they'll probably be better suited as meat shields or objective holders (as everyone has been saying).
The Chosen were beastly in melee but they were whittled down to 2 or 3 strong by the time I was able to get in range to assault.
The Helbrute seemed like he was going to be a boss but he lost his shooting arm early on and was bogged down by groups of small throwaway units and really couldn't do much, lol.

Considering I'm playing mainly with friends at games under 1000 points, what should I buy next and what should I run/not run to be more competitive? (I'm fine with just benching any or all of the current units I have)

I'm hearing a lot of good things about Chaos Lords on bikes but I don't think I'll be able to convert the DV Lord to a Biker Lord and I really want to use my Sorcerer (gf bought this one for me =3) but since I haven't really opened that box I could always return it...

Anywho thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to some feedback and ideas for my first army!

Get a helldrake. It will kill a DA squad a turn.

Leave the chosen at home. They are far to expensive point-wise for the gear the models carry.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Get a helldrake. It will kill a DA squad a turn.

Leave the chosen at home. They are far to expensive point-wise for the gear the models carry.

Ooh yeah those Heldrakes look pretty awesome. Of all the units the Chosen felt the most effective, but perhaps it was that specific game letting those high point units shine. What do you think about the Helbrute? And how do I maximize the efficiency of the cultists? Someone else stated turning them into zombies would be the best option.

For Zombies you would need Typhus who is not bad at all but you have enough HQs for the moment imho. In which unit do you run the Lord with? I have made the experience that Cultists work quite well as ablative wounds for a HQ especially as they get fearless from the Lord.

The Chosen are no way bad at what they do but they share the same problem every unit has which has to purchase it's power weapon on a per model basis, they are horribly expensive. For the point cost of the Chosen with the DV equipment, you could get 10 normal CSM all with additional CCWs and 2 Meltaguns. With this unit you have enough bodies to get to cc, you can also hunt tanks and ICs and the unit scores.

You should really try out the Sorcerer, in my experience they can be really awesome. Give him lvl 3 and a mix of Biomancy and Telepathy powers so you can look what suits you best.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:
Ooh yeah those Heldrakes look pretty awesome.

They are as awesome in the game as they look. Before you get one though, I suggest better troops.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:
Of all the units the Chosen felt the most effective, but perhaps it was that specific game letting those high point units shine.

The problem with the chosen is they are to fragile. Sure, they have lots of killy'ness but they can fall over to a few bolters.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:
What do you think about the Helbrute?

Its a beautiful model. I wish it was better in the game.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:
And how do I maximize the efficiency of the cultists?

Get 30 of them. Stick Abbadon or Kharn with them. Use them as 4 point ablative wounds to get your nasty IC into assault.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:
Someone else stated turning them into zombies would be the best option.

So long as your willing to pay the Typhus tax for it -- yea its good.

This is what I would suggest doing, in order.
1) Decide if your going Nurgle or Slaanesh. Those are the two best gods to follow right now. Nurgle lets you bring plague marines, which are awesome. Slaanesh lets you bring lots of blastmasters. Look at these two threads for more info on them.
http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/plague-marine-awesomeness-t4616.html
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/501356.page

2) Get some Plauge Marines/Noise Marines as troops. The best way to do this is to just buy a normal CSM box and paint them to the color scheme you want. If your going Nurgle paint em green, if your going slaanesh paint em purple/pink. Don't bother forking out the cash for the better troops. To make a blastmaster for noise marines, take some green stuff and add it to the heavy bolter. Its a pretty simple mod. If your making plague marines just use the melta/plasma guns in the base CSM box.

You will want about 20 troops. You need solid scoring units before you can move onto the fun units.

3) Once you have your troops, you need to build up your ability to kill. This is where two helldrakes come into play. They can really help push your army to the next level.

4) Keep your eyes open for deals! Part of the fun of CSM is that you can customize everything and it looks great. This is a broken razorback that someone gave me. The gun was gone, and there was this annoying hole in the top of it. I converted it into a CSM rhino by adding some bits from my bits box.


You can also mod your chosen pretty easily. For this chosen I clipped off the claws and added bolt pistols from my bits bin.


Anything can become a chaos marine! Look at some of these models I used. A lot of these were old 'garbage' models that I got in an army swap. I just took bits and converted them into plague marines. You can do the same. Ask around your FLGS for old marines that people don't want, and convert them up. Green stuff is your friend.


When your done, start with something that looks like this. Its a good start. You want a few squads of PMs or NMs and a few helldrakes. From there you can expand where you like - havocs, predators, etc.. Some people will say that with helldrakes you should just go with lots of cheap zombie cultists. I don't like that solution as that puts a single point of failure on your army. If you face something that can ignore the helldrakes your going to have a major uphill battle. If you take good troops + helldrakes you can handle more situations.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadox wrote:
You should really try out the Sorcerer, in my experience they can be really awesome. Give him lvl 3 and a mix of Biomancy and Telepathy powers so you can look what suits you best.

I run the lord that came with the DA box and call him a sorcerer. The sword on the model makes a great force sword. Just clip off that horrible plasma pistol and put on a bolt pistol. In the 3rd picture you can see my DA lord. Thats an easy conversion.

I run the chosen from DV as aspiring champions in normal squads.

The Helbrute is underwhelming - remember though units that cannot hurt it cannot assault it in 6th edition.

Do not buy a heldrake under 1000 points - it is just not fair to put that model on the field. I would go for a unit of Noise Marines - maybe dedicate the Lord to Slaanesh to make them troops. Flesh out the infantry portions of the army first and then work your way to some of the killer toys.

Obliterators/Havoks w/ autocannons are also a good addition.

You are right on cultists, I might keep them as either backfield objective holders or throw the lord with them. If you get Mental Fortitude on the Sorcerer they become a 20 man fearless unit which can be quite good.


Edit: Just a clarification the heldrake is awesome, but it is no fun to play against at the lower point levels at this point. You can win lots of games with it, but you will also have people who refuse to play you if you use it and there is nothing worse than being forced to shelve one of your toys.

I believe the latest FAQ stated that even if you cannot hurt a unit, you can still assault it.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:

It seems like running 2 separate units of 10 Cultists was a bad idea as they seem to be horribly underwhelming and squishy and they'll probably be better suited as meat shields or objective holders (as everyone has been saying).
The Chosen were beastly in melee but they were whittled down to 2 or 3 strong by the time I was able to get in range to assault.
The Helbrute seemed like he was going to be a boss but he lost his shooting arm early on and was bogged down by groups of small throwaway units and really couldn't do much, lol.

Considering I'm playing mainly with friends at games under 1000 points, what should I buy next and what should I run/not run to be more competitive? (I'm fine with just benching any or all of the current units I have)

I'm hearing a lot of good things about Chaos Lords on bikes but I don't think I'll be able to convert the DV Lord to a Biker Lord and I really want to use my Sorcerer (gf bought this one for me =3) but since I haven't really opened that box I could always return it...

Yeah, small units of cultists are going to basically wilt away from bad vibrations alone. If you still want to run small units, some people have been reserving them, keeping them off the field as long as they can and then having them hold backfield objectives. Cooler ways to run cultists are, as said, as a bunch of ablative wounds for a nasty character: Kharn, Abaddon, Typhus (although there you'd use zombies), a Khorne Lord with the Axe.

The chaos chosen should be used as champions or not at all. Well, the bolter ones can be normal marines, but the advantages of chosen are not taking a bunch of power weapons. They're basically Space Marine Sternguard Veterans, without the ability to take a drop-pod, but they can still take stuff like 5 plasma guns. The DV Chosen look amazing, but are too squishy to be of much use as a unit of Chosen.

The Helbrute, and walkers in general in this edition, are relatively weak choices unless they're taken in a few specific ways. The two main ways loyalist Dreadnoughts are run is either two twin-linked autocannons (rifleman) or with multimelta and drop-pod. Now Chaos cannot take droppods, and the helbrute will occasionally not want to shoot, so neither of those two builds are really possible for helbrutes. Shame, because the DV helbrute also looks amazing.

Heldrakes are a good buy if you really want to be competitive, although if you're just playing small games with friends, I might actually pass. Flyers in generally are really good this edition, more importantly, many armies don't have good ways of dealing with them. I'd ask your friends if they are okay with it first.

The nice thing about the current Chaos Space Marine Codex is that most of the options are viable; barring things like Mutilators and Warp Talons, basically all of the codex options can be used in a not-terrible way. Some have a little more 'oomph' than others, and some options push you towards a single list built around it. Biker Lords are great, especially Toughness 6 Nurgle Biker Lords, but usually want some escort (other bikers, typically), so you'll have to decide if that's the way you want your list to go. As you already have the DV Lord and a Sorcerer, I'd just run each of them as whatever lords/sorcerers you need to make your preferred cult units troops. I'll also second the opinion that you should chop off the arm of the DV lord and put a normal bolt pistol on in its place; plasma pistols are generally overpriced for the use you get out of them.

Getting some standard Chaos Space Marine Kits or Plague Marine Kits should probably be your next option. As said before in this thread, Plague Marines and Noise Marines are probably the 'best' troops choice CSM has right now, although normal CSM aren't terribad. Getting Obliterators is also a good option afterwards, for some relatively cheap (points and money-wise) fire support. Plague Marine kits look nice, but can't really be counted as anything other than plague marines, and are harder to convert, so I'd go for just the plastic CSM kits.

Anything can become a chaos marine! Look at some of these models I used. A lot of these were old 'garbage' models that I got in an army swap. I just took bits and converted them into plague marines. You can do the same. Ask around your FLGS for old marines that people don't want, and convert them up. Green stuff is your friend.

This is very true. One of the funnest things about building CSM is their kit-bash-ability. I just smashed together a CSM box with a Space Wolves Wolf Pack box, making renegade Space Wolves. As long as some Chaos marks are somewhere, it's a Chaos Space Marine.

Thank you all for the awesome advice! I guess I'm going to stock up on some CSM boxes as my next buys and work on building up my troop selection.

As for labmouse's suggestion of either Nurgle or Slaanesh, what would the playstyle and benefits of each god be like? And would it be possible to run say my DV Lord as a sorcerer of one and the other sorcerer as the other?

As of right now, after reading your replies I want to lean to building towards this army:

DV Lord in blob of 20 or more cultists

Sorcerer with Noise Marines or Plague Marines (first buy)

Plague Marines or Noise Marines (second buy)

Obliterators or Havocs (3rd or 5th buy depending on the Heldrake leniency)

2x Heldrakes if not frowned upon within my circle of friends, haha. (Buy Heldrakes 1 at a time as 3rd and 4th or 4th and 5th buy depending on how lenient my friends are on the cheese)

Is this a solid plan?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm really liking the Slaanesh psyker powers so I think I'm going to want to roll with the Noise Marines so here's a more descriptive list:

HQs:
Chaos Lord with MoS, Lightning Claw, Sigil of Corruption - 120
Sorcerer with MoS, Spell Familiar, Mastery level 3 -140

Troops:
20x Chaos Cultists - 90
5x Noise Marines w/ Blastmaster - 125
5x Noise Marines w/ Blastmaster - 125

Fast Attack:
Heldrake w/ Baleflamer - 170

Heavy Support:
2x Obliterator - 140

Totaling 940

I like it. Perhaps a little too many points blown on HQs at 1k but whatever floats your boat...

Yea, go ahead and cut out your Lvl 3 psyker. Keep him cheap.

Take a look at Lucius. Hes a few more points, but he's fearless which makes him a good fit for your cultists. Fearless makes them bullet shields.

If your lord is not fearless, your lord can get up to the fight, beat the snot out of an enemy IC, then run like a scared little girl b/c you lost combat due to crappy cultists. You need a fearless lord to make the cultist rush work.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Get a helldrake. It will kill a DA squad a turn.

Leave the chosen at home. They are far to expensive point-wise for the gear the models carry.

Came here to post "buy helldrake. Do it quick".

Buy 2 Heldrakes, enjoy your auto pilot army.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
Buy 2 Heldrakes, enjoy your auto pilot army.

It takes timely, calculated movement and planning to kill anything you want in any direction, good sir.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
Buy 2 Heldrakes, enjoy your auto pilot army.

Helldrakes are the new Flamers/GK/SW/IG

Helldrakes are good, no doubt, they they are not an auto-win button. Don't let the hype fool you.

 Chumbalaya wrote:
Buy 2 Heldrakes, enjoy your auto pilot army.

While I don't disagree that this is a very good unit, They hardly do everything. I just played a wraithwing list and my hellturkey spent 4 turns flying around looking at the scenery. Excellent at clearing objectives of infantry, not so great vs (most) vehicles, flyers and stuff with good saves.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Yea, go ahead and cut out your Lvl 3 psyker. Keep him cheap.

Take a look at Lucius. Hes a few more points, but he's fearless which makes him a good fit for your cultists. Fearless makes them bullet shields.

If your lord is not fearless, your lord can get up to the fight, beat the snot out of an enemy IC, then run like a scared little girl b/c you lost combat due to crappy cultists. You need a fearless lord to make the cultist rush work.

Ah, I think Chaos Lords are fearless and I was going to put him with the cultists to do the rush. I wanted the Sorcerer to roll with a group of noise marines to give them buffs but I'm not sure if I want the Slaanesh buffs or just biomancy buffs.

If I ran with Nurgle instead and put the Lord on a bike with a bunch of bikers (instead of cultists), or ran Typhus with zombie cultists, and used plague marines to roll with the Sorcerer instead, do you think that would be more effective?

Not saying I am an expert, I am also new to 40k and CSM ,but it seems that Khorne berzerkers are really good. For 230 points you get a unit with AP 4 and 41 attacks on the charge. Which, to me, is pretty good.

 Typhus the Betrayer wrote:
Not saying I am an expert, I am also new to 40k and CSM ,but it seems that Khorne berzerkers are really good. For 230 points you get a unit with AP 4 and 41 attacks on the charge. Which, to me, is pretty good.

They do "look" good but are in reality pretty crappy. First of all, they're AP4. Which means that the stuff that they'd already do pretty well against (Guard/Tau/Orks), they do even better against. So it's a "win more" option.

Against anything else, they end up being hyper overcosted. However, they're overcosted anyway. Close Combat is a bad deal in 6th, and Khorne Berzerkers actually got worse from their 4th edition incarnation to now. In short, they're not worth it.

DeeZeeWhy wrote:

Ah, I think Chaos Lords are fearless and I was going to put him with the cultists to do the rush. I wanted the Sorcerer to roll with a group of noise marines to give them buffs but I'm not sure if I want the Slaanesh buffs or just biomancy buffs.

If I ran with Nurgle instead and put the Lord on a bike with a bunch of bikers (instead of cultists), or ran Typhus with zombie cultists, and used plague marines to roll with the Sorcerer instead, do you think that would be more effective?

It really depends on your play style. Plague marines are really tough, and can deal a good amount of damage at relatively close range with plasma or melta guns and bolter fire. They can survive a lot of small arms fire, and many melee units. So, they are a good generalist that can survive against most anti infantry fire and some dedicated melee units. Noise marines are much better at shooting and have pretty good long range capabilities with the blastmaster, and can do well at close combat with a champion with a doom siren and power weapon and the rest of the squad with pistol and close combat weapons and being Initiative 5 they can dish out their damage before most other armies can attack. You could also make them shred infantry at 24 inches with the sonic blasters pumping out 3 shots a dude. They are a versatile unit depending on what wargear you give them. Personally I run both, I have only played one game with the new book (grad school takes so much of my spare time) so I can't say for sure which is better or worse. But they both seem to be very good options. It really comes down to what other units you want to field and what sort of play style you want.

Typhus is a beast in combat and is really tough. Zombies are amusing, and I would say slightly better than normal cultists. The slaanesh psyker looks fun, but he can only get half his powers from the slaanesh power list, so some biomancy or other powers are needed for him. I like the idea of running a slaanesh Sorcerer with terminator armor and a unit of terminators. Chaos bikers are really good this edition and a nurgle bikers are just really good.

Hope that helps and continue corrupting the minds of the loyal imperial dogs =)

Dont forget icon of excess for your noise marines

 Ineedvc2500 wrote:
Dont forget icon of excess for your noise marines

Only on larger squads, if you use it in a MSU build you will not really get enough use out of it.

if the idea here is to be friendly, might not want to tell him to take Heldrakes at 1K. I mean that very seriously. 2 would just be... well... I think if you wanna keep your friends at 1K, avoid the Heldrake. if you wanna get competitive... Douse your friends in fire and tell them to buck up... theres always next time right?

Lol.

The new FAQ on Heldrakes was just...wow.

 Jancoran wrote:
if the idea here is to be friendly, might not want to tell him to take Heldrakes at 1K. I mean that very seriously. 2 would just be... well... I think if you wanna keep your friends at 1K, avoid the Heldrake. if you wanna get competitive... Douse your friends in fire and tell them to buck up... theres always next time right?

Lol.

The new FAQ on Heldrakes was just...wow.

agreed, in a friendly game no need to rain down that level of pwnage

Heh, don't get him all worked up guys.

He will bring his helldrake, toast the enemy tactical squad then bounce off the terminators for the rest of the game.
His buddy is playing DA. Hes going to have terminators from the DV set.

STR 6 is still STR 6. doing 5-6 wounds a round on Terminators is still 5-6 wounds and his chaos can still field a couple troops and a really hardcore HQ to handle the termies or just keep them busy.

All theoryhammer aside, I think that it will be a lot less fun at 1K bringing that kind of stuff.

Noise Marines are an swesome investment

Noise Marines ARE an awesome investment. That IS true.

get a single Oblit and deep strike it on his termies just for lolz

Haha, I was just going to ask about how to deal with terminators. I haven't grabbed the heldrakes just yet but had a quick and small 500 pt match with my DA friend just today. I could deal with the ravenwings pretty well but man those termies with 2+ save are so strong. Are power weapons the way to go or are there specific units that would be able to tear them down from range?

Thanks again guys for all the help and honest feedback.