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My brother wants to start up an army that's not IG, SM, or space elf (light or dark). Right now he's looking at Chaos Spacemarines, and I'd like to help him.

I haven't played them, so I ask Dakka, what are the general pros and cons of playing CSM?

Well the big con is that they are filthy heretics and need to be purged.

Can't think of any pros that counteract that level of soul-taining depravety.

And if you are helping him turn to the worship of the dark gods, you need to have a brief chat with your local commissar. It shouldn't take longer then the time it takes for his bolt pistol to clear his holster...

Pros:
Heldrakes
Good amount of T5
Good Speed Troops (Chaos Spawn, Raptors, Bikes)
Heldrakes
Decent Marked Sorcerer Paths
Cheap Troops
Heldrakes
Havoc Autocannon spam
Plenty of Anti-SM


Cons:

Most Marks are Terrible, Expect to see Mark of Nurgle everywhere with maybe some Slaanesh
Cult Troops are horrible in the Elite slot, and most still aren't good even in the troop slot
Daemon Princes are horrible except in very specific builds.
Most troops suffer from Kellyitis. Must haves (Heldrakes), and never takes (Defiler)
Some horrible, horrible pricings (Chosen with dual claws are more expensive then terminators!)

The chart actually makes you wish you don't get Daemon Prince at times.

Pros:

-Tied with Orks for most convertible army in the game
-Recently got a spurt of updated super-detailed plastics
-Cheap to acquire due to Dark Vengeance starter
-Recently updated codex
-Wide variety of models to choose from

Cons:

-Chart rolling can hold up games
-A general correlation between cool models and subpar rules
-Taking heldrakes will result in damp, soggy clothing from the tears of your manbaby opponents

Pros: Very fast, tough, or hard hitting. Wide variety of models, not just for gameplay, but modeling and painting as well. We do have very good fast attacks and heavy support, as well as many options for both. Our troops are either disposable cultists that are both cheap on the wallet and points wise, or some customizable marines that are good at whatever role you choose for them to be. Chaos is cheap on the wallet in general as long as your group doesn't mind you converting models, as mentioned above. Even the5th edition release starter set has models that can be snagged for cheap and converted to chaos. Oh, and chaos sorcerers are very sexy and flexible with a wide array of gear to take with them. It's completely viable to take a melee focused sorcerer in terminator armor. Also, NEVER underestimate any daemon engine. You'll see a lot of hate on here about them, but when the time comes they can really pour some pain on.

Cons: Not very mobile. It's pretty easy to predict where our transports are going and be ready to hit them hard. Our other options are subpar deepstrikers, or being pigeon holed into taking Huron to get things into the field deeper. A general lack of specialization also hurts (benefits!) the army, as a lot of people try to see units in black or white, and chaos is LOADED with grey area units. For instance, dakka hates helbrutes, but mine has earned his points in every game he's been in because people are just not ready to deal with him anymore. He can pour the pain on with heavy flamer and multimelta for low points, then charge in and smash away with dreadnought close combat weapons to tie up a squad. However, you can't expect him to take on 20 MEQ by himself. Just give him some backup. That said, raptors do alright if setup right, but it's once again a matter of specialization. They can take weapons to deal with anything, but they will not easily overrun a target with them.

Also we have a pretty flexible allies list, for what it's worth. Daemons are weird but powerful friends to have, but IG are freaking IG and have all the benefits that come with them.

I LOVE my chaos army. You just can't go wrong with it. The main thing I like about it is that it is so versatile. You can go shooty. You can go assaulty. You can go combined arms. You've got elite troops, you've got throwaway troops, you've got light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. There are really no holes or weakness in the army if you design your list right.

I honestly can't think of any cons worth mentioning. I guess I wish Defilers were somewhere in the realm of reality points-wise, but, that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

Chaos is a very fun army to play, as long as you play it the way you want to play. Fielding a bland lists you find on the internet using nothing but hyperoptomized setups of what they perceive as the best units in the book makes for a boring game. Aside from mutilators, pretty much every unit in the codex has done me well so far. Not the biggest fan of the helbrute, but I definitely recognize its potential as a distractory/tarpit unit. They have access to quite a few nice special characters, and can make some super killy or superpsycher generic HQ's. Only units I personally shy away from are terminators, because for some reason Khorne frowns upon those who cannot sweeping advance (my terminators always are dead by turn 3, regardless of where I put them, how I kit them). In the end, if he decided running chaos marines is what he likes ENCOURAGE HIM!

What I see as the pro's:
-Nice wargear options on basic HQ's
-Nifty rules on special characters
-Heldrakes are just as amazing as everyone says they are
-Maulerfiends are, in my experience, one of the scariest units in the codex. A beast walker that gets meltagun CC attacks? Ok
-Havocs are supercheap heavy weapon squads
-Dirge casters. No really. Probably one of the best 5 point pieces of vehicle upgrade in the game.
-Have access to awesome psykers. ML3 psyker with re-rollable psychic tests is awesome


Middlegrounds:
-Cult troops generally tend to put out exactly what you put into them. If you buy 10 noise marines with bolters, they will underperform. Buy 10 noise marienes with 2 blastmasters and 8 sonic weapons, and they will show everyone just how awesome cocaine is at volume 15.
-Cultists and CSM are very much in the same boat. Subpar if you take them as is, but gain quite a bit of utility/sustainability if you upgrade them smartly.
-Daemon princes are good, but only if you spend a boatload of points on them (usually ending up in the 275-300 range)
-boon table can be AWESOME if you roll the right thing at the right time. I'd say around 30% of the time, I end up getting something redundant, nothing, or something pointless. You wouldn't believe the number of times my LC/PF berzerker champion has gotten gun morph (+1 range weapon strength...)

Cons:
-there are some obviously bad units in the codex. Mutilators currently are tied for 1st in the "Ultimate GW Codex Writer Troll Unit" category, along with pyrovores
-most of the supercool models are mediocre at best, or require a rediculous set of combinations to get them to work. [warp talons, terminators, chosen, warpsmith]
-Fearless which can be sniped out of the unit is decidedly not fun.

Overall, the more I read this codex, and the more I play, the more I realize just how much you can do with it. My last game I used one of the "cons." I built my entire army around a 10 strong unit of warp talons, which worked out great. my opponent was all MEQ so they just blendermoded through everything. Then they got charged by a dreadnought and just kept passing their 4++.

Somewhat related, but has it ever been clarified whether or not you are able to take two artifacts?
nothing in GW FAQ about it, and I'm pretty sure INAT hasn't been updated in close to 2 years.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Pros:
Heldrakes

Ew

I'd say pro-wise, they're sort of like Orks but not crap. That said, I'd take da boyz over dem spiky gits anyday

 Dakkamite wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Pros:
Heldrakes

Ew

I'd say pro-wise, they're sort of like Orks but not crap. That said, I'd take da boyz over dem spiky gits anyday

The fact that you think Orks are crap makes me question your input at all.

CSM are a good army. They are not top tier like necrons, but they are solid.

You can also ally them with daemons which unlock some very powerful combinations. Plague bearers, for example, make excellent allies objective campers.

 Dakkamite wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Pros:
Heldrakes

Ew

I'd say pro-wise, they're sort of like Orks but not crap. That said, I'd take da boyz over dem spiky gits anyday

It has to be said, It is the Kelly "Must Take" of the book afterall.

Besides orks are pretty mid-tier, just like chaos.

Pros:
-Heldrakes

Cons:
-Nothing is as good as the Heldrake, so every CSM army tends to look the same
-Forced challenges
-Garbage Elites
-Legions once again take a back seat to "naughty marines with spikes (and dinobots)"
-No real themed list options beyond "LOL DINOBOTS" and "Red Corsairs"

 Chumbalaya wrote:
Pros:
-Heldrakes

Cons:
-Nothing is as good as the Heldrake, so every CSM army tends to look the same
-Forced challenges
-Garbage Elites
-Legions once again take a back seat to "naughty marines with spikes (and dinobots)"
-No real themed list options beyond "LOL DINOBOTS" and "Red Corsairs"

QFT

Unless your brother is going to be playing in a highly competitive environment playing what he thinks is cool will work fine.
For casual play, if he thinks that thousand sons are cool -- tell him to play thousand sons.

All the talking about 'helldrakes' and 'broken challenge mechanics', are only relevant when playing in highly competitive tournaments like NOVA, Bay Area Open, and Adepticon. When your brother is just learning the game, they will not be nearly as important as thinking the models that hes playing with are 'cool'. Enjoyment of collecting, assembing, and painting models is far more important than 'picking the strongest units' when your starting out.

 Chumbalaya wrote:

-Forced challenges

This one right here was what irritated our CSM player the most. His characters must always accept a challenge or issue one if the opponent chose not to. So a character designed to wipe out units will have to kill any old lonely sergeant first, while the sorcerer you wanted to boost your troops will be forced to throw his life away against tough stuff like Necron Destroyer Lords, Ork Warbosses or Mephiston.

From a modelling perspective CSM are great fun as you can do pretty much anything and explain it as "mutation" or "arcane daemon-tech".

What appealed to me was playing as the "bad guys" when all my friends were playing "good guy" armies (Marines, Eldar etc)

Spetulhu wrote:
This one right here was what irritated our CSM player the most. His characters must always accept a challenge or issue one if the opponent chose not to. So a character designed to wipe out units will have to kill any old lonely sergeant first, while the sorcerer you wanted to boost your troops will be forced to throw his life away against tough stuff like Necron Destroyer Lords, Ork Warbosses or Mephiston.

There are a number of tactics that your local CSM player can do to improve his situation with forced challenges. When handled properly the mechanic is an inconvenience, not a show stopper.

In order to properly manage challenges, you want to ensure your IC is in a squad with another champion. Only one must issue/accept the challenges. Lets say your fielding Abbadon leading a squad of cultists. Your assaulting a warboss leading a squad of lootas. What you want to do is have your cultist champion challenge, and then use Abbadon to clean the clock of 8 lootas. You should win the combat by enough to overrun the warboss with your cultists (as Abbadon cannot sweep)

Mephiston should not be a problem for most CSM armies. You should always be giving your IC terminator armor for the advantages that it provides. Mephiston is a prime example of this. If your IC is wearing terminator armor, Mephiston will bounce off it. If you also took a power fist, your going to be slowly pinking away his wounds. A 2+ save is a strong advantage in challenges, and since your forced to take them you might as well be good at them.

Finally, there are some items that will simply cause issues. An example of this would be necron destroyer lords. Sadly this is not just a problem for CSM. Necron destroyer lords leading a squad of wraiths are a problem for all armies. No matter what happens, the destroyer lord will be challenging -- causing any character to accept to be removed from the combat. Its a lose-lose for any army. It does not really hurt the CSM player any more than other armies.

Taking a character that can quickly clobber enemy ICs in challenges also assists. Take the one man wrecking crew Abbadon -- he can take nearly any other characters lunch money in the game -- and he will do it quickly! Once he is done, he can munch through any squad attached to it.

In summary, careful and intelligent use of characters in your units can allow you to mitigate most of the challenge mechanic problems.

I'd say they are a very good first army to play. More complicated then C:SM but can still take a hit, but need to be more tactical.

This gets him in the right frame of mind, while C:SM seems to put people in the mind of ''LOL my armour is invincible!''. Most units are good, by that I mean few are terrabad. Just make sure he steers clear of mutilators and he is fine. I'd say try to get him into a specific theme, it helps newer players with narrative and army comp when they have a pre-set list of things to use when others have to trawl the net to find what's hot and not. Id suggest a Typhus zomplauge army for him as Zombies are insanely easy to convert from cheap DV cultists or guardsmen and plague marines are Very good.

Nurgle is the best theme to get him into, as they are the best part of the army mainly...+plus Typhus helps with his great story and awesome model! Nurgle Oblits are leaps and bounds ahead of other marks and Nurgle spawn are very cheap, fast T6 monsters.

So the main pro I would say is that CSM have so many available themes, this makes it a lot easier to get into the army.

So the main pro I would say is that CSM have so many available themes, this makes it a lot easier to get into the army.

And so long as it's Nurgle based themes with heldrakes it'll actually do well.

 labmouse42 wrote:
Lets say your fielding Abbadon leading a squad of cultists. Your assaulting a warboss leading a squad of lootas. What you want to do is have your cultist champion challenge, and then use Abbadon to clean the clock of 8 lootas. You should win the combat by enough to overrun the warboss with your cultists (as Abbadon cannot sweep)

The cultists aren't sweeping either as their unit contains a model (Failbaddon) who can't. And ofc, the Ork wouldn't have his Powerklaw delivery Warboss in a unit of heavy weapons - he'd be leading a large Boyz mob with a Nob, most likely. Well, the Lootas could have a Mek to soak the challenge too.

 labmouse42 wrote:
In summary, careful and intelligent use of characters in your units can allow you to mitigate most of the challenge mechanic problems.

Some, perhaps, but it's not like CSM are the only ones who can use the same tricks to either make sure characters are too far away or just the one they want is close enough. We had already gotten used to the idea of trying to sacrifice a Sergeant or even refusing a challenge before the CSM codex was out.

Thanks for the advice, he chose the CSM and got a codex today.

The cons: Ugly models and hideous prices (although tbh, there are very few nice looking models in the imperial factions either.).

The Pros: I'll get back to you when I think of one.

CSM is one of the strongest armies right now, but owe much of this to the helldrake which is crazy good. Other than helldrake their army book is very balanced. They typically can take a little more damage than most marine list, which is good for someone starting out. They can also can make theme lists which I guess is important to some people.

I personally hate most of the models, I guess grim-dark = spiky spikes of spikiness.