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Got a newbie at our club, CSM player. He's not a Dakka user (boo, hiss etcetc) so I thought I'd post this on his behalf.

He wants to run a cultist-heavy force led by a Dark Apostle with Daemon Engines and a few other bits. We don't think it's ever ever ever going to work, but I thought I'd get the Dakka community view before we draw any conclusions. So what do you think: will cultist armies ever be worth playing?

I recently played against someone using Ahiriman and lots of Cultists (3-4 units) along with a unit of noise marines (I think) and berserkers. The cultists were surprisingly annoying just because of how many there were, though they were incapable of inflicting almost any damage. All they did was buy time. The real threat was his Baleflamer Heldrake and my stupidity...

Really the problem is that Heavy Stubbers are only S 4 AP -. They don't really offer anything other than a large speed bump. I could see the use for 1 or 2 units, 1 large with Flamers lead by someone with Fearless. You could use it as a screen for some of your other units or to hold a midfield objective while a smaller Cultist unit hangs back to hold a home objective, preferably in an ADL or cover.

Led by a Dark Apostle, the larger Flamer wielding unit would be awesome. Fearless and Hatred due to the Zealot special rule. 250 points gets you 30 Cultists with the Apostle, along with the 3 Flamers. None of the Marks are worth it.

Personally I don't see any other use for them. Just a way to get lots of cheap bodies while other things do the real work.

Cultists are tar pits, zombies are even better tar pits.

yeah cultists are cheap scoring units and if you give them something to shoot at they will not shoot the cultists

flying black mace prince
6 squads of 10 cultists with a winged prince with mace and 2 helldrakes
allied with
bloodthirster
winged khorne prince
squad of 10 letters
squad of 4 crushers

so you are packing 70 bodies of scoring units that are good at not much but they will be unlikely to shoot at them with three flying monsters in their face and the flamer turkeys coming in turn 2. the crushers are there to be ignored as well. so horde of cultist work as being cheap scoring squads. wanting more out of them will leave him saddened.

if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

Daemons are battle brothers with Chaos Marines,

They are fragile and if you do run them they have to be run in big squads so you dont lose them to a single round of good shooting.

I disagree. you want them big if you are running them with a fearless character but if you are just using them as a objective holders you want them small and cheap. keep them cheap so you can buy powerful units.

the more points you pump into a cultist unit the more likely it will be shot and they never handle getting shot.

When I see him I'll mention the flamer squad with Apostle that cowmonaut mentioned as well as small squads like skkipper said, he's far from a WAAC type guy so I doubt he'll give a single jot. He also wants necron allies so he can have a monolith (a throwback to his WoW days apparently)

Exalbaru wrote:
if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

exactly. If you want a blob of humans, take guard. They are far better with so many options and special rules. They will actaully do damage.

Cultists are okay for getting cheap scoring units in a list where you cannot (necron allies) or do not want to take IG allies. They let you spend points on the important stuff; i.e. hellturkey, DP, named HQs, and nurgle bikers.

Zombies are usually better except in the situation of taking an aegis line and going to ground. If you are doing that then you need to stick the apostle in another squad so they are not fearless, plague marines are good for this or noise marines can be decent.

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

exactly. If you want a blob of humans, take guard. They are far better with so many options and special rules. They will actaully do damage.

Except Zombies are cheaper and hardier, you'd be hard pressed to find a better tar pit in the game.

I've recently toyed with the idea of 35 cultists with a Dark Apostle. I want to try giving them Mark of Khorne. That is 140 attacks on the charge, averaging 70 hits, averaging 23 wounds.

 Kain wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

exactly. If you want a blob of humans, take guard. They are far better with so many options and special rules. They will actaully do damage.

Except Zombies are cheaper and hardier, you'd be hard pressed to find a better tar pit in the game.

I was referring to regular cultists which doing 3-4 units of I think would have to be. I enjoy using zombies as a tarpit but for shooting IG brings alot more to the table than naked cultists. There are alot more nice bonuses to having Typhus too, he brings alot to the table especially being able to nominate zombies

Exalbaru wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

exactly. If you want a blob of humans, take guard. They are far better with so many options and special rules. They will actaully do damage.

Except Zombies are cheaper and hardier, you'd be hard pressed to find a better tar pit in the game.

I was referring to regular cultists which doing 3-4 units of I think would have to be. I enjoy using zombies as a tarpit but for shooting IG brings alot more to the table than naked cultists. There are alot more nice bonuses to having Typhus too, he brings alot to the table especially being able to nominate zombies

Cultists are about 2-3 points cheaper than guardsmen, essentially being what conscripts ought to be (and if they're an indication, in the new ork book Grots will get a further point deduction). It may not seem like much, but when you buy a lot of them shaving off a third to a half of the cost adds up quite a bit. But yeah, Guardsmen definitely have more killing potential, while Cultists are there to be dirt cheap objective campers so your MEQs can do stuff of actual importance.

 skkipper wrote:
yeah cultists are cheap scoring units and if you give them something to shoot at they will not shoot the cultists

Correction: if your opponent is bad they won't shoot the incredibly fragile scoring units that are obviously the lynchpin of the lists tactics.

It doesn't work with guard, it's not going to work with the weaker chaos codex.

Depends what army you are playing against. If playing against Tau, They will all be dead by turn 3. Due to the sheer amount of shots and pie plate spam the Tau can put out. If you use zombies at least you will have some chance of saving a few. Unless the Tau are using Dark strider That lowers there Toughness to 2, so they will be insta killed by Fire warriors. However I have had Zombies work well for me against Necrons.

The way i see a cultist force working is with Mark of Khorne. Give that to your Cultists, give them flamers, don't give them autoguns, and put a Dark Apostle in the middle of one of the units. Have big units of them (at least 20 man strong for each unit, to about 30; having 35 makes it actually unwieldy to use).

Your plan for the cultists is to use them as faux Ork Boyz, in a cultist tide. They're not as good as them (no furious charge, T3, only fearless with Dark Apostle), but you get a reasonable result with them. Even though they're S3, you get a large number of attacks on the charge, which will wipe things out.

Note that they certainly won't win games by themselves. In response to other posters, we want the opposite of small cultist scoring units. We want the enemy to be focused on the cultists that are getting up in his face, while the rest of your army does work. You present the choice: deal with cultists, or the rest of the army? If the cultists are relatively unmolested, then they will do more damage than is expected, especially when backed up by a Dark Apostle. If the opponent dedicates his fire to taking out the cultists, well then he's left the rest of the army fine. Sure they'll be armies like Tau that can do both at once, but if you're not looking for a tournament winning cultist army, then it'll function fine with some bad matchups.

Daemon Engines and other threats are actually pretty critical to your strategy. Having a few maulerfiends rolling up alongside the Cultist lines add a lot of additional threat and target saturation. Forgefiends are nice too, but don't quite play into the way the cultists want to play. Obliterators work well in this strat, as they move up alongside cultists, giving fire support. Your non-cultist portions should be capable of doing things the cultists can't. You need to take out vehicles, monstrous creatures, maybe Flyers, etc. Obliterators work well in this role, alongside things like Termicide units (3 Terminators w/ 3 Combi-Meltas + 1 Chainfist)

In this strategy, I'd actually recommend against using Typhus/Zombies, as the role you want Zombies for is tarpit, whereas for this we want the cultists to be moving up fast with some actual threat. Zombies have little mobility with SnP, and a pitiful number of attacks. Sure they gain FnP, but that's not what we want for aggressive cultist hordes. I'd consider using both Huron and a Dark Apostle for the HQ choices. The Dark Apostle gives a nice Chaplain buff to the Cultists, as well as being so flavorful, while Huron gives infiltrate to get your units up the board, or outflanking. A 30-man cultist unit outflanking with Huron isn't bad if done correctly. Huron also gives another fearless cultist unit, as well as other utility.

The List Frame:
Huron (if you want him)
Dark Apostle (Maybe Khorne Marked with Axe of Blind Fury for the lulz)

4 or so Large Cultist Units w/ MoK, Flamers, Pistols/CC
1-2 CSM Units for either backfield scoring or other tactical purposes. Probably with Meltas or plasmas, and MoN.

Obliterators (with MoN of course)
Maulerfiends
Heldrakes (hey, no reason not to)

You'll have an interesting horde list that can be fluffily run as either Word Bearers or a reborn Tyrant's Legion. I'm totally unsure as to how truly competitive it is, probably not so much, but it shouldn't be an autolose, and your friend may surprise people if he plays it right.

 Kain wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
if doing that why not to guard, I dont see a point behind it

exactly. If you want a blob of humans, take guard. They are far better with so many options and special rules. They will actaully do damage.

Except Zombies are cheaper and hardier, you'd be hard pressed to find a better tar pit in the game.

I was referring to regular cultists which doing 3-4 units of I think would have to be. I enjoy using zombies as a tarpit but for shooting IG brings alot more to the table than naked cultists. There are alot more nice bonuses to having Typhus too, he brings alot to the table especially being able to nominate zombies

Cultists are about 2-3 points cheaper than guardsmen, essentially being what conscripts ought to be (and if they're an indication, in the new ork book Grots will get a further point deduction). It may not seem like much, but when you buy a lot of them shaving off a third to a half of the cost adds up quite a bit. But yeah, Guardsmen definitely have more killing potential, while Cultists are there to be dirt cheap objective campers so your MEQs can do stuff of actual importance.

A 10 man infantry squad is 50 points
A 10 man Cultist squad is 50 points

the infantry have better guns, orders, 5+ saves, and grenades to go with their better options.

An infantry platoon is 130 points the same amount of cultists are 110. It is true if you want a cultist army playing guard is a better bet. If you want a smash you in the face chaos list, cultist make for cheap scoring units. My cultists will be fielded as either guard or cultist depending on what I want to field

If you've got points to burn, throwing a mark on your cultists isn't half bad,I put mark of nurgle on half of mine and mark of tzeentch on the other squad and it helped out quiet a bit, on a 20 man squad it was only 40 points that I didn't have anywhere else to put.

I played against 2 30 strong units last night (as Orks) and one unit held out on an objective until turn 6, the other turn 7. They were pesky that's for sure. We were playing the Cold Zone sub zero game where all terrain is dangerous and he put one of his objectives in area terrain and his cultists who kept trying to take the objective kept dying from DT tests, it was pretty funny.

If he had taken min squads they would have died way faster. Most deaths were caused by my Lobbas, which had killed 3 Chaos Marines totally out of site in one turn. The point is, the Choas Marines lost more points per turn than the cultists did trying to hold an objective. Sometimes more bodies is just plain better.

GeneralCael wrote:I've recently toyed with the idea of 35 cultists with a Dark Apostle. I want to try giving them Mark of Khorne. That is 140 attacks on the charge, averaging 70 hits, averaging 23 wounds.

Bad idea mate. You're looking at spending 70 points for the Mark in a unit that size, and they're balls in combat. 6+ save and Guardsmen stat lines? And remember, only models within 2" of a model that is in base to base get to attack, so many of your models won't be getting attacks off. They're good for tarpits, and you should keep tarpits cheap. All they can do is buy time, and the number of attacks won't help with that.

BTW, if you get all 140 attacks you can kill 11.67 Space Marines. Problem is you are going to lose a lot to enemy shooting (no saves unless Invisible if you are moving to get into close combat), not everything will be able to contribute to the fight, and you are only Initiative 3 so many things will strike before you.

Basically, it'll probably be Turn 3 before you get into combat and you'll have lost probably a third of the unit, and depending on terrain and placement of the enemy models maybe 2/3 of your remaining forces will be able to contribute to the fight. Suddenly that 140 attacks on the charge turns into ~68 attacks, assuming you can even get the charge. 10 Space Marines or 5 Grey Hunters (without Counter Attack or special wargear) are going to drop 3-4, so take out 12-16 more attacks.

Suddenly you're only killing 4 Space Marines on the charge... Suffer any losses from Overwatch (statistically guaranteed with just 5 Grey Hunters, 10 Space Marines shows you losing 2) and you suddenly just lost close combat. If your Dark Apostle dies to an enemy Character (since he has to Challenge) you aren't fearless and you are going to break, and possibly lose the entire unit.


So its up to you, but in my eyes you should use some of the other excellent choices in your list for combat.

 skkipper wrote:
An infantry platoon is 130 points the same amount of cultists are 110. It is true if you want a cultist army playing guard is a better bet. If you want a smash you in the face chaos list, cultist make for cheap scoring units. My cultists will be fielded as either guard or cultist depending on what I want to field

A min sized Infantry platoon is 130, it is 2 units at least, one of 20 and one of 5 men. For 2 units of cultist you have to pay 120 points and you still only have 2 characters while the guard have 3.
65 bodies comes in at 330 points. 65 cultists is 280. The guard have 7 characters while the cultist have 2. Getting 6 cultist characters would cost 320.

I'll run these by him see if he'll listen. I haven't played CSM and therefore cultists much, but they're certainly something you sometimes can't dare ignore. Sure that possessed squad may be shredding you, but they won't take that obj. and winning the game at the last (as my crons found out today actually).
Just to run down his list plan (this will be VERY vague I'm no expert):
Apostle
Lord/Warpsmith
2 blobs of cultists
Obliterators
Heldrake
Forgefiend/Maulerfiend
CSM squad or 2
Necron allies; Basic Overlord, 5-10 Warriors, Monolith

hopefully possessed arent actually being used though because thats another issue all together

GeneralCael wrote:
I've recently toyed with the idea of 35 cultists with a Dark Apostle. I want to try giving them Mark of Khorne. That is 140 attacks on the charge, averaging 70 hits, averaging 23 wounds.

I think I'd burst out laughing if I saw this. With all e pie plates I can bring, if you didn't sit at 2" coherency you'd be taking casualties like crazy. However while sitting at max coherency I'd be surprised if you ever advanced. All the difficult terrain rolls and losing casualties from the front means you'll be receding further than your max move.

 Griddlelol wrote:

GeneralCael wrote:
I've recently toyed with the idea of 35 cultists with a Dark Apostle. I want to try giving them Mark of Khorne. That is 140 attacks on the charge, averaging 70 hits, averaging 23 wounds.

I think I'd burst out laughing if I saw this. With all e pie plates I can bring, if you didn't sit at 2" coherency you'd be taking casualties like crazy. However while sitting at max coherency I'd be surprised if you ever advanced. All the difficult terrain rolls and losing casualties from the front means you'll be receding further than your max move.

The truly insane may try to fill out all their troops slots with cultists just to make you ragequit with how long it would take for them to move them all.

 Kain wrote:

 Griddlelol wrote:

GeneralCael wrote:
I've recently toyed with the idea of 35 cultists with a Dark Apostle. I want to try giving them Mark of Khorne. That is 140 attacks on the charge, averaging 70 hits, averaging 23 wounds.

I think I'd burst out laughing if I saw this. With all e pie plates I can bring, if you didn't sit at 2" coherency you'd be taking casualties like crazy. However while sitting at max coherency I'd be surprised if you ever advanced. All the difficult terrain rolls and losing casualties from the front means you'll be receding further than your max move.

The truly insane may try to fill out all their troops slots with cultists just to make you ragequit with how long it would take for them to move them all.

If playing a true DKoK style artillery list and I go first then not very long...I like helping my opponent by removing half of their infantry models turn 1. Now if I bring maxed out 12 thudd guns the shooting phase will be resolved in about 2 hours.

Seems as though the horde army is a bad call, so how would you guys run Cultists? What units would be useful in a Cultist-heavy force, and is a Dark Apostle the right HQ?