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So while familiar largely with the fluff, I've obviously never had experience with making a tabletop given that I'm just starting. I'm getting Dark Heresy as a starter set (plus the Chaos Champion looks amazing) and will be using the models for Night Lords, but what critical minis do I need for a Chaos Space Marine army? While I do intend to follow the Night Lords lore a bit, I'll be making them unique, a further fallen warband of Night Lords that are more devoted to Chaos than usual- especially to Khorne and Slaanesh. Write up character backgrounds, etc. But for the actual gaming, what sets are not only recommended, but critical in order to even put up a fight? Which ones should be passed over for simply being useless on the tabletop?

It's gonna be tough since Plague Marines are a popular choice and the Nightlords don't like cult troops, you could always make a count as maybe undead Marines or something.

Heldrake for sure at least one, Night Lords are a quick hitting force so you could try lots of rhinos (even though they get shredded nowadays) or maybe Huron (do up a count as) and try for a sneaky approach.

Basic list
Chaos Marines
Plague Marines (or suitable count as)
Heldrakes 1-2
Oblits (for firepower)

Expanded List
Small group of terms for suicide deep strikes
Huron (or count as) for quick hitting
Raptors for the fluff
Maybe toss some wings on your Lord and put him with the Raptors
Havocs
Cultists (if you have the points)

Fluff wise it'll be difficult to field anything competitive but with a little count as creativity you should be able to build a decent force

2x210 wrote:
It's gonna be tough since Plague Marines are a popular choice and the Nightlords don't like cult troops, you could always make a count as maybe undead Marines or something.

Heldrake for sure at least one, Night Lords are a quick hitting force so you could try lots of rhinos (even though they get shredded nowadays) or maybe Huron (do up a count as) and try for a sneaky approach.

Basic list
Chaos Marines
Plague Marines (or suitable count as)
Heldrakes 1-2
Oblits (for firepower)

Expanded List
Small group of terms for suicide deep strikes
Huron (or count as) for quick hitting
Raptors for the fluff
Maybe toss some wings on your Lord and put him with the Raptors
Havocs
Cultists (if you have the points)

Fluff wise it'll be difficult to field anything competitive but with a little count as creativity you should be able to build a decent force

Thanks, although I'll be making them more Chaos based, as the story behind them will be more deeply fallen (plus Night Lords aren't alien to Chaos, as the Talos Trilogy shows), I'll probably buy some blitz packs as well for Noise Marines, just have the army devoted to Chaos Undivided with various units devoting themselves to a specific god. Maybe even go into a personalization similar to the Black Legion fluff materials, with pieces of the basic trooper armor painted to represent their respective god. Say a dash of pink/purple, red, blue, and sickly green here and there with champions themselves.

I'll also likely be avoiding Rhinos, although I likely will want some when I really get the hobby moving. However, I've gotta have a Land Raider.

Excellent, Night Lords are really cool. Welcome to Chaos!

Regarding HQs, either a Sorcerer or a Lord, if you want to go for the lower-cost options. As has been said, Huron Blackheart as a counts-as would be helpful to the sort of style Night Lords have in-fluff, due to allowing a unit to infiltrate.

Heldrakes are awesome at present. You'd be mad not to grab one or two.

Basic Chaos Space Marines aren't terrible, and you can usually find something for the models to do, either as CSM, Havocs or Chosen.

Noise Marines are pretty tidy when used well, if you wanted to back Slaanesh.

If you're definitely using a Land Raider, you could (and should) grab some Terminators to put in it. A Land Raider is more effectively used ramming Termis down the enemy's throat than as a very expensive pair of lascannons. Alternatively, you could use Khorne-marked CSM, but I'd go with the Terminators myself.

After that, whatever floats your boat, be it Bikers, Raptors, Defilers... it's a big book, put it that way.

What's deemed as "Essential" and how necessary it is to stick to that list is largely dependent on your local meta. If you're just going to be playing some friendly games with mates you don't need to worry about min-maxed Plague marines, Oblit spam, etc. Going for a tournament will obviously change that.

Just remember the 8th Legion isn't all Raptors all the time and you should be fine

:

 Zed wrote:
Excellent, Night Lords are really cool. Welcome to Chaos!

Regarding HQs, either a Sorcerer or a Lord, if you want to go for the lower-cost options. As has been said, Huron Blackheart as a counts-as would be helpful to the sort of style Night Lords have in-fluff, due to allowing a unit to infiltrate.

Heldrakes are awesome at present. You'd be mad not to grab one or two.

Basic Chaos Space Marines aren't terrible, and you can usually find something for the models to do, either as CSM, Havocs or Chosen.

Noise Marines are pretty tidy when used well, if you wanted to back Slaanesh.

If you're definitely using a Land Raider, you could (and should) grab some Terminators to put in it. A Land Raider is more effectively used ramming Termis down the enemy's throat than as a very expensive pair of lascannons. Alternatively, you could use Khorne-marked CSM, but I'd go with the Terminators myself.

After that, whatever floats your boat, be it Bikers, Raptors, Defilers... it's a big book, put it that way.

Out of curiosity though, is there any actual reason to buy the Night Lord blitz packs yet when in lore, their armor is normally scavenged and the only thing they bear in common with the rest of their brethren is a deep blue color and typically gold trim?

EDIT, and which are better, Raptors of Lightning Claws?

It's all about aesthetic when it comes to the bits. I personally prefer the older Night Lords that weren't all bat wings and more bat wings and some bat wings.

Some people like their Night Lords with silly hats. That much is up to you. I think the idea of scavenged armor (you could even use bits from the regular Space Marine kits, since that's who they'd be scavenging from a lot of the time) is a good way to og.

If you're going to do night lords, I'd do something like...

Huron
Sorc (or lord) with jump pack and artifact of choice

20x CSM - choice of weapons, IoV
20x CSM - choice of weapons, IoV

10x raptors - choice of weapons, IoV
10x raptors - choice of weapons, IoV
10x raptors - choice of weapons, IoV

Huron infiltrates the CSM forward, and the raptors either deepstrike or start on the table and book it forward turn 1.

In any case, by turn 2, everything is in your opponent's deployment zone, and very likely is getting into close combat with something.

It fits night lords well, not just because you're bringing raptors, but it fits their style. You 100% have the initiative every game. You fight on your terms, and your terms are likely crushing your opponent back into his deployment zone (aka, cowering with fear), and then slaughtering him in a brutal close range melee.

Sounds very night lords to me.

Otherwise, the only other advice I can give is to summarily ignore any advice not given in the context of night lords. A huge majority of the CSM community here appears to believe that there is nothing in the codex except helldrakes and plague marines.

If you're running a pure Night Lords army, according to the fluff they're pretty ambivalent towards all that dark mutation tentacle stuff. So of all the legions to run counts-as with the Space Marine codex, I'd say they'd fit the best. Run them as Raven Guard, their combat doctrine fits Night Lords really well and Shrike makes a good Raptor Lord.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Out of curiosity though, is there any actual reason to buy the Night Lord blitz packs yet when in lore, their armor is normally scavenged and the only thing they bear in common with the rest of their brethren is a deep blue color and typically gold trim?

EDIT, and which are better, Raptors of Lightning Claws?

You aren't obliged to, by any means. If you like the bat wings on the helmets, then go for it. If you don't, leave them out. You're correct about the scavenged armour, CSM wargear tends to be a happy anarchy, which the kits reflect well.

"Better" is difficult as far as comparing a weapon to a unit goes. Raptors are a reasonable harassment unit, generally taken with an anti-tank weapon to make them more flexible. You can use them against tanks, or to pick off weaker units in close combat. There aren't usually enough of them to make them full-on assault units, but I guess you could take a large blob and see what happens. If used carefully, they can be great.

Lightning Claws are great. Re-rolling to wound and ignoring most armour means you can put out a lot of damage. They tend to hurt MEQ quite badly, but bigger units such as Guardsmen and 'nids aren't as fussed (they die pretty easily anyway). They don't boost Strength, so you've still got a problem if anything high-Toughness comes along (this is where Power Fists or firepower come into play). I like giving claws to my Lord, because when coupled with a Mark of Slaanesh you get a high-initiative, capable close-combat unit.

Both are good in their own niches.

 Badablack wrote:
If you're running a pure Night Lords army, according to the fluff they're pretty ambivalent towards all that dark mutation tentacle stuff. So of all the legions to run counts-as with the Space Marine codex, I'd say they'd fit the best. Run them as Raven Guard, their combat doctrine fits Night Lords really well and Shrike makes a good Raptor Lord.

That's where it comes down to choice more or less, given that there's a fair share of possessed Night Lords, and at least one Daemon Prince last I checked.

Also, how complicated is it to make a CSM army with Daemon support units? Having Furies would seem fitting for fluff.

And the Huron, CSM, Raptor/Warp Talon combo sounds fairly good. Something I'll certainly aim for, if not maybe even buy instead of Dark Heresy. Which would be more recommended for starting off? Dark Heresy or buying a Squad of Raptors, Huron, and a full squad of CSM's along with maybe some Cultists for practice? One of my attractions to DH largely comes from the fact that the included Dark Angels would allow me to play against a friend rather than drive the annoying distance to the nearest GW shop or search for a local gaming group in order to even play the tabletop. Although I suppose I could always use my old Star Wars minis as stand-ins.

Don't bother with Dark Vengeance (Dark heresy is the name of an RPG system created by GW) unless what you want is cultists and chosen. It doesn't seem like you're aiming for either of those, which means it would probably be better to just start with box kits.

Also, I'd note that you don't strictly have to buy a huron model. When you buy a box of raptors, you'll have more lightning claw bitz than you can ever use (if you build them as raptors, that is). All you've got to do is come up with something convincing for a force axe and you can kitbash your own huron model out of regular CSM bitz.

Ailaros is right about Dark Vengeance, no good for PA Chaos armies. If you kit bash Huron, there's a power axe in the Space Marine Assault Marine kit, though it's not exactly big or evil looking. The Sanguinary guard kit has an axe in too, as well as jump packs. Could work for a conversion with some good Chaos bits.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Ailaros is right about Dark Vengeance, no good for PA Chaos armies. If you kit bash Huron, there's a power axe in the Space Marine Assault Marine kit, though it's not exactly big or evil looking. The Sanguinary guard kit has an axe in too, as well as jump packs. Could work for a conversion with some good Chaos bits.

It's cheaper though to just buy the Huron kit, although, how easy/hard would it be for me to convert Assault Marines into CSM's after taking their power axe? Luckily their Aquilas look like it'd be fairly easy to cover up, if not make it look convincing that it was scavenged armor, maybe even mixing and matching armor bits. Although the lightning claws from the Raptors kit should likely make up for any lack of fearsome appearance of the scavenged power axe.



Hm. This also looks like it'd be far cheaper than the DV starter set as well. I'd likely get the CSM 6th Ed. codex along with the cheap newer version of the rulebook.

Granted the Sanguinary guard would be more expensive than Huron, but you still get another four Raptors out of it...

The axe from the Assault marines would simply be there to say you have one, but then the rest of the kit would be pretty intimidating, especially if you had a spare torso front from the raptors. Your call of course, but both are viable options.

I threw a few Thousand sons in with mine since Night Lords have been known to hire on or even buy stuff from other chapters. That and it visually works really well.

I run predators and helldrakes. I have a land raider but its a bit too many points for most games. otherwise dont really need a bunch of funny shenanigans. i do perfectly fine with the same lists i used in 5th ed with the addition of helldrakes. all i did was drop raptors and no problem. which sucks since i have the old oop metal ones that look exactly like the ones in the illustrations for night lords but points wise helldrakes are a much better buy.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Granted the Sanguinary guard would be more expensive than Huron, but you still get another four Raptors out of it...

The axe from the Assault marines would simply be there to say you have one, but then the rest of the kit would be pretty intimidating, especially if you had a spare torso front from the raptors. Your call of course, but both are viable options.

I'll probably do this then. Save some money, get some extra Raptors. Also, would it be viable for me to have Huron use a Jump Pack?

zteknon wrote:
I threw a few Thousand sons in with mine since Night Lords have been known to hire on or even buy stuff from other chapters. That and it visually works really well.

I run predators and helldrakes. I have a land raider but its a bit too many points for most games. otherwise dont really need a bunch of funny shenanigans. i do perfectly fine with the same lists i used in 5th ed with the addition of helldrakes. all i did was drop raptors and no problem. which sucks since i have the old oop metal ones that look exactly like the ones in the illustrations for night lords but points wise helldrakes are a much better buy.

Yeah, I really hate the 6th Ed design for the jump packs.

http://digitalsushi.co.za/image/data/products-wargaming/warhammer-40-000-chaos-space-marine-raptors-citadel-finecast-43-41.jpg
Those looked far, far better.

Also, how much Corvus armor comes with a standard full squad Space Marine tactical kit?

And so is it definite that the Space Marine Assault squad comes with a power axe?

If you want extra inspiration for Night Lords, then buy Lord Of The Night . My friend gave it to me because he collects Night Lords ( ), and apart from being the best book I've ever read, it really gives an insight into the uncorrupted Night Lord soldiers. He started with the DV set and is struggling to build a tough list, so, like Ailaros said, I'd give it a miss unless you want a cultist following (frankly you'd be better off getting them from eBay). In my mind DV is a very difficult set to expand for Chaos Space Marines. Cultists are only good in numbers, and you only get 20. You get Chosen - flexible, but not here since you don't have a choice in loadouts. The Hellbrute is simply a gamble (an expensive one at that ), and the Chaos Lord struggles to get around WYSIWYG without being useless.

Don't get me wrong DV is awesome value, but only if you plan to collect DA too, or wish to get some fancy Chaos models.

Hope this all helped

G.A.

General Annoyance wrote:
If you want extra inspiration for Night Lords, then buy Lord Of The Night . My friend gave it to me because he collects Night Lords ( ), and apart from being the best book I've ever read, it really gives an insight into the uncorrupted Night Lord soldiers. He started with the DV set and is struggling to build a tough list, so, like Ailaros said, I'd give it a miss unless you want a cultist following (frankly you'd be better off getting them from eBay). In my mind DV is a very difficult set to expand for Chaos Space Marines. Cultists are only good in numbers, and you only get 20. You get Chosen - flexible, but not here since you don't have a choice in loadouts. The Hellbrute is simply a gamble (an expensive one at that ), and the Chaos Lord struggles to get around WYSIWYG without being useless.

Don't get me wrong DV is awesome value, but only if you plan to collect DA too, or wish to get some fancy Chaos models.

Hope this all helped

G.A.

Thanks. I guess I'll probably pass on DV and get Raptors/CSM's/Space Marine Assaults to start off as the others recommended, maybe with some other sets thrown in too. Also, I have the Talos Trilogy. Fantastic series and a terrific look at CSM's in general, especially Night Lords.

Great! Don't forget a decent handful of Chaos Marines - arguably the best troop choice in the game to hold down an objective.

Well, you can always bitz order. You don't need to buy the entire box to get just the axe.

and huron's other weapon is the tyrant's claw. That's what the raptor claw is for. Get a flamer bit from somewhere, and you're good.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well, you can always bitz order. You don't need to buy the entire box to get just the axe.

and huron's other weapon is the tyrant's claw. That's what the raptor claw is for. Get a flamer bit from somewhere, and you're good.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440277a&prodId=prod1710018a

Hm, would that work? I could use the combi guns for other units, and cut off the tip of the flamer and glue it to the palm of the power claw, then paint over the two in an attempt to hide the work. Plus the other weapons would be fairly useful for standard infantry.

This also would likely be good for me as well as a project to start modeling. Once I finish the other units, Huron will be my first attempt at making a scratch model from spare parts.

The flamer bit would probably need to be cut down a bit, but you could make it work. If you're going to put it in the palm of the claw, then all you really need is a small tube, something like the barrel of a lasgun or even the end of a bolter, stick it in the palm and drill a small hole like you would for any gun and viola! Instant in-built flamer

There's definitely an axe in both the Sanguinary guard and Assault marine kits, just to confirm that. Bitz ordering could be the way to go as well.

As far as critical models, I'd say a Lord leading a unit of Warp Talons would have to be up there. Other than that Raptors, un-marked marines in rhinos and lightning claws on everything with fingers would be pretty fluffy for Night Lords. I assumed you've read the Night Lords series of books?

Get so helbrutes so you can scare the enemy when a raging dead guy charges them [igonore the people who say they're bad, BTW]

Or just mount the flamer to the claw. Before Huron had his heavy flamer put into his bionic arm, he had it simply mounted to his arm.



I've also been floating the idea of incorporating the flamer into the axe rather than the claw. More like a claw and a "rod of fireball +5, with axe" sort of thing.

Night Lords (were) all about hitting,l hard, fast, without mercy and with everything you can get. Overkill was a foreign language to them. And they loved to scare the gak out of things.

So anything that fits that bill works wonders. Raptors, Warp Talons and Heldrake all fit the fluff profile and the Heldrake is a demon of hell on the table. The heavy support will also serve you well with Land Raiders and Daemon Engines for support.

To back the NL themes of hard fast and scary I recommend aggressive CC troops like CCW CSM squads, Berserkers, Termies, Chosen and anything from the Fast Attack region, with an HQ that looks suitably Batman and awesome.

 Deadshot wrote:
Night Lords (were) all about hitting,l hard, fast, without mercy and with everything you can get. Overkill was a foreign language to them. And they loved to scare the gak out of things.

So anything that fits that bill works wonders. Raptors, Warp Talons and Heldrake all fit the fluff profile and the Heldrake is a demon of hell on the table. The heavy support will also serve you well with Land Raiders and Daemon Engines for support.

To back the NL themes of hard fast and scary I recommend aggressive CC troops like CCW CSM squads, Berserkers, Termies, Chosen and anything from the Fast Attack region, with an HQ that looks suitably Batman and awesome.

Starting out, I'll likely use Huron as the main HQ. However, when I gain enough skill, I intend to make an HQ Lord with a Night Lord helmet and wings taken from a possessed kit.

You can take both. Just count huron (or, rather, your huronesque night lord) as your warlord to get the infiltration and then take a different lord with wings to get that in your army as well.