Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As someone mentioned earlier also. A lot of the newer dexes got points reductions and little buffs to even the regular dudes. CSM got... erm Champ of Chaos (or as I like to call it, "here kill my unit's leadership").

Tau / Deamons / Eldar (and even the DA's with the dakka banner ) got internal synergies that just made you opponents have to think. Quite often CSM end up being a beat stick, and a poor one at that.

CSM is not as competitive as we'd like lately, but they can still be very strong against a bunch of other armies out there, even without a Heldrake (though I always use mine now in tournaments

The Huron infiltrating list can often be very painful for an opponent, especially with cheap Termies in dedicated Land Raiders.

Typhus Zombie hordes can work well too, with plenty of points to spare for Daemon Allies or bunches of Obliterators.

Helbrutes and Daemon Engines on a Skyshield with Warpsmiths, how bout that?

I think Noise Marines suck, their Sonic Blasters should've been kept at Assault2/Heavy3 or no extra points cost; and 30 points for that small blast is way too expensive; plus they don't even come with a close combat weapon! The FNP Icon very not worth it. They can score with a Slaaneshi Lord, but then you don't get a Lord of better type, though Outflanking Bikers with Acute Senses could be interesting...but not interesting enough for me to buy and paint the Noise Marines.

Here's another way to look at it. A friend of mine plays Chaos in Armaggedon, he claims that Chaos gets tougher in higher point lists to the point where he doesn't need superheavies or formations.

Try playing a 3000+ point Chaos army with double FOC. Skip the Heldrakes and bring a ton of Nurgle bikers, 6 Laspreds, 6 large squads of PMs and a ton of cultists. See how that stacks up against other forces.

Here's another way to look at it. A friend of mine plays Chaos in Armaggedon, he claims that Chaos gets tougher in higher point lists to the point where he doesn't need superheavies or formations.

Try playing a 3000+ point Chaos army with double FOC. Skip the Heldrakes and bring a ton of Nurgle bikers, 6 Laspreds, 6 large squads of PMs and a ton of cultists. See how that stacks up against other forces.

I have said since the book came out that if you could play at minimum 2000pts with allies and a double force org, that this might be one of the toughest books so far in 6th. It really does get exponentially stronger at higher points levels. If only anyone around me played more than 1850 ...

Try playing a 3000+ point Chaos army with double FOC

4 defilers marching behind 4 20 man bricks with a warpsmith and a sorcerer...*drool* about 2000 pts. plenty more room for special weapons, a couple helldrakes, and oblits.

Tycho wrote:

It isn't that CSM can't win in a competitive setting--they can. However, players claiming that it is easy or that the army isn't at a disadvantage are being naive. The book simply isn't all that good as a whole.

QFT!

The lack of synergy between its own units, rules like Champion of Chaos, and the lack of internal balance makes this book a bit of an uphill battle imo.

+1

I have tried to keep my mind out of this thread but, it seems that it was too tempting




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 techsoldaten wrote:

In terms of tournaments, the problem with CSMs really boils down to issues external to the Codex itself. First, the USRs other armies get for free has a big impact on games, and they have a bigger impact than anything we get for CSMs. Space Marines with ATSKNF is the best example, where their troops do not break and it affects the mechanics of the game. Like, a tactical squad that has only 1 model left can tie up a CSM squad in an additional round of combat, and this is huge considering the length of games. The new chapter tactics exaggerate this affect a great deal. The Eldar, Tau and Necron armies all have similar USRs, either on individual units or their entire armies. Bottom line is, in a tournament, you can get lucky and win against one of these lists, but probably not 3 - 4 of them.

I agree with this, this is my personal problem with CSM, because I have a slight competitive setting (not as big as others but still has a decent competitive element), and im also a narrative gamer so I use a Warpsmith list full of all the daemon engines you want and whilst I like the list, I don't get very far with it just because my opponent may outthink me (which I have nothing against, after all that's part of the game) but majority of the time my opponent had rules which renders my army and/or tactics null and void (main reason why I call competitive 40k I-had-rules-hammer), so when I see stuff like battle focus or supporting fire which render some of my units null and void, it makes me wonder why CSM couldn't have our own "special element", yes while we do get VoTLW it does not have a big impact unlike other rules, something as simple as Warband traits would have been great, but alas we did not get anything like that.

Otherwise CSM are a great competitive army............if you only spam the units OP said.......

Tycho wrote:

Without trying to sound arrogant, I don't know if the responses in this thread do much to answer the question of the OP. Observations about the popularity of Heldrakes is really just a statement about the unit's popularity. Saying that any Codex is competitive with the right playstyle / build is a pretty general observation.

CSMs have a competitive Codex. I don't think it's competitive in a tournament setting, where you have to take a single list and expect it to perform against all comers. But in a friendly setting, where your list is optimized to beat a specific army, it's possible to design a force to beat a specific army, and beat it badly.

I think this is a fair assessment and you do a VERY good job of going on to support your opinion. My biggest issue is that when I'm planning on playing some friendly Saturday afternoon games, I have no way of knowing who's showing up and what they are bringing so I tend to need a TAC list and, as you mention, TAC is something CSM really struggles with.

My suggestion: bring multiple lists and use the one that is right for the situation. There's nothing that stops you from bringing more models than you need and just tailoring your forces to the opponent.

The hardest thing for me these days is deciding whether to play Black Legion or straight CSMs when I play somebody.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Warpy0013 wrote:

Try playing a 3000+ point Chaos army with double FOC

4 defilers marching behind 4 20 man bricks with a warpsmith and a sorcerer...*drool* about 2000 pts. plenty more room for special weapons, a couple helldrakes, and oblits.

Yeah, that's the thing. Get a bunch of fiends, defilers, bikers, obliterators, preds and havocs on the board and it's a different game.

4 defilers marching behind 4 20 man bricks with a warpsmith and a sorcerer...*drool* about 2000 pts. plenty more room for special weapons, a couple helldrakes, and oblits.

I did this early on only with Maulers instead of defilers. It does change things quite a bit.

My suggestion: bring multiple lists and use the one that is right for the situation. There's nothing that stops you from bringing more models than you need and just tailoring your forces to the opponent.

The hardest thing for me these days is deciding whether to play Black Legion or straight CSMs when I play somebody.

See, that's something else I feel the book is bad at. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel like I can take a bunch of extra models with a few lists written up that are tweaked a little depending on who I'm facing. I feel like with the Chaos book, you can't just say "Oh, units x and y will not be good in this match-up so I'll swap them out for unit z". I feel like it's more "units x and y will not work here so I need a brand new list". In which case I have found that I end up bringing almost all of my Chaos models because of the nature of the book. Does that make sense? It's kind of like, you are forced to pick a "gimmick" (for lack of a better term) and then build your entire list around delivering that gimmick. So I don't feel like I can bring multiple lists without hauling a metric ton of models with me. lol I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Warpy0013 wrote:

Try playing a 3000+ point Chaos army with double FOC

4 defilers marching behind 4 20 man bricks with a warpsmith and a sorcerer...*drool* about 2000 pts. plenty more room for special weapons, a couple helldrakes, and oblits.

How are you taking 4? I am confused.

EDIT: Oh yea... Double FOC. Why not have 6

How are you taking 4? I am confused.

EDIT: Oh yea... Double FOC. Why not have 6

Just trying to keep the siege portion of the army under 2000 so you could take Anti-Air options. No reason why you couldn't. Of course you could also take 210 cultists instead of 80 Chaos Marines.

I think Chaos Space Marines has just shown its history as legions, not chapters.

Warpy0013 wrote:

How are you taking 4? I am confused.

EDIT: Oh yea... Double FOC. Why not have 6

Just trying to keep the siege portion of the army under 2000 so you could take Anti-Air options. No reason why you couldn't. Of course you could also take 210 cultists instead of 80 Chaos Marines.

I think Chaos Space Marines has just shown its history as legions, not chapters.

That just made me think about the grot army I was once thinking of running when you mentioned 210 cultists. I thought of 360 grots instead of 210 cultists... I don't want to live through a movement phase like that. Please go for the 8- marines

FA slots are great especially the drake and spawns.

Good solid HQs. Typhus, nurgle lord on bike, juggy with blind fury, black mace on a deamon prince...

plague zombies are great. Cultists, pm, and noise are good. Actual csm& other troops are crap.

Overall it's just not a good codex. It's not complete, and doesn'tsynergize well unless you add allies, then it's top tier. Plenty of players have found powerful combos that make up for Csm being an incomplete codex.

Mr.Blue wrote:
Hi many say that Chaos suck very hard

You will be fine playing at your FLGS. You might even win an local RTT.
Don't expect to win any big GTs with them. But that does not mean you cannot have lots of fun with them.

You will be fine playing at your FLGS. You might even win an local RTT.

I would say that actually depends highly on your local meta though. Around here, no. You won't. You won't win a local RTT and you will probably struggle in the FLGS (our FLGS tends to be semi-competitive). If your local meta is not so competitive, then the above quote will likely hold true.

CSM is a beer and pretzels codex with a few super units. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to realize that a lot of the new books are a level or two better (better in terms of competition) than the beer & pretzels level. You can definitly have fun with them at the LGS, but they will generally always be an uphill battle.