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So even though I have a decent amount of basic chaos space marines, the only time I ever used them was when I first started playing and only had a rhino and 10 marines. Does anyone still use just basic cult marines? Are they worth it, and if so, how do/would you run them?

The list I'm building has:

2x units: 10-man squad, 2x special weapons with matching combi-weapon on the sergeant, moving around in a rhino.

10 man squad, autocannon + plasmagun, camped on an objective, with Veterans of the Long war so they don't run off the table.

Most of us use plague marines or zombies unlocked by typhus.

If you use zombie cultist then you have points for more turkey n oblitz.

I think the optimal load out for csm is to keep them cheap.

10 csm, trade bolter for ccw, 2 meltaguns, champ meltabomb, rhino, dirge caster

The extreme build i see are those with huron or ahriman granting infiltration of
20 csm, MoS, IoE squads

Yea I favor Plague Marines myself, and usually just make my cult models into plague marines anyway

i started to run them again because ive been trying not to proxy as much (Normally proxy them as plagues marines)

I played a list 2 good effect running 4 sqauds of 10, 2 sqauds were built for cc so they had slaanesh and power weapons to feed off of boons and the other 2 sqauds were for objective camping they had 2 plasmas, i think i should of but a long range heavy weapon in because they really did nothing, or move them up to get them into the action, I still won mainly bause my friend took like some crazy 900 point deathstar (i believe it was 10 vanguard with power weapons stormsheilds in a LR with his hq taking like max artifacts)

The thing that gace him the most trouble was my chaos champion who got the re roll failed armour saves, it was priceless.

I could see using vanilla CSM in two cases:

1) Black legion armies where you don't want to run abby/chosen troops

2) nightlords/alpha legions/other chaos undivided chapter

Their one strength is they're cheap as hell, so I'd take no less than 4 squads of 10 of them in rhinos

My Chaos marines are mostly renegades, and thusly, unaffiliated with a specific Chaos God.

I just proxy them as plague marines mostly. Otherwise I just stick them with the undivided mark to make them fearless and have them hug an objective.

I use mine to kill things. You can take 20 so its a great retinue for a buff scorcerer tool up with cc weapons and MoS add the fnp banner add sorcerer and then run at the enemy and use buff spells to add extra attacks and debuff enemy WS and BS with the slaneshi powers they are very good. Nice death star that isn't weak to plasma due to number of bodies. One good use that other Marines don't get.

Vanilla CSM are cool, but I like Noise Marines even more. I've got 30 of them, and use all of them in all of my games. MoS and Fearless by default and the ability to take sonic weapons is pure awesome.

Regular CSM just don't work. I tried using the 10 man autocannon + plasma gun squad when the codex first dropped... it doesn't work. They WILL run off.
Cult marines are way better because of fearless. When you have a below 25% strength squad holding an objective and not budging you will know why.
I love using plague marines (even though cultists are unfortunately better) and I really want to use noise marines but the only thing stopping me is the fact I don't have the models.

Why exactly will the CSM run off? Their leadership is at least as good as Dire Avengers, and I rarely am able to run them off.

The fact that they can ever run off the table is the problem. "What can go wrong will go wrong" applies here.
Plus if your unit is below 25% strength nothing short of a miracle from the Chaos gods is going to keep them put.

 Solomongrundy wrote:
So even though I have a decent amount of basic chaos space marines, the only time I ever used them was when I first started playing and only had a rhino and 10 marines. Does anyone still use just basic cult marines? Are they worth it, and if so, how do/would you run them?

My Night Lords use Chaos Marines in Rhinos for objective taking. Most recent list is on my blog here:
Night Lords...ATTACK!

There are links from there for other cult armies if you're interested.

In other normal forces, i love taking the Chaos Space marines with Fabius and powering them up, then sending them forth to wreak havoc. This does require you to think a bit about what ELSE you're going to do with the list, and pretty much like all advice, the list in total kinda dictates what to do with them.

Chaos Space Marines are much better when you pay for the extra close combat weapon, but if they are just there for objectives, then like normal Marines, they are what they are. Dont overpay.

One thing though: massive hordelike units of Chaos Space marines are really underused and theres a REASON why they can be taken in those numbrs. The middleground is no place for normal Chaos Marines. You either take them en masse... or you take them in very small numbers. They perform their function well at both sizes, but the inbetween stuff rarely works out.

I bring 2 squads of ten marines with 2 melta guns, combi melta on sarge, icon of veng and 9 ccw. Each in a rhino with a combi melta (i like melta) and my iron warriors win games =]

I just cant see myself build a list over 1000 and not run them.

My current plan is to run w squads of 10 CC Noise Marines in Rhinos with another squad with sonic weapons for covering fire (among other FOC choices!) But now I'm wondering if I couldn't use a squad of regualr marines in a Rhino with plasma guns as a mid-range heavy covering fire unit as well.

Hmmmmm.

Last 1k game i've run a list with:
-Sorc, spell familliar, mastery level 3

-8 csm with ccw, 1 meltagun, mark of slaanesh, icon of excess
-champ with combi-melta, lightning claw
sitting in a Chaos Landraider with dirge caster, dozer

-9 csm, 2 plazmaguns
-champ with combi-melta
-rhino

-some bikes and cultists.

And i faced tau with misslesides, 2x10 firewarriors, crysis commander with retinue, hammerhead with submunition, outflanking stealth suits and pathfinders. I thought was gona be an auto-loss for me. Though with a help of invisibility that my sorc rolled, some luck with not loosing a landraider and hiding a rhino behind it, i managed to pull a victory. Also it was fun how a puppet mastered hammerhead just annihilated 10 firewarriors with 1 shot which was a great help either. And when the time was right those regular unmarked marines in a rhino moved from the cover of a landraider, disembarked and annihilated the squad of pathfinders + threatened firewarrior next turn (though my opponent surrendered at the end of the turn).
However, i think that without hiding behind a landraider, those csm in a rhino wouldn't do a thing. They're very dependant on surroundings and blos.
Marines in a landraider worked fine. Though, i think plague marines would have been somewhat better as a retinue. The cost is just about +20% but they get t5, blight nades, fearless and poisoned weapons; ini 3 however.
Also, putting sorc in a landraider lowers his effectiveness as a caster. He still worked for me but he's better on a bike accompanied by a bunch of spawns.

I alwayz put a combi-melta on a champ even in a plazma-wielding squad. Just in case. Also, it's assault.

So in general i'd say that regular csm marines can work in rhinow but they need means to avoid being shot at for a couple of turns Either via blos or something more threatening to an enemy. Maybe a squd of spawns with indep ahead?

as much as I want them to, I feel the cult troops are so much better--green stuff the hell outta them or buy some upgrade sprues

Yep, Plague marines are really good for their points. But if you go more than 10 models - regular marins seem to have a larger damage output. For example, when you want to infiltrate a 20-strong csm squad with Huron/Ahriman. And there are some interesting tactix with Cypher.