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I'm not a very competitive person by nature, and I'm much more interested in modeling and painting, and the 40k mythology (I refuse to say fluff, it sounds pejorative) than the gaming. However, I am also a very social person, and I've come to realise that gaming adds a social aspect to the game. It lets me meet with like minded people, talk about the models and stories I love, and show off my models. Whenever I take my models into the shop, people come to see what I have today, and they are even impressed by my unpainted stuff.

However, I have come across a problem. Maybe I'm just not very good at the game, or maybe I just have a bad list, but most of my army is dead by my opponent's second shooting phase, and those models I worked tirelessly on for hours each, even the infantry, have to go back in the box after only a few minutes. I want to be able to give them the visibility they deserve, and they look incredible on a battlefield, facing down the enemy, and I think it's such a shame.

How do I deal with this?

I would suggest not playing 40k. It's a game where everything dies quickly (other than a few game-breaking balance mistakes), whether in shooting or assault. If you can't handle taking entire units off the table every turn you should probably just pick a different game to play.

I was hoping for more of a positive response.

OK. so what army? what models? we might be able to come up with a strategy to keep them alive, and maybe very effective

Well, looking at your title I'd say your a chaos player and from your sig a khorne fan? Personally as a guard player I experience this alot and I've come to terms with it. On the other hand to avoid getting table I use the tactic of target saturation, your opponent can only kill so many guys per turn. I know chaos can field hoards of zombies and those notoriously hard to kill nurgle bikers but other than that I not very well versed in the ways of traitors.
If your playing a "canon" list know that most times you will be at a disadvantage and in some metas defeat will be unavoidable if you refuse to change up the list. I feel your pain as like to mostly convert and paint and play really only for the social aspect and to see my troops on the battlefield as well, but thats the way it is unfortunately.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I was hoping for more of a positive response.

Well then I guess you're just going to be disappointed. Hoping for a positive response doesn't mean that one exists. Would you prefer that we lie to you and tell you everything is going to be ok, so that you can play a few more disappointing games before you quit?

Wow I'm really starting to realise that there are a lot of jerks on this forum. If you have nothing constructive to say, why bother posting at all?

It's hard to give meaningful advice without knowing what list you run and what your enemies are.

Make sure you try to think about the rest of the game when you make a move.

For example if you move your guardsmen over there to take that objective will that enemy tactical squad be in range next turn and would it work to your advantage if they stood there trying to scrape them out of cover for a turn or two while the rest of your army moves to assist.

I have a friend whos army could table mine quite easily in the right circumstances. But I realised he can be distracted by a well positioned sacrificial unit or two. Of course that might not always work but don't underestimate the psychological part of the game. A weak unit can be used as a speed bump or a powerful unit can distract an opponent and force them to move against it.

As I mentioned earlier it's hard to give you advice without knowing more but if you play an army with lots of cheap infantry look at things like tarpitting and screening. For more elite armies it's more about proper target selection and positioning I think.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I'm not a very competitive person by nature, and I'm much more interested in modeling and painting, and the 40k mythology (I refuse to say fluff, it sounds pejorative) than the gaming. However, I am also a very social person, and I've come to realise that gaming adds a social aspect to the game. It lets me meet with like minded people, talk about the models and stories I love, and show off my models. Whenever I take my models into the shop, people come to see what I have today, and they are even impressed by my unpainted stuff.

However, I have come across a problem. Maybe I'm just not very good at the game, or maybe I just have a bad list, but most of my army is dead by my opponent's second shooting phase, and those models I worked tirelessly on for hours each, even the infantry, have to go back in the box after only a few minutes. I want to be able to give them the visibility they deserve, and they look incredible on a battlefield, facing down the enemy, and I think it's such a shame.

How do I deal with this?

Depends on many things. One, what is your meta like? Is there commonly multiple riptides, waveserpentspam, and screamerstars (having these manta rays that fly with weird daemons riding discs)? Or is it perhaps a hodge podge with few fliers and a very diverse number of armies. In short, does your meta lean more towards casual or competitive? That's one way to consider it.

The next problem, as others have mentioned, is that we don't really know exactly what you are playing. From your images and the sorts, it's probably CSM and probably khorne in particular... so quite a couple of berzerkers? You'll have to elaborate on that but here comes the most important part.

You'll have to accept models will leave. I have a friend that plays Tau. He's a great person but he put too much care into his models and losing a single one crushes him even whilst he tables you he'll be gloomy having lost 1/4th of his army. Don't do that, it's not fun for you or your enemy. You can't expect a game where your models will last on the battlefield. That said, we can see how we can try to make them last although be warned, depending on your responses, there might not be a satisfying answer.

Also, for a silly answer... if you like the lore of the world. Why not create your own? Be it your own warband, waaagh, or simply a subset of a greater army (a certain company of marines etc). Make up a story for them, provide a narrative. If they die, that doesn't necessarily mean they die for good. Perhaps they had to retreat? Maybe they are lying on the ground and will either evade death or be carried away to safety. If you really like the lroe side, it's an entertaining enough way to look at it.

I'll also second what StarTrotter says there both sides should be pretty mauled by the end of a good game!

Do you want tactical or moral advice?

Tactical...well, you need to post list, but dying after 2nd turn of shooting seems weird. Do you use LOS blocking terrain? Also, keep something in reserves. Of course, thats just what came to my mind. If you are facing truly fluffy list like cavalry IG against Taudar or just Riptide spam, there is simply too big difference...and you should talk to your opponent maybe make slight changes so both of you can enjoy the game (I dont believe you or him enjoy it at all).

And mindset...well, when I play some more fluffy list and face something that crush me... I focus on surviving as long as possible and for example destroying some units - and thats important - putting a lot of narrative into the game. OK, my IG is weak against Seerstar, but who cares? My brave Captain Cesmina made heroic grav chute drop into the rear of bikes, flamed them and then made suicidal charge with his chainsword and Emperors name on the lips! Eldrar is killing my guardsmen 5 a turn, but commisar McBride with power sword went to challenge and held off mighty Eldar for whole three turns! Hero of Imperium!

Well, even losing can be fun a lot of fun. Of course, if your opponent just wants to mechanicaly roll dices and dont invest into game anything else, it sucks.

The current state of the game is very unfavourable to the unprepared and a 'bad' list will get demolished fairly rapidly. The worst place to be right now is either a MEQ or assault-infantry, and judging by your signature you just might be both.
This is not your fault as a bad player, it's just that the whole game is stacked around destroying you regardless of defenses (And so Marines suffer) and typically doing so with a gun (And so assault suffers). By playing Assault-Marines, you've basically chosen the single worst combination in the current game.

It's not unbeatable, but you might need a radically different approach to the army. Melee power is worthless if you do not have the speed to connect. A good Khorne-based army does not use Berzerkers, or Rhinos, or Terminators. It uses Spawn, Flesh Hounds and Juggernauts, because they have the speed and resilience to actually apply their hitting power.

What is a typical army list for you?


EDIT: As an idea of how your list should be looking:
The Good!
Lord on Juggernaut, Cultists (Unmarked), Spawn, Heldrakes, Bikers, Maulerfiends, Obliterators, Flesh Hounds
The Bad!
Terminators, Mutilators, Possessed, Berzerkers, Warp Talons, Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers

Ignore Peregrine, its usually negative from him

Share something about your army and whats going wrong. The answer is the same no matter what though - you are going to have to take things a little bit more competitively. As in, put a bit more towards winning. It's noble that you don't care about it at all, but at the same time, some optimization towards your lists will help increase their lifespan on their board. The best defense is a good offense as they say, and being able to smack down some hard hitting bad guys will give your guys longer lifespan to look pretty.

Besides, if you are getting just about tabled turn 2, it sounds like your opponents don't have the same outlook to winning games that you do (even if they say they do!), and you can at least compete at their level without being TFG in any way whatsoever.

Please, share a list that you play with, a list or two that you play against (roughly is fine), and your list of models to work with, and people will be able to help you out !

 SHUPPET wrote:
Ignore Peregrine, its usually negative from him

Share something about your army and whats going wrong. The answer is the same no matter what though - you are going to have to take things a little bit more competitively. As in, put a bit more towards winning. It's noble that you don't care about it at all, but at the same time, some optimization towards your lists will help increase their lifespan on their board. The best defense is a good offense as they say, and being able to smack down some hard hitting bad guys will give your guys longer lifespan to look pretty.

Besides, if you are getting just about tabled turn 2, it sounds like your opponents don't have the same outlook to winning games that you do (even if they say they do!), and you can at least compete at their level without being TFG in any way whatsoever.

Please, share a list that you play with, a list or two that you play against (roughly is fine), and your list of models to work with, and people will be able to help you out !

Woops entirely missed the turn 2. Yeah, at that point you might want to look for other players. Really would love to know your army, your general list, and the meta. Analyze what's usually deployed preferably.

 Peregrine wrote:

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I was hoping for more of a positive response.

Well then I guess you're just going to be disappointed. Hoping for a positive response doesn't mean that one exists. Would you prefer that we lie to you and tell you everything is going to be ok, so that you can play a few more disappointing games before you quit?

There's no need to be a dick about it dude. We're all here to have fun, what's the point telling someone else they should just quit?

What list do you have?

As others have guessed, I am a Khorne fan. I think they fit perfectly within the game, more than any other faction. They unashamedly are all about destruction and spilled blood. They don't hide behind excuses, or even other tendencies like the followers of the other gods. My guys in particular have their own story, which isn't much different from your standard Traitor Marines, they were betrayed by the Imperium, and turned the only way they could, to the terrors of the Warp. With nowhere to run, they turned to Khorne, who promised them the power to bring their backstabbers to their knees. He promised the death of the false God Emperor. He promised that the staleness of the Imperium would finally be eradicated, that when enough blood was spilled, the galaxy would thrive again, that the Imperium was all that stood between them and the freedom they desired. My marines are tragic heroes, they were the ones forced out of the Imperium for not having the blind faith in the Emperor that the others did, for not wanting to slay their brothers for heresy when in fact they had just done what they had to do. Their tragedy is that they exchanged dying in vain for one god for dying in vain for another. They know this, but they know they cannot go back, it has come to far, and they know that at its heart, their mission is a true one. The know that the Imperium's unstoppable deference to a false Emperor is what is destroying the galaxy. Their bodies and minds have become corrupted by the Warp, and while they relish in blood and know that they are unsaveable, they do this for the future of the Galaxy. Khorne is a harsh master though, and he has corrupted their bodies so that their only food is blood, and their only medicine is pain, both theirs and that of others. They will never be able to break from the cycle of death and destruction, and they know this too, and this anguish has torn their minds more than the Warp ever could.

My cultist are cowards, and have joined my Marines in an attempt to save their own skin. Some are awed by the power granted by Khorne, some see it as the only way out. But they are all cowards who have turned on their families and townsmen in order to survive. My Daemons are my humans' nightmares incarnate, who stay by their sides, forever haunting them on the battlefield. Every time a Marine dreams of pain, another Bloodletter is born and will appear in battle beside him. Some Marines want their nightmares to kill them, but Khorne will never allow that. Just as the pain of the dead feeds his soldiers, his soldier's pain feeds him.

Anyway, so that's how I play my guys. They are almost entirely close combat, and I imagine them amongst the ranks of the enemy, slashing throats, dodging panicked gunshots, Daemons flashing in and out of existence, and pure unbridled Chaos.

I have.

1x Chaos Lord
2x Cultists (10 members each)
1x Chosen Marines (6 members)
1x Possessed Marines (5 members)
1x Helbrute
1x Bike Squad (3 members)
1x Maulerfiend

1x Daemon Prince
2x Bloodletters (10 members each)

Waiting to be built I have...

1x Bloodthirster
1x Terminator Lord
1x Terminator Squad (5 members)
1x Chaos Marines (10 members)
1x Rhino
1x Warp Talons/Raptors (5 members, I haven't decided yet which to build)

Peregrine is our resident crotchety old man, your better of just letting most his posts just scroll on by. If you absolutly HAVE to read them (he does give sound advice under all the scorn) I suggest reading it aloud in a screeching hawk-like voice while imaging his avatar flapping angrily from atop the spacemarine statue piece of terrain, it makes even his most scathing posts humorous.
Back on topic, if you post a list and are open to changes, most of us are happy to help you out and see if we can get your warband to hang around till the bitter end and aquire some skulls for their trophy racks.

Also, I don't like the term warband, any other suggestions?

Don't have to be competitive to minimise losses, it helps though. But, obvious tricks like not standing in the open with more fragile units to be shot to hell. I don't play CSM so can't help too much with them, but I think you're building in a better direction since the current problem seemed to be you didn't have much of a core with just the cultists. Again I'm unfamiliar with the CSM so I really don't know that much about them.

I also am very Khorne centered with my chaos marines. I use a ton of MoK close combat wielding marines and raptors in my lists. Most of the time I get destroyed too but there is something about seeing a line of 50 marines with axes and chainswords running at the enemy that just makes me so happy. But then I also know that I'll probably lose every time I put my army on the table. One thing that helps me is that I play just about every army out there so I have at least one army that's good at any time. May be a little difficult for most but that's how I get through it.

I am also not fan of the term "warband" and just say legion with anything chaos related

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:


I have.

1x Chaos Lord
2x Cultists (10 members each)
1x Chosen Marines (6 members)
1x Possessed Marines (5 members)
1x Helbrute
1x Bike Squad (3 members)
1x Maulerfiend

1x Daemon Prince
2x Bloodletters (10 members each)

... Yup, that'll do it.
Hopefully without sounding like a dick, your problem is the list: It is just awful. It is formed entirely of slow melee infantry without a single delivery mechanism or anything to protect them. I can only assume that your game plan revolves around running them upfield at Infantry-speed and hoping the survivors are still enough to win. Quite simply, they won't. You have nothing fast or protected enough to actually win an assault after reaching them.
Remember, melee ability is *worthless* if you do not survive to actually hit things.

Don't use Berzerkers, use Spawn. They are much tougher, much faster, and still a capable assault unit once they connect.
Don't use Bloodletters, use Flesh Hounds. I appreciate you need a unit to be Troops but Bloodletters are just a paragon of slow, squishy troops that would actually be decent melee units, if they could get there.

Without telling you to just buy a new army, really go out of your way to avoid any more melee infantry and instead focus on Rhinos or Land Raiders to get your existing ones somewhere they can be useful. Go for Raptors and Bikes instead of Possessed or Chosen, take Flesh Hounds with a Grimoire rather than Bloodletters etc.
There is a limit to how much advice we can give before it simply becomes 'buy better models', and unfortunately I think we have already hit it.

Incidentally, mad respect for playing a fluffy army and Raptors are always the better choice over Warp Talons.

I started with a fluffy Slaaneshi CSM list, lots of unnecessary upgrades and suboptimal unit setups for the sake of the theme (MoS and Icon of Excess on a unit of PF Terminators, for instance). After a few somewhat embarrassing defeats at the hands of my competitive-minded friend, I began adjusting and improving lots of things, sacrificing many fluffy, but questionable choices for the sake of efficiency. As such, I've uplifted my primary army list from casual to semi-competitive status, and whenever I play my friend with the new list, the battles are always very intense and both sides take heavy casualties no matter the end result.

Try to tweak the upgrades, think of the best ways to run what you like, learn and try out new tactics, use cover and LOS, figure out what's your opponent's plan and attempt to foil it. There are many ways to improve an army's performance without ditching all the stuff you like only to switch it for the 3x Heldrakes + MoN combo.

Had this exact problem. MOAR Cultists!!!

Unfortunately, I hate the Spawn models, and I won't play models that I don't like. I might be convinced if there was an alternative model I could use that still made sense, but I'm not a huge fan of their story, I don't think they'd fit it.

Oh well, it looks like I'm doomed to have a bad army. In my head they are still badasses.

You aren't doomed so much as you've really built yourself into a hole, tactically. With a few more transports and some faster melee units, you can claw yourself back to 'gimmicky' or a 'tilt list' without too much trouble and keep the list Mono-Khorne.
My advice would be not to take it to heart too much. You've jumped into a very hostile environment with an army that has everything against it, and so you can either sell out and get some better-adapted units or you can soldier on as a fluffbunny and accept that you'll likely get more than your share of beatings. In an ideal world your army would still be a viable option, and it might well swing that way under the next rulebook, but for now it will always struggle because you lack the tools to actually make your army work.

Also, Spawn are a great unit because you can really think outside the box. Maybe they are some of Fabius' special brew, hulking monstrosities with far too many steroids and rage implants driving them into a mindless slaughter. Or they could be Direwolves, with Khorne blessing his favoured with the aspect of a Flesh Hound and extremely rapid muscle growth.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I was hoping for more of a positive response.

You either play an army which has the rules to be very resilient or your stuff will die very fast , specialy against good armies. A lot of flyers +3/+2 inv , re-rolls or forwarning on super big units .

There's no need to be a dick about it dude. We're all here to have fun, what's the point telling someone else they should just quit?

he is not going to have much fun with the stuff he has now . Worse most the stuff he does have never comes up in chaos lists , which makes me wonder who was advising him when he was buying his army.

I'm not taking the losses to heart too much, it's a game, people win and people lose. That's fine. What I do take to heart is spending maybe 25 hours building, customising, and painting a squad of Bloodletters that goes down in one Wyvern attack. They go back in the box, and aren't seen again until the next game.

I think I will try to find someone with a Guard army, with similar bases to mine, and photograph them on a board with a similar design scheme, and photograph them all in a big melée. That will help immortalise them I hope.

Is it possible, as someone who said they didn't even paint miniatures for the gameplay until recently, that he purchased his models not based on someone's competitive advice, but instead committed the atrocity of buying the models he actually liked?!

But if someone bought models , because of their looks and looks are the thing that makes them happy , why would they have problems with losing , if being good at the game wasn't something they wanted in the first place ?

You buy a good army and it works good. Or you buys models you like and get models you like. If you want both you pick armies that have little bad units and not something like csm , which could as well be called codex helldrake.

He explained that, he has no issue with losing, started gaming only recently and purely for the social aspect, he just wants to extend the games life for longer than the usual two turns so that he can show off his models for longer, and made this thread asking advice to how to do so. Hence why he originally purchased non-competitive models.



Re-read thread, believe it or not there is more information here than "CSM-list-with-no-Heldrakes-alert". I swear some people lack the capacity to process what actual socializing is.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Is it possible, as someone who said they didn't even paint miniatures for the gameplay until recently, that he purchased his models not based on someone's competitive advice, but instead committed the atrocity of buying the models he actually liked?!

And sadly that's a bad way to buy things in the current iteration of 40k. For all the brusqueness of his responses, Peregrine is usually 100% correct. It's going to be VERY hard for a Khornate army to win without going the cheesy route, because the game itself is built against said lists. There isn't much in the way of advice to give that isn't going to devolve into the typical "Use an OP list or GTFO" mentality, because that's how the game is.

 SHUPPET wrote:
He explained that, he has no issue with losing, started gaming only recently and purely for the social aspect, he just wants to extend the games life for longer than the usual two turns so that he can show off his models for longer, and made this thread asking advice to how to do so. Hence why he originally purchased non-competitive models.



Re-read thread, believe it or not there is more information here than "CSM-list-with-no-Heldrakes-alert". I swear some people lack the capacity to process what actual socializing is.

Oh I understand very well what he wants. He ain't going to get it though.
Non of the units he has will survive longer then two turns , unless he hides them off table or hides them in land raiders and out of LoS.
Look at his list he has blood letters. Those are t3 , they die to everything , including lasguns . No spawn or big biker unit , that could make his HQ survive longer . Cultists are good , but they are in reservs so he won't be showing them off to anyone.