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.

Chaos Space Marines

HQ: Ahriman = 230

Troop: 4x Thousand Suns & 1 Aspiring Sorcerer = 150

Troop: 18x Chaos Cultists & Cultist Champion w/ Shotgun, Icon of Vengeance (on random unit in back of squad) = 113

Elite: 10x Noise Marines, 9x Sonic Blaster, 1x Blast Master, Icon of Excess = 267

Elite: 10x Noise Marines, 9x Sonic Blaster, 1x Blast Master, Icon of Excess = 267

Fast Attack: Heldrake w/ Baleflamer = 170

Fast Attack: Chaos Bikers, MoN, 2x Meltas = 108

Heavy Support: Defiler (stock) = 195

Total: 1500

Looking for suggestions, tips, critiques or comments.

Tactics for using this army:

Hope to infiltrate both NM squads, position on left and right wings of table at a distance that would benefit early shooting against initial enemy troop movements.

Ahriman travels w/ TS squad up middle of table

Defiler defends back half objectives & against linebreaker & possible deepstrikes

Bikes hang around for late game objective scoring. Can also use meltas to attempt to pop high armor vehicles if enemy brings too many for the rest of my army to deal with.

Cultists can be used for tarpitting or objective grabbing. Icon given to them specifically for effective tarpitting.

Heldrake is the burninator.

you should totally just listen to your friend rob on this one

If you're planning on taking a squad of 10x Noise Marines, I would take a second Blastmaster and reduce your Sonic Blasters a bit to allow for some casualty cushion. You have a decent amount of firepower, but you are lacking AT.

Ahriman is pretty good but needs lots of Warp Charge to gain full effectiveness. So I would look at Grey Knight or Daemon Allies for extra Warp Charge to power him up. Also with only 5 marines as bodyguards and no transport he'll lack the mobility to get full use from triple Shriek.

You're taking 20 Noise Marines but only 2 Blast Masters which is a bit of a waste. Also if you're fielding that many Noise Marines you really should consider a Slaanesh Lord to make them troops.

The Defiler is your only piece of armour on the board so will die without achieving much if anything. Drop it or get more armour. Ideally you either want full mech where everything is in a transport or no mech. That way you are either denying your opponents AI fire viable targets or denying his AT fire viable targets. Eitherway you're hurting his efficiency.

FlingitNow,

I appreciate you taking the time to critique my list. I was thinking about scaling this list into a 2,000 points list with Daemon allies, so I completely agree with the idea of adding them for the extra warp charge points.

Also, I share the same concerns regarding Ahriman's squad. I was really hoping to counteract their vulnerability with the seemingly unlimited shots that I would be able to take with my NM squads.

As for the lack of armor, I was considering running the NM squads in Rhinos, I just have to make sure that with Ahriman's infiltrate special rule I can infiltrate them in the Rhinos. I also was considering trying to adjust the list to incorporate the Mayhem pack from the new Helbrute dataslate (Mayhem Pack - Consists of 3 Helbrutes *It Will Not Die *Mayhem from the Maelstrom: Units in this formation roll one die for reserve rolls. Unit must start in reserve, and arrive by deepstrike *Tormented Terrors: At the start of your movement phase, roll once on the Crazed table. All models in this formation suffer the results regardless of taking damage previously) but I could not find a way to work to points out without removing something from my list that I felt I needed.

I do agree that I should be taking two Blastmasters per NM squad I just have to find the points.
I am also not against adding a Slaanesh Lord to make my NM troops, just have to, again, find where I can remove points to add it.
I could drop the Defiler. I wouldn't be too opposed to this because I actually haven't seen it do incredibly well so far in the four games I've used this list.

If I were to drop the Defiler, I could rewrite the list as the following:

HQ: Ahriman = 230

HQ: Slaanesh Chaos Lord, Bike = 100 (place with bike squad)

Troop: 4x Thousand Suns & 1 Aspiring Sorcerer = 150

Troop: 12x Noise Marines, 10x Sonic Blaster, 2x Blast Master, Icon of Excess, Champ w/ Doom Siren, VotLW = 351

Troop: 12x Noise Marines, 10x Sonic Blaster, 2x Blast Master, Icon of Excess, Champ w/ Doom Siren, VotLW = 351

Fast Attack: Heldrake w/ Baleflamer = 170

Fast Attack: 4x Chaos Bikers, MoS, 2x Meltas, Icon of Excess = 148

Total: 1500

Thoughts?

Your Slaaneshi Lord has a different mark to your bikers (Nurgle).

Sorry, I did that very hastily and reworked the list, please evaluate the newest version.

Also, thank you for taking the time to critique.

Think you'd be better off with just 11 CSMs instead of the Thousand son squad. Maybe drop the 11th Noise Marine from each squad to add to that further. As that squad just seems very fragile and not very cheap for just 1 Warp Charge.

Otherwise it is looking stronger.

Ahriman is pretty good, but as stated prior, his effectiveness won't be great without substantial WC to maximize his powers, and his "retinue" is pretty small yet still desirable to focus down to slay the warlord. I don't want to push the argument of "fitting with the rest of the army" as well, as weak as that is, but this list looks more like a Slaaneshi army, rather than a hybrid army.

I would devote to Slaanesh and take a Sorcerer w/ MoS to take SoP to buff the firepower of your Noise Marine units and make them pretty decent skimmer hunters. With the rule for Snap Shots, you could drop a unit to BS 0 and prohibit them from shooting... happy thoughts for you and your opponent (who is overcome with sensation).

Edit: I didn't see that sonic weaponry Ignores Cover. I doubt any skimmer would intentionally Jink, so a reduced BS will only affect them evading with movement and limiting their firepower as a result.

Your infantry can be infiltrated with its dedicated transports.

My main concern with the revised list is the size of the Noise Marine troops.

At 12 men, you can't fit them in Rhinos, which means you have to footslog it up the board. This is rarely a good idea for anything with salvo weapons. Sure, they are survivable, but their range gets halved. You're going to lose a lot of them before they do much of anything.

Consider breaking the Noise Marines out into 4 smaller squads and getting them Rhinos. This will let you move up the board more easily and give your opponent a harder time shooting them. If you have the points, 6 or 7 men per squad is optimal.

As for the Defiler, I personally think he's a good unit, but do think you could do better with a Forgefiend using this list. I am imagining there is some Psychic power to be had with an unmarked Sorcerer that would let you make them even more shooty.

Noise Marines are infiltrating. A single piece of armour is never a good idea. You'd need a Balestar to get the powers to boost shooting and another HQ who would cost over 100 points to buff a unit that dies turn 1 every single game as your opponents AT has literally nothing else to target.

Well chaos marines can take divination so you could TL the forge fiend making some good AA.

Only if they are Crimson Slaughter and have the Balestar. That's a 25 point item before you get him anything else.

 techsoldaten wrote:
My main concern with the revised list is the size of the Noise Marine troops.

At 12 men, you can't fit them in Rhinos, which means you have to footslog it up the board. This is rarely a good idea for anything with salvo weapons. Sure, they are survivable, but their range gets halved. You're going to lose a lot of them before they do much of anything.

Consider breaking the Noise Marines out into 4 smaller squads and getting them Rhinos. This will let you move up the board more easily and give your opponent a harder time shooting them. If you have the points, 6 or 7 men per squad is optimal.

He doesn't have Rhinos in his list, so although he will be footslogging to claim objectives or increase pressure, he could also sit on backfield objectives. It's also why I recommended reducing the amount of Sonic Blasters earlier to allow for expected casualties. I agree with taking 6-man squads equipped with Blastmasters and a few Sonic Blasters in Rhinos to shoot in mobile bunkers, though that would require dropping the Thousand Sons to afford them.

 FlingitNow wrote:
Only if they are Crimson Slaughter and have the Balestar. That's a 25 point item before you get him anything else.

What book are you using? It says on the psychic cards chaos can take div psychic discipline this is for 7th ed.

Use the CSM book and the FAQ, the card summary is misleading. It says the same for Vanilla Marines when still only Tigirius has access.

Can you post the link to the FAQ? It doesn't make sense to screw up on something so obvi...Silly GW....

Well they didn't screw up. The summary is technically correct but misleading. FaQs are on the BL website now for some reason:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/faqs-and-errata.html

raggs027 wrote:

Troop: 18x Chaos Cultists & Cultist Champion w/ Shotgun, Icon of Vengeance (on random unit in back of squad) = 113

Cultists do not have access to Icons.

Interesting list idea! Your second list with Noise marines as Troops is better than the first one!

An alternative strategy to Ahriman and infiltrating the NMs would be to change A to a Slaaneshi ML3 sorcerer, which should get Symphony of pain 2/3 of the time. S5 sonic blasters are not bad.

A small thing, the noise champion cannot take a sonic blaster, only regular troopers can. So you would be limited to 9 SB, 2 BMs and bolter, boltpistol, ccw and doom siren on your champion.

Umm, where does it say that CSM don't get divination? If at most its up to YMDC because the codex entry says they don't have it, but the 7th ed cards say they do?

 Arbiter wrote:
Umm, where does it say that CSM don't get divination? If at most its up to YMDC because the codex entry says they don't have it, but the 7th ed cards say they do?

Those cards are a summary.
They say someone has access to it, doesn't say who.
You refer to the individual entries (and FAQ's) for what disciplines are available to each model.

 grendel083 wrote:

 Arbiter wrote:
Umm, where does it say that CSM don't get divination? If at most its up to YMDC because the codex entry says they don't have it, but the 7th ed cards say they do?

Those cards are a summary.
They say someone has access to it, doesn't say who.
You refer to the individual entries (and FAQ's) for what disciplines are available to each model.

No one in the CSM has divination in their entry, it is bought through a supplement piece of wargear, so maybe they will FAQ these changes ot redo their cards?

 Arbiter wrote:

 grendel083 wrote:

 Arbiter wrote:
Umm, where does it say that CSM don't get divination? If at most its up to YMDC because the codex entry says they don't have it, but the 7th ed cards say they do?

Those cards are a summary.
They say someone has access to it, doesn't say who.
You refer to the individual entries (and FAQ's) for what disciplines are available to each model.

No one in the CSM has divination in their entry, it is bought through a supplement piece of wargear, so maybe they will FAQ these changes ot redo their cards?

Units in the CSM FACTION do indeed have access to divination. Those being Crimson Slaughter models with the Moonstar. The card is correct if misleading. Just like for Vanillas with Tiggy.

Needs MoN Obliterators. Best unit the codex.

It seems your list lacks coherency, here are some suggestions:

The unit of 5 Thousand Suns doesn't bring much to the table, they cost a lot of points and just end up getting shot footslogging across the table. The same goes for Ahriman. I suggest going all out with Thousand Suns (a few 9 man units) to complement Ahriman or just leave them at home. Huron is a good point efficient alternative if you want to infiltrate.

For the Noise Marines I suggest 2 blastmasters in a 10 man squad. Also Noise Champions can't take sonic blasters (only melee and ranged weapons from the wargear list, unless this has been FAQ'ed).

The cultists can't take icons, only marks. Personally I wouldn't give them any marks but MoK makes them more killy in close combat and MoT makes them more survivable since most weapons negate their armour save. Take Typhus for plague zombies if you want a cheap tarpit unit (fearless and FNP).

The bikers are good, but having only 3 makes them squishy and if you lose 1 meltagun the unit loses half of its anti-armour capabilities. Give the champ meltabombs and/or a combi-melta and possibly more bikers to soak up some wounds.

Just my 2 cents, hope it helps.

A small point MoT makes cultists less survivable not more. Even assuming they are never in cover and never hit by anything without an Ap the MoT increases cost by 25% for and increase in save of 16.67% which means point for point just buying extra bodies makes you more survivable add in Ap- attacks and cover and that difference just gets bigger. Basically the same story with MoK.

 FlingitNow wrote:
A small point MoT makes cultists less survivable not more. Even assuming they are never in cover and never hit by anything without an Ap the MoT increases cost by 25% for and increase in save of 16.67% which means point for point just buying extra bodies makes you more survivable add in Ap- attacks and cover and that difference just gets bigger. Basically the same story with MoK.

You're absolutely right, that's why I never give cultists any marks (plus they're cannon fodder.... not even worthy of the attention of the Ruinous Powers).