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From what I've seen it's basically that they aren't anything special, and are typically outclassed. They're IIRC 14 points, with no ATSKNF, and that stupid "must challenge" rule.

From a lore perspective a lot of it comes from the fact that the old Codexes attempted to give Chaos a solid identity, and after the 3.5 book that went away in favor of generic warbands, when most Chaos players didn't want generic warbands, they wanted the Traitor Legions.

They're not awful, what it boils down to is that their troops are overpriced/inferior in comparison to Loyalists, and that there are only a handful of builds that even stand a hope of hanging with the top tier lists/armies.

When you then take the very limited options on offer, then compare to what they've had/could have and all the potential that goes unfulfilled within the faction, you've got a lot of disappointed pandas.

Their army...just kind of is underwhelming. If you want to beat anything outside of fluffy pillow lists, you're kind of shoe horned into a mono-build with P-marines, Obliterators and Heldrakes. (maybe someone gets really inventive and throws in a noise marine.) It has sooooooo many bad options and by bad I mean "outright suck." Mutilators, warptalons, 1ksons, khorne zerkers and defiler to name a few. The marines don't really fill any rolls and seem expensive for what they do.

But I think most people's problems with it is the fluff. or rather, the dex doesn't reflect the fluff. Many people started their chaos armies back when each legion had a separate and distinct style and way to show them on the table top. Noise marine dreads and Iron Warriors used to be able to take IG artillery, for example. Ahriman, the sorcerer supreme who created divination...can't use divination. The new dex just feels boring and generic with no vision or flavor.

TL;DR it feels like "Chaos Shareware" and still very much stuck in a 4E/5E game paradigm.

Yep, it comes down to a very limited choice of units to be competitive and it is almost impossible to field a fluffy AND strong army.
On top of that we got too many units that are just badly designed - best example the warptalons: a close combat unit without grenades...and seriously overpriced.
Another example: Khorne Berserkers can dish out a high amount of wounds, but get ap4 at best (for a lot of points) and have only one transport option - the expensive land raider (which is less reliable than its loyal counterparts).
Oh and instead of giving us codex supplements for the traitor legions we only get black legion (renegades with 1 or 2 nice artifacts) or the uber-bland crimson slaughter, a warband that didn't even exist before the supplement... how stupid is that?
Perfext example of how to screw the fans!

In general a big issue with 40k chaos is that they lost their identity. In 2nd edition and to a lesser extent 3.5 there was a conscious design decision to make each "flavor" of Chaos distinct to allow for maximum variety. Chaos has always been the one faction, more than anyone else, who should have had multiple codexes for each type of army:

1) Traitor Legions
2) Renegades (i.e. more recent Chapters a la Red Corsairs)
3) Cultists/Beastmen/Lost & the Damned
4) Daemons

WayneTheGame wrote:
In general a big issue with 40k chaos is that they lost their identity. In 2nd edition and to a lesser extent 3.5 there was a conscious design decision to make each "flavor" of Chaos distinct to allow for maximum variety. Chaos has always been the one faction, more than anyone else, who should have had multiple codexes for each type of army:

1) Traitor Legions
2) Renegades (i.e. more recent Chapters a la Red Corsairs)
3) Cultists/Beastmen/Lost & the Damned
4) Daemons

Just to add that a lot of people want to play mono god armies.

With so many flavors representing those particular sub factions the ability to have that particular army thematically comes down to one or two units. Daemons being its own book at least solved that issue by compartmentalizing them.

It's mportant to emphasize that this all-in-one approach results in a codex that represents none of the above.

Traitor legions who are escaped into an almost timeless region of space have none of their specialized units or vehicle from a war that to them was only years ago.

Renegade loyalists who overnight lost everything imperial and some how found a secret cache in their armory that says in case of heresy break glass.

Lost and the Damned who for all intents and purposes should be the most numerous and diverse chaos rabble ranging from mutants to traitor guard to space pirates are a single entry.

The fact mono god cult armies are just a single character, a single unit, some cult membership cards for generic units and allies might be enough for some but then you look over to what FWs done and you realize there is a greater depth to it than marks and icons.

Imagine if GW took the space wolves codex and reduced all the SW fluff to a 2-3 paragraph blurb, then got rid of all your units except say, Canis and Thunder Wolves. Those are the lucky legions of the chaos legions. The other 5 have no representation at all except a blurb of fluff. Now imagine tht the codex was so bad that it gets blown away by even casual lists and the only way to win is to play 1 of the 2 mono-builds that destroy casual lists but still don't hold a candle to competitive lists. It is a failure on every single level. You cannot play it fluffy, you cannot play it competitively, and you cannot play it casually. That is the Chaos Space Marine Codex.

In fairness to GW, Chaos doesn't sell as well as loyalist. We can all make arguments about sell fulfilling prophecies of GWs marketing but at the peak of popularity in 3.5ed CSM sold better than some loyalists but no where the level of all of them together. Part of the issue I feel is that GW sees chaos space marines on the same level it sees space wolves or blood angels rather than a more overarching book like C:SM. They don't want to sub-divide and explore CSM in greater detail because they don't think they can risk supporting it.

I think GW also has a fear of making Chaos better than loyalist marines... We have superhuman killing machines selling their souls and dedicating themselves to the dark gods and yet that translates into having less than a loyalist.

After losing daemons when they were spun off Chaos lacks worthwhile units that can take to the field and strike deep. It'd be nice if Chaos had drop pods like they're fluff says. It'd be nice if the daemon engines were all as worthwhile as the Heldrake.

More on topic to the OP... At its core CSM is weak because the big 4 cults as far as elites go aren't that good and they're watered down pretty much because they're also some of the time troop choices. It leaves a hole in the codex to have troop choices that 3/4 of the time fill up the elite section of your army. In this way the foundation of the army is shakey. There are two mindsets as far as troop choices go if they're useful, great, if they aren't they better not cost so much since you'll need the points else where. If it weren't for chaos cultists we would only have pricey and marginally useful choices. Other parts of the codex have only one or two good unit choices twith such clear front runners that an optimized list is filled with those. For an army that wasn't traditionally fast our fast attack section is our best with several good choices. It's the severe underperformance of elites and heavy support that I feel do it. I think the best performing elite choice are terminator units built for suicide missions. The only other reason to touch any of our other elite choices are if like our cults you're using them as troops. The best heavy support choice are Obliterators who even after being nerfed are worthwhile. The only other worthwhile heavy support choices are worthwhile are very basic classics that are cheap but aren't necessarily doing a whole lot and tend to rely on target saturation to stay alive, which isn't that great in an army that doesn't always present a lot of targets.

They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

More than any other army I think CSM stand to benefit from supplements. Even though our two supplements gave us flavors equivalent to vanilla bean and french vanilla, I really feel they're the best avenue for GW to see how much benefit can come from supporting non-vanilla flavors.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

This. This is entirely the problem with the book. It has no flavour. A beige piece of beige with beige stripes.

That coupled with the fact that CSM players have had to see SM get a fantastic book full of options, flavours, and opportunities to build an army of their favourite legion.

I would start a CSM army tomorrow if I could have Sonic Dreads and Doom sirens on lords.

They were the Lab rats of 6th, just like my Dark Angels.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

Hey! Don't you mock Vanilla! it sure beats Chocolate when it comes to Soft-Serve!

 Overlord Thraka wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

Hey! Don't you mock Vanilla! it sure beats Chocolate when it comes to Soft-Serve!

Soft-serve. That describes the CSM dex.

If you read the rage in its entirety.. You'll find most are itching that they're not over-powered.. And they equate that as useless..
To many players in 40k think if you don't have a major advantage to win most of the time.. Your army is crap..

Unfortunately this mentality is due the fact that there ARE over-powered armies that win ALL the time even with poor players..


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only legitamate rage I can understand is the four "special" godling troops (plague/1k sons etc) got no love where in games past you could field a whole army to just one god and still have diversity..
That's now gone.. And the CSM dex is poorer for it.

Well they worship bad gods so of course they're bad to the bone.

 Inquisitor Bob wrote:
If you read the rage in its entirety.. You'll find most are itching that they're not over-powered.. And they equate that as useless..
To many players in 40k think if you don't have a major advantage to win most of the time.. Your army is crap..

Unfortunately this mentality is due the fact that there ARE over-powered armies that win ALL the time even with poor players..


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The only legitamate rage I can understand is the four "special" godling troops (plague/1k sons etc) got no love where in games past you could field a whole army to just one god and still have diversity..
That's now gone.. And the CSM dex is poorer for it.

I wouldn't quite agree with that entirely but there is one part that's true. People like having equal playing fields or having advantages. I'll be honest, I'm averse to options that bring me disadvantages. I'm slow to buy raptors or talons despite loving their models (sticking to my metal raptors which I like aesthetically less) because I don't like their rules. Possessed? Not worth it, very underpowered so I only have 5. Berzerkers? Were already kinda meh last edition but I have about 24 of them. Thousand Sons? I have about 20 that sit around doing nothing besides the few times I dust them off against the biggest pillow matches we ever play. Making custom Rubric terminators? Although I want to, I don't see a point particularly when there aren't even rules for them anymore. Heck, it's already hard enough to compell myself to make them look Tzeentchian since that will jam me into feeling compelled to purchasing the most overpriced, pointless mark of them all (bar a few exceptions). From a logical part, I wan't things to be balanced so that there's no OP and no UP. Some minor variation is fine and some mess ups but to work on fixing those aspects up. Now I'll confess, if there was one unit that was slightly superior in a way that was significant but not 6th edition heldrake (beginning of edition right after the rules made it turret 360), I'd use it. While I would see the broken nature of the drake, toss me a unit that's good but not outright devastating and I wouldn't notice as easily. But I'm human.

The biggest gripes seem to be several frustrations. 1, Chaos Space Marines are more diverse than SM yet SM get multiple codices. 2, the SM codex is largely far more internally balanced and gives more feelings to playing a diverse number of armies whilst CSM sit in an odd mess where several legions don't even have a way to truly represent them whilst others (the god specifics) have no real dramatic representation (The 4 god factions basically require taking a named character and the cult troop only). 3, it doesn't fit many's interests. It's trying to represent traitor legions, renegades, and the lost and the damned. Lost and the Damned get only one mention whilst renegades and legions don't fit together. The fluff massacre. They drastically redid the fluff and have removed fluffy representations. Where are the daemonic weapons to represent nurgle, slaanesh, and Tzeentch? Where's one only for undivided? Where's a mark of undivded to show your true faith to all? Why is it Ahriman can't use divination? That, coupled with there being several downright bad units with a few, such as Thousand Sons, being models that have been known to be bad since 3rd edition really makes one perplexed. It has internal balance flaws, misses feeling fluffy, and meanders on.

And they took allies of convenience with guardsmen

All of this is why my Word Bearers remain shelved.

CSM are fine, they are just HtH-oriented marines in AP 2 shooting edition.

Overlord Thraka wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They only come in one flavour - Vanilla.

Hey! Don't you mock Vanilla! it sure beats Chocolate when it comes to Soft-Serve!

Amen.

elotar wrote:CSM are fine, they are just HtH-oriented marines in AP 2 shooting edition.

Tell that to my 'outright sucky' Thousand Sons that haven't lost a game in 7th.

I'm glad your TS are doing great, cause I just lost to two different Tau players back to back last night.

In fact, I tried my best and it was only an exercise in removing models and putting them in the dead pile. Forged a narrative though, didn't Perils at all.

I hate smart missiles.

What are you taking in your TS army?

I literally just takes Thousand Sons and Sorcerers.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Soft-serve. That describes the CSM dex.

Ok that actually made me laugh. Well done.

 Inquisitor Bob wrote:
If you read the rage in its entirety.. You'll find most are itching that they're not over-powered.. And they equate that as useless.

Methinks you haven't "read the rage" in its entirety.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
What are you taking in your TS army?

I literally just takes Thousand Sons and Sorcerers.

Also depends what you're playing against in your local meta. If you're doing the competitive circuit then that makes a bigger difference.

I played 2500 vs. Tau and used Ahriman, some terminators, 4 units of TS in Rhinos, a Predator, Fateweaver, horrors, screamers and a burning chariot. (Everything I own)

I got tabled turn 4, I couldn't do any damage by the time I got close because I only had a few models. Plus I couldn't shoot down the fliers and they just harassed me.. Ahriman killed a riptide but the others tore me apart.

Then I played someone else (Tau of course... Surprise) at 1000pts because I wanted a quick game. It was fast alright. I had two units of TS, a single cheap sorcerer, some suicide melta terminators and a sprinkling of all the demons. Still got wiped.

It's not like I'm making tactical errors.. It's just I cant keep up with the damage output.

It seems like the only time I have a chance is against a Space Marine player, which I can usually tear apart with ease. Of course, that's not because of any particular skill on my part.. Just paper-rock-scissors.

 Brometheus wrote:
I played 2500 vs. Tau and used Ahriman, some terminators, 4 units of TS in Rhinos, a Predator, Fateweaver, horrors, screamers and a burning chariot. (Everything I own)

I got tabled turn 4, I couldn't do any damage by the time I got close because I only had a few models. Plus I couldn't shoot down the fliers and they just harassed me.. Ahriman killed a riptide but the others tore me apart.

Then I played someone else (Tau of course... Surprise) at 1000pts because I wanted a quick game. It was fast alright. I had two units of TS, a single cheap sorcerer, some suicide melta terminators and a sprinkling of all the demons. Still got wiped.

It's not like I'm making tactical errors.. It's just I cant keep up with the damage output.

It seems like the only time I have a chance is against a Space Marine player, which I can usually tear apart with ease. Of course, that's not because of any particular skill on my part.. Just paper-rock-scissors.

I commend you for trying, but 1ksons against Tau is a forgone conclusion.
I hate forgone conclusions.

I think my favourite comment I have ever heard on the current codex was just an off hand remark by one of the guys at my FLGS. I was counting how many marine codexes there where and mentioned the chaos one, he jumped in to point out it didn't count. I argued it has 'marine' in the name and the base troop is a profile full of 4s with power armour and bolters. Except, in his words "Yeah but no one actually takes choas marines in it, you run the monsters and cultists".

That sentiment right there is why Codex Chaos Marines sucks. The actual marines aren't worth taking.