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I've heard a lot of people complaining about how bad Chaos Space Marines are. Competitively, are they really worse than regular Space Marines?

In many ways, yeah. They don't have access to near as many toys, and where Space Marines get their flavor-buffs (Chapter Tactics) for free, CSM have to pay a considerable tax for them (Marks.)
CSM do have a couple tricks, but normal Space Marinez have better ones, and their top builds (Nurgle Marines vs White Scar/Iron Hands bikes) are nowhere in the same league in terms of power, especially now that Helldrakes are down the tube.

Take C:SM
Remove
Razorbacks
Storm Shields
Thunder Cannons
Thunder Hammers
Land Speeders
All Land Raider Variants
The ability to buy EW
Command Squads
Van and Sternguard Vets
Chapter Traits
PLasma Cannons
Grav Guns
ATSKNF

In exchange you get
Thousand Sons- Known to be utter garbage
Berzerkers- Shot to death before they get into CC
Noise Marines- Average anti MEQ
Plague Marines- Decent Units
Warp Talons- Garbage
Mutilators- Garbage
Oblits- Good but Centurions and Thunder fire cannons are justas good if not better
Various Crappy Demon Engines and a useful Heldrake

Everything Chaos has, Space Marines have a equal if not better version.

Point in case, top level SM HQ has 4 Wounds and a 4++ standard and can drop a bomb on the battlefield Chaos has 3 wound guy with nothing but expensive options to make him above average but not amazing in CC, ohh wait we can take a DP with 3+ and 5++ who will get murdered by anything remotely his points cost fielded by Space Marines.

yeah 2x210 has this pretty neatly.

CSM has some fun toys, i like the daemon engines etc (heldrake copped the nerfbat with 7th :( ) but in a competitive sense... csm is way behind.

our base troops are "cheaper" but for the difference 1pt marines get ATSKNF, we need to PAY for 1 extra leadership, and thats usually twice as much as the difference,

the "marks" cost points and are usually hopeless. (except maye nurgles... but meeeh

the icons? soulblaze? fear? i mean woot woot.. :( oh and they can be sniped out so it isnt a bonus confered on the unit. no thanks who wants to pay a premium to give a unit FNP then have that 1 model sniped out. not me... ever.

2 of our elites are rubbish, as much as i love my 1ksons, nope waaay to expensive. you pay a premium for a level 1 sorcerer that HAS to take its power from the most rubbish psyker table in the game. beserkers, CC.... yep that covers that, oh and you need to PAY for chainaxes.
The other 2, well Plague marines, are good but thats a diamond in the rough. and Noise Marines.. i do like them BM to get units in cover, im looking at you tau and your markerlights.... but thats about it there.

our LR is rubbish. no POTMS so we cant really move and shoot it. its armed with Long Range weapons when we need to rush it forwards...... i mean i need my lascannons on the front line. (give me a crusader with marine rules please)

the vets, well lets see chosen are expensive as hell, give me sternguard i cannot say it enough.

then we have the one thing that i find almost inexplicable ( from a fluff point) my legion just defected, and left its toys at home. no drop pods, none of the newer vehicle types etc.'

and chapter tactics, now if the marine book was released closer to the CSM one id be mad but well there was a heck of a gap so its not a total slap in the face, more a smug pat on the back to the CSM players. how we dont have something similar ill never know.

Things i do like with CSM.

its not a total hate, the daemon engines are cool. Oblits great (sadly marines do it better).
mmm maybe its that i like the potential that CSM have if they were written right.

TLDR; vanilla marines do it better in every step sadly....

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40k Wargamer wrote:I've heard a lot of people complaining about how bad Chaos Space Marines are.

Yeah, there are several people on dakka who volunteer on a part-time basis to make people feel bad about things while pretending to be high-minded.

Thankfully, the number of people who hold an opinion has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the truth.

40k Wargamer wrote:Competitively, are they really worse than regular Space Marines?

CSM can definitely compete.

Unless, were you confusing the word "competitive" with "easy"? If so, then it's probably going to be easier to win with SM, yes. CSM is more close combat focused, and regular SM are more shooty, and their toys are all shooty as well, and 7th edition isn't much kinder to assault than 6th was. Not to say that CSM can't shoot, of course (say hello to combi-weapon terminators and obliterators and 13 point bolters), and it's far from impossible to get into chainsword range either.

In any case, though, if what you want is easy wins, then don't go for either. Both armies will make you have to think to use them correctly, and being forced to use tactics will always put you at a disadvantage against those who don't.

 Ailaros wrote:

40k Wargamer wrote:I've heard a lot of people complaining about how bad Chaos Space Marines are.

Yeah, there are several people on dakka who volunteer on a part-time basis to make people feel bad about things while pretending to be high-minded.

Thankfully, the number of people who hold an opinion has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the truth.

40k Wargamer wrote:Competitively, are they really worse than regular Space Marines?

CSM can definitely compete.

Unless, were you confusing the word "competitive" with "easy"? If so, then it's probably going to be easier to win with SM, yes. CSM is more close combat focused, and regular SM are more shooty, and their toys are all shooty as well, and 7th edition isn't much kinder to assault than 6th was. Not to say that CSM can't shoot, of course (say hello to combi-weapon terminators and obliterators and 13 point bolters), and it's far from impossible to get into chainsword range either.

In any case, though, if what you want is easy wins, then don't go for either. Both armies will make you have to think to use them correctly, and being forced to use tactics will always put you at a disadvantage against those who don't.

can you give me a list thats competitive. im curious. at say 1850 pts, for 7th.

here is mine. rough numbers though. comes up 3pts short



thing is that there is where its at, the helldrake is now a flying pyrovore.
you can be shooty but youd be looking outside the codex to fill the gaps (IG for wyverns that kind of thing)


what i see with csm and you are right is they are good in CC, DP + PM + Spawn. but in pure CSM its a nurgle mono list and thats a little boring.
The book as you say has no autowins and you need to play it smarter and harder than other books, i agree there as well and it can work well, its jsut when you try to write a very competitive list with JUST the CSM book... its a very green army..

one thing i didnt mention was just how lame cultists are... good in the insular look at the codex, but you look at a basic Guardsman? culitst are closer to grots.

The helldrake was always crappy. The recent change didn't make it worse so much as it was a "emperor has no clothes" moment for a lot of gamers. Just because it was way overrated in the past doesn't affect its playability now.

My last go around with CSM was with mono-khorne, It did pretty well, even in some insane circumstances like this.

I can easily see several good chaos lists. You just have to play to their strengths, rather than pretending they're loyalist space marines and quequeing over the stuff you don't have while ignoring all the stuff you do that they don't out of hand.

I mostly just want new sculpts for the basic marines.

 Ailaros wrote:
The helldrake was always crappy. The recent change didn't make it worse so much as it was a "emperor has no clothes" moment for a lot of gamers. Just because it was way overrated in the past doesn't affect its playability now.

My last go around with CSM was with mono-khorne, It did pretty well, even in some insane circumstances like this.

I can easily see several good chaos lists. You just have to play to their strengths, rather than pretending they're loyalist space marines and quequeing over the stuff you don't have while ignoring all the stuff you do that they don't out of hand.

just to quickly discuss those lists here



im not dismissing that there is a few lists open to CSM, but when you think competitively, and what would i take to a tourney to WIN it with a mono CSM book. lots of stuff in that codex cant be taken. for fun that Khorne list is a good idea, just for a game where you want to win, would you really field that?

im under no illusion that Chaos needs to play to their strengths its just that there is far fewer options that have the survuvability in that book than other books, IG, SM, Tau and eldar. and im not talking auto wins here either, the only one we had that was powerful was pulled back to basics. (though inreality it SHOULD only have killed 4 models a turn).
i like chaos and i will twist and turn for fun games for me and opponents but when your talking mono book tourney winner... its a longer stretch.

If the only point is to win a 40k tournament, then don't show up with either SM or CSM. And show up with loaded dice.

No, CSM probably won't, by itself, give you the easiest possible odds to play to increase your chances to the very most to win a game of 40k, but that's a rather pointless activity anyways. So you won a dice game with toy soldiers. Congratulations? Way to roll your dice well?

40k's random mechanic is certainly coarse enough for a strong mono-god CSM list to stand a chance against a more-optimized something else. The stronger a list gets absolutely, the less strong it gets compared to others relatively. CSM certainly fits within that envelope.

Which is what makes it actually competitive - you can reasonably compete with it. When people say "competitive" to mean "easy win button", then they're not only using the wrong words, but they're playing the wrong game...

And khorne works precisely because survivability isn't the only metric that matters in 40k. If you have 10 models that do X damage at X*2 survivability, and another group of 10 models that have X survivability, and do X*2 damage, then the end result will be a draw, regardless of the fact that one is more survivable than the other.

Ailaros:
Your damage/toughness comparison misses an important point: Range. Khorne has practically zero range.
So, if you have durability of 1 and damage of 1, and your opponent has damage of .5 and durability of 1 but gets to fire at you repeatedly before you get to hit back, you're still worse off. Since melee units need to cross the board before they can cause damage, they need durability to get a chance to strike. Compare, meanwhile, to Tau or even normal Space Marines: Their damage output might not be equal, but they get to hit you several times for each single hit you get back.

It's not supposed to be tourney-oriented. When you stop looking at things like: "OMG i can't beat serpentspam! This codex is garbage!" you'll be fine. CSM are awesome for fun games. They're pretty well ballanced when you compare them to other well ballanced stuff.

 40k Wargamer wrote:
I've heard a lot of people complaining about how bad Chaos Space Marines are. Competitively, are they really worse than regular Space Marines?

FYI, I quit Chaos Space Marines during 5th edition.

The main issues you will discover if you play Chaos Space Marines; is the army is very lack luster particularly when compared to the fluff. Although I think that is a common failing of a lot of codexes. Outside of a few dedicated MonoGod CSM players, most lists will look very much the same (ie: lots of nurgle, cultists and heldrakes, you never see warp talons, or defilers, etc). The book is bland.

There are few players that don't outright hate the challenge rule in the current book.

Personally, I feel the book reveals a complete disinterest in the army by the Design team. There is no passion in it.



BTW be wary of anybody happy with the CSM codex. They're probably Slannesh worshipers, and they get off on their own suffering.

The book does have the personality of a freshly boiled potato. It's also quite annoying how Chapter Masters have four wounds and yet our Lords do not, despite many of them being ex-chapter masters.


However, marines are often my best match up and I can normally hold my own and have never been crushed by a marine army either.

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