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Like what can they beat? Hordes, deathstars, power armor?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kinda wanna take a bunch of av 2+ not sure if I should

They have a strong HQ roster I guess.


Khorne and Nurgle Lords are good at CC but I assume SM probably have better. But we still can put up a good CC fight with a well geared Lord.

Sorcerers are cheap enough and have enough options to be flexible.

Belakor is fun in that he always gives you set powers, random is random and you cant plan for invisibility any other way.

Um, and...well...um..


Oh. And then the Heldrake is still good at wasting troop anything armor 3+ or worse. The turret nerf and the Vector change is fine, not great but whatever. Still a very nice unit.

Obliterators also look super cool (if you buy better than GW models)

They are really great at decorating and adding value to display cases. Oh, and justifying the purchase of dust removing tools and supplies. They are also great at being part of the first step in my "l2p" guide.

They're good at dying. Trouble is they cost too many points, so not enough of them show up to die. So they could even be doing that better.

They can go alright vs Marines on foot. Blastmasters and Helturkeys are nice and AP3. A Nurgle build tends to die slowly while putting out minimal damage, which is okay for Maelstrom if you can build enough of a lead. If you want Khorne you need to go to Daemonkin.

Thousand Sons Marines are probably the biggest laughing stock in the entire game at the moment.

Bikers with MoN are pretty decent, IMO. Toughness 6 and the mobility they provide is nothing to sneeze at. Take a couple squads of those with an accompanying Lord, a Sorcerer, a couple Hellturkeys, and hordes of cheap cultists and you'll do alright playing for objectives against opponents that don't bring lots of heavy vehicles.

marcman wrote:
Like what can they beat? Hordes, deathstars, power armor?

Other Chaos Marines... Maybe?

Otherwise, they're best at being everyone and their mother's favourite punching bag. Even Blood Angels mop the floor with us thanks to Drop Pods & Grav.

No cover save AP3. My Emperors Children army threw down four AP3 flamer templates. Two AP3 small blast templates. One AP3 large blast template.

As such I've not had any uphill battles with any army that doesn't have a 7th edition codex (or IK) simply because I could erase large portions of their army all in one go and those codexs haven't seen their boosted to 11 codex creep yet.

They look nice and are forgiving for new painters. They are also fairly good for conversions and freehanding.

It seems like only yesterday that I was talking about what I wanted to see in the 6th edition codex for CSM, but it was like five years ago in retrospect. Nothing has really changed since 4th edition. Really nothing has changed since 3.5

CSM are strong against your wallet. Thats basically it. Right now you're forced to take things from Forgeworld in order to be competitive in any nature, but that requires in and of itself, Lost and the Damned IA book, which goes for around $180 with Import charges on top of that.

We are getting a new Dex soon (Rumors apparently so take with salt) and although we are all hoping they become better, most of us are in agreement that the Dex will probably suck major donkey balls. Primarily because Chaos hasn't been "Competitive" outside of Daemons and pure luck of the "Roll on random Table gods".

If you ever want to collect them, well, don't. As a big fan of Chaos in general, it's a waste of time waiting around for models with good rules to come out from a Faction that has been "Ok" and "Bad" at a constant handicap from GW simply because they are the poster "Bad Guy" Faction and need to be used as a punching bag. Imo collect the models because some are "Cool" but don't play the army because they're crap right now.

Honestly? They have decent HQs. Wait....that's Daemonkin. So literally nothing.
They're terrible, and the amount of hate I have for GW for their treatment simply can't be given words.
Lords make a good line of comparison in that they should literally be CMs +1 due to being more experienced, generally better geared, and swelling with chaos juice, but they're weaker in every way.

Sorcerers with spell familiars.

Obliterator spam.

Scaring Marines with Heldrakes.

Conversions.

I play Iron Warriors pretty often. I do alright in games, but I'm also playing with other folks who play for fun, not throat slitting WAAC types or tournament lists. They can be fun so long as you go in looking to have fun and tell a story, not go for a perfectly balanced hardcore game.

Their characters are pretty poweful, and if you ally with Daemons you can do pretty well.

Losing. They are good at that.

marcman wrote:
Like what can they beat? Hordes, deathstars, power armor?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kinda wanna take a bunch of av 2+ not sure if I should

Chaos can beat any army really. I'd say they cant deal w Knights very easily except thats not entirely true. the Eye of Night surely equalizes the scale some.

Saturation is a really strong suit for Chaos Marines. Small units with mighty abilities all buzzing in at one time and with little time for someone to respond. The enemy shoots what they can nd then gets blitzed.

Most of this is mentioned, but:
HQs and Psykers (Bel'akor, access to lvl3 Psykers, winged Nurgle DPs etc)
The Flying Decepticon
Fire Raptor
Nurge Bikers
Obliterators and Havocs
The sweetest APC in the game; the pimped out, havok launching, dirge casting, daemon possessed Rhino!

Cultists can be good, though they are essentially IG whose base cost is 10 points more with a worse armour save.

Some good things you can use competitively with CSM:

-Heldrakes ( take 2-3 )
-Legion Sicaran Battle Tank ( take 2-3 )
-Chaos Hellblade
-Nurgle Chaos Spawn + Nurgle Biker Lord with PF/LC
-Sorcerer with Burning Brand of Skalathrax
-Nurgle Daemon Prince with Burning Brand of Skalathrax or The Black Mace
-Be'lakor

The only half decent choice for Troops are Cultists as they are cheap, or Plague Marines in small amounts as they can actually get stuff done. Usually people go with the Cultists.

If you ally in Chaos Daemons or Renegades & Heretics you can get some really competitive stuff going, such as;

-Firing 120 small blasts a turn
-Having 100+ Fearless FNP Zombies swarming objectives, supported by other elements
-Guaranteed Invisibility or even 2 of said spell for your hard hitters

I've played a list with 3 Heldrakes and 3 Sicarians and a crapload of zombies occasionally, and rarely the opponents are prepared to deal with it. The list counters a few staples in the current meta, such as any form of powerarmour and it also hurts anything that relies on a jink save, Eldar Jetbikes for example.

There is also a super effective trick I have been using that basically gets the opponent with his pants down if he is not knowledgeable in FW releases. Take those 100-200 Plague Zombies in your army. Let your opponent place the first Maelstrom Objective ( if you play those, I always play hybrid scenarios ) - and place every objective near to the one he placed. You want to attempt all the objectives being on the same side of the table, it doesn't always succeed but get many as you can in there.

Now, you use Arkos the Faithless as your HQ and use his special ability ( autolose first turn, autowin choosing a side. ) Park 200 Feel No Pain Zombies ontop of the objectives that are nearby eachother, supported by Heldrakes/Sicarans or R&H artillery. Now take a photograph of your opponents expression.

Proceed to score any Capture Objective X available for the next 2-3 turns.

 Jancoran wrote:
Chaos can beat any army really.

Sigh....

Anyway, Back in the real world. Chaos are without a doubt the worst codex in the game at the moment from a competitive perspective (and even semi/light competitive down at your FLGS). If you like playing 40k with an army that rewards you for playing well, has interesting options, or even if you like to win games at least semi regularly...Don't play CSM.

The Codex literally can't put even a remotely competitive take all comers army on the table.

What are you looking to do marcman? Is this just a modelling project? Cause if your thinking of spending money on CSM or a terminator CSM army, I would strongly advise against that.

I'd say Blood Angels are worse off than CSM. Sisters of Battle aren't faring too well either.

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
The Codex literally can't put even a remotely competitive take all comers army on the table.

Firstly, not true. Secondly, TAC is dead in competitive play, in the high end anyway.

 Runic wrote:
I'd say Blood Angels are worse off than CSM. Sisters of Battle aren't faring too well either.

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
The Codex literally can't put even a remotely competitive take all comers army on the table.

Firstly, not true. Secondly, TAC is dead in competitive play, in the high end anyway.

As bad as Blood Angels are, they are not as bad as CSM. I forgot about Sisters, they can flip a coin for who's worse with CSM I guess.

Why don't you list out a competitive CSM List for us so? Also to me TAC is a list with the tools and options to deal with the multiple threats in the meta, (Knights, Invis , Multi wraithknights , warp spider spam etc) if it can't then it isn't a competitive list in my opinion. Not sure why you think tournament players don't build lists that can deal with multiple threats aka ''tac''.

Well, I play World Eaters in HH.
The models are really great:
Khorne Berzerkers can be mixed with Blood Warriors, Skullreapers can be taken as Rampagers
and everything is on 32mm bases.

SoB ain't bad, they are just monobuild. But Dominion bumrushing is viable.

As for CSM, they make great mascots, excelling at being pretty next to your computer.

 Runic wrote:
I'd say Blood Angels are worse off than CSM. Sisters of Battle aren't faring too well either.

It's hard to say who is worse, CSM or Blood angels. I want to say CSM, since pods at least allow blood angels to pop tanks and get a somewhat decent alpha strike.
CSM are just terrible in any phase of the game, and across all selections. We have a few options that get out of low power and move to competing with bottom of mid units (cultists, heldrake, plague marines, dropping termies with combi weapons) but its still worse than what every other marine codex can do.

Sisters actually aren't that bad. Probably solidly in the middle. They suffer from the tyranid problem though, where most of their dex isn't very good and enough units to make a list prop them up. I'd place them mid tier.

 Runic wrote:

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
The Codex literally can't put even a remotely competitive take all comers army on the table.

Firstly, not true. Secondly, TAC is dead in competitive play, in the high end anyway.

First, we'd like to see a decent list. Jancoran has been saying both CSM and IG are great armies, but has yet to list a single strength or good build they can pull off. You'll understand why everyone here is prone to disbelief.
For example, his IG blob was wiped out in 2 turns by bikers (who were about 140 less points) and was shot to death by basic marines in pods over 2 turns (again, about 100 less points). Something like ASM with flamers would have been even worse, or sternguard with special ammo.
The eye of night, for example, is going to cause 2 penetrating hits a turn (which they can then attempt to save) and requires a supplement. It hardly deals with knights, an army that currently walks over CSM.
Saturation is also not a strong point of CSM. They have no strong units to spam, so saturation isn't going to work.


Second, TAC is hardly dead at the high end competitive level.
While house rules are alive and well at the high end tournaments, if you browse through the 2015 ETC lists, you'll mainly see TAC lists (especially from the eldar and necron players, who can easily pull it off).
It's hard to call the ETC anything but high end competition.

Nothing. They can beat nothing.

Well Jancoran didn't respond to anybody on the ''tau treatment'' thread when he was challenged on the frankly bizarre things he says.

Not sure about Runic, since he just said in response to me ''no, you're wrong lol'' without any evidence to support this. I guess the mysteries of ''high end'' tournament 40k escape me.

40k really isn't rocket science or even close. You do have players like Josh Roberts in the Uk who come up with wonderful new horrors to inflict on the tournament scene, but in general 99% of this game is easy to work out yourself. Most innovation comes from trying to circle the meta, and even then it's usually utilizing tools that where already efficient/good just perhaps underused.

There is nothing competitive about CSM. There is no secret to uncover. It annoys me to see people come asking for advise to be told utter rubbish. Nothing wrong with saying ''My CSM army does okay in my local meta/playergroup, and I find myself winning games''. So long as you add the caveat for the person asking for advice ''that said when it comes to tournament play or even regular play CSM are incredibly disadvantaged and can really only win vs the better books if they agree to severely handicap themselves''.

Instead we get people saying CSM can beat any army.

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
Not sure why you think tournament players don't build lists that can deal with multiple threats aka ''tac''.

Because if you follow the larger tournaments you'll notice it's the skewed lists that are winning in the top tables. You don't need TAC to do well in competitive 40K.

Most winning lists are also built for the sole purpose of capitalizing the chance to win within the tournaments ruleset, a good example being NOVA Open which was won by a COTGW + RW deathstar list, which is not a TAC list by any measure.

Posting a list is pointless as you'd counterargument to which setups such a list would lose until no end ( which actually has nothing to do with competitiveness, a competetive list doesn't need to be able to beat everything, that would be an undefeatable list instead. ) Seen this one before and I won't partake. You can make a competitive CSM list if you're allowed to use Forgeworld.

Other than that, you can keep believing what you want, it's not off anyone else. I'd advise you to take a look at the game on a competitive level a bit more, because if you think TAC is the way to go then there's probably some studying to be done. There are a few armies who can pull it off, but even they rely on something more than just being able to deal with "everything" - A Gladius Strike Force can have the weapons to take on everything, but a true deathstar will still walk over it if we talk actual fighting. However, the Gladius doesn't need it's combined arms to win ( with which again, it wouldn't against a deathstar, or say penta flyrants, or other examples which are numerous. ) The lists power isn't in its combined arms - it's in the MSU capability, boiling down to hundreds of free points worth of transports such as Drop Pods that become a chore to remove while the list scores points steadily.

In a meta where jetbike spam, decurions, flyrant spam, war convocation + flesh tearers, gladius strike forces, buffed to the max IG blobs, centurion and/or biker deathstars are prevalent, you cannot build a list that can take on all of them. Hence, TAC is dead in competitive 40K. I expect this factual example to be met with denial and not much more, and hence really have no more to say about it. It's not off anyone else if you want to keep believing something else.

I'm waiting for someone to try and claim that Thousand Sons are a top tier unit...

I'll admit that I'll occasionally use a basic squad of 5 + Rhino as a way to ferry Ahriman around and give him another WC, but the only reason they're really there is because;
a) I love the 1kSons.
b) I can never pass a 3+ save, but seemingly am able to pass a ridiculous number of invuln saves... Must be a Daemon player thing?!

All they do is taxi Ahriman around so he can either 3x Psy Shriek or if he lands it, 1x Shriek + 2x 'Winning' Flame from the top hatch.

Is this actually "competitive" though? Only Ahriman himself is, though he's still overcosted in general, and is forced to waste a power on the useless Lore of Tzeentch.
Overall it's a really, really expensive package that can definitely inflict some major damage, but is an absolute glass cannon. It won't hold a candle against any list put together using a 7.5 edition Decurion/Gladius styled build.

They're good at being durable on the table, but that's it. With the CSM codex, always go for Nurgle. Nurgle spam everything, litterally. Then allie them with Nurgle daemons. NURGLE.

 Runic wrote:

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
Not sure why you think tournament players don't build lists that can deal with multiple threats aka ''tac''.

Because if you follow the larger tournaments you'll notice it's the skewed lists that are winning in the top tables. You don't need TAC to do well in competitive 40K.

Most winning lists are also built for the sole purpose of capitalizing the chance to win within the tournaments ruleset, a good example being NOVA Open which was won by a COTGW + RW deathstar list, which is not a TAC list by any measure.

Posting a list is pointless as you'd counterargument to which setups such a list would lose until no end ( which actually has nothing to do with competitiveness, a competetive list doesn't need to be able to beat everything, that would be an undefeatable list instead. ) Seen this one before and I won't partake. You can make a competitive CSM list if you're allowed to use Forgeworld.

Other than that, you can keep believing what you want, it's not off anyone else. I'd advise you to take a look at the game on a competitive level a bit more, because if you think TAC is the way to go then there's probably some studying to be done. There are a few armies who can pull it off, but even they rely on something more than just being able to deal with "everything" - A Gladius Strike Force can have the weapons to take on everything, but a true deathstar will still walk over it if we talk actual fighting. However, the Gladius doesn't need it's combined arms to win ( with which again, it wouldn't against a deathstar, or say penta flyrants, or other examples which are numerous. ) The lists power isn't in its combined arms - it's in the MSU capability, boiling down to hundreds of free points worth of transports such as Drop Pods that become a chore to remove while the list scores points steadily.

In a meta where jetbike spam, decurions, flyrant spam, war convocation + flesh tearers, gladius strike forces, buffed to the max IG blobs, centurion and/or biker deathstars are prevalent, you cannot build a list that can take on all of them. Hence, TAC is dead in competitive 40K. I expect this factual example to be met with denial and not much more, and hence really have no more to say about it. It's not off anyone else if you want to keep believing something else.

Damn I was hoping you actually knew what you where talking about.

You can actually build lists to take on the meta's variety of things. Assuming your playing ''normal 40k'' not nova or a special comps pack you can build a tournament list that has the tools and options to deal with all the stuff you mentioned. In fact if it can't you probably wont be doing very well at the event to begin with. If your aiming for top 25% you need to be able to play into all of those and more (knights, wraithknights etc).

Not sure what army lists you play, but I assure you I could walk up to a tournament and if I saw ''jetbike spam, decurions, flyrant spam, war convocation + flesh tearers, gladius strike forces, buffed to the max IG blobs, centurion and/or biker deathstars'' I would be able to play vs them with my army without feeling like I auto lost.

Which comes back to why CSM are truly boned, they can not deal with a single one of the lists you mentioned. How can you say they can be competitive when you yourself can list eight+ common builds which they auto lose to?

They are a mixed bag, and currently a mid-tier army (in my opinion).

They are a typical T4 3+ army, wearing power armor, so they are a failry resilient army. They are supposed to have focus on winning challenges, outfighting enemy hq's and rolling on dark gifts table, but that never seems to work well.

Ok units:
Sorcerers,
obliterators,
Heldrakes
T5 nurglites (T6 bikes)
3+ chaos spawns seems to be something that is fairly cost effective?
Ahriman can be good if you do it right.
Noise Marines can be good.
The fire raptor, which is kick ass-ingly good!
Their Forgefiends with 8 str 8 shots are not bad either.

Apart from that they have veterans of the long war, and more flexibility in building their terminators, and the whole chaos gift thing. They are decent all rounders with both elite, and horde (cultist) starting at 50 pts.

Personally I like the formation that lets you deepstrike 3 helbrutes into combat as well. That _can_ snap your opponents backbone on good days.


The thing is that CSM, more than any other army (imo) benefits from taking doubles, so 2 heldrakes complements each others. 2 Forgefiends complement each others etc. Even the much reviled Defiler can work ok if you have 2 of them.

 Runic wrote:

 Shade of Asuryan wrote:
Not sure why you think tournament players don't build lists that can deal with multiple threats aka ''tac''.

Because if you follow the larger tournaments you'll notice it's the skewed lists that are winning in the top tables. You don't need TAC to do well in competitive 40K.

Here is a link to the ETC lists from this year for one country
http://www.mariscal40k.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Italia.txt
You'll notice that a lot of the lists are indeed take all comers. I'll admit that not all of them are (or at least I don't see it, which is entirely possible) but the majority are, especially if you limit yourself to viewing the stronger dexes.

 Runic wrote:

Most winning lists are also built for the sole purpose of capitalizing the chance to win within the tournaments ruleset, a good example being NOVA Open which was won by a COTGW + RW deathstar list, which is not a TAC list by any measure.

True enough, in raw 40k TAC lists are bad. NOVA stops lords of war and gargants, but doesn't address the powers that make death stars so good (and LoW and GMCs are a good counter to deathstars), so I'm not surprised that death stars were taken. I looked at the lists and the only one I could find in the top 7 who didn't use a deathstar is #2. I'd imagine out of the 16 lists presented, 14 run deathstars, so there your point is well illustrated.
That doesn't change the fact that in what is becoming the standard tournament rules that reign in the most OP stuff, TAC lists still do well (again, see ETC).

 Runic wrote:

Posting a list is pointless as you'd counterargument to which setups such a list would lose until no end ( which actually has nothing to do with competitiveness, a competetive list doesn't need to be able to beat everything, that would be an undefeatable list instead. ) Seen this one before and I won't partake. You can make a competitive CSM list if you're allowed to use Forgeworld.

CSM do benefit quite a bit from forgeworld. People are still weird about forgeworld however, so its hard to use those units to justify a dex.
If you can post a list or unit that does well as CSM against standard builds (Bikes+Spiders, Wraiths in Decurion) nobody is going to tear it down. I don't use my CSM much anymore since most of my friends happen to play the better dexes and would have to seriously down grade against me to get a game in.
Jancaron got "torn down" simply because he insulted everyone else and posted what is, frankly, a bad build that loses to commonly taken units (Drop Pod Marines, 2 units of Scat bikes). It's honestly hard to come up with units that blob does well against.

 Runic wrote:

Other than that, you can keep believing what you want, it's not off anyone else. I'd advise you to take a look at the game on a competitive level a bit more, because if you think TAC is the way to go then there's probably some studying to be done. There are a few armies who can pull it off, but even they rely on something more than just being able to deal with "everything" - A Gladius Strike Force can have the weapons to take on everything, but a true deathstar will still walk over it if we talk actual fighting. However, the Gladius doesn't need it's combined arms to win ( with which again, it wouldn't against a deathstar, or say penta flyrants, or other examples which are numerous. ) The lists power isn't in its combined arms - it's in the MSU capability, boiling down to hundreds of free points worth of transports such as Drop Pods that become a chore to remove while the list scores points steadily.

Right, and that strategy of using transports does work well against a lot of lists (Deathstars have trouble against MSU, since they can't effectively earn their points back. Nothing new, Dark Elves were using it in WHFB when their army book was garbage).
By TAC, we don't mean can defeat every army in the game.
By TAC, we mean can play the game against all armies, assuming objectives and possibly ITC (might be wrong acronym) is in effect, since it's becoming fairly common.
Again, the ETC seemed to use TAC lists quite well. Probably the most common builds were wraiths + destroyers, and bikes + D-cannons, which are TAC lists.

 Runic wrote:

In a meta where jetbike spam, decurions, flyrant spam, war convocation + flesh tearers, gladius strike forces, buffed to the max IG blobs, centurion and/or biker deathstars are prevalent, you cannot build a list that can take on all of them. Hence, TAC is dead in competitive 40K. I expect this factual example to be met with denial and not much more, and hence really have no more to say about it. It's not off anyone else if you want to keep believing something else.

Objectives help with some of the deathstar problems, as do the ITC rules. Decurions, Jetbikes, and Flyrants (gladius too) for a lot of lists are real issues, since they can claim objectives and still do damage. These are more the lists I would be building to face, rather than death stars.
A lot of armies can go up against them and play (I disagree with the IG blob but in your examples alone we see 3 different armies being mentioned, plus DA and SW have good death stars/strategies, and Tau have new formations that seem fine).
Really, it seems like about 5-6 armies can field a decent TAC list assuming objectives and ITC rules, while the bottom 3 can not. That's all anyone is asserting.

The problem with CSM is that even in a halfway competitive meta, they fall short. Same problem with IG.
Look at the blob example. It didn't lose to the decurion or jetbike spam, it lost to 2 units of bikes or 3 drop pod marines. It's bad unless you go up against extremely casual lists.