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Oh yes. If you think you're goingto play a wargame and not take casualties, you're crazy.

So will he fire at the Raptors... the Mutilators? The Obliterators? the Dirge Catsers? The scoring Marines? the Heldrake? I mean what exactly is it that he is going to shoot...first?

Dunno. I do know he cant get us all. That I do know. My guess is he tries for the Raptors. He's then not firing with precision if at all in the next phase at the other things I dropped in, assuming hes successful. If he isnt successful it will hardly matter...

He also will miss some shots. He will fail to wound a couple times since I am T 5 and because: dice. My invul save will save me from some of it, and so when its all said and done, I dont think one round of interceptor fire is going to end the threat. Do you? it will not be MORE painful than crossing the board in any event. So a net gain methinks.

In my case, he can kill half my list turn one and the other half the next turn. The Tau have the firepower to get you all. I guess you've got invulns that I don't and T5. Must be nice to no longer be the worst power armor list.

It is.

You still need to stop over in a BA thread and tell us what we're all doing wrong then. Since it's not GW's fault.

Noise marines have the advantage of being smaller and fearless. 1 will always stay out of los and score. Blastmasters, sonic weapons?.. They're too damn pricy for doing so little. CSM main power are spawns, lords and sorcs. Other stuff is just support and distraction. I also don't like drakes cause they're so unreliable. Yep, they're gona be decent when they arrive 2-d turn. But there will be games they arrive 4-th turn. I'd definitely not go overboard with them unless you use comms relay or eldar allies with exarch.

So, probably the best way to beat eldar with scatbikes is use eldar with scatbikes.

I deleted my original post since you no longer wish to discuss those points, in order to save room.

Reavas wrote:


In oder to explore the synergies in the chais dex/suppliments Im going to have to go into what I often pack, which Im happy to do for the sake of argument.

Please, go ahead.

Reavas wrote:

One of my favourite things to pack is a minimum of 4 units of CC cultists with flamers and run them towards the enemy, with the new lost and the damned formation this is great as fearless makes some of the units a great tarpit and having them respawn on the board edges is great for taking out many low toughness units (Ive been very lucky and have had them even take out several units of CSM)

A unit of SM charging the cultists does the following
2/3, 2/3, 5/6, 20/54, so every 3 marines kills 2, plus the champ. So figure 7 die before initative.
On your turn, they wipe the squad, maybe suffering 1 casualty.

If they rapid fire, assuming no cover
2/3, 2/3, 4/9 per shot, nearly every marine kills 1 cultists. Probably 9 dead.

You have no way to start the charge since you're slow, and its easy to charge first or just rapid fire.

And they are relatively slow...and this is marines here. Not exactly a CC powerhouse. Most units can wipe them in one round if they leave cover, which is why their current role is objective grabbers that go to ground and sit there. With a 3+ cover save they become only removable for tau and a few other weapons.

What units are you using them against specifically? I've never seen cultists used aggresively and most BRs seem to back that up.

Reavas wrote:

this synergises with the blastmasters as 50 points of cultists can prove rather troublesome if you leave them to their buisness, even worse is if you target them as a priority, leaving the blastmasters to put large dents in the enemies units while the cultists run amok.

I'm afraid I don't see this.
In the above example, the marines or basic troops can fire at the cultists but will never reach the blastmaster since they lack the range to do so.
In stronger lists, like tau, the riptide moves faster than the cultists while still firing. Scat bikes are the same, and both armies can take other units to fire at the cultists (the WK can just stomp them tbh and nearly wipe the squad, though that seems like a huge waste).
How are cultists absorbing shots from scat bikes, tides, and grav cents (units going after the blast masters) rather than say... warp spiders, avengers, basic marines, fire warriors?

Reavas wrote:

They also give my chaos spawn a 5+ cover save which is always nice.

Wouldn't that imply the spawn are behind the cultists? Doesn't that slow them down? And it's not like cultists are hard to remove, though in this case I'd probably just fire on the spawn anyway and ignore the cultists since they don't do any real damage.
Let's see, 2/3, 2/3, 2/3 per shot from a bike, is 8/27, so almost 2 wounds per bike. A squad of 5, even with cover, will kill 3 spawn. Not great, but not bad, I'm not sure if being that slow is worth it. Depends if it costs a round or not.

Reavas wrote:

Other than useful distractor units like cultists one of my favourite things to ally in is a forgehost, although not innately CSM its damn better than a defiler, and they brutalise even wraith units and the instant death on most units is amazing! The Grinders become top priority targets that allow for the noise marines to, again, do their job from the other end of the board.

I'm not aware of this unit, so I won't comment.

Reavas wrote:

Sorcerers are also always a welcome synergy, roll on ectomancy if you want to shoot those blastmasters without tbe need for LOS, cant hide from them anymore but personally I roll on heritech for the soul grinders but the potential for synergy is there.

I'm not sure which power you mean...Ghost Storm makes the unit count as moving no? So you can't fire the blastmasters if you use it.
Soul Switch causes a unit to switch places, meaning another unit must now move and possibly wasted it's turn. This isn't a bad use for cultists, but switching a 150 pt unit just to fire one more time seems like a heavy point investment to me.
You must also roll those powers, and the primaris power is garbage. A lot of the rest of the powers are okay, so this leads to a bigger investment if you want this trick to work. This is the problem with more powers unless the guy has the ability to choose, re-roll, or just get all of them (like marines oddly enough).

Heretech is nice but has similar issues. The main power is really bad, and only half the powers seem to be any good. To be fair, the ones that are good are REALLY good. Fair point, if we could pick our powers I'd love to see a daemon engine list work. I own a bunch of fiends modelled as hydras for my alpha legion army that I never get to use.

Reavas wrote:

Blastmasters are meant to serve as an auxillary and thats how I play them, all of what I mentioned above is what I pack in 1350 point games and I have tabled opponents on multiple occasions, opponents such as necrons, tau, and space marines (eldar I got close but no dice).

1350 is a weird points level...do you play competitive games?
I ask because, while not really eldar, Necrons and especially marines can be made to have total dud lists. Their codexes are incredibly swingy. Just facing them alone isn't enough, we had someone claiming they defeated a competitive eldar list that ended up being guardian spam. Not exactly competitive or a sound bit of evidence as you can imagine.

Reavas wrote:

In reguards to pitting single units against single units I dont think its fair to pit an auxillary that is used to eliminate specific threats such as scatterbikes and a unit that as you said, can make up the bulk of an eldar army.

My point was thus
Your argument; Blastmasters counter scat bikes
Mine; Actually, they don't. It takes an equivalent amount of points 4 turns, nearly the whole game, to wipe the bikes. On top of that, the bikes can wipe them out without trying.

If the unit could wipe the bikes out quickly (say 2 turns) they would be a good counter even if they can't absorb shots. If they were very resistant to shooting from them, but couldn't kill them quickly, they would still be a decent counter though not great (why would the bikes fire at the blastmaster in this case?)
However, none of these are true. Instead, scat bikes counter blastmasters. And since they can make up the whole army, this makes the blast master useless against eldar unless they leave their strongest option at home, in which case we are no longer talking competitive.

To be fair, I don't run scat bikes. I play biel-tan. Blastmasters do okay against me, though never ever earn their points back. CSM has issues opening up my WS and really want to target my WG. My spiders move around too quickly and are hard to get a bead on, and dire avengers don't cost enough to be worth it.

Reavas wrote:

If you would like me to point out some more synergies that are indide the actual chaos codex and supplimemts, as I know several people will rip me a new one for the forgehost not being in the dex but being a synergy I use, I will do so after class (which Im attending now) because there are some great synergies with certain formations.

Sure, by all means post more synergies. I'm going to look into heritech with my daemon engines, I hadn't looked at all the powers and a few of them seem quite strong.
I don't think any of this makes CSM remotely competitive though.

Reavas wrote:

On a side note: how the feth did your necrons get in CC with scatterbikes??? I mean, scarabs maybe but what else possibly could catch those things?

...Wraiths?
Wraiths are one of the fastest CC options in the game and are incredibly strong. How do you beat necrons without facing wraiths? Competitive necrons spam them to the point they are called the Wraith Wing.

And they are relatively slow...and this is marines here. Not exactly a CC powerhouse. Most units can wipe them in one round if they leave cover, which is why their current role is objective grabbers that go to ground and sit there. With a 3+ cover save they become only removable for tau and a few other weapons.

Sorry I mustn't have been very clear to what the cultists role was within my list, I predominantly use my cultists to push up the front line, grab and hold objectives in cover late game once the enemy lines are thinned out and act as a distraction unit, the one game where my cultists wiped out a few units of Khorn Berserkers was possibly incredibly bad luck on my opponents part, the amount of 1's he rolled was statistically impossibly but, nonetheless happened. If my opponents uses a round of shooting to kill the cultists only for them to come back possibly even closer than before thanks to outflank, it was a waste of that turn on his part, all the while long range units such as Blastermasters and my soul grinders thin out the enemy lines to great effect. As for their movement I run them incredibly aggressively, even giving up turns of shooting (depending on context) in order to run them and put pressure on my opponents units. In reality the cultists are very little threat wound-wise but are like pawns in chess, expendable but powerful when used strategically and in a more likely event sacrificially. Also I really must stress the power of outflank with these units, if 2 units return to the board (so 50 points each respectively) and often into or next to the enemy gunline they are often forced to use another turn of shooting to attempt to remove them again. Also Im sure you can mathhammer the likely-hood of how many cultists are going to be around late game when both side have suffered heavy casualties, this is great for grabbing any spare objectives and putting even more pressure on the enemy.

I'm afraid I don't see this.

Hopefully I explained their roll well enough above, their ability to re-spawn makes whatever firepower you put into them risky at best, so I know they will die, only often to come back even closer, and in most cases angrier , and again, I'm happy for riptides to fire into cultists, seems like a sub-optimal play to me, especially because around 40-60 of the buggers are running around the board.

Wouldn't that imply the spawn are behind the cultists?

First turn if your going second yes, probably should have clarified that, was in a rush to class. But with outflank it can sometimes if not rarely prove a bonus.

I'm not sure which power you mean...

Ah crap, my bad, again, was in a rush. I meant to say Geomortis, the power in question is the "earthly anathema" it is incredible considering it turns any weapon into ignore cover and there being no need to draw LOS to a unit to fire it.

I'm not aware of this unit, so I won't comment.

I'll briefly inform you on what It entails as it takes up a good 1/3 of my 1350 point list, so soul grinders are large daemon walkers AV 13, 13, 12 with 4 HP with 4 melee attacks and carry:
Phlem Bombardment: 36 inch Str 8, ap 3 large blast,
Harvester Cannon: 24 inch Str 7 ap 4 Heavy 3 (optional sky-fire)
Iron Claw: Str: 10 ap 1

I take 3 of these in a formation that if one of them causes a wound during the assault phase or shooting phase the other 2 soul grinders re-roll to hit and to wound for the rest of the turn (pretty sweet considering they are only slightly above 500 points in cost for 3 of them)

With these hulking models on the board it allows me to draw all enemy fire unto them and away from the blastmasters, which means they are going to continue to get their ignore cover blasts off at specific cover sitting/jinking units that the soul grinders with their ap 3 large blasts can't particularly handle well. without them cover becomes a particularly big issue when attacking enemy units.

1350 is a weird points level...do you play competitive games?

Not often but yes, I'll give you a quick run through of just a few lists that my list has done well against. Also a fair few competitive events run that point amount in my area just due to it being noticeably faster and still rather competitive in regards to lists

- Necron Decurions: their 4+ reanimation isnt so scary when most of your shots are instant-death and ignore their armour, I have had a few games some even tableing my opponent, with competitive lists often leaving behind units like orikanstars which my cultists kept busy. There was one particular recent game against someone who brought a Tesseract vault, killed near all his infantry but that vault really started to wear down my troops, my grinders couldn't get close enought to get into CC with it and really damage the thing. The blastermasters came in real handy against warrior blobs hiding in cover, you can afford to let the enemy take more than 1 save when they have such crazy reanimation on every one of their units. havn't run into any wraiths, musn't be in the local meta, most necrons I see are very shooty orientated.

- Tau: I remember one match quite vividly, the poor guy looked so despondent by the end of the game. He took a stealth cadre with a load of stealth suits, about 6 or 7 crisis suits, 3 broadsides and a large stealth suit to which its name escapes me. We ended up running out of time due to he was rather slow at moving things around and setting up but I didn't mind, in the end the turns were brutal and his stealth suits were being taken off the board in handfuls thanks to blastermasters (I imagine you can see why I like them so much now) Other than that match I'm fairly well versed against tau, mostly suit spam with some fire warriors and marker-lights mixed in, on the occasion a few monstrous creatures.

- SM: God there are too many to name, blastmasters have served me well against bikes and a few other things but against the superfriends Im Sh*t out of luck, I rely on my sorcerer and sinistrum to kill them or in higher point games the masque of slannesh is a godsend (don't even get me started on how underrated she is, got some priceless stories about her and rarely disappoints me)

- Eldar: f*ck their psychic phase, I've been up against some downright dirty lists, wraiths I don't have too many problems with but psyker conclaves for sure, as I have said before I have handled scatterbikes with relative ease as I have never seen someone purely build a list out of scatterbikes and farseers only seen them as additives that take up only a few hundred points. But the experiences I have had with them was difficult but manageable, probably my least favorite army to fight.

hopefully that gives you a few ideas on my experiences in competitive play, if not too much information (god this post is getting long)

Sure, by all means post more synergies.

Raptor talon has great synergies with a lot of CSM lists. It is a downright amazing replacement for the "melta termicide" that many CSM players ran, pack 2 melta guns and a melta bomb on the champion and bam, no more vehicle. In an army that from my experience had very little reliable anti-vehicle its great, bikes were an option but not likely they would live to melta an enemy vehicle, terminator suicide squad wasn't as reliable or as point savvy as this new formation, and also expending their melta only to not be able to use it again isn't nice. Also give a possible use for the dimension key, lord knows that thing was terrible (still is a little bit). As for synergies with blastmasters and noise marines in particular? I can see some use there, defiantly helps round out the anti vehicle in my lists.

Sorcerers are just always worth a mention, first turn charges with geomortis? yes please. Enemy has a deathstar that has a 3+ invun save? Sinistrum will you make that a 5+, thanks. +1 AV on my squadron of 5 hellbrutes? (why would anyone take that formation is beyond me) thats amazing! The BC's cabal is a nice excuse to shove some IC's into some of the new formations.

If you don't like blastmasters as a long range artillery then you can always take the cult of destruction! (for the heavy tax of a godawful warpsmith *grumble grumble*) I've had it used against me to some good effect, it can be a powerful and versatile tool but you better use it damn well or risk overspending a buttload of points on those obliterators. (if you bought mutilators for this formation thinking they would be good you have my condolences)

And finally, daemons, I may get strung up for suggesting it but they about fill every damn problem CSM has, taking them as allies gets rid of some of the randomness and you still get all of the goodness. not to say CSM isn't viable without them, they are, even competitively if you really know how to build a list, but they really have some answers for some big problems and turns your list from semi-competitive to legitimately competitive.

Praetorians, Tomb Blades, and on occasion Flayed Ones can make it into combat with Scatterbikes.

Chaos Raptors can also easily get into it with Scatter bikes.

 Jancoran wrote:
Chaos Raptors can also easily get into it with Scatter bikes.

youre joking right

He's using the assault from deepstrike tech. He's not qualifying his statements in any way which makes it very hard to follow.

Yes the assault from deepstrike makes it possible unless you scatter badly. Outside of that, they can't really catch it.

Still weird that Chaos has one of the worst deepstrikers considering the whole warp thing. I can understand necron being the most accurate, but next should really be chaos.

Well we have the dimensonal key, for what its worth. But now im itching to run some raptors and maybe even a warptalon squad. Jan, are there other legions or warbands that focus on raptors or is it a nightlords type of thing. I ask because I dont have the skill to paint nightlords.

Table wrote:
Well we have the dimensonal key, for what its worth. But now im itching to run some raptors and maybe even a warptalon squad. Jan, are there other legions or warbands that focus on raptors or is it a nightlords type of thing. I ask because I dont have the skill to paint nightlords.

Any khornate warband would be suitably fluffy, also raptors/warp talons would be pretty good at taking out warp spiders too

Martel732 wrote:
He's using the assault from deepstrike tech. He's not qualifying his statements in any way which makes it very hard to follow.

Im not qualifying my statements because I am assuming all those bitching and moaning have all the facts before they do so.

I already said Traitors Hate did a lot for us and the responses from you...Slay-Fan123 and others was typical.

So to be clear to those who are truly interested in a good faith back and forth, yes. The new Formation allows my Raptors to drop in and handle their business on the drop as a Disorganized charge. In addition, if two units charge a target that target is at -2 LD. And as always, Raptors cause Fear so that means some of their victims will be hitting on 5's. And better, the new Black Crusade Formation can even make it so I get Veterans of the Long War for free. Which is awesome.

So Scatterbikes will get clamped down on hard and this is good. it answers a huge problem the forces of Chaos faced. More than that, the Night Lords (nothing more than the fluff name I give to my army because of how it fights and I imagine them being Night Lords) is not an actual "thing but it is in my heart!

I don't own the chaos book and no one plays them anymore in my group. Forgive me for assuming it was as underwhelming as the ba book. I don't understand why raptors got this and not my assault marines.

Martel732 wrote:
I don't own the chaos book and no one plays them anymore in my group. Forgive me for assuming it was as underwhelming as the ba book. I don't understand why raptors got this and not my assault marines.

No offense but im starting to think almost everyone bitching on this thread hasnt read traitors hate. I thought BA got a attack from deep strike formation in AB? I need to read that soon. Also, fun fact. WHen I first made the switch to Chaos from Necrons I was boggled to see that Bezerkers had one attack and that a unit that should be its mirror ( Death Company) infact beats them silly. So theres that to feel good about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reavas wrote:

Table wrote:
Well we have the dimensonal key, for what its worth. But now im itching to run some raptors and maybe even a warptalon squad. Jan, are there other legions or warbands that focus on raptors or is it a nightlords type of thing. I ask because I dont have the skill to paint nightlords.

Any khornate warband would be suitably fluffy, also raptors/warp talons would be pretty good at taking out warp spiders too

And thank you. I guess I can go with a khornate warband, could even moonlight it as a KDK force with a few doge's.

Blood angels can charge turn 1.

 Jancoran wrote:
In addition, if two units charge a target that target is at -2 LD.

Is that the rule for this formation?

Anywayz, the way it can work is if you have a dimensional key + something like a pod or scouting dogs, a deathstar and a bunch of sorcerrers for electroexchange. You perform a 1-st turn charge, charge up the key and now your opponent also has half his army in d terrain. Now all you need is a way to ensure the raptor's arrival. It's doable with a fortification with comms relay that you'll likely need anywayz to score the backlines with your min cultists or maybe csm with an autocannon. A well placed bunker can controle 2 points with obsec from the guyz inside.

Now that's a risky strategy but it might be fun when it goes off. Scatterless raptors will be a great source of melta. Warp talons are decently choppy vs 3+ armor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jancoran wrote:
Blood angels can charge turn 1.

If you're about termies in pods, i'm not sure it's really allowed due to wording "roll on reserves" and 1-st turn pods don't roll on reserves. Anywayz, termies are still good turn 2-3.

I see the old "you need to use Forgeworld" argument has now turned into "you need to use Forgeworld + Traitor's Hate". So, in order to compete against certain base codices (i.e. Eldar) now I need to buy my main codex, a FW supplement and another GW supplement.

Fantastic.

Can you use KDK Warp Talons and raptors in the traitors hate formation?

KDK Warp Talons are daemons of khorne, so you can manipulate reserves with a unit of blood letters musician and precision deep strike off their icon too.

I want to throw this out there.

A lot of people criticizing Traitor's Hate may still be digesting what you can actually do with it. When the 6th edition CSM codex came out, there was a period of about 3 months when people were praising it for being the first Codex in a new era of balance. It takes time to get adjusted to something new.

That said, a lot of the people praising Traitor's Hate have been overlooking how it works with IA:13.

Raptor Talons, Helforged Warppacks, and Favored of Chaos formations backed by Fire Raptors, Sicarans, and Rapier Conversion Beamers would be no joke. The addition of long-range firepower to hard-hitting frontline units is pretty much what CSM armies have needed since 5th edition, and now we have it.

For that matter, you could fit almost an entire Malestrom of Gore formation in a Spartan and charge 4 squads simultaneously from a vehicle that is very hard to blow up. Thinking this could almost be an easy button for 1500 point games.

I know no one really sees the value in the Terminator Annihilation Force, but I am thinking about what happens when you drop 3 rapier batteries (so 9 platforms) in the backfield to compliment them. The terminators could tie up anything they want while the big guns shoot down threats. Incredibly point-efficient compared to the Cult of Destruction and leaves a lot of points for Cultists to fill in the gaps.

I mean, screw you and your Eldar, I am coming at you with 9 conversion beamers and dropping 25 LC terminators to tie up half your army for the whole game. If you think you can take out my big guns, go through 60 respawning cultists before the terminators arrive.

XT-1984 wrote:
Can you use KDK Warp Talons and raptors in the traitors hate formation?

KDK Warp Talons are daemons of khorne, so you can manipulate reserves with a unit of blood letters musician and precision deep strike off their icon too.

Nope, unlike the crimson slaughter or black legion supplements Khorn daemonkin is a completely different army.

 techsoldaten wrote:

I know no one really sees the value in the Terminator Annihilation Force

I've run it 2 times so far.
3*3 combiplazma + mostly 2 axes 1 mace, sometimes a lc or sword but it hasn't really come into play yet.
Nurgle lord with nades, fist or chainfist and a brand.

1-st game vs Iron Hands + FW.
Turn 2. 1 squad arrives, mishaps and gets delayed.
Turn 3. 2 squads arrive including lord's squad, lord scatters 10", mishaps and gets delayed. Another squad scatters a bit, shoots plazma at a dread's back armor but he saves everything with 3+ cover from techmarine+ruin. Termies get killed with 2 tl asscans.
Turn 4. Game's over by that point. Biker lord, sorc, spawns and scoring rhinos won the game allready.

2-d game vs eldar.
Turn 1. I infiltrated 3 regular non-formation termies and marines, got 1-st turn, termies than managed to double-tap plazma some bikes to death. Marines scored and ate fire.
Turn 2. Lord+termies and another squad arrives. Lord doesn't scatter and burns down the seer council with double shooting brand helped by plazma and tl bolters. They didn't get invis.
Turn 3. Game's over as Lord+scoring bikes and termies managed to wreck enough havok and controle the field. But the opponent had no wraithknights or mass scatbikes - he even had a squad of banshees and a few fire prisms, while i chose to field helbrutes, regular decked up marines, a large squad of khornate bikers + lord and termie annihilation force. Iirc it was a 1000 or 1250 fun game.

So, my experience with termies so far is that they're very random and unreliable. They can be great - especially the double tap brand but without reserve manipulations (no comms relay without cad) and scatter mitigation - leave them to fun games and laugh when they inevitebly fail 1/2+ of the time.

 koooaei wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

I know no one really sees the value in the Terminator Annihilation Force

I've run it 2 times so far.
3*3 combiplazma + mostly 2 axes 1 mace, sometimes a lc or sword but it hasn't really come into play yet.
Nurgle lord with nades, fist or chainfist and a brand.

1-st game vs Iron Hands + FW.
Turn 2. 1 squad arrives, mishaps and gets delayed.
Turn 3. 2 squads arrive including lord's squad, lord scatters 10", mishaps and gets delayed. Another squad scatters a bit, shoots plazma at a dread's back armor but he saves everything with 3+ cover from techmarine+ruin. Termies get killed with 2 tl asscans.
Turn 4. Game's over by that point. Biker lord, sorc, spawns and scoring rhinos won the game allready.

2-d game vs eldar.
Turn 1. I infiltrated 3 regular non-formation termies and marines, got 1-st turn, termies than managed to double-tap plazma some bikes to death. Marines scored and ate fire.
Turn 2. Lord+termies and another squad arrives. Lord doesn't scatter and burns down the seer council with double shooting brand helped by plazma and tl bolters. They didn't get invis.
Turn 3. Game's over as Lord+scoring bikes and termies managed to wreck enough havok and controle the field. But the opponent had no wraithknights or mass scatbikes - he even had a squad of banshees and a few fire prisms, while i chose to field helbrutes, regular decked up marines, a large squad of khornate bikers + lord and termie annihilation force. Iirc it was a 1000 or 1250 fun game.

So, my experience with termies so far is that they're very random and unreliable. They can be great - especially the double tap brand but without reserve manipulations (no comms relay without cad) and scatter mitigation - leave them to fun games and laugh when they inevitebly fail 1/2+ of the time.

I really dislike this formation, not because the rules aren't amazing for it, don't get me wrong they are great! its just the terminator equipment does not jell well with how the formation's rules work. So to elaborate, CSM terminators can only be upgraded with heavy weapons with units of 10!, and the only other shooting weapons are the combi weapons that can be only shot once. This means if you want to pack melta you better hope you kill your target because bolter rounds in the shooting phase wont help. with flamers and infantry it isnt as bad, but still very unreliable imo.

There are some nice synergies with certain weapons with chaos lords and sorcerers that they can actually use in the shooting phase, such as the aforementioned brand which would decimate many types of infantry squads, come to think of it, It looks like a very reliable way to kill jinking enemies like bikes or screamers. But I have to stress the brand is only one weapon, unfortunately the others that the terminators can be equipped with aren't as reliable, unless you want to just use plain bolters then go ahead

Traitors Hate is certainly a good supplement, it did a lot for Chaos. I only really have two problems with it.

1) I don't think it did enough to make the chaos dex competitive.
Chaos now stands at the top of the bottom, occupying a similar spot to Tyranids or SoB. They are just not competitive in the way that SM or Eldar are if everyone takes their A game. I don't think this is the fault of the supplement...chaos has too many problems for anything to fix it completely other than an overhaul.

2) I don't like the manner in which Chaos was fixed.
To play competitive chaos, you now need to spam psykers to a degree. The cult troops, the reason many of us got into Chaos, is now being left in the dust. Raptors, Bikes, Spawn, and Psykers are now the best units (though the other poster made a good case for Daemon engines with psykers).
I play alpha legion, I wanted some psykers, but mainly a small elite fighting force backed up by huge amounts of cultists. I can't really get that.
My second chaos army is 1k sons, which are still awful and don't have access to the new powers. If 1k sons had the conclave rule for their squads and could take other powers, it would go a long way to fixing them.

Nowadays it seems the most competitive lists are Word Bearers (Daemon allies + Deepstrike + Cheap cultists holding objectives + Psykers), Black Legion (Just take whatever), and Iron Warriors (Field psykers as tech priests using heritech and spam daemon engines and FW). It's kinda funny, cause this was the same thing that happened in 3.5...


For the record, I have read it. I haven't gotten a chance to play it as my gaming amounts have died down, so I haven't seen it at the table. I've been mainly playing Tau and Eldar lately. None of the other chaos players are trying it yet.

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
He's using the assault from deepstrike tech. He's not qualifying his statements in any way which makes it very hard to follow.

Im not qualifying my statements because I am assuming all those bitching and moaning have all the facts before they do so.

I already said Traitors Hate did a lot for us and the responses from you...Slay-Fan123 and others was typical.

So to be clear to those who are truly interested in a good faith back and forth, yes. The new Formation allows my Raptors to drop in and handle their business on the drop as a Disorganized charge. In addition, if two units charge a target that target is at -2 LD. And as always, Raptors cause Fear so that means some of their victims will be hitting on 5's. And better, the new Black Crusade Formation can even make it so I get Veterans of the Long War for free. Which is awesome.

So Scatterbikes will get clamped down on hard and this is good. it answers a huge problem the forces of Chaos faced. More than that, the Night Lords (nothing more than the fluff name I give to my army because of how it fights and I imagine them being Night Lords) is not an actual "thing but it is in my heart!

Janc, you can't blame people for being unimpressed with the Traitor's Hate book. I think it's great that Raptors can deepstrike and charge the same turn, but that doesn't fix the fact that A) it's still a deepstrike, so it's risky, and I don't know a way CSM can get no scatter deepstrike and B) it doesn't fix more glaring issues like points costs or bad codex design.

Second, that disordered charge still hurts, plus the Scatterbikes still get Overwatch (with reroll if a Farseer casts it) and any player worth his salt will ask what your formation does, then intentionally plan around it.

I'm not saying it's not a good tactic, I'm saying it's not the end all be all you claim it to be.

Akiasura wrote:
Traitors Hate is certainly a good supplement, it did a lot for Chaos. I only really have two problems with it.

1) I don't think it did enough to make the chaos dex competitive.
Chaos now stands at the top of the bottom, occupying a similar spot to Tyranids or SoB. They are just not competitive in the way that SM or Eldar are if everyone takes their A game. I don't think this is the fault of the supplement...chaos has too many problems for anything to fix it completely other than an overhaul.

2) I don't like the manner in which Chaos was fixed.
To play competitive chaos, you now need to spam psykers to a degree. The cult troops, the reason many of us got into Chaos, is now being left in the dust. Raptors, Bikes, Spawn, and Psykers are now the best units (though the other poster made a good case for Daemon engines with psykers).
I play alpha legion, I wanted some psykers, but mainly a small elite fighting force backed up by huge amounts of cultists. I can't really get that.
My second chaos army is 1k sons, which are still awful and don't have access to the new powers. If 1k sons had the conclave rule for their squads and could take other powers, it would go a long way to fixing them.

Nowadays it seems the most competitive lists are Word Bearers (Daemon allies + Deepstrike + Cheap cultists holding objectives + Psykers), Black Legion (Just take whatever), and Iron Warriors (Field psykers as tech priests using heritech and spam daemon engines and FW). It's kinda funny, cause this was the same thing that happened in 3.5...


For the record, I have read it. I haven't gotten a chance to play it as my gaming amounts have died down, so I haven't seen it at the table. I've been mainly playing Tau and Eldar lately. None of the other chaos players are trying it yet.

How is this new update not good news for you? We have amazing cultist formations in spades, You have a choice of re-spawning, outflanking cultists that it is better to take a lot more smaller groups, or the Crimson slaughter formation which has re-spawning 1d6 cultists which is also useful. As for elite groups why not run the chosen of Abbadon (black legion formation) It fits what you want perfectly, you can either take a chaos lord/sorcerer with a unit of chosen or chaos terminators. Bam, alpha legion, loads of cultists and a group of elite.

It's good news, but like the BA book, it's not WK/scatbike/Riptide/TWC/Wulfen good news. The SW still make the entire BA codex pointless and arguably this one too. Actually, two units make the entire BA codex pointless. Anyway, SW don't need these shenanigans because they just endure. And can handle a bigger variety of targets.


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 Jancoran wrote:
Blood angels can charge turn 1.

Which isn't always a good plan. Especially vs your null deployment schemes. Which can be copied by Tau and Eldar.

Reavas wrote:


How is this new update not good news for you? We have amazing cultist formations in spades, You have a choice of re-spawning, outflanking cultists that it is better to take a lot more smaller groups, or the Crimson slaughter formation which has re-spawning 1d6 cultists which is also useful.

I don't find the cultists useful since they are so easy to eliminate and slow. It's not a problem with the formations, it's a problem with the cultists. I should have explained better, I've tried the crimson slaughter one and never had it accomplish anything of note.
Really, with cultists, I think they need better guns or a suicide option. If they died and gave warp tokens, that would be amazing. Or for every so many cultists that die your other units get buffs or something, making cultists a risky thing to deal with and the spawning matter. Or if they reached CC they exploded and for every model that blows up it's S2+Model and Ap 6 - model. So if I get 4-5 guys to your line you're in trouble, but they are easy to remove.

As it is currently most of my enemies just ignore them and it seems to work. I'll try the outflanking ones but seeing how easy they are removed and how little damage they do, I don't see it accomplishing anything outside of explosive dice. It could be fun against the weaker armies. I have a game against Saim-Hann next week

Reavas wrote:

As for elite groups why not run the chosen of Abbadon (black legion formation) It fits what you want perfectly
you can either take a chaos lord/sorcerer with a unit of chosen or chaos terminators. Bam, alpha legion, loads of cultists and a group of elite.

The problem here is the formation doesn't do anything that makes chaos terminators or chosen any good. Chosen are one of the worst units in the dex, and I own a lot since they used to be so excellent.
Similar issues with the terminators. They just aren't very good, attaching a caster helps but I'd rather use the caster with bikes or raptors now.
Again, not an issue with the formation. A free boon isn't bad, and the other bonuses are okay, but it doesn't fix the core unit which is awful.


I think what chaos really needs is a big deathstar unit sadly. All these psykers and good powers are just dying for a unit worth casting them on. The best we have is Nurgle bikes or Khorne Raptors though, which fall short of the wulfen or other melee units. I am not a fan of deathstars, haven't liked them since fantasy, but it does fit the chaos mindset of ultimate power resting in the hands of a few.