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Them new Chaos Space Marines look promising. Not Primaris-scale, so plastic Heretac & Havocs might come out before the whole existing range gets put on notice. Hopefully the loadout implies we’ll get a hero or squad set for Kill Team with a better inventory.

Also:

I thought primaris marines were supposed to be engineered bigger. CSM that are bigger than non-standard SM doesn't make sense to me, as nice as it looks. Someone said they're to scale? By what metric? IDK how 20 of those new bois will fit inside a Storm Eagle.

AFAIK Belisarius (or w/e) also made primaris marines from founding chapters that went heretic, so there could eventually be primaris CSM that aren't veterans of the long war, and/or primaris marines of say Luna Wolves or Iron Warriors still loyal to the Imperium. That would be neat, though I don't know how GW would pull it off.

I recall hooks being set regarding Fabius Bile on a load of Community content. My main thought is ‘how would they square up with similarly sized Plague Marines’?

But, hey, in-kit combi-weapons seem to be incoming, I can rejoice at that.

Enhanced Marines certainly could become a thing, just as easily explained off like the Cawl Marines.

I also think adding more mutation to the Marines to make them bigger is a possibility. Not quite as badly corrupted as a Plague Marine, but noticeably bulkier, spikier, explained away as having spent so much more time in the Warp. I've had issues with the smaller scale on CSM way before the Primaris having had to use metal upgrade packs on all my Night Lords, compared to Raptors or even the Possessed kit. And my metal Plague Marines were a sore sight.

I am thinking about running the following:

Double Gatling RK
Gallant variant RK
Warglaive Armiger

Magnus
Ahriman on Disk
DP with Wings

54 Cultists in either 34/10/10 or 18/18/18

How would you split the cultists? Does the list have enough AT?

The idea is to have Magnus and the Gallant to go berserk in CC while the double gatling RK provides fire support.

The Warglaive is just random AT and something to have my characters hide behind.

Would this work?

Hmm. What’s the plan, mobile stuff runs up behind a Warptimed Cultist screen in the first turn, then gets stuck in over the next few turns? If you budget 4CP to make sure the Warptime goes off, the Infantry don’t get snake eyes on their Advances, and the 34 Cultist blob doesn’t get deleted by morale, I guess the knights and heroes can probably stomp most threats that cross the picket line to tag your home objectives.

For the first turn(s) the cultists cam bubble wrap the shooty knight. Magnus and the Gallant are fast enough to get into position for some charges from turn 2 on forward most probably.

Go after their AT threats and scoring units and play bullyball was the idea behind the list.

Turn one I hope to.have enough target saturation to have enough live for turn 2, then try and get the defense powers off on Magnus.

We do not play ITC mission but mostly play book stuff though.

My first 2500 pt PL cap tourney is this weekend.

At least one person is bringing a Custodes army What can I expect from that list? I've never played against them. Also, besides units and Death Hex, what tactics work well to counter them?

Has anyone had any experience with summoning as opposed to Deep Strike?

I have a Fire Bomb (30 Pink Horrors) that I usually Deep Strike on T2. However, using a summons (with the 4d6 stratagem) would let them avoid enemy fire T1, and be on the field T1.

The downside is that the range is severely limited compared to Deep Strike.

I have a TSons Prince with Warptime who would do the summoning, so he could "move" afterwards and stay close. And he also has Temporal Manipulation and 8W, so he won't die from this tactic, and can heal himself.

you never want to plan on summoning specific units. You want to have a large pile of Daemons available, so if you do decide to summon you can drop in whatever you need at the time. Do you need a Fire Bomb of 30 Pink Horrors to light something up, drop it in. Did you get lucky and roll high enough to drop in a Lord of Change? Do it. Do you have Gift of Chaos psychic power on your Daemon Prince? Have a laff and take a moment to summon in a Chaos Spawn where the Farseer used to be. Roll'd unexpectedly low on your summon roll? Drop in a smaller squad of some sort and be ready to drop in the rest later or drop something else later. You ideally want a very large toolbox to pull from so you can go for exactly what you need at any given time. Remember, you are still subject to all of the inherent flaws of summoning, and you need a healthy amount of characters scattered across the map.

By contrast, you can just take a Daemon Patrol, and spend CP to deep strike the Daemons directly into reserve and not worry about a character giving up their movement, and have access to the Daemon Strategems to help your Daemons. INFACT you should have at least a Daemon Patrol in any list that plans to take advantage of summoning so that your summons themselves can use the Daemon strategems if they need to. Summoning is only really going to be worth it to you if you have the collection to drop in whatever you need to solve whatever problem you are currently facing. Being able to decide whether you would be better served by dropping a big plague bearer squad onto an objective, or zapping a Keeper of Secrets into existence. that flexibility is the only advantage Summoning has over just bringing those units in an allied daemon detachment.

If you really want to take advantage of summoning I would look to putting together a list like this.

1) Word Bearers / Thousand Sons Battalion
2) Daemon Battalion - probably Nurgle for objective holding reasons.
3) Leave points free for summoning stuff in. I would hesitate to leave a hole bigger than 300 points in your list.
- Create a cheat sheet of your available Daemons and break them into blocks of roughly equal power level / points cost. So you can quickly look at your summoning roll and bring in the squad you need without pen and papering points costs.

Keep the Nurgle Battalion cheap, and use them as your primary objective runners and a good CP pool. Use your summons to trouble shoot any issues your list is having by summoning exactly what you need. Don't expect to drop in a Greater Daemon other than a Keeper of Secrets. And remember, if you have a specific unit in mind, you are *always* better off bringing in a patrol.

EDIT: It bears mentioning that the biggest benefit to summoning is it allows you some degree of list tailoring- which is why it has so many drawbacks. Are you expecting to face down a green tide of orcs? Drop in as many Flamers of Tzeentch as possible. Dealing with an opponent with tons of strong invulnerable saves? Drop in Heralds to help spam smite and take over the psychic phase. It lets you patch up your list based on what your opponent has brought to the game, and lets you adjust on the fly as the game continues. If you have the knowledge and collection to take advantage of that, you can see benefit to summoning.

 akaean wrote:
some good insights

The main benefit of summoning I've noticed lately is that it gives you much greater flexibility in detachments. My core list is a pure Khorne battalion. I then have some Nurgle stuff and some TSons stuff, but I'm already at my 3 detachments limit.
Summoning Pinks instead of building them in essentially gives me that patrol of Changecaster+Pinks that I want, but without having to pay the Brimstone tax, AND while keeping my Nurgle and TSons as pure detachments.


Leaving my options open for WHAT I will summon is a good idea. I have loads of Pinks and Khorne Dogs, as well as some Slaanesh character models and extra DPs.

Is it possible to spend 1CP on a bloodletter unit in your summoning pool to upgrade an icon into a Banner of Blood? Because summoning bloodletters without a 3D6 charge would be awful otherwise. Pinks and plaguebearers make sense. Khorne units... not so much.

Dactylartha wrote:
My first 2500 pt PL cap tourney is this weekend.

At least one person is bringing a Custodes army What can I expect from that list? I've never played against them. Also, besides units and Death Hex, what tactics work well to counter them?

Shield Captains on Bikes are usually the biggest threat. The best way to fight them is to tie them up as much as much as possible. The fact jumpbikes can no longer charge over units is a significant nerf for them.

The tactics I use to deal with them are massed firepower and screens. Make them fight small screening units that are there to fall back or die. Then pour tons of firepower at them.

There's a clever fellow at my FLGS who incorporates several small patrol detachments in his lists specifically for this purpose.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 barboggo wrote:
Is it possible to spend 1CP on a bloodletter unit in your summoning pool to upgrade an icon into a Banner of Blood? Because summoning bloodletters without a 3D6 charge would be awful otherwise. Pinks and plaguebearers make sense. Khorne units... not so much.

It's something worth arguing about.

The Stratagem says the Banner of Blood must be used before the battle begins. The argument against using it for summoned units is that they are not there before the battle begins. The argument for it is that summoned units are the same as any other, the fact you don't specify how your points will be paid later in the game makes no a difference.

I personally play it that you are allowed to use this Stratagem for units you plan to summon. But something to remember is it's almost always better to actually take a Daemon detachment with a herald and have them deep strike. What you lose in CPs you make up for by not having to summon (which is uncertain.)

 Elric Greywolf wrote:
Has anyone had any experience with summoning as opposed to Deep Strike?

I have a Fire Bomb (30 Pink Horrors) that I usually Deep Strike on T2. However, using a summons (with the 4d6 stratagem) would let them avoid enemy fire T1, and be on the field T1.

The downside is that the range is severely limited compared to Deep Strike.

I have a TSons Prince with Warptime who would do the summoning, so he could "move" afterwards and stay close. And he also has Temporal Manipulation and 8W, so he won't die from this tactic, and can heal himself.

Huh. Re-reading the big FAQ, I realise that Summoning is indeed allowable on T1, granting a 12” reach.

How is ‘wholly within 12’ defined, exactly? Could you drop something so that the tip of its base kisses a 12” ruler? Or does the entire base of every member of the unit have to be completely within 12”?

My main (only) uses for Summoning ATM are as a way to add Epidemius to a niche list where detachments are limited, and narrative games. I’m open to the notion of a 12+?” surprise T1 drop. I *want* to make Summoning *viable*, it’s my Legion’s whole schtick.

The entire base of every member has to be completely within range.


Anyways. anyone seen the new chaos toys in the fortress?
Thinking any of it has any merit?

 BoomWolf wrote:
The entire base of every member has to be completely within range.


Anyways. anyone seen the new chaos toys in the fortress?
Thinking any of it has any merit?

It’s not very good.

The Chaos Lord is 102 points and gets a thunder hammer.

But the CSM come in a squad of 2 and are regular CSMs. They do not fill slots in a detachment.

The traitor guard come in squads of 7 - no more, no less. They are regular guard.

I can’t see a reason to use anything besides the Choas Lord.

Also, he Lord can't take a MARK, for what that's worth.

And did we mention he is Black Legion. That's an advantage in everyone's eyes, I'm sure.

Also, all the other Chaos units from BSF have to deploy within 6 inches of the Chaos Lord at the same time he deploys. If they can't do that, they are automatically destroyed.

.. how do you even use the non black legion stuff in matched play? Struggling to see how you can do anything other than aux detachments .

Captyn_Bob wrote:
.. how do you even use the non black legion stuff in matched play? Struggling to see how you can do anything other than aux detachments .

Easy, Servants of abyss keyword. That's probably also why the CSM lord with a thunderhammer rocks a 102 pts pricetag since his reroll aura also works on all the mortal dudes aswell as CSM of the black legion.

Captyn_Bob wrote:
.. how do you even use the non black legion stuff in matched play? Struggling to see how you can do anything other than aux detachments .

There doesn't appear to be a way to use most of the models without the Chaos Lord. The Servants of the Abyss keyword is the only thing they all have in common.

You can't take the Black Legionnaires without him unless you want to lose Legion traits. You max out at 4 Negavolt cultists in any army. You max out at 14 Guardsmen in any army. You max out at 4 Beastmen in any army.

So the rules limit the models to use as a meatshield for the Chaos Lord. They don't have a use otherwise.

So it’s great models whose purpose is to be a piñata of kill points, then.

If you want them in 40k, use the Lord as a LEGION Lord, the guardsmen as cultists, the priests as possessed, and the beastmen as either of the prior.

 lindsay40k wrote:
So it’s great models whose purpose is to be a piñata of kill points, then.

If you want them in 40k, use the Lord as a LEGION Lord, the guardsmen as cultists, the priests as possessed, and the beastmen as either of the prior.

Or just use the Beastmen as Tzaangors. Tzaangors are just a kind of Beastmen as far as I know.

Hang on, hasn’t the Lord got the BL faction? So he could just be taken in a BL detachment, assuming you wanted a Thunder Hammer?

 lindsay40k wrote:
Hang on, hasn’t the Lord got the BL faction? So he could just be taken in a BL detachment, assuming you wanted a Thunder Hammer?

Correct, altough his thunder hammer seems overpriced.

So i have been working on a slaanesh force, but not using emporers children. I am using this as my basic starting point.

Alpha legion

Hq -

Lord w/ bolt pistol and hydra blade
Sorcerer w/ delightful agonies, jump pack, and ??? Power i need

Troops -

40 cultists, mark of slaanesh
10 chaos marines, 2 w/ plasma gun, 1 w/ combi plasma, icon of excess
10 chaos marines, 2 w/ plasma gun, 1 w/ combi plasma, icon of excess



Idea is i can move my cultists and marines up if needed before t1, i get extra protection from -1 to hit, cultists get 5+++, and icon helps those plasma guns get extra shots to make up only having 3.

Super competitive? No, but viable in an unexpected way? I think it has potential. Thoughts?

Azuza001 wrote:
So i have been working on a slaanesh force, but not using emporers children. I am using this as my basic starting point.

Alpha legion

Hq -

Lord w/ bolt pistol and hydra blade
Sorcerer w/ delightful agonies, jump pack, and ??? Power i need

Troops -

40 cultists, mark of slaanesh
10 chaos marines, 2 w/ plasma gun, 1 w/ combi plasma, icon of excess
10 chaos marines, 2 w/ plasma gun, 1 w/ combi plasma, icon of excess



Idea is i can move my cultists and marines up if needed before t1, i get extra protection from -1 to hit, cultists get 5+++, and icon helps those plasma guns get extra shots to make up only having 3.

Super competitive? No, but viable in an unexpected way? I think it has potential. Thoughts?

Separate the Cultists enough so that you can meet the minimum troop requirement and make those Chaos Marines as Chosen with Plasma Guns instead.

I have used minimum sized cultist squads before, 10 men squads just get shot and die without doing anything from any enemy unit that just looks at them funny. Are you saying thats all they are good for?
As for choosen, didnt think of them. Your suggesting small squad sizes or more plasma or both? I get that choosen get more plasma without needing 10 guys, and have more cc attacks, but is cc worth the extra 28 pts they would cost is the question, or put differently is the 2 less wounds for the same number of plasma worth the extra cc ability from those 8 guys?

10-strong Cultist squads do get shot off the board in a single round of shooting if your opponent decides they want to shoot at them, this is very true. This is why mine are typically found lurking in table corners holding objective markers that I might need later but don't want to devote my main force into capturing/holding when I do happen to draw the relevant card. If the enemy decides they want to delete them, they'll be deleted, but that's typically shooting not going into a unit that I want to keep alive because it has a good damage output.

Assuming you split your Cultists into 20/10/10 strong units and didn't want to pay for Chosen, you could take them as Havocs instead - same cost per basic marine model, but access to 4 Plasma per squad instead of two (plus the combi weapon).

You should swap the Bolt Pistol on your lord for a second chain sword. That gives you an extra attack (4+1+d3). Then pair the Flames of Spite Warlord Trait, with Veterans of the Long War in the fight phase and he will cause mortal wounds on a 5+. Since you are fielding Alpha Legion, you don't lose anything by marking him Khorne instead of Slaanesh, which would let him potentially fight twice in the fight phase. And just like how Vets stacks with Delightful Agonies... Vets will stack with the Khorne fight twice stratagem for two rounds of carnage.

The nice thing about Psychers in 8th edition is you pick your powers at the start of the match. So look at your opponents list and pick a suitable power. Prescience is always potent for helping a shooting unit. Death Hex is great if you are willing to spend CP to help get it off and your enemy has units that rely on strong invulnerable saves, even Infernal Gaze can be awesome if you want to spit out mortal wounds for a turn with your Sorcerer. Also remember we have the Familiar Strategem, so if you need a psychic power on the fly, you can pick it up.

Finally, you should look into some transports for your Power Armor bodies. Rhinos. The Alpha Legion strategem is now more akin to a scout move, which is unlikely to take you into plasma rapid fire range. And you don't want those squads getting chewed to pieces while you advance up the field. Some metal boxes could be helpful in ensuring your boys stay alive. If you don't want to go the Rhino route, you will be better off with doubling up on heavy weapons on those CSM squads. Consider taking 2x Las Cannons or 2x Auto Cannons instead of the Plasma Guns. That gives you much more reach to touch things without leaving cover. You can also use the scout move to get your guys into ruins placed just out of your deployment zone, etc.

As others have said, you can also do 20, 10, 10 cultists to fill out the batallion and use Havocs instead of the Marines. 10 man Cultist squads are not combat units, but they are nice for screening to deny deep strikers a place to land, or running off to objectives, or screening vs front line assault units, and just generally taking up space. Usually people don't want to divert fire power to 40 point cultist squads when they are being hammered by auto cannons anyway, so the low aggro that 10 cultists draw helps keep them alive a bit.