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I always loved the reaper auto termi... anyways what to do with marines I think is a very important question. Cultists are abominably priced compared to marines and we need 3 troop slots... or 2 minimum depending on the game. What sort of priority are enemies giving our troops over the rest of the list? Shooting our ObSec off the board In a single turn seems fairly easy unless you use rhinos or reserves. Should we assume that we won’t have marines past a single turn if ObSec is important? If so is it worth investing points on guns that will be prioritized due to how playing the objectives works? And how important is ObSec for our army? Or are we relying on threat saturation to keep the guns off our tac equivalents, or to even control the objectives after turn 1/2/3, when we likely have no more troops?

CSM are at a big disadvantage, but we have yet to see what CSM will be getting when their rules update finally comes. I doubt they'll be brought up to the level of primaris, but even just a trait rework would take them from bad to just sub optimal compared to loyalists.

From all the discussion I've seen of how 9th plays, not bringing troops just doesn't work out. So we should be looking at it as how to make the best use of our troops tax.

Plasma is still good, and with closer ranges and a lot more primaris likely to be on the board, is still a solid go to. 5 man plas+combi plas will do fine. Meltas are still not worth using over plasma, and flamers aren't likely to be necessary (and also aren't dangerous enough vs hordes to really be worth losing the plasma.)

Our heavy weapon selection is actually also really good. Autocannons were always a solid options due to being cheap. They aren't really great against anything, but they also aren't bad against anything. They are nice vs primaris too. Lascannons went down 10pts for infantry. Hard to go wrong with them either. Missiles launchers used to be inferior to ACs due to frag missiles being bad, but now that they've got blast, the math about averages out. And kraks will kill primaris. And of course the Reaper Chaincannon is one of the nastiest weapons in the game still. Good old LasPlas will work well, or single long ranged heavy weapon while holding backfield objectives. I wouldn't run them naked as if you're going to pay for the 5 bodies, at least let 4 of them be ablative wounds on a nice weapon.

It may also be necessary to take 10 man squads. In that case, triple plasma or double long range heavy weapon, depending on where you intend to put them on the board.

4 5 man squads in 2 rhinos is probably good for grabbing objectives.

What if you put chosen or cult marine of choice or a havoc squad with a marine squad, To add a bit of punch to that marine squad and maybe to help with clearing out that objective?


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What if you put chosen or cult marine of choice or a havoc squad with a marine squad, To add a bit of punch to that marine squad and maybe to help with clearing out that objective? I guess deep strike termi or oblit or raptors or even bikes could basically pull all those jobs off as well...

Depending on your legion I think csm are quite handy. They’re there to stay on objectives not necessarily take them away from your opponent. Leave that job to the cult marines or armor.

As has been said you can give them a heavy weapon and a special weapon if you want to camp your back line objs or kit them out with chain sword and bp and a melta,combimelta if you want to get up close and personal.

From the 9th battle reports I’ve seen it seems as though you need to build your army with a true plan where as before you could just build an army that blows the other guy off the table.

Red corsairs in particular with their stratagem to bring back entire squads seem very potent Alpha legion have the -1 to hit and strats to make them untargetable. World eaters can move their csm up 9 inches before the battle, making scoring easier.

macluvin wrote:
What if you put chosen or cult marine of choice or a havoc squad with a marine squad, To add a bit of punch to that marine squad and maybe to help with clearing out that objective?


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What if you put chosen or cult marine of choice or a havoc squad with a marine squad, To add a bit of punch to that marine squad and maybe to help with clearing out that objective? I guess deep strike termi or oblit or raptors or even bikes could basically pull all those jobs off as well...

Chosen and Cult marines aren't particularly good either because all of them just have terrible durability, so it doesn't really help. Chosen are particularly weak for their cost once you buy special weapons. Berzerkers are good for killing, but need to get there. Plague marines are worth a look due to their durability, but only really for DG who take them as troops.

If you're going to put another unit there to help your CSM, look at more durable and efficient units like Helbrutes, daemon engines, terminators, etc.

Well, the obsec that our CSM has does have one use. It IS obsec. With what we know about the importance of taking midboard objectives, we are going to see both sides dog piling tons of stuff onto an objective.

The presence of obsec troops like CSM on an objective forces the opponent to make a choice. Does he focus on taking out all of the CSM or does he take out that big threat like a hellbrute or terminator squad first? If he does NOT have obsec on that objective, then even if 1 CSM survives the fight, you will get that objective points on the start of your next turn because of obsec.

It forces the opponent into making decisions like try and wipe out all of your CSM squad and leaving your hellbrute and Rhino left to shoot and pummel them during your combat phase.

Rhinos seem so good for blocking and being a nuisance now I feel like taking 4 to 6. lol And then the question becomes, do I take 6 CSM squads or 3 CSM squads and 3 other infantry like Chosen or Havocs.

On a seperate but kind of related note. Lascannon havocs are cheap now, but a trio of lascannon predators with kill shot are totally MEAN! And by hiding behind obscuring terrain, you can sort of gaurantee that you will survive till you are ready to move out, expose your self and activate that Kill Shot.

Also, if I am planning to run that many Rhinos, having even more vehicles will really force my opponent to have to make very hard choices. 6 Rhinos and 3 predators are 9 vehicles he has to shoot. But if I take predators, then I need to find something else to use cacophony on...

Decisions decisions .... lol

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, the obsec that our CSM has does have one use. It IS obsec. With what we know about the importance of taking midboard objectives, we are going to see both sides dog piling tons of stuff onto an objective.

The presence of obsec troops like CSM on an objective forces the opponent to make a choice. Does he focus on taking out all of the CSM or does he take out that big threat like a hellbrute or terminator squad first? If he does NOT have obsec on that objective, then even if 1 CSM survives the fight, you will get that objective points on the start of your next turn because of obsec.

It forces the opponent into making decisions like try and wipe out all of your CSM squad and leaving your hellbrute and Rhino left to shoot and pummel them during your combat phase.

Rhinos seem so good for blocking and being a nuisance now I feel like taking 4 to 6. lol And then the question becomes, do I take 6 CSM squads or 3 CSM squads and 3 other infantry like Chosen or Havocs.

On a seperate but kind of related note. Lascannon havocs are cheap now, but a trio of lascannon predators with kill shot are totally MEAN! And by hiding behind obscuring terrain, you can sort of gaurantee that you will survive till you are ready to move out, expose your self and activate that Kill Shot.

Also, if I am planning to run that many Rhinos, having even more vehicles will really force my opponent to have to make very hard choices. 6 Rhinos and 3 predators are 9 vehicles he has to shoot. But if I take predators, then I need to find something else to use cacophony on...

Decisions decisions .... lol

You don't need 6 rhinos. Take some helbrutes, contemptors, daemon engines, or hell forged preds.

But Rhinos seem like the perfect answer to powerful troops like intercessors. I did some quick math on 1 combi melta Rhino vs a bunch of 5 intercessors.

Unless the intercessors are really lucky, even if they shoot and charged into the Rhino, they aren't going to be able to kill it. Not in 5 turns.

Meanwhile, the Rhino is shooting 6 combi bolter shots and 1 melta shots into the intercessor every turn. The Rhino may actually come out on top at the end of 5 turns.

And a combi melta Rhino is 85 points while an intercessor squad is 100 points. So, move advance your Rhino turn 1 and block those intercessors. Then shoot and charge them turn 2 (if they didn't charge you first). As long as you are fighting away from the objective, you have effectively neutralised 100 obsec points with 85. And you may even win in the end.

Sounds like an extremely good deal to me. And if its a vehicle heavy meta, then do you really want to ignore 6 combi melta Rhinos to go after other stuff? Because that is 30 melta shots over 5 turns potentially... lol (not to mention all the other bolter shots).

Predators are pathetic. Hellforged contemptor dreads are much better. A quad LC pred is 175. A quad LC dread is 168, hits on 2s, has a 5+ inv against shooting, and 4+ inv in melee, can fight back in melee with 4 attacks at S7 AP0 D1 hitting on 2s. Pred is useless in melee, 3 attacks hitting on 6s, it has no inv, and its BS is 3+.

Playing around with lists for 9th with my Black Legion and Death Guard, obviously DG have just had a load of rules updates but it makes me realise how far behind even many other CSM factions they are. When Vigilus came out they got a boost but it feels like that was nothing compared to what has come out of Psychic Awakening.
Frustratingly, I could easily spend all my CP pre game with Death Guard, but with Black Legion I'm looking at 12CP starting and should be able to earn another 10 throughout the game with Trusted War Leader.
I wish we had some ways to upgrade units before the game like red butchers or adding disgustingly resilient etc

We should probably figure out how many CP we would need to optimally run a list as well. Are we using a god aligned stratagem like Slaanesh double tap every turn? Command Reroll/insane bravery? VotLW?
Do we need to keep cp tucked away for replenishing a csm squad? What structure do we need to accomplish that?

I mean, even in 8th I tried to ensure that for at least the first three turns I could put VotLW and Endless Cacophany on a powerful shooting unit. Normally Havocs turn one, obliterators turn two, whatever's healthiest turn three. It's just too powerful not to do it. EC also gets double from any other stratagem/psychic you stack on it so i always try to build around it.
A full unit of melta bikers is another good one for first turn double tap. 72 bolters and 6 melta shots does a lot of work with VotLW, Prescience or the BL reroll 1s strat!

Ok, quick question: 2 bolter squads or 1 squad of bolters and 1 chainswords + boltpistols for 500 pts?

Longer version:

I need to put the final polish on a current list for quick and fun 500pts games with friends (made this to hand out to others).

Friend is very pro-chaos and prefers the mantra of Blood for the Blood God.

Keeping this in mind, I made this for him:

Red corsairs

Chaos Lord of Khorne with Exalted champion, power axe of Blind fury

5 Csm of Khorne, bolters
5 Csm of Khorne, bolters + missile launcher

5 raptors, powerfist

Defiler with Reaper Autocannon + Twin Heavy Flamers


So not really looking for list help per say, but rather just that final tweak. Do I put chainswords on the squad that doesn't have a missile launcher to further distinguish his tactical choices? Or is it better to just stick with 5 bolters since I already have powerfhl close-range units?

My own list is Krieg and I'm building 1 necron army and, potentially, q fourth army, all armies that are not my main will be given away or at least primarily used by particular players, so I am tailoring them to suit those players and what they like on a conceptual level.

Since its red corsairs, it would probably be more interesting to put one squad with chainswords and pistols. Because then he will have no qualms on using the renegade legions traits of can advance and charge into combat.

Yeah, I figured that would be interesting, and picked red corsairs specifically to give him that option, but started worrying that maybe it would be better to shoot the necron or potential other MEQ army that might show up (got a third friend who's still looking into things he thinks is cool with warhammer 40k and he has yet to settle on something).

But yes, you are probably right, it also gives a much more khornate feel to them!

A melta gun in the CSM squad synergise more with the red corsairs trait because the melta gun is an assault weapon. So they can move advance, still shoot the melta gun, and then charge into combat straight after that. And a melta gun is always scary. Characters, vehicles are all scared of a melta gun shot in the face.


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Abaddon303 wrote:
I mean, even in 8th I tried to ensure that for at least the first three turns I could put VotLW and Endless Cacophany on a powerful shooting unit. Normally Havocs turn one, obliterators turn two, whatever's healthiest turn three. It's just too powerful not to do it. EC also gets double from any other stratagem/psychic you stack on it so i always try to build around it.
A full unit of melta bikers is another good one for first turn double tap. 72 bolters and 6 melta shots does a lot of work with VotLW, Prescience or the BL reroll 1s strat!

It kind of depends on your army composition as well. If its heavy daemon engine theme, there is less avenue for CP to be spent. Because VotLW and Endless Cacophany only works on infantry and not on daemon engines. At most you use daemon forge every turn and thats about it. If you play Iron warriors you have more CP options.

WE patrol or batallion is a strong choice now I suspect.

Zerkers in Rhinos are a serious pressure unit with obsec, and unlike cultists and CSM, zerkers are a great troop choice. They clock in at 90-109 per five man squad depending on loadout (fist? Icon?) and with their new strats they can just clean out most units.

I'd rather just not bother with CSM's terrible troops choices quite frankly. They are a waste of points on the whole. We'll see what 9e has in store, and it certainly sounds like this is a temporary situation, and that the faction is getting an overhaul soon: Lawrence at TTT has clearly playtested their new rules/codex/whatever and is very impressed with them.

So in the meantime, I will be shelving the ill-begotten CSM/cultist gak-sandwich and play to the kill/main/burn strengths of the faction.

How reliably would a 5-man Beserker squad jumping out of a Rhino remove a unit of Infiltrators or Intercessors from an objective? Anybody feel like doing the math?

Yoyoyo wrote:
How reliably would a 5-man Beserker squad jumping out of a Rhino remove a unit of Infiltrators or Intercessors from an objective? Anybody feel like doing the math?

If they all have Chainaxes and Chainswords, the math is as follows:

16 Chainaxe attacks
32/3 hits
64/9 wounds
32/9 failed saves

5 Chainsword attacks
10/3 hits
20/9 wounds
20/27 failed saves

For a total of 116/27 wounds dealt, or 4.30 damage per fight. Since they fight twice, you can expect to kill about 4 PMEQ per turn, with the charge.

Edit: Let me look into the odds of clearing a 5-man...

So, assuming they fight twice without interruptions, you have a 35.18% chance of killing a 5-man squad.

That's really not too bad. Probably tip the scales more reliably if you added a Powerfist.

 grouchoben wrote:
We'll see what 9e has in store, and it certainly sounds like this is a temporary situation, and that the faction is getting an overhaul soon: Lawrence at TTT has clearly playtested their new rules/codex/whatever and is very impressed with them.

Why do you say that? Was there a stream where he said as much? Curious to watch it then.

Yoyoyo wrote:
That's really not too bad. Probably tip the scales more reliably if you added a Powerfist.

Average damage if we give the Sarge a fist is...

12 Chainaxe attacks
8 hits
16/3 wounds
8/3 failed saves

5 Chainsword attacks
10/3 hits
20/9 wounds
20/27 failed saves

4 Powerfist attacks
2 hits
5/3 wounds
25/18 failed saves
125/54 damage

For an average of...

103/18 damage, or 5.72 damage per fight. In other words, the addition of a Powerfist means you will, on average, body a squad of 5 PMEQ.

Well, first of all, it looks like you've forgotten DttFE and the WE bonus +1A.

your 5-man chainaxe squad will do 5.44 with axes and 0.86 with CS on the first attack, killing 3 marines outright, and the whole squad shortly after, if the don't elect to interrupt your second attacks.

That jumps to 7.26 + 1.56 if you use 1cp to proc Wild Fury.

If you have a sarge with a fist (and you usually do) that jumps to 4.15+0.86+3.47 (still need to fight twice) or 5.53+1.56+4.17 with wild fury (bingo, one shotted!).

So what's the simple takeaway? If you're charging one squad of intercessors with axes and you think the sarg (who will survive) may interrupt to strike back (ie he has a fist or such), you'll need 2cp for Wild Fury AND Stoke the Nails to kill them all in one set of attacks.

If you charge with axes+fist, just Wild Fury will do the job.

If your opponent can't/won't interrupt, don't spend any CP, you'll kill them all.


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Finally, WE zerkers are now at a huge premium because of the changes to charge rules.

Because they can consolidate 6" with kill/main/burn they will often get to use their second set of attacks, wheras other zerkers will often have to be careful with their charge distance, and not declare two units.

I did forget DTTFE.

I did not apply any other buffs, though.

Moreover, multicharging is now a HUGE risk.

 grouchoben wrote:

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Finally, WE zerkers are now at a huge premium because of the changes to charge rules.

Because they can consolidate 6" with kill/main/burn they will often get to use their second set of attacks, wheras other zerkers will often have to be careful with their charge distance, and not declare two units.

Can you explain this please? I figured Berserkers were kind of neutered because they can no longer charge two units, eat through the first then consolidate and pile into the second with their fight twice. Unless I'm missing something? Fight twice looks like you'll only ever use it to chew through something big and in that sort of situation your opponent is likely to interrupt.

It makes me think chosen with chainaxes and a couple of power weapons are a better option as they can also throw a few combi bolter shots in and probably do as much damage in melee as Berserkers in their first fight?

 grouchoben wrote:
Lawrence at TTT has clearly playtested their new rules/codex/whatever and is very impressed with them.

Do you have a link to this?

 grouchoben wrote:

WE patrol or batallion is a strong choice now I suspect.

Zerkers in Rhinos are a serious pressure unit with obsec, and unlike cultists and CSM, zerkers are a great troop choice. They clock in at 90-109 per five man squad depending on loadout (fist? Icon?) and with their new strats they can just clean out most units.

I'd rather just not bother with CSM's terrible troops choices quite frankly. They are a waste of points on the whole. We'll see what 9e has in store, and it certainly sounds like this is a temporary situation, and that the faction is getting an overhaul soon:

I think that a Red Corsairs battalion w/ a World Eaters patrol could be something.

Kharn + 9 Zerkers + Rhino (maybe also a Possessed bomb in a Rhino as well) is fairly self contained and gives access to the WE strats, especially the 4+ deny.

I suggest Corsairs because they can keep up and offer a ton of pressure while also netting +3 CP.

Agreed, hence the 6" consolidate is a huge deal which lets you avoid it...


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Yeah, that sounds solid as heck, Dr What.

 grouchoben wrote:
Agreed, hence the 6" consolidate is a huge deal which lets you avoid it...

But they can only fight what they charge, and if they declare it, they have to get within engagement range of it with the initial charge role.
The 6" consolidate just enables you to tag stuff but you can't hit it.

Abaddon303 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:

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Finally, WE zerkers are now at a huge premium because of the changes to charge rules.

Because they can consolidate 6" with kill/main/burn they will often get to use their second set of attacks, wheras other zerkers will often have to be careful with their charge distance, and not declare two units.

Can you explain this please? I figured Berserkers were kind of neutered because they can no longer charge two units, eat through the first then consolidate and pile into the second with their fight twice.

There might be a new rule I'm not aware of, or this aspect of the rules may well change... But in 8e Zerkers could consolidate into engagement with another unit and then use their fight again. Their 'fight again' is best thought of as a second unit. If that 'unit ' is in engagement range then it can fight. So even though you charged one unit you can fight two, if and only if you could consolidate within 1" of them at the end of your first fight sequence. And with Kill Main Burn cosolidate range goes up to 6".

Pleae correct me if I've got this wrong folks.

You got it wrong-if you charge that turn, you can only fight what you charged.