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Okay, I'll take your word for it dude, I might be missing something.

In 9th you can fight everything you are in engagement range with. If a character heroically intervened within engagement range of your charging unit you can attack him, even if you didnt declare him as a charge target.

 p5freak wrote:
In 9th you can fight everything you are in engagement range with. If a character heroically intervened within engagement range of your charging unit you can attack him, even if you didnt declare him as a charge target.

I'm not sure that's right either. I believe 9th is just the same as 8th where you can still only fight units that you declared to charge but there is a special dispensation for heroic intervention

Yep, here's the rules:

Just had an interesting thought. Black Legion Abby List can have a elite slot thousand sons Rubric squad in front of Abby as a sort of shield and for look out sir. Because of the BL trait, the rubrics can move advance and still shoot their rapid fire inferno boltguns as assault weapons.

Rubrics are 2+, 4++. Have a psyker cast weaver of fates on them for a +1 invul and they are now 3++. Abby then makes them immune to morale. They can form a good shield if we take a large block of them in front of Abby, and lay down some deadly shooting as well. Anyone trying to charge them will have to face Abby heroically intervening. This block can be part of the second wave that pushes onto an objective on turn 2.

They are probably not the best Rubrics since we aren't taking TS, but they benefit from being BL rubrics in a different way. Its interesting to consider. I suddenly have many different ways to play CSM now, and I am kinda unsure which is the best to go.

But realising that Rhinos are so good now this edition has definitely helped CSM.

Anti tank is definitely going to be a must this edition. If only because I bet a fair number of armies are going to run multiple transports. If your opponent gets to go first and rushes Rhinos and landraiders onto the midboard objective, we need anti tank to respond. Melta guns are also looking better and better this edition, because the troops that take them like CSM are often close to the midboard objectives where they can be used for transport killing or dreadnaught killing. Because dreadnaughts are much improved this edition too, so I bet we will be seeing some of them too.

9th has made me come back to cultist blobs actually. Currently running alpha legion/1ksons one of my favorite combos. With the ability to forward deploy and teleport from multiple sources the army can really adjust to anything. A large blog of cultists and tzaangors are both very good for getting there early and outnumbering obsec at a decent price. Also cultists are more durable due to moral changes making tide better. Backed up by rubrics for risen.

Sadly many of my go to units are gonna collect dust for awhile. But on the bright side I get to bring back defilers, scarab occult termies and even spawn. 4-5 spawn from strategic reserve are murderous with the 1ksons strat.

Actually gonna run warp talons in place of oblits next as my main conceal target. See how that goes..

Rivener wrote:

 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.

He said it in a recent battle report, Ulthwe Vs Iron Warriors but it's an on demand video so you need to be a subscriber.
Basically they were saying about the shortcomings of CSM and the wonky points for 9th. He said the points weren't balanced yet because we haven't got all the rules yet (this was after the 9th rules leak etc so he didn't mean the 9th core rules). He basically heavily hinted that things were gonna be good for CSM.
Thing is, while I think he was being genuine, I really can't see CSM getting a new codex anytime soon. Being the only faction to have gotten a '1.5' codex I imagine we're firmly at the back of the queue. I would have said they'd start back through them in a similar order to 8th as some of the oldest codexes need the biggest help, but then death guard got a lot of help in PA.
Who knows? I've given up trying to predict GW they make so many odd choices.

Abaddon303 wrote:

Rivener wrote:

 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.

He said it in a recent battle report, Ulthwe Vs Iron Warriors but it's an on demand video so you need to be a subscriber.
Basically they were saying about the shortcomings of CSM and the wonky points for 9th. He said the points weren't balanced yet because we haven't got all the rules yet (this was after the 9th rules leak etc so he didn't mean the 9th core rules). He basically heavily hinted that things were gonna be good for CSM.
Thing is, while I think he was being genuine, I really can't see CSM getting a new codex anytime soon. Being the only faction to have gotten a '1.5' codex I imagine we're firmly at the back of the queue. I would have said they'd start back through them in a similar order to 8th as some of the oldest codexes need the biggest help, but then death guard got a lot of help in PA.
Who knows? I've given up trying to predict GW they make so many odd choices.

I suspect CSM will be one of the first codices, after SM and Necrons. The 1.5 codex doesn't really count. The reason they are likely to get a new book is because they didn't have their rules disparity with SM addressed in PA, whereas other loyalist SM did. So Chaos are the only marine faction that isn't up to date.

Just kinda of throwing ideas out here for discussion. Superheavies got hit because everyone can see and shoot them, but they can't see and shoot units behind obscuring terrain. However, the walker superheavies like chaos knights got 2 buffs:

1) they can step over blocking infantry units in a normal move and they can also fall back over units and still shoot and charge.

2) They can assault units on 2nd and 3rd floor now, because their hulls are very high.

A pure knight list is an uphill task because it is hard to fight on primary objectives with just a few large models. But how about spending the 3 CP to have just one despoiler melee knight as a distraction carnefix?

So, the idea is to keep it as cheap as possible (hence a melee despoiler with chainfist and reaper chainsword). And this despoiler will charge up as much as possible turn 1 and just basically try and wreck as much carnage as possible before going down and hopefully blowing up while doing that. He can't really be blocked, because he can step over blockers. And he is a huge distraction carnefix which has to be dealt with. If you don't deal with him, he could quite possibly be in the opponent's back objective and wrecking havoc there by turn 2. The key thing is that we bring him with the expectation that he will die. Even if he does, the opponent is focusing all of his efforts on this cheap melee knight while not touching the rest of our army. If you raise ion shields, he is still a 4++ T8 titanic unit with 24 wounds.

Ordinarily, chaos knight armies gives up secondaries too easily. Because you can easily max 15 VP in the secondary that kills titanic. But if you have only one, then the max points you can get from that secondary is 10 VP.The key thing is that losing that 1 superheavy is ok if it allows us to win the mid board. It seems to me like 3CP spent to get him might be worthwhile for such a huge tanky distraction carnefix. Now, question is why don't we use other heavy support or vehicles like defilers to do this. We can, except they can all be blocked by scouts while the chaos knight won't be blocked by such scouts. We have to plan that 50% of the time, we may go second.

If our opponent goes first, rushes some Rhinos, even a land raider onto the midboard objectives, plus push his scouts forward near to our lines to limit our forward movement. How do we respond to that without giving him an easy 15VP at the start of his second turn?

I mean I certainly wouldn't disagree that they need a new codex. There are fundamental issues with the army structure that makes several units useless and almost impossible to include in an army build.
Death Guard are actually set up quite nicely for 9th edition, they have a few powerful and versatile HQs, then a lot of their buffing characters are in the elite slot. Their DPs are far more robust so are effective warlords while regular CSM DPs are used more as a shock unit. This means CSM are forced to take multiple HQs for power and redundancy (chainlords/Ex Champ)
CSM have such limited and lacking legion traits that they need to get their buffs from characters, but we are limited to three. We have two psychic disciplines but need to take two psykers to access them, also our best Daemon engine is a HQ!
CSM really need several of their HQs moved to elite starting with the Master of Executions, Warpsmith and probably Dark Apostle

Abaddon303 wrote:
I mean I certainly wouldn't disagree that they need a new codex. There are fundamental issues with the army structure that makes several units useless and almost impossible to include in an army build.
Death Guard are actually set up quite nicely for 9th edition, they have a few powerful and versatile HQs, then a lot of their buffing characters are in the elite slot. Their DPs are far more robust so are effective warlords while regular CSM DPs are used more as a shock unit. This means CSM are forced to take multiple HQs for power and redundancy (chainlords/Ex Champ)
CSM have such limited and lacking legion traits that they need to get their buffs from characters, but we are limited to three. We have two psychic disciplines but need to take two psykers to access them, also our best Daemon engine is a HQ!
CSM really need several of their HQs moved to elite starting with the Master of Executions, Warpsmith and probably Dark Apostle

Honestly, no point wishing and hoping. I would rather play with what we have in existing rules. If a new codex does drop, thats well and good. But I don't want to say I won't play a game of 9th ed 40k until such a CSM codex drops. What if it takes another 6 months, or even a year ?

And frankly I don't think CSM are that bad right now in the grand hierarchy of the game. Our biggest weakness compared to other armies was our relative lack of ranged killing power. But now that tabling your opponent is no longer the default wincon of the game, I think we can be competitive.

It's also worth noting that the only faction in the game that seems to genuinely be head and shoulders above the rest is Primaris. Take SM out of the picture and a lot of our old rivals, Eldar and Tau being good examples, seem to be hurting as much as we are. CSM is a very workable army with lots of options and is no where close to being near the bottom of the factions imo.

Abaddon303 wrote:
Yep, here's the rules:

Right, sorry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Eldenfirefly wrote:

2) They can assault units on 2nd and 3rd floor now, because their hulls are very high.

No, they cant. They have a base, and distances are measured from the base. They can hit the first floor, because engagement range is now 5" vertical, but not second of third floor.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just kinda of throwing ideas out here for discussion. Superheavies got hit because everyone can see and shoot them, but they can't see and shoot units behind obscuring terrain. However, the walker superheavies like chaos knights got 2 buffs:

1) they can step over blocking infantry units in a normal move and they can also fall back over units and still shoot and charge.

2) They can assault units on 2nd and 3rd floor now, because their hulls are very high.

A pure knight list is an uphill task because it is hard to fight on primary objectives with just a few large models. But how about spending the 3 CP to have just one despoiler melee knight as a distraction carnefix?

So, the idea is to keep it as cheap as possible (hence a melee despoiler with chainfist and reaper chainsword). And this despoiler will charge up as much as possible turn 1 and just basically try and wreck as much carnage as possible before going down and hopefully blowing up while doing that. He can't really be blocked, because he can step over blockers. And he is a huge distraction carnefix which has to be dealt with. If you don't deal with him, he could quite possibly be in the opponent's back objective and wrecking havoc there by turn 2. The key thing is that we bring him with the expectation that he will die. Even if he does, the opponent is focusing all of his efforts on this cheap melee knight while not touching the rest of our army. If you raise ion shields, he is still a 4++ T8 titanic unit with 24 wounds.

Ordinarily, chaos knight armies gives up secondaries too easily. Because you can easily max 15 VP in the secondary that kills titanic. But if you have only one, then the max points you can get from that secondary is 10 VP.The key thing is that losing that 1 superheavy is ok if it allows us to win the mid board. It seems to me like 3CP spent to get him might be worthwhile for such a huge tanky distraction carnefix. Now, question is why don't we use other heavy support or vehicles like defilers to do this. We can, except they can all be blocked by scouts while the chaos knight won't be blocked by such scouts. We have to plan that 50% of the time, we may go second.

If our opponent goes first, rushes some Rhinos, even a land raider onto the midboard objectives, plus push his scouts forward near to our lines to limit our forward movement. How do we respond to that without giving him an easy 15VP at the start of his second turn?

If you're only taking one, you're probably better off with Lord of Skulls as it can benefit from CSM auras, strats, powers, and prayers.

But I don't think the LOS can step over models in its movement phase or fall back phase. So the LOS can be blocked while the chaos knight can't.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
But I don't think the LOS can step over models in its movement phase or fall back phase. So the LOS can be blocked while the chaos knight can't.

Yes, a LOS can be move blocked, and it costs you 3 CP to use him, you cant put him in a supreme command detachment, because he isnt a primarch or supreme commander. I think mortarion, or magnus, will probably get those keywords. What he can do is hit units on the second floor, because he hasnt got a base, thus you measure from any part of the hull, Knights cant do that, they have a base.

Well, objectives will not be on second floor. They can't even be in terrain, So, I think its fine. In any case, engagement range is 5 inches up so, even if its measured from the base, can still hit second floor. (if there is a need). I honestly love LOS more than a chaos knight. But LOS being able to be blocked is kinda of a big deal. Guess we will see. In any case, cost wise, LOS is only a bit more expensive than a melee despoiler, with more synergies with CSM. So, if LOS can serve the same purpose, then I would pick LOS over a chaos knights. What I am worried about is when we go second, not so much when we go first.

What makes it so Knights can't be blocked? And might the LoS get it?

Walker type super heavies like knights can "step" over their opponents.

I like the idea of a single Knight Eldenfirefly, but I think a SHD with two moiraxes alongside would be a good way to go. And a Castigator warlord instead of a melee despoiler. Go Khomentis, give it the dreadhunter warlord trait, and take 1d3 mortal wounds for daemonic power, and you now have a knight that's solid in melee still, that once a game can spit out 16 S7 -2 D4 shots that reroll hits and wounds. That kind of firepower can help decide a game, and depending on the opponent/mission you can elect to put it in reserve for 3cp to ensure that it can't be denied its super shot. 790 for the detachment, leaving you 1210pts for CSM.

The big downside to this build is it robs you of your CSM warlord traits (Castigator needs to be actual warlord to take a trait), which can be pretty clutch, unless you're AL.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
And frankly I don't think CSM are that bad right now in the grand hierarchy of the game. Our biggest weakness compared to other armies was our relative lack of ranged killing power. But now that tabling your opponent is no longer the default wincon of the game, I think we can be competitive.

It's also worth noting that the only faction in the game that seems to genuinely be head and shoulders above the rest is Primaris. Take SM out of the picture and a lot of our old rivals, Eldar and Tau being good examples, seem to be hurting as much as we are. CSM is a very workable army with lots of options and is no where close to being near the bottom of the factions imo.

Truth be told, you are definitely right that everything looks better once you pretend space marines aren’t a thing. One of my strategies is to be a bit picky with space marine players... if I willingly put chaos space marine squads and other suboptimal units in my list they can keep their eradicates out of theirs...

Drudge Dreadnought wrote:I suspect CSM will be one of the first codices, after SM and Necrons. The 1.5 codex doesn't really count. The reason they are likely to get a new book is because they didn't have their rules disparity with SM addressed in PA, whereas other loyalist SM did. So Chaos are the only marine faction that isn't up to date.

The rumor is Deathwatch get the first 9th edition Codex.

Honestly, I hope CSM doesn't come for a while. We did in 6th and 8th and codex creep ruined them after about a year.

p5freak wrote:In 9th you can fight everything you are in engagement range with. If a character heroically intervened within engagement range of your charging unit you can attack him, even if you didnt declare him as a charge target.

This is going to be an interesting aspect of the game, charging to draw characters into battle.

People should really be thinking about it before they field melee armies. Might have an impact on list design.

Black Legion have a WLT called Black-Clad Brute. After you charge, you do d3 MW on a 4+. Have been thinking about putting this on a Dark Apostle specifically for character sniping.

Eldenfirefly wrote:Just had an interesting thought. Black Legion Abby List can have a elite slot thousand sons Rubric squad in front of Abby as a sort of shield and for look out sir. Because of the BL trait, the rubrics can move advance and still shoot their rapid fire inferno boltguns as assault weapons.

Rubrics are 2+, 4++. Have a psyker cast weaver of fates on them for a +1 invul and they are now 3++. Abby then makes them immune to morale. They can form a good shield if we take a large block of them in front of Abby, and lay down some deadly shooting as well. Anyone trying to charge them will have to face Abby heroically intervening. This block can be part of the second wave that pushes onto an objective on turn 2.

They are probably not the best Rubrics since we aren't taking TS, but they benefit from being BL rubrics in a different way. Its interesting to consider. I suddenly have many different ways to play CSM now, and I am kinda unsure which is the best to go.

Thought about this too. Black Legion Rubrics could be powerful, the drawbacks are a) price and b) they're elites (so no ObSec.)

I could see them as a shield for a Sorcerer or Tzeentch DP, but ask yourself if you could do better with a TS Patrol detachment with Cult of Magic or Cult of Duplicity. Abaddon's morale aura works for all Heretic Astartes.

Abaddon303 wrote:I mean I certainly wouldn't disagree that they need a new codex. There are fundamental issues with the army structure that makes several units useless and almost impossible to include in an army build.
Death Guard are actually set up quite nicely for 9th edition, they have a few powerful and versatile HQs, then a lot of their buffing characters are in the elite slot. Their DPs are far more robust so are effective warlords while regular CSM DPs are used more as a shock unit. This means CSM are forced to take multiple HQs for power and redundancy (chainlords/Ex Champ)
CSM have such limited and lacking legion traits that they need to get their buffs from characters, but we are limited to three. We have two psychic disciplines but need to take two psykers to access them, also our best Daemon engine is a HQ!
CSM really need several of their HQs moved to elite starting with the Master of Executions, Warpsmith and probably Dark Apostle

Almost agree with this. Downside is current HQs competing for slots with things like Contemptors, which could be worse.

Changes to the Supreme Command Detachment have really cost CSM, you used to be able to pack these guys into a list. I was running Ahriman and Disk Sorcerers in one and now there's no way to load up on them without a troop tax.

I think you're getting into a more fundamental flaw with CSM, too much of our offense is concentrated in HQs. GW has used this role as a band-aid over multiple editions, you don't get that much out of the rest of your army without their auras / psychic buffs. Designers need to really look at this and consider improving the statlines / abilities of basic units to decrease our reliance on HQs overall.

I've always felt from a fluff perspective we should have lots of champions and freaks and whatever else. We gained a few characters very recently but before that I found it odd how loyalists had ancients and champions. After 10000 years in the warp you'd imagine a few particularly gifted chaps would stand out. It's even worse that we lost our mounted characters too. We've ended up more vanilla than the vanillas... ?!?

Greater Possessed are in the Elites slot, they only went up 8%.

I really like GPs, M7, T5, W5, 5+ Inv, hitting on 2s, 6 attacks on the charge with S6 AP-2 Dd3 for 65 pts. in 9th is good. Playing them as RC would allow them to charge after advancing. They can board a rhino for protection.

It'd be great if we had more elite slot character options. The Master of Executions doesn't need to be an HQ, and perhaps even the exalted champion. We still lack a source of re-roll 1's to wound when shooting aura. That could go on an elite character.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
It'd be great if we had more elite slot character options. The Master of Executions doesn't need to be an HQ, and perhaps even the exalted champion. We still lack a source of re-roll 1's to wound when shooting aura. That could go on an elite character.

It would be more needed to have actual Mobility options back for our charachters....

I think the LOS is in a weird place because I don't think they addressed its rules in the FAQ. It always had the rule that it could fire when engaged. If i understand the new rules correctly, the difference is, the standard 9th rules are that you have to fire at the engaged enemies while the LOS is free to shoot at whoever it likes.

If the LOS keeps that rule it's actually a huge advantage over knights because you can quite easily bog down knights with bodies and force it to put all of it's shots into something like 20 poxwalkers point blank. It can't fire blast weapons so I'm not sure any knight has a chance to free itself to shoot it's big guns at anything tasty.

 p5freak wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
But I don't think the LOS can step over models in its movement phase or fall back phase. So the LOS can be blocked while the chaos knight can't.

Yes, a LOS can be move blocked, and it costs you 3 CP to use him, you cant put him in a supreme command detachment, because he isnt a primarch or supreme commander. I think mortarion, or magnus, will probably get those keywords. What he can do is hit units on the second floor, because he hasnt got a base, thus you measure from any part of the hull, Knights cant do that, they have a base.

Quick note - Mort and Magnus are Primarchs and already have the keyword. Morty’s main disadvantage is that DG like an Arch-Contaminator to be on a hireable character; Warlord Morty bagsies this WT, which in a meta prepared to delete a Knight seriously limits its lifespan. Fortunately Deathshroud are more useful now

 lindsay40k wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
But I don't think the LOS can step over models in its movement phase or fall back phase. So the LOS can be blocked while the chaos knight can't.

Yes, a LOS can be move blocked, and it costs you 3 CP to use him, you cant put him in a supreme command detachment, because he isnt a primarch or supreme commander. I think mortarion, or magnus, will probably get those keywords. What he can do is hit units on the second floor, because he hasnt got a base, thus you measure from any part of the hull, Knights cant do that, they have a base.

Quick note - Mort and Magnus are Primarchs and already have the keyword. Morty’s main disadvantage is that DG like an Arch-Contaminator to be on a hireable character; Warlord Morty bagsies this WT, which in a meta prepared to delete a Knight seriously limits its lifespan. Fortunately Deathshroud are more useful now

What made Deathshround more useful? They got dis proportionally more expensive.