competetive chaos

[Brother Gathurn]

A friend of mine just got into the hobby a few months ago and is looking to expand his army, he plays chaos and asked me for help expanding his army. I do play chaos but I play purley for fun, bikers. I have only ever won three games with them. It's obviusly not competitive. However he wants to be competitive. I wasn't really sure what to tell him. I know that the chaos codex's competitive choices are limited, what are they? I know that terminators, defilers, and deamon princes are all exellent, what else. In particular what should he do for troops? He right now runs a squad of khorne bezerkers in a lr and a squad of chaos marines in a rihino. What other troops should he get?

[Brother Nihm]

The most commonly used and effective choices are:

 

HQ:

1-2 Daemon Princes.

 

Elites:

1-2 Termicide squads.

 

Troops:

3+ squads that are a mix/consists of PMs, 10 man CSM with dual Flamer or Melta and Berzerkers, all in Rhinos.

 

Heavy Support:

3x2 or 2x2 Obliterators

 

Add anything else you want in there if you have leftover points.

[minigun762]

To further elaborate on this topic, don't neglect your troops! The dark heart and evil soul of a good Chaos list is in its troop choices. The other units are there as support.

 

This is the reverse of say, Codex Marines, who rely on their specialist for the important jobs and their Tactical Marines as general support.

[Corpse.]

I prefer my zerkers in land raiders for the ability to ensure their charge bonuses.

 

Greater Daemon is a competitive choice if you think of it as one. (really can't go wrong with 160 points worth in models, 100 for GD, the 40-60 for the other model and it still beats up a carnifex)

 

Defiler if you know how to abuse it. come in from reserves and blast with its cannon far out of range of certain armies. Or be that big hulk that grants your land raider obscurity for the first turn. Among other uses, most might disagree with me. But I play against lots of Eldar and Orks, so its a given.

 

Chosen are pretty nifty, outflank and meltabombs+meltaguns/flamers etc.. A 'reliable' termicide style that can come in the risky-to-deepstrike-stuff-near-the-table-edge issue that terminators suffer tremendously from. That and you can rhino them for extra range of a clear 24" from either side with 12" meltagun range. Often hitting side armor to add. Not to mention combi-melta on the rhino if you want to add insult to injury.

 

I prefer mine with no rhino, 5 flamers and 5 meltabombs. The auto-hit crew of 5 at 140 pts. Often never let me down.

[Brother-Chaplain Gaius]

obliterators and some nice troop choices ftw

[infyrana]

There are a host of threads relating to army lists in the chaos areas which all give excellent advice.

 

Ask your friend if they want a specific theme though. Although the codex doesn't lend itself to thematic armies as well as individual SM codex books do, you can still theme your chaos list somewhat.

 

More specifically.. does your friend want a Khorne heavy army, a standard CSM Alpha/black legion style army, or Plague Marine / Death Guard army, or do they want more daemon based troops and feel? Or purely an army based on competitive winning ?

 

I went for Plague Marine / Death Guard army because of the models and the fluff. My choices as given by all the advice on these forums, are based on 2x Daemon Princes (wings a must, powers to your choice), several troop options (2x 7 PM's, with 2x meltas and Champ with PFist plus rhino, and 7 PM's with 2x plasma, no champ with rhino), obliters 2x2 and a termicide squad (3x combi meltas).

 

Everything beyond these choices will be based more on what I want to field (some things like dreadnoughts are not very competitive / consistent, but I want it in my list).

[Cale]

Brother Nihm is basically spot on. There are plenty of other things you can add or swap out or in which don't seriously hurt the army, but the outline he's presented is going to routinely turn out the most competitive Chaos Marine lists.

[chaplain belisarius]

It depends on what sort of army your mate wants-if he wants to assault, take berzerkers. Personally taking chaos marines is never a waste of points in my opinion (10 CSM with 2xmeltaguns, aspiring champion with powerfist and combi melta, icon of chaos glory in a rhino-excellent unit capable of fulfilling all battlefield roles!)

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

Plague Marines are a good option.A bit expensive unit,but in my opinion,the most resistant troop unit of all the game,ideal to occupy and or deny objectives.Enemy can expend a lot of resources to kill that unit.

[Iron_Chaos_Brute]

Link to my blog in my sig, I'm not going to repost it all here:

 

There are basically 2 competetive and 1 semi competetive build(s) for CSM.

[Brother Evar]

I have had good sucess with termi squads that are no more than 200pts max. If you DS them where you need them the combi spam and HF can be useful. I put a fist in there in case they live past being shot at. You would be suprised on how many times people forget CSM termi's still get fists as they are not seen en mass like on loyalist tactical termi's.

[Brother Gathurn]

Thanks for the replys. I don't belive he really cares a wholel ot about the theme. He slightly prefers khorne. It looks like what is good is LR's, Obliterators, DP, and troops. Plus greator deamons look awsome. So my next question is about tanks, i love vindicators in my loyalist lists however chaos is built totally differentally much more centered on the troops. is there any reason why there useless/infeirior

[Cale]

Nope. Vindicators are great. It's often the case, though, that 25 extra points for a pair of Obliterators gets you a little more versatility, as well as some lascannons--which Chaos is otherwise pretty short on.