Vet CSM player needing tactical advice :(

[Lorn Dune]

Okay, so I play CSMs. I haven't played in a long time and finally got my stuff together this year. Mind you I play with my circle of friends, nothing really competitive.

 

I'm frustrated. Very frustrated. My friends play, Dark Eldar, Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Tyranids, Eldar, and Tau.

 

The only one I've even marginally done well against is the Eldar.

 

I have

 

20 CSMs with various magnetized weapons.

 

10 Noise Marines with blastmaster and doom siren.

 

7 plague marines

 

A bunch of daemons I bought a long time ago.

 

1 Chaos Land Raider

 

5 Chaos Terminators

 

5 Havocs with whatever they need.

 

1 Chaos lord in terminator armor

 

1 Chaos sorcerer in power armor (he just looks super cool, haha)

 

1 Daemon Prince w/ Wings

 

3 Predators with various magnetized weapons that I switch out for proxying these as Rhinos.

 

I think thats about it. I'll edit if I remember more I'm out of the house atm.

 

The purpose for this is really to get a handle on tactica as, frankly, the games are typically so one sided that it isn't even fun. Which is sad because I want to be able to have fun playing AND losing occasionally.

 

Our skill level is moderate, and I used to win more or less half the time back when 5th was new. I guess I might be rusty. What can I do, people?

[Something Wycked]

Some of the CSM players on the board will come and tell you "Lash Princes, 3x3 Oblits, Plagues for Troops" and that is the only thing you can do. I disagree. ;)

 

Knowing what you have for models is one thing. How you play the game and how your friends play the game is the most important thing. What are your tactics? Do you make effective use of cover? What are your opponents' tactics?

[Lorn Dune]

Good call.

 

Typically I'll load up a rhino with 10 CSMs with two melta guns and champ w/ pw and their goal is to melta vehicles and be decent in combat should they get charged afterward, or ideally make charges in the next round.

 

10 Noise marines in a rhino to rail into a squad with their assault weapons or use the blast master if things are grouped up. When marines are present I'll attempt to get close and use that doom siren to full effect.

 

Daemon Prince is usually of Tzeentch with Wind of Chaos and Warp Time (Off topic what is your feelings on the way warp time is worded in the codex? we house ruled all missed hits and wounds) and wings, he'll duck into cover and attempt to eat walkers, vehicles, or soft targets.

 

5 havocs with missle launchers for their versatility vs vehicles and infantry, I'll stick them in cover most times.'

 

Predators with Lascannon sponsons and tw las up top. Decent snipe potential.

 

 

 

I dunno, my general tactics are to load up most things in rhinos and jam them down range for a 3rd turn assault or shooting vehicles up close.

 

I'll deep strike terminators with a lord occasionally with Bliss Giver to drop near things with personal icons to help out if needed, or else where to mess things up if something seems particularly vulnerable. I feel a heavy flamer is a must.

 

I have never used my land raider, haha.

 

I'd like to consider using chosen

 

That seems to sum up my general strategy.

 

-------

Dark Eldar just loads up all his stuff into raiders and jams it down my throat. Shooting from his vehicles thanks to that terribly vague open topped rule. He hides his close combat guys until something opens up where he has either creeped up behind cover or b-lines in two turns for assault. Good ol' Archon with a 2+ invulnerable save, husk blade, and soul trap with incubi retinue. He hasn't really dug into the humonculai stuff

 

Grey Knights loads up chimaeras with death cult assassins with power weapons, dread knight with his rending large template. I'm not really sure everything about his army, I just know he doesn't assault me save with his assassins. He shoots my face off or if I get into close combat force weapons my lords and stuff, excluding the Daemon Prince of course.

 

Those are the two I play the most, and most relevant to this post I'd say.

[nurglez]

Tactics should change depending on the force you are using, vs the force your opponent is using. If you are playing vs an army that has better close combat then you, you want to stay away, if they are better at shooting, you want to close. This is simplified by the often used slogan shoot the hitty stuff, hit the shooty stuff.

 

Also planning a few turns ahead is useful, while running your 10man squad close to a landraider to try and melta it might be useful, jumping out of your rhino exposes you to all their fire power, and you will then get assaulted by the contents.

 

Useful anti tank choices for CSM are oblitorators (though I rarely use them) and my favourite ones are 3 terminators with combi meltas, held in reserve to deepstrike in. 2 squads of those will set you back a massive 210 points, and are throw away units that can contest objectives, assault weakened squads and blow up tanks/hurt MC's.

 

The main bit of advice is to play the mission. I've won many games by having a greater part of my force destroyed then the opponent but them having no scoring units left, while I have a lone troop model sat on my objective playing solitaire :D

[Lorn Dune]

Granted about the waiting on timing thing staying away from the Dark Eldar is nearing impossible and at some point I have to attack. Having 8 blasters in two venoms blowing up my rhinos and having wyches waiting to charge afterward comes regardless of where I am, he'll fly there.

 

Grey Knights its not so bad, It ends up being the shooting that rends, and the force weapons taking out my HQs like nothing. It's either I send my hqs into combat vs force weapons or I8 assassins with power weapons. keeping them out of combat is not necessarily an option, and frankly a daemon prince doesn't fair too much better, save with dealing more damage with wind of chaos and warp time.

 

Mind you we make take all comers lists and try not to tailor and with the models I have my lists are fairly consistent.

[Something Wycked]

It looks like what you have is generalized tactics for how you want to use each unit solo, and not how you are going to use them all as a group. Try grouping your units into "internal detachments." There is no in-game rule for this, just in your head identify some unit groupings in your army. Keep them relatively close to one another so that they can support each other.

 

Dark Eldar just loads up all his stuff into raiders and jams it down my throat.

Good! Let him come to you. Hide your units behind cover, use your Havocs and Predators and anything else with decent range to shoot at his Raiders. Get those DElves out of their rides and they'll fall like wheat before the scythe of... ANY of your units.

 

Grey Knights, basically the same idea. Get those Assassins out of the transports, first thing- they'll fall just like the DElves to simple Bolter fire. If that Dreadknight is only equipped with that Heavy Psycannon, you can basically save it for last because its damage potential is fairly low. For regular Grey Knights models, you need to stay out of their 13"-24" range band. This is where they will out shoot you. You need to be inside of 12" where your shooting is just as good or outside of 24" where they can't hit you at all.

 

I'm essentially advocating the "reactive" play style. Your friends play aggressively- welcome that. Instead of playing to their game and being like mountian rams- charging each other, headbutting and locking horns- change the scenario to a Spanish bullfight. Your friends are the bull, and you are the matador. Offer them a target, let them charge it, and in the process they become vulnerable to your counterattack. As an example, offer the Wyches/Assassins an expendable unit to assault. Let them charge it and kill it, leaving them in the open and vulnerable to your shooting phase.

 

I highly recommend reading the Water Warrior article by Silent Requiem in my signature. :P

[Hellios]

With the Dark Eldar player... If he is shooting from his raiders they are going slow... So a 5+ flicker field save at best... Things like auto-cannons (Reaper or otherwise) should eat through his transport vehicles... Melta weapons will also trash them if you can get close enough to them but that leaves you lined up for a Dark Eldar assault.

 

I find that forming a castle and trying to brake the Dark Eldar's blade in the first two turns works for me. If you can start a war of attrition with the Dark Eldar you will probably win.

 

So hide your units in or behind terrain. If they won't be doing anything in the opening stages of the game ideally put them somewhere they can't be shot (So Rhinos that won't be shooting raiders), while giving as much protection to fire units (havocs and dakka preds) as possible while minimizing the number of routes that the Dark Eldar can approach you by unmolested.

 

Oh this might not be the best tactic... but consider taking gift of chaos on your Tzeentch DP when playing against the DE... Keep him safe (because you don't want to be shot by lance and splinter fire before you make combat) and try and get him into assault with the DE Lord and incubi. They should have a tough time hurting you and you can pick off the incubi and then try and spawn the lord XD. I'm assuming you have enough to terrain to hide a few units XD

[Lorn Dune]

Hellios -- haha, yeah, gift is the best way statistically I'd say to kill him outright without the bother of that 2+ shadow field save.

 

Something Wycked -- I will read this material you have suggested. I appreciate the time you took to come up with a concise and excellent approach to my particular issue. I will definitely give this a try. Generally I wouldn't say I leave my units to solo as it were, but I would prepare them in creation to be able to be self-sufficient for the most part. Typically my CSMs and Noise Marines travel within aiding distance of each other for instance, and my daemon prince as well seeing as how he can chop a vechicle no problem and get off a good charge when the blow up a raider. However, what you say still stands, I think you're right in that I devote a lot of effort trying to play the same game that the Dark Eldar do and fail at it simply as I'm not as fast or as geared to accomplish that sort of thing. Makes me wish that we had drop pods or some such like the space wolves drop pod assault.

 

Anyhow, I'll let you know how my next game goes! Thank you again, it means a lot to me!

[Something Wycked]

Hey, you're more than welcome amigo :D Solving tactical problems is why I play this game.

 

Playing my shooty Blood Angels against my friend's CSM, he was rolling a mix of Plagues, Zerkers, Thousand Sons, and CSM's in four Rhinos right at me, and they were rolling 2x2, in a box formation, down a flank of the board to avoid the big terrain piece in the center. I was worried- not only did he have the hammer & anvil of Plagues/Zerkers, he also had the serrated blade of the Thousand Sons to cut right through any of my Marines who were in the open. On top of that, he had Havocs, Oblits, and a Defiler in support, and outflanking melta Chosen coming later.

 

My heavy weapons wrecked one of the lead Rhinos and immobilized the other, creating a roadblock on that flank of the table. That enabled me to engage little pieces of his army at a time while he was forced to redeploy the rest of it (rear Rhinos and Defiler) around the roadblock and terrain. The Chosen came in on the roadblock side of the table and had no support.

 

The key is to examine what your opponent is trying to do and figure out how you can throw a monkey wrench in his plans. Don't let him enact his battle plan or you'll have to overcome the full, coordinated force of his troops. ^_^

[minigun762]

I have

20 CSMs with various magnetized weapons.

10 Noise Marines with blastmaster and doom siren.

7 plague marines

A bunch of daemons I bought a long time ago.

1 Chaos Land Raider

5 Chaos Terminators

5 Havocs with whatever they need.

1 Chaos lord in terminator armor

1 Chaos sorcerer in power armor (he just looks super cool, haha)

1 Daemon Prince w/ Wings

3 Predators with various magnetized weapons that I switch out for proxying these as Rhinos.

 

I'll do my best to give you some advice but I think the biggest thing you could do is either pick up some real rhinos so you can leave your predators as predators or convert the predators to rhinos and invest in some defilers/obliterators or maybe vindicators.

 

Assuming this is everything you have and you can't/don't want to add anything, here is what I'd start with.

 

1) Take the 20 CSMs and divide them into 2 squads of 10. Dual meltagun and power fist champions if you have the bits available. Put them in two of your predator/rhinos. These guys will be your army's foundation. They can shoot, assault, bust armor and take objectives.

2) Depending on your terminator's loadout, I'd prefer to use them as a deepstriking support squad and free up the transport capabilities of that land raider since you're lacking transports. Combi weapons and a fist weapon or two would be perfect for that squad.

3) With the land raider/noise marines and plague marines you could go one of two ways. The first is put the plague marines in the land raider with the sorcerer. Give them a power fist and assault weapons (either flamer or melta) and the sorcerer warptime. Now you have a decent fearless assault unit that counts as scoring. Take 5 of the noise marines and the blastmaster and use them as a footslogging/objective holding squad. Hide in cover and blast things with your super missile launcher. The second option is to put the noise marines in the land raider instead, take the doom siren and a power fist (sorcerer is the same) and have 5 plague marines with 2x plasma guns be your objective holder.

4) This should leave you with 1 predator, convert it into an autocannon/lascannon version (combi-predator) and use it for long range tank busting. Aim for low/medium armor targets of high value, things like IG valkyries.

5) Take the daemon prince with wings. Depending on point level you can upgrade him with marks and powers but even naked he is a great bullet sponge.

 

There you have it, a pretty solid army with 3 mobile scoring units, some long range firepower and a decent mix of shooting and assault.

 

Tactically, it would depend on the opponent and the mission, but I would generally try to have units supporting each other. Daemon prince and a rhino full of CSMs is a match for most things for example.