Been away for a while, some questions...

[ant7]

I have been away for a while, I am just now getting back into it and I have a couple of questions about CSM and the latest edition. Any help would be appreciated.

 

1. I thought about about making a unit of termies for CC and one for long range. How are our termies in CC? I get the impression that they are not great against loyalist termies.

2. I really like the juggernought models, I would love to use them in my army. I thought about counts as chaos spawn or mutilators, what do you think?

3. What about chaos space marine squads? Should I arm them with close combat weapons? Are they fine with just the bolt gun and bolter?

 

Thats about all I can think of right now but any advise would be great! Thanks.

[Sception]

Our termies are significantly worse in cc than loyalist assault termies. They also don't really do long range - the reaper is an overpriced gun to begin with, and the move to 1/5 instead of 1/3 hurts it further, as it's the only long range gun in the squad.

 

Our termies will beat anything in cc that isn't itself a terminator or something with many AP2 attacks at initiative (some ICs, most monstrous creatures) or rending (slaanesh daemons, genestealers, death company). That's... somewhat less impressive than it sounds, since you've still got to get to close combat, and our options for that are limited, and there tends to be a lot of plasma going around these days. Also, it's very possible for terminators to get bogged down if outnumbered or caught in the open with a ton of small arms fire staring at them, and then you'll just lose them sooner or later to rolling ones on saves.

 

Our termies also don't have exceptional long range capability, but they do get one turn of decent short range shooting via combi weapons. As such, they tend to do best in small size (3-4 model), deep striking squads with combi melta or combi plasma. Alternatively, mid size (5-6 model) squads with combi plasma infiltrating via huron or Ahriman as the warlord also seem alright. Either might consider a chain fist to make them a bit more threatening after their melta/plasma salvo is spent.

 

Otherwise, they lack fearlessness, don't have ATSKNF, and can't get storm shields or cyclone launchers or assault cannons. We don't have teleport homers to make deep striking safe enough to risk larger squads on it, nor do we have land raider variants that let you deliver squads larger than five, including attached characters. The land raider we do have is overpriced, lacking the loyalists' machine spirit at no discount, and with access to worse upgrades in general. They do have access to marks, icons, and vets, but none of them are really worth the price, and they negate the one minor thing our termies do have going for them compared to equivalents in other factions - a slightly reduced base price.

 

If you do want to field larger squads, if only for purely aesthetic reasons, then I'd personally recommend leaning on that minor cost advantage by taking plain terminators with power axes (oh, yeah, you should lean towards axes as default kit, unless you absolutely must go slaanesh, in which case swords, but still take that fist or two) and combi bolters, maybe springing for a couple combi plas or melt and maybe a single chain fist.

 

If you want to run a sort of 'death star' terminator lord plus retinue in land raider, well... that's not ideal, due to being stuck with a low capacity, over priced land raider variant. If you do want to do this, try nurgle mutilators instead of terminators for the retinue - it costs you a heavy support slot (though you're probably running out of points before you fill slots anyway if you do this, or playing a game large enough to get double slots anyway so it may not matter), but it does let you get a couple more wounds in the squad than you could otherwise, and with MoN it takes S10 or force weapons to insta gib them.

 

 

 

Next up...

 

Juggers as mutilators are an interesting idea, but I would lean towards one of two other options:

 

1) 6th ed has allies as part of the standard rules, just take bloodcrushers with maybe a khorne herald from the daemon book, along with some core choice to meet the minimum slot requirements for the allied group

 

2) run unridden juggers as chaos spawn. Spawn are generally the preferred retinue for a jugger mounted khornate chaos lord with an axe of blinding fury, so that would work out for you aesthetically. The Jugger axe lord doesn't do much for the rest of your army (the way a sorcerer might use buffs & debuffs to tilt things in your army's favor, or a nurgle lord might unlock plague marines as a useful troop choice - berzerkers are sadly outshone by their already somewhat lackluster plain CSM bretheren, khorne flavored or otherwise), however there's no denying that the juggerlord can put out a world of hurt on even the heaviest infantry, so long as you're good at not rolling ones.

 

 

 

Finally....

 

6th ed heavily favors shooting over close combat, at least for units that aren't inherently fast and tough enough to make it accross the board relatively unscathed (for you, not counting allies, that's primarily spawn and bikes, though they compete for slots with the frankly overpowered heldrake which has been nearly single handedly propping our current book up since its release). Further, as with the terminators, our CSMs are lacking compared to equivalent troops from other books. You can tool them up with marks and icons, but, again, that makes them more expensive and still less good than other equivalents. As with terminators, a slight points discount on the base model is about the only real advantage they have, so lately I've been seeing people tend to run them pretty cheap - generally 10 man squads with a pair of plasma guns, maybe in a rhino which maybe has a havoc launcher but often as not just on foot hugging terrain.

 

If you're running a nurgle or slaanesh lord, you can instead run plague or noise marines as troops which are both pretty decent. Otherwise, you might want to consider cutting back on the power armored troops and just fielding cheap cultists (generally ten, either with nothing or with rifles, held in reserve to move onto your back edge and claim your uncontested objectives late game; or a full 35 with melee weapons and maybe a couple flamers to deliver a fearless-granting chaos lord, possibly outflanking via a lord of slaanesh on a steed), relying on an allied book to give you a few more scoring options.

 

 

While that is the conventional wisdom, I generally run with somewhat more points intensive CSM squads - taking additional hand weapons and giving the champion a power sword and melta bombs, maybe giving the whole squad veterans of the long war if I have points left over (it's alright on close range & melee units that can buy it for a single point, if you play against marines mostly). And some people even give them a mark (any but tzeentch). But while they feel a bit more like 'chaos marines' instead of weak posers if you tool them up a bit, it's hard to escape the nagging feeling that you're overpaying for them and might have been better off going cheap - or running cultists - and saving those points for more heldrakes/obliterators/havocs/predators/bikes/spawn/HQ/fortifications/allies/etc.

 

Again, if you can run plague or (post errata) noise marines as troops you're ok just fielding them instead of basic CSMs if you want a troop foundation that feels more elite without at the same time feeling like you're throwing points away on purely aesthetic considerations. And even then, you'll probably use a squad or two of cultists to get up to an acceptable number of scoring units (general target is one scoring unit, plus one more per 500 points, with an extra one more in double force org games).