Chaos Space Marines: Making The Best of a Bad Unit

[Ammonius]

Just one of many goofy rule oversights. Unless someone would want to explain why Mortarion, technically a Daemon Prince, would have problems summoning Plague Marines to his cause.

Mortarion only plays in Apocalypse level games, where there is no FOC to limit the number of plague marines who can flock to his banner

[Brother Eleysium]

The newest armies or the "flavor of the month" having bigger and better

toys has been a trend with GW for years, I dunno why all you "Veterans"

of the game are surprised.

IG players are happy with their dex , as are necron and non of those are fully fresh dex. Flavor of the month have nothing to do with codex viability

You should probably check on other non marine forums once in a while to see how much goes on when marines get anything competitive, or a decent Codex for that matter.

[the jeske]

I am multi accounting on most forums known to man. And tyranid players have every right to hate every post crudd codex , save the SoB one.

[Brother Eleysium]

I am multi accounting on most forums known to man. And tyranid players have every right to hate every post crudd codex , save the SoB one.

That's great, but that still doesn't rebut my original point stated in my original post.  I appreciate your opinion of what others think on the matter though.

[the jeske]

Are you claiming that armies like IG or Necron and now tau and eldar[and tau and eldar in the past] or DE had even close to the bad reactions the chaos players had , seeing codex SM and codex SW/GK/BA in 5th or now seeing codex SM ?

[Grey Mage]

Well Eldar players always complain, always. Its one of our defining traits. The problem is when chaos tries to give us a run for our money.... its almost like our psyches are being reflected in the warp, twisting and mutating it.....

 

Cheap and effective is something I keep hearing as a guideline- and thats good, because thats why SWs love their GHs for example. I think part of hte problem is alot of players are looking for something to break face, and troops just arent supposed to be a break-face type of unit.

[Scribe]

I am multi accounting on most forums known to man. And tyranid players have every right to hate every post crudd codex , save the SoB one.

 

Even now? I dont know. Nids always stomp me, because I always try and punch them in the face with MEQ stat lines...

[the jeske]

Well Eldar players always complain, always. Its one of our defining traits. The problem is when chaos tries to give us a run for our money.... its almost like our psyches are being reflected in the warp, twisting and mutating it.....

 

Cheap and effective is something I keep hearing as a guideline- and thats good, because thats why SWs love their GHs for example. I think part of hte problem is alot of players are looking for something to break face, and troops just arent supposed to be a break-face type of unit.

That is because they will never again get 4 shot star cannons .

The problem with SW is that they can do cheap and effective for less. I mean SW can take 2 melee upgrades for the same cost as our unit [both the SW and GH unit runing their chaos icons etc] which technicly makes them better at melee . Only don't , because they dont have to . And that is the biggest lol of them all.

[Tenebris]

Tyranids and Dark Eldar perform well in my meta, they have several fast or horde lists that are very tough to take on. I still think that the problem with our CSM bar the discipline, which is critical, it is that they lack the means to get into the 12'' range fast to account for our numbers and two special weapons per squad.

 

If we would have the Drop Pods than our book would be awesome. Immagine 10 CSM with MoK drop in, fire the first turn and than assault with all the bonuses in the next turn. It would be a great and shocking tactic that would account for our weak discipline and somehow lacking troops. Some would cry that it would not be balanced but I don't think so for we still have the discipline crux and the mandatory challenge to offset this. 

 

In the end even if you increase the number of marines per squad you are still subject to the 25% rule and said that this is very quickly, three marines dead and you roll if you stay in combat. I have also advocated for a time a power weapon on the Aspiring Champion but since he is minced meat more often than not I think that the basic chainsword is more than good for him. If you win ok, if you die it does not matter anyway, at best you have spared 15 points for something else. As it is now the only thing that I have learned to put in every squad are the Melta Bombs, it has saved me several times when I was locked in combat with a Venerable Dreadnought who conveniently came close via Drop Pod. The average walker is not a problem but AV 13 is and the Melta Bombs have at least a chance to inflict the loss of a hull point.

 

Than it is the problem of the combiweapon on the Champion. It is good to have a solid ranged weapon on the Champion but the 6 for Precision Shot is a bonus and it should not play a key in our strategy or in the choice of wargear for our squad. Yes, it is a bolter in the end but it is a very expensive one on a squad that can already skyrocket in the total point value.

 

So to revise a bit my view of the CSM squad:

 

Chaos Space Marines:

+ 7 Marines

+ 1x Plasma Gun

+ 1x Autocannon

+ Melta Bombs 

 

And this is this, I consider the combiweapon, power weapon and other fancy upgrades a dire cost to spend for little to no overall utility. At this stage, we should spam CSM squads and hope that something lives through enemy fire to actually do something useful. With the Autocannon one can hope to kill something at range and with the Plasma Gun you hope to reap some kills before you are either blown to pieces or torn apart in melee. 

[Brother Eleysium]

Are you claiming that armies like IG or Necron and now tau and eldar[and tau and eldar in the past] or DE had even close to the bad reactions the chaos players had , seeing codex SM and codex SW/GK/BA in 5th or now seeing codex SM ?

No, my original point that you strayed from, was that the units are great and flexible troop units. Any form of marine(loyalist or Chaos)is the best troop unit available to any army Codex, hands down.  And players are just refusing to use them or adapt them to fit their role.  Not try and make them the all go no quit unit that they're not designed to be.

[Agent Purple]

 

Are you claiming that armies like IG or Necron and now tau and eldar[and tau and eldar in the past] or DE had even close to the bad reactions the chaos players had , seeing codex SM and codex SW/GK/BA in 5th or now seeing codex SM ?

No, my original point that you strayed from, was that the units are great and flexible troop units. Any form of marine(loyalist or Chaos)is the best troop unit available to any army Codex, hands down.  And players are just refusing to use them or adapt them to fit their role.  Not try and make them the all go no quit unit that they're not designed to be.

 

 

Even if your assertion were true, CSM are objectively the worst MEQ troops in the game (by a large margin), so if you wanted to make an MEQ infantry based force, you would not pick chaos blowdex (fro CSM) to do it with. Best way to use unit, as has been previously stated in this thread, is to spend minimum points on CSM units (if these are the ones you decide to go with) to meet scoring units / table presence needs and spending the remainder on Chaos' few and boring 'good' units.

 

Chaos troops are not appreciably cheaper than loyalists. Thanks to suicide champ, minimum buy in for 10 csm (minimum to unlock all weapon slots) is 140 points, which is exactly the same as new SM dex and DA dex tacticals (greys is 150 but they come with free weapons so they are really even a better deal). Chaos will accordingly, not really be able to eek out any numerical advantage over a loyalist dex when trying to put MEQ bodies on the table. In fact, the only way this would be possible would be to take larger than 10 man units, saving a paltry 1 ppm vs. loyalist books caping out at 10 points saved per unit. These bodies are also less valuable than loyalist equivalents because the open up less weapon slots. Point's saved won't even cover the cost of your fearless banner or VOTLW upgrade. 

 

Sure chaos have lots of options. This dosen't make them flexible. Having lots of crap options does not equal a flexible troops choice. Infact, it is even worse than having no options because if the options exist, some new or bad players will fall into the trap and buy them.

 

Melee options are bad due to foot melee being bad in general in this edition, compounded with the lack of any reasonable delivery system. After fearless stick and MoK (or MoS), CSM are nearly 18 ppm which is more than new SM dex vanguard veterans, and almost as much as BA assault marines (which have jetpacks to actually make it to assault), and substantially more than SW grey hunters (which have better melee options as well).  You can get way better melee units for cheaper or similar cost to CSMs. 

 

Accordingly, if you want an army based around melee MEQ troops, you again are not using chaos blowdex.

 

Other chaos options are resilience based. You get the choice of MoN (or the privilege to pay +23% ppm for only +17% resilience against some attacks), or MoTz which is even worse. The only reason you would ever consider these is if you wanted a unit in a Rhino and needed extra resilience and couldn't just by additional models. Basically, the might as well not even exist.

 

These options aren't even good internally, so again, no reason to pick chaos blowdex over any other MEQ book.

 

Therefore, since CSM as proven above are objectively worse than other loyalist equivalents, if you are investing a significant amount of your army points into this type of troop choice, you are very likely better off not playing chaos. This makes CSM a terrible unit.  To use them 'effectively' is to bite the bullet and invest as little points as necessary into them in order to buy other units where chaos blowdex can provide advantage over other armies.

 

Before someone inevitably whines about comparing to other books, I will point out that, when making your army build (assuming you are building a cohesive force and not just buying whatever like a newbie or hobby srcub), you have total control over what codex to use and what models to buy. As an MEQ based book, chaos offerings are often directly comparable or equivalent to other MEQ based books, with a few real 'unique' units. The 'Unique' stuff is only worth considering if it is also 'good' otherwise there is no advantage to be had over the other MEQ books. If you are not using a significant amount of unique, good, units from the chaos codex (that will ultimately carry your build), but are instead buying made-in-china knock-offs of units in other MEQ books, there is really no objective reason to select CSM.  I therefore submit that CSM MEQ heavy builds are redundant because grey hunters exist, and any CSM squad configuration that results in the build becoming CSM heavy (i.e. making the unit become points intensive) is therefore bad.

 

Internally, CSM have to compete with plague marines, which put 2x pg on the field for cheaper and are more reliable due to being fearless base, noise marines, which have a  long range, high strength, ignores cover bast weapon, and are more reliable due to being fearless base, and cultists, which are as resilient (or even more so, depending on the type of attacks) due to getting 3 wounds on the table for the cheaper and being able to take better advantage of cover. All these units will fill up the scoring bodies on the ground role that is the CSM units only real effective purpose - so the unit has lots of internal competition.

 

CSM unit, due to all the crap PK put in their codex entry, is like a puzzle with a piece missing and a bunch of parts from other boxes mixed in. You can sit down all day and try to figure out how to solve it, but you can't succeed because it isn't complete - just loaded with extra useless crap.

[Rayray]

Agent Purple, your post is way off topic. It wasn't tell us more of what we already know. This topic has become somewhat of a resource of builds on chaos space marine units, and it would be a shame for it to end up locked because your dakka-dakk-ish post ended up here. And i resent being called a scrub due to my gaming viewpoint, more than likely along with others. I have used chaos space marines to help beat the brakes off of other, "better" codexes, so please, come up with ideas that further the cause of the thread, or go to another thread and make other people waste their time reading things that are blatant and obvious.

[HJL]

Agreed. I thought we talked about this being a "boohoo my toy soldiers arent best". There is some good stuff in here if you can dig through the dregs of self pitty and over reaction.

[Tenebris]

Has someone experimented with the Melta Gun / Autocannon build. I think it would be a flexible option that will allow our CSM to be truly a generic unit that can take on an threat. The Autocannon gives you range until you need to close in and this squad could sits well in the middle field, while the melta gun allows one to knock off some hull points or to assault after shooting. So any experiments with this so far?

[the jeske]

Not flexible . single melta has a too low ratio of actualy hurting a vehicle . you would be forced in to taking a combi melta for the champ ,and then we get the whole investing in to a  suicide champ thing, and little to no synergy between the melta and AC. I could sooner imagine a flamer and an AC[does not mean it is a good way to run it] , but only if someone plays a lot against armies with high number of models t3-4 deep striking units with low saves and doesn't have combi weapon models to give to his asp champions to get the same effect.

 

 

Ah and what purple said is right.
 

 

 

If we would have the Drop Pods than our book would be awesome. Immagine
10 CSM with MoK drop in, fire the first turn and than assault with all
the bonuses in the next turn. It would be a great and shocking tactic
that would account for our weak discipline and somehow lacking troops.

I would like to point out that SW are already doing that and terminator leader/extra special melee weapons doen't boost them in to awesome range. Just saying.

 

 

 

No, my original point that you strayed from, was that the units are great and flexible troop units.

 

Ok I am confused , because csm are not a good troop option . Even the name of the topic and the fact that we talk about them here means they are in fact bad.

[Grey Mage]

 

Well Eldar players always complain, always. Its one of our defining traits. The problem is when chaos tries to give us a run for our money.... its almost like our psyches are being reflected in the warp, twisting and mutating it.....

 

Cheap and effective is something I keep hearing as a guideline- and thats good, because thats why SWs love their GHs for example. I think part of hte problem is alot of players are looking for something to break face, and troops just arent supposed to be a break-face type of unit.

That is because they will never again get 4 shot star cannons .

The problem with SW is that they can do cheap and effective for less. I mean SW can take 2 melee upgrades for the same cost as our unit [both the SW and GH unit runing their chaos icons etc] which technicly makes them better at melee . Only don't , because they dont have to . And that is the biggest lol of them all.

If GHs dont have to then neither to CSMs.

 

I honestly double specials is the way to go though, youve got havocs for the heavy weapons. All C:SM players do is whine about their heavies, its insane.

[Dallas Drake]

I've also had a great deal of success with a 15-16 man squad with MoS/IoE & 2 meltaguns (or flamers). I usually run them with Huron. 15-16 seems about right to me. 10 doesn't quite last long enough and Rhinos never last long either, 20 is just too big.

 

Dallas

[Brother Eleysium]

@Rayray and @HJL Couldn't have said it better myself. 

 

@the jeske It's pretty simple, I am saying that CSM's are a good troop choice when compared to other Codices, many players are just unwilling to adapt to the new rules and are using them incorrectly.

 

@Grey Mage I use double Specials on most of my CSM squads as well.  A very viable, flexible, and useful option.

[the jeske]

If GHs dont have to then neither to CSMs.

SW get free pseudo fearless, counter attack and acute senses. out of which at least 2 are good. also one has to remember the fact that a SW player taking a power ax or MotW doesn't have to put it on a dude that will end up in challange .

And while all this happens the SW players GH are cheaper and/or have better transport options then csm .

 

 

 

 

jeske It's pretty simple, I am saying that CSM's are a good troop choice

when compared to other Codices, many players are just unwilling to

adapt to the new rules and are using them incorrectly.

then let us look at some of the troops in other dex.

 

necron:

cheap , stand up , teslas and gauss are nice weapons. a bit weedy in melee , but it is 6th and they have access to flyers which are transports.

SW

csm that do the same but cheaper or they can realy go to town[which they don't too inefficient, just hinting the option being  there] and then they end up with triple melee weapons , terminator armored leaders. oddnly enough those squads are sometimes still cheaper then our 10 mans with mark/icon/melee leader 0_o

eldar

bikers . fast contesters/claimers/. cheap. Everything else can ride around in serpents

Tau

fire warriors and kroot. both with very good synergy with other tau units , not bad own rules[precise shot, ok str 5 weapons etc]

crissis teams as troops are awesome . every tau army will run 1 or 2 of those , if a tau player doesn't want tau eldar . they are a viable option

 

sm/da

tacticals are cheaper then csm for what they are suppose to do [score and support] . I can't do the same with csm which need 10 dudes for a hvy weapon and not 5 and who may run away from an objective.

 

Demons

Plaguies . cheap and resilient . If someone wants to focus on the killy part of the list , then this is all someone needs.

CSM

Plague marines outperfom csm in many things[price, survival] , they are weaker then csm in number of attacks/bolters and against low ap over str 9 weapons. cultists are the plaguies of csm codex.

IG

vets. ultimate fire units. IG the blob . cultists with good weapons and army synergy[orders] .

 

Those are just examples [didn't want to go in to the whole sm bikes +DA uber speeder synergy or what ally change for some races troops , save for the small tau example etc] and csm are not close to that.

 

They have 0 army synergy aside for using huron [and from someone who played infiltration builds a lot back in 3.5 , people forget that if your opponent has an inf unit too and deploys them before you an infiltration based list offten ends up almost in its deployment zone], they can neither do killy[be it in melee or through shooting] nor resilient[pms and cultists do it better] , they lack transport option to make realy good use of their arment or options and they don't even do cheap troops good.

Ergo they are not good. If they were good we wouldn't be talking about them in a topic called Making The Best of a Bad Unit

   

[Rayray]

Hey jeske, if they are so terrible and not worth taking, why post in this thread at all? And i am surprised, because if anyone could come up with top notch ideas, it would normally be you.

[Zhukov]

Rayray, on 07 Sept 2013 - 16:11, said:

Hey jeske, if they are so terrible and not worth taking, why post in this thread at all? And i am surprised, because if anyone could come up with top notch ideas, it would normally be you.

To prevent people from getting wrong ideas about the viability of CSM.

[Sception]

I'm with Jeske here.  I mean, I field CSMs anyway, partly because they're painted, partly because I play CHAOS SPACE MARINESS dammit and I'm going field some blasted chaos marines.  but they're really not very good compared to the majority of troops out there.  I wouldn't call them the worst troops unit out there, or even the worst power armored troops unit, especially not with Sisters in their current state.  Saying they're bad isn't the same as saying you can't get any use out of them at all, or that there aren't better and worse ways to field them.  But yeah, as troops go, they're pretty bad.  They just aren't very good at anything, not even being generalists, and all their options don't really amount to much in terms of how they play or what they can accomplish.  Mostly its just different amounts of points spent to function the exact same regardless, hence why many advocate running them as cheaply as possible.
 
Other marines get more real variety in terms of how they can play their tacticals, how they function in the game, from combat squads & transport options alone than CSMs get from the entire menagerie of mark and flag options available.
 
Yeah, we have drakes and spawn and cheap bikes and cultists and allied daemons and lords and cult units and whatnot.  I'm not arguing that our faction overall is super weak.  But there is very little synergy built into our list and options, so all of those things are exactly the same amount of effective regardless of whether you field any chaos marine units, and in fact tend to be better if you field more of those, and skip spending points on the chaos units altogether.
  
Again, none of that stops us from looking at CSMs to try and find the best/least bad ways to field them, since a lot of us, myself included, will field them anyway.  But pretending they're a 'good unit' to begin with seems like you're starting from a place of fooling ourselves, and I doubt honest tactical advice will come out of that.  I think we'd do better aiming to mitigate the readily apparent weaknesses of the unit, rather than trying to build up on strengths that aren't there.

 

 

Hey jeske, if they are so terrible and not worth taking, why post in this thread at all? And i am surprised, because if anyone could come up with top notch ideas, it would normally be you.

 

The name of the thread is 'making the best of a bad unit'. If you think they aren't bad to begin with, why are you posting in this thread? Why not start your own thread, "CSMs: making the most of an awesome and points efficient unit with tons of great options that are all totally viable because CSMs are a super good unit and not bad at all"?  Or perhaps something shorter, like "CSMs: actually good" or "CSMs: H8rs gonna h8"

[the jeske]

 

Rayray, on 07 Sept 2013 - 16:11, said:

Hey jeske, if they are so terrible and not worth taking, why post in this thread at all? And i am surprised, because if anyone could come up with top notch ideas, it would normally be you.

To prevent people from getting wrong ideas about the viability of CSM.

Dem few words . Dem wisdoms .

 

 

But if someone actualy read what I said , they would notice I said more or less 3 things about csm . The "best" way to run them is cheap . There is no good way to run them so how you actualy run them in the end doesn't matter [well as long as you don't make some sort of abomination 400+pts squad before adding HQs/transports] , the best [and more or less only due to how BB works for us] support option for csm is huron , but even that doesn't make them amazing.

[Trevak Dal]

I really wish we could swap out shooting special weapons for power weapons, eh but there's chosen for that.

 

I know Chosen aren't Chaos Space Marines strictly...but if you don't 'max out' on what you can take and just stick to 2-3 things added to the squad of 8-9 (I do like having less than 10 so that a IC can ride with them) they have been working well for me.

 

I've said this before, but I can only remember one instance where my CSMs have been swept.

[Sception]

I've been skeptical of Chosen.  For the most part, they're very similar to CSMs.  They can be viewed in some ways as another optional upgrade to the CSM unit, and when viewed in that light they really do feel like just another overpriced option takes away more in terms of efficiency than it adds in power.  If extra close combat weapons aren't worth it for +1 attack to begin with, as many feel nowadays, then a further +3 points a model (or +4 pts if you took vets already) on top of that for yet another +1 attack is extra not worth it, and that's all they get built in for the cost, and they're not even scoring unless you play Black Legion, and then you're forced into the 4 point per model differential by the required vets upgrade.  20 points a model for a guy who dies and, for the most part, fights like a 14 point chaos marine is not a great place to start, and their extra options, while all interesting, only compound the points efficiency problem.

 

Again, I plan on running them anyway.  The DV models are cool, and as a Black Legion player I feel there's some amount of honor involved.  But it's again about making the most of a not very good situation, and I certainly won't be replacing CSM units with chosen altogether any time soon.