Hey everyone. Today I'd like to talk a little more about building lists with everyone's favorite traitors, the Chaos Space Marines. Now, its no secret that CSM are generally considered a mid to low tier codex right now, so how can we best leverage what we have to our advantage? Please keep in mind that while some of these units and tactics work in my meta, they may not work for you, and they may not be the most competitive tactics in the world.
So firstly we need to decide what kind of list we want. For the most part, I would disregard trying to build an overly shooty list with these guys. We just simply don't seems to have the firepower to compete with the top-tier dexes in a shooting war. This leaves us with an assault based list, and while assault can be powerful this edition, it definitely comes with its challenges and downsides (casualties from the front, overwatch, needing an effective delivery system etc.) Luckily, assault is something our boys can do quite well, if we can get them into a position to do so.
Now that we've chosen an assault list, we have to consider an effective delivery system. We need to use units that are either fast on their own, or units with access to transports to drive them at the enemy. I've already talked about our options when in comes to transports in another post, and based on what we're trying to do, I would go with Landraiders for transports. Of course the downside is that these things are expensive, and coupled with the squad inside, you're likely to have close to 500 points tied up right there. If you play at 1500 points like I tend to, this is a large part of your army, so we're probably going to rely on cheap scoring units in the form of cultists.
With this established, we need to look at the units available to us that can do stuff in melee, or that can support a melee army. The first thing that comes to my mind are Spawn, preferably with the Mark of Nurgle. These little creeps are fast, thanks to being beasts who are also fleet, and they're also very tough, despite the lack of armour save. Even if you're getting shot the whole way up the board (a trip that should take you about 2 turns at the most) you're still probably going to have something survive to make combat, and if they're focusing that much on your Spawn, that's allowing one of your other units to make it in relatively unmolested. Once we get to combat we have potential for a huge number of attacks at a pretty high strength. Thanks to Spawn having d6 attacks (+2 on the charge from rage) we can get between 15 and 40 strength 5 attacks on the charge, which may or may not be poisoned. Not too shabby.
Our next good option is the flying Daemon Prince. While these guys are pretty expensive, they're fast and can easily eat a unit a turn if they can make it to combat. I would run one with either the Black Mace or the Axe of Blind Fury depending on whether or not you take a Khorne Prince. With their wings, they also have the benefit of being hard to hit, which unless you're playing Tau with lots of Skyfire, can mean that your FMC can make it into combat without even taking a wound. The main thing that I find kills these guys is in after you have wiped out your unit. Once he's left alone on the board, he's going to go down, unless you get lucky and get Iron Arm and or Endurance on him. This means that you need to either hold him back until other things get locked in, or bring enough stuff that you can get most of the opponent's army locked in combat.
Another unit that has worked well for me in the past is one that I affectionately call "Kharn and Friends". Kharn and friends is just what it sounds like. Kharn the Betrayer with a unit of either Berzerkers, or Fauzerkers (regular marines with MoK and possible the Icon of Wrath) inside a Landraider with Dozer Blade and Dirge Caster. This is a pretty pricy unit, but they tend to be pretty effective. I've been finding that people aren't taking all that much anti-AV14 in their lists in this edition, making it more likely that your Landraider will survive at least long enough to get Kharn and, by extension, his friends, to where they need to be. Once they hop out, there's not alot that can stand up to that assault. Kharn gets a meaty 7 strength 7 ap 2 attacks on the charge which hit on 2s (and if he's your warlord re-roll) with armourbane, meaning pretty much any unit or vehicle you throw him at is going to have a bad time. His buddies are really just there to soak hits and in the Champion's case, issue and accept challenges, so don't be overly upset when they die.
Anyways, this article is starting to get lengthy so I'm going to leave you all hanging here for now. We'll continue talking about the individual units and ways to combine them in a post next week! Stay tuned!
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