Chaos space marines

[Canas]

I got a random start collecting box of chaos space marines for my birthday, anyone know what's a halfway decent load-out for the things in it so I don't regret what I've build them with if I start making a proper army with them somewhere down the line? Some genius decided that these boxes apparently need no explenation of what the various options are, let alone stat-lines.

 

[Padre]

I got a random start collecting box of chaos space marines for my birthday, anyone know what's a halfway decent load-out for the things in it so I don't regret what I've build them with if I start making a proper army with them somewhere down the line? Some genius decided that these boxes apparently need no explenation of what the various options are, let alone stat-lines.

I might wait and see what Killteam looks like. A single box won't do much for you army-wise, but it would work as is for Killteam.

 

[Canas]

I might wait and see what Killteam looks like. A single box won't do much for you army-wise, but it would work as is for Killteam.

I'm not expecting it to make an entire army. Just don't want to end up having the entire box be useless cuz I happenend the pick a bunch of useless weapons. The instruction booklets in it are dissapointingly lacking when compared to AoS ones

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

I would advise to do as @Padre says and save them for either the upcoming Kill Team or use them in Shadow War Armageddon - for some Chaos Cultist new recruits there’s a box GW does for about £5 or so which is nice - some of the old Dark Vengeance ones. I got one of these boxes a while back and painted them up as smuggler crewmen for Necromunda.

Alternatively if you want to you can just expand this into a small 1000 point army to play 6th and 7th Ed 40K with - in these editions Chaos Dreadnoughts (I’m assuming you have one in the SC box) are considerably better than they were in the 4th Ed codex (I have a small army of them myself and a copy of the 4th Ed book), and a Chaos Land Raider, Maulerfiend and Heldrake are some solid choices from the new 6th Ed codex, as well as the Maulerfiend being an awesome model. You get a Terminator character too who can be built as either a Chaos Lord or Sorcerer I think - if you plan to go Tzeentch, I’d say build him as a Sorcerer, otherwise build him as a Chaos Lord. Chaos Lords are strong in combat, able to beat their equivalent from regular Space Marines easily along with many other HQ choices, especially with Terminator armour.

 

[Canas]

I would advise to do as @Padre says and save them for either the upcoming Kill Team or use them in Shadow War Armageddon - for some Chaos Cultist new recruits there’s a box GW does for about £5 or so which is nice - some of the old Dark Vengeance ones. I got one of these boxes a while back and painted them up as smuggler crewmen for Necromunda.

Alternatively if you want to you can just expand this into a small 1000 point army to play 6th and 7th Ed 40K with - in these editions Chaos Dreadnoughts (I’m assuming you have one in the SC box) are considerably better than they were in the 4th Ed codex (I have a small army of them myself and a copy of the 4th Ed book), and a Chaos Land Raider, Maulerfiend and Heldrake are some solid choices from the new 6th Ed codex, as well as the Maulerfiend being an awesome model. You get a Terminator character too who can be built as either a Chaos Lord or Sorcerer I think - if you plan to go Tzeentch, I’d say build him as a Sorcerer, otherwise build him as a Chaos Lord. Chaos Lords are strong in combat, able to beat their equivalent from regular Space Marines easily along with many other HQ choices, especially with Terminator armour.

The box contains 10 chaos space marines, a hellbrute & a terminator chaos lord/sorcerer.

Mostly I'm just trying to figure out what the hell are decent options as the booklet in it explains nothing beyond "this is a gun you can stick on this model". With just this box I have no idea what the difference is between a chainsword and a powerfist other than that I stick a different hand on the model.

Could you gimme a short description of what each option roughly does and wether or not it's terrible? E.g. are they any good with bolters or is it better to just default to chainsowrds. What's the difference between the various icons. What do the various special weapons do (and what is each special weapon, I know one is a plasma cannon and one of the others is supposed to be a flamer, but the two remaining ones both look like they could be flamers) etc.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

The box contains 10 chaos space marines, a hellbrute & a terminator chaos lord/sorcerer.

Mostly I'm just trying to figure out what the hell are decent options as the booklet in it explains nothing beyond "this is a gun you can stick on this model". With just this box I have no idea what the difference is between a chainsword and a powerfist other than that I stick a different hand on the model.

Could you gimme a short description of what each option roughly does and wether or not it's terrible? E.g. are they any good with bolters or is it better to just default to chainswords. What's the difference between the various icons. What do the various special weapons do (and what is each special weapon, I know one is a plasma cannon and one of the others is supposed to be a flamer, but the two remaining ones both look like they could be flamers) etc.

In 6th and 7th Edition Chaos Marines come with bolt pistols and bolters and can have hand weapons at an additional points cost without needing to model the whole lot with hand weapons and pistols, so they can use their hand weapon and bolt pistol in melee to give them an additional attack, along with the bonuses for charging and (if you go Khorne) the Mark of Khorne, giving them a potential 3 attacks each in addition to their good 3+ armour save. You will need to model at least one with hand weapon and pistol as hand weapons are not part of the default profile anymore. For the Champion, however, a Chainsword basically counts as a regular hand weapon in 6th and 7th (don't know about 8th) so if you're fighting regular Space Marines, Necrons or other heavily-armoured armies I would go with the Power Fist as it's AP 2 (meaning it ignores all saves of 2+ or worse) and doubles the wielder's strength to 8. It does also force him to strike last but regular marines and Necrons will struggle to do much damage to your own blokes anyway unless you're locked in melee with an elite unit like Terminators or Lychguard, which ordinary Chaos Marines shouldn't be fighting in melee anyway.

Icon of Wrath gives the unit Furious Charge and a re-roll to charge, and can only be taken by units with Mark of Khorne, which gives them +1 attack as mentioned before. Icon of Flame gives the unit's bolter weapons Soul Blaze and can only be taken by units with Mark of Tzeentch. Icon of Despair gives the unit the Fear special rule and can only be taken by units with Mark of Nurgle. Icon of Excess gives the unit Feel No Pain and can only be taken by units with the Mark of Slaanesh. Finally Icon of Vengeance can be taken by any unit that can take icons and gives the unit Fearless.

Hellbrutes, AKA Chaos Dreadnoughts, can ideally take any combination of shooting weapons and melee weapons and work well in battle.

 

[Canas]

In 6th and 7th Edition Chaos Marines come with bolt pistols and bolters and can have hand weapons at an additional points cost without needing to model the whole lot with hand weapons and pistols, so they can use their hand weapon and bolt pistol in melee to give them an additional attack, along with the bonuses for charging and (if you go Khorne) the Mark of Khorne, giving them a potential 3 attacks each in addition to their good 3+ armour save. You will need to model at least one with hand weapon and pistol as hand weapons are not part of the default profile anymore. For the Champion, however, a Chainsword basically counts as a regular hand weapon in 6th and 7th (don't know about 8th) so if you're fighting regular Space Marines, Necrons or other heavily-armoured armies I would go with the Power Fist as it's AP 2 (meaning it ignores all saves of 2+ or worse) and doubles the wielder's strength to 8. It does also force him to strike last but regular marines and Necrons will struggle to do much damage to your own blokes anyway unless you're locked in melee with an elite unit like Terminators or Lychguard, which ordinary Chaos Marines shouldn't be fighting in melee anyway.

Icon of Wrath gives the unit Furious Charge and a re-roll to charge, and can only be taken by units with Mark of Khorne, which gives them +1 attack as mentioned before. Icon of Flame gives the unit's bolter weapons Soul Blaze and can only be taken by units with Mark of Tzeentch. Icon of Despair gives the unit the Fear special rule and can only be taken by units with Mark of Nurgle. Icon of Excess gives the unit Feel No Pain and can only be taken by units with the Mark of Slaanesh. Finally Icon of Vengeance can be taken by any unit that can take icons and gives the unit Fearless.

Hellbrutes, AKA Chaos Dreadnoughts, can ideally take any combination of shooting weapons and melee weapons and work well in battle.

Mm, right, thanks. At least that makes the hellbrute easy, just pick whatever looks cool for now then. The rest is a bit more questionable but I'l have a look.

 

[Canas]

edit; never mind I figured it out, Im an idiot

 

[Fhanados]

@Canas I play a fair bit of 8th and have been using Chaos Space Marines since 3rd. I'm not a competitive player but I like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to the army (perhaps a little self delusion...) so if you want a rambling opinion of a warp-touched madman let me know!

EDIT: Totally forgot I did this write up at the beginning of 8th. It's based off the Chaos Index so a few things have changed but my opinion of the units is generally the same.
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/death-to-the-false-emperor-chaos-in-8th-edition-40k.19751/

 

[Canas]

that's already closer to what I was looking for though still not entirely what I wanted.
I basicly just want something like

Space marines have these weapon options:
- Bolters
- chainsword + pistol

Bolters are good for X, chainsword for Y. Both are viable

Special equipment:
- Flamer
- Heavy bolter
- PLasma gun
- melta gun
etc.
Flamer is for Y, only works with chainswords
Heavy bolter is for Z, it's kind of terrible
Plasma gun is for X, only works with bolters.
Melta gun doesn't really work cuz the range is just too short for bolters but too long for chainswords.

Actual things I wroteare nonsense but you get the idea. It's impossible to find without owning the codex.

I've aready put em together now anyway by now.'

I've gone with:
Marines with bolters; heavy bolter, plasma gun, mark of tzeentch. Guy with the mark has a plasma pistol. Champion has a plasma pistol and power sword.
Sorcerlord with I think a combi-melta (there's no damn explenation in the lil booklet of what each weapon actually is)
Hellbrute with first + scourge
Also, tzeentch cuz I already have a bunch of tzeentch aos stuff so it's closest to a full army can get

Hopefully it isn't entirely crap or at least a legal loadout

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

I've aready put em together now anyway by now.'

I've gone with:
Marines with bolters; heavy bolter, plasma gun, mark of tzeentch. Guy with the mark has a plasma pistol. Champion has a plasma pistol and power sword.
Sorcerlord with I think a combi-melta (there's no damn explenation in the lil booklet of what each weapon actually is)
Hellbrute with first + scourge
Also, tzeentch cuz I already have a bunch of tzeentch aos stuff so it's closest to a full army can get

Hopefully it isn't entirely crap or at least a legal loadout

That all seems legal to me, except that your whole unit has to have the same mark, if you choose to have one at all, like with Warriors of Chaos. It used to be that you could have just one icon bearer with the Icon of Tzeentch that applied the mark to the whole unit, which made Chaos Marines a bit more distinct from WoC, but in 6th Edition GW decided to make them more like Space Marine versions of WoC and gave them marks instead.

And I would advise that in order to get the best experience out of 40K, I would advise you to get either the 5th Edition Rulebook and CSM 4th Edition Codex (there wasn’t a 5th Ed Codex for CSM) or the 6th Edition Rulebook and Codex (or both), as discounting the horrendously OP Craftworld Eldar Codex, 6th Ed was the last Edition that was really balanced and fun, at least in my view. Afterwards each army just got too congested with units and became too unbalanced for my liking, except for Genestealer Cults which were the one good thing about 7th (and the 7th Edition Codex can be quite easily used in 6th anyway as 7th Edition was 6th Edition with Tactical Objectives, which I don’t care about anyway).

 

[Canas]

When I say mark I meant the icon/banner-thingy.

Also, aren't we at 8th edition by now?

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

When I say mark I meant the icon/banner-thingy.

Also, aren't we at 8th edition by now?

We are, but I still play 5th and 6th and recommend you start off in those editions, as in those editions there was none of this Lords of War nonsense unless you played Apocalypse, and thus in my view it was more balanced and less ridiculous, discounting the horrendous 6th Edition Craftworld Eldar Codex. Also it was easier to get into an army as armies had fewer choices then and it was less overwhelming in terms of what you should get. However, if you primarily go down to your local GW to play games, then by all means go with 8th. I just prefer 5th and 6th to 8th because:
1. I don’t like the new 8th Edition lore (The Tyranids would easily have annihilated the Blood Angels if it wasn’t for GW trying to keep the Space Marine players happy).
2. The game just feels too much of a halfway house between the previous editions of 40K and Age of Sigmar - neither one or the other. I just can’t really get on with it.
3. I hate how GW just kept the previous codex covers for the 8th Edition codices - I just think it looks so tacky and cheap. In previous editions they always dedicated themselves to producing new awesome Codex artwork, yet in 8th they skimp on it almost completely purely to produce all the codices as quickly as possible.

Of course, this is just how I feel. You go with the Edition you want to play.

 

[Fhanados]

that's already closer to what I was looking for though still not entirely what I wanted.
I basicly just want something like

Space marines have these weapon options:
- Bolters
- chainsword + pistol

Bolters are good for X, chainsword for Y. Both are viable

Special equipment:
- Flamer
- Heavy bolter
- PLasma gun
- melta gun
etc.
Flamer is for Y, only works with chainswords
Heavy bolter is for Z, it's kind of terrible
Plasma gun is for X, only works with bolters.
Melta gun doesn't really work cuz the range is just too short for bolters but too long for chainswords.

Actual things I wroteare nonsense but you get the idea. It's impossible to find without owning the codex.

I've aready put em together now anyway by now.'

I've gone with:
Marines with bolters; heavy bolter, plasma gun, mark of tzeentch. Guy with the mark has a plasma pistol. Champion has a plasma pistol and power sword.
Sorcerlord with I think a combi-melta (there's no damn explenation in the lil booklet of what each weapon actually is)
Hellbrute with first + scourge
Also, tzeentch cuz I already have a bunch of tzeentch aos stuff so it's closest to a full army can get

Hopefully it isn't entirely crap or at least a legal loadout

Ok so when it comes to the basic Chaos Marine squad they're pretty flexible, but the box doesn't contain the BEST options for them. So considering the contents of the box this is my take on them...

In my opinion Bolters are pretty much always better than Bolt Pistol and Chainsword. You have longer range so you start doing damage earlier, you get double the shots at 12" compared to a bolt pistol. Since the basic Chaos Marine squad doesn't really have any specialist close combat weapons other than what you put on the champion I think it's generally not worth using them as an assault unit.

Heavy bolters are pretty decent now so I think you made the right choice there. Ditto on the plasma gun. Plasma is a very solid all-rounder and much more reliable than a meltagun due to number of shots and extra range. Flamers are just not that good.

Champion with Plasma Pistol and Power Sword is decent. I gave all mine Power Fists but the reality is that it makes the squad too expensive and makes the weilder's attacks less reliable. Good choice here.

The icon bearer is just another squad member, so by giving him a plasma pistol you've actually made the squad illegal. A 10 man unit of Chaos Space Marines can only have 2 weapons upgrades (not including the champion) and adding a plasma pistol to the icon bearer means your squad has 3.

Helbrute with fist and scourge is possibly the best way to equip them. Good choice.

The Lord/Sorc comes with a combi melta and it's pretty good since you can teleport pretty close to your opponent. I think you've made the right choice using a Sorcerer instead of a Lord. I find that the Chaos powers are really good.

 

[Canas]

Ok so when it comes to the basic Chaos Marine squad they're pretty flexible, but the box doesn't contain the BEST options for them. So considering the contents of the box this is my take on them...

In my opinion Bolters are pretty much always better than Bolt Pistol and Chainsword. You have longer range so you start doing damage earlier, you get double the shots at 12" compared to a bolt pistol. Since the basic Chaos Marine squad doesn't really have any specialist close combat weapons other than what you put on the champion I think it's generally not worth using them as an assault unit.

Heavy bolters are pretty decent now so I think you made the right choice there. Ditto on the plasma gun. Plasma is a very solid all-rounder and much more reliable than a meltagun due to number of shots and extra range. Flamers are just not that good.

Champion with Plasma Pistol and Power Sword is decent. I gave all mine Power Fists but the reality is that it makes the squad too expensive and makes the weilder's attacks less reliable. Good choice here.

The icon bearer is just another squad member, so by giving him a plasma pistol you've actually made the squad illegal. A 10 man unit of Chaos Space Marines can only have 2 weapons upgrades (not including the champion) and adding a plasma pistol to the icon bearer means your squad has 3.

Helbrute with fist and scourge is possibly the best way to equip them. Good choice.

The Lord/Sorc comes with a combi melta and it's pretty good since you can teleport pretty close to your opponent. I think you've made the right choice using a Sorcerer instead of a Lord. I find that the Chaos powers are really good.

wohoo, made a nearly legal unit. Ah well we'l just pretend it's a normal bolt pistol

I'm surprised the plasma pistols count as upgrades though, in the instructions for putting em together they're showns as being optional to take either bolt pistols or plasma pistols with the chainswords Then again the instruction booklet is sorely lacking when compared to AoS, only the hellbrute actually states what each weapon is and has the instructions like "put bit 1 here and bit 2 there" the rest just has little more than "an arm goes here, you figure out which arm you need for it".