Tactica: Chaos Space Marines - 6th Edition

[Charax]

Anyone have any thoughts about Forgeworld units and how they fare with the new rules?

Granted, we're due an update telling us things like Hull points (although that could be guessed) but we can take them at the moment.

Blood Slaughterer: Both Rage and Fury of Khorne replace a model's +1 attacks for charging, so they're mutually exclusive. Until it gets updated I guess you get to choose between a reliable +2 or a risky +D3. All the Daemon Engines would benefit from being Daemons rather than Daemonic, as Daemonic isn't going to come into play all that often.

Contemptor Dreadnought: Well, this little puppy got a boost. I imagine it'll probably have 3 Hull Points, but being able to ignore glancing hits on a 4+ will make it seem much tougher. Khorne dedication got a minor nerf, for the same reason the Blood slaughterer did. Slaanesh upgrade got a little better because of how Defensive grenades work now

Blight Drones: Not a lot has changed here. Still pretty awesome

Mamon's a bit nastier, he causes Fear and has poisoned (2+) AP2 attacks (with a reroll against most things). Due to SaP he can't Overwatch with his AP3, Poisoned (2+), he also gets all the normal buffs to FnP

Uraka hasn't changed much - his attacks still cause Instant Death (making him the bane of Nurgle armies) and the boost to psychic powers makes his 2+ ward even better. Monstrous creature changes help him get into combat and hit hard, but he didn't have many special rules to begin with, so not much of a change.

Plague Hulk - the biggest change to the Hulk comes from the Noxious Fumes. Defensive grenades give Stealth, which gives +1 to cover saves, and Noxious Fumes give defensive grenades and a 5+ cover save, so you could read that as always being 4+. Even if you don't, a Plague Hulk in cover is a hard thing to shift. Not much has changed close combat-wise, and the Rot Cannon's not great - rending's nice an' all, but it doesn't kick in very often.

Plague Ogryns - why do you have Plague Ogryns in your army?

Hell Talon - One of our only fliers, it seems a little overcosted. It carries 8 bombs but can only drop one a turn, so...yeah, that's kinda useless. I wouldn't take one - for 180+ points, I'd want something that has more weapons

Hell Blade - well, it's a decent interceptor, but it sure as hell isn't cheap. Won't survive very long in a dogfight, but can fly in and out out an OK amount of accurate Skyfire firepower. Unless they get a significant boost, not worth it

Decimator - I imagine this'll have at least 4 hull points. Unholy Vigor's not nearly as useful now, and a front armour of 12 isn't exactly eliciting much confidence - but the siege claws got an indirect boost from the new fortification rules, and overwatch-firing a heavy flamer's going to be a nasty surprise for anyone charging it. Overall a slight nerf. still a worthwhile choice, but I'd rather take a contemptor (although we can take allied decimators!)

[Cambion Daystar]

Defensive grenades only give stealth if the firer is within 8" i believe.

[Clarkson]

Anyone have any thoughts about Forgeworld units and how they fare with the new rules?

Granted, we're due an update telling us things like Hull points (although that could be guessed) but we can take them at the moment.

Blood Slaughterer: Both Rage and Fury of Khorne replace a model's +1 attacks for charging, so they're mutually exclusive. Until it gets updated I guess you get to choose between a reliable +2 or a risky +D3. All the Daemon Engines would benefit from being Daemons rather than Daemonic, as Daemonic isn't going to come into play all that often.

Contemptor Dreadnought: Well, this little puppy got a boost. I imagine it'll probably have 3 Hull Points, but being able to ignore glancing hits on a 4+ will make it seem much tougher. Khorne dedication got a minor nerf, for the same reason the Blood slaughterer did. Slaanesh upgrade got a little better because of how Defensive grenades work now

Blight Drones: Not a lot has changed here. Still pretty awesome

Mamon's a bit nastier, he causes Fear and has poisoned (2+) AP2 attacks (with a reroll against most things). Due to SaP he can't Overwatch with his AP3, Poisoned (2+), he also gets all the normal buffs to FnP

Uraka hasn't changed much - his attacks still cause Instant Death (making him the bane of Nurgle armies) and the boost to psychic powers makes his 2+ ward even better. Monstrous creature changes help him get into combat and hit hard, but he didn't have many special rules to begin with, so not much of a change.

Plague Hulk - the biggest change to the Hulk comes from the Noxious Fumes. Defensive grenades give Stealth, which gives +1 to cover saves, and Noxious Fumes give defensive grenades and a 5+ cover save, so you could read that as always being 4+. Even if you don't, a Plague Hulk in cover is a hard thing to shift. Not much has changed close combat-wise, and the Rot Cannon's not great - rending's nice an' all, but it doesn't kick in very often.

Plague Ogryns - why do you have Plague Ogryns in your army?

Hell Talon - One of our only fliers, it seems a little overcosted. It carries 8 bombs but can only drop one a turn, so...yeah, that's kinda useless. I wouldn't take one - for 180+ points, I'd want something that has more weapons

Hell Blade - well, it's a decent interceptor, but it sure as hell isn't cheap. Won't survive very long in a dogfight, but can fly in and out out an OK amount of accurate Skyfire firepower. Unless they get a significant boost, not worth it

Decimator - I imagine this'll have at least 4 hull points. Unholy Vigor's not nearly as useful now, and a front armour of 12 isn't exactly eliciting much confidence - but the siege claws got an indirect boost from the new fortification rules, and overwatch-firing a heavy flamer's going to be a nasty surprise for anyone charging it. Overall a slight nerf. still a worthwhile choice, but I'd rather take a contemptor (although we can take allied decimators!)

you forgot the dreadclaw.. our other flyer.. might actually be good this edition..

[Erwos]

The CSM book is far from the worst codex in the game.

From a competitive standpoint, it is almost dead last. I'm not going to argue about this with you, it's not exactly an uncommon opinion. Chaos will always be my first love, but I'm not blind to its current faults.

Anyways, I was poking through the rulebook this morning, and found a small easter egg: Chaos terminator champions are now characters, so that means, on a roll of six, they get to allocate their wounds (shooting or melee) to whomever they want in the target unit. And, remember, you can take as many termie champs as you want, and they get an extra attack. I am uncertain exactly how to leverage this in an effective fashion. I guess you could use Reaper autocannons and snipe out high-value targets with them? Twin-linked is handy for that, albeit you're paying a relatively high cost for the privilege. The change to rapid-fire movement also makes plain-old rapid-firing bolters useful for this, if it's against a 5+ save unit.

I guess you could also use it effectively with TL-LCs, but you'd already be doing a challenge to pop-out the hidden powerfist... then again, killing the special/heavy guys is worthwhile. *ponder*

Anyways, what's the general consensus? Does this make the termie champ upgrade a reasonable deal now?

[IAMNOTHERE]

So characters can snipe can they? A noise champ with siren is an awesome choice then. S5 AP3 template?

Same goes for lucious the eternal.

[twistedmarine]

From a competitive standpoint, it is almost dead last. I'm not going to argue about this with you, it's not exactly an uncommon opinion. Chaos will always be my first love, but I'm not blind to its current faults.

My armies are chaos and nids, and nids are much worse off. Chaos space marines have power armor and much more options, just that makes them more competitive than most xenos books.

[Sekhmet]

So characters can snipe can they? A noise champ with siren is an awesome choice then. S5 AP3 template?

Same goes for lucious the eternal.

Shots from weapons that scatter or do not Roll to Hit can never be Precision Shots.

[IAMNOTHERE]

Oh well, worth a shot.

[Lemenhead]

Wow, that's a great find. The big (read: abusive) thing you can do with units composed of characters is use "Look out Sir" to allocate Wounds. The internet is already freaking about about Nob Bikers and Paladins which are also both composed of characters. Basically you get a wound on your chainfist/combi-melta, you say "look out sir" and on a roll of a 4+ you can allocate to another model. This has all kinds of applications (kill the less useful model, allocate to ruin a potential charge, etc...)

[Brotheroracle]

So I think its safe to say for now every list needs 3 things:
Terminators
Anti Terminator weapons
Anti Flier weapons

So what is the best TDA load out?
What are the good in list options for AA fire?
Are foot slogging plasma squads worth it?

Look out sir is only really useful with multi-wound models.

[Excessus]

Quantity works pretty well against termies anyway, those ones are going to come sooner or later...

[Kevlar]

Can't people start a forgeworld thread for the forgeworld crap?

[Charax]

Can't you start a whining thread for your whining crap?

[FraustyTheSnowman]

Word Charax...so far the only game of 6th I've gotten in was with my chaos, including my decimator. Performed very nice, though it did eventually get blown up by something from a grey knight terminator squad (psycannon perhaps?). Wrecked a razor back right off the bat, then killed a couple devistators on the next turn. Can't wait until I have four of them. Think I'm going to run three shooty decimators as daemon elites and have one assault based allied from the chaos marines.

[Erwos]

So what is the best TDA load out?

My gut feeling is that you need at least one champ with TL-LCs to handle challenges. I'm unsure whether it's worth ten points to give them an extra attack, LO,S!, and sniping. They are still overpriced compared to the more recent codexes, and the lack of storm shields is extremely painful... if you run into a unit of assault terminators with TH/LCs, you're screwed. But Chaos has never had much of an answer to that.

Oh, and they didn't even bother to give CSM termies the option of taking power axes or power mauls in the FAQ, despite the fact that the damn models come with them. Classy, GW, very classy. That new codex cannot get here soon enough.

What are the good in list options for AA fire?

The only plausible AA option in the list is a flying German lash DP. Plan on bringing two to every game. Otherwise, allies.

Are foot slogging plasma squads worth it?

Are you referring to Chosen with a bunch of plasma guns? My gut feeling is, probably not any more than they used to be. No more charging out of reserves removes a huge amount of utility from them. I'm willing to be proven wrong about this, but I ultimately think that unit is a path to nowhere.

Look out sir is only really useful with multi-wound models.

Not quite true. It's not as useful, certainly, but being able to reallocate wounds half the time can be a life saver. You're not always taking thirty wounds on a unit... you might save yourself by reallocating one or two of them.

[Xandros]

Oh, and they didn't even bother to give CSM termies the option of taking power axes or power mauls in the FAQ, despite the fact that the damn models come with them. Classy, GW, very classy. That new codex cannot get here soon enough.

It's in the rules. No FAQ needed.

[Erwos]

It's in the rules. No FAQ needed.

Which rules?

[Clarkson]

Which rules?

did you miss the stupidly big book that came out on the weekend?

[Erwos]

did you miss the stupidly big book that came out on the weekend?

To be fair, I may have missed a particular page in that book... as you've mentioned, it's stupidly big.

[samiens]

It says on the power weapons entry that where 'power weapon' is referred to you use WYSIWYG to determine the type, unless it has additional codex rules. Threrefore we get the full use of differentiated power weapons.

On the downside daemon weapons, except for Typhus manreaper, are all unusual daemon weapons and therefore AP3