Building the Perfect Chaos Marine Army

[me_in_japan]

ha! argue ye not with the Primarch, for his vengeance is swift and comes with a pointy stick (well, a pointed remark, at least.)

OK: taking the dex purely as a means to create an army that will do well in a game of 40k, rather than as something which expands/builds upon 40k and creates that atmostphere within a game:

HQ: Lords are nice, and if given power armour, jump pack and a combi melta can score back their points easily. Throw in a power weapon and youve got a nice wee marine splatter.
Psyker: much like a lord, really, but psychic.
Special characters: need a separate discussion.

Chosen: Pick a job for them and they'll do it well. Give em all the same weapon. If you mix weapons, half of them will be wasting their time every turn.
Termis: I still dont know how to use these. Points sink?
Possessed: Sorry, theyre poo.
Dread: Not as nerfed as people think. Ive used mine every game, and every game it has delivered. I'd say give it some anti infantry weapons (Hbolt, Hflam) and walk it in - walk-shoot-walk-shoot-charge.

outside of the HQ and Elite, youre basically dealing with a standard marine dex with minor modifications (USRs for Legion marines). The two exceptions are:

Oblits: teleport them in, shoot stuff. done.
defilers: use like a dread, but target bigger things when shooting.

[Colonel Voss]

I think that saying it is boring and not criticizing anything else makes a big statement alone. I didn't lash into the units, just the style of the book. Overall, my old list would still work pretty well. A moderately strong unit of terminators, a unit of bezerkers, a unit of plague marines, two tactical squads with a havoc squad and supported by 2 dreadnoughts would still do respectfully. What it would need would be some mechanization and something in fast attack. The only real weakness would be the two squads of demons (flesh hounds and plague bearers) just wouldn't hold up as well as they use to.

[Admiral-Badruck]

Great I am now getting info about all the good and bad of the units not about the fluff thanks guys... good posts... does anyone else have any thing they would like to add

[Colonel Voss]

defilers are good. being on the receiving end of Phil's was quite the lesson in pain

[Admiral-Badruck]

Defilers V Oblitz

pros cons I am having a had time with this one...

[me_in_japan]

defilers - pros: harder to kill, faster, can choppety chop most anything in close combat.
cons: fire magnet. ugly model. hard to hide. makes you choose shoot-or-fleet every turn.

oblits - pros: as flexible as the proverbial. can deep strike wherever the heck they want. small model (compared
to defiler) so can hide behind walls and tanks when necessary.
cons: cant ride in transport, so slow. relatively easy to kill (plasma guns etc.) ugly model. not good in
close combat.

...as i see it.

[Primarch]

Defilers V Oblitz

pros cons I am having a had time with this one...

Apples and Oranges

The Defiler has a powerful long range blast weapon and awesome cc ability, the Oblitz have some great anti-tank and reasonable anti-infantry but tend to die when exposed to power weapons. Both fear lascannons.
I think 1 Defiler and 1 pair of Oblitz is a decent enough combo. You dont HAVE to take 3 of the same unit in each FOC slot.

[Admiral-Badruck]

Phil's DFs are as cools as it gets and I rather like the look of the Oblits as well... but it is very hard to hide DF... hummm...

[Danguinius]

In my opinion, there is still not enough difference between Obliterators and Terminators; and Oblits are still way better than Termies, so you don`t see them much. I have a lot of plastic Termies that I took my time painting and I want to use them, but it`s hard in any list 1500 or lower. I think the stripped down 30 point Termies could be useful if spammed (3 units of 5 with minimal upgrades) because the point cost is not too exorbitant. But otherwise, why wouldn`t you take Oblits in almost any CSM army list. The only more of a no-brainer choice is using a Daemon Prince. As I wrote a few posts back, I liked the streamlined approach to the codex (some may say "boring") when the assumption was ALL codices would go this route. But compared to everything that has come out since, CSM does have some internal balance issues and some units that make scratch your head and wonder what they were thinking.

Danguinius

[Admiral-Badruck]

I think that makes perfect sense... I like my terminators they look so cool but I really do not know if they are worth it...