Ok, so for the last couple editions these 10,000 year old badasses have kind of been the whipping boy of the 41 Millennium. Not since their fabled "3.5" edition codex have the Chaos Space Marines been one of the top dogs.
So what happened? Who the fuck cares. All that's history. Lets talk about the here and now!
First off, I wanted to get these guys out of the way because there have been some rumblings as to a new Chaos Codex coming out, so just to make sure that this site is even more useless to you, I decided to do them first.
Lets get into it by starting with the army special rules:
Champion of Chaos is one of those thematic rules that GW used to really push a new facet of the game that they brought over from Fantasy, ironically only to kill off with the birth of Age of Sigmar, but I digress.
This rule basically states that if there is a character in close combat, you must issue, and accept, a challenge. If there are multiple characters you are at liberty to decide who must challenge and accept the challenge.
This is a problem with this though, because any good opponent will just pit your beast of a Chaos Lord vs some weeny sarge, or vice versa, their hardcore beat stick vs your champ which essentially nullifies any and all upgrades you gave him.
There is an up side, sort of, to this. If your character kills another character then you get to roll on a D66 chart and get a Boon of Chaos. Most of these boons are good, some are nearly useless, 2 results turn you into a spawn, but 2 other results turn you into a Daemon Prince, with Armour.
Now, thanks to the way the rule is written, you get to roll on that chart no matter how you kill an enemy character.
Now there are a couple ways to game this and maximize you rolls on the chart. First off, separate you characters shooting attacks from the rest of the squad. Second, put a Dark Apostle in the unit and it allows you to re-roll the result on the chart. Sure, a 105 pt character is a lot for that, but if it saves your 200 pt ass kicking Lord from turning into a spawn, you will thank your lucky stars.
Veterans of the Long War is an upgrade for each model, usually 1 pt per model, and it give each model +1 Ld and Hatred Space Marines. Which, as it turns out, is pretty good. Since the new Astartes book was release with the Space Marine Battle Company are getting more and more popular.
Marks of Chaos are a long time standing upgrade for units and on the basic troops they are pretty straight forward. Where they fall down is when a psyker has one of them. They gain Chaos Focus, which is the primaris power for free, but they then must roll at least once on their patrons chart. Which means an level 1 Psyker can ONLY get powers from their patron god list in the Codex, which isn't exactly good because the Chaos power are hit or miss.
There are a couple good ones though. Both Doombolt and Breath of Chaos from the Tzeentch are good, being low ap and able to hit multiple models. The Nurgle powers are pretty good, with Weapon Virus and Plague Wind leading the way. Weapon Virus is great against big units that put out tons of shots and don't have the ability to re-roll. The Slaanesh powers are meh, with Ecstatic Seisures being pretty good vs large units.
Alright, so lets move onto the actual units in the game starting, of course with the HQ section.
The Daemon Prince is good at combat, can be made a lvl 3 sorcerer, and is usually a flying monstrous creature. You see him all over the place so I won't bother talking about him.
Same goes with the Chaos Lord and the Sorcerer. You see these guys pretty regularly in dozens of different builds all pretty mush doing what they do best just as good as anyone else.
So, who does that leave us with? Well, other than the named characters, who I won't talk about, it leaves us with the previously mentioned Dark Apostle and the Warpsmith.
As previously mentioned, the Dark Apostle can be used to keep your super killy dude from turning into a squiggly gribbly after pasting your opponent's chump characters that were thrown in his way to soak a wound or 2. But he is more than that as well. Since Chaos seems to have a bit of a morale issue, many of the units not having any special rules to help them not run away, this guy gives everyone within 6" of him his own Ld to use, which is 10 of course, and gives his unit Zealot, which is Hatred and Fearless. To one up that ability, in the Crimson Slaughter book he can be bought a weapon that changes that Ld bubble to a Zealot bubble, which is HUGE. Consider you couple this with Foreboding, a Divination power that a Crimson Slaughter Sorcerer can get. You can over watch on full BS, you are fearless, you get to re-roll your attacks on the first round of combat, and you get counter attack. Now put those 2 HQ's in a large, and expensive, unit of Draznicht's Chosen and that is a very dangerous unit to charge. You could give them the MOT and pray to get Forewarning for a 3++!! Throw them in a Dreadclaw drop pod and you can drop that ball of MEQ death anywhere on the table, all for the low low price of 650 points.
We finally come to the Warpsmith. Usually taken as a "fluffy" choice for a themed Iron Warriors or Dark Mechanicum army, he actually has some up sides and I have used him to great effect on a number of occasions. His first ability allows you to lower the cover save of a piece of terrain by 1. Pretty useful vs "turtle" style armies like Tau and IG(or AM if you prefer). Next, he can repair a vehicle on a 4+, or he can curse a vehicle on a 2+ which gives all of it's weapons Get's Hot. YOu might not think that all that shit hot, but I've stopped Pask in a Punisher from shooting for 2 rounds, and then killing himself on the 3rd when times got desperate. He has a 2+ save, a power axe, melta gun, flamer, and bolt pistol, and thanks to his mecha...mechaden...robot arm things, he gets to shoot 2 weapons at a time in the shooting phase and gets +2 attacks in close combat. That's right, with the MoK he has 6 attacks on the charge with a power axe! Too bad he's only WS 4, if only there was some way of giving him Hatred...
Alright, I've yammerd on long enough. I'm gonna take a break and next post I will delve into the...Troops section!
This is gonna be harsh
Until next time, keep them dice rollin
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