Chaos Space Marine Analysis and List Building: Part Three

This series of posts has been composed a few paragraphs at a time over the last week as I have begun the journey of learning a new book, and play style, as I move away from tyranids this next tournament season. Rather than changing previous ideas or reworking this post I have left it as is. I feel that is shows the process I use while creating and testing lists as well as providing insight behind why I am and will continue to make the list building choices I have been. This is part three of four interconnected posts.

So after I made two Chaos Space Marine lists in part two, I started playing theory hammer in my head, and decided I value the high rate of fire of the autocannons over the potential utility of the terminators. Ideally the 16 S7 shots would be able to work toward replacing the 24 S6 shots that I normally get out of my Carnifex units. I tested the second list (with the small shift in dropping the Icon of Wrath for the 4^th autocannon in the second havoc squad) against a Tyranid list with two flying combat hive tyrants, two trygon primes, doom of malan’tai, five hive guard, one genestealer squad with a broodlord, and a lot of hormagaunts.

We rolled up the relic and vanguard strike with night fight in effect. I went first and killed one hive guard with all my shooting (nearly all of his army was in cover, and both Tyrants were either out of line of site or out of my range). He had iron arm on both tyrants, with his warlord being T9 all but one turn of the game. I moved my zombie horde forward as well as my biker gang, leaving them on the middle line behind my aegis. His shooting did very little, and he progressed toward the middle.


At this point I realized I never rolled for daemons, let alone deep struck any of them last turn; rookie mistake. I got all of my reserves but the flamers on turn two, but he had spaced out well and each dragon only got five gants with their flamers. I brought the plaguebearers in behind his line trying to draw at least one of his close combat squads away from the center where the relic was. The drakes were able to kill the non-warlord tyrant with their vector strikes getting me first blood. I charged my warlord and bikers into a squad of hormagaunts, killing the whole unit. I directed my shooting at the genestealers, bringing them down to four stealers and the broodlord. After my movement I have one unit of zombies two inches from the relic.

My opponent gets one trygon (who he places behind the heldrakes so as to avoid a vector strike) and doom of malan’tai (who arrives in the center of my backfield) from reserve. Doom kills 17 cultists the turn he arrived with his brain leeching power. He charges two units of hormagants into the bikers after shooting into the bikers with his hive guard. After combat I am down to only three bikes and my lord, but he lost a lot of gants in the process. His remaining tyrant charges the cultist squad by the objective so they won’t be able to pick it up.

I fly both heldrakes off of the table, bringing him down to only two hive guard after the vector strikes. I am presented with two choices. I can hang my zombies back away from the relic, or I can push them forward, past doom, to go for the objective (the only way to the objective would be through doom’s 6” death bubble). I chose the wrong answer, losing 35 zombies to doom by the end of the game from trying to push them to the table center. The flamers deep stuck in but scattered back away from his tyrant and toward doom. They took three wounds from dangerous terrain tests, but passed their doom Ld save.

The game continued in a mercilessly bloody affair. My plaguebearers beat the stealers in combat, finished off the hormagaunts after the tyrant killed my lord in a challenge, and even brought his warlord down to one wound in combat. After the tyrant killed them I vector struck him, removing him from the table. Typhus with a little autocannon backup killed the second trygon (the first was vector struck to death), but he died in close combat against doom of malan’tai. At the end of turn six when the game ended I had my havocs, a single zombie an inch from the relic, and my herald of nurgle in a ruin scoring linebreaker. My opponent only had doom and the spore. I won 3-1 after getting all of the secondaries; the relic did not move once during the game.

It was great to face a nid army and actual get to play against it after the curb stomping I received last time I played one. Iron arm on tyrants are no joke, my shooting was completely useless against them. On top of that, I totally underestimated doom. I guess all of the games I played with him where he did nothing made me not realize his potential.

Heldrake – Most of my own, and the internet’s, love for this unit has been based on the flamer, I killed two hive tyrants, a trygon, and a full unit of hive guard with vector strikes. Just another reason these guys are the definition of awesome right now.

Zombies – These guys are super slow. Not being able to run is a bigger issue than I thought it would be. They are literally the definition of a bad troop in the relic. I will need to come up with a way to rectify this, as there will be times when I cannot devote all of my firepower on killing cheap units that are trying to grab my heretical items from the table center!

Havocs – I am not set on them with autocannons. I was rolling low on the to hit side, and will need to play against mech before casting a final judgment, but I would rather pay a bit more for something not S7.

Lord – I am still jazzed about this guy, but he gets punked anytime he fights something scary. I can get better anti-infantry for 170 points, so he will be sitting on the bench my next few games.

So what is changing? First, I need a way of tar-pitting things not only death stars like paladins, but also things like hive tyrants or decked out daemon princes. The answer here is easy – 35 zombies. This is not only a reliable scoring unit, but it will last a long time in combat against anything. Second, I am adding lascannons. Lots of them. I didn’t play back in the day when people put as many lascannons as they could in their list, but as someone who played Dark Eldar, high strength low AP weapons are always useful. Having lots of them is even better.

Credit: GMort's Chaotica

Third, earlier this week Hulksmash made a blog post using the Masque as a daemon allied HQ. She is incredibly fragile at 2W, T3, and is unable to join units which is a huge turn off on a 100 point investment. What she does have going for herself is the fact that she can pavane three units a turn. For those not in the loop, pavane is like the lash of submission psychic power from the old CSM book, except it has only a 1D6” range of movement in the target unit, and because it is a daemonic gift and not a psychic power there is no psychic test or deny the witch roll. All I have to do is roll to hit. The Masque is allowed to do this three times a turn. If you are following, I have three units that shoot flame templates which ignore armor in my army. I believe she could match up incredibly well with what I am putting together for my chaos build. If you don’t understand why you can just look at the picture to the right for a full explanation as to why being able to move my opponents models before using templates is a beautiful thing. Taking these changes into account my current list is

Typhus
35 Cultists
11 Cultists
10 Cultists
10 Cultists
Heldrake (Baleflamer)
Heldrake (Baleflamer)
6 Havocs (4 Lascannon)
6 Havocs (4 Lascannon)
5 Havocs (4 Lascannon)

Masque
9 Flamers of Tzeentch
5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle

Aegis Defense Line (Quad Gun)


I got two games with this list last night, so look for my reflections of that on Monday in the final installment of this analysis and list building segment!

As I stated at the beginning, this is the third of a four part series on my initial list building and testing of the new Chaos Space Marine book. Because of the composition process there will be things in this post that I disagree with in later posts. That is part of the raw analysis as I develop a new list.