Post Team Game Chaos Marine Thoughts

Tonight I will be getting in my first two league games with the new Chaos Space Marine codex. The league is an 1850 point adventure to get ready for Adepticon and the Dark Star GT. Each month players play three games against an assigned opponent. You are required to use the same list in each game. This format is great to meet a few new people in the club as well as face some armies you might not normally face. I talked the guy running it into doing Bay Area Open missions (Thanks Reece for coming up with such a great system!). Not only are the rulebook missions more accessible to people, but the way they are structured in this format is really balanced and leads to fun games. The max 10 points per game is great for keeping score as well.

Tuesday my Adepticon team met up and played a team game together. The results of that game is neither here nor there since one guy’s 1K list only had 500 points of models in it (and my two Heldrakes paired with a Necron airforce was extremely brutal); after that game though we played 2 vs. 1 in a 2K game. It was my Chaos against a mixed CSM/Sister of Battle force. Here is what I learned.


I greatly benefit from going first with my list. Not only do the lascannons act as a great alpha strike, but the havocs do die from a full army of shooting. This is part of why I don’t put extra models in the units – if my opponent does not want me to have long ranged weapons they will kill these units to the man, regardless of how many are in the squad. The other huge benefit of going first between killing transports and getting my reserves faster is that I can keep my opponent pushed back in their deployment zone; between a flying daemon prince and a terminator filled land raider each moving up 12” I actually had to move units backwards my first turn to keep my opponent out of charge range.

Terminators are pretty meh. I used them in the team game and I faced them in the second game and in no situation were they impressive. I think if I run them again (in a situation other than babysitting Typhus) I would make them Khorne to boost their number of attacks and try to make them dangerous enough to warrant their inclusion.

The land raider the other team brought also quickly died on my first turn between the flamers and lascannons. I still am not set on land raiders in this edition as being worth bringing in the meta, even with less melta. I certainly will be continuing to take land raider defense though. In his part of the team list he is next going to try a defiler and some noise marines for sweet anti-infantry action.

Screamers are the new hot diggity. When the daemon update came out I was all about the flamers, but now I see that these guys are the perfect precision tool for either light infantry via sweep attacks or heavy infantry and mech with their AP2 armorbane attacks. Even with me forgetting their 4+ save for turbo boosting and losing more models than I should have they were still the boss. The screamers schooled the terminators, killed Celestine, chaperoned the daemon prince to his grave, and sweep attacked a whole pile of regular battle sisters. Their speed is great for my army, forcing shots off of my scoring units and keeping people back in their deployment zone, remaining a threat no matter where they drop in.

I have found with my shambling zombie horde to actually feel quite shambly. Without a run they are very slow, even slower when each turn the first few models die. It was not until turn six that I got one squad of zombies onto the relic at the center of the table (part of this was due to having to move around a large terrain piece in my deployment zone. Their slow speed makes the dragons all the more important. If I have less objectives than my opponent the zombies will never get there, and so I must have a reliable way to get models off of backfield scoring positions.

Typhus with cultist is loltastic in challenges. They give him six rerolls, which I primarily use to reroll armor and FNP saves. Considering the 2+/5++ and the FNP 5+++ he has the rerolls make him an indestructible tank. Then factor in his S6, AP2, daemon weapon and his ability to use the force rule and you know eventually he will kill whatever he faces (unless your opponent rolls a million 5+ saves like the daemon prince did). So far though, every time he locks in with a decked out combat character he wins through the survivability of his rerolls.

People keep telling me to switch to autocannons on the havocs. To be honest though, massed lascannons are far too awesome. Between doubling out units and deleting armor they are great. When there are no other targets, four lascannons become great anti-air. Even if only one hits there is a good chance it will penetrate and do something good for me.

Look for full battle reports early next week for my first two league games, first against Sisters of Battle with Imperial Guard allies and then against vanilla marines.