Finally cracked it…pt 1

So usually when a new codex comes out I will sit down with a bottle of Pepsi and Oreos and sit for a good 3 hours taking in each page, until it sinks into my head. Usually I can very quickly see units and combinations that I can break. Even the new daemon book I have a couple of solid ideas...

However there is an elephant in the room, and it's name is codex chaos space marines!

Yes, I've loved chaos since 4th ed, the codex with more choice than an ice cream parlour, however I've never in the last few months written a list I'm truely happy with.

I'm not 100% sure why, I just look at it and think, another flavour of marines does this better. What got me really stuck with the chaos book was trying to work out how the army needed to play. After figuring how I thought they work best, I then wrote a list of what I felt where the game breakers in the codex. From there I wanted to see how I could apply this to a list:

1. Heldrakes - they are by far the stand out unit in the codex, torrent s6 ap3 flamer with 360 Los, add in iwnd, daemonic and vector strike and you got a serious wrecking machine.

2. Cultist - at 5 point a pop they are a bargain, the ability to take large blobs as well as space marines and there fire power mean you don't need guard as an ally, making the cultists fearless then makes the unit a pain for your opponent.

3.Sorcerer - you can get a mastery level 3 sorcerer for 115pts, ld10, force weapon, power armour. That's very cheap, with access to biomacy and telekineses. Biomacy I think is. The second best lore, second only to divination. 50% chance of getting either iron arm, or feel no pain and it will not die, this makes you very good at buffing, a true utility unit, bargain.

Now I'm not saying that these guys are the only good units in the book, I happen to think noise marines are the dogs b*****s aha, but they are such a huge point sink, it's scary. Losing this unit will hamper your army in such a way I'm not happy with it.

Another shout out goes to any daemon prince with with armour and black mace, very solid choice, but once again it's over 300pts..

Khorne lord on juggernaught with axe of fury is another solid choice, but doesn't fit what I need.

So, these 3 units are the three units that stand out for me. Now what I needed to do was apply this to an army that would hugely benefit this added enforcement. Daemons have just dropped, and although I like the models I'm not feeling them, so other allies of convenience are imperial guard, orks, and necrons.

I love imperial guard, they have that band of brothers feel to them, but I would only ever want guard in an imperial army, I just prefer them to be loyalist, add this to the fact the list above really doesn't benefit from the above.

Necrons in the new rules and new fluff are badass, the models are some of the best gw has released in years, the whole range has a new feel and look to it. Fluff wise I prefer this new "ancient empire" feel to them, rather than the flat, dead, kill everything feel to the previous editions. As for the army, necrons suffer on three main things.

1. Lack of boots on the ground to claim objectives, they are so mobile, that you can get side tracked with your units, you need a prescience on the board.

2. Lack of ap2/3 weapons, necrons are a high strength low ap army (s7 ap-) they really on making people take saves, and try to shoot you to dust rather then vaporising your in one hit.

3. No way to stop psykers and no way to cast powers, they miss and entire section of the game.

Then we have orks, we all know my hatred of them. Nothing in my body wants me to buy 1 ork let alone an army.

So necrons fit the bill better. My allied section of chaos will look like this:

Chaos sorcerer
Mastery lv 3

30 cultists
3 flamers

1 heldrake

Now this seems a bit backwards, I haven't decided on my main force, yet I've settled on my allies.
So now I must design the feel for the army. This will decide what I want, need and should have to play against any opponent. So in my next post I will discuss what I need to include.