CSM 2250 pts & list tactics

I've never posted my CSM list around here before. Just wanted to get some ideas on it, as I've already asked around everyplace else.

Chaos Space Marines: 2250 pts

Daemon Prince Zyzlaxen: 155
-Mark of Slaaneesh
-Wings
-Lash of Submission

Daemon Prince Krag: 175 pts
-Mark of Nurgle
-Wings
-Warptime

10 Chaos Marines: 275 pts
-Icon of Khorne
-2x Flamers
-Champion w/ Powerfist & Combi-Flamer
-Chaos Rhino

10 Chaos Marines: 285 pts
-Icon of Khorne
-2x Meltaguns
-Champion w/ Powerfist & Combi-Melta
-Chaos Rhino

10 Khorene Berserkers: 285 pts
-Skull Champion w/ Power Fist
-Chaos Rhino

10 Khorne Berserkers: 285 pts
-Skull Champion w/ Power Fist
-Chaos Rhino

8 Raptors: 240 pts
-Icon of Khorne
-2 Flamers
-Champion w/ Powerfist

8 Raptors: 250 pts
-Icon of Khorne
-2x Meltaguns
-Champion w/ Powerfist

2 Obliterators: 150 pts

2 Obliterators: 150 pts


The fluff story behind this army is that two rival Daemon Princes, Zyzlaxen and Krag, are seeing which of them can cause more damage and disorientation. For the pride of their respective patrons, naturally. They commandeer Khorne forces because they are the easiest to manipulate, of all the Night Lords' factions. Khorne also has the most populous of all forces, and thus are easily replaceable. This is particularly important for the rival princes, as they will stop at nothing to one-up each other. Of course, the hapless soldiers of Khorne either don't know or don't care about their commanders' rivalry, as they are solely concerned with the shedding of blood and the taking of skulls in hopes that one day, their own patron would smile on them with such immortality.

The goal of this list is rapid target saturation. Everything here will be moving 12" on the first turn, either blasting forward full steam, or redeploying. I have never faced an opponent capable of dealing with enough of these units to stop me from hitting his lines, and those armies that can are the kind that crumple like wet kleenex when they get hit in CC by anything. A trick I use to this end, to varying effectiveness, is "forgetting" to use Smoke Launchers on Rhinos whose cargo has already moved into position. This not only gives me a Smoke Launcher to use on a subsequent turn, should the Rhino survive, but it basically lets me dictate to the opponent which Rhinos they are going to target first. Because Lash isn't the only way to get your opponent to do what you want.

Speaking of which, the sole purpose of the Lashprince, aside from the aforementioned target saturation, is for Dawn of War. I either want to keep the opponent from getting froggy enough to deploy on the 24" line, or be able to punish him painfully for doing so. The Lashprince dies quickly, on account of being, well, a Lashprince waltzing out in front of 2250 points of guns. I actually encourage this because, if my Lashprince dies, the firepower it ate would've put down some Rhinos convincingly, and the Rhinos serve basically the same purpose as the Lashprince: to get the jump on the enemy units. If the Lashprince survives, I usually use him to set up double-charges. Sure he forfeits his ability to charge himself most times, but I'd rather lose my Lash and keep my Berserkers than lose my Berserkers and keep my Lash.

The Raptors may seem like a strange choice to some, particularly as I have Marines with virtually identical loadouts, but I've grown quite fond of Raptors in an army like this. What they lack in scoring status and points efficiency, they make up for in threat range. Basically, if you want to surround one of my Rhinos, you had best be able to hold off the countercharge of 16 Khornate Raptors. Not surprisingly, very few people attempt to charge my Rhinos. Not only are they a potent psychological threat, but they're also my workhorse units. They're not scoring, so I don't have to worry about keeping them alive. They also have really long movement ranges to get their weapons into optimum positions, quickly crawl up lightly-defended flanks, guide Oblits into place, pick off stragglers for their KPs, and basically do the kinds of things that CSM should do, but are too wasteful to use large scoring units on.

The Chaos Marines in Rhinos are the big backup. With a potential 3 meltas or 3 flamers, as well as no necessary need to charge themselves, they can warm stuff up for the Raptors to charge. They can work on their own, but they're usually not strong enough to hurt assaulters enough to keep them away. The Berserkers then follow this up by countering the enemy chargers, after the CSM do the hard part of sucking up the charges. This is one way I handle opponents mechanizing their armies (especially their assault armies).

I keep the Oblits in reserves. With all the 12" moving Icons I have, I can basically get the Oblits to wherever I need, whenever they show up, without ever risking a scatter. What I usually try to do with this is deep strike near a Transport, then use the 2x TLed Meltaguns from each unit to try and open the tank and evict the squishy cargo, which my Raptors gleefully jump on.

Comments? Critiques?

If you can sacrifice a few points you should give your rhinos a combi-melta for more tank hunting. I believe it only costs 10 points per.

-Jason

I like the theme behind the army should be a good one to play, why don't you take a unit of plague marines though just to have one really tough squad thats pretty hard to kill, get them in a bunker or something and its hard to get them out of it, but the army does look pretty good, I like the uses of the raptors.

Eeeeeh... I'm not as big a fan of Plague Marines as other players seem to be. First of all, they're horribly ugly, even from Forge World. Their armor is supposed to be all mutated, pocked, and rusted. Makes it kinda' hard to show my Night Lords' colors when they have to fight their way through the grime. (My Prince only barely gets away with it.)

Second, Plague Marines are kinda' cliche. Not only does everybody expect them, but the metagame is turning against them rather brutally at the moment, as Plasma weapons rise in popularity between IG's plasma-users and Tyranids' plasma-targets.

Third, and most importantly, I have my Chaos Marines as the anvil for the Berserker hammer. The thing about hammer-and-anvil is that, if your anvil is too obvious, your opponent is just gonna' start laying waste to your hammer and try to force you to use your anvil as a hammer, which rarely ends as well as you would hope. Something I implied about my strategy is that it involves setting up lose-lose decisions for the opponent. If I had Plague Marines rather than Chaos Marines, and I attempted to use the Plague Marines as a charge bait to draw stuff into Berserker range, no one who could afford otherwise would charge the Plague Marines. In fact, most players would shoot the Plague Marines with their oodles and oodles of Plasma (thank you Cruddace) while the Berserkers spend another turn weaseling into range. Not that the Plague Marines couldn't take it, but it becomes an obvious choice to not go for the bait. Instead, with CSM, the smart choice is to take the bait, because Ld10 without ATSKNF, even on 3 attacks base per model, is worth charging in an attempt to rout, catch, and destroy in a single sweep. But if they spare the Marines, they just gave me a turn to move, shoot, and assault with a unit where every guy has 4 attacks on the charge. (And this is assuming the Raptors aren't too busy to add their $0.02.) That's a devastating amount of dice. Hence, instead of giving the opponent one really bad decision and one not so bad decision, I give the opponent two decisions that are both bad, thus forcing the opponent to do something I'm ready, willing, and able to counter.

I really really like this list. It looks like it would give my Orks a world of hurt (CSM armies that focus on bodies & combat kill my Orks super quick).