Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Making Chaos Competitive

One of the things I really enjoy doing is taking "bad" or at least what the internest considers bad armies, and making them competitive.  Chaos is an army I've always had a nerd crush on, but never really got around to doing, but here's how I would do it.

Well actually first let me say what I think every competitive army needs.  Psychic defense, target saturation, the ability to kill approximately 15 rhino chassis in a game, the ability to kill 3 land raiders without just dying to its contents, the ability to kill 180 orks over the course of a game, the ability to kill deathstars, either enough long range firepower to neuter half the enemy army in a turn, enough fire power to supress the enemy until you get there, or just straight up the ability to get there.  Now you don't have to fufill all of these at once, but most throughout all your games is necessary.

Let's see what chaos marines have to offer as far as our little checklist goes.  Psychic defence?  Nope none of that, moving on... target saturation, well we can spam rhinos!  Rhino killing power, yeah we got that, Land raider killing power, we got that too, horde killing power, were actually good at something!  Killing deathstars?  Ehh kind of you need to play well to pull it off.  Long range fire power like guard?  LOL.  Supressing firepower, well yes we can have that, but it makes it slightly harder to spam rhinos.  The ability to get there?  Well hopefully...

So obviously not the best army, but it kind of has the basics down.

Let's see what we can so with that.

HQ
Sorcerer- lash 125

Elites
5 Chosen- 3 meltas 2 flamers 130
rhino- combi melta 40
5 Chosen- 3 meltas 2 flamers 130
rhino- combi melta 40
5 Chosen- 3 meltas 2 flamers 130
rhino- combi melta 40

Troops
8 Berzerkers- champion powerfist 208
Rhino 35
8 Berzerkers- champion powerfist 208
Rhino 35
5 Plauge marines- 2 meltas 135
Rhino- combi melta 40
5 Plauge marines- 2 meltas 135
Rhino- combi melta 40

Heavy
5 Havocs- 4 plasmas 135
Rhino- combi melta 40
5 Havocs- 4 plasmas 135
Rhino- combi melta 40
5 Havocs- 4 plasmas 135
Rhino- combi melta 40

1996

So there you have it.

10 Rhinos, 13 meltas, 8 combi meltas, 6 flamers, 12 plasmas, and 57 infantry (26 of which score)  Only dows side is it is 21 kill points, but whatever.  What do you guys think?

7 comments:

  1. "One of the things I really enjoy doing is taking "bad" or at least what the internest considers bad armies, and making them competitive."

    Wow !! Sounds just like my buddy Marc Parker.

    Anyways the new CSM codex is super boring for me so I dont play it.

    G

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  2. Marc is a good guy, I like him. We need to get a rematch in some time. We had some bug on bug action last year, and and we pretty much drew.

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  3. There isn't any long range fire power... like none. For two or so turns your opponent can go untouched while de-meching your 5 melta squads. It isn't hard to stun, shake or destroy five Rhinos.

    The target priority is just to simple.

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  4. The armies that have power to de mech this army are guard, space wolves, dark eldar, and tau. Let's remove tau from the equation, because they are a very rare army now days.

    Against guard and space wolves I figure I can line up 3 rhinos sideways (plasma rhinos) and have the other 4 move up behind with blocked LOS, or if not at least cover. And, I can outflank the chosen rhinos based on deployment.

    As far as dark eldar I don't know ebough about them to really tell yet honestly. There book is still too new. But, I don't know how to fight that army with the armies I do play, let alone the armies I don't.

    Armies can get by without long range fire power. Or are you saying that immo spam and dameons are uncompetitive aswell?

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  5. Blood Angels can give that army a run for the army as well.

    One thing the new CSM has going on is the ability to spam lots of rhino units loaded up with meltas. With a little bit of luck if they roll up on mech guard it's nasty. I think any mech guard player who is honest will admit that mech MEQ lists with lots of meltas can be a real challenge.

    Now going back to what you have said elsewhere it's fun to design lists that are bad news for meta lists - DoA can do that well versus mech so I have found.

    G

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  6. Very true. DoA is a very powerful tool. It really helps blood angel jump lists when they're going second.

    It's a shame that most "competitive" BA lists you see in tournaments run nothing but preds and razorbacks with min sized assault squad because they're better than tactical marines.

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  7. I love my DoA and would never play the razorspam . I have smoked many of these armies with my jumpers.

    G

    ReplyDelete