Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Chaos Space Marines (section)

==Why Play Chaos Space Marines==
[[File:Chaos Space Marines Cover 6e.jpg|300px|right|thumb|]]
Chaos Space Marines are '''the''' main antagonist of the Warhammer 40,000 setting; with the Horus Heresy arguably being the most pivotal moment of 40k's timeline. From a fluff-perspective, a Chaos Space Marine army can be a Warband derived from one of the nine original Traitor Legions, or a more recent group of Marines (or even an entire Chapter) that has gone Renegade, and the fluff for your army is [[Your Dudes|yours to write]]; besides the normal question of "what god(s) do your Chaos Marines follow?", the backstory of how your former defenders of Humanity fell to Chaos can be every bit as compelling, as well as any driving motivations. After all, while some Chaos Space Marines may be occasional pawns in the grand scheme of the Gods, most of their own motives remain entirely human, whether it's the quest for vengeance in The Long War, carving out pocket empires, or researching forbidden secrets. In many ways, Chaos Space Marines are the [[Your Dudes]] army. 

For those that enjoy kitbashing and converting, you can do so with the help from pretty much any kit from any other race and not give a single fuck about what people say. You can legitimately say: "Dude, I play Chaos, and Chaos can take any form". So long as you don't make a fool out of yourself and pretend that a Lizardman with wheels and spikes instead of legs would make a good Chaos Bike. Chaos Space Marines arguably exceed Orks in the sheer amount of room they allow for custom projects, as they can either be ramshackle mess of diseased maniacs, fervent technosorcerers with baroque war engines, a disciplined force of elite Infiltrators or otherwise.

From a gameplay perspective, Chaos Space Marines can best be described as "Space Marauders", compensating for a lack of uniform quality with a mix of psychic prowess, close combat saturation, and "troubleshooters" to plug gaps in your battleplan. Unlike [[Eldar|some]] [[Necrons|other]] [[Orks|armies]], Chaos Space Marines don't have too many "over-specialized" units, but they have "exotic generalists" that can be adapted to multiple roles in one go. That said, many of their advantages come with corresponding disadvantages. You lack '''And They Shall Know No Fear''', which means you need to keep pressure on your opponent or else when you do falter, you may not properly recover from it. In exchange, you get the option to improve your Leadership beyond Loyalist standards (while most Loyalist Marine squads will be Leadership 8, you can easily have Leadership 10 throughout your army), while Fearless is easily available to units that pay a premium for them. Likewise, you lack a lot of the shiny toys Loyalists get, and notably lack access to [[Dude, Where's my Land Speeder?| Grav Weaponry, Razorbacks, Landspeeders or Vanilla Drop Pods]]. In exchange, you get a lot of "daemontech" tools, as well as the ability to jury-rig those vehicles you do get with a wide array of options. While the Loyalists can easily get units that will murder your melee units in a straight-up slugfest (if they pay top points for them), your rank-and-file will beat up their rank-and-file most of the time; add in a system where your heroes or unit leaders can receive herohammer buffs (or the chance to transform into Daemon Princes or those-that-must-not-be-named) for beating up your opponents, and Chaos Marines favor a very gung-ho playstyle. 

===Pros===
*'''Herohammer Toybox:''' Although you don't have a character that has the sheer destructive crunch as Commander Smashfucker, you have a lot of cool relics on hand. Between all the codex options and legion-specific toys, you can make heroes that are really good at bringing the fight to your foe, and then tearing said foe a new one. Add in a system that randomly buffs (though with its risks; this will be covered) your heroes when they RIP AND TEAR, and your characters have a playstyle that can be incredibly fun.
*'''Rocking the Psychic Phase''' - Although you don't have the sheer ability to run Psychic shenanigans as an Eldar or Daemon faction, Chaos Space Marines have a fairly extensive psychic toolbox to work with. Other than Telekinesis (which is generally not considered a power discipline) and Divination (though one artifact does allow you to take it), you have access to most of the base rulebook disciplines, including Telepathy and Malefic Daemonology. Traitor's Hate helped out further by giving Chaos "copypastes" of the Astartes powers from Angel of Death. Unlike the Loyalists, your casters have the option to go up to Mastery Level 3 (or even Mastery Level 4 for one of them), and you have the single most powerful psyker in 40k available to you in Magnus the Red. Instead of the Psychic Hood, the Spell Familiar is a fairly cheap upgrade that lets you re-roll failed Psychic Tests. So not only can you throw down more Warp Charge than a loyalist army, but you can make each one count for more. 
*'''Exotic Generalists:''' Chaos Marines have trouble-shooter units that can plug into multiple different roles at once. The Heldrake blends the line between an aerial interceptor and ground-attack aircraft, potentially doing both at once, while the Obliterator is always guaranteed to have the right gun for the right job, while being able to smash things in a pinch. Even the humble Rhino gets a few tricks up its sleeve in a Chaos army, with additional equipment options letting it deny Overwatch or serve as fire support.
*'''Marks and Icons Chaos Gods''' - Chaos Space Marines can be marked to be stronger, faster, tougher, or trickier than their Loyalist brethren at a cost. Some of these bonuses are costly for what they are, and in several cases Loyalists can arguably do it better, but some of them let you do things other armies can't quite do. 
*'''Unconventional Alliance opportunities''': Chaos Space Marines are one of the only armies (besides Renegades and Heretics or Daemonkin) that is Battle Brothers with Chaos Daemons and Renegade Knights, and this does allow for some unique power combinations between the two. They're also Allies of Convenience with Necrons, and are the only faction that is Allies of Convenience with Orks. 
*'''Apocalypse''' - You're better than the loyalists in Apocalypse games because you get fucking Titans and lots of sweet Forgeworld loving in the form of flyers and Daemon Engines. You're part of the Apocalypse Quintet along with the Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, and Tyranids, to which all other apocalypse armies are measured against. Be warned, you are comparatively lacking in long ranged heavy artillery, so even in Apocalypse, your dish is best served by getting close to [[RIP AND TEAR]].

===Cons===
The current Chaos Space Marine codex book is the oldest in current use, and it shows. The fluff and art are top tier, but the rules in it are clearly written for another age - one without grav and knights all over the place. Make no mistake - you'll be fighting an uphill battle all the way in every game if you try to run a CSM army as just a CAD with just the rules in that book - and that's just in CASUAL games. There is a good reason why an Ork, Tyranid, and CSM players arguing who has the worst codex is a popular online cliche. Luckily, as of the end of 2016, CSMs have finally gotten a boost in the form of powerful and varied (if spammy and often overcosted and/or tactically infexible) formations that can be found in the Traitor Legions supplement.

Most of the issues have generally come from Chaos being compared to loyalist Space Marines (and their many variants). Among them are:
*'''They Shall Know Fear:''' Unlike vanilla Space Marines, you don't get "And They Shall Know No Fear." Considering the advantages of ATSKNF are four-fold (Auto-pass Fear checks, immune to being destroyed by sweeping advance, auto-regroup regardless of how many models you have left, and suffer no move/shoot penalties after regrouping), the regular Chaos Marines are in an unenviable position point-for-point. However, it's not all doom and gloom: Unlike the loyalists, you get a fair few options for making your guys Fearless or superior Leadership so you're less likely to fail Morale checks in the first place. Inversely, if you're running MSU units, you don't care too much about trying to rally "that one last" model for any given unit when you can have two more small units in backup. 
**'''Note:''' If you're running a cult legion from the Traitor Legions supplement, Veterans of the Long War is fearless across the board. Thus this one issue can be discounted, if you wish to theme your army based on a named legion rather than Crimson Slaughter or your homebrewed warband.
*'''Beggars of the Long War:''' As a price for Chaos getting access to more consistently powerful Psykers, herohammer blessings, and general "unconventional" power options, they're missing a lot of powerful tools the Loyalists get access to. Most notably, your army lacks Grav Weapons which are considered "the one special weapon to rule them all" for normal Space Marines. You can find "analogues" for some of the other tools Marines get that you don't, though you also lack good equivalents for Drop Pods, Razorbacks, Attack Bikes, or flying transports. Forgeworld can potentially mitigate this to some degree if you wish. You'll see other small examples of Chaos technology being more "dated" or second-hand than their Loyalist counterparts, discussed in their individual unit entries.
*'''Tactically Inflexible:''' Chaos Space Marines have no units with the innate ability to Infiltrate or Scout. They don't have any special rules or wargear to get better deployment options, to have better chances of selecting a table edge or to Seize the Initiative, to improve their Reserves rolls or to mitigate scattering from Deep Strike (the Dimensional Key doesn't particularly count). Unlike many armies, they don't get many non-psychic "toolbox" abilities; there is no Combat Tactics/Doctrina/Canticles equivalent, nor do you get stuff like Guard Orders/Acts of Faith. 
*'''One Codex In (At Least) Two Books:''' The CSM codex is OLD AS FUCK. The rules in it are dated, and power creep means that it hasn't aged well. To GW's credit, as of the end of 2016, steps have been taken to bring CSMs up to speed. That's all well and good, but unfortunately the 'update' was done through the issuance of supplements rather than an updated dex. This means that you have to own the dex + one or more of the supplements in order to build a passable army, and if you want a really decent one that supplement has to be the Traitor Legions or The Traitor's Hate. Woe betide anyone wishing to actually collect all the books in order to have access to all the current rules - there are, like, 6 of them, before you even dip your toe into Frogeworld and Apocalypse.

===Countering these cons===

*Don't try to play CSM like loyalists. Chaos Space Marines lack a lot of the same bonuses that Loyalists get, point-for-point, and they lack the same degree of fire support, transports, or speed. If you try to just emulate them, you're going to have a hard time doing so. Luckily, you don't have to - you have the option to take hordes of cultists, monstrous daemon princes and FUCKING DRAGONS to go with your bolter-lugging meatheads.
*The rules that you can find in supplements (like Traitor Legions and Traitor's Hate) are nearly mandatory if you want to level the playing field somewhat. They give CSM armies an opportunity to employ some ''really'' game-changing playlists, that have potential to make a regular CSM army competitive while at the same time keeping true to the fluff. In most cases, said formations go a long way towards fixing the fundamental flaws of the Codex, even if it's arguable whether or not they always succeed. DEFINITELY check them out in the tactics section below!
*Cult units have Fearless and give you better mileage, if you have the points. You can also make them Troops (Plague and Noise Marines, for example, are awesome, if a bit situational).
*While nowhere near as good as ATSKNF, VotLW is decent. Don't forget that it gives you hatred against all the other non-spiky marines. Traitor Legions should be mentioned here, as it almost universally allows AND forces CSMs to take VOTLW for free if they meet the criteria to be part of that legion - which is a nice bonus.
**FW threw you a bone in the form of an updated Renegades and Heretics list that are Battle Brothers with you. They have good artillery and meatshields for said artillery, but fall short in most other areas.
*Allies give you some breathing room when building an army. You are the only army that is Blood Brothers with Daemons, Renegade Knights and KDK, AND has  access to Necrons and Orks as allies of convenience (in fact, you are the *only* army that treats Orks as anything better than Desperate) is pretty cool. KDK
*The spell familiar, which in 6th edition was practically useless, got a huge boost with 7th edition psychic rules. As a piece of wargear that can be taken by any psyker that isn't Ahriman, Typhus or a T-Sons Aspiring Sorcerer and allows you to re-roll failed psychic tests, it makes CSM psykers some of the most reliable in the game.