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

==Supplements==

Chaos Space Marines core codex is lackluster, and many of the best rules are spread across the supplements! Anyone with a Chaos Space Marine army in mind should read this guide, to figure out what supplements they will need.

===Crimson Slaughter=== 
[[File:Crimson Slaughter 7e Cover.jpg|150px|right|]]

Yes, the Chaos warband from Dark Vengeance that nobody had heard of before got their own supplement for some reason, and before most of the 10,000-year-old veterans get their own, to boot. This is an undivided army that cannot take VotLW, and takes Possessed as troops... and is better at it than [[Word Bearers]], for some reason.

Unfortunately, the new revised version brought some serious nerf to this supplement. Gone is the ability to buy a cheap upgrade to your chosen to give them Preferred Enemy, and the Renegades of the Dark Millennium changed quite a bit, so that you can no longer take special characters or daemon princes.

Get this supplement if you want to play as the Crimson Slaughter, like their wargear or formations, want to play undivided CSM with access to Divination, or want any sort of Possessed-heavy or non-VotLW list.
*If you are playing a Legion, don't get this book, you have no use for it.

===Traitor's Hate===
[[File:Traitor's Hate Cover.jpg|150px|right|]]

This nifty little book includes some really nice formations in addition to the official dataslates for renegade knights AND Khorne lord of skulls. All in all, not a bad deal. While the formation dataslates and updated Lord of Skulls are compiled in Traitor Legions, the renegade knight rules are not, and nor is the Black Crusade detachment. The Black Crusade is the main gem of this supplement for many players. It is a generic formation-based detachment for any Chaos Space Marine army, regardless of warband or legion.

Get this supplement if you want to play a formation-based detachment or use the CSM-only psychic disciplines, and don't want to use Traitor Legions stuff.
*If you run Crimson Slaughter, Red Corsairs or Fabius Bile & Co., or a list containing special characters from multiple legions, you need this book if you want a formation based detachment. 
*If you are playing a Legion, you will only need this book if you are including a Knight in your army list, or if you prefer Black Crusade to your legion-specific detachment. Otherwise skip it, there's greener pastures ahead.

===Wrath of Magnus===
[[File:Wrath of Magnus Cover.jpg|150px|right|]]

This supplement gives some love to Thousand Sons players as well as Tzeentchian Daemon players. For Chaos Marines, this updates the rules for Thousand Sons and Ahriman, updates the Lore of Tzeentch, and adds rules for Exalted Sorcerers, Tzaangors, SCARAB Occult Terminators and Magnus himself! In addition to the Thousand Sons Grand Coven, it also adds rules for any detachment to become a Thousand Sons detachment, thus granting it access to a new set of Relics and Warlord Traits, and it includes reprints of the powers from Traitor's Hate.

Where this gets amusing is the fact that '''any''' Detachment can be made a Thousand Sons detachment, and standalone formations are Detachments. This means if you really wanted to, you could run a Cult of Destruction, and give the mandatory Warpsmith the Astral Grimoire for a unit of Jump Obliterators, if you were so inclined. Alternately, a Daemon Prince casting Cursed Earth on itself would have a 3+ Invulnerable and reroll 1s. The jury is out as to whether a Detachment can belong to different Legions with mutually exclusive requirements (example: a Tzeentchian Cyclopia Cabal), but discuss this with your opponent beforehand and generally assume the answer will be no.

Get this supplement if you are a big Thousand Sons fan or want the updated Horrors rules for summoning.
*You don't need to get Traitor Legions or Traitor's Hate if you have this book and all you are planning on playing is Thousand Sons, unless you want the generic formations or the Knight.
*If you are playing Thousand Sons as part of your army but aren't mono-Tzeentch, get Traitor Legions instead, you won't miss any Thousand Sons rules by not buying this book.
*Don't get this book if you are Crimson Slaughter. There's nothing in it for you unless you want to use the splitting Horrors rules.

===Traitor Legions===
[[File:Traitor Legions Cover.jpg|150px|right|]]

Riding on the tide of the Wrath of Magnus supplement above, this one will grant special rules and detachments to all named traitor legions, including the ones from WoM. We haven't seen something like this since 3rd edition, folks!

Traitor Legions contains ALL the current(as of December 2016) rules for EVERY Traitor Legion. Each Traitor Legion has its Legion Tactics: every model that can take VotLW in your army gets it for free, and then every model that has VotLW benefits from the Legion's special rules. Traitor Legions contains all the CSM rules from Wrath of Magnus concurrently, you get the same from either one. It also replaces the older Black Legion rules, improving them tremendously. Most importantly, though, it takes all the neglected legions and makes it so you can finally play a fluffy list, and adds a truly enormous amount of unique wargear and special rules. Daemon weapons for every god are back too! Even if it doesn't necessarily make every legion a top tier army, this book finally makes CSM '''FUN''' like it used to be!

Of note is that this book makes boys over toys more important: For relic burdened characters, take the old supplements, and pretend this doesn't exist. For better rules for all models, use this supplement. 

Also included are updated Lord of Skulls and psychic powers for both the undivided disciplines and the mono-god disciplines, so you'll definitely want to get this just for those if you run sorcerers.

Get this supplement no matter what. It's important.
*You don't need Traitor's Hate or Wrath of Magnus if you buy this book, even if you plan on running Thousand Sons. The only exception is if you specifically want the Black Crusade detachment(for instance if you aren't running a Legion), a <s>Chaos Knight</s> Renegade Knight (Chaos Knights are the Daemon-possessed versions, available from ForgeWorld) or the updated Horrors of Tzeentch rules for summoning.
*Even if your army isn't a Legion, you will likely want to get this book anyway just for the psychic powers.

===Imperial Armour 13: War Machines of the Lost and the Damned (Forge World)===
[[File:Imperial Armour War Machines of the Lost and the Damned Cover.jpg|150px|right|]]

Forge World provides '''HUGE''' support for Chaos. Though it's spread between several books, IA13 is your primary go-to sources for goodies. Included in this huge book:
*Predator, Vindicator and Land Raider variants
*The SPARTAN ASSAULT TANK
*Dreadnought variants
*Drop Pods
*Flyers
*More Daemon Engines
*Super-Heavies
*Rapier Artillery
*Legacies of Ruin
...and more

Get this supplement if you want to take the really big/crazy/good stuff and have a hundred dollars to spare. 
* Forgeworld has it as Out of stock, doubtful reprint as the Chaos Dreadnoughts have been removed from sale, find a PDf or fork out on Ebay..*

===Experimental Rules (Forge World)===

These Forge World rules are available [[Awesome|free of charge]]. Just download them and print them off if you want to use them. Be sure you have a suitable model first, however.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Downloads

The current free CSM rules include:
*Chaos Knight(Daemon Knight variant)
*Cor'Bax Utterblight, Daemon Prince of the Ruinstorm
*Deimos Pattern Vindicator Tank Destroyer
*Kytan Daemon Engine of Khorne

===Other Supplements===

Other books containing CSM rules:
*'''IA: Apocalypse(3rd Edition):''' Contains several special characters not found in IA13, as well as Apocalypse-only formations.
*'''IA: The Siege of Vraks:''' Contains several Nurgle-related datasheets as well as The Purge detachment rules.
*'''Warzone: Pandorax:''' Contains several super-heavies not found in IA13, as well as Apocalypse-only formations.
*'''Death from the Skies:''' Contains a datasheet for using the Heldrake with the advanced flyer rules.
*'''Starter Sets:''' The Start Collecting! box and the Dark Vengeance box + Chaos expansion have their own formations. Dark Vengeance has an Aspiring Champion special character.
*'''Renegade:''' The Renegade Imperial Knights set has a datasheet for the Chaos Knight.
*'''Dataslates:''' Include a Kharn formation, Cypher, a Cypher formation, Be'lakor, and three Helbrute formations. Back from when GW was having its micro-transaction phase.

Outdated Supplements:
*Black Legion formerly had its own supplement before being absorbed into Traitor Legions. Under this old supplement, Terminators were not troops, VotLW was not free, there was no Hatred(Everything!), and no big formation based detachment other than the generic one in Traitor's Hate. Suffice to say, Traitor Legions is a big boost to the Warmaster's forces! <s>Note that there was an older Daemon Prince + Possessed formation in the old Black Legion supplement which is not reprinted in Traitor Legions, however.</s> It is printed in Traitor Legions, but they seemingly forgot to add it to the speartip. So keep an eye out for a faq. Another interesting rule was is in the first edition of Black Legion, where Abaddon's Chosen Terminators were an upgrade to a unit in a CAD, not a formation. In addition, in the updated pure black legion supplement, you could take any number of relics from both black legion and the vanilla codex, unlike the bullshit only one from traitor legions. Thus, if you want to play a tzeentch force, take the wrath of magnus and an old black legion character as an unbound additional HQ: It is just better. 
*The older version of the Crimson Slaughter has the Chosen with Preferred Enemy be something taken as a 10 point upgrade, not a formation, meaning you could take a squad of pref. enemy plasma chosen in a CAD without paying the Possessed tax. In addition, you could take models with VotLW(such as Daemon Princes and special characters) as long as they came with it stock and you weren't buying it.

===FAQs===

Both GW and Forge World have these. Don't ignore them, they are important because they also give errata.