Editing Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Kill Team(9E) Chaos (section)

===TSM Strategies===
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'''CSM Strategies:'''
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Generic Chaos in Kill Team is a bit of a mixed bag. While in theory access to both marines and cultists should give you enough flexibility to adapt to many threats, the lack of options on their wargear stops them from being trully great. At least in vanilla Kill Team, they got a lot of shinny new toys in Elites and Commanders, but let's talk about the base game first.

Starting with the traitor astartes, we have the aspiring champion, the toughest guy you could take in the basic game. With 2 attacks (3 against Imperium, 4 with the right speciality and 5 with the chainsword, but why would you give it that, though?) and access to a power sword or a power fist, this unit is your prime melee guy. This thing can do a lot of damage, especially good against heavy armoured units. Throwing this at GEQs is somewhat of an overkill, unless said unit is really dangerous, like a guardsman with a plasma or a melta. The Aspiring Champion cannot get boosted by the chaos marks, though, only the regular chaos marines and cultists can, so no more than 4 attacks. Though, to be fair, 4 should be enough to reliably kill most things, the power sword has AP3 and the power fist has Sx2, AP3 and D3 Damage. This makes it a lethal member of your team, with the drawback of it being a rather obvious target. Every unit that could realistically take it down will shoot at it, least it reach melee. And considering it only has one wound, you have to be careful on how you make it reach the enemy lines. They can at least be effective at ranged with the plasma pistol, though is bett for melee when someone charges him.

Chaos Marine Gunners rather basic: options range between heavy bolter, plasma rifle, flamer and meltagun. Meltagun is rather situational, considering it needs to be close to reliably hit (but when it does, it can turn into goop anything, D6 damage is great). Flamers are on the weak side, more for defending against charges than an offensive weapon due to their 8" range. So the choice is between plasma and heavy bolter. To take advantage of all of the specialisms, you want a plasma sniper and a heavy/demo heavy bolter. The plasma is self-explanatory, re-rolling ones means that you can overcharge the weapon safely. Heavy heavy bolter will be able to move around the map without the hit roll penalty, although considering it has a 36" range, you might rather let it stand still and add the demolition's +1 on the wound rolls. This combination makes it the best sniper of your team, though it is probably somewhat mediocre compared to the choices of other teams. 

Regular Chaos Marines are your run of the mill marines. Either chainsword with bolt pistol or boltgun, with both frag and krack grenades for good measure. You know what these do, don't expect miracles from them. Sadly, unlike SotA Marines, they can't naturally boost the surrounding unit's leadership, they instead recquire a relic for that. The regular marines have one relic, and ONLY one relic on the team. The Undivided relic boosts surrounding unit's leadership, Khorne's makes everyone re-roll charge rolls (very good for melee focused teams, of course), Nurgle's hurts enemy leadership, Slaanesh's makes surrounding allies get a DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR ar 5+, which is really good, probably better in melee than Khorne's relic, and Tzeench makes the bearer into a psyker that only attacks on a 6+ roll, but with no perils. Melee focused teams will go for Khorne's and Slaanesh's, while ranged teams will preffer the Undivided to boost the cultists. Tzeench's is nice but very unreliable, with 1/6 chances of actually doing something, and Nurgle's relic is simply not that good. 

Once we finish with the superhumans of the team, we go to the squishy ones. Chaos cultists are close to Imperial Guardsmen in terms of stats, but have worse equipment overall. The regular cultists have access to the relics, but it's just not as good on them, considering the marines are much tougher and better armed. The cultist champion has access to a shotgun, which you're going to give to him considering that there's no point to it outside of it (maybe the extra leadership? It's still L6, it's going to be at risk at all times, and be terrified after a wound or two). Cultist Gunners have flamers or heavy stubbers. Flamers are good for kamikaze runs, heavy stubbers are too weak for the job. Though they are free, the moment there's cover and a wound, it will barely hit aything, plus if the enemy is going to shoot cultists, they will go for the gunners first. Also, you don't want to give the specialities to this guys, those are for the marines.

For team composition, avoid space-marine only teams. Seven marines can be strong, but you will always have the same team composition, and always be outgunned and outmatched by both loyalist and specific traitor counterparts. Loyalist have access to better weapons and primaris with W2, Death Guard have better toughness, Disgustingly Resilient and better weapons, and Thousand Sons have psykers. The only full marine chaos team worse than this would be the SotA, and even then they have access to boosted cultists, traitor electropriests and actual psykers, so they are NEVER going to go full marine. All-out cultists is more interesting, though considering how squishy they are and with their pathetic weak guns and low morale, their only numeric advantage is numbers. If you could have more than two cultist gunners, a massive horde of flamers would be quite scary, but as it is, it's just not worth it. 

Mixed teams is going to be the best option. Give your leadership to one of the cultists and hide it from EVERYONE, to clear specialist slots. Combat/Zealot aspiring champion, sniper plasma, heavy/demo heavy bolter, marine with the icon you want. After that, you'll either pick a couple of extra marines, and two flamer cultists, and as many regular cultist as you can with the remaining points. This is pretty much the standard team, and people know this. This lack of flexibility is what makes this army difficult to be competitive with, though if competitive is what you want, you can check out the Elite slots.

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'''Counterplay:'''
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A team that can reliably take down marines while not sacrificing power against hordes is a good team against it. The guy who gets the Beseech the Gods stratagem has to become an instant target, especially if the aspiring champion, the plasma or the heavy bolter have it, though keep in mind that these are already high priority targets, it just changes the focus of the first attaks. Regular marines will have enough firepower to deal with the traitor scum, while the units with basic equipment will pretty much always kill the cultists. Same with Imperial Guard, plasma spam for the marines and attack spam for the grunts. AdMEch can use the infiltrators with the power sword to charge first and deny the enemy the chance of attacking first, the transuranic arquebus to obliterate whatever it sees, as well as the plasma guy (in fact let's just take this out of the way, PLASMA IS THE BEST COUNTER AGAINST MARINES OF ALL KIND, PERIOD), plus, ranger/vanguard spam is excellent against them. Other Chaos teams have ways to deal with astartes' high saves, though cultists will be able to give poxwalkers a run for their money, considering how weak they are without the disgustingly resilient rule. Tzaangors overpower cultists in melee pretty much every time, and rubric marines have enough toughness to just walk straight to them and roast them with magic flamers. Necrons will laugh at anyone who tries to kill them with autoguns, so once they've dealt with the big guys, the game is over. Orks might outnumber and overpower chaos marines, and once in melee, cultists are fucked. Eldar of all kinds will ignore most of the damage caused by the cultists (another reason to use the flamers with them, because something is eventually bound to get in). SotA will have problems with them, but that's where you want you negavolt cultists and your rogue psyker to carry your team, while the black legionnaires boost them and the rest deal with the cultists. Tau will have no problems dealing with regular chaos marines if they can keep them at a distance (a full mixed melee team with Khorne relic is great if you manage to reach the Tau lines with enough dudes, if you play Tau you'll prioritize the Aspiring Champion and the guy with the relic). A Lictor and Genestealer charge should be enough for tyranids to deal with the marines, but be wary of the counter-offensive if the astartes survives. 

Overall, the strategy against heretic astartes is simple: Big guns focused on their big guys, cheap units on the rest. 
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