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

===Battle Brothers===

*'''Other Chaos Space Marines: '''With Traitor Legions finally getting their own rules, there will be many new strategies arising involving allying different Chaos subfactions. Chaos warbands are battle brothers with each other: if you want to benefit from another subfaction's rules, ally them in as an Allied Detachment or a single formation. This way you can take armies consisting of multiple legions and warbands if you want to combine their different strengths.
**Want Divination? Take a Thousand Sons War Cabal or Ahriman's Exiles. Exalted Sorcerers of Tzeentch(including Ahriman) have access to Divination and can cast its powers on 3+ easily with either of these formations. Divination and tack-on psyker spam formations are no longer just for loyalists and Eldar. Thousand Sons are so eminently valuable as allies, as their relics are awesome for helping other detachment forces (i.e. Jump Infantry Terminators)
*** Oddly enough Black Legion can do this too. You loose access to TSons artefacts, but you aren't forced to slap mark of tzeentch onto cultists/marines and as an allied detachment actually allow you to bring an exalted sorc + ObSec termicide unit or chosen.
**Does your melee army need a powerful heavy weapons team, for fire support? Ally in Iron Warriors or Death Guard for autocannon or lascannon havocs, with free Feel No Pain and either Tank Hunters or Relentless. Loyalist Devastators may have the grav, but they have nothing like this.
**Want your Possessed to not suck as bad? Ally a Crimson Slaughter formation to get a squad of Possessed that can roll Shrouded, 3++ and Beasts type among their mutations.
**Saw the loyalist veteran meltas in drop pods strategy, and want to try it out? You can do it for cheaper by taking an Alpha Legion allied detachment and infiltrating Chosen!

*Renegade Knights allow for more specialized loadouts but do not have the formations of Imperial Knights. And your Warpsmith has no servitors. Good support but not enough synergy to be the main focus. [[dwarf fortress|FUN]] in small games.

*'''Chaos Daemons:''' Daemons provide fast-moving assault elements to supplement more assault-heavy forces. Soulgrinders are awesome due to having an in-built 5+ Invulnerable Save, and can either be viewed as a "better Defiler" in many ways, due to their AV 13! Fantastic mobile cover, and they pack a punch, too! Troops are no longer obscene amounts of points in this codex, either, and heralds are fuckcheap HQ units; the mandatory units in an allied detachment can cost as little as 135 points, meaning you could take Soul Grinder support in lists as small as 1000 points and still be none the worse for wear. Meanwhile, bloodthirsters follow the flying monstrous creature rules and have WS 10 (10!). Lords of change are mastery level 2 psykers by default, level 3 with the upgrade (which you will always take) and can take either Tzeenchy witchfire powers to give your enemy feel no pain or Divination powers to be useful (Divination is probably better in a shooty CSM army because of Prescience). Daemons are by far the best allies you can take simply because they bring Divination.
**Protip: Wanna make your Bloodletters or Daemonettes actually survive so they can reach combat? Run them straight towards the enemy every turn, then park a rhino in front of them and block all incoming fire! Then deliver your delicious, demonic payload right into those helpless loyalist corpse-fuckers' sphincter!
**'''Icons''' Also, friendly 'daemons' can get more accurate deepstrikes off daemonic icons. This does still work for warp talons ('blind' bursts near the enemy, you say?) and obliterators. You still scatter D6", but that's not ''that'' bad.

*'''Khorne Daemonkin:''' - A combo of Daemons with things you can already do, the Space Marine aspects of the detachment don't have the random mutation table, and the champions can get access to AP2 initiative weaponry through the Axe of Khorne. The Daemons are more stable, and can actually join your squads and you can join theirs, though adding a Herald won't benefit you since it only applies the Locus to "Daemonkin" units. Having BftBG also only applies its effects to Daemonkin, so if you only use a small allied detachment you might as well save those Blood Tithe points for summoning more free units of daemons, which can be done more reliably than having Sorcerers with Malefic Daemonology. They have fantastic formations, so you can easily add them to your main force without being forced to pay a HQ+Troops tax. But even if you use the "Combined Arms Allies" FOC at least you've got Berserkers as the Troops choice, leaving your primary detachment free to build towards another god(s) of your choice.

*'''Renegades & Heretics (Forgeworld)''' - probably the most obvious one for both fluff and functionality. You get to combine the Helldrake AND Hydra flak tanks and DOMINATE the skies. As battle brothers your characters can join each others squads and/or benefit from each others abilities, so you can have an impressive number of psykers buffing each other up. Dark Apostles can make your massively combined renegade squads fearless & zealots and Warp Smiths can fix up your multitude of tanks that you'll probably have. Your big platoons/troops choices don't need to take up several FOC slots so can generate a considerable amount of cheap bodies.
**Now with that said, taking Renegade as allies causes a few problems. First you are "required" to take the Arch-Demagogue w/ command squad as a compulsory HQ choice. But if he's not your warlord it's a wasted slot, because you aren't allowed to buy a Demagogue Devotion ''(and therefore can't get any of the interesting army upgrades)'' and you won't have the Master of Renegades rule either, so no unlocking God-specific units using a Covenant to gain things like contagious Plague Zombies. You still get access to all of the generic list and all of their upgrade options however. So if all you wanted was access to cheap bodies or Imperial Guard tanks then it's still a perfectly good option.

*'''Renegade Knights:''' Unlike Imperial Knights they have no relics or formations (yet), but as BB you can repair them, pack them closer with your units (e.g. Nurgle bikers), and they can dual wield identical weapons, allowing you to gear them up for specific roles.