Noise Marines
- "My Emperor's Children, what wonderful music they make."
- --The Primarch Fulgrim on the eve of the Drop Site Massacre
- "The loudest faggots in the Eye of Terror"
- --Anonymous
- "Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting."
- --Johann Sebastian Bach
Possibly the most derp thing of all of the grimderp things to come out of Games Workshop, the Noise Marines are Chaos Space Marines sworn to Slaanesh.
What?
Yeah, so Slaanesh is the God of Excessive Pleasure: lots of sex, lots of drugs, lots of weird sex, lots of pain, lots of weird sex that's painful, lots of weird sex while on drugs that are painful. You get the picture. So when it comes to making up a Slaaneshi flavor of Chaos Space Marines, what does GW come up with?
Rock stars, naturally. Rock stars with sound-laser guitars. Because in the 80's, everything was awesome. They've since moved away from giving them actual sonic guitars in favor of sonic guns, but the parallel is still there. Why have they moved away from something freaking awesome into something just kind of meh? Because Games Workshop doesn't know a good thing when it sees one. You really should know this by now.
Even more recently, thanks in part to Dawn of War 2: Retribution and a certain Youtube video This one is even better they've seen a slight resurgence of popularity. The goofy idea of 80's, Motley Crue-spewing Noise Marines has been replaced with the goofier idea of evil-DJ-esque Noise Marines with long and loud sustained "music" (also known as dubstep) being blasted out of speaker-guns at head-fryingly loud volumes. Also the idea of a Land Raver is pretty cool too.
There have been sightings of the Noise Marine's 21st century counterparts who used weaponised dubstep to fuck up Counter Strike wannabes [1], and if you want to make an ACTUAL terrorists teeth explode then you need to called up the L.R.A.D a real world sonic cannon with a range of over two miles, with a total volume slightly lower then a shotgun going off next to your ear, but able to just keep that volume up for hours.
L.R.A.D is maybe close, and while it surely does please Slaanesh while doing a pretty awesome job of ruining some terrorist's day, it does not quite match the mark of Slaanesh's rock star/Skrillex Marines, but some day. . .
On the Table Top
The Noise Marines are a strictly balanced choice. Much like any other troops in the Chaos codex, they are very balanced, so will be run off the table by the overpowered Wardian codices unless supported by other Warp-fueled goofiness. That aside, this unit is a less-played but very fun choice.
They come as basic marines, with +1 initiative and Fearless. Naturally, they get the edge on other Marines in close combat, especially a power-sword-equipped Noise Champion (the sergeant equivalent), despite being stereotyped as shooty. That said, you want to keep them as close-range support choices due to their special weapons.
Any model can upgrade to a Dubstep Gun Sonic Blaster (the new sound-laser guitars, which look like pipe-organ guns). They are profiled as Salvo 2/3 bolters with ignores cover, so be prepared to bring down the rain on massed infantry waves, and ignore cover saves. The Blastmaster (which looks like a long-barreled sonic blaster) shoots like an Assault 2 heavy Bolter, or as a small blast krak missile, and both firing modes also have Pinning, and ignores cover. Fun on many levels. The Noise Champion can be given an angry pipe organ/mic combo for a backpack, which spits out a S5, Ap3, Assault 1 Flamer, which is fantastic news for you and terrible news for anything near that champion.
The downside, of course, is balance. They are 17 points a model, +3 for Sonic Blasters, a Blastmaster costs +30 points, Champion comes by default for +10, his power weapon is +15, the Doom Siren (Angry Organ) is another +15 points, and you'll probably need a transport as well. Due to the salvo nature of their blasters they cannot shoot and charge the same turn, but sweet motherfucking Jesus, with ignore cover on all guns any cover campers (yes, i'm looking at YOU, blobguards) would be ROCKED out of the table the turn these guys comes in range. Their other problem is that they have some very stiff competition in the Troops and Elites section, and while their sonic weapons are nice, players wanting a good shooting unit will often prefer Obliterators or Chosen.
Tl;dr: The god of excess delivers to those that can afford it. For ideal results, chuck a team of Noise Marines in a Metal Box, get it within range, and drop the bass.