Hello everyone, Frankie here making my new chaos list for some up coming tournaments. Let’s give these poor bastards a chance to get onto the table!
We recently just ran the BAO and chaos had a very poor showing opposed to the previous year where almost a quarter of the field was chaos, lol. What has changed? Are chaos still worth using at events?
Let’s start with some large changes that have hurt chaos. Well the poor backbone of the chaos book got nerfed hard (the Helldrake). Unfortunately now with vector strike getting toned down to only doing one hit on ground units it makes them only barely worth their points. You used to take Helldrakes to kill monstrous creatures, vehicles, and well, pretty much anything that stood in your way as long as it didn’t have a 2+ save, haha. Now you take a Helldrake for anti-flyer ability and it is still an infantry mulcher with its Bale Flamer. Honestly I don’t see myself taking a Helldrake in the new edition with the nerfs that it took. Hard believe one nerf can hurt a codex so much. The other change was to challenges. Now that people can swing at a character locked in a combat as long as they don’t have another target, your poor chaos champion never stands a chance. Although this issue isn’t huge and in some ways benefits you as well since your badass character that has to challenge can kill other guys if wounds spill over from the challenge.
So now on to the things that chaos benefited from in the new edition. Challenges, as I talked about above, can be good or bad. Wounds from a challenge now spill over into the unit if you over kill the challenger. So be sure to deploy your secret weapon: the cultist champion! He’s gonna get you with his zipgun and broken bottle shank, hi-yah!
Next big benefit would be the nerf to smash. Your toughness 5 Nurgle Obliterators just got a little tougher as did the Nurgle lords. The biggest change and most beneficial to chaos was the change to everything scoring. Now you don’t have to take those crappy cultists. My list is going back towards my fifth ed list with Plague marines inside there objective secured rhinos!
So my list currently consists of one Chaos Lord with mark of Nurgle with a power fist. He’s mainly just in the list to make my plague marines troops and provide a little bit of assault punch. Watch out for that boon table though haha last game he turned into a mighty spawn after winning a challenge…damn you GW! The core of the list is five x seven man plague marine squads inside of rhinos (sacred numbers, bro!!). They are armed with two melta guns and the champion has a Combi-melta and a Melta bomb. I use these guys to charge at the enemy, usually hopping out of the rhinos on turn one if the army I am playing against comes towards me, or turn two if it is a shooting army. The Plague Marines are so resilient and pack a pretty large punch with 3 Meltas for shooting and poisoned attacks in cc. The Plague Marines killed 30 Wraithguard and 2 Wraithknights last game, for me! While the opponent is dealing with the Plague Marines the rhinos are getting into a position to score the objectives. So far I have been having a blast with this army and haven’t lost yet. The nail in the coffin for this list though is of course the eight Obliterators, haha. Two units of three and one of two. They are so good at toughness five and the ability to deep-strike or even infiltrate if you get the right warlord trait. Eight Obliterators infiltrating and five units of plague marines charging at you is brutal, but when that combo is being commanded by the worlds greatest 40k player? Good game, broseph, don’t even get your models out of the case! Might as well just shake hands and go buy a me beer, haha!
Anyways, just wanted to let everyone know that chaos still has it and some of the cult troopers are actually worth taking. Chaos with allies might even be better but all I’m all about Plague Marines, all day, everyday. Thanks for reading everyone and hope to see more chaos at the next event.