Hi, I'm soon to go to my first 40k tournament after playing friendly games since 2nd edition.

I'm not particularly good at building tournament armies as I have always gone for style before power.

Anyhow now I have to build two armies, one 1500 pts. army and one 400 pts. army. I got the 1500 pts. army covered, but as for the 400 pts. army I am totally clueless. I have tried a couple of variants against my friends (dark eldar, SM, Eldar and Sisters of battle) and I was utterly crushed every game. In these games I went mainly for regular C:SM and some raptors.

It seems to me that you get so few models and options at this scale in a Chaos army, so I wondered if any of you have any good army lists and general tactics to use in such a game?

I take it the 400 pts is Iron Warriors. >.>

Having said that Do you have to keep the force organization chart?

If so Take a lord with as little as you can.

If not then load up on 5 man chaos squads and thats about 400 points already. :|


5 Marines ~90pts
-special weapon

^ something like 4 of those and one with a champ if you dont need the lord. or 3 and the lord. that will give you around 15 men which is decent in such a small points game.


Hope that helps. It is hard to make such a small list with chaos :o

If you have to use a standard FOC then it will be difficult.

For 400pts I'd use something like this -

HQ
Daemon Prince - Wings, MoT - lots of wounds, high invul save, immunity to ID, high movement.

Noise Marines 5 - Blastmaster. Fearless troops, good heavy weapon which can also be used in assault mode for advaning forward.

CSM's 6 - Meltagun

Think that would be around 400pts or so. It's diverse mark wise but at such low point levels it's very difficult to get in decent troops otherwise.

If your not using a standard FOC then you could go wild with terminators and oblits.

Terminators 3 - Heavy flamer 2 combi weapons
Terminators 3 - Reaper
Terminators 3 - 3 combi weapons.
Obliterator

Loads of 2+ saves, all has the ability to DS. Combi weapon fit can be altered according to enemy. Heavy troop, combi flamers, lots of tanks, combi melta, heavy elite infantry, combi plas!

Good luck, I know I wouldn't like to play at that point level with new CSM.

You have to use the combat patrol rules in the 4th edition rulebook,m you need at least one troop choice, can't have models with 2+ save or more than 2 wounds and maximum total armor value 33 and no ordnance.

urgghh combat patrol rules, ok I'll have a think but it will be really difficult I think..

How about as a tounge in cheek suggestion

20 CSM, Asp Champ, PF, 1 melta, 1 plasma, mark of nurgle :)

I try to avoid the legion specific marks as I want to run as close to the old fluff as possible (you get bonus points in the tournament for being true to your army's fluff).

Anyway, I'm not sure if the marks are worth it for such a small game.

I was thinking of three five man squads with chaos marines, one will include a missile launcher, since I have found that this weapon is pretty versatile and cheap.

I am also considering a small unit of chosen since I can get really close to the enemy with infiltrate which is pretty nice with rapid fire.

I am leaning towards a "havocback" (a Rhino with a havoc launcher) transport as well, but this has been blown up in every playtest I've had with this army so far (then again I've been wiped out by the third round in every game so...)