Overview
A few tips and tricks for CSM that I personally prefer and that usually works well.
Introduction
Hello there everyone. I wrote this guide to share a couple of tips, tricks, and other things for the Chaos Space Marines that I personally use. I might not be a competetive tournament player, but I feel I do pretty well regardless and I hope this guide might be useful to at least some of you.
But without further ado, let’s begin.
Tips and Tricks
Ah yes, the Chaos Space Marines, my favourite race. An army of huge spiky armoured badasses that slaughter everything in their path, while their masses of servants swamp the enemy in weight of numbers. Well… That’s the theory, anyway. But outrageously enough, the other races have a tendency to fight back! So, how do we deal with that? Here are a few tricks and tidbits that you might find useful.
First, remember that Chaos Space Marines are stronger than their loyalist brethren in close combat. Sure, their ranged damage can’t quite match the loyalists’ better maintained weapons, and their health is very slightly lower (The difference per squad is 975 to 990, or 325 to 330 per model; not a huge difference as you see), but the advantage in melee damage is noticeable indeed.
Basic Chaos Marines have 22 melee dps, while Tactical Marines have 19. While both will equally cheerfully hack their way through other ranged units, as well as melee units with enough support, this difference really shows once they engage in melee with one another. As long as they have reasonably equal health and support, the Chaos Marines will win. Add Eternal War into the mix, and you will really see the difference. Just beware of Kraken Bolts! For some reason this ability increases Tactical Marine melee as well as ranged damage against heavy armour, giving them a temporary edge.
Be aware of the fact that since Chaos Marines have higher melee than ranged damage, meleeing Generators and Power Nodes (Particularly the latter) is often more effective than shooting them.
Second, think about which commander you choose. The Plague Champion alone is one of the weaker commanders, the Techmarine has almost double the ranged damage output and can shoot him to bits. It is his support abilities, power in late game and strong globals that make him useful. A Champion walking together with 2 CSM squads, essentially acting as a bonus stronger CSM, forms a strong ranged blob with useful melee utility, and by using cover and Heretics worshipping they can win pretty much any shoot-out in the early game. The Chaos Lord is a direct tank and brawler that is good for taking down suppression weapons controlled by unaware players. (But turrets make him very sad.) He excels against masses of weak melee foes, or ranged ones if he can catch them, as his high health and excellent ability gives him high staying power. In lategame he becomes one of the strongest direct combat commanders in the game. The Sorcerer compensates for lower health, loss of knockback and suppression resistance, and loss of selfhealing with his strong Doombolt and similar abilities. This you probably knew. But did you know that the Sorcerer does higher melee damage than the Chaos Lord? Against heavy infantry the Lord mitigates this somewhat by having a power weapon, but against basic infantry the Sorcerer wins out.
Third, the Chaos Dreadnought’s Blood Rage ability is more useful than some think. It does not only give him more strength and speed, but it also halves damage taken, which is incredibly powerful. In addition, while you can’t control him for the duration of the ability, he will continue attacking the target he attacked before you used it, so that disadvantage is often minor. In fact, he does not even need to be in melee, it is enough that he is shooting them. Therefore, you can just activate it while closing in, minimising the effect of any ranged fire until he gets there. Mark of Khorne also makes his melee attacks do additional AoE damage, just like the loyalist Dreadnought does without any weapon upgrades. He does not gain this AoE damage with Mark of Tzeentch, even if Mark of Tzeentch generally is a better choice when fighting fast ranged enemies or ranged vehicles.
Percentages in Retribution are additive instead of the usual multiplicative. While this usually does not make a lot of difference when stacking buffs, if you are stacking debuffs and reductions it becomes very significant. If a Warlock is falling back (-80% ranged damage taken) uses Distort Field (-50% ranged damage taken) on himself, he will actually be healed for 30% of the damage normally dealt by a ranged weapon if fired at him. Chaos can abuse this in various entertaining ways. Put Chaos Space Marines in heavy cover and then boost them with Tzeentch worship. As long as they are in the flashing-red state, they will suffer 78% less ranged damage, and the firer gets a 40% penalty to accuracy, making them almost impossible to dig out at range without truly massive firepower. Enter a building and the damage reduction increases to a crazy -90%!
One of the single most evil tricks available to the faction is the Warp Rift abuse. Situational at best, it can nonetheless utterly cripple a T1 army- though expect your opponent to be very unhappy! The idea is simple. On some maps, there are small areas that are ringed in by low walls. An example of this is just below the central victory point on Capital Spire. If you time it correctly, you can use the Chaos Sorcerer’s Warp Rift ability to teleport enemies here, trapping them. Once trapped, they can’t escape- not even falling back works- and you can ignore or gun them down at leisure. Once the battle reaches T2, this tactic will be redundant as all factions gain access to wall-crushing units, but until then it can be devastating. Be aware of heavier T1 commanders, Sentinels, and certain abilites that can free them!
Chaos Marines do good melee damage, but did you know that Noise Marines and Havocs with the Autocannon upgrade do equally high DPS? This is extremely situational but good for a last ditch effort, for example, if your Noise Marines encounter a very low health Warlock with Distort Field, or when an enemy is about to flee through your units.
Target priority is important. Always focus fire with your ranged units on one enemy unit a time, unless your squads have weapons with different specialisations. In general, you want to shoot the squishy stuff before the resilient stuff, and shoot the assaulty stuff over the shooty stuff. Your melee units want to engage enemy ranged units where possible, and slow units take precedence, especially weapons teams when possible. For example, if in T1, a standard Chaos Lord build (Lord, 1x Heretics, 2x Chaos Marines) encounter a standard Force Commander build (Force Commander, 2x Tactical Marines, 1x Scouts) you generally want to move forward the Lord first to tank (Possibly with Worship) and get him & the Heretics into melee with the Tactical Marines as soon as possible, to lock down their shooting by meleeing and Doom Blasting. Doom Blast is important here, since slowing down the squads you are in melee with allows the Chaos Lord to hit them with his ability. The Chaos Marines should focus down the Scouts quickly and then switch targets to the Force Commander, unless the Scouts are difficult to reach- The scouts are only slightly higher priority than the Commander due to their low resilience. Finish by mopping up the Tactical Marines.
Countering common ploys
Retribution is not a perfect game. There are plenty of things that are either cheesy or downright broken. Other things are counterable but still very strong. No situation is without hope, however. Let’s take a look at how we counter usual problematic things.
Zoanthrope blob
Zoanthropes are very dangeous units, having a high damage artillery blast and both protective and anti-tank abilities. While slow, fragile and useless in melee, they have a health regeneration aura that stacks, making killing them almost impossible once there are 3 and 4 of them and they start to gain levels. Each of the commanders can counter this; the Chaos Lord can rush in and use his abilities to disrupt and/or scatter the blob, allowing the rest of the army to focus fire and bring them down one by one. Bloodletters, a teleporting and/or chaining Sorcerer, and a Plague Fist or Bile Spewer-toting Plague Champion can do the same. Always remember to attack them from between their base and them, that is, from behind, if you can. If they retreat, you can easily carve them apart with melee attacks. Blastmasters are also quite effective, as are Khorne Dreadnoughts.
Catachans
Catachans are utterly lethal, each hitting as hard as a Nob in close combat and combining powerful abilities, high ranged damage and excellent spreading of incoming damage between the squad members. They are without doubt the single strongest T1 unit, and dealing with them while facing the rest of their army is no simple task. Try to focus them with all the ranged firepower you have. If you have a Chaos Lord he can distract them, while a Sorcerer can help damage them with his bolts.
Sniper Spam
By building multiple squads of Rangers, Sniper Scouts or equivalent, a player can do crippling damage to our Marine units. By killing a Marine and perhaps wounding more with each salvo, before rapidly pulling back, they can keep us at arm’s length while reducing our firepower steadily. There are two ways of dealing with them. Either you must anticipate their movement and deal as much damage to them as you can while they move in and take their shot, or you must rush them, using Khorne worship and other similar abilities to catch them. This is a difficult task, for snipers are usually fast. If you are playing Plague Champion, turrets can be a good solution. Use Nurgle worship and/or the rest of your army to protect him while he is building it. Once completed, the enemy will need to find alternate strategies; snipers do irrelevant damage to turrets and several units of them cost enough power to prevent him from T2 rushing you, assuming he does not have a significant power advantage. If they have a turret protecting them when they pull back, however, it is usually best to deal with it first. Which brings us to…
Turrets
A single turret is a threat. It can easily beat a large T1 ranged army from the front with minimal damage taken, and a melee army with no damage taken at all. It takes almost no damage from Snipers and can lock down large areas of the battlefield. Jump units like Assault Marines are very effective at dealing with heavy weapons teams, but since you can’t force turrets to stop shooting by attacking them in melee, said Assault Marines will have to fight the entire enemy army alone once they jump to behind the turret, while the turret keeps your army from joining the fight. This rarely ends well. Chaos lack jump troops until tier 2, making it even more difficult. Therefore, flanking turrets is absolutely vital, at least until T2 when artillery like Plasma Cannons and vehicles can deal with them. If multiple turrets have been set up, covering each other, it is unfeasible to attack them until T2. Simply evade them if so. It should be noted that this will cost your opponent 60+ power. Assault his power node if you can, and you will get a significant power advantage that you can use to rush to to T2 and stomp him to dust.
Final comments
That is all, for now. I will be adding more tips & tricks periodically. Do you know of some quirk that should be added? Do comment!