# Alternatives to Lash? I'm almost afraid to ask...



## Lord_Aaron (Sep 24, 2010)

I'm contemplating the next Chaos Space Marine army I want to build, and I'd like it to be a competitive tournament list. But before I start writing one down, I was wondering if there are other decent builds out there other than dual DP/Lash/obliterators/Plague Marines. I'm not trying to make any arguments against the dual DP/Lash/etc. build, I'm just curious. 

I'm sure this topic has come up before, I just couldn't find any when I did a search. It's probably just really old or I'm just unfamiliar with the site. If someone could show me a link, that would be appreciated. Besides, tournament meta-games change over time. Maybe a revisit of the topic would be useful?


----------



## KingOfCheese (Jan 4, 2010)

Nurgle/Tzeench Princes with Warptime
Plaguemarines
Berzerkers
Possibly Terminators/Chosen with Melta
Oblits


While it doesnt rely on "tricks" or "combos" to win, it is still somewhat effective in that each of them can do their own thing without having to rely on another unit to help it.
The Oblits are the helper units, popping vehicles and softening up squads before your CC stuff makes the charge.

Played well, it can be just as effective as a Lash list.


----------



## Zaden (Oct 21, 2008)

Pure Slaanesh without Lash can be quite competitive. MoS WT DPs are cheap and beasts in CC. Noise marines are also EXTREMELY flexible as they can be kitted out for objective holding, fire support and/or assault extrordinairs. I would still take lots of Obliterators.

I'm also of the opinion that Warptime princes are better for a take all comers list than Lash. And noise marines are much more fun to field than plague marines =)

And check out Broken Sword's CSM tactica for lots of info.


----------



## jaws900 (May 26, 2010)

Zaden said:


> Pure Slaanesh without Lash can be quite competitive. MoS WT DPs are cheap and beasts in CC. Noise marines are also EXTREMELY flexible as they can be kitted out for objective holding, fire support and/or assault extrordinairs. I would still take lots of Obliterators.
> 
> I'm also of the opinion that Warptime princes are better for a take all comers list than Lash. And noise marines are much more fun to field than plague marines =)
> 
> And check out Broken Sword's CSM tactica for lots of info.


Says the Emperor's Children player:wink:

I dislike people saysing "i'm want a compettavie list so i can only have less than half the codex in my army and can't even consider the rest" Now i'm kind of biest as thats just the way i play buy using the stuff that msot don't. I don't Mech up my armys and i try not to use the "popular" choices all the time.

The "competative" units are probbly the following;

Daemon Prince (Tzeetch/Nurlge w/ Waprtime)
Chosen w/ Meltaguns
Termiantors
Plagune Marines
Zerkers
Obliterators

Now personly i find that there are a few other that msot over look alot of the tike like Nurgle Bikers, they can be deadly have T6 and being on bikes. Also the Vindicators are underused in Chaos i armys i feel as people oftne go for the Obliterators and Defilers.

My advie is to build a semi-list. What i mena by that is build up a hight competative list but those a spnner in there with something people don't expect. When you have a Competative list people more or less know whats goign to be in it but if you throw in a unit they don't expect they have to approch the battle completly diffrently. Such as Deep stieking Raptors and then having them pop the Vindicator form behind. Just having them in reserve for DS will cause your oppoent to re-think there deployment and what thney do during the battle.


----------



## Whizzwang (Dec 31, 2008)

Lord_Aaron said:


> I'm sure this topic has come up before,


yup: 
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=71645
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=71819

and there are some real muppets out there.

From what I've managed to gather so far, being new to Chaos myself, there are many, many different ways to build a list without zerk/plague/oblit/lash combos.

Oblits seem to be must have inclusion as they are seriously good value for points, however other than that as far as I can tell it will generally come down to how good a player you are. 

As far as I'm concerned the better Chaos players seem to use all sorts of combinations of stuff that don't include the standard cookie cutter list.


----------



## DrinCalhar (Jul 10, 2010)

If you want good CSM without the Lash/Oblit/PM list but still want it to be good then you will want 2 DP warptime, Havocs with ML or dare I say it a few Oblits, 2 Zerkers and maybe 1 PM for objective holding, Chosen with Melta/flamers (outflanking) is very versatile.


----------



## Whizzwang (Dec 31, 2008)

DrinCalhar said:


> If you want good CSM without the Lash/Oblit/PM .... then you will want Oblits, 2 Zerkers and maybe 1 PM


Well done :laugh::laugh:


----------



## PhantomPhoenix (Oct 4, 2009)

Lash was severely weakened with the rise of mech. Now it's mostly useless until at least turn 3, granted the same thing can be said about Warptime or even most psyker abilities. Even so, it has seemed situational at best, not nearly as good as it was in 4th/early 5th. If you're looking to avoid Lash, you're 'best' option is a Nurgle/Tzeentch Prince with Wings and Warptime (I generally take one of each), and I honestly think they work better than the Slaaneshi Princes any way. If you're looking to avoid Princes, Kharn is a great buy at 165, just be ready he will kill some of the unit he's running with. Other than that really the only very competitive HQs we have are Sorcerors, unfortunately the lash sorc is the only one I know cost for, but generally a Sorc with wings and warptime work well too since they have a force weapon. (side note: always buy wings instead of a JP, since you only move like Jump Infantry with wings you can still get in Rhinos/Raiders). 

As for your heavies, Oblits are great. They're very flexible, very mobile (compared to other heavy weapons teams) and not _too_ expensive. Defilers and Vinidis are relatively interchangeable, generally you'd want to run 2 but I usually do alright w/ 1. I've also seen a lot more people toying with Havocs recently, considering they can take 4 special or heavy weapons they seem more appealing to me now. 6 Havocs w/ 4 Autocannons seems reliable and flexible enough. Conversely you could do 6 with 4 melta or meltaX2/plasmaX2 in a rhino, any less than 6 and I think you risk losing those specials/heavies to random fire. 

Now for the most important part in my opinion, Troops. There are many many articles comparing all the cult troops so I'll skip that. The 3 choices that I feel fit in a truly competitive build are Zerkers, PM, and CSM. Summoned Lessers, TSons, & Noise Marines all have pretty big issues (most prominent is no reliable vehicle killing) so I would advise against them if you're looking for purely competitive. Since you expressed intrest in non-PM I'll skip them as well. CSMs work best in full units of 10 for 2 specials, I'd steer clear of the heavies here, Chaos is primarily CC and short range fire fights so you'll need to move. I'd say 2x Melta or 2x Flamer, Plasmas a bit expensive and denies you the charge if you shoot it. Rhinos are a must for all your troops, I prefer mine base since even with ExA they're fragile and Chaos Dozers are still the old crappy ones. Your other troop option then is the Zerker. These guys are some of the best troop choices in the game. I've run them from 10 strong to 6 strong, as long as you don't send them into something unwinnable like a big unit of Nobz or Terminators they'll do the job. Most common set up is 8 strong with Fist Champ, it works and it's fluffy. If I were running it I'd do 3 units of CSM and 2 of Zerkers all in rhinos at 2000.

The rest is fill to fit, Chosen/Termis/Raptors/Etc. I personally don't like any of the Chaos FA, and feel Chosen are a tad expensive. My personal favorite here is Termicide, 3 termis 3 combis(usually melta) 105 points of deepstriking dead tank. 

I'd also like to apologize for any typos or other oddities typing this on my phone so it's hard to go back and check...


----------



## LordWaffles (Jan 15, 2008)

I've sent fantastic rave reviews about the other choices time and time again, in short: No, there is no other way to run competitive chaos unless everyone in your gaming group is a mouthbreathing neanderthal marine player.

The long version: Go F$*& yourself.


Lots of people will say the rest are as sound, but they aren't unless you're a flat-out far and away better player. And if you are that good, running the dual lash zerk/plague/oblit/chosen/termicide/raptor/vindicators list is fine.

Chaos is not as good at CC anymore, it's turned into a more double tap from twelve inch, but has zerkers army.

Good builds for nilla chaos marines:
Five guys. Icon. Have termicide for support. Go to ground a bunch.

Zerker build:
10 guys, 1 champ, powerfist, rhino, ex armor.

I'm curious why you dislike plague marines? If you hate the fluff behind any of the gods you can just as easily modify some of your current marines to look tougher and more survivable(with metal plates welded on, bracing pieces around the armor, more of a terminator look) to make them look like they'd very easily shrug off wounds just as easily as plague marines? Also Zerks? Those are your legions champions, those that excel at any and all physical combat. Shit like that goes a long way into making an army feel more original, while still being competitive. It's all fluff, but you can make up some very cool concepts by just having imagination.

Back to the original question:
Either take MoN or MoT, and warptime. That's it.


Also I'm going to start advocating people to take significantly worse and worse chaos lists. Hopefully by the time our next codex comes out, after seeing how fuckawful we do in tournies we'll get a massive boost in powah.


----------



## Anensenef (May 24, 2010)

nurgle DP with warptime. dont bother w/ a khorne DP. the warp nurgle will almost always outshine it.


----------



## Lord_Aaron (Sep 24, 2010)

Wow. This has generated more of a response than I though. Cool.

Actually, I never said I dislike Plague Marines. In fact, my first chaos army is Death Guard. Everybody here has giving me some great ideas on how to tweak my Death Guard to make it more tournament worthy, so thank you! (I'll post it in the army lists section.) Right now my Death Guard army is mainly PM's and Obliterators. I'm contemplating building a new chaos army and I just wanted to do something different, but keep it competitive.

Oh, and thank you for the links Whiz. I think maybe my next army will be Emperor's Children or World Eaters.


----------



## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

Most of the internet hasn't caught on yet, but Lash/Plagues/Zerks/Oblits became a big bag of fail quite a while ago.

Daemon Princes aren't bad. Slaaneshi Daemons Princes aren't bad. But Lash is bad now. In truly competitive environments, Lash falls down. Why?

1) Most armies are heavily mechanized nowadays. Lash doesn't work on units that are inside transports very well. In fact, it doesn't work on units in tranports at all.

2) Competitive armies have psychic defense, or access to it by taking Allies (Imperial Guard/Black Templars, I'm looking at you). Against armies like Eldar, Space Marines/Blood Angels/Dark Angels/Black Templars, you're going to be shut down just under 50% of the time for even being so presumptuous as to cast a psychic power without their permission. Against Space Wolves, it's even worse as Rune Priests auto-counter your powers on a 4+. Even goofball Inquisitorial armies can get psychic hoods on an Ld10 model without much effort.

3) Daemon Princes are big, fat, rather large targets that aren't overly tough. Without the Mark of Nurgle to increase their Toughness or the Mark of Tzeentch to give them a better Invulnerable save, you can pretty much bank on one or both Princes going down by the bottom of turn 3 against any army that has respectable shooting. Good luck surviving 16 autocannon shots and 6-10 lascannon shots, plus a boatload of lasguns and other shenanigans. If that isn't bad enough, remember that Guard can do cool things like make their weapons twin-linked against Monstrous Creatures. While most other armies can't put out quite this much firepower, its not unrealistic to go up against a Dark Eldar army with 10 or more dark lances, or a Space Wolf/Space Marine army with four or more Razorbacks with twin-linked lascannons or lascannons and twin plasma guns. Even Tau can blow your units off the board with a ton of missile pod and plasma rifle shots.

So if you want an alternative to Lash... look outside of the Chaos Space Marine Codex. We all knew it was happening, but it's finally here. Chaos has become just about obsolete (except for a few lucky occurrences) in the tournament scene. In people's local stores and so on, Chaos may still be doing well, but the big picture isn't looking good for the followers of the Dark Gods right about now.


----------



## space cowboy (Apr 3, 2009)

I tend to look to mix Lash with a Warptime DP anymore. Nurgle or Tzeentch, as mentioned before, is fine, and unmarked is ok if you need to save the points. I tend to like to run at least one Lash just to couple with the big guns that I run, but I have stopped relying on it. I find it is still useful against Orks, some Tau armies, definitely against Necrons and, as mentioned above, after the first turn or two against heavily mechanized armies (once a couple of transports go down.) However I don't think you are going to kill yourself if you double-up on Warptime princes.


----------



## DrinCalhar (Jul 10, 2010)

Remember to run your DP behind a rhino to add that 4++ cover save. When you do that Nurgle DP is amazing.


----------



## LordWaffles (Jan 15, 2008)

Katie Drake said:


> Most of the internet hasn't caught on yet, but Lash/Plagues/Zerks/Oblits became a big bag of fail quite a while ago.


Plague/zerks/oblits are still viable.



Katie Drake said:


> Daemon Princes aren't bad. Slaaneshi Daemons Princes aren't bad. But Lash is bad now. In truly competitive environments, Lash falls down. Why?


Because of mech lists with double melta...rrrraaaage!



Katie Drake said:


> Black Templars


In the tournament scene it is entirely illegal to take allies, what with the latest update to the witch/daemon hunter missing those pages. That means templar don't have any psychic defense, and even if we could take allies it'd be a ld9 table-wide psychic hood or even better a 35 point null rod inquisitor that wanders inside squads.
Plus black templar aren't super competitive, we're high second tier now at best.

But if allies -are- still legit you let me know, because I miss my lashless twenty six man squad



Katie Drake said:


> 3) Daemon Princes are big, fat, rather large targets that aren't overly tough. Without the Mark of Nurgle to increase their Toughness or the Mark of Tzeentch to give them a better Invulnerable save, you can pretty much bank on one or both Princes going down by the bottom of turn 3 against any army that has respectable shooting. Good luck surviving 16 autocannon shots and 6-10 lascannon shots, plus a boatload of lasguns and other shenanigans. If that isn't bad enough, remember that Guard can do cool things like make their weapons twin-linked against Monstrous Creatures. While most other armies can't put out quite this much firepower, its not unrealistic to go up against a Dark Eldar army with 10 or more dark lances, or a Space Wolf/Space Marine army with four or more Razorbacks with twin-linked lascannons or lascannons and twin plasma guns. Even Tau can blow your units off the board with a ton of missile pod and plasma rifle shots.


Hey know what wacky amazing rule changes happened with the last splash of codexes?
Instead of having icons give you +1 init, +1 attk, reroll ld, 5+ invul, or +1toughness now you REROLL ALL ONES IN COMBAT.
So essentially you have a squad of marines that only fail their save on a 2, making them effectively 15 point terminators for one turn.



Katie Drake said:


> So if you want an alternative to Lash... look outside of the Chaos Space Marine Codex. We all knew it was happening, but it's finally here. Chaos has become just about obsolete (except for a few lucky occurrences) in the tournament scene. In people's local stores and so on, Chaos may still be doing well, but the big picture isn't looking good for the followers of the Dark Gods right about now.


You mean the followers of the pirate gods of butthurt. Because that's what we are right now, an entire floatilla of butthurt pirate marines. Wow. That's the army I want to play.


----------



## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

LordWaffles said:


> Plague/zerks/oblits are still viable.


Plague Marines are good. Zerks are nice. Oblits... not so much. Getting insta-fucked by every decent weapon ever isn't terribly conducive to being a good unit. 




> In the tournament scene it is entirely illegal to take allies,


What tournaments are you playing, brah? Every tournament I'm aware of is still allowing them.



> You mean the followers of the pirate gods of butthurt. Because that's what we are right now, an entire floatilla of butthurt pirate marines. Wow. That's the army I want to play.


Pretty much. Sorry Chaos players, be you a Daemon or a Marine. Your army sucks. It's not your fault, it's GW's stupid design philosophy during late 4th edition that screwed you over. I'm a Daemon player so I feel your pain.


----------



## PhantomPhoenix (Oct 4, 2009)

Katie's right about Allies, most tournaments allow them as long as you own a physical codex not the new download versions. This is because no where in the new book or FAQ/Errata does it say that the old book is to be disregarded in favor of the new pdf. Yeah it's a far stretch that IG parking lots were really pulling for, but they got it so we have to deal with them for a little longer.

I don't think we're quite as doomed as Katie makes us out to be, but we're definitely not high tier 2 in the tourney scene. I'd give us top of T3, but I'm being generous there. 40k has turned much more heavily toward shooting which is something we're a bit lacking in. (I know NMs shoot a ton but I don't care how many magic bolters you shoot at the front of a rhino, it's not gonna break... So that doesn't really count.)

In short you can do well with Chaos in tournaments if you're a good player. But it's going to be an uphill battle the whole way.

(As a side note: DE Lances don't really need to be worried about until their new book... Magical Bolters _will_ break a DE Raider... So will normal ones eventually for that matter)


----------



## LordWaffles (Jan 15, 2008)

Katie Drake said:


> Plague Marines are good. Zerks are nice. Oblits... not so much. Getting insta-fucked by every decent weapon ever isn't terribly conducive to being a good unit.


But that's weaponfire NOT hitting our precious leaping princes or plagues. We still suck but at best the oblit squad will absorb two whole shots(Two dudes) as opposed to one with the vindicator, or half a shot if a defiler.

Besides, getting insta-fucked is a trademark of chaos marine 4th edition codexes! We -trademarked- that shit. Because every single fucking chaos marine character(Not dp) I take under 250 points gets to share in DYING INSTANTLY.

I'm really tempted to go to adepticon with an entire black legion army bent over exposing their armor-plated assholes at all times.
"No, it's in the fluff, this is what they do."



Katie Drake said:


> What tournaments are you playing, brah? Every tournament I'm aware of is still allowing them.


I had assumed, and so had all three of my FLGS that since the new updates were released, they were set in stone, especially since they are the latest thing produced on the subject.

I wouldn't think they needed a rule for you to not do something, (IE: No rule I can't flip the table) Negative reverse ruling is kind of a silly argument.


----------



## Lash Machine (Nov 28, 2008)

Twin Lash is still viable at 1500 and 1750 points levels. Getting people out of their transports has always been part of the problem and is in general regarding which ever army you play. Lash princes are soft compared with a T6 Nurgle prince or other compareable MCs but you can not deny their usefulness and cheapness.

Obliterators do not like las cannons and such but I'm quite sure most opponenets would not think 'oh it's only 6 oibliterators and they can be instant killed, no problem.'

What about the hordes of cult marines chugging their way towards them and those lovely deamon Princes?


----------



## ckcrawford (Feb 4, 2009)

To Katie Drake: I've actually seen a great move from mechanized armies. Everyone is trying that stupid poding/dreep strike melta moves on other armies. The reason why I say its stupid as they always blow up vehichals but they always get chewed up piece meal. There is way too many of these nubes. And these lists are just as pestering as Lash lists. Except for the fact they almost always lose. The pestering part is that you play these lists over and over again.

Other good chaos armies are zerker and noise marine armies. Except I tend not to spend the points on the ranged weapons for my noise marines. I tend to see that noise marines with their initiative five are good shock troops. They cause more damage than the enemy because they go first most of the time and they are fearless. These shock troops kind of set the battle field for my zerkers to have units already unmoble in combat to charge and use their furious charge skill.

First Wave: Noise Marines, jump infantry and DP. 
Second Wave: Zerkers and defilers. 

Actually I quite successful list I had. Lash Lists are of course a lot more fail safe.


----------

