First Chaos Games

So my buddy Dave came over and we squeezed two late night games using the new Chaos dex.  He brought his updated Slaneesh army and I tried my updated 1ksons for one game, then my Imperial Fists army.  I thought the fistss would be a good litmus test to see how Dave's army (and Chaos in general) held up to what I think it is a good baseline army.

First Dave's CSM looked something like this, I'm not going to have all the upgrades but it gives you a basic idea.

Lord with MoS on Steed
2x Hellbrutes with Reapers Autocannons and Missile Launchers
4 CombiMelta Termies
8 Noise Marines
8 Noise Marines
20 Cultists
20 Cultists
5 Bikes with MoS
Helldrake
3 Oblits
5 Havocs w/ Autocannons
Forgefiend with Hades Autocannons
Aegis no gun

So some good things to check out in his list.  For one he's got the Cultist and Cult troops which I am also trying to find that balance.  He's got some new toys in the Forgefiend and the Helldrake to see how they perform.  Also the Hellbrute are cheap AV12 firepower.  I was also interested in the Lord riding with the bikes and how they would do.  I hadn't really looked into the Mounts for the HQs since I'm primarily looking at Ahriman but some of them seem awesome (note not the the Tzeentch one).  Plus obviously I've been playing bikes a lot!

My updated 1ksons at 2k list also not all the updates included:
Ahriman
Apostle with MoT
Hellbrute with 2 Fists
5 MoT Termies, Combi Meltas one CF
9 1ksons with Rhino with Havoc Launcher
9 1ksons with Rhino with Havoc Launcher
10 Cultists
10 Cultists
2x Auto/las predators
3 MoT Oblits
Aegis w Quad gun

So first big question is is Ahriman worth the points.  Run into a farseer and the answer is easily no, but I need at least MoT sorc to unlock the 1ksons but he could be anywhere from 50-100 points cheaper.  I picked up the Apostle and cultists, but the more I think about it the more I think the Apostle is almost better served going with Infiltrating Terminators.  I added some Havocs to the rhinos because I've had problems with horde type things in the past.  Cheap cultist to sit and man the quad gun.  The rest is pretty much the old list with some updates.  I also took the Gift of Mutation on anybody I could.

We played the Scourging with Hammer and Anvil.  I didn't grab pics and I'm not going to turn by turn a battle report since it went sideways fast on me.  We were able to call it on turn 3 as there was no way I was going to turn the game around at that point.  I had plenty of observations for my sons from these 3 turns:

-Never outflank.  It still is horrible unless you have Accute sense, which Dave's lord did and was able to use with a fast unit (bikes) to great effect.  I put Ahriman + Termies + Apostle to outflank instead of infiltrate and they came in the wrong side on turn 3 and they would have been better starting 18" away and taking shots early.  Even with hammer and anvil they were still horribly out of position!

-Infiltrating Oblits is cool.  They shot horribly this game but it is still cool. 

-My 10 cultists just wilted easily.  Of course Dave did deep strike terminators and outflank bikes, so I didn't get to utilize my Aegis for the 2+ go to ground.  Would more have helped?  Eh... debatable.

-The boon thing is neat but not to be counted on for anything super.  My Apostle got nothing, and twice while casting the spell to give boon I rolled the same thing which is a goose egg also.  I had one Asp Sorc die to perils.  However my other one was doing great (+1 T, FNP, Fleshbane) before he died to Dave's Lord whom he had almost killed!  If the damn asp sorc were not Lvl 1 I could have gone for the force weapon but as it is they might never get a chance to use that thing!


So I learned some things and didn't others due to some bad planning on my part.   As for Dave's army it held up really well for the three turns we played.  Certainly with my termie unit on the board I would have done more damage on following turns but there was no way I was going to get enough points due to the way the random point values for the objectives fell.

Tomorrow I'll do up a quick synopsis of our second game and give some more thoughts to what we've seen from Chaos so far!