Chaos Marines: Huron vs Bugsculptor
So to inaugurate my new collection of 40k terrain, my pal Pete, a.k.a. Bugsculptor dropped by and decided to show me what the interior of a Tyranid's digestive system looked like. I'm still in the process of assembling all my Chaos Marines (something which will still take quite a while), but I was able to piece together 1850. Instead of giving a couple battle reports, I'm going to show you my list and say what I thought about the unit through both the games I played. Huron Blackheart - The man of the hour! Huron is quite nice, his random psychic powers are often helpful, and he's not too shabby in close combat. Infiltrating was decidedly less useful against Tyranids, but I definitely can see it being handy. Overall, I love him, A+.
Sorcerer (Level 3, Spell Familiar, Chaos Bike) - Loaded up with Biomancy, a Sorcerer becomes quite a threat, even with Shadow in the Warp around, the Spell Familiar helps quite a lot, significantly increasing the chances of getting a spell off.
Helbrute (Reaper Autocannon, Power Scourge) - Wow, what a piece. I ran 2 Helbrutes, neither one did anything worth while and were easily removed by a single turn of shooting, or just getting slapped in the face by a Trygon. In the future, I may try them with Reaper Autocannon and Missile Launcher, just to get some firepower out of my Elites, but I don't think they're much use other than that.
10 Chaos Marines (2x Plasma Guns, Bolters, Bolt Pistols, Close Combat Weapons, Veterans of the Long War, Champion with Power Sword) - Good all around troops, effective shooting, not bad in combat. A bit on the pricey side, I may drop the Close Combat Weapons in the future, but for now I'm going to keep them as-is.
Chaos Rhino (Havoc Launcher) - Actually, not bad! In one game, it was first blood, which I expected I suppose, though in the second game, sitting back and plopping out S5 blasts actually was quite nice.
20 Cultists (Autoguns, 2 Heavy Stubbers) - A surprising amount of dakka for not many points. Decent for camping objectives and even spitting out a few bullets.
20 Cultists (2 Flamers) - Similar to the dakka cultists, they're good at camping objectives, but I wouldn't trust them to do much more.
Heldrake - No brainer, as the internets say, this wins the chaos book.
8 Chaos Bikers (2 Meltaguns, Veterans of the Long War, Champion with Power Sword) - A good buy for their points, resilient, fast, shooty and choppy, when combined with the Sorcerer they can be quite a threat. I'd bump them up to 10 if I had the points.
5 Warp Talons (Mark of Slaanesh,Veterans of the Long War) - Ugh... I really wanted them to do something, but against nids, everything is either T3 or T6. They can spend time chopping up gaunts and end up losing 1-2 a turn for little gain, or end up fighting a monstrous creature which is a pain to wound even with the re-rolls. The 5++ is nice, but their lack of strength doesn't help against the threats that will be ignoring their armor anyhow.
5 Havocs (4 Autocannons, Veterans of the Long War) - A steal at 120 points, can't wait to build my second unit of them. Some disposable wounds would be nice, but for how cheap the unit is, it doesn't really matter.
Maulerfiend (Lasher Tendrils) - This monster is going to be a huge pain for Monstrous Creatures, reducing most of them to 1 crush attack means that there is a really good chance that you'll tie up a monster for a few turns, buying time to deal with the other threats. Additionally, it's fast enough to counter attack just about anywhere, or keep up with the bikes if you want to use it more offensively.
Overall, I had a decided lack of AP 2/3 shooting to deal with the Monstrous Creatures, but that will hopefully be fixed when I get my second Heldrake built. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the large units of cultists. They take up a ton of space in the deployment zone, otherwise they're sucking down large blasts, in the future I'll probably run units of 10.