It's all well and good saying that it's an inbuilt weakness that chaos players have to live with but the end result is going to be that chaos lists remain infantry and superheavy heavy and all look quite similar.

If you want to see more armour and variation in the chaos lists that people use then the stalker tank is the way to go.

It's a fair point that it feels a bit meh to copy the marine list but lets not forget that the two have a shared ancestor and so will have some similarities in gear. It's also worth bearing in mind that even with some shared/similar equipment the two armies do play quite differently with chaos forces having much larger infantry fms, daemons and neccessitate the use of different tactics because of the lack of ATSKNF. I wouldn't let the fact the meh factor stop you from adding an AA tank to improve the variety in competetive chaos army builds. Failing that, allow Oblits to ride in Landraiders as E&C suggests.

As for Oblits being too expensive - Really? These guys are AWESOME. Adding major firepower and an engagement boost to infantry units, as well as being fearless and with AA and a rienforced armour save. They're one of the best infantry units in the whole game. The no of times I've spent trying to hunt down that last BTS Oblit to claim the objective.

Simpliest thing to do is to allow more mechanised BL forces is to go back to the old style of army list, then I could play this army again.

Open War 11
W - 2 L - 1 D - 0
1 Warlord & Raptors x5
2 Armoured Company - Predators x3 & Land Raiders x1
3 Armoured Company - Land Raiders x4
4 Armoured Company - Land Raiders x4
5 Assault Company - Death Wheels x3 - BTS
6 Assault Company - Death Wheel x1
7 Titans - Feral x1
8 Titans - Feral x1
9 Titans - Feral x1

No AA, but it was great fun to play

- its not a cop out if it's a military nessesity
- it was probably replaced for the same reason everything gets replaced in the imperium: either a new and better STC was discovered, or the production knowledge was lost. There are lots of examples of that with Chaos' infantry weapons.

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Tim: By mech we mean mechanised infantry.

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So you mean

Epic London 2008
Black Legion
W - 2 L - 1 D - 0
Daemon Pool 10 x Lesser Daemons
BL Retinue + Obliterator
BL Retinue + Havocs + Rhinos
Chosen + Daemon Prince + 2 Obliterators
Raptors
Falorn Hope + Rhinos
Falorn Hope + Rhinos
Bikes
Death Wheel
Death Wheel

Obliterators did the job for me whilst my mech retinue joined up with my Chosen.

Not having AA in my other list was a known aspect when I put the list together and I recognised that I might have problems against air heavy lists, but to me that's part of the fun of tournament play, you don't know what you are going to face and your opponent has the same problem.

2008 means you'd have had those Oblits that laid twice the number of AA hits than they do today. Just sayin.

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See I thought Night Lords would make good mech (well at least mobile) infantry because they would have:

Raptors
Bikes
Mounted Retinues (yay mech infantry)

They wouldn't have anything Daemonic (aside from Raptors) in significant numbers, so no Obliterators (and trying to write the Iron Warriors BFFs out of an IW list to make room for an alternative AA unit feels wrong to me). So, giving them the Stalker that they would have either had to keep in service or invent post-heresy seems to make sense.

They could also have smaller armoured companies to reflect the fact that they don't have that many tanks.

I'd love to see a Chaos tank army too though

Understood and accepted, just wanted to show a list that has actually been used.

I wouldn't like to see ACs becoming core in a standard BL list as it makes it easy/easier to make abusive lists and a BL list without any actual CSM just sems wrong.

The addition of the stalker tank would make things quite a bit more interesting though.

Agreed.

I think sticking them on the Armoured co only would work well, like I say makes them vaguely attractive then, certainly down from the 8-pinter they seem to be atm

But a loyalist list without any marines is ok?

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I think that's a whole seperate argument

Thanks for pointing that out to me

I also like the idea of allowing Oblits in Land Raiders.

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Only alowing the stalker in armoured formations sounds like a good idea. It would allow you use mobile formations and keep this under somekind AA while keeping it out of the retinues themselves. It would force you take armoured instead of a foot retinue and allow a different style of play.

This kind of AA would also be easier to destroy/suppress than organic retinue AA, leaving an inbuilt weakness while still alowing variety of play.

Btw - I notice both the lists posted to support the idea of mobile CSM armies all jammed full of deathwheels and ferals, units which don't fear air very much. I'm sure everyone would be happy to see a mobile CSM army which doesn't rely on these units.

Obliterators in LR: I don't understand why this is supposedly desirable. You've gone from a 75 point upgrade to 150 points. There's a high probability of losing Rhinos and therefore formation speed regardless of the Oblit/LR combo. In a choice between 2 Oblits and garrison versus Oblit/LR in a mech formation, I'd take the garrison.