Chaos Space Marines Units and Tactics: Spawn

This one will be quick. I know that a tactical article on Chaos Spawn seems a little moot, but I want to make this a complete tactica, so before I move to our HQ selections, I am going to cover Spawn and possibly bring something to mind that was never seen before:

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Chaos Spawn can be brought in your list in two ways, through Gift of Chaos (turning somebody into a spawn) or by buying them points-wise and including them in your actual army list.

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Gift of Chaos Spawn: A Spawn born from the Gift of Chaos can be fun. Dropping a T5, W3 and D6 attacks model that take out a squad member (probably the Sgt equivilent in a squad) and enter the squad into combat can really hurt Guard and Tau (any low S squad). Even in this scenario however, the Spawn has no save and can be taken out without much trouble. In fact, it may die in combat that turn and allow that unit to consolidate, giving them the advantage of free movement that turn. For the cost of Gift of Chaos, I think there are better powers available to our HQs. Once you have turned someone to a spawn once, you will get over it.

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The cost of the power is 30 points and can be used every turn, which makes it a better value if it works than taking Spawn outright, but it also may never work and gimp the sorceror or Prince who took it.

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Fielding Chaos Spawn: When fielding Spawn it is important to remember that they are Mindless (must move toward the closest enemy) and that they must fall into the least number of squads (so if you field 3, you have a squad of three, 4 and you have a squad of three and a squad of one).

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Chaos Spawn on the Charge: Another thing to remember about spawn is that they are Slow and Purposeful, but they also have a unit type of Beasts, this means they charge as cavalry, but due to also being S&P, they charge Charge 2d6, but with a difference: they take the best number per the S&P rule and then multiply it by 2. So, if a spawn rolls a 2 and a 6 for the charge, he takes the 6 and multiplies it by 2, which gives him a 12" charge that turn.

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Now with all that being said, spawn really only have a couple uses: The can be a meat shield or an escort.

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Meatshield: Spawn can screen units pretty well with their large size, but a fast enemy can run a flank and force the spawns' movement and their slow and purposeful will also tend to slow the units they guard down. count that with the fact that 3 of them will run you 120 points (the same price as a min biker squad with meltas or a termicide squad with combi-meltas) and you will quickly decide that they are a poor meat shield, but they are there if you want to do that with them.

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Escort Duty: Escort duty is an idea I first saw on Stelek's site YTTH and works with spawn for the simple fact that they have a high volume of wounds and T5. I recommend that the unit they escort also have the ability to perform a cavalry charge, so really a mounted Slaaneshi sorceror or lord is the only option that can keep up with their potential charge range.

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The Lord can be nasty with a Blissgiver, but also might not make it into combat turn 1, which means you will want to get into cover or move with your army giving you cover. This is where you run into trouble with this unit as the enemy can play games with your movement and you can get your 9 ablative wounds killed pretty easily be hesitating in the back. This leads me to the sorceror.

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The Slaaneshi Sorc with three spawn has the ability to use Lash, which makes it possible to get into combat with an enemy squad turn 1. His 9 wounds seem like a good thing, but the problem is without an armour save, you will lose some wounds pretty easily, even at T5. Sure your High I sorc will help you out here, but you could be forced to take wounds on your spawn, leaving the sorc on his own for the most part and not where you need your Lash sorcs to be.The downfall of both of these escort ideas is the mech army. You are counting on getting into comat turn 1, but what if you can't pop his tanks? What if you cannot get there even if you do? Sure, if you hit a unit and wipe it and if your long range anti-tank units kill stuff turn 1 as well, you may have just thrown the balance of the game heavily into your favor, but, there are a lot of ifs there.

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Overall, my thoughts on Chaos Spawn are that I have scoring meatshields available called Plague Marines, I have assaulty, deepstriking meatshields call lesser daemons, who are also scoring. So meat shield spawn are out of the question for me. Escort spawn are also out of the question for me as I would rather kit out a lord to work with a squad (IE Khorne lord with LCs or Blood feeder with 8 Zerks with a Powerfist) and I would rather have my sorcs ride with more dependable units (Any unit that can take a rhino really).

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Hopefully you do not feel your time was wasted reading this entry, but I want to cover each unit as well as I can and present possible uses, even for something as terrible as the Chaos Spawn.