Using Your Nerd Crush Unit

... and maybe win a game with it!
Fly Molo back again.

There was a time back in 5th edition where I played a lot of Chaos. I had somewhere around 30,000 points of mixed Chaos Marines forces and I could field whatever I needed, except triple Vindicator lists (which strangely I can now, but I own less points) or triple Land Raider lists. Most options were available to me.
But for some odd reason, I always used at least 2 Defilers. I *rarely* used all three I had, but 2 seemed good to me.

POP QUIZ HOT SHOT! Was the Defiler the best unit in the 5th Edition Chaos Space Marines Codex?

a. Yes
b. Yes
c. Yes
d. No

If you chose a b or c, my Lash Prince has something to say to you. Or my Obliterators.
AV 12 was very easy to explode, often on the first turn, in 5th edition with all of that anti-tank people were packing. It had fleet but that involved me forgoing shooting in order to get up field faster. It was easily smashed up by loyalist Dreadnaughts due to their high initiative. Its cannon was ordnance so running him with extra close combat arms was probably the only set up.
Why did I use this thing?
The price was nice. 150 for something that deadly was reasonable. The model is wicked cool. Uh, the model is wicked cool. I liked having armor saturation to get my Rhinos up field. The model is wicked cool. I had some nicely painted ones and the model is cool. Wicked.
Additionally there were better competitive choices in the heavy support slot. Obliterators for one. They were great in 5th (arguably better in 6th!). The Predator and Vinidicator weren't bad either. A case could be made for Land Raiders.
But when I started my Chaos lists, I would always start:

Daemon Prince
Daemon Prince
Defiler
Defiler
... then fill in the rest with whatever.

I was stuck on this unit. It was my nerd-crush unit (NCU). I loved that model, I loved how it played in game and I loved having them on the battlefield. When starting my lists like this, I needed to figure out how to make a list that could win a game.
Admittedly, starting the list like this was also a handicap. I was setting myself up with suboptimal choices from the get go, and I would have to attempt to make up for this lack of power if I wanted to compete with people who weren't going to pull any punches.

The last incarnation of the Space Marines codex was an interesting one. It has a section in the back that allowed you to make your own Space Marines chapter that had a list of benefits and a list of drawbacks. You could select benefits but needed to weigh them against drawbacks. I loved this idea and I felt it should have been kept in the current edtion of the codex. You had to make some tough choices but it allowed you to customize your chapter and playing experience. The Chaos Marines codex from years back allowed rules to make your army a Legion specific one. You could take Night Lords, Iron Warriors (artillery!), Death Guard (who needs fast attack?) or any of the awesome bad guys. Each had its strengths and each had its weaknesses. I loved it.

I bring this all up because we often handicap ourselves with these nerd-crush units. Its all well and good if your nerd-crush unit is something awesome like Heldrake or Annihilation Barge... its not so much if your nerd-crush unit is Helbrute or Lychguard. How can we make those sub-optimal fanboy-esque units work for you? The answer is simple and complex at the same time.

Simple: We need to take all comers. Figure out your NCU's (nerd-crush unit) strengths and weaknesses, then design the rest of your list to minimize the weaknesses.
Complex: We need to take all comers. In order to do so, we need to understand what your army list needs to do in order to prevent the enemy from winning and to ensure that you win. We'll look at your NCU, understand what role it fills and then fill in the other roles with units from your codex or allies, so your NCU is still a contributing unit in the game.

Easy enough?

Awesome. Time for some parameters. This is a list, made up by me, for what I think an army should be able to do or have an answer for if that army is to win. This isn't a ten-commandments. This isn't made up by some Grand Tournement winner. This isn't voted on by a high council, its just the list I run my armies through before I field them.
Can my army....?

1. Score Objectives?
2. Kill Troops?
3. Handle Flyers?
4. Handle Deathstars?
5. Handle AV13/14 Saturation?
6. Handle Fearless/ATSKNF Hordes?
7. Handle a Bottom 1/Turn 2 Assault?
8. Can you score secondary objectives?

In a perfect world, your list should be answering "yes" to every question, but only two are required. If you can't answer "yes" to 1 and 2, you should scrap and start over or you need a serious overhaul.

1. Can I score objectives? Seems simple enough. But can I get my little guys to little points on the board and live until the end of the game? It boggles my mind sometimes when I run through my opponents' lists before games and think "How does he plan to win?" and I can't come up with anything. I often think (not to be mean) that many people who play don't think about claiming objectives until turn 4! Before that point its about killing stuff, pew pew, chop chop, boom boom THEN worry about scoring objectives.
Troops can only walk 6" per turn and then run an average of 3.5"... but that usually means you forgo doing anything besides moving. In 5 turns, troops can only walk 30"! Thats not even fully across the short distance across the board (48")! You still only get 47.5" when you RUN ON AVERAGE! Yikes! Look at the distance you got to move in Hammer and Anvil. 47.5" is what you are going to get if you do nothing but book it. 48" is the distance from the nearest edge of your deployment to the back of the board. Yikes. You need to preplan on how you're going to get your dudes to objectives. If you don't, you will lose.
When considering this, you need to look out what force organization slot your NCU fits into. If its a Troops slot, you're probably okay. Otherwise, we'll need to invest a considerable amount of points into fullfilling this battlefield role because IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THE GAME.

2. Can I kill troops? Again, simple enough, right? On the surface, surely it is. I see troops, I shoot them, they die, they don't score, I win.
What unit is the absolute best at killing troops that you can think of? Heldrake! There, you thought it before you read it, I'm sure. There is a reason that this bad boy is in every Chaos list, and why Chaos has been revelant despite having an otherwise lackluster book. Its because it reliably kills troops every turn it is on the table. It has the added bonus of being extremely survivable and manouverable in order to make sure it kills the troops that you need dead. It is the best unit in the game at answering the question of killing troops.
This doesn't mean that every army you make should include "Heldrake- Baleflamer x 3." It means you need to think that you will lose every game (or nearly every one) that you don't kill your opponents objective holders. Other units can do this effectively. Look at your list and figure out what can kill MEQ, GEQ and TEQ. If you can't really kill many of those things with your NCU, then you're going to need something else to do the job. If your NCU is incredible at this (like the Heldrake), then you'll just be a pig in shit. This section is probably the second most important thing to fill out fully.

For 3-8, you'll have to rate them based on your own meta. If you regularly play against other armies chock full of flyers, you'll probably rate that one as 3. On the other hand, if your game store is full of throwback Guard players using all sorts of blob-squads, then you might keep 6 in mind over the others. Just know that the "just ignore it and focus on scoring objectives and killing troops" is a viable strategy, but probably not for each and every one of those answers.
Running your list through the simple 8 questions can tell you a lot about what you will be able to handle and about what you won't be able to handle. That in itself is an advantage. My buddy Boogie often says that he's smart because he's dumb and he knows he's dumb. That's only partially true of course, he's not actually dumb. The truth comes in because he knows his limitations and that makes him brilliant.
You need to know your limitations.

My current NCU is the Plague Marine. This is a great unit. An absolutely amazing unit. It's my NCU because they have been in every list that I've played in my last 15 or so games. The only games I haven't used them was when I wasn't playing Chaos. Even then I tried to work them in. I won't give you an example of building a list with Plague Marines (even though they are in it like crazy), I think they're too good to do this with. They fill #1 better than probably any unit and that's the reason I win more than I lose with them. No, I'm not going to use Plague Marines as my Nerd-Crush. I'm going to use the unit that I include almost as often as them, the under appreciated Chaos Terminators.

Alright, Chaos Terminators, my example Nerd Crush Unit. Force Org Slot: Elite... no scoring for them.
Advantages:
- they are a denial unit/line breaker unit
- they have alternate deployment (deep strike)
- they are highly adaptable
- they are tough
- they are points effective
- they are effective antitank with accurate rear/side combi-melta
- they can stand up in assault

Disadvantages:
- they don't score
- they don't pack overwhelming troop killing power
- they are not mobile after deep-strike
- they lose effectiveness in large groups
- they won't score you first blood
- they don't help vs deathstars
- they don't scratch flyers

Hrmmmmm. That is a lot to take in. Running it through the 8 questions, I see it does 5 (kill tanks)very well, it does 8 (line-breaker and warlord hunting) pretty well, it could do 2 and 7 (kill troops and handle assaults) in a pinch... but 1, 3, 4, and 6 are not in the realm of the mighty Chaos Terminator, unless you loaded them up with three combi-flamers, then we might be able to scratch some of those fearless hordes... but who uses combi-flamers?

I'm going to focus on their strengths. 5, 8 and 2. That's three different battlefield roles: Kill tanks, kill troops and score secondary objectives. Alright!!! Here we go!
Nerd Crush! I'm starting with 3 squads of Chaos Terminators in an 1850 list. I'm going 'whole hog.' I want to keep them small for a few reasons; they are cheaper, they still are deadly, and I can get three small squads that can fulfill three roles instead of getting a large squad that can only do one thing. Only one squad needs to be alive at the end to score line-breaker, so I will view these guys as expendable.
I think I will fill out 2 of them as anti-scoring unit and 1 of them as anti-tank. If this AV spam of Eldar catches fire, I think you could easily switch to 2 anti-tank and 1 anti-scoring unit. The antitank unit will have simply 3 combi-meltas and plan on deep striking behind a tank and blowing it to shit. Additionally, they will all have powermauls so they can smash the shit out of tanks that don't move away on the next turn, or they can start smashing troops if they live.
The next two squads, I'm stuck. Do I want combi-plasmas to shred MEQ and TEQ? Or do I want to aggressively deep-strike in some flamers in case I'm running into Tau/Eldar/Guard/Cultists in cover?
Idea: use a lord to deepstrike in with one squad using my favorite "Burning Brand of Skalathrax" to get some quality flamer goodness, and load out everyone else with combi-plasma. Here we go:

170 - Terminator Lord
Nurgle, Burning Brand, Lightning Claw, Gift, Blight Grenades

128 - Chaos Terminators
Nurgle, Combi-plasma x 3, Power Axe x 2, Power Maul

110 - Chaos Terminators
Combi-plasma x 3, Power Axe x 2, Power Maul

110 - Chaos Terminators
Combi-melta x 3, Powermaul x 3

Note I made the Lord with his body guard a bit tougher with Mark of Nurgle. I figure that they are dropping near objective holders and would probably take a bit of small arms fire after they landed. T5, 2+5+ is pretty sweet versus lasguns, bolters and pulse rifles. Another thing of note is that I probably don't want my deep-striking lord to be my Warlord, as he might be dead at the end of the game. I'll need another HQ.
I think this is a great start and gets the most out of my NCU. They'll fulfill a few key battlefield roles and I imagine I'll have a great time impersonating terminator voices from Dawn of War and pretending to shoot plasma guns, complete with sound effects.

This still leaves us with 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 and we still have 1332 points! Woo! Lets start with the most important, number 1. Scoring objectives.
The Chaos Marines codex does a few things well and does a few things poorly. I only have two "stock" troops, Chaos Space Marines and Cultists. Luckily, I took a Lord with Mark of Nurgle, so I have access to Plague Marines as troops also. Each choice has its benefits and its drawbacks. Since scoring is the most important aspect of the game, I imagine that I want some tough-as-nails and hard-to-shift bad mamajamas as my scoring units. That makes my choice much easier. Plague Marines are the toughest scoring units in Warhammer 40k. They are fearless and they have tons of other survivability mechanisms for a decent price (underpriced in my opinion). Plus, I love them. Plus, I have access to them. Well, I'm using them.

I'll take five (!!!) units. I think that's a good number of tough dudes that can score. I'm going to use 5 man units. It takes a little over 100 bolter shots from BS4 guys to kill 5 Plague Marines out in the open. That's 21 bolter shots at bs4 to get one plague marine... to get 25 guys down, we're looking at over 500 bolter rounds... if you opponent doesn't dedicate a lot of time and effort to grinding these guys down, they won't be dead by turn 5 and then, well, you'll win. I'll probably also need to get up field with a few of them, so I'll take a few *gasp* Rhinos!

As far as weapons go, I imagine I'll want range and killy-ness, considering I'll probably move to an objective and sit on it. If I am sitting on it, I don't want to be stuck with a flamer or meltagun if guys are 19" away from me. Of course, if I need to get up field in the Rhinos, those guys will be considerably closer to the enemy lines. They'll probably want either flamers or meltaguns. How about two of both?

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

175 - Plague Marines
Meltagun x 2
Rhino

165 - Plague Marines
Flamer x 2
Rhino

That takes us up to 1308 and covers number 1 like flies on poop. There is no way you can say this list can't score objectives. That leaves a little over 500 pts for support to cover 3, 4, 6, 7 and a little more 2. Additionally, I'd love to have a Warlord besides my Terminator Lord.

In comes the Telepathy Sorcerer.
He's going to fulfill a multi-purpose role with his three tosses on the Telepathy table. There are three powers he would like to get in order to mitigate the deathstar and the horde/blob. Terrify, Hallucination and Dominate. Each of those powers can wreak havoc on a points-heavy blob or deathstar. Additionally, besides Mental Fortitude, there are no 'bad' powers. This will help with 4, 6 and some of 8 (preserving Slay the Warlord). I figure I'd hide this guy with some midfield Plague Marines. He is majority toughness 5, has Fearless thanks to the PMs and has 2+ LOS. I like. Plus the familiar is the best 15 points you can spend. If you happen to come across a list that requires you to be in combat early or you REALLY want Enfeeble, you could roll on Biomancy if you get what you want in your first couple of Telepathy rolls, or just throw all three at Biomancy.

125 - Chaos Sorcerer
Level 3, Spell Familiar

Awesome, we're doing well. We're covering a lot of what we need to cover, except handling flyers and handling early assaults. The early assaults aren't that big of a deal to Chaos surprisingly (or not). Plague Marines live for a long time in assault and do some decent damage back with their uber-grit poison attacks and blight grenades. Most of the armies capable of pulling of scary early assaults are Daemons based or Chaos based. They take speed over survivability and hitting power. That wouldn't be so bad for this list.

Now flyers... argh. Chaos anti-flyer is terrible. Skyfire missiles on Havocs is over priced and just doesn't do much, especially versus Heldrakes, Vendettas and Storm Ravens. The quadgun/defense line doesn't mesh with the army style well along with not being very deadly. Perhaps a shooty Heldrake? Perhaps a bunch of autocannon Havocs? Perhaps twin-linked plasma/melta from Obliterators? Hrmmm, the choices don't seem too "omg I lol at flyersss!11!!" We have no interceptor either (besides the quadgun). I'm starting to think that if I can't do something right, I might as well not do it. I might just ignore flyers. I would run the risk that if I used just one anti-flyer, it would be quickly targeted and destroyed. Maybe I should just focus on winning by focusing more on #1 and #2?

170 - Heldrake
Baleflamer

170 - Heldrake
Baleflamer

Boosh. That covers #2 with a emphatic boosh and takes us to 1773. They are just flatout awesome, they are resilient, and they will utterly destroy scoring units. As a bonus, they will put out a lot of wounds on 3+ deathstars or ones relying on cover saves via invisibility or stealth/shrouding/jink. You might see a few eye rolls, but hey, you're using 9 Chaos Terminators and a Terminator Lord. Also, every codex has powerful units. I don't roll my eyes at Psycannons, I don't scoff at Lootas and I don't think less of a player using Annihilation Barges. They are just good choices. Too bad for them that Heldrake is the best :)

That leaves a wonky 77 points. Oh man. Could this be any better? 76 points nets you an amazing heavy support unit. The dreaded Obliterator with Mark of Nurgle.

76 - Obliterator
Mark of Nurgle

He helps with some long range anti-AV13/AV14, along with plopping a plasma cannon round onto a deathstar, can twin-link a plasma or melta shot into a flyer, can be held in reserve to deep-strike if needed per a mission, can score in Big Guns, can roast scoring units with a heavy flamer,... is there anything he can't do?

That brings the grand total up to 1849. A nice, well rounded list. It may look a little "Spammy" but I would like to argue that its not. I'm loading up on an idea. I'm not just taking one unit over and over again. I am using a take-all-comers approach to list building with a less-than-optimal unit at its core. It just happens that there is clearly a best choice for certain roles, so I am going to use those units.

So, all together, the list:
Bad Guy Terminators

170 - Terminator Lord
Nurgle, Burning Brand, Lightning Claw, Gift, Blight Grenades

125 - Chaos Sorcerer
Level 3, Spell Familiar

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

150 - Plague Marines
Plasmagun x 2

175 - Plague Marines
Meltagun x 2
Rhino

165 - Plague Marines
Flamer x 2
Rhino

128 - Chaos Terminators
Nurgle, Combi-plasma x 3, Power Axe x 2, Power Maul

110 - Chaos Terminators
Combi-plasma x 3, Power Axe x 2, Power Maul

110 - Chaos Terminators
Combi-melta x 3, Powermaul x 3

170 - Heldrake
Baleflamer

170 - Heldrake
Baleflamer

76 - Obliterator
Mark of Nurgle

We know this list is strong in scoring, strong in troop killing, strong against deathstars, strong against av 13/14 and good against hordes. It is probably a wash against fast assault armies. It has a definite weakness against flyer heavy lists. Tactics will have to come into play here in order to handle that tough matchup.

Well there you have it. A usable list with a focus on a Nerd-Crush-Unit. Can your Nerd-Crush-Unit work in a competitive list? What is your NCU? Want to make it work? Let me know, maybe we can do it together! What do you think?