Well. First post and the honour goes to the posthumous Chaos Marine. Yes, the standard 15pt troop choice. And yes, before you ask, because I want an easy bit first.
Overview
Your standard troops choice with one major advantage over their Astartes counterpart: The humble Tactical Marine, which should give you a decent idea about their purpose already. This advantage is the presence of a Pistol and CCW, giving them effectively 2 attacks basic, as well as bolters. This does have a downside, as they lack ATSKNF and Combat tactics but then again this means they have the same stats as Sergeants, with their Ld.
Great for holding objectives, but are still worse than Plague Marines (Nigh-on impossible to budge), Noise Marines (Great anti-horde) and the 1k Sons (Anti heavy infantry is a specialty). The upside is cheaper. And nothing else, other than upgrades
Upgrades
Champion: Extra attack and access to CCW Weapons. Arming the guy with either a fist or Power weapon (Axe or Maul) & Meltabombs gives them good multi-tasking. A personal icon is only useful with Daemons or Deep- Strikers, so without these they're useless.
Heavy/Specialist Weapons:
This is where your main decision comes in - Static defence unit or mobile strike force. The prior will make maximum use of the multiple heavy weapons, most probably the missile launcher but heavy bolters really hurt against things like hordes. The enemy will general dictate deployment. The next type is loading the squad with meltas or flamers, with an upgraded champion then sending them to hunt out vehicles. Plasma is almost a no-go as this squad will probably fit best as an assault squad, although a Plasma Pistol may be a good decision.
Icons: Generally too expensive unless in beefy squads. As a rule of thumb Tzeentch & Slaanesh are not that useful, although Nurgle will make them great at camping objectives whereas Khorne will make them an assault force to be reckoned with
Transport
Raider: No. Period.
Rhino: Good for both deployments, just to give something else to kill for campers whereas assault units will massively benifit from the mobility to strike at expensive unit.
Well, hope you enjoyed it. More to come shortly.
