Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Chaos Space Marines (section)

===Black Legion Speartip Detachment (Traitor Legions)===
The Black Legion Speartip rewards alpha strikes, but does not grant objective secured to anything at all. On the flip side, running a CAD will work wonders because both Chosen, Terminators and by extension Land Raiders will have it! Keeping this in mind, there are tradeoffs to either army list, very much like the Horus Heresy Rites of War. The veterans of your Legion are mostly Luna Wolves, after all, and that carries over into their battle doctrine.
;'''Special Rules'''
*'''The Tip of the Spear:''' Warlord may re-roll on Black Legion Warlord Trait table.
*'''Heralds of the Black Crusade:''' Non-vehicle units have Fear and Crusader. Fear is mostly pointless, but Crusader can be useful for getting in position faster, and it synergizes with the Hounds of Abaddon's main trick.
*'''Speartip Strike:''' Deep Strike Units can start rolling to arrive from reserves on Turn 1. Warlord and his unit can auto-pass this roll in 1st turn if they are in DS reserve.

====Command (0-5)====
*'''The Bringers of Despair -''' One unit of Terminators plus Abaddon. The Terminators have WS and BS 5 and can re-roll one "Look Out, Sir" roll for Abaddon each phase. This replaces the old ability to upgrade a unit, and now the terminators get the stat upgrades for free, which is a welcome change.
**Note: Remember that Abbadon hands out a 12" bubble of Preferred Enemy (Space Marines.) If fighting loyalist scum of any flavor, give your Bringers of Despair combi-plasmas. Hitting on rerollable 2s will cut through those corpse-worshippers like a plasma knife through butter.
*'''The Chosen of Abaddon -''' 1-4 Chaos Lords or Sorcerers, plus a unit of Chosen or Terminators for each one. Each Sorcerer or Chaos Lord has to join one of the corresponding units of Chosen/Terminators (and can't leave). While the character remains attached to his unit, they get Fearless. Each Chaos Lord/Sorcerer in the formation gets to roll on the Boon table prior to deployment, re-rolling Spawnhood and Dark Apotheosis results. Not particularly useful, given that you give up flexibility for a crack at a bad chart of upgrades. This is where you get your extra terminators when playing Black Legion, BTW. 
*'''Cyclopia Cabal -''' THIS IS A GOOD ONE, and nasty with the new powers from Traitor's Hate. 3-5 Sorcerers. At the start of each psychic phase, you can have one sorcerer in the formation use a special psychic power called Shroud of Deceit. You get an additional warp charge die for each Sorcerer within 12" of the main caster (you can still allocate warp charges to it as normal, though you do not have to) and it's a warp charge 3 power. Shroud of Deceit targets a non-vehicle ''enemy'' unit that isn't locked in combat within 30". You can immediately make a shooting attack with that unit as though it were a part of your army. It's a pretty neat power, and super-useful against the Tau and their Riptides (good luck trying to get it off against Eldar though, lol). One recent tournament strategy is to add a Cabal to a Daemon army. Five ML3 psykers, on top of Fateweaver and Pink Horrors, to generate 24 dice per turn. Nuts.
*'''Lord of the Legion -''' A Chaos Lord(can be Abaddon), Sorcerer, Daemon Prince or Dark Apostle. Take this option if you just want the HQ with no added formation tax.

====Core (1+)====
*'''Black Legion Warband -''' One Chaos Lord, 0-1 Sorcerer, 2-5 units of Chosen or Chaos Space Marines in any combination, 1-3 units of Terminators or Possessed in any combination, 1-3 units of Raptors, Bikes, or Warp Talons in any combination, 1-3 units of Havocs or Helbrutes in any combination. This is the core formation for the Speartip. Units in this formation roll twice when rolling for boons and can take either one or both of the results. Additionally, any time an enemy unit is completely destroyed by a unit in this formation in a phase, all of the other units in the formation can re-roll to hit and to wound rolls of 1 for the rest of the phase (note that this just means when a unit is finally completely removed from the table, per the rulebook definition of "completely destroyed"). The bonus roll on the boon table will often be irrelevant, but the other bonus is kind of cool.
**'''NOTE:''' Unlike the other legions this uses the Black Legion Warband and not the "normal" one. That means that a Black Legion Speartip doesn't have a single Objective Secured unit since it can't take a Chaos Warband as an auxiliary either. This is a big disadvantage over other demi-company type formations. However given that this is meant to be a speartip formation, ergo you want to be the aggressor, losing objective secured isn't as big of a hindrance as you may think.
**'''Alternate Opinion''': This formation is actually pretty good. The key is to activate units in the right order to get the sweet Preferred Enemy for all the army; simply destroying a transport with some Autocannon Havocs can make your Plasma Chosen so much better. Or your suicide terminators popping a tank making your Chaos Lord on Steed outflanking with plasma Raptors ready to ruin the day. Or both! In general if you like to play with special weapons, this formation can help you a lot. Also, remember that without objective secured, Havocs are just CSM with more weapons. Use them if you feel the need for ablative wounds and feel free to go heavy on special weapons.
*'''The Hounds of Abaddon -''' This is a pretty solid formation. You take 1 Chaos Lord, 1-3 units of Berzerkers, 1-3 units of Chaos Space Marines, and 1-3 units of Bikes/Raptors/Warp Talons. The entire formation gets the Mark of Khorne for free; this means you can have 13-point Marines with Leadership 10, Hatred(Everything), and Rage...not bad at all! Once per game, you can declare a massed assault with this formation to run and charge in the same turn. As if that's not enough, any time you roll an 8 or more for charge distance with a unit in this formation, that unit gets +1 Strength until the end of the Assault phase, and this is where the formation can snow-ball into something truly frightening; the Icon of Wrath is highly recommended for units in this formation, as not only would the re-rolls help you maximize the chances of getting 8, but the Furious Charge would stack on top; a unit of 5 regular Marines from this formation would cost 100 points in exchange for making 20 S5 attacks on the charge, with a good chance of those attacks being S6 instead. Note that this can give a Lord with AoBF strength 8 on the charge, allowing him to ID.
**''Interesting obeservation:'' This formation has a few interesting quirks. Both lords and champions can have S10 powerfists, and considering they have rage means that a champion with LC/PF has 5 attacks of either strength 10 AP2 or S6 AP3, shred. And since they have hatred, they have the equivalent of WS5, meaning these champions are essentially budget chaos lords. A termielord with Lc/chainfist has 6 S10 AP2 armourbane attacks. So for only 2 points more you can give your lord a better Gorefather that doesn't take up a relic slot.And technically, these csm can be better chosen. With the savings you could buy them CCW weapons. What you get is 17 point chosen that trade 3 special weapons for +1-2 strength and re-rollable charges. And run & charge once per game.

====Auxiliary (1+)====
*'''The Lost and the Damned, Helforged Warpack, Cult of Destruction, Fist of the Gods, Raptor Talon, Terminator Annihilation Force, Chaos Sp-GRUGHGLGL!!!-''': See their entries in the Basic Chaos Detachment
*'''Daemon Engine Pack -''' One Warpsmith and 2 Forgefiends/Maulerfiends, in any combination.  At the start of each shooting and assault phase you can have one of the fiends within 12" of the Warpsmith use his WS or BS for that phase instead of its own. In practice, this bonus works better for running dual Forgefiends, since being able to get 5 BS is a much bigger deal than 4 WS; this makes the Hades Autocannons that the Forgefiends can have much more useful, since now they'll hit with most of their shots. You can either "cycle through" the Fiends, to combo Daemonforge with improved BS, or use it alongside moving on separate flanks to force enemy Knights into a "no-win" situation regarding where to use their Ion Shields. Also at the start of the game, you nominate a single enemy character and the Forge/Maulerfiends get Preferred Enemy against that character, plus if they kill him, the the model that did so regains a hull point.

====Standalone formations====
*'''The Tormented -''' 1 Prince and 2-5 units of possessed. The possessed get +1 WS and initiative as well as rending, and hatred since they have to be Black Legion. If they stray too far from their prince, they have to take a leadership test at the start of turn (unless in combat) and if failed, move D6 instead of 6. Unlike the favoured, their buffs are *always* up and prince thing is really a non-issue as it is 18 inch and even then they have Ld10 so it has a low risk of failure and the penalty isn't even that big. This formation makes possessed pretty freaking brutal. No, seriously. Forget the favoured. A unit of khorne possessed can generate enough wounds to kill even a wraith knight on the charge. Or a knight before it can do diddly squat. Never mind buffing them with assorted powers. All marks have something to offer, but MoK plays nicest with rending and anti-tank due to every 6 being an auto glance even on AV13 (with icon of wrath). MoK(+Icon) on a 10-man unit gives you 40 S6 rending attacks on the charge at initiative 5, while hitting on 3's, re-rollable. The rest of the table is pure icing on the cake at that point. And you need one less unit compared to the favoured formation, making it cheaper to boot. They also get better yet vs IoM armies thanks to endless hatred.
**''Important-'' While that offensive is cool and all, they have a huge problem, several actually. They're still slow, have no grenades and are still pretty frail outside of combat. So like the favoured formation it doesn't really fix possessed in any meaningful way, but if you do want to take possessed, this is the way to go.