6th edition is all about allies.

Much of new synergi comes from allied forces taking the field with you. Most armies need the allies to be competitive in 6th edition, a few do´nt.

Its no secret that no army can do everything at an affordable point cost. Be it either close combat, screening, cheap shooty transports, flyers, psychich defense or offense, long range fire or something else. Some armies are better of than others and some army builds allow you to compensate for the lack of some of the shortcomings, by for example survivability or mobility.

My Chaos and allies

So a week or two ago i delved into a list combining Tau with my Chaos space marines. Since I only have a smaller Tau army made specifically as an allied force, I wont be doing the reverse excersise. What I am gonna do is do a list combining Chaos with my newly bought Imperial guard force.
The Imperial guard force is also bought to be an allied force only. It is therefor pretty limited in what I can deploy.

The weakness of Chaos

Besides evil turning upon itself and such yadda yadda, chaos in my oppinion suffers from two weaknesses. Our shiny new codex got no good dedicated shooting transports. Our cheap troops has a habit of getting really expensive really fast, if you try to make them good.

Enter the Imperial guard ...... the corrupted variant.

Found this pic on the web. Nice job to whomever did it.

Ok so which slots does Chaos do well? In 6th edition chaos space marines has good fast and heavy slots. Troops are decent and elite is bleh. I dont really fancy spending points on elites, unless its stuff I moved to troops from there.
Imperial guard on the other hand, does just about all slots well. Especially troops shine and they have solid good choices in fast and heavy as well.

The 2000 point Chaos + imperial guard list

So doing it in reverse, this is what im aiming at fielding as an allied force

Company command squad
- 3 plasmaguns, chimera

Platoon command squad
- 3 meltaguns, chimera
2 Infantry squads
- 1 meltagun, 1 autocannon, chimera

1 Vendetta

That in itself is a pretty decent amount of shots being poured out. But its mostly a force that hangs back or moves slowly into the midfield. Which is where you want to be, if you want to win games with objectives.
I do have two Hydra flak tanks, a manticore and a medusa but the points are getting used up really quick. So I will settle for troops in chimeras massing melta and plasma and a flyer.

So now the jump to the chaos part.

Here im looking for upping the firepower even more and adding a fist to the face component, in the form and shape of some (counter)assault. I also wanna make my presence felt in the air with some drakes.

Chaos lord
- bike, mark of khorne, sigil of corruption, axe of blind fury, mutation

2x 5 Chaos space marines
- 1 plasmagun, 1 combi-plasma, veterans of the long war, rhino

7 Chaos bikers
- mark of khorne, 2 meltaguns

2 Heldrakes
- bale flamer

2x 5 Havocs
- 4 autocannons
6 Havocs
- 4 missile launchers, veterans of the long war

Chaos lord on a bike?

So what does this list bring? It brings a whole lot of strenght 6, 7 and 8 mid- to longrange firepower. Actually over 35 shots on both infantry and vehicle platforms. And ofcourse the three twin linkedlascannon shots.
It brings between 5(7) and 10(14) plasmashots, alongside 7 meltaguns.
It has 4 hull mounted heavy flamers and 2 bale flamers to deal with MEQ and hordes alike.
It can do two vectorstrike runs against both flying monstrous creatures, flyers and groundtargets.
It has airsuperiority over most armies except dedicated imperial guard lists and Necron airforce lists. And yes the havocs with autocannons can actually do pretty ok in a pinch against flyers.

It is lacking a bit in the troop department. I would have liked to squeeze in more CSM troops, but im just so in love with the new Chaos bikers and biker lords. Im also slightly short on hull points. I prefer being able to field between 30 and 40 hull points when I use vehicles in my armies. Either that or the vehicles being inconsequential to my plans.

The one thing I would have liked in this list, that there isnt point for is an aegis defenseline with a qaud gun for the havocs. That would have made my day.