White Dwarf Spine Image - Death Guard?

I've just seen on the always-excellent Faeit 212 blog the combined spines of the last four White Dwarf magazine spines.

It seems to be the general consensus that the image depicts a Dark Angel, however I would like to offer an alternative - could it be a Death Guard plague marine? The clues are there:

• Dark green armour? Check.
• Off-white tabard? Check.
• Red detailing? Check. 

All these basic colours fit perfectly with the classic Plague Marine colours. And if you look closely at the White Dwarf spine image, it appears there are some Nurgle-style plague mutations on the chect, and the backpack looks non-standard too.

Now, I am quite willing to be wrong (it happens a lot), but we know rumours of a Chaos Legions codex are rife, and I think it always helps to have alternative opinions to balance any argument!

Plague Marine (thanks to
http://mallius.blogspot.co.uk/2010_05_01_archive.html)

Achieving the Impossible - Competitive Chaos Marines

Recently I've had an itch which I need to scratch - that is, to revisit the Chaos Space Marines codex and see if there are some left-field ways of building a CSM force capable of competing with Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Imperial Guard mech/leaf-blower builds and other armies which are rightfully considered to be competitive in tournaments. The reasons for this are simple - firstly, my original 40k army is Chaos Marines, and right now they are simply collecting dust, and secondly, I think we can safely expect a new Chaos Legions and/or Renegade Marine codex any time soon, so time is short to 'enjoy' the current codex.

The Masterplan

Whenever I plan an army (no really, I do plan) I aim to be able to achieve three main things:

1. Destroy enemy transports early in the game

2. Eliminate opposing troops

3. Have enough surviving scoring troops alive at the end of the game to claim objectives

This may be a bit over-simplistic, but it helps me to approach a codex with clarity of thought. I am a mainly fluffy player, and I will often compromise my army's overall efficiency by including units that I love, or by building the whole army around a theme (all drop-spore Tyranids, all jump-pack Marines etc). Nothing wrong with fluffy playing of course, but you can only lose so many times before the  novelty wears off! 

Thinking Outside the Box

So this week's plan is to take a fresh - and more importantly critical - look at the Chaos Space Marines codex, and to try to address the three tactical points above. I'm hoping that, with the advent of elite, low model-count tournament favourites like Grey Knights, Loganwing, Deathwing et al, that this might give  the old book a new lease of life. Of course I'm a realist so I'm not expecting miracles, but it's worth a try.

Where Your Help Comes In

I'd love to hear from you! If you play Chaos Marines, let me know what works for you (let's keep it positive; there's plenty of blogs dedicated to negativity already out there!). If you regularly play against Chaos Marines, let me know what you have come to dread facing.

So, thanks in advance for your comments!

Later this week I will comment on your responses, and also publish my thoughts on what I think could work. Finally, I intend to play some games with the best 1,750pt list that we can come up with here. So Mick, Andy, Gav, Dave - this means I'll be looking for some practise games! And if the army works reasonably, I may even take it to the Open War tournament in Manfield in April.