How my army works

This analysis is going off of my previous list with a few tweaks. Here, I'll be going over my general mindset when playing this list and what strategies I roll out with it.
The list involves Renegades from Imperial armor 5. Siege of Vraks reprint, Orks, Chaos Daemons, and Cypher's dataslate.

Okay, to start this off, I'm using The Purge detachment which forces me take elites instead of compulsory troops, i have no fast atrack slots, 4 heavy, 6 elite and 8 troop. This particular detachment also affects all of my barrage weapons with the blast special rule, and makes it so the blast templates stay on the field for a turn and count as dangerous terrain. I also took the Ordnance Tyrant devotion on my Arch Demagogue to allow me to take Renegade field artillery as non-compulsory troops and a whole bunch of other options from my heavy section gets moved to elites. As an additional bonus, my field artillery can fire onto my own dudes as long as the hole in the blast marker is in an enemy. AND i can fire into close combat (so it says. Im unsure if that means I can target enemy units in close combat, or it just means I can graze my own guys even if they are in combat.)
For HQs I have:
Renegade command squad with the ordnance tyrant upgrade and an Autocannon. Pretty strait forward on this part.
Elites:
Two units of Desciples, each with just an Autocannon leaving 3 bodies to just sit in front and soak bullets for the gunners, also not unusual.
In troops I have five units of field artillery with two guns ,each being the heavy quad mortars. Giving me a total of 10 of my favorite guns ever. The reason being is that even though I "can" fire into my own guys in close combat, I don't want a large group of my guns tied up in combat, getting slaughtered, when I can just spread them out in smaller chunks and keep everyone else shooting, thus, negating what I call the back line cascade, where all the important stuff is tied in close combat getting mulched, with the rest of my army just watching in horror unable to do anything because a key asset was in that assaulted squad.
That about sums it up for my Primary detachment, now onto Daemons:
For HQ I have Two heralds of Tzeentch on discs at mastery level 3. Their entire purpose in life is to cruise around the midfield summoning a bunch of dudes to just flood that area, give me support where needed, and grabbing midfield objectives.
For the mandatory troops, i just bring a unit of Nurglings. They're cheap, and with their infiltrate and shrouded rules, i just park them in a pices of terrain near an objective and just have them glom onto it and never let go.
This brings me to orks. I bring two ork detachments that are exactly alike so ill just go over what is brought and just apply things to both.
For HQ, I just bring the cheap little mek boy. He doesn't do much, but he doesn't need to.
Orky Troops get me a unit of minimum grots. Surprisingly, they actually help me out. They give me more bodies to flood the field with, block shots into my more important stuff, and can speed bump a unit for a turn or two.
The main reason I brought orks, however, is for tue lootas. I bring in a squad of 6.
Why go to all the troubke of bringing orks just for the lootas? Because with 6 lootas I'm having the same amount of shots from a support squad, 1/3 of the time and more often than not, twice or three times as many shots for roughly the same price as 6 guaranteed Autocannon shots. Plus the grots give me more wounds on the table that my opponent has to mop up.
Cypher's dataslate gives me my infiltrating chosen that have worked so well for me. I load them up with 4 Meltaguns and a combi melta on the champion, and have them go to town popping heavy transports and critical tanks that my Autocannons or lootas can't touch easily. Anything to slow the roll of my opponent.
To put it all together:
When placing objectives, I will generally place two, if not all three of them somewhere inside my deployment area, with maybe the one I don't, being put somewhere in cover for the Nurglings to grab and hold forever. This gives me the pesce of mind to know that half of the objectives are already secured by me and I won't have to worry too much about them going anywhere.
I deploy all of my artillery units kind of spaced out, with some of the spare crew bodies covering my Desciples in case my opponent is going first or steals the initiative. They are generally placed next to my backfield objectives because T7 makes it very hard for them to go away from anything other than close combat or Destroyer weapons. Desciple heavy weapons teams and my renegade command squad, are put where you would expect them to be: in cover with line of sight to something on the enemy side of the board.
The Arch Demagogue joins a unit of artillery that is in the middle of my field, so he benefits from majority toughness 7 and because his special rule that lets me fire with the template covering my own guys, is a bubble of 12 inches all around him, this positioning gives him the most bang for his buck and goes that extra mile.
Lootas set up in cover and fire away at light transports or high toughness models that pose a threat. I usually like to keep them on some kind of leveled ruin or something similar so they have the clearest line of sight. The gretchin mobs are set up directly in front of my artillery lines so they actually have a save of some sort in the form of shooting through a unit for a 5+. Mek boys just hang out in front of the lootas for an extra wound.
The heralds of Tzeentch deploy on either side of my board side, to maximize coverage, and roll every power possible on Maelific Daemonology. On my first psychic phase, they usually try to bring iut a unit of horrors, who also roll on maelific, to add to the warp charge pool, and in very lucky cases, turn into a keeper of secrets. If one of my heralds was lucky enough to roll the "sacrifice" power, which lets me bring out another herald for the price of a wound, I will either plbring iut another herald of Tzeentch with a mastery level 2 upgrade, Iraq a herald of Slaanesh for the charriot that does d6 hammer of wrath hits for each hull point left. Summoning daemons is all about using them like a proverbial scalpel: to precisely use this tool to carry out a specific purpose. If you try to use them just to make more things without an end goal in mind, then you're just wasting everyone's time, including your own.
Cypher and his chosen buddies infiltrate as close as possible to key vehicles, so when they pop the metal boxes, my artillery has more targets to shoot at. Sometimes it's best to not infiltrate everything and to maybe leave a squad of chosen in reserves because of imminent drop pods or something similar. In that case, if my opponent has at least something on their side of the field, I will infiltrate cypher with a unit if chosen into some kind of cover because he gives them all shrouded. As an added bonus, if the chosen and Cypher get tarpitted before being able to bring anything down, hit and run with initiative 8 helps my guys run away to take care of more important stuff.

(It's been mentioned to me that I should consider taking out a few the field artillery units and see how the rest of my army performs without them. I feel that that would probably be good, so i can actually see how my army does in late game since, every time I field this, the battle is over before the end of turn 2.)

Basically, my army three has pieces to itself: the backfield gunline, the midfield reinforcements, and the infiltrating tank murderers. In the few games ive played with this flavor of list, I have found that my opponents get tunnel vision on my artillery and forget about literally everything else I have on the board.
To that effect, I chew up my opponent as much as possible on my turns to make their resistance as futile as possible, which actually turns out fairly well with all the shelling going on. The heralds dump out more models, and in the case of a large assault unit making its way towards my back lines, I make some new daemons to bubble wrap my opponent. For this, I usually summon some daemonettes because of their running d6+3 inches to get into place. This one time, I had an ork warboss with a bunch of bikers barreling down onto me. I summoned two units of daemonettes, and each unit ran and spread out completely encircling the orks so in their turn, they could only shoot at one unit and be forced to charge it instead of going anywhere near my back lines, buying me an extra turn to retaliate. All the while my horrors were sitting on an objective scoring me some points, my gunline finished off the other orks, and my heralds kept summoning out more tarpit.

Beast Master

This is another incarnation of the rider of the Juggernaut I have. This time, riding a captured steed of Slaanesh.
I used a Grey Knight head and snuck a little horn on it just to be different, lol. His sword is also from a Grey Knight kit, Paladins I believe. The notches in it were tricky to do with snips, it threatened to break a few times, but gradually digging into it worked easier than just going full turkey on it and breaking it.
I don't remember where the horns on the mount came from, but they were the perfect size for throwing some Dark Eldar Raider chains on. Almost too perfect of a fit.
If the rumors about steed riding marines in the new book are true, this guy just might get some friends to ride around with. But rumors are rumors and a decent amount of salt has been taken to ease the dashed hopes.
Hope you like it!

The Iron Host pt3

Having made pacts with the techpriests of Hastia III's forge moon, the Iron Host were asked to take care of a 'small' ork problem in a neighboring system. A couple of the Host objected to being ordered around by a machine priest. But Anthrallis curbed them by reminding them that they needes their allies for ships and equipment and running this mission was a sure way to enforce that relationship. He told the nay sayers to stay back on Poxvidrae and guard their home. Six stayed behind. Five of those that had been transformed in the stronghold, and the rouge twenty-first Marine who was utterly intolerant to the other twenty and refused to serve Anthrallis as a dog of war.
Anyway, stepping onto the planet and seeing a sea of green foliage, Anthrallis ordered scouting sentinels to lead a ground force in all directions with constant vigilance while their landing ships were guarded by artillery batteries and heavy weapon emplacements; arial surveillance had shown no ork settlements in open ground, so a ground mission was needed.
The sentinels encountered no resistance, and upon regrouping on the caravan of Rhinos and Vindicators, were bombarded by heavy artillery coming from the drop site's direction. Communication attempts were met with static, and the strike force was left backtracking to the camp, avoiding shells and anti tank weaponry
When they arrived, the place was overrun by Greenskins. Carving their way through, the Iron Host pushed the enemy back and away from the ships before any major damage had been done. The skirmish had left a Rhino wrecked and a Vindicator without the demolisher cannon. Most of the artillery crew had been slaughtered, but one mortal remained, he had held up inside a Lander and fought off the small horde from the rear when the marines showed up.
Groups of sentinels were again sent out to try to track the ambushers and stumbled upon a large group of settlements loosely clustered in a large forest and made it back to the landing site without attack.
Now knowing the location, the marines took action: the artillery was mounted to one of the landing ships, facing downward. Two groups of bikes positioned themselves on the east and west of the forest with Anthrallis leading the eastern squad. Sentinels were to the north and the remaining marines and tanks to the south.
The landing ship flew over the central ork settlement and all batteries were released, setting great patches of the forest ablaze and crumbling not only the central, but many smaller neighboring holds as well. All wings of the attack rushed in and slaughtered the orks on their way out of the burning mess.
All units made it to the central camp, each reporting they killed each ork that came in their path. All agreed they had not seen many nobs or the leader of the orks so they began a scouring mission.
Before long there was a commotion over the vox: sentinel unit Alpha had been overrun and the orks had taken over the vehicles with an exceptionally large one mounted as well.
Anthrallis and his bikes were first to the scene. The sentinels had been damaged enough to the point where they were easy to drop, but the ork leader ripped off the lascannon attached to his ruined steed, aimed it directly at Anthrallis, and fired.
The leader of the Iron host was bisected cleanly from head to toe. The rest of the attack wings approached and finished off the warboss, ending the battle.
Anthrallis' second in command, Cephalen, ordered all the bodies of the fallen be brought back to Poxvidrae. Two others of the Iron Host had fallen to slay the great ork. One decapitated the other cut down by a power klaw, along with the pilots of Sentinel Alpha.
Back in orbit, Cephalen had the voidship saturate the settlement area with weapons fire, and they returned home.
The news of Anthrallis' death was, as expected, not taken very well.  The bodies of the mortals were brought to the Garden and would become a part of it, but none among the marines knew what would happen to one of their own after death. They decided to bury the bodies in their own grove, to remain remembered.
In-fighting began over who would replace Anthrallis as their leader, for he had been chosen by the greater daemon to lead them all in the wars to come. Three weeks passed; blows had been struck against brother, lines had been drawn, and no progress had been made.
Weary of the debate, Cephalen went to the grave of Anthrallis. The two had been together since the days of the great crusade, together they had beaten their squad mate to death when Perturabo declared decimation.
And now, Cephalen was alone and at a loss. Begging Nurgle to somehow bring light to the situation, or send the daemon down to settle the matter before bolters were fired and throats slit.
Then the ground moved.
It wasn't a quake, nor had it just been his imagination, his armor had recorded the movement too. Cephalen clawed at the ground before him to see if his prayers of Anthrallis' return had been received. To his delight: it had been.
From the two halves of his body Anthrallis had grown whole. There were now two of him, each in perfect synchronization with its twin. The two stood to face Cephalen and gave a small laugh and told Cephalen that there was a great story to be told.
The other marines were dug up, each had been brought back with a duplicate. All of them made their way back to the stronghold and all heads turned to the sevem marines standing in the doorway.
Both bodies of Anthrallis explained everything that had transpired:
Upon burial, the Lord of the Host and the other two were joined in their graves by open canisters filled with the spores that had transformed their superhuman bodies, as had become tradition when planting the bodies of the mortal humans to allow a tree to take their place.
The souls of the three dead marines had been brought to the home of the daemon that had given them life after their first death. There, he greeted them as sons and told them they would return to life and that their bodies, and all pieces that had been detached, would regrow whole again and that their consciousness would inhabit both bodies; and that should any of the Iron Host lose a part of their bodies, with enough exposure to the Devourer Virus, that part would regenerate and be another extension of their soul.
Not only were the marines shocked their fallen comrades were back, but to hear that they were immortal as long as the entirety of their body wasn't vaporized had them all feeling full of drive to conquer like never before; for they had no more fear.

R&H, Daemons, and Cypher VS. Grey Knights 1250

Okay, so remember how i said i play games against myself on a whiteboard to test stuff out? Well... My results lead me to believe that grey knights shouldn't play against me... Also, this is my first battle report so it may be a bit rough of a narrative so please bear with me.

Also, included is the board i was playing on, im not sure how well you'll be able to see it but know that green is grey knights, red is chaos and brown is terrain and objectives. If you have questions about the map feel free to ask away.

The armies:
R&H, Daemons, and Cyper:
Purge detachment. (No required troops, instead I'm required 2 elites)
HQ:
Renegade command squad 45
Ordnance tyrant 30 (allows me to have field artillery as non-required troops)
Autocannon team 10
85 for unit
Elites:
Disciples 35
Autocannon team 10
45X2=90 for two units
Troop:
2 units of 3 field artillery batteries each with a heavy quad mortar (thudd gun) and 3 crewmen
90X2=180
Heavy:
Renegade support squads 25
Autocannon upgrades on each team 30(10 each)
Militia traing (upgrades BS to 3) 10
65X2=130 for 2 units of 3 weapons teams

Daemons:
HQ:
Herald or Tzeentch: 45
Mastery level 3 50
Disc of Tzeentch 25
2X115=230 for two of the same Heralds
Troops:
Nurglings 45

Cypher's Formation:
Cypher 190
Chosen 90
X4 melta guns 40
Combi-Melta gun on champion 10
2X140=280 for 2 units of 5 marines

Grey Knights:
HQ:
Lirbarian 110
Mastery Level 3 25
135
Elites:
Paladins 165
+2 dudes 110
Apothecary 20
Brotherhood banner 25
320 fpr a unit of 5
Troops:
Strike squad 110
Razorback 55
Twin-Linked assault cannon 20
185X2=330 for two units of 5
Heavy Support:
Dreadknight 130
Teleporter 30
Heavy Incinerator 20
Sword 10
210X2=420

Okay, so disclaimer: Grey Knights aren't my primary army and I sort of just threw this together just to see how it worked, whereas my army of Chaos is well tuned and produced through trial and error.

Grey Knights won the roll-off for deploying first and decided to go first. The Paladins were kept in reserves. The rest of the force was split in half, a dreadknight and a razorback on both sides of deployment behind some cover.
Chaos deployed with the artillery and heavy weapons teams way in the back, with the heralds of Tzeentch around them, also all behind cover. Cypher and the two squads of chosen set up camp on the central hill, infiltrated, in a very precarious situation that would've gone horribly wrong had Chaos not STOLEN THE INITIATIVE.
That's right, Cypher pulled something and got the jump on the Grey Knights.

Turn 1: the heralds of tzeentch moved up to midfield, and both units of chosen manage to roll a 5 for their move through cover to get off the hill, each splitting off to take on a half of the Knights.
In the Psychic phase, one herald failed to bring in some horrors, and the other brought in another Tzeentch herald with 2 mastery levels.
Shoosting face: Melta guns on the left are shot at the dreadknight over there, reducing it to 2 wounds. The chosen squad on the right had Cypher with them, so naturally they outright killed the Dreadknight on their side. Autocannons completely failed to do anything except take 1 hull point off the razorback on the right
Now the fun part: Thudd guns.
Not having a clear target, the first unit targeted the left side of the field. Specifically the Razorback, to get to that juicy rear armor with the hope that some blasts will go wide and strike the dreadknight. After the barrage, the Razorback had been wrecked and the dreadknight dropped another wound. Thudd guns Part 2 wiped out the recently evacuated strike squad completely.
At the end of Chaos turn 1, the grey knights had been reduced to a 3/4 dead dreadknight. And a 1/3 dead razorback.

Now, on the bottom of turn one, they grey knights were left with a bit of a dilemma: where should the dreadknight teleport to? To stay in place and charge the chosen... Well shit, now i realize that might've been the better thing to do. Damn.
Instead of the smart thing, apparently, the dreadknight teleported behind the gunlines of the renegades and tried to torch one of the artillery crews.... And then remembered that all shooting towards artillery crew count as the toughness of the gun... Which is 7. So with one blast, the dreadknight ended up putting a single wound on one of the thudd guns. The razorback moved towards and objective and shot the assault cannon at Cypher's group and ended up taking 3 cbosen out. Not bad. And then ended the turn.
Chaos turn 2 was simple: move Cypher's group toward the razorback and explode it, Autocannon the dreadknight to death, and pelt the 5 remaining grey knights to dust with 12 small blasts. Tabled, end of story.

Now since this game was so short, i didn't have the opportunity to try out everything all the way, but a couple of notes i took were
That i liked how Cypher really bumped up the initial mobility of the chosen. Too many games in the past I've spent the first half of the game driving up the board in rhinos hoping to blast something along the way.
Which brings me to another thing: repeating melta guns. In the same lists that I used rhinos horribly in, I would instead have a 5 man marine squad, with 1 true melta, a combi-melta on the champion and a combi-melta strapped to the rhino and hope for the best.*sigh* if only I could send my hand back through time and slap myslef into doing this sooner.
Another fun thing was having 2 groups of thudd guns. 1 group of 4 can devastate an entire unit, but it can be overkill. 2 groups of 3 makes it so i don't have to commit all of that power in the unit to just one target; it gives me options.
Running the 3 pronged atrack of artillery with 9 Autocannons supporting them, melta right in the face turn 1 and daemon summoning has a lot of potential. Setting up the grey knights, i had to think even more carefully about my placement. As it happened it didn't really matter, but it still helped and I wish i hadn't alpha struck as well as i had had.
And my final point: I have finally witnessed a true alpha strike, and have felt the pain of removing half my army before getting the chance to do anything at all... Quite the powerful manoeuvre and yet another thing I wish I could've learned much sooner.

Well, that about does it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it and want to read more.
Please, comment and ask questions, I am open to constructive criticism and would greatly appreciate any advice.

The Barge of the Dead

Back during my first years of playing 40k, my friend, General Baites, gave me a built Landraider, telling me he had no use for it and that ill 'definitely need it for when you start to play marines'. I laughed at the notion and thanked him for the gift. Two years later, Baites turned me to the Dark Powers and told me id better start using that Landraider from way back when.
Well, i don't much like land raiders. They cost too much for what they do, at least to me (and especially since there's only one flavor for Chaos), and are rather cumbersome.
So i bought a defiler and merged the two kits. The pictures you see are the final product of that.
Using leftover daemon prince bits, I made it seem that the daemon inhabiting the machine was trying to break free and even added the touch of making the crab claw arms in the same relative positions of the daemon's arms.
He's not perfect, but i love him.
His track record includes a game against Tau where a unit of melta crisis suits dropped right in front of him, got one hit through and caused an explodes result. The defiler shook it off with a 6 on his daemon save and on my next turn mulched the unit completely. After that, he ripped apart a, previously unwounded, riptide in one go. And THEN made contact with a fortress of redemption, blasting apart one side of the thing with the battle cannon. And charging the center. He crushed the center piece, and then became a wreck as the pathfinders haywired him to death with grenades. But, the other side of the fortress had been destroyed by my Autocannon Havocs, leaving the pathfinders and fire warriors stuck in the building, with no where to go and a big ol piece of Line of Sight blocking terrain in their face.
Good times.
In the fluff of the Iron Host, after a battle of rampaging through the enemy, The Barge is sent around the battlefield, scooping up all the bodies, guns, and other gear he can and bringing it back to the base camp to be used and repurposed. By asking nicely (read: "adding more seals internally"), some marines can hitch a ride into battle (fulfilling it's heritage of land raid-ing).

I also have reason to believe this is actually IS possessed. He's fallen from my car to the ground outside anything to hold him in and he landed properly without a scratch... When i picked him up a heard a faint laughter...

Enjoy!

My Juggerlord

As you can see, this guy simply doesn't take no for an answer, and promptly responds to walls and barricades and enemies with a resounding: "I'M THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!"
Some interesting notes on his model:
The long axe's head he is holding was made from the keel of a Dark Eldar raider and the haft from a flagpole from the same kit.
However, these pictures are mildly  outdated and since being take, he has had a bit of a tumble: the axe snapped, and a couple of the blades in his mount broke off. He has been repaired, but the axe is no longer nearly as long as it started out. Also, his chainsword has grown; I added a second length of blade to make him even more choppy.

Some background: as part of the Iron Host, he is not a Lord, such as Anthrallis, but is instead designated "the Pack Master" and is in charge of keeping various beasts of the gods in the material world, bound to himself for his own riding.

The Iron Host pt2

Okay, so after finding out their bodies were replaced by daemons of nurgle, the 20 marines of the Iron Host decided that it was pretty sweet: no more need to make sure all holes in your armor were sealed for voidwalking, and they could breathe whatever atmosphere they wanted, and best of all: stunted pain; they could probably take a bolter round or two directly to the chest and keep going (though no one had volunteered to be shot to test the theory). They decided to finish up their base, since they now considered it their headquarters. As they set out to work, one mentioned to another his concern for the 21st marine, the one they had closed the doors on just as he was about to make it inside. The listener shrugged and suggested that maybe he hadn't made it, that the stronghold had protected the rest of them for the most part.
As in most drama shows on television these days, no sooner had the two finished their short conversation they were attacked (Gasp)!
Limping back to the stronghold carrying his mangled brother, tge survuving marine told the other 18 what had happened: that there was a blur of silvered armour and the screaming of jet pack engines and suddenly the other was missing both legs at the knee and an arm at the shoulder.
They all then collectively remembered that none if them had advanced medical knowledge.... The one they had left outside was the designated medic(cue massed facepalming).

Flashing back to when the doors were slammed on said medic. He wrestled with many emotions including hatred, for his brothers for locking him out when he was seconds away from the entrance, and despair, for he was to die alone and forgotten.
Instead of pounding on the doors to be let in, he figured he would wander around the wasteland until he could move no more.
He ended up staring down a cliff, with the valley the stronghold was nestled in, right below him. Deciding that he was to perish with or without company, he unarmed himself: disengaged the mag-lock for his pistol, wrenched the lightning claw off his arm and took off his helmet to see his destruction without the assistance of his lenses.
He knelt on the Cliffside feeling each cell in his body being destroyed individually, and stared into the clouds; and in them, he saw a funnel cloud of the spored spiraling through the air... And heading towards him.
He stood as the cloud touched down on a puddle of what was once a group of cultists and saw a tree start to grow from it. The tree was roughly the shape and style of a Terran Ash and grew to the approximate size of one.
Looking back into the valley, he noticed all the cultist puddles were behaving the same way, each becoming a tree of a grand forest.
Feeling a presence behind him, he turned and saw a roughly humanoid shape dislodge itself from the trunk of the Ash and walk toward him.
The... Thing had what looked like branches sprouting from itself, with a pair of antlers crowning itself. It then spoke.
It spoke of how it was the the daemon that provided the necessary daemonic essence to give life to the virus. It told how it had been charged by Nurgle himself to create a garden on this planet, for all the worshippers of the Father of Blight to gather and take joy in the existence of such a marvel. Finally, it mentioned to the lone marine that he was to be the chosen guardian of the forest, a great and wonderful task to be sure, and that he was to be gifted with the ability to spread the garden on whatever planet he set foot on.
Eventually the marine agreed to the task, donned his helm and weapons again, and succumbed to the sweet embrace of Grandfather Nurgle.

(Sorry if the character shifts are confusing, i haven't pinpointed names for the marines yet. But rest assured they will be named eventually.)

Modular Rhinos

One of favorites, of the many things I've modeled, has been my Rhino tank add-ons. Pieces of equipment that i can add or remove based on what kind of tank my Rhino chassis is being used as for a game.
In the span of an afternoon i made add-ons for turning this humble tank into a Vindicator, Predator (complete with sponsons), or almost any other imperial standard tank.
Attached are some pictures of when i first made it.
Hope you like it.

The Iron Host pt1

Over the few years of playing my Chaos Marine army, i have developed a quite in-depth background for them.
...do you guys wanna hear about it?
Of course you do.
The Iron Host was originally a splinter cell of Iron Warriors, their ship had been sent to set up a base on a frozen wasteland of a planet to keep eyes on the other inhabited world in the system of Hastia. 21 marines made planetfall with dozens of cultists and a couple priests of the Dark Mechanicus to observe proper building technique. No sooner than they had put the finishing touches on the stronghold and were just setting up a defense perimeter, than the shiney new base power generators were targeted and blown to all hell by an orbital laser. The vox erupted in "what the hell?!" and was silence in the other end. Soon, another barrage came, this time a virus that had recently produced to be used on the other inhabited planet in Hastia. Most of the mortal cultists were liquefied upon contact with the stuff, a few others watched in horror as they withered away, being eaten away by a green spore.
The marines, seeing this, NOPE'd back to the dead fortress and held on for as long as they could. Weeks went by, each of the remaining 20 (one was sealed outside as another barrage started raining down) slowly started decaying;
Their armor was sealed to outside air, but gradually the spores in the air clogged up all the recycling apparatuses and ventilation systems s much that the seal needed to be released.
As spores made their way into the bodies of the marines, the first symptom for each was extreme cold followed by a plethora of symptoms unique to each marine. One couldn't feel his legs, another his arms. One become paranoid of being the first one eaten and convinced himself he would take the others out before allowing himself to be eaten. So he went to the armory to load up and was betrayed by gravity as some large and very heavy storage units fell onto him.
Eventually they all died. The last one to do so was Anthrallis, who had survived a full standard terran week longer than the rest. As his dying breath escaped him, he saw something form from the spores in the air. Definitely something humanoid in shape but his vision blurred and he slumped to the ground.
Threek weeks later, according to the chronometer in his helm, Anthrallis awoke and saw the humanoid shape again in front of him. And he felt... Better. He talked and argued with the daemon for some time in the silent fortress, and eventually came to terms with it all:
The virus that was launched in the planet was created using some warp technologies he didn't understand that involved tiny cell-sized daemons of nurgle and ork replication genes. Normally the virus would make contact from skin or breathing, eat a cell reproduce, and continue on until the entire organism was replaced by the spores. The daemon Anthrallis was speaking to, revealed itself to be the progenitor of the cells used to make the virus and claimed that as each marine was devoured, their DNA was kept somehow inside the spore. Since all the marines were in complete armor upon death, the spores had no room to spread out and maintained shape. (Not being in a ridged suit of armor to keep the shape of their bodies was how the cultists became puddles) the residual dna in the spores ended up, by some machination, knowing what the purpose of the marine cell they replaced was, and acting like them. Thus, a skin cell eaten by a spore cell had it's job replaced by that spore.
In short: they had become "fungus men"
As time went on, the other 19 woke up and they all took evaluation of the situation. They were alone, abandoned, and betrayed. So they continued adding to the fortress. Two of the marines, no longer terrified of death to go outside the walls, repaired the generators and got things going again.
Oh, and they changed their name to the Iron Host because A) they're still iron warriors and B) because they are each host to an amazing gift from Nurgle and only want to share it.

That's it for now, ill add more later...
Have a good night, Interwebs.

Fun fact #1

Interestingly enough, the Chaos marine Rhino comes with a combi-bolter as is, and in the vehicle options it states that it can take not only a combi-weapon for 10 pts, but also can take a second combi-bolter for 5, like the rest of the vehicles can... Fo for 15 points you have a Rhino with 3 bolters, two of which are twin-linked.
Not that it's going to do too much, lol. But fun to think of a rhino with 3 bolters (and 5 gin barrels), a single shot melta AND a havoc laincher with dude blasting out the top hatch with their own guns.
Its almost like the Warpsmiths are taking a page out of the Ork codex astartes equivalent: MOAR DAKKA!