New project: Chaos Space Marines

I got a text message from my buddy Aslak this summer:
Do you want to do a few painting sessions with me this fall? Want to try 40k (Tau).

Huzzah! We talked about it and decided to try a tale of two gamers, building our forces in manageable chunks. This is his first 40k army, only having played Warhammer Fantasy so far.

The seven steps to glory

1. One unit of Troops
2. 400 points and at least two Troops
3. 500 points and at least one HQ unit
4. 750 points
   
5. 1000 points
6. 1250 points
7. 1500 points and done

The master plan
My seven step program should keep things interesting and manageable for both of us. The game after step 1 should be pretty one-sided, but at step 2 and 3 things will start to get interesting.

1. 10 Chaos Space Marines with champion, icon, plasma rifle and lascannon, mounted in a Rhino transport
2. 10 Lesser Daemons
3. Chaos Lord (have to take a lot of his gear away to fit him into 500 points)
4. I need some anti-tank at this stage, so I'll take 2 Obliterators and 5 Raptors with Meltaguns
5. 4 Terminators won't bring me to 1000 points, but using the Chaos Lord at full power will
6. 8 Khorne Berzerkers with Skull Champion in a Rhino
7. 9 Thousand Sons in a Rhino

That's it. 1499 points of Chaos Space Marines. The army has a very high model count (for CSM), in all 52 models. This is balanced fairly neatly with the fact that I lack anti-tank weaponry, have no heavy vehicles at all, and no blast or template weapons. A fun army that I am looking forward to painting and playing with.