The Voice - Building a better Marine list

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. Ive just been really busy job hunting and looking after the little one.

So, Marines; its all about the bikes right?

Wrong

I won't lie i looked at the book and thought the same initially. With grav as it is and scoring cheap bikes the way they are, then surely that's your starting point with marine lists?  We'll this is what i thought and played some games...and its good, but its not great. If you don't go first it can be a problem. It was almost 2 army's, the one where you went first and the one where you went second and the tactics changed a lot depending on that. With Coteaz as an allie then i think it is a strong contender, but other wise its good but not tourney winning good (Hello Mr Sacket :P)

So what do i think marines should be doing. Well that depends, on one thing. The chapter tactics you use. This rule more than any other really does define how you should build your list, and, in my humble opinion, tactical marines tend to use them to the fullest.

I was a bit disillusioned with the tacs at first, they didn't get much of a buff and they were not cheaper (not really, when you consider their old free/cheap weapons upgrades). But add in the chapter tactics and the fact that a lot of the upgrades are optional and available for squads under 10 strong now and hoo nelly!. Suddenly tacs en mass can be scary.

Yes i said it, Scary

So what I'm going to do is go through each of the chapter tactics and show you a list , talk about it a bit and throw some ideas your way. I won't include allies out of codex as frankly thats an exercise that would take forever. Plus i think allies are kinda cheating :P

First off. White Scars:

This is what I'm currently using myself, as i think hit and run and scout on mass scoring troops is brilliant. Marine hordes/pseudo hordes work now. Id rather 10 marines and a rhino than a equivalent amount of bikes.

So - 1850.

Khan on bike

Chapter master, bike, arti armour, shield eternal, thunder hammer, auspex

Command squad, bikes, apoth, max gravs

10 tacticals with melta, combi melta,  - rhino dozer blade

10 tacticals with melta, combi melta,  - rhino dozer blade

10 tacticals with melta, combi melta,  - rhino dozer blade

10 tacticals with melta, combi melta,  - rhino dozer blade

5 scouts. shotguns

5 tacs, melta, combi melta - pod

thunder fire

hunter

aegis line

obviously the go to allie here is making the chapter master, scouts and hunter Iron hands :p

But what you have here is an in your face, turn one, gigaton of marines. The command squad are your hammer to deal with the big problems, the thunder and the hunter are your support to deal with very specific units (troops and flyers). But really the heavy lifting it done by the tacs. Get midfield, melta targets and then get in to combat.

Combat you say? Yes. cos mass kraks does a number on vehicles and id rather be in combat with something to then hit and run out, shoot and then charge again than be shot in the face at the enemys pleasure. All the time you are doing this you are conserving your scoring to then hit and run out to an objective later and to deny the enemy bringing his guns to bear till the command squads gets there to wreck face.

The pod squad are a great little distracting unit too, i really want them getting shot with Tau intercept so that marker light support is not an issue for those weapons next turn where they can do a number on my rhinos before I'm maybe ready to get out, or can just do more damage ignoring cover to the tacs.

The scouts are used as your baseline objective campers, relic nabers or just plain used to push back other infiltrators to create a hole to scout into (yes i know with the new inquis book you may see more servo skulls but it dont do jack vs outflanking if needs be and frankly, the scout its nice but not ultimately the be all and end oll of your tactics)

The aegis is there cos going second you always want a nice cover save for this rhinos.

The alpha strike on this can be immense. A few games now ive had a conceed turn one. If you combat squad too you have enough shots to reliably ground multiple fmc's (then charge with Mc Hammer and friends). If fact i was at WW Wednesday and played Scott Nichols and his tzeentch deamons. It was over  turn one effectively (me going second) I caused 5 failed grounding checks, grounding all his fmc's. I charged 3 of them with the bikes, including fatey, then spent a few turns just tanking up attacks, hit and running out and killing them in turn. Fatey died to a hail of cc grenades from 20 tacticals once the grim bearer had died and it wore off. Troops die to bolters and thunder fire cannons as normal.

Fear the tactical marine.

So what does the chapter tactics do to this army?:

It gives you mobile and tricksy troops to keep out of the way of every gun on the table and still run off to score later. It makes the bike squad more reliable and hit harder (S5 hammer of wrath, no dangerous terrain tests and 4+ jink saves). It gives you access to Khan for scout on all your transport mounted troops and bikes for that turn one rush or outflank.

Anyway this is my tourney list of choice atm (ish, i have the Iron hand chapter master et all)


Thoughts?

Gary