tactica tactical squads?

[DarkGuard]

Many good points in this article, and interesting to see how everyone uses their Tactical Squads, some loading them out with gear and others keeping points at a minimum so that they can use the points elsewhere.

 

One of the things I've picked up is the idea on similarly equipped Tactical Squads. Now when I used three Tactical Squads I had two the same (forward squads) and one different (objective holder squad). Now that I use only two full Tactical Squads (I swap between a third in a Razorback or Scouts), I ensure they are different. With me liking to make sure they can do their job efficiently, they often end up at about 240pts each. So in order to fill in the gaps I could have filled with other more specialised units, I've ensured each squad has a unique focus, and used points to maximise their effectiveness with that (combi-melta/meltagun for tank hunting and MM/PG for midfield). Thanks to the specialisation this particular army build of mine has an impressive win/lose streak at the moment.

 

But the main I wanted to ask people, is do you normally keep your Tactical Squads similarly equipped, to either keep points down and keep redundancy, or do you make them different, giving separate rolls and equipping them so they can perform them to the best of their ability?

[Jackelope King]

But the main I wanted to ask people, is do you normally keep your Tactical Squads similarly equipped, to either keep points down and keep redundancy, or do you make them different, giving separate rolls and equipping them so they can perform them to the best of their ability?

Almost always keep them similar. Redundancy is key: not only does it protect your army from inevitable attrition in battle, but it forces your opponent to make more difficult decisions in target priority. For a mech-heavy, force, if you present a Meltagun/Multi-Melta/Combi-Melta Tactical Squad and a Flamer/Heavy Bolter Tactical Squad, target priority is obvious. But if you instead present a pair of Flamer/Multi-Melta Tactical Squads, the opponent must now decide based on positioning, game turn, opportunity, and other factors. The more mistakes your opponent makes, the better your chances of winning. Throwing redundant units onto the field is a good way to increase the chances your opponent will mess up.

 

Mixing up Tactical Squads for different roles starts to get pricey for little gain. A Tactical Squad will never be a squad of face-smashing brutes like TH/SS Terminators or Sternguard or Thunderwolves or the like. They'll never provide better Anti-Tank than fast melta on a Speeder or a Rifleman Dread or the like. Tooling them up to try to make them "specialize" in an area is okay only when you have multiple redundant units of them. For instance, if for some reason your force can't squeeze Melta in on a lot of slots, I think making your Tacticals Melta/Melta squads is quite fair, but don't take just one. You want two.

 

240 points is borderline-obscene for a Tactical Squad, quite frankly (at least at 2000 points and below). Two of those squads versus two 205-point squads won't see a whole lot of difference in killing power or staying-power, but the latter has the points to buy another pair of Rhinos, or a MM/HF Land Speeder, or almost a whole Dakka Predator. Adding those provides more threats, and thus makes for a stronger force.

 

In general, Tacticals take and hold midfield. They're not going to smash face. No matter how many points you spend on them, they're still only Tactical Squads. Best to keep them cheap and use them to support more efficient threats.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

I think that identical tactical squads as a GENERAL rule, sub-par, and should be different, thus diversifying what they can do. HOWEVER I would say that if they fill a unique, or nearly unique role in the army then multiples of the same load out are fine.

 

I wonder about 3 tactical squads, 3 (or potentially 6) scoring units and a section bristling with multiple guns could be quite fearsome, but often people will take 2 and use the 205+ points for something killier. Are 3 squads better than 2, or do 2 squads bring all that needs bringing to the army?

 

Generally i see 2 trains of thought

 

Maximise on killing efficiency elsewhere and take the tactical units as cheap as they can

 

Trick out tactical units to perform certain roles, whether it be split or focussed and enable them to maximise their influence in the fight

 

 

Is either the better answer?

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

Two is way too few to me(multiple two homophones intended). They get killed off too easily and leave you playing for a tie after your enemy intelligently figures out that you have two ten man scoring units and only has to kill them in order to auto-win/tie unless you completely wipe him out.

[chaplain belisarius]

I take 1 tactical squad per 500 points and keep them cheap (about 180 points) and get them a rhino to ride in. I arm all my tactical squads the same (normally plasma gun and missile launcher or multimelta).

 

I am enjoying this thread immensely some very interesting posts here..:)

[Jackelope King]

I take 1 tactical squad per 500 points...

I find this old chestnut comes up once in awhile, and I'm not attacking you, bellsarius, but it's a myth that needs debunking.

 

At the end of the game, you need to control exactly 1 objective and just prevent the other guy from controlling any. And every non-Troops model in your Codex can contest.

 

So let's keep our Troops cheap in another way: for most Marines forces (save Armored Cavalry deployments, with Razorback spam, or Bikes lists), 2 is usually good. From about 1850 and up, taking a third Tactical Squad is simply to add durability. I'm fine with that. And I'm even okay with a fourth at 2500. This saves us points to spend on killier units.

 

I already know the comeback, by the way. I hear it all the time when I play my Tau list: "All I need to do is kill your few weak troops and you can't win!" My Tau list has two Kroot Squads (15x T3 models with no save in each squad) and a minimum-sized Fire Warrior squad (6x T3 models with a 4+ save). The Fire Warriors pile into a Devilfish that's basically a Chimera skimmer. My opponents gleefully go after my Troops. The Kroot die in about two turns, and I might get a weapon knocked off the Devilfish. But they've thus spent two turns ignoring my Crisis Suits, which can put out 40 shots that wound on 2s every turn. By the time this dawns on them, it's usually too late. The Kroot have sapped their momentum and slowed them midfield, and the Crisis Suits have shot most of their threats into irrelevance or just plain off the table.

 

This is a lesson I've since applied to my Marines. I'll save my points to take as many threatening units as I can. Troops can do this, note. I take 3 full Bike Squads in my Biker army, and 5 tactical squads in Razorbacks in my Armored Cavalry army. They're decently killy within the context of these lists. But as a rule, Tactical Squads in Rhinos aren't killy. They're pure, delicious support. They hold midfield, and provide fire-support to your more deadly elements. A Tactical Squad in a Rhino takes some investment in both time and firepower to kill off, so usually by the time the enemy realizes the futility of "killing my few troops", he's suffered more attrition than his force can handle, and now he's choking on my more threatening elements.

[chaplain belisarius]

its ok mate-i think a lot of what you say makes sense to be honest! I mostly play 1k games so normally have 2 tactical squads (armed identically, with rhinos)

 

I think we are on the same page regarding tacticals-they are not uber killy troops of doom....

[Jackelope King]

its ok mate-i think a lot of what you say makes sense to be honest! I mostly play 1k games so normally have 2 tactical squads (armed identically, with rhinos)

 

I think we are on the same page regarding tacticals-they are not uber killy troops of doom....

Yeah. I just like to make sure that I qualify clarifications like that to make sure it doesn't come off as an attack when I don't intend it to.

[chaplain belisarius]

i get what you mean-its the internet after all! (cant be too careful!)

 

I keep tacs cheap and cheerful and mostly concerned with shooting and holding objectives...rest of my army does the heavy lifting!

[DarkGuard]

I must say I agree with you Jackelope King about the amount of Tactical Squads needed. I used to follow your line of thinking chaplain bellsarius, one troop unit for every 500pts, and used to run 3 Tactical Squads in 1500pts all the time. However, after reading Warp Angel's fantastic articles, I dropped down to two squads for a while, and I was still competitive and it work fine.

 

However, despite this I do feel more comfortable with 3 scoring units at 1500pts, and so in addition to my two full Tactical Squads in Rhinos I will normally have a small Tactical Squad in a Razorback or a small Scout sniper squad, this unit being used to hold my backfield objectives so the rest of my army doesn't have to worry about them.

 

I feel armies can be competitive with 3 Tactical Squads, but they do need to be more specialised in these instances as you have less points for things like Speeders and Sternguard and other killy units.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

On Standard Loadout

 

I equip all of my Tactical Squads exactly the same, and there are two reasons for this. The first is simply the way my mind works. I'm a soldier so I'm used to the concept of a standard operating procedure, where every sub-unit in an organization is armed and trained the exact same way. It just doesn't make any sense to me to alter your gear loadouts between squads. The second is the aforementioned concept of redundancy; my Tacticals are equipped to do one thing well and I want to make sure that if I lose one, the other one or two can pick up the slack.

 

 

On Weaponry

 

So what is my standard loadout?

 

- Sergeant with power fist and combi-melta. For a while I went with power weapons and plasma pistols -- expensive to lose to Get Hot rolls, and 4+ to wound against MEQs often meant I wouldn't get a lot of utility out of the PWs. This forced a switch to fists, and after carrying like that for a while I realized that the Get Hot problem hadn't been solved and I got no real benefit from the pistol -- no extra attack, specifically. So I'm in the process of bumping them all over to combi-meltas. This gives me added range over the plasma pistol when the squad is boltering, and the melta shot gives me a chance to plink heavy armor that gets too close for comfort.

 

- Plasma Gun and Plasma Cannon. I've been deployed since before the Blood Angel Codex came out, but even when I was actively playing games I ran into a lot of armies that pushed FnP models across the table (specifically, one of my friends has a Nurgle obsession, and those guys are a huge pain in the ass to kill with just bolters). Add to that an Iyandan Eldar player and two Deathwing players -- and now a Wolfwing and two other players (that I know of) have picked up BA, and I've got lots of 2+ saves and FnP to get through in my local metagame. The easiest way to beat them is to load up on plasma. Cannons are great for splashing multiple models, and the gun is there to add in extra hits. The gun is a touch expensive for a Tac Squad, but at 5 points the cannon is dirt cheap in comparison to its Dreadnought-mounted or Devastator-armed equivalent.

 

On a further note, I experimented with various configurations of meltas, flamers, and missile launchers, and none of them really worked out very well -- even against other, more run of the mill armies. This loadout gives me the ability to threaten light and heavy infantry, monstrous creatures, light and heavy armor, and even hordes (to an extent); I get my serious tank-busting power from my vehicles, Dreadnoughts, and combi-heavy Sternguard. Normally the Tac Squads go into Rhinos for the Objective-camping bunker tactic, but I've been toying with an all Drop Pod army upon my upcoming return home, so we'll see how that goes...

[TyrionTheImp]

I already know the comeback, by the way. I hear it all the time when I play my Tau list: "All I need to do is kill your few weak troops and you can't win!" My Tau list has two Kroot Squads (15x T3 models with no save in each squad) and a minimum-sized Fire Warrior squad (6x T3 models with a 4+ save). The Fire Warriors pile into a Devilfish that's basically a Chimera skimmer. My opponents gleefully go after my Troops. The Kroot die in about two turns, and I might get a weapon knocked off the Devilfish. But they've thus spent two turns ignoring my Crisis Suits, which can put out 40 shots that wound on 2s every turn. By the time this dawns on them, it's usually too late. The Kroot have sapped their momentum and slowed them midfield, and the Crisis Suits have shot most of their threats into irrelevance or just plain off the table.

 

This is a lesson I've since applied to my Marines. I'll save my points to take as many threatening units as I can. Troops can do this, note. I take 3 full Bike Squads in my Biker army, and 5 tactical squads in Razorbacks in my Armored Cavalry army. They're decently killy within the context of these lists. But as a rule, Tactical Squads in Rhinos aren't killy. They're pure, delicious support. They hold midfield, and provide fire-support to your more deadly elements. A Tactical Squad in a Rhino takes some investment in both time and firepower to kill off, so usually by the time the enemy realizes the futility of "killing my few troops", he's suffered more attrition than his force can handle, and now he's choking on my more threatening elements.

This.

 

I follow the same thinking with my Tau and Tacticals. People at my local store are always telling me to bring more fire warriors and I constantly try to argue how inferior they are for their points cost, but 6 in a Devilfish with a disruption pod (4+ cover from ranges 12"+) can last quite while, and only reason I bring them is because it's required. Of course, Tacticals have a bit more staying power (a lot actually), so I do upgrade them a bit to give them some kick, but I see no reason to bring more than 2 squads in rhinos. People often forget that because of ATSKNF Tacticals can always regroup regardless of their numbers, so even one model can count as scoring, and killing a Rhino, plus 10 T4 3+ potentially in 4+ cover (since it's very easy to get) does require the opponent to divert a hefty amount of firepower towards killing them, while the rest of the army dishes out the pain. A 3rd Rhino squad means around 200+ points subtracted from elsewhere in your army, and I see no reason I can't use those points on things more killy than tacticals.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

See I think this is where it gets hazy:

 

1 - Your regular opponents and weapons that do well against them

 

2 - How your squads mesh with the rest of your army

 

 

For some armies all thats needed is a weak scoring set of units to just hold objectives, for others the tactical is the very spine of the force. In some ways there is no right answer, but I think its hard because there are so many choices with tactical squads and options that we get in few places in the rest of our army for such prices or if at all.

 

This in a sense allows them to gather the equipment needed to fill whatever slot you need, but its sometimes hard not to be greedy or to pick something 'just in case'.

 

I very much like 2 particular squads out of all those mentioned:

 

Plasmagun, Multi-Melta, Rhino - Holds the midfield, threatens more or less anything and is placed right where the tactical operates the best!

 

Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino - Cheap, basic and although it doesn't threaten EVERYTHING it's still pretty dangerous to anything on the field and again doesn't mind operating in close range where tacticals shine!

[chaplain belisarius]

@deus ex ferrum-great post there! I also give my tacs the same standard loadout (either multimelta or missile launcher and a plasma gun, in a rhino) but tend to keep my tacs cheap and cheerful (sgts always disappoint me in melee so id rather save the points for somthing that hits hard! then my tacticals dont get in melee)

[Mysticaria]

See I think this is where it gets hazy:

 

1 - Your regular opponents and weapons that do well against them

 

2 - How your squads mesh with the rest of your army

 

 

For some armies all thats needed is a weak scoring set of units to just hold objectives, for others the tactical is the very spine of the force. In some ways there is no right answer, but I think its hard because there are so many choices with tactical squads and options that we get in few places in the rest of our army for such prices or if at all.

 

This in a sense allows them to gather the equipment needed to fill whatever slot you need, but its sometimes hard not to be greedy or to pick something 'just in case'.

 

I very much like 2 particular squads out of all those mentioned:

 

Plasmagun, Multi-Melta, Rhino - Holds the midfield, threatens more or less anything and is placed right where the tactical operates the best!

 

Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino - Cheap, basic and although it doesn't threaten EVERYTHING it's still pretty dangerous to anything on the field and again doesn't mind operating in close range where tacticals shine!

Yep. Local play environment is typically going to be more relavent than general interenet advice.

 

I think you are right on the role of the tactical squads being the deciding factor on cost. Seems like some people want to keep them cheap and minimized, while others like to kit them out to kill things. This is a sliding scale though, and you don't necesarilly have to be at one end or the other. For example, the two squads you mentioned above are awesome and cheap... but some people would augment them with a combi weapon. That is not quite as cheap as the low end, and gives a little extra punch... but it isn't as expensive as the tooled out squads either.

 

I'm with the "2 tactical squads per army" school of thought, not "1 tactical squad per 500 points". Take advantage of rhinos, 3+ and ATSKNF for resiliency. I use the same squads as in the post above and sometimes combat squad the missile/flamer squad depending on scenario. Works pretty well and if someone starts headhunting my troops, and ignores the real threats, then it really is pretty easy to keep one guy alive until the end of the game. All that mobile terrain (rhinos, vindis), buildings that block LOS, terrain with 4++ saves, going to ground, rallying with only 1 guy, etc... I've won lots of games with only 1-2 marines alive at the end.

 

-Myst

[DarkGuard]

Again, as I've said before a lot of good ideas here. I'm particular interested by Jackelope King's ideas on Tactical Squads being kept cheap. At the moment at my LGS there's a 1000pts tournament, so I'm going to try and play with a cheap Tactical Squad, using the following configuration: combi-flamer, flamer, multi-melta, Rhino.

 

So a midfield unit, with it using the multi-melta, and with the flamer and combi-flamer it can threaten any infantry that comes close to it in one horrible turn of shooting for the opponent (hopefully). I've found that with the points I dropped from the meltagun and power fist I was able to switch my scout squad to a mounted Tactical Squad (5 men in HB Razorback), while keeping my Vindicators, Librarian and Sternguard. Will see how this works out, and if it works out well I'll consider using two of them at 1500pts.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

One thing i've been pondering over:

 

Why is it 3 tacticals fit into a half company so well? And why does a half company have so much efficiency despite the lack of high powered killing units?

 

 

(Though I also wonder why devestators fit into the half company too......I mean if they could have all 10 men in the squad given heavy weapons and upgrades for FNP or Split Fire or Relentless and Jump packs they'd be pretty awesome :) )

[Shadowstalker Grim]

I don't want to create a new thread since there was one about tacticals not so long ago, hence why im posting here.

 

But upon that train of thought 2 tacticals is all we need, do we need any other boots on the ground apart from those 10-20 men? I ask because when i build a list i feel that i should probably have 35+ models on the board and usually thats 30 or so troops (whether it be tacticals, assault squads, sternguard etc).

 

In one list i debated, it has 28 models, 8 vehicles and 2 tactical squads.

 

Is it viable to run the tacticals as our only troops like this?

[Hellios]

I don't want to create a new thread since there was one about tacticals not so long ago, hence why im posting here.

 

But upon that train of thought 2 tacticals is all we need, do we need any other boots on the ground apart from those 10-20 men? I ask because when i build a list i feel that i should probably have 35+ models on the board and usually thats 30 or so troops (whether it be tacticals, assault squads, sternguard etc).

 

In one list i debated, it has 28 models, 8 vehicles and 2 tactical squads.

 

Is it viable to run the tacticals as our only troops like this?

 

It is if you can keep your vehicles alive. I like to have 30-50 bodies at 1,500pts (not possible with say my DW army) if I can but if your vehicles have the staying power and the firepower to do enough damage to the enemy, then why not.

[DarkGuard]

I used to run with only 2 full Tactical squads in Rhinos. One would be with a Razorback and plasma cannon and sit back, and the other was loaded with plasma gun and multi-melta to take midfield. However, for some bizarre reason I then stuck in a small Scout squad with shotguns, and when I moved by backfield tactical squad into a Rhino to take midfield, I stuck the scouts in the backfield with snipers. Now instead of snipers I have a 5 man Tactical squad in a las/plas Razorback.

 

What I'm trying to say is that yes, 20 Tactical Marines in a couple of Rhinos are enough in objective games, even at 1500pts. However, I didn't feel safe with just 20, so I squeezed in an extra survivable scoring squad of 5, scouts with camo cloaks, able to get a 2+ cover save, or a 5 man tactical squad in a Razorback. The reason I have this is that at my LGS, in objective games there is often one sitting in backfield, and I don't like keeping my forward squad to sit back and look after them, nor do I want to rely on them to have to fall back and get them. By keeping a small squad on one of those objectives I already have one and don't have to worry about it. 100-150pts is good expenditure for reassurance IMO, especially as they can contribute to the battle in some way.

[Captain Juan Juarez]

One, leading, question:

 

How many people will tailor their Tactical Squads for a particular task, or is it a case of mixing and matching?

[Mysticaria]

I use 2x Tactical Squads as my only troops in 1000, 1500, 1850, and 2000 points. My GT army, which is played in fairly competative 2,000 point tournaments only has 2 tactical squads for scoring. The thing I've found is that you just need to have enough other threats that they can't go after your troops. If they do, you have to be able to make them pay dearly. Also, between rhinos, terrain, going to ground, using mobile elements to screen lines of fire, and ATSKNF it really is pretty hard to kill off every last guy. That is one of the strengths of Space Marines in my opinion, the fact that you have to kill every guy to get them to stop being scoring troops. In kill point games tactical marines are usually a liability, and if it isn't kill points then combat squading can be good. I really see no reason to spend more on tactical marines than I have to, and buying more than 2 squads is doing that in my opinion. I think this plays into the strengths of Tactical Squads (being reasonably hard to kill) and the army (having lots of good elite/heavy/fast stuff). Anyway, I've found that if the enemy is going after my tactical marines, that usually means I am winning since the other more dangerous stuff is getting ignored and usually making a difference.

 

On role, I like them somewhat purpose built. I am a proponent of flexibility, but you have to balance that with not paying for things that are unlikely to make a difference.

 

Here are my normal squads:

Squad 1: Black Reach, flamer, missile, sarge with ccw, Rhino. Combat squading is option here with flamer/sarge going forward and missile camping. Really cheap at 205

Squad 2: MM, Plasmagun, combi-plasma, Rhino - This is made for midfield, 24" threat range, and up to 5 low AP shots is really good for Tac squad, still pretty cheap at 225

 

-Myst

[Shadowstalker Grim]

Well I was thinking about things as a more 'fun' list, so it has a captain and a libby, 2 land speeders, 2 dreads (one AOBR, one venerable), a land raider (for one tactical which i'll come to soon) a predator and a rhino.

 

 

The idea was that a barebones regular tactical goes in the rhino, assisted by the AOBR dread. The other tactical is a PF, Melta, PC combo. They are accompanied by the libby and cappy in the land raider as a sort of assaulting, anti-heavy infantry unit. Its loadout comes to 205 (the same as the barebones + rhino) so its not too badly priced to sit in a massive tank. The Ven Dread accompanies this unit.

 

After that the 2 speeders and predator shoot out the heavy and light vehicles respectively before moving onto smaller units or monsters...

 

Problem with this list is that i feel that it's too easy for it to lose its teeth. The massive number of points in the land raider makes it target, although its armour is nice and the unit inside will hopefully fight off all but the assault specialists. But all other units are practically AV 12 so less special gear there and its not too hard to remove the dreads and thus a major part of the firepower...

[Ming]

After alot of experimenting and such, my base loadout for tac squads:

 

10 marines, power fist, combiflamer, meltagun or flamer, multimelta or ML, rhino with PMSB and HKM.

 

Overall, every PF sergeant (even sternguard) takes a combiflamer now. The combiflamer only needs one use, right before assault vs a dismounted opponent (such as large packs of dogs or orks or tyranids or dark eldar).

 

Rhinos are all taking HKMs because they get used turn 1 for more anti-transport punch.

 

Basic loadout for sternguard:

 

10 veterans, 2 meltaguns, 2 combimeltas or combiplasma, powerfist, combiflamer, rhino, PMSB, HKM.

 

Basic loadout for devastators:

 

5 marines, 3 ML or 3 HB.

[waaanial00]

I am starting to relax some of my "rules" since coming back from playing Fantasy. One such rule was that every Tactical Squad had to have a power fist, looking back they never really challenged tanks or walkers because the Sgt had too few attacks to really make them count. Similarly I had players feed me Walkers knowing that the chances of a quick destruction was quite remote (which it is really).

 

As such I am starting to branch out into taking a power weapon again and, shock horror, melta bombs. I still believe in packing for eventualities but I am not going to be mindlessly dumping 25 points onto my Tactical squads anymore. Too many times have the big handed marines died before combat or just simply missed.

 

Still in terms of layout I have gone back to just taking Missile Launchers, I just havent seen enough effects from my other endevours (MM, PC, LC have all been tried) to make me want to swap out the work horse which is the ML. It has to be said that I always take the heavy, its interesting to read advice away from this forum on taking heavy weapons on mobile units. I had an interesting debate with someone the other day about the merit of taking one, the too and fro isnt important but the summary is.

 

Basically the only thing you lose out by taking a heavy weapon is one bolt shot at 12", everything else is either the same or a potential gain. Though it was interesting to note that the decision would be different if we had to pay additional points to get the heavy weapon.

 

Still I digress, I would challenge people to break their own rules for a game or so in terms of tacticals. I have never played the "1 tactical for every 500 points" game though I have regularly taken more than 2 tacticals, I find I would rather take a Sternguard unit in a Rhino instead of another scoring unit now. It doesnt even have to be a full unit, put in amoungst the Rhino charge and it will more than likely attract more fire and therefore make up the numbers that way. Plus if it doesnt then its unlikely all of your tactical marines will be destroyed so you have still some scoring units plus better infantry backing them up.

 

I would say add a Power Fist to 50% maximum of your squads, it really isnt that brilliant as the Sgt delivering it isnt extra special anyway. Getting stuck in combat with a Walker may be inconvienient however its far from devastating, Combat Tactics is a decent enough way of getting out of that assuming the walker ever does any damage and generally speaking you are better off killing these sorts of things with shooting attacks anyway.