How does C:SM stand up to C:SW and C:BA?

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Grey Mage: I understand your example, but it seems pretty cut and dry. Sure, it's great to be able to fall back when someone shoots you up, but your example is only going to take place against someone who somehow doesn't know about combat tactics. It's not a big deal at all to skip your shooting to ensure an assault. It's rather routine for most armies in fact, because often killing a model or two would leave you out of assault range. A CSM squad (with a fist of course) is perfectly happy to delay killing a couple models if it means getting the whole squad. I am a chaos play myself. I've fought codex marines on tons of occasions. I have never once seen combat tactics used successfully. Not because my opponents are all bad, but simply because the opportunity has never come up. I've always been careful not to throw away my assaults for some shooting kills, and it's never once helped someone escape a close combat against me.

 

I can certainly see it working vs shooty armies (where moving backwards isn't so helpful), but I remain skeptical because it seems like your opponent can easily deny you it's use simply by timing their strikes correctly. I've certainly never had any trouble denying my opponents its use.

[spartan249]

Nor have I really had the chance to take advantage of Combat Tactics against skilled opponents. It's really a parlor trick that works against unwitting opponents, which I think is something that can't be classed as a real advantage.

 

I prefer close combat prowess to the ability to choose to wimp out of a combat, as close combat prowess gives me the chance to outright win instead of knowing that I will lose totally every time I'm assaulted.

[DarkGuard]

Combat Tactics is all about versatility. Where Blood Angels have no other option than to run forward, and Vulkan lists no other option but to get in flamer/melta range, a Marine army with Combat Tactics can do both those things, and then extract themselves when the going gets tough. Furthermore, if you're paying 190pts for Vulkan, you're going to want to use his Chapter Tactics. This means meltas, flamers, thunder hammers etc. None of these are bad, but it does hamstring you into playing one way, giving you less tactical diversity. Yes the way of playing is very good due to his rules, but you don't get a choice. Combat Tactics, more than anything else, is about individuality. I can do things a Vulkan army can't do, and I don't have to pay 190pts for the privilege. I believe I said this a while go, but I remember it because I believe it. Combat Tactics is individuality, it lets you do what you want. Chapter Tactics and to an extent the rules of BA and SW lose that individuality.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

I'm on a similar tangent to DarkGuard, Combat Tactics is the basic package, its decent enough to be on our marines and nothing needs to come to the table in order to bring it into effect. So its something reliable and consistant. BA and SW are quite divergent and thus their units have their own rules, losing out on our way of fighting and deploying in quite a different fashion, though that fashion usually FORCES them to fight in a particular predicatable style. Something we regular marines don't have to worry about.

 

Now we also diverge a bit within our own group with the use of SCs. I think that its here that we find that Vanilla marines can completely change a playstyle, yet remain inside the same army group and utilise the same choices (with some becoming more obvious than others) or sitting in the middle and taking a vanilla HQ choice. Thats quite a lot of diversity and different armies and playstyles under the same banner. Far more than could ever be had with some of the other armies that require key units, the only thing we'll usually have multiples of army wide are tacticals or scouts and thats because we have to take them! The loss of Combat tactics to the chapter tactics is a double edged sword, as some of the SCs are going to be forcing you to play by some rules and lose out on CT all together.

 

CT may well be the 'vanilla' flavour, but that doesn't mean it HAS to be adhered to, SCs give us new rules to play by and even if we keep the plain old CT it'll come in handy at some point, or you'll force your enemy to try and nullify it (which you can then use to play into your hands, a predictable enemy is an easy enemy) plus its built in and its not a bad built in rule because it gives you a little more option when playing, besides marines are as hard as nails, what more do you want from their stat profile!

[Bartali]

I have never once seen combat tactics used successfully.......... I've always been careful not to throw away my assaults for some shooting kills....

 

Combat Tactics seems to be working perfectly there....

 

I'll say it again - Tacticals should never really be in assault. If they are in assault, then something has drastically gone wrong. Combat Tactics is a nice free addition to help them deal with worst case situations. Having a Power Fist is always a bad idea for a Tactical squad as the points are better of being spent to make sure they don't get in assault in the first place.

[d@n]

BA are a fast close combat army, but are less flexible then the other 2 and generally a much smaller army.

 

SW have some very strong units like rune priests wolf lords, wolf scouts, gray hunters , long fangs and thunderwolves balanced by some rubbish units like our termys cant deep strike and th/ss are well over priced our bikers, assault troops and jump infantrys are ws/bs3 (so worthless) .our good units with counter attack are very flexible in themselves but are less so as an army.

 

codex space marines gives you loads and loads of different builds and by adding in, say a character vulkan you can completely change the army. there not stronger in any specific area you can build a much more blanced army.

 

A pack of gray hunters in ganeral are better then a pack of tactical marines both in cc and as a gun line and pretty much once a blood angel army gets into combat with a codex army its game over, but if your facing 120 ork boyz you do wish you had an orbital bombardment or a few thunderfire cannons or if you facing a nidziller build you could really do with a unit of 2 of sternguard vets (if your a pup player)

[d@n]

Cheapness, for one. C:SM armies will generally have more boots, more guns, and more units then C:SW armies or C:BA armies. In some cases, Space Wolf armies bring just as many boots to a fight as Codex Marines, but then there is little seperating the two in terms of ability. When you actually start taking the units unique to space wolves, you start racking up point costs very quickly (only exception to this is Long Fangs, who bring more special weapons for cheaper... Thanks ;)). C:SM Special Characters are also very competitively priced.

 

Psychic powers with high utility is another plus. Space Wolves have powers that are mainly focused on straightforward offense vs light armor and infantry. Codex Marines have Null Zone, a great equalizer against armies using decent invulnerable saves to protect their assets (TH/SS terminators, anyone?), Vortex of Doom, a very good, if straightforward and a little risky, short range attack that can obliterate a lot of targets, and Gate of Infinity, which unlocks some very rapid relocation when needed.

 

Other than that... Space Wolves hold a lot of advantages over Codex Marines. It has become very hard to find any reasons to play codex marines unless you're interested in making a biker army or vulkan Ironclad spam army. Otherwise, C:BA brings quite a bit of what C:SM wanted/needed.

Thats not right, gray hunters are cheaper at a base cost then tactical marines, you dont get a sargent but if your going to upgrade your sargent at all then gray hunters can have a wolfguard join there pack. for a few more points then a gray hunter you can have a wolfguard join and his upgrades are alot cheaper then a sargents

[templargdt]

I run vanilla SM lists with no Special Characters. In 8 games so far this year in tournaments (6-1-1) I've gotten to use combat tactics exactly once (which, I'll admit, was useful that one game, but not game breaking.) And that ratio reflects my experience with C:SM since I started playin the game when 5th edition dropped.

 

I would gladly trade combat tactics and combat squads just for access to Sang Priests/DOA or dual CC weapons/counter charge, forget the other advantages like access to Thunderwolves or the Stormraven. Not to mention 2 special weapons is IMO far superior than 1 special/1 heavy.

 

The reason is combat tactics is an easily avoidable rule. Don't want the Marines to run away? Don't shoot them. Most people playing know about this rule and how to avoid it (and once you CT out from them, they won't make that mistake twice.) On average things charging your tacticals (Wolves, BA Assault Squads, CSM) are going to win combat anyway regardless of losses they give up by not shooting you. The ability to CT out of close combat is great, except it usually doesn't work and when you try it you're taking fearless wounds when you (probably) fail.

 

Combat squads are also 'meh' at best. Do I use it? Sure, during objective missions, sometimes. 5 Space Marines are not diffifult to remove when you really need to in decent sized games.

 

Finally, at those two tournaments I went to out of 8 guys I fought 4 Space Wolves and 2 BA. My one loss was to a guy who had a beautifully painted Night Lords army you could tell he'd worked on for months at least. He plunked it down and said 'ok, so this is my blood angels army...' At the last one out of 46 players there were exactly two C:SM players. Me and one guy running Vulkan. There were at least 6 Wolves that I saw; I didn't bother counting BA. That to me says it all about C:SM versus C:SW/BA.

[Bannus]

COMBAT TACTICS. Say it with me, one more time now... Combat Tactics. Easily one of the most powerful rules in the game. Got an ork horde in your face? Run away, walks back up and rapid fire on them again! Losing combat to a greater demon? Walk away pall, and let your other units come over to help shoot him dead. Heck, its now possible to move farther by regrouping and then walking forward than just walking foward by itself! Holy cow! Its not likely, but its odd no? And this ability is free. It never fails to be with your squads. You always have the option.

I wouldn't say you always have the option.

 

One thing that is not being discussed in relation to these armies' strengths and weaknesses are the victory conditions of the game.

 

Combat Tactics is great if you're looking to score (and preserve) KP's - but running away doesn't get you closer to your objectives that you need to seize to win.

In these situations, the "balance" between these armies tends to shift more in favor of those better equipped for close combat. In objective-based games, close combat is more common.

 

 

 

Food for thought.

[DarkGuard]

One thing that is not being discussed in relation to these armies' strengths and weaknesses are the victory conditions of the game.

 

Combat Tactics is great if you're looking to score (and preserve) KP's - but but running away doesn't get you closer to your objectives.

 

 

Food for thought.

 

But on the last turn you could run away from Mephiston who is about to kill your unit in assault, regroup, and then run onto the objective and the win game. When I pulled that off I had a couple of the Veterans telling the guy I played that I was afraid I'd do, what they said, was textbook use of Combat Tactics.

 

Seriously, Combat Tactics is of more use in objective games than kill point games. The very nature of kill points games means that if you can't pull clear of the enemy with your fall back move they can run you off the table and they get a kill point. However, there is less risk in objective games, as you possibly weren't contesting the objective in the first place, and if you are run off the table then you don't surrender a kill point. And remember that you've got 9" to move when regrouping (3 for regrouping and 6 for normal movement), so you can easily get back on the objective, remembering that you need to be 3" away from it. And of course, what if you're not on the objective, but what if there's one behind you? Your fall back move can bring you into range of that. Again, another way I beat Space Wolves. So two examples of Combat Tactics trumping these two Codices.

 

I do think, however, that in kill point missions C:SM are behind. They just can't match the brutal, unstoppable ferocity of the other two Codices, who can also boast better Troop choices than us. This means they get more effective units that fill up their mandatory Troops and scoring units needs, whereas with Space Marines we are forever attempting to balance our points spent on our mediocre Troops with the big hitters. Thankfully two thirds of our games are objectives, so the playing field is evened somewhat.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

But on the last turn you could run away from Mephiston who is about to kill your unit in assault, regroup, and then run onto the objective and the win game. When I pulled that off I had a couple of the Veterans telling the guy I played that I was afraid I'd do, what they said, was textbook use of Combat Tactics.

 

The chances of disengaging successfully from mephiston without him catching you are horribly small. Saying that's textbook use of combat tactics would be like saying that you won a game because of textbook use of rolling all 6's the whole game. It's complete luck, not something you can rely on.

 

I'm on a similar tangent to DarkGuard, Combat Tactics is the basic package, its decent enough to be on our marines and nothing needs to come to the table in order to bring it into effect. So its something reliable and consistant. BA and SW are quite divergent and thus their units have their own rules, losing out on our way of fighting and deploying in quite a different fashion, though that fashion usually FORCES them to fight in a particular predicatable style. Something we regular marines don't have to worry about.

 

This all sounds a little abstract. While it's a nice idea, I don't see how something that can be easily prevented, and will often accomplish nothing even when it does work, can be abstracted to the whole army flavor and play style. BA don't HAVE to rush you, ya know. They have...all the same shooting units as SM for the most part, but they do it with more mobility. Being able to reposition quickly with your fast vehicle, or move and shoot on your preds, is much more flexible than the occasional fallback move.

 

BA and SW aren't forced to fight in any particular predictable style. Melee heavy armies are though. The thing is that BA and SW can make melee heavy armies, and SM can't. They are predictable when they go melee. They don't go melee because they are predictable and forced into it. You can make flexible, hybrid, and ranged lists with both BA and SW just fine. And they will match vanilla SM for flexibility and/or raw firepower, while still having their superior survivability and/close combat bite.

[dannygravestones]

Granted I'm not a very veteran player, and not very veteran to this site, but here's my two pennies:

I'm a BA player and your a SM player and we play a game on a 6ft by 4 ft table. If deployment is on the long edges, I have the advantage. If its on the short edges, or table quarters, you have the advantage, plain and simple.

[Br0ther Rafen]

@ Drudge:

All right, the primary use of Combat tactics is to run away. Simple as that. Now, while the maths says that the Tactical squad will easily get caught, I rarely ever get caught by Orks, or Nids, if they get into assualt range. Multiple times, during my opponent's turn, he will assualt me, my Tacs lose, and then they run away. Then, in my turn, my opponent get's shot to peice's by the rest of my army.

Really, I recommend you try it out, maybe proxy or something. When the 5ed Codex came out, I thought the same thing as you. And then I started to actually use the rule, and I realized how useful it is alongside of ATSKNF. It means that our units get to run away and retaliate in our turn, unlike before when a Tactical squad in assualt basically meant that it was dead.

Another thing, why are we only taking the Tactical squad into consideration? What if I have a unit of Honour Guard (Hammernator's, Vanguard Vets, whatever) right behind the assualt? Tacs can disengage, and then my counter charge unit will wipe the floor with the opposing unit. It's all about how you use the army, and your tacticals can't reach their full potential when they go up against an opponent unit. Like, if I was versing a Green Tide List, 2 tactical Squads, or a Tactical squad and an assualt squad will be able to handle a 30 man blob of Orks over 2 turns. With further support, they will wipe the floor with most anything. Really, you shouldn't be relying on all of your units to go it alone. You should have everything supporting everything else, and Combat Tactics helps you to achieve this synergy and to win games.

[DarkGuard]

@ Drudge Dreadnought: the BA player in question didn't charge me with Mepthiston, if he had my squad would have died and the game would have been a draw. No, what happened is that he shot his Devs at me. I must admit I asked him why he didn't shoot me with his plasma pistol before charging, he had fleeted, and he responded that he had Devs to do that. Obviously, that was rather underhand tactics, but a competent player would have seen the inherent danger and not done so. What happened here was that the BA player had forgotten Combat Tactics, despite having played C:SM before taking his green painted Marines the Codex he perceived better, the Blood Angels. I can say that because I know the player is only playing them for their power, as he has allied Grey Knights as well, which made using Combat Tactics to outwit him all the sweeter.

 

I hold my hands up to your second point, Combat Tactics is very situational. That's the point. It pulls your units out of situations you don't want to be in, it's like reset button. It doesn't work all the time, but it gives us options. I'd say paying no points for a situational and handy ability is quite useful, as well as it being fluffy. I don't like playing with Vulkan because it doesn't feel too fluffy for my Chapter. I don't want to use C:BA because it wouldn't be fluffy for my Chapter. Those Chapters are hamstrung into their playstyles because they haven't got something like Combat Tactics, C:SM, by comparison, are not. In the end, it comes down to personal preference. I must admit I used Vulkan again recently and I was awed by his power again, my combi-flamer, flamer, MM squads killed lots of people. And I was happy to use my Captain's model. But I'm going to try him out as regular Captain, because I feel that and his Command squad would have more character. It's all about playing about with what you like.

[Grey Mage]

Thats not right, gray hunters are cheaper at a base cost then tactical marines, you dont get a sargent but if your going to upgrade your sargent at all then gray hunters can have a wolfguard join there pack. for a few more points then a gray hunter you can have a wolfguard join and his upgrades are alot cheaper then a sargents

Yet a fully equipped GH Pack is going to run at 273pts. A fully kitted Tactical Squad is going to run you about 240pts.

 

That adds up. I play my GHs cheaply, by sacrificing luxuries like LD 9, and a second SCCW. That doesnt mean that overall GHs arent priced about the same as Tacs.

 

In case anyone missed this part:

 

It's all about playing about with what you like.

 

and again:

 

It's all about playing about with what you like.

[Bartali]

Yet a fully equipped GH Pack is going to run at 273pts. A fully kitted Tactical Squad is going to run you about 240pts.

 

In my opinion a Tactical Squad should never cost more than 205pts. Flamer, Multi-Melta, Rhino. Combi-melta if you have spare points lying around.

[Br0ther Rafen]

i dare say that I agree with Bartali, I hate to "pimp out" units with upgrades and such, unless they are vital.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

I think he knows that, hes just saying the most points you can really spend is 240 when you get the most pricey gear

 

Powefist, Plasmagun, Lascannon, Rhino adds up to like 250 and thats with the most pricey upgrades picked..

 

 

 

 

I'll admit Combat Tactics isn't great and 100% reliable, possibly even predictable, but what about its replacement rules in the other units? Are they really any better? Do they lend themselves to the respective army playstyle better than CT does? Or are they not as important and its the actual units themselves and FOC slots that make the armies so strong, we've spent a long time looking at rules and points, but what about the actual units and ways they mesh together?

[DarkGuard]

Yet a fully equipped GH Pack is going to run at 273pts. A fully kitted Tactical Squad is going to run you about 240pts.

 

In my opinion a Tactical Squad should never cost more than 205pts. Flamer, Multi-Melta, Rhino. Combi-melta if you have spare points lying around.

 

More or less agreed, although I'd personally have a combi-flamer. How about no more than 220pts, which allows the combi-melta, meltagun, missile launcher, Rhino build, another favourite of mine.

[Grey Mage]

I think he knows that, hes just saying the most points you can really spend is 240 when you get the most pricey gear

 

Powefist, Plasmagun, Lascannon, Rhino adds up to like 250 and thats with the most pricey upgrades picked..

And as a side-effect GH packs tend to be more expensive than tactical squads despite being cheaper to buy the basic models.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

One thing i'll note is that the MOTF we pick allows us to take up to 6 dreadnoughts, Blood Angels seem to be able to take quite a few without the limitations on the special character, do BA do dread spams better perhaps?

[Grey Mage]

No really. BA are limited to 3 dreads with weapons that can shoot over 12", Id say thats a severe limitation. And while they can technically bring out more those DC dreads require you to spend 100pts on DC infantry for each one you take... it adds up fast.

[Arikel]

Eh i kinda like combat tactics so far.....gets my marines out of unwinnable fights etc, and the squad can't be swept, if you do get swept then your marines auto regroup and suffer no retreat wounds instead(see and they shall know no fear), means i can then hose the opposing unit with fire from my support squads and usually take it out completely. I haven't played that many games, but I've learned so far that my marines should never work alone as one squad. If you don't have enough squads, say in a small points game, then combat squadding provides the supporting units you may need and allow you to combat tatcics effectively. So far when i've lost an assault I haven't seen a reason not to try to combat tactics out of it.

[Shadowstalker Grim]

Perhaps then its worth saying that in reality C:SM does stand up to BA and SW fairly well. Sure BA has some stuff that probably could have been useful in SM codex, but I'd say that between the 3 codex's they are all diverse and different enough to have their own place. SW are quite a different codex really, in the sense that although they take some of the SM units, enough of them are different enough to really make them quite a stand out. BA on the other hand take some of our units and they have a different feel to them, because they deploy in a different way to us and whilst some of it seems a little crazy and over the top (all that deep striking rapid moving stuff) they'll probably be outnumbered by regular old SMs.

 

So I guess to summarise, SM take their place as the numerically superior army, with access to a HUGE variety of different strategies and playstyles thanks to the HQ section (Biker captains, MOTFs, SCs etc) and access to the same units that the other 2 have, possibly with more wargear options and although they lose out on some of the fancy toys and characterful models that the other 2 have, they do have their own!

 

 

Sound reasonable?

[Br0ther Rafen]

Perhaps then its worth saying that in reality C:SM does stand up to BA and SW fairly well. Sure BA has some stuff that probably could have been useful in SM codex, but I'd say that between the 3 codex's they are all diverse and different enough to have their own place. SW are quite a different codex really, in the sense that although they take some of the SM units, enough of them are different enough to really make them quite a stand out. BA on the other hand take some of our units and they have a different feel to them, because they deploy in a different way to us and whilst some of it seems a little crazy and over the top (all that deep striking rapid moving stuff) they'll probably be outnumbered by regular old SMs.

 

So I guess to summarise, SM take their place as the numerically superior army, with access to a HUGE variety of different strategies and playstyles thanks to the HQ section (Biker captains, MOTFs, SCs etc) and access to the same units that the other 2 have, possibly with more wargear options and although they lose out on some of the fancy toys and characterful models that the other 2 have, they do have their own!

 

 

Sound reasonable?

 

I agree, that sounds quite reasonable.