Who Here footslogs and how?

[thade]

Topic says it all. This is something I haven't examined since I bought my first Rhino as I quickly (if unconsciously) subscribed to the 5th Ed. "Mech meta" (or whatever you choose to call it): I'm not talking about Drop Pods, Bikes, or Jump Infantry. I mean a list that's only 6"-per Movement phase standard infantry lists. Entirely foot slogger lists. Legs. And nothing else.

 

IG and Orks do it with massive "tidal" infantry spam. Necrons used to do it and probably still will. Thanks for their 24" storm bolters, GK can (and do) do this. Nids have no transports at all. Etc.

 

So, what about Space Marines? I mean any of the marine codexes, really. Do any of you (or have any of you) fielded a foot slogging list? What worked? What didn't? What's the rock to it's scissors? Is there a paper to its scissors? How can you make it work? If you lack mobility and deployment shenanigans, what do you have left? How far can standard deployment go?

 

This is something I haven't tried and I'm curious to see how I might make it work. It didn't really work when I first started playing...but I was young then. <3

[Something Wycked]

Honestly, this is where my 40k gaming began. Partly this was due to a lack of models, but it developed into an Earth style all its own.

 

I would fill my points with Devastators and Tacticals and Dreadnoughts and rely on the shooting aspect of the army to do the work for me. Often we would play in 2v1 or 2v2 games where I was paired with Black Templars against various opponents- I was the firebase to the Black Templar's face punching and it worked beautifully. We were never defeated as a team (though he used mech, so that's all I'll say about that.)

 

Basically, I loaded up on Lascannons and Heavy Bolters in the Devastators and a mix of things with the Tacticals- always with a close-range focus for them, since they were the close support for my big guns. My Dreadnoughts were almost always TLLC+ML, though against particularly mobile or assaulty armies I would keep one with base equipment (which was Assault Cannon back then.) I had a bit of trouble with Eldar until 5th edition, and then Drop Pod mounted Sternguard fixed that for me. With all of the ways they had and have to make their vehicles hard to kill, my firepower struggled to protect my Astartes from the super-Marine-killing weapons of the Eldar.

 

Essentially, if you're pure foot, you'd better have the range and moxy to reach out and punch someone. Forces with greater mobility than yours will just dance out of reach since you can't chase them down, and forces with greater power at range will crush you.

 

One of the first tourney games I ever watched was an IG infantry gunline versus Chaos, pure Thousand Sons. And the Chaos player was footslogging it.

 

He didn't even reach midfield before the IG player tabled him.

 

My modern version of footslogging doesn't fit with this thread- Strikes, Interceptors, and PTDreadknights, with no AV in sight. With the mobility it brings to the table, and making the opponent's anti-armor weaponry into basically wasted points, its a beautiful thing ;)

[Bracks0682]

I had two armies that are Foot slogger's kroot and a Marine list that is very hit or MISS..(15/85)..

 

I still use the Kroot to good effect With the new DE codex they got an update to the Splinter weapons..

[Seneschal of the Seventh]

I mean a list that's only 6"-per Movement phase standard infantry lists. Entirely foot slogger lists. Legs. And nothing else.

 

I footslog when I play my Black Templars... 1500 points nets me something like 3x 20 man Crusader Squads with PF and MG, 2x 6 man Double Cyclone Tank Hunting Termie Squads and an Emperor's Champion. It's actually a rather effective list - 70-odd dudes, with over half in power armor has some serious staying power, and the termies absolutely destroy armor. Never played it competatively, but it's plenty good for friendly and semi-competative games. Hell, having only 6 KPs is awesome, and a 20 man squad is large enough to claim several different objectives at once if need be.

 

What worked?

 

Templars lend themselves to this kind of list more than most: Righteous Zeal combined with Crusader Seals and Chaplains, plus run moves make you terribly fast for a foot army.

 

BT termies with 2 cyclones and tank hunters make transports cry sweet tears which can be used to polish my EC's armor. Those two squads are the entirety of the long-range fire support for my list, and I've never felt truly lacking. Sometimes I would have liked to kill faster, but I never needed to. The fact that their 2+/5++ is out of range of most AP2 weapons the entire game makes them terribly difficult to remove.

 

What didn't? What's the rock to it's scissors?

 

Hrm... any IG army with a Colossus makes this army fold pretty quick unless the termies get lucky and punch through the cover saves early on.

 

Also, I really have no CC specialists. Crusaders can take most things in melee, but highly survivable units and those with I4+ power weapons are trouble. I try to avoid such units until the termies have time to shred them from range. Sometime that works, other times it doesn't. Single model CC specialists aren't that much trouble, as the EC can tank them for a bit, or just kill them outright if they're ICs.

 

Kill points against DE gets annoying, but there are enough bodies that you can deny good hiding spots by filling them with crusaders, leaving the raiders exposed to the missiles. This kind of game is annoying and awesome at the same time - it's like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. Sure, it takes a while, but when you connect... holy crap.

 

Is there a paper to its scissors?

 

Orks, at least in my experience. Especially foot orks.

 

How can you make it work?

 

You need to be faster than everything stronger than you, and stronger than everything faster than you. I would say you need a "mobile" firebase, "mobile" meaning "not static" in this case. Vanilla devs aren't scary for a reason, and as soon as you buy your firebase a transport for rapid redeployment, you're not footslogging anymore. And you need enough plastic dudesmen with guns and chainsaws to take casualties and still kick.

 

If you lack mobility and deployment shenanigans, what do you have left? How far can standard deployment go?

 

I've never had much trouble crossing the board, but again, RZ + CS + Run = much faster than typical infantry. In larger games I take Chaplains, both to direct my RZ moves and to provide some real CC brutality. In objective games with one objective in each DZ, I'll reserve one crusader squad and send everything else forward. Games with 3+ objectives are even more fun, as you just flood the board with bodies and challenge your enemy to remove them all.

 

In Kill Point games I usually try to grab the 7 easiest KPs on the board (transports and small squads) with the cyclones, then force my enemy to table me. After all, catching an enemy that wants to run away isn't easy on foot - though often you have enough dudes just to surround and trap them.

[JamesI]

I do it sometimes with my chaos guys, though they usually have 1 unit of raptors. Regular chaos marines, noise marines, or TSons basically standing somewhere and shooting.

 

Worked a lot better in 4th edition though.

[thade]

I do it sometimes with my chaos guys, though they usually have 1 unit of raptors. Regular chaos marines, noise marines, or TSons basically standing somewhere and shooting.

 

Worked a lot better in 4th edition though.

That was back during the "Transports are death traps" era, no? I started in 5th, so I only heard stories.

[Mysticaria]

My first thought to this was "only when I play Tyranids".... but seriously, rhinos are so good that it's hard not to take them, even in a horde style army.

 

-Myst

[DarkGuard]

My Scout/Terminator list is mostly footslogging. I have one unit in a Land Raider, one in a Storm and a couple of Typhoons, which is pretty low on mech for me. And I'm thinking of making it even less mech in a Deathwing list with the Typhoons being the only mech in the force. With this sort of army I rely on durability. Thanks to Telion and Lysander my sniper scouts have a 2+ cover save most of the time, while I have a big unit of 10 Tactical Terminators who rely on numbers and a high armour save to stay functional. They have cyclones, so with the Typhoons and a melta storm they attempt to knock out transports first turn and make my opponent footslog, which isn't in their plan, therefore handing me an advantage. At times it's been surprisingly mobile, walking all the way to the other side of the board, most people don't like moving forward against a big blob of Terminators, which kind of defeats half the purpose of taking a Rhino.

[Hellios]

Hmmm apart from my Black Templars and Deathwing... Nah not with marines... not normally... I do play Footdar now and again... My footdar lists tend to surprise people with how well they work if they haven't played against such before.

[OptiMAT]

My Crimson Fists army is fairly footslog.

 

1 LSS for Alpha Strike/Last minute objective contending

3 Scout Bikes for the Mobile Locator Beacon and Grenade Launchers

 

... but the rest is on foot. No Rhinos, no tanks, an Ironclad dreadnought, a thunderfire cannon (eventually) and 1 Vanguard squad which I hardly play because they're an alternative to my Sternguard (with regards to points cost vs. play style), and I hardly play the scout bikers either unless I feel a Deep Strike is really necessary (Librarian + Termies). I was thinking about picking up some drop pods so that my scout force could start the game and have the tactical marines come in later but for the most part I play solidly on foot. Any movement I do is just denial of route.

 

Because of my army setup then I know I will and do struggle against tough tanky opponents but I mainly play horde armies in my little group so I set up for that and the idea is just to mow them down with fairly static heavy bolters in almost every squad and rely on scouts for small arms fire and outflanking once they get too close. I find the minimal movement on foot tactics to work really well against such armies but coming up against a Chaos SM Army for example usually results in heavy losses win or lose. I'm okay with that, though, I'm not a tournie player by any means.

 

I wouldnt really call the way I play Earth in the strictest sense. It's like... Mud. A lot of static shooty units that will hold their ground and support each other in target acquisition, but playing on foot gives you a good chance to move into the right positions and flow against/around the enemy without committing the way that a lot of people do with their Rhino based armies.

 

Rock paper scissors and all that.

 

In regards to not having my jump infantry, bikes, and LSS, there have been times when I've played that. Usually in non-objective games against tyranids or Orks (as you might expect) but I find it to be a little bit boring. Sure it's fun ramboing with those still=present Heavy Bolters and Lascannons and rapid fire weapons but as an experiment I consider those games a bit of a failure, even with a win. I did end up feeling a little bit like that guy who sits in the darkest corners of a computer game waiting for someone to run past.

 

Just my opinion of course, but the beauty of Codex Space Marine armies is their ability to have a centric style while still picking decent units from other types. I like the idea that most of army can be on foot but for 50 points my LSS can still be in reserve ready to crush a mistake by the enemy that's left their flank exposed. As a tabletop general that security and knowledge makes the game more fun for me, so I dont think I would even be able to run a fully 100% nothing-but-foot army.

[MagicMan]

I used to, until one of my regular opponents switched from Chaos to Ork Horde.

 

 

Against foot slogging Orks you need the maneuverability (especially in DoW, where they can start so close to you) otherwise you end up in combat on turn two, and the game pretty much a forgone conclusion unless you manage to win on objectives.

[Sons of the Forge]

I run an almost 100% footsloggers list as I only have two rhinos to transport my two tactical squads to objectives or positions. Otherwise my list is made up of dreads, Devs, Sternguard, MoF with CB (on bike but only for relentless not for speed). I also have a small unit of assualt marines but they normallly have a counter attack role in my lists so most of the game dont go far. I loss slightly more then I win but I dont get tabled to much as I put up a reasonable fight to the end.

 

Personally if 10+ plasma cannons cant solve the problem I dont know what can.

[DarkGuard]

All this talk has me wanting to play a foot list now, and not Deathwing foot list, but Battle Company foot list, may have to dust off Army Builder and have a look.

[dswanick]

I have, from time to time, run a no-transport list with my Wolves.

-10-man Grey Hunter packs, plus a Wolf Guard Pack Leader, often joined by an IC.

-Long Fangs.

-Wolf Scouts.

But even in this I usually have a Land Speeder for some mobile heavy weapons and/or Sky Claws for anti-personnel work, so this doesn't count as "foot-sloggin" by your definition. Maybe I'll try a pure-foot Logan-wing at some point (I have a non-Apocalypse Megabattle coming up, maybe I'll try it there)...

[nurglez]

Well, my Draigo wing is foot slogging, apart from a jumping DK or 2, and it generally has done well, both of my other armies use either rhinos (for my chaos/deathguard) or drop pods (for my logan wing).

 

Going from using mech to foot slogging was rather difficult (its why I bought 3 drop pods for my logan wing), but my paladins seem better suited to foot slogging, though the few games I've lost or drawn have generally been due to lack of speed...

[Brother Tual]

2nd ed. Yes. The game was very different though.

 

3rd ed lasted for two weeks...

 

4th ed is when I 'meched up' due to the changes in the rapid fire rules and assault rules.

 

In my opinion the only competative foot build with codex marines is going to be a terminator heavy list. You need 5 turns to cross the table and you cant afford to be overly static when employing limited movement. The unit needs to be relentless OR have 'long' range assault weapons. Without this your list will be too slow and too short ranged to have an impact other than on the final turns. If you build a list of heavy weapons you will end up with the old 'gun line' lists of 4th ed but not having access to those cheap las/plas squads to fill out your fire power. Wolves, DW and BT can do it because they can be all terminators or have relentless heavy weapons or have units that are not built on rapid fire weapons.

 

A foot list without terminator spam is going to look something like...

 

HQ - Librarian or captain or MoTF

 

2+ units of sternguard with various weapons

 

4+ full tactical squads with lascannons and plasmaguns

 

Maybe some scouts

 

3 Dev units with whatever heavy weapons...

 

BORING

[Shadowstalker Grim]

I'm not sure why but to me marines feel like they SHOULD be on foot most of the time...after all they're practically walking tanks (ok fine dreadnoughts really ARE the walking tanks and even then terminators still are closer, but you know what I mean!)

 

But I dont think the gameplay really matches the fluff in this aspect, as a game of rock paper scissors its easy enough to see that if you overload on the rock, a small amount of paper can still beat you. Investing in a single type of gameplay has its ups and downs much like anything, I think that if you were to footslog it'd have to be a mainly static force

 

Some of the key advantages seem to be things like reducing the effectiveness of enemies guns, plus as we're decently armoured plasma is probably one of the best ways of killing marines and that can be quite expensive for many units to purchase

 

The downsides are really that against certain enemies you'll just get crushed and the playstyle just doesnt seem too flexible to me, but these are just my thoughts and as I don't play with footsloggers I'll happily defer to the knowledge of someone who has played with them :)

[jeffersonian000]

I'm running a 100% footslogging Ghostwing (Morkrak+Ghosts, Libby, 2x 10-man GKT, 1x 10-man GKIS, 1750pts). Of cousre, just about everyone is coming in via deep strike, so ...

 

SJ

[Hytanthas]

Back in 3rd edition and 4th edition (before BT came out), All I did was footslog. I would create a fire-base of Devastators and Tac Marines (sometimes I would take a Landraider) and shoot my Eldar or SM opponent (as there were only three of us playing the game at the time, now 40K has gotten bigger its a lot more fun),

 

But back then meta-gaming was not nearly as it is now. Armies were more fluffy and stories were told (more often than I feel they are told about my games now but that's my fault). But because of the smaller amount of power gaming it was easier to footslog. When the BT book came out and I meched up it felt almost wrong and like it was cheating. Now in 5th if you don't meta game you lose (I'm not talking about WAAC, but more synergy).

 

At the moment I'm thinking about playing a string of games with a Tyranid player where all games are linked together. game one All Drop Pods (for the marines). Games two: all Slogging as the marines struggle to create a fire base (if the space marines win game one they get one free orbital strike that comes on a random turn using the orbital bombardment rule without the need of a Chapter Master or an HQ not moving. Tyranids get to infiltrate one unit of his choice and one HQ if SM lose). Game Three: SM Wins game 2: anything goes as the marines have made a fire base, because of this they may have one extra HS slot; SM Lose game 2: Final stand. In the center of the table the space Marine player deploys and prays he lasts 6 turns vs. an infinite horde of Tyranids (all dead units of Tyranids may re-spawn on any table quarter or the tyranid player may "destroy" a unit to re-spawn them..

 

So footslogging seems to be more of a Fluff choice now more than a synergistic one. I do believe that a Hybrid Drop Pod/Foot Slogging army would work great though.

[Brother_Fatiswon]

near three-ish years ago, when i started back into the hobby: using C:SM

i was using:

Hq: calgar in PA

x3 tactical squads w/ PF+SB+MG+LC

x3 tactical squads w/ SB+MG+LC

weights in at 1495pts

 

work ok for coming back into the game from the 3rd edition:

suffered badly from dual lash list which were super popular in my area at the time

----

added ven dread with an assault cannon and a no heavy weapon devastator squad to act as Calgar's personal body guard (yes, i know.. i've heard it before: Why would you field that??) to play 1850

 

pretty much played like a single option force: either i'd static all six units and open up any Armor or scary to me units on the board with the laser cannons + calgars OB

or

we'd run for better distance for using rapid fire/bolters...

[Freman Bloodglaive]

Technically my bikes are foot-slogging, but even with six dreadnoughts they don't really come under your requirements.

 

Basically the answer is no. Making a take all comers foot list with marines is not going to work in a competitive environment. You don't have the numbers or the number of guns that would be needed.

 

If you could still take five man squads with heavy weapons? Possibly, but you can't.

 

Bikes (or Jump Packs in a BA army) give you mobility and mobility allows you to pick the fights you want and flee the ones you don't. Mech gives you slightly less mobility, but renders most of your opponent's anti-infantry weapons pretty pointless until your shell is popped.

[spu00sed]

My three marine armies are:

 

A foot slogging logan wing

 

A foor slogging Grey Knight army (mix of units, one unit of interceptors)

 

And a Dante/Sang guard bunny hopping army

 

 

I also have:

 

My guard foot slogging. Massed infantry in close order formation, supported by executioners, plasm sentinels and rough riders

 

My nids foot slogging (shocking I know :cuss )

 

My 'crons (when finished) will have two barges and two ark, but the warrior units are 20 stong so the arks are only there to respawn dead warrirors, so they are foot slogging as well.

 

 

I don't seem to go up against that much mech in my area. Only two players mech up alot. Most of use are happy with only one or two units in APCs.

 

Our most successful player is a green tide behind a killa can wall Ork player, he is also crazy and one of the best sports I have ever met.

 

 

I just like my Infantry

[DarkGuard]

How I'd love to be in your area spu00sed, I just get so bored with mech now, but to stand a chance in my area you have to mech up, just hope 6th Ed rebalances it.

[greatcrusade08]

How I'd love to be in your area spu00sed, I just get so bored with mech now, but to stand a chance in my area you have to mech up, just hope 6th Ed rebalances it.

 

im not sure thats the case though, most people run mech in my area, yet my predominantly footslogging scouts do pretty well vs mech.. even BA mech

the list has the match the use and tactics, if your footslogging you need a list that can handle that, so bikes scouts etc with mobility and reach would do better than a tac squad on foot.

 

if your using tac marines the rhino is almost essential

[Hellios]

How I'd love to be in your area spu00sed, I just get so bored with mech now, but to stand a chance in my area you have to mech up, just hope 6th Ed rebalances it.

 

im not sure thats the case though, most people run mech in my area, yet my predominantly footslogging scouts do pretty well vs mech.. even BA mech

the list has the match the use and tactics, if your footslogging you need a list that can handle that, so bikes scouts etc with mobility and reach would do better than a tac squad on foot.

 

if your using tac marines the rhino is almost essential

 

One question I would ask is... How big are your boards and how often do you make use of infiltration on your scouts? Foot slogging Draigowing can work as well but what such armies have is special deployment that allows you to 'start' in different areas of the board (This can help or hinder you).

 

However I put to you, especially against a fast army like DE! If you have a foot slogging force that isn't using a substantial amount of special deployment... Fighting and getting to enough objectives (or into a position to stop the enemy claiming objectives) to win is pretty tough on a 6 by 4 board.

 

So while you are footslogging (I personally don't count bikers as foot sloggers) I guess you use infiltrate and scout... maybe even outflank often! The problem is for people who are foot slogging with no form of special deployment.

 

I'm sure you understand what I'm saying, I just wanted to make it clear to everyone.