SM Tactical Squad loadouts

[SyNidus]

Been running 10 man squads with Gravgun and Combi-Flamer. While counter-intuitive at first glance, they work really well for my army because I need the adaptability for my army. They threaten most targets. The Flamer also works great against termies which just deepstriked.

 

Though, given that I'm thinking of running 3 tacs now, I'm thinking of switching the combi Flamer for Combi Melta instead. One of my tacticals will have to be specialised against tanks.

[goosey_j]

My planned load out for my Tac squads is Plasma gun, Combi-Plasma and CCWs (thanks Carcharodon tactics). They will be loaded up in Rhinos and if I have the extra points to spare then the Sergeants will get Melta bombs. At 1500 points I would be running 2 of these squads.

 

430 points for 2 relatively durable squads that can threaten most targets at mid to close range, can take out vehicles and can stand up to assaults. Pretty damn tactical if you ask me :) 

[Excubitor]

For over 10 years my go-to loadout for my first two tactical squads is flamer, Missile launcher, veteran sergeant w/ power weapon & Melta bombs, Rhino w/ Extra Storm Bolter. (except part of fourth where one would be double-flamer [salamanders ftw!])

 

Versatile, reliable, and getting cheaper every edition!

[Kaedes Nex]

My planned load out for my Tac squads is Plasma gun, Combi-Plasma and CCWs (thanks Carcharodon tactics). They will be loaded up in Rhinos and if I have the extra points to spare then the Sergeants will get Melta bombs. At 1500 points I would be running 2 of these squads.

430 points for 2 relatively durable squads that can threaten most targets at mid to close range, can take out vehicles and can stand up to assaults. Pretty damn tactical if you ask me

430 points for only 2 squads though. No doubt, they're great squads, and I give all my Carcharodons CCWs as well, but 430 points is 2 Riptides or 3 Wave Serpents. That's my biggest complaint about marines: how overcosted they are.

[goosey_j]

My planned load out for my Tac squads is Plasma gun, Combi-Plasma and CCWs (thanks Carcharodon tactics). They will be loaded up in Rhinos and if I have the extra points to spare then the Sergeants will get Melta bombs. At 1500 points I would be running 2 of these squads.

430 points for 2 relatively durable squads that can threaten most targets at mid to close range, can take out vehicles and can stand up to assaults. Pretty damn tactical if you ask me

430 points for only 2 squads though. No doubt, they're great squads, and I give all my Carcharodons CCWs as well, but 430 points is 2 Riptides or 3 Wave Serpents. That's my biggest complaint about marines: how overcosted they are.

I wouldn't say they're over costed, merely overshadowed by things which are far too good for their points cost/availability. Wave Serpents are totally broken, and should not being able to downgrade penetrating hits on a 2+ or have the S7 "shield gun" or whatever bull crap it is. The serpent shield should not be on a fast skimmer transport vehicle with 12/12/10 which can be taken by almost anything in the army as a dedicated transport.

Likewise, the Ripdtide feels massively under costed for what it does, It should sit around Land Raider cost without upgrades (people would still pay that cost to take one barebones). Alternatively, instead of a points hike it should only be allowed to take one support system. A super jetpack 5 wound 2+ 5++ monstrous creature with a S8 AP2 pie plate gun and an overdrive mode that can also attack aircraft and intercept any and all reserves is so OTT I don't know where to start. And all that for around 250 points. Now compare that to a Land Raider....

Anyway, back on topic. It is costly for troops. And I know 2 squads of 10 is relatively inflexible compared to other set ups. But I'm hoping that they'll be able to hold their own to survive till the end of the game and do what they need to do.

Other troop options are 2 Land Speeder Storms with heavy flamers and 5 barebones melee scouts a piece, and a 10 man CC Tac squad with Flamer/Vet Sarge in a drop pod.

[SyNidus]

Meh, wave serpents and Riptides are easy to deal with if you have the right stuff. For example, a 10 man CC scout unit infiltrated in close with meltabomb and Camo cloaks, lock the fellow in close combat, or better yet, multi-charge into a fire warrior squad and the riptide, win combat, sweeping advance them into oblivion.

 

Wave serpents, get into CC with Meltabombs and it's history.

 

As for tacticals, another loadout I'm going to try out is Meltagun and Combi-Grav on a 10 man squad. Have 3 of those bad boys in drop pods.

[Paulochromis]

10-man MG/C-G doesn't combat squad effectively, what benefit are you getting from fielding full squads?

No codex to hand, but can't you field 4-5 5-man squads in pods for the same points?

Check out Axagoras' battle reports for IH equivalent.

[Kaedes Nex]

Meh, wave serpents and Riptides are easy to deal with if you have the right stuff.

 

That's the problem. I don't consider tailoring for Tau and Eldar a viable solution to the problem. I like my TAC lists to be just that, not Take All Eldar.

[SyNidus]

 

Meh, wave serpents and Riptides are easy to deal with if you have the right stuff.

 

That's the problem. I don't consider tailoring for Tau and Eldar a viable solution to the problem. I like my TAC lists to be just that, not Take All Eldar.

Who said anything about tailoring? Lol, I only ever build take all-comers list, then once I'm happy with it, it's about working on my play.

 

Generally I don't combat squad my tacticals, I like having them be chunky and and durable. The way I see it, I need them to perform multiple roles with some measure of success. Although mg/cg is a combination I haven't tried yet and it'll need to be tested to see how it works with the rest of my list.

[Azash]

Personally I love the missile launcher for being cheap and effective, especially for rhino mounted tacs. Opponents forget about them especially eldar and will blow there shield defending against a las cannon or shoot that shield if they don't see that armor killer out there. My humble tacs have blown up out right or finished off there fair share of wave serpents.

[Kaedes Nex]

 

 

Meh, wave serpents and Riptides are easy to deal with if you have the right stuff.

 

That's the problem. I don't consider tailoring for Tau and Eldar a viable solution to the problem. I like my TAC lists to be just that, not Take All Eldar.

Who said anything about tailoring? Lol, I only ever build take all-comers list, then once I'm happy with it, it's about working on my play.

 

Generally I don't combat squad my tacticals, I like having them be chunky and and durable. The way I see it, I need them to perform multiple roles with some measure of success. Although mg/cg is a combination I haven't tried yet and it'll need to be tested to see how it works with the rest of my list.

 

If C:SM could just build a general TAC list and "easily deal with" Riptides and Wave Serpents, they'd be one of the top 3-4 armies instead of 5th best. Tournaments right now show C:SM don't have an easy matchup against Tau or Eldar, so sorry, but I'm not buying it. It's easy to talk a big game while discussing theory, but we're seeing virtually no evidence of it in practice, and just look how many grav guns White Scars can take. If it really were so simple White Scars should be eating up Tau and Eldar. Something's not adding up with what you're saying and what's really happening.

[SyNidus]

Lol really? Fair enough man. I play a drop pod Raven guard army. I don't play cheese, half the time I don't even use the RG chapter tactics. Maybe I'm a better player or maybe my opponents are worse or maybe I'm just plain lucky. Doesn't matter. You want to win a debate about theory and compare this tourney stats to those, etc... Then you win brother. I ain't here for that.

 

I'm here to present what I've found through my games personally and out of wanting to be helpful I'll share my experience. And my experience is that they're easy to deal with. Many times I'd just ignore those and go for other targets. Because at the end of the day the damage they do is minimal if you're wiping out a squad or 2 per turn. In a 5 turn game, how much damage can they really do compared to what you can do? How much closer to achieving the objective can you get than your opponent?

[Kaedes Nex]

No need to get defensive, I wasn't criticizing you or anything, just stating that your presentation is in disagreement with the vast majority of what other players are presenting as THEIR experiences.

 

3 Riptides unchecked is 3 AP2 large blasts per turn. That's a lot of damage. It's also hard to deal damage with just bolters, drop pod, scout or no against Wave Serpents and a castled and bubble wrapped Tau army. Marines don't bring enough special or heavy weaponry on the ground to really alpha strike that hard. Only thing I can even think of with impressive firepower is a list with 3+ flyers, 3 Thunderfire Cannons, or a White Scar army.

 

I don't know what kind of build you're running but even for Raven Guard drop pod, go ahead and add up all your weapons and categorize them by strength and AP. I guarantee you Eldar and Tau and even IG will bring way more guns that will make your list pale in comparison. Marines are not a high firepower high weapon count army.

 

For the sake of discussion, let's assume when you said you "don't play cheese" this either meant you don't use cheesy lists, or you don't play against opponents with cheesy lists. For the former, you will be hard pressed to find people who consider C:SM more cheesy than Tau or Eldar. So how do you beat a more cheesy codex without cheesing yourself, with a less powerful book? If you don't play against cheesy opponents, how do you have the experience to make statements like "Tau and Eldar are easy to deal with." You've never really played against real Tau or Eldar cheese.

 

Drop Pods are great...if Tau didn't get an update. You can dodge the Riptide interceptor to be sure. Simply disembark within 1" of their front lines. But in the rare chance they have Interceptor HYMP XV88s, you are screwed. Your alpha strike is obliterated or crippled, and the other 50% of your army is coming in piece meal, if at all. Sometimes you may be able to land safely but if you play with a lot of terrain and they choose not to reserve their Kroot blobs, you won't even be able to shoot anything but Kroot when you pod in. Space Wolves can bypass this with a 24" beam that instantly kills Riptides, but C:SM isn't SW. Lastly, drop podding is far from TAC. You could even consider it tailoring against certain gunline armies who can't do anything about deep strikers.

 

If you still disagree, by all means elaborate with how you've been easily dealing with Tau and Eldar because I sure won't turn down any way to increase the matchup against those armies in my favor, even by 1%.

[SyNidus]

Nah man, not being defensive. Just saying it like it is. There's too much resistance to ideas in general, someone suggests something, someone else says why it doesn't work simply because of X theoretical reason etc... without actually trying it. But it's all theoretical and does not do anything other than give a general idea of what to expect. That's why I said: I'm not here to debate, only share what I've found. To have that suggestion devalued merely because of theoretical arguments is frustrating. It's quite annoying frankly and I guess my patience was low when I wrote the reply. For that I do apologize.

 

So I will try my best now to explain how it works for me. I use 5 drop pods, carrying 3 tacticals and 2 thunderfire cannons. The thunderfires always start on the but I still give them drop pods so that my first turn will always see 3 pods come in. Generally, for tau I deploy as close as possible so as to attempt to deny blasts. This is usually against opponents who have deployed tightly to attempt to protect from the drop pods cutting off a piece of the army. This makes a prime target for my 2 thunderfires and my orbital bombardment. Sure, they can have interceptor fire, but that doesn't make my force lack teeth. In fact if you deploy in a more dispersed fashion, his blasts will be less effective.

 

Another tactic I try to do is compartmentalising his army, if there's room, I try to use the pods to block LOS to the tacticals from one portion of the enemy army. This usually happens when he sees the thunderfires at the other end of the field. And it's fine.

 

In all instances I like to focus fire to ensure the destruction of 2 (possibly 3, if I'm lucky) units. If need be I'll ignore Riptides entirely and go for his squishies. Sure they hurt, but like I said before, the damage they can do is limited, if you survive and can get men into multi-charges against fire warriors and a riptide, you have a good chance of winning combat and sweeping advancing both units into oblivion.

 

 

As for Eldar wave serpents, that becomes more tricker because of their higher mobility. In that case, I would use terrain and the pods to block lines of sight and force him to come to me so I can fight him on my terms. Set up cross fires so that if he faces one unit, he'll expose his rear armour. It's very rare that I've ever had my tacticals get wiped out in one turn from wave serpents.

 

Now, as a general point, always keep in mind that none of this happens in a vacuum. This means that when discussing the best tactical loadouts, keep in mind the army as a whole. Tacticals need to synergizes with the rest of your army and also your list. Then when you're at the table, take into account terrain, enemy list and disposition. Even down to where you place objectives, it should be in places which would be advantageous to you. What I like doing is placing multiple objectives in his zone if I intend to play offensively (and generally I do because I'm an aggressive player and my army is built to work with my playstyle.

 

I hope this helps.

[Cornelias]

Nah man, not being defensive. Just saying it like it is. There's too much resistance to ideas in general, someone suggests something, someone else says why it doesn't work simply because of X theoretical reason etc... without actually trying it. But it's all theoretical and does not do anything other than give a general idea of what to expect. That's why I said: I'm not here to debate, only share what I've found. To have that suggestion devalued merely because of theoretical arguments is frustrating. It's quite annoying frankly and I guess my patience was low when I wrote the reply. For that I do apologize.

 

So I will try my best now to explain how it works for me. I use 5 drop pods, carrying 3 tacticals and 2 thunderfire cannons. The thunderfires always start on the but I still give them drop pods so that my first turn will always see 3 pods come in. Generally, for tau I deploy as close as possible so as to attempt to deny blasts. This is usually against opponents who have deployed tightly to attempt to protect from the drop pods cutting off a piece of the army. This makes a prime target for my 2 thunderfires and my orbital bombardment. Sure, they can have interceptor fire, but that doesn't make my force lack teeth. In fact if you deploy in a more dispersed fashion, his blasts will be less effective.

 

Another tactic I try to do is compartmentalising his army, if there's room, I try to use the pods to block LOS to the tacticals from one portion of the enemy army. This usually happens when he sees the thunderfires at the other end of the field. And it's fine.

 

In all instances I like to focus fire to ensure the destruction of 2 (possibly 3, if I'm lucky) units. If need be I'll ignore Riptides entirely and go for his squishies. Sure they hurt, but like I said before, the damage they can do is limited, if you survive and can get men into multi-charges against fire warriors and a riptide, you have a good chance of winning combat and sweeping advancing both units into oblivion.

 

 

As for Eldar wave serpents, that becomes more tricker because of their higher mobility. In that case, I would use terrain and the pods to block lines of sight and force him to come to me so I can fight him on my terms. Set up cross fires so that if he faces one unit, he'll expose his rear armour. It's very rare that I've ever had my tacticals get wiped out in one turn from wave serpents.

 

Now, as a general point, always keep in mind that none of this happens in a vacuum. This means that when discussing the best tactical loadouts, keep in mind the army as a whole. Tacticals need to synergizes with the rest of your army and also your list. Then when you're at the table, take into account terrain, enemy list and disposition. Even down to where you place objectives, it should be in places which would be advantageous to you. What I like doing is placing multiple objectives in his zone if I intend to play offensively (and generally I do because I'm an aggressive player and my army is built to work with my playstyle.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Smashing post, if often refrain from posting something in a thread mainly because i feel someone with come in with some sweeping "theoretical" reason why something which has worked for me doesn't work at all.

[goosey_j]

Great post Synydus, some really insightful ways to use drop pods there... even if they have nothing in them!

 

It's and interesting idea using empty drop pods to set up cordons and firing lines. I guess it means that even if you are up against an army where your drop pod assault is of little to no strategic value, you still have a use for your pods.

[Kaedes Nex]

See, what you're describing is a far cry from "Wave Serpents and Riptide are easy to deal with". You don't just roll up to a table, throw some dice, and then beat Tau and Eldar. You take 5+ drop pods, 2 TFCs, and make use of disembarking and coherency rules as much as possible, and even then you admit that Wave Serpents "are a little trickier" to deal with. Taking multiple TFCs and removing the entire Tau army except the Riptide is definitely a good way to beat Tau, but it's not "dealing with Riptides easily". This is why I was disagreeing with your choice of words.

 

I wasn't implying C:SM can't beat the top armies at all, I'm saying it's definitely not an easy matchup and if someone is claiming Tau and Eldar are just so easy they never lose to them, I really question the circumstances of those games, whether it's disparity between generals or poor list building or whatever. 5+ Drop Pods and multiple TFCs is a very powerful C:SM build so it's not surprising you don't flat out get tabled by Tau and Eldar, which is not something I was implying should happen to begin with.

[SyNidus]

Ah, I see where the confusion is. When I say "easy" I didn't mean that I could just roll up and win everytime, I meant that there are no further tactical quandaries. I knew what'd I do and how to do it when I see their deployment. While your definition is different from mine, so it's easy to see we had some miscommunication :)

 

That's fair enough man. With Eldar it's trickier mainly because I've got to get the Eldar player to bite and come into my kill zone. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't in either case there's a way to deal with it.

[Hellios]

 I've got to get the Eldar player to bite and come into my kill zone. 

 

That was my first thought on reading your post (as an Eldar player). My philosophy for defeating the Eldar is simple. You can't allow a good Eldar player to dictate the terms of engagement. You need to interfere with his movement, you need to interfere with his shooting, you need to interfere with his support elements (such as psykers) and you need to interfere with his assault elements. Eldar units do what they do pretty well. However, they tend to be weaker in other areas. This advice is good advice against any foe, but some armies have a greater tolerance (or are harder to interfere with) than others.

[Kaedes Nex]

The great thing about marines is that they come with free grenades. If you look at things like Warp Talons or the new Tyranid units, a huge complaint is that they don't have grenades and don't even have option to purchase grenades. So if the Eldar player decides to move, meaning his rear armor is no longer up against the board edge, or if he shoots his shield, you are free to throw kraks or even assault. Drop pods with melta and krak are devastating since Eldar don't have as much Interceptor as Tau, unless I forgot about something.

 

A single drop podded tactical squad that successfully lands on a table edge behind a Wave Serpent (no guts, no glory) is 2 krak grenades and 2 melta shots. And a MM snapshot if you take one.

[JeffTibbetts]

Wait. Maybe I'm crazy but can't only one member of the squad toss a grenade per shooting phase? Or, are you talking about combat squadding them? 

[SyNidus]

I think he means to combat squad them. I never really liked combat squadding....that being said, I'm starting to see the merits of it.