Are Space Marines a horde army ?

[Thoqqu]

My friend has been running dark angels list couple of times lately.

I don't know all the tricks but they have a banner that turns all bolters in a unit that's within reach into 2/4 salvo weapons.

He runs the banner inside landraider or some other large tank so the "reach" bubble is quite large and in last game they forced me to abandon my aegis line.

(He had superheavy with invulnerable save that was immune to melta so it took some time to crack).

 

Anyways, if one wants to run lots of marines in a list, he might want to look into this.

[GreyCrow]

Personally I've tried the mass bodies thing and I have a hard time coping with the amount of casualties I take. To a certain degree you need to take on a Guard mindset of acceptable losses.

I completely agree with the feeling, it's a grinding game that's quite saddening for a Marine Captain. After all, losing 10 marines means losing 10% of your company !

 

Perhaps there's a middle ground to be found somewhere...

 

Excubitor's "heavy" assault squad gave me an idea, but instead using it to represent a "mounted" devastator squad.

Playing with Raven Guard Chapter tactics, I also dislike the idea of a gunline of 30 Marines, even if they scouted in a Rhino. Among the two following forces, which one do you think offers a good trade off between mobility and staying power (the goal is to represent a demi company, in a Chaper that has suffered losses, so not reaching 50 marines is okay). Here is just the core of the lists :

 

List 1 - Codex compliant

10 Marines + Rhino

10 Marines + Rhino

10 Marines + Rhino

10 Assault Marines

2 Typhoon

3 Attack Bikes

 

List 2 - Heavy mechanized

5 Marines + Razorback

5 Marines + Razorback

5 Marines + Razorback

5 Marines + Razorback

10 Assault Marines

2 Typhoon

3 Attack Bikes

 

I'm not detailing the gear because the goal here is to have you tell wheter the critical masses are comparable, or whether one list will falter over the other.

List 1 will have a heavy and a special, sometimes a melee+vet for the sergeants, while List 2 will have 3 upgraded Razorbacks out of 4, and the Tacticals will try to go to melee a lot faster (so assault weapons and melee for some of the squads). They won't stand in line and shoot in list 2 for example, while they could do that with list 1.

 

Which lists seem the most survivable to you, intuitively ?

[Guest Drunk Guardian]

I would suggest List 1 is more durable in most cases. The larger Marine squadrons will hang around longer. The Rhino and Razorback are equally non-durable so spending those points on Marines will keep you alive longer.

 

Only way Razorbacks have a shot at hanging around is if you're staying 48" away from enemy threats all game... Kind of limiting, and the offensive output of Lascannons is just ok.

[GreyCrow]

That's definitely true, and as a side note one of the main drawbacks of Razorbacks ! Their most effective armament work when they are between 8 and 24" of the enemy. 75 points for a Twin Linked Lascannon and not capitalizing on their transport capability until late game for a squad that might be dead is a waste of points imho.

 

But I digress, what this does illustrate is the fact that we need a very critical mass of Marines to have survivavibility.

 

These cores were designed with games of 1500 points in mind, and even then just 10 more Marines on the table seems to intuitively make a big difference !

[Kaedes Nex]

I think a list of things to watch out for is pretty relevant. GreyCrow mentioned his area isn't big on anti-MEQ, so what are some things to watch out for in a MEQ horde army? I can think of the following:

 

- Riptides with 2 markerlight tokens

- Tau plasma or fusion with 2 markerlight tokens

- Any AP2 or AP3 with Perfect Timing

- Vindicare Assassins

- Heldrakes

- Conscript/full platoon First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!

- Leman Russ/Vindicator templates with Perfect Timing

- Eldar with Perfect Timing

- Grav bikers

- Grav Centurions

- Knights

 

As you can see, most of the stuff can be negated by removing markerlights or psykers, so they can't ignore cover. Something stripping your expensive and valuable 3+ armor save is not too huge of a deal because it's very easy to get 4+ cover or even 4++ invulnerable, but some stuff will wreck you no matter what, like a Heldrake.

 

There is no real way to prepare for all weaknesses, because the game is so diverse now. If you take Land Raiders and Terminators to be immune to Heldrakes, you will practically auto-lose to armies with a lot of AP1 or AP2. This is debatable, but I think it's a better option if your goal is to win 4+ rounds at a tournament to take a list with a theme like deathstars or bikes or Grav Centurions rather than a flexible TAC list. MEQ spam is one such thematic list. The problem is the theme revolves around MEQ, which isn't in the best spots at the moment. Maybe this will change in the future and basic marines and terminators will become good, but this would take a massive overhaul to either the factions or the games' rules.

 

As it stands, the only people who really rate MEQ highly are those who don't use them much against tough opponents. I see Tau and other xenos players say that vanilla marines should stop whining because they have bikes and Centurions. But that is completely irrelevant to the basic tactical marine being underwhelming. I also see SoB players say the tactical marine is better than the SoB. This is true, but that just means a basic bolter Sister is even worse than a tactical marine, not that tacticals are amazing. I even see xenos players say they'd gladly take tactical marines as an elite choice in their codex, at which point I just stop reading because any Tau player who claims tactical marines are better than Riptides is full of :cuss.

[GreyCrow]

This is a great post Ultramarini, thanks for the time you put into it !

My meta likes deathstats and beardy lists, but because they are many xenos players, usually people bring varied lists. It's true that tailoring the list to your opponent's army will work wonders obviously, but I hope that take all comers are not dead yet.

 

More than any Anti-MEQ horde is abundant, I think that we must watch out the fact that weapons used to deal with Marines are also very effective dealing with our support elements, and most notably our vehicles which, apart from Land Raiders which are still easily dealt with, really are paper thin.

 

AV10 is like a T6 model without an armour save basically. A Rhino is akin to a T7 W3 Sv- model in terms of how dice rolls needed "to wound". Perhaps vehicles were more survivable in 5th, but now they are still glass canon.

For C:SM, vehicles are overcosted for what they bring, aside from the trusty Rhino.

Factor in the reduction per model for PA Marines and it's clear that GW tries to sell Tactical sets ! :p

 

Your point about removing the enemy's key support elements is extremely valid I must admit, especially all the bits about Ignores Cover.

 

The most fearsome of these are dominions with 4 meltaguns in my opinion and they left a sour taste everytime...

Then again, with a larger volume of Marines, they become a lot less fearsome.

[GreyCrow]

Okay, so after fidgeting with the Codex, I realized that all the squads shown in the Ultramarines 2nd company can fit in a 2000 points army list (with no Rhinos) along with a cheap HQ. So you have a total of 101 Power Armours on the table with a list that looks like this :

 

Librairan - Plasma Pistol

 

10 Tactical Marines - Heavy Bolter, Flamer, Power Sword

10 Tactical Marines - Melta, Multi-Melta, Power Fist

10 Tactical Marines - Flamer, Missile Launcher

10 Tactical Marines - Lascannon, Plasmagun, Veteran (fluff upgrade)

10 Tactical Marines - Flamer, Missile Launcher, Veteran (fluff upgrade)

10 Tactical Marines - Melta, Missile Launcher, Veteran (fluff upgrade)

 

10 Assault Marines - Flamer, Plasma Pistol, Plasma Pistol, Power Fist

10 Assault Marines - Flamer, Plasma Pistol, Power Sword

 

10 Devastators - 2 Lascannons, Multi Melta, Plasma Cannon

10 Devastators - 2 Missile Launchers, 2 Heavy Bolters

 

That might not be the most optimized build there will be, but that looks pretty darn competitive nonetheless... I mean, with all the cover, 100 bodies does seem quite hard to displace, especially with the Ultramarine doctrines increasing the damage output of virtually everyone on the list at some point...

[Brother_Ead]

If the idea is to have 100 bodies on the table and be hard to break, why not turn that to 11 by taking Iron Hands?

[Kaedes Nex]

Because the 6+ FnP is unnecessary, doesn't always make a difference in the face of overwhelming firepower, and you lose out on a massive amount of bonuses due to the nature of the Ultramarine tactics. If you were running two Chapter Masters or mech, I would put IH at the top of the list. If you're running 60 Tacticals, you want something that massively benefits Tacticals. IH don't really do this compared to other chapters. Even Red Scorpions do it better for the FnP.

[shandwen]

I would venture to say that UM or WS tactics would do best with a horde. I only say WS as H&R could really pay off... but UM live off of marine bodies, and will do brilliantly with that many marines.

[Altasmurf]

Or fists. That many bolters and devastators would be utilized to the max. For 1000 points my main core is always 2 10 man tac squads combat squaded in rhinos with flamers, heavy bolters, and a meltabomb. These guys probably win me about 80% of my games. The key is support though and my support is always highly specialized and put in a position to succeed. A properly played tac squad is more than capable of handling about 75% of the units in the game just make sure your support hits the other 25%.