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"New" veteran tactics


helterskelter

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Come on, really? Veterans are 1 point more than tactical marines once you consider the extra CCW (granted an optional upgrade but always worthwhile to me). You wouldn't pay a point per model to make them all snipers and pretty decent in melee too through sheer volume of dice?

well, it's quite obvious that tacticals are kinda obsolete. You might take them so you can score, but beside that they are cannon fodder. Mine are yet to actually do something usefull. Rino with multimela does more usefull stuff than guys inside. Take 20 and watch them die under blast, while in return doing mostly nothing, or maybe enemy will just run isnide with small specialized unit that will kill few guys and run them down. Take 10 so you can stick them in rhino, and only thing they can do is ''guard'' while actually more, just stay by objective and hope something doesn't kill them OR later in game parks itself next to them and denies them objective.

Veterans on other hand will always do something, and you can equip them to deal with basically anything.

Look at DA veterans, they are on whole new level comapred with basic veterans, which are already great....

how many heavy bolters with snipers can a squad of vets take? (thinking of combining them with SoH long march turn 1 reroll to hit of 1s, and relentless in my deplymentzone +deathdealers gives +1bs on targets within 12inch)

1 per 5. Same as any other special/heavy weapon. (Ignoring combi-weapons.)

 

how many heavy bolters with snipers can a squad of vets take? (thinking of combining them with SoH long march turn 1 reroll to hit of 1s, and relentless in my deplymentzone +deathdealers gives +1bs on targets within 12inch)

1 per 5. Same as any other special/heavy weapon. (Ignoring combi-weapons.)

 

thats no fun!

Iron warriors, Iron hands, Night Lords, blood angels, sons of horus.

 

3 of which will have bonuses in combat.

A big squad of basic BA will have just the bonus

A big squad of NL will outnumber, therefore bonuses which get better during nightfight if they charge

SoH will outnumber and get the bonus attack

Through weight of dice alone these are excellent choices on a budget. And then you told me not to mention world eaters.

Iron hands (apart from vs vets) having a big squad with an apothecary you may as well not bother shooting unless you've the weapons to deal with effectively, which not everyone has

And iron warriors that can shoot then charge with bolters.

 

If you want we can include raven guard and alpha legion for being able to infiltrate, which anything exposed and vulnerable enough could suffer from a fury of the legion strike early on.

 

Vets are versatile and they are great

But bread and butter can get the job done too.

Iron Warriors don't prefer tacticals. Yeah they just need to stand there for ironfire tokens, but no one would pass up a 1 point upgrade to make them snipers too.

I don't get the Iron Hands thing at all.

Night Lords, Blood Angels and Sons of Horus would all gladly pay 1 point per model for WS5 and +1 attack. 10 veterans have the attacks of 15 tacticals.

If you are talking about large despoiler squads, those are of questionable value to begin with*, and require a Spartan or Kharybdis, so we are now far far far from your original statement of "better and cheaper".

*World Eaters and their half dozen USRs and free axes excluded. Everyone else takes tacticals because they have to, not because they want to.

What's the ideal combo-weapon/bolter ratio?

This is a major consideration of their use, and I'm not sure if there is an ideal.

 

I see a lot of people take a bunch of combi-weapons and not bother with the special weapon at all, and I always wonder about that. If given the option, rather than a combi-weapon, I would rather have a permanent plasma/melta/heavy flamer for just 5 more points.

 

For meltas, I would say 5 shots should be enough for the vast majority of targets, especially with machine killers buff. Sons of Horus and anyone with preferred enemy could probably get away with 4.  For flamers, I would say the same, since it's very hard to get a whole unit worth of flamers on a unit, and shooting half the unit and counting on the other half to survive to shoot again is risky. For plasmas, how many spare points you got? :D

 

All of the above require alpha-strike capability, in my opinion, which usually means deep strike. Plasmas have a longer effective range and could potentially be used when outflanking, but it's not optimal.  If alpha strike capability is not available and you're just running marksmen squads in Rhinos, I'd keep them cheap and go for volume. Take 2 special weapons to shoot out of the firing ports, and stay alive to deliver rapid fire sniper death.

Tacticals might be good in a less aggressive role. You wouldn't want to throw one of your only two (yes most people take only two minimum) vet squads onto an objective out in the open. There are definitely ways around that, but you get my point. I don't mind throwing Cannon fodder tacticals onto objectives when I need my Veterans always being aggressive and killing stuff.

 

TL;DR don't pigeonhole yourself :P your opponent will adapt and make you pay for it...

my veteran marines rarely score intentionally , since I  run Armored Breakthrough , but I  take them because they provide a tremendous boon through the marksman tactic. 

That said , there have been more than one situations that saw my veteran tactical units wind up on an objective toward the end of the game after murdering the unit that was camping it. 

Veterans are hands down one of the best units in the game and I won't deny that.

But.... I have to add that Tacticals aren't as bad as many claim.

They sure are only slightly cheaper if you consider extra CCW, and even if you don't we only talk about 35 points. The thing is that we won't stop there.

Let me explain.

If we talk about ten Tacticals, we talk about ten dudes in a Rhino with some kind of weapon on top, AA and Melterbombs on the sarge most of the time, am I right?

That's round about 200 points.

Most loadouts for Veterans look like that:

Ten dudes, five Combi-weapons, Rhino, couple of Power Weapons, AA and some kind of PW on the sarge as well.

That's around 260 points.

Yes, they are way morgen versatile then the Tacticals, and way more powerful in CC, but the temptation to make them really expansive is high and even if not they're at least 40-60 points more expansive, because let's face it:

No one buys ten dudes without any upgrades. And you don't want them to babysit an objective, if you spend 260 points on them.

What I want to say is, that Veterans just have a different battlefield role then Tacticals. But if you can get them as Troops you may do just that. It's a great thing after all, but not always the best option.

In opposite to what I said, and in the desperate attempt to stay on topic, I do have tried almost naked Veteran Squads.

In The Ironfire I made good results with ten dudes in a Dreadclaw with minimum additional gear on them. Maybe Melterbombs but that's it. They get out and shoot stuff like Thudd Guns or marines. Stuff like that. They're very good at that and still are very cheap. 195 if you take Melterbombs what I recomment. That make them even more dangerous for turn two. Yeah, I know you can only use one bomb at a time in CC but in my humble experience you tend to loose the sarge with Power Fist very often and then you stand in front of a armoured target pants down. ;)

Vets with sniper I feel is the winner as they are anti MEQ MC and TEQ. Keeps the point investment down too as has been duly noted. In my area you rarely see Vets... tactical squads are far more popular. I typically run PotL with one big squad of terminators and one full squad of Vets along side Templar Brethren if I'm running Sigismund. Tactical squads don't get me excited but like I said they are very popular in my area.

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