Tacticals just a tax? What troop choices to take?

[Lord Asvaldir]

Not really any different from any other legion, they are still the cheapest choice for your troop tax if you take just a basic unit of ten in a rhino, best used for scoring. You could take a big unit with CC weapons to take advantage of EC's assault rules, but assault marines are a lot better at that. 

[Withershadow]

I find the CCW upgrade usually worth it.

[m0nolith]

So almost nobody here runs the ol 20man + Apothecary tactical squad any more?

[Slips]

I have a few friends who do but they don't post on the B&C. Certainly don't take what is posted on here as a clear indication of how the wider 30k community plays :p

 

My most frequent opponent enjoys drowning the board in bodies when not playing his mechanicum...

[Lord Asvaldir]

So almost nobody here runs the ol 20man + Apothecary tactical squad any more?

 

I'd say it's more useful for some legions than others. World Eaters for sure that's actually a solid choice, especially if they are upgraded to inductii. I'd also say Iron Hands can make decent use of those big units, since they only lose their fnp against s9 or higher weapons and are just tougher against small arms fire. That being said no matter what legion is using big 20 man squads with apothecaries they can still die fairly quickly to weapons like phosphex and aren't as useful as vets.   

[depthcharge12]

Sons of Horus use them pretty well. You get movement and shooting bonuses from tLM RoW plus they can junk punch dudes in cc if you've got a big blob.

 

If you don't like tacticals, why not take the Ancients or panzers vor! armored breakthrough RoW? You can use predators and dreadnoughts as mandatory troops choices :)

[Withershadow]

20-man tactical squads are pretty much universally worthless. Despoilers can be useful for certain Legions. World Eaters do it best because they get free chainaxes (so they can keep bolters), and tons of universal legion perks that help them in combat. Sons of Horus and Night Lords can also take advantage of outnumbering bonuses, but these guys are pure despoilers because 20 boltguns is not worth 40! points.

[Kais Klip]

NoLifeKing, I am sorry but your opinion on Tactical's is incomprehensible to me. To explain, Everything in this game can kill a Power Armoured (PA) marine. Absolutley Everything. It is the base premis. But, a PA marine cannot kill everything. So for maximum tactical flexibility, especially in an all comers army list, I would want to maximise the scope of what my simple PA Marine can threaten. For very little difference in cost, veterens offer that versatility.

 

You have suggested that "Regular tactical squad is the hammer and the anvil when it comes to infantry vs infantry warfare, and when played correctly and kept out of CC". I think this is a fairly rare occurnace to find infantry facing off vs infantry. There are so many more effective ways to remove your enemeies infantry that I fail to see where the Tactical squad comes into play if that is their prime use. In fact, in my experience, for a Tactical squad to survive long enought to get into range is a rareity (I am looking at you Quad Mortars/Scorpious/Typhon - hell, anythign with an AP3 template). You also suggest that you keep Tactical squads out of CC, so you are only advocating the Tactical as a shooting option were a bolters threat is very limited. On the other hand, Veterean Tactical Squads have access to specialist weapons and tactics that can make them a threat to light/medium vehicles as well as infantry.  

 

 

But then, you also say "Tactical squads are all about abusing your numerical advantage over the enemy, in the sheer amout of bolter shots and chainsword attacks you can dish out". This is a valid point and I have seen enough Terminators fall to sheer weight of fire to know this is true. But for this to be effective you either need big squad sizes or to use the tacticals special bolter rule. One presents a large inviting target to everything with a template, the other loses tactical movement and flexibility. So either your squad is severly reduced by template weapons (and might have routed under casulties) that you cannot garuntee having the nessecary weight of fire to produce effective results, or you are so locked in place that the ideal targets can easily avoid your tacticals and instead target them with a hard counter (I don't know, a dreanaught or one of the many other things their bolters cant touch). 

Relying on poor generalship from your opponent does not make the Tactical Squad supperior to a Veteran Tactical Squad.

 

 

But then you suggest, "add in a chaplin or an apothecary and they do xx up your veteran tactical squad in a firefight or close combat any day of the week". When you start adding in HQ options and/or Elites you are not, strictly speaking, advocating the strength of the Tactical Squad. You are actually highlighting their weakness, that they need a crutch to be superior. That they cannot do it alone. You could argue that sort of logical all day long ... ie, add in a rhino and a heavy flamer to your Sniper Veteren squad (to be fair on points) to be near enough invunrable to bolter fire and will certainly cause the Tactical squad a few headaches....  You can back and forth scenario's all day long and it is still immaterial. (Does that make it a straw-man arguement? I can never recall the definition for that...)

 

 

Tacticals do have there place, but (outside of specific legions - World Eaers) I can only see them used in one of two ways: 1) as a large blob designed to draw fire away from units that are more useful to achieving your overall battles objective, or 2) a small mobile unit to capture/hold strategic objectives.

 

The Veteran squad (under certain RoW which seems to rub yo up the wrong way) can do the later, but via Veterean special rules and access to special weapons they can also fullfil other roles in the army. This versitility free's up points to allow the rest of your army to excel in other departments (ie, templating the hell out of your opponents tactical squads amoungst other things).

 

 

So, in summary, the Veteran Tactical squad, in my opinion, can offer more than the standard Tactical Squad. They open up a much bigger threat-range and therefore can counter more of your opponents list. Certain RoW (or with certain Primarchs) the rule make Veteran Tactical Squads troop choices, which would to my mind would advoccate taking Veterens over standard tacticals. So in short Veterans > tacticals. The lower model count (painting & purchasing), greater modeling options, easy of transport, quick set-up time, and list optimisation all make those RoW valid and sensible choices.

 

However, in regards to Alpha Legion compulsary troop choices,  each has it's place and will fill a role. It wil ldepend as much on how you want the army to play. Infiltrating assault squads for an early blitzkrieg might be fun, as could sneaking forward Tactical squads tobunker down on an objective. For me though, nothing says 30k like Breachers (and with Grav/Melta they can dish out hurt to more than just infantry, uping their value in my books).

 

 

 

NoLifeKing, Oh, and as an aside, I tend to find elitist snobs reprehensible. Your negativity to people based on what they can afford (or more importantly, your assumption as to what people can afford) is repugnant to me personally and attitudes like yours are something I have seen as a barrier to people entering 30k. Without new take-up, the game will not grow.

I'm on NoLifeKing's side on this one.

 

Preamble. I'm putting aside my choler at seeing another game with rhinos and veteran squads. Great, ten man squads in a game where twenty is the new ten. Perhaps we might as well bring the xenos into 30k, with no need to change the codex, since all our squad sizes are ten, and were no longer playing a thematic setting about legendary mass vs legendary death. Yes, we'd rather treat an aside option put in by Bligh (delegatus, vets, pride of legion) as the only way to play the game.

 

The argument of tacticalstactical vs veterans is the same one as boys vs toys. And we know the winner of that one. Add that to the detailed explanation we have that veterans are actually outperformed by support squads at their assigned tasks, while being just as survivable. I said this in another thread, I'll say this again. Your space marines in this game cost 10pts. That's it. Your space marines cost the same as guardsmen, so they should die like guardsmen. If you have a problem with this, talk to our fine mortal fraters elsewhere for their solution to the problem (which generally rhymes with take more guardsmen).

 

Your troops slot are your boys, your body count, your footprint on the board. Any other slot of the enemies, such as typhons or sicarians, firing at your troops slot, means one more slot of yours not being shot at. Throne save you if I find you using that slot to shoot at enemy tactical. Your backbone continues to be your backbone. Your backbone holds you up, keeps you steady, and sets up the environment in which your arms can do some damage. Don't go trying to hit people with your spine. But, at the same time, I'm gonna laugh if I'm facing a spineless blob of flesh going "WHARGBALAGHBALA" at me. Because now you're putting your body count besides your big guns, oh, and your objective scoring capability, all in one 3+ box. And then you say tacs are :cuss because of typhons. Right, so rather than taking 15 men, let's take 10.

 

Everyone knows that Typhons have vision based on armour value. And if the other guy is bringing a typhon, what would you rather offer up in fealty to it? Because you need to offer something; 7 squads a game, if you've really :cuss the porch. 6, most of the time. Guess how many troop slots you have?

 

So all that gets blammed is just my body count, my hit points of the game, if you will. Maybe my scoring, if I didn't have implacable advance. But with vets, what you lose is the whole trinity.

 

This is all ignoring Rapiers. Because if you want to talk competitive, you take 9 of them and some allied Rapiers, all under 1,000 points. Alan, nerf Rapiers pls.

 

Oh, and as an aside, perhaps we should refrain from taking a collective :cuss on another loyal member of the board, who merely made one reply, and an exasperated one at that, after he wrote out a detailed analysis than was then rebuffed with "But my RoW". No personal attacks were made, and neither were any financial remarks directed at anyone. Merely the frustration of 1) a lack of effort to read his post, and 2) BaC kiddies coming into this game with tactical vets when they might as well stay in 40k. This is the second time in a span of two weeks where a mob mentality, supported by a mod, shuts another brother, which is fine, but it's not fine when that brother is

actually contributing 1 of 2 proper posts in the whole discussion, or throne forbid, the whole board. If you were paying attention, you'd notice that it's the majority of our dedicated posters, who take their time to write out a rational and dedicated analysis, commonly within a wall of text, getting shut down nowadays. A portion of them already left. The other portion became mods, and now serve to exacerbate the problem. Perhaps, say, their concerns against the board have merit?

 

I propose the following; lets obsess about 30k, and follow the board rules. If we start mobbing every snarky reply, and persecuting personality rather than rationality, we're gonna be left with a WIP board full of carebears. Throne damn it, I used to really like you guys.

[Amon777]

Scoring is ever an issue in 30K so tac squads will always be more than just a tax.

 

That said, tactical squads would be so much more useful if their fury of the legion rule didn't have a movement restriction. All the other caveats are fine but not being able to move severely restricts the rule, and therefore tacs, one usefulness.

[Rangaman]

"BaC kiddies"...perfect representation of a bad attitude.

[Unknown Legionnaire]

I agree on the attitude thing.

 

But really, people need to stop to p*ss on each other's parades and also to take things so damn serious in general.

 

It's only a game.

 

And if you don't like a particular aspect or can't seemingly agree on it with other forum members, then by all means, play it differently in your respective gaming groups.

 

Ever since WHFB 8th officially died on us, playing and enjoying it got so much easier on me and all my buddies .... because the stupid 'competition' aspect and tournament scene almost vanished.

 

 

And back on topic in general:

 

There are quite a few lists where standard Tac squads are absolutely fine to be used. 

 

Almost any unit that can score or has Implacable Advance is worth it on the battlefield.

 

Rapiers, Spartans, super-heavies ... these all don't score jack. Maybe play some missions besides 'wipe-'em-out' sometimes.

[panascope]

I played a 2k point game this weekend that perfectly encapsulates how I feel about Tac squads. I had a 20-man tac squad, a 15-man Assault squad, 5 Justaerin in a Dreadclaw, and a combi-plasma Vet squad. Everybody but the tac squad was relevant and did cool stuff - the Justaerin and the Assault marines got tied up in a big assault (I even got to use Merciless Fighters!), and the Vet squad Outflanked and made a big play against a bunch of Grey Slayers - meanwhile the tac squad marched forward a few turns, did literally nothing else and then the game ended. And that's how it goes most of the time with them. Without some kind of transport or Outflank they're easy to dodge and don't do much besides sit on objectives. Even a full double tap, Death Dealer, Fury of the Legion results in less than 12 wounds against marines. And that's *insanely* boring to me.

[ronin_cse]

As is usual in these kinds of threads I think the point gets a little lost.

 

If anyone wants to use tactical marines then they by all means should do so, no one is saying (or at least they shouldn't be) that you are a bad person or a bad gamer for taking standard tactical marines in your 30k list. IMO people should take them as it makes games more fun and I try to include at least one blob in most of my lists for that reason. Plus IMO it looks great on the table.

 

That is not the point of a tactica thread though. This is a place to discuss what the best and most efficient units are, possibly within some kind of fluff restriction depending on the legion.

 

Veterans and other choices depending on the RoW are just simply better options to fill your compulsory choices. As has been pointed out a lot the other options will just do more in your average game. Veterans in a rhino can capture more objectives, get in range to do more damage, and hurt more things than a 20 man tac squad. Even compared to a 10 man tac squad in a rhino veterans can still do much more thanks to their special weapons and rules. They are worth the extra points in almost all cases.

 

Again: take tac squads if you want. A big squad can be lots of fun and a 10 man squad can be almost as good as a vet squad. Just understand that when you take standard tacticals over veterans you simply aren't using your points as efficiently as you could be.

[Kais Klip]

Allow me to re-iterate my point.

 

Troops are there to do two things. Take ground and take hits. The less troops in your FoC, the more the rest of your slots have to fulfill the previous roles. Taking ground is fine; vets can do it, so can Implacable terminators. But you cannot say it is more point efficient to allocate more points into the same mortal frame (T4, W1, 3+) to do the dying. 

 

The whole discussion can be distilled into the following; what is better, a Support Squad with Volkite Calivers, or a Heavy Support Squad with Volkite Culverins?

 

Once you do the math, both damage outputs are ~ the same points wise. The question is how many shots do you want riding per wound. In a closed environment, like the one I suspect you are considering, the latter is favorable, due to the many benefits a smaller footprint brings. But once your enemy actually starts peeling caps back at you, your offensive output plunges. You may laugh to read "tacticals" and "offensive output" in the same sentence, but the plunge holds true for any other kind of utility you may use your troops for. 

 

The aforementioned are my own points. The following is not, but serves to completely damn your argument. 

 

This discussion has been had before, by more dedicated and grander neckbeards than us. The following :

 

 http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-076.htm

 

is a NAVY research paper addressing just the topic we are discussing, albeit in a different form: what is more efficient, battleships or destroyers? Guess what the result is. The statistical maths (simulated) demonstrates that a larger group of destroyers are superior to a smaller group of more lethally condensed battleships. This holds true especially when the number of guns remains the same. 

 

The rest of the world addresses the concept we are discussing as Distributed Lethality. It has become accepted naval doctrine for quite some time now. The N-Squared law is specifically why wargamers around the world, be they historic, modern or future, have always spouted boys over toys. Warhammer gamers have traditionally struggled with the concept, as the roll of victories my "2x Firewarrior EMP Platoon" had demonstrated back in the day. And I hear Kroot can snipe now. Hell, if I go back to Tau I could take down the Riptide meta all by myself. 

 

Thank you for reading this. I spent an hour searching for the link (the whole site is a treasure-trove), before my browser made me re-write this post three times. Rest assured the beatings will continue until performance improves. 

[helterskelter]

What would make it easier for me to go boys vs toys, if appropriate jump packs and combat arms were more readily available via forge world or GW (as in separate kits, not ebays filthy pricing). 2 x 15 assault marines would come so much easier (or raptors in horror cult for that matter), but that's not quite tactics.

 

Still wouldn't mind playing flight of the valkyrie while lobbing jump pack troops across the board.

[Lord Blackwood]

there is a joke about grey slayers here somewhere.

[Kais Klip]

What would make it easier for me to go boys vs toys, if appropriate jump packs and combat arms were more readily available via forge world or GW (as in separate kits, not ebays filthy pricing). 2 x 15 assault marines would come so much easier (or raptors in horror cult for that matter), but that's not quite tactics.

 

Still wouldn't mind playing flight of the valkyrie while lobbing jump pack troops across the board.

 

I've come for a confession, frater. 40k jump packs look ace with Mk IV. 

[Hfran Morkai]

What would make it easier for me to go boys vs toys, if appropriate jump packs and combat arms were more readily available via forge world or GW (as in separate kits, not ebays filthy pricing). 2 x 15 assault marines would come so much easier (or raptors in horror cult for that matter), but that's not quite tactics.

 

Still wouldn't mind playing flight of the valkyrie while lobbing jump pack troops across the board.

Wholeheartedly agree with standard combat and pistol arms being lacking. Good news is FW responded to a comment on their fb page toting the MKIII upgrade set regarding sets of chainsword and pistols with "We'll see".

[depthcharge12]

I'd be more inclined to take assault marines now if Gdub did a mkIV assault marine set. They already can do the packs since the Sang guard have them and can make MKIV relatively competently.

[Lord Blackwood]

just give me arms for mk3  and ill take tons of assault marines ,  or do that and give grey slayers the option to take jump packs 

[depthcharge12]

just give me arms for mk3 and ill take tons of assault marines , or do that and give grey slayers the option to take jump packs

I thought they like having their feet on the ground, no?

[Kais Klip]

 

just give me arms for mk3 and ill take tons of assault marines , or do that and give grey slayers the option to take jump packs

I thought they like having their feet on the ground, no?

 

 

Brother you misunderstand. When a saga-warrior of the Rout activates his jump pack, its not him that jumps, but rather the earth beneath him that moves.

 

Completely different thing, brother. 

[Sanct]

 

 

just give me arms for mk3 and ill take tons of assault marines , or do that and give grey slayers the option to take jump packs

I thought they like having their feet on the ground, no?

 

 

Brother you misunderstand. When a saga-warrior of the Rout activates his jump pack, its not him that jumps, but rather the earth beneath him that moves.

 

Completely different thing, brother. 

 

 

....

How is that not more terrifying??

[Tamwulf]

The role of a Legion Tactical Squad depends heavily on two things: Your Legion, and the Rite of War you are using.

 

I roll with two 20 model Tactical Squads, extra CC weapons, sergeant with P-Fist and Artificer Armor, and an Apothecary in each squad. I use The Long March as my RoW. As a Sons of Horus player, I always want to out number you and that +1 BS at 12" is too good to pass up.

 

It's performance on the table has always been good. They get ignored a lot because "They are only Marines!". I love parking them on objectives or in cover, and Fury of the Legion anything that gets close.

 

My meta is filled with a lot of vehicles and "tank hunters", so most of my opponents have no good way to deal with 40 Marines and the rest of my army on top of it. I'm seriously thinking of adding another squad...

[Baluc]

Having played the Adepticon missions, I will say this. Kill Points make Tacticals pointless. 

 

5 Objectives, and no kill points give the humble tactical squad in a rhino an actual role. Being able to fend off an assault and survive shooting which are basically the only strengths they have, is actually valuable at that low point cost. It also opens up the other units, like dreads and contemptors, since they are a really good counter, but essentially pointless when they give up a KP to a spare lascannon shot, and lose assaults to typical infantry units (Terminators, vets)