Returning Son of Dorn, Taking Inventory, looking for advice

[Adam500]

Greetings sons of Dorn. Recently, 40k has seen a resurgence at my FLGS and I've been eyeing my old stock of miniatures (half-finished projects et al) with the intent of whipping them into shape and finishing my 3rd company.

 

It has been a LONG hiatus from the hobby for me. Primaris weren't around yet, flyers weren't common yet, etc, etc (I think I ducked out somewhere between 4th-6th ed). So I'm not really sure how to build a well-performing space marine list anymore.

 

I took an inventory of all my models and would love advice on what I might want to pick up to round out lists at a few levels (Primaris, vehicles, w/e). A lot of my current stock still needs to be arranged into squads and painted so advice on that would be welcome as well. I'm nearly at square one here.

 

 

INVENTORY OF MODELS

 

1 Vindicator

1 Dreadnought (magnetized, no plasma cannon or multi-melta)

1 Bike Squad (+3 Bikers (1 plasma, 1 melta), +1 Attack Bike  (MM)) (a couple in UM Blue need to be repainted)

2 Tactical Squad (5-man, Seargent w/Power Fist, Rocket Launcher)

Various Marines (16 w/bolter, 1 w/missle launcher, 2 w/plasma gun, 21 w/no weapons, 5 sergent w/bolt pistol&sword, 2 w/flamer, 1 w/plasma pistol)

Lysander

Chaplain in Term armor

Librarian in Term armor

Standard Bearer w/Power Sword

Captain w/sword & Power Fist

Captain w/sword, no right arm

Captain w/storm bolter, no left arm

Apothecary w/ lightning claw

Metal Veterans box (I think its all here)

Eversor Assassin (old sculpt, unpainted, may leave it alone)

 

 

((The rest are painted in Ultramarine colors that I bought from a friend; I intended to strip and repaint them))

Twin-las Predator, no side sponsons

Razorback (las)

Dreadnought (a couple diff arms)

Marines (21 Bolter, 3 Missle Launchers, 1 flamer, 2 pistol&sword)

Scouts (6 snipers, 3 bolter, 1 Missle launcher, 1 heavy bolter, 1 sword&pistol sergent)

Assault Squad Marines (5 pistol&sword, 2 pistol & no arm, 1 axe & plasma pistol, 1 sword & plasma pistol, 1 Fist & Shield)

Another set of Metal Veterans

 

[Closet Skeleton]

Ditch it all and buy knights or Eldar instead.

 

Let's try again.

 

Your captains are bad because they don't have thunder hammers but Lysander is bad because he's a terminator captain locked into taking a thunder hammer.

 

Sorry, writing marine advice is hard.

 

The only thing that's completely useless is the Vindicator, but marines just aren't in a good enough place to say you can buy a specific set of things to make a decent army. Marines have a lot of stuff that is 'okay' but isn't going to perform well if everyone around you net lists and knows what they're doing.

 

Eversors are alright. I find them over-rated as they can be countered by smite and a little zoning and I don't run whatever they're supposed to counter but there are far worse uses of their points.

 

Primaris are similarly 'okay' but aren't a solution to making other stuff work.

 

Really the best marine advice is to play games and try and find something that's okay for you. I could tell you to buy a Knight Castellan and depending on your local meta that could either be exactly what you need to scratch by or turn you into 'that guy'. You can win lots of games by spamming MSU tactical squads and feeding them to your opponent while you holding points, especially if your opponents aren't building their lists for efficiency, but that's not the advice you'll get if you want a really competitive list. If you want to have an okay time and use as much of your existing models as possible I would recommend you just buy more of what you already have, a little redundancy goes a long way.

 

There's a nasty trick you can do without buying any models by combining a Imperial Fist specialist detachment field commander and the regular IF warlord trait to give most of your army a 2+ save against anything less than AP-2 which might be considered either horrible cheese or a complete joke the moment the dark eldar disintegrators show up.

[Adam500]

I have enough bits I may be able to reconfigure some of the existing models (case in point the 21 unarmed marines); So if the Captains would be better off other than they are it may be possible.

 

I'm sad to hear the Vindicator is 'useless'. The demolisher cannon was one of my favorite guns in older editions. 

If I was to kit out my Tac squads as MSUs (I had to look that up, thats how out it I am) what loadouts would you recommend? I checked the tactica thread on the Dakka forums and see a lot of plasma/combi-plasma setups. Obviously this was a tactic I was aware of in the old days (since I listed 2 MSUs with Power Fist/Launcher) but weapons have been retooled since then.

I've seen that detachment, and I like it. I havn't fully worked out detachments and how list building works, but its something I've been keeping an eye on.