Why minimum troop sizes?

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

That’s mathammer not taking into account things like terrain to hide units.

[Schlitzaf]

So like game circumstances affect which units do better in what circumstances? A stellar revelation. More on topic through. That kinda my point MSU is not strictly better but neither is max squads. Proper tool for proper job.

[xommul]

Hmmm so this is now a topic on what squad size to take? 

 

So this depends on so many things like your chapter and tactics, your army build, your play style, 

 

As many people have said 9th is about Holding objectives and denying/scoring secondaries the latter of which you choose based again on your army and play style and you may have designed your army based on denying secondaries. 

 

Blast - If you have left your 10 man unit out in the open or in a position to be wiped you have either not made the best use of cover or dont have enough on the table or you are playing eldar/harlequins and then your options are limited.

 

You hear a lot about MSU (multiple small units) which do provide flexibility to achieve multiple goals simultaneously while mitigating blast if your opponent has it but as mentioned above if you want to maximize efficiency in CP usage with things like Rapid Fire or Transhuman you want to place these on as large a unit as possible to get the most from it. 

 

People have spoken about Sgts and their power fists or power swords and having more is better. (it depends if you want to get them into melee or not really). Its probably worth a mention that the Combat squad ability may give you deployment flexibility during your deployment and after you've seen your opponent deploy but it doesn't give you 2 Sgts, only one and you'll have to remember which squad they went into. You didn't pay for 2 power fists so you cant have them when you split up a squad

 

A 10 man blob is quite a spend and can be limiting on its ability unless its got a specific plan/tactic. I often use a 10man Intercessor squad with bolt rifles as i intend using +1 to Hit and would only need the captains re roll1s so i can use my CM re roll elsewhere. I use rapid fire on them and as an Ultramarine player with my lads in tactical counting as not having moved so always get bolter discipline. Its a combo that kicks out 40 shots, hitting on 2s r e rolling 1s, and by placing them in tactical its all AP-2 so i get a 36" threat range, I could also use the extra AP on 6s to wound WLT and your opponent is now in serious trouble. 

 

I could operate this combo on a 5 man squad but efficiency is way down and the CP would be much better spent elsewhere. 

 

Ideally you would have accounted for much of your CP spend pre game on key strategies and have a few spare to ensure key combos go off. I see too many people spending Cps on pointless re rolls of hits or wounds only to roll a 1 on a D6 Damage roll and could then do nothing about it. 

 

I think ive digressed but these are my thoughts on deciding 5 man vs 10 man. 

[Closet Skeleton]

To be honest as someone who tends towards large marine squads I've always found that a lot of the love for MSU is more inertia than actual tactical experiance. I've always been willing to accept that since players who tend to do better than me at tournaments tend towards MSU then they must be on to something but I really doubt they actually spent time every edition testing which was better.

 

Best argument for 10 man marines squads actually came from a tyranid player I was failing against for best placed tyranid army. We'd played at a previous event where I had crushed him using marines and I was watching him defeat a less experianced marine player. His current opponent was sighing about being unable to deal with an early kraken genestealer rush and he mentioned how those same genestealers had just bounced off my 10 man intercessor squads.

 

The reason is that a charging mass of genestealers can easily kill 4-6 primaris marines but are fragile enough than the remaining 4 marines with their 14 attacks with support rerolls can do enough damage back to tip the endurance fight back into the marine's favour. If another 10 intercessors get to counter-attack before a second unit of stealers attacks them they'll do pretty severe damage.

 

MSU kind of forces you into trading unit for unit against your opponent while large squads has you trading models.

 

Part of the reason I like 10 man primaris squads is that I like doing damage in every phase and big units are better in close combat and more likely to survive to get in. In marine vs marine fights then two 5 man squads only have an advantage in assault if they have power weapons on each sergeant, charge at the same time and the 10 man squad uses no stratagems. If the MSU player wants to take advantage of being able to cover more of the board he's leaving his small units open to getting bullied in assault while he's limited to having to try and outshoot his opponent.

 

My 3 units of 10 intercessors imperial fists army only lost against marines once in the last 4 tournaments I took them to and that was vehicle based Iron Hands at the height of their cheese.

[templargdt]

Hopefully someday I'll get to play again, but 30 Intercessors with ABRs laying down a huge pile of dice with rerolls sounds AWESOME.