|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 29, 2016 9:30:08 GMT -5
All,
As a fun little hobby project, I'm making a small(ish) gunline marine army. They're transport-less, mostly because I don't want to buy more rhinos or drop pods, so their real function is objective camping and shooting things. Ideally, this list (or a slimmed down version) will pair with my Deathwatch, BA, or, when I get some, Sisters, all of whom are more about in-your-face murder than sitting back and shooting.
I've gone with Ultramarines because I'm a dork it was cheaper to get their upgrade packs than to order a bunch of Imperial Fists ones from Forgeworld, and I had some stuff already for them. Also I like blue.
Ultramarines Gladius Strike Force
OPTIONAL: Strike Force Command Cato Sicarius (I just want to see if I can build my own proxy)
Demi-Battle Company
Captain Power Sword, Plasma Pistol
Tac Squad Full squad with plasma cannon, plasma gun, Vet sgt. with Combi-plasma
Tac Squad Full squad with plasma cannon, plasma gun, Vet sgt. with Combi-plasma
Tac Squad Full squad with plasma cannon, plasma gun, Vet sgt. with Combi-plasma
Assault Squad Half squad with flamer, jump packs, Vet Sgt. with power sword, meltabombs.
Dev Squad Half squad with 8 missile launchers, Vet Sgt.
Venerable Dread Lascannon, Autocannon
10th Company Task Force
Half squad with sniper rifles, camo cloaks
Hald squad with sniper rifles, camo cloaks
Half squad with bolters, Missile Launcher
All this clocks in at around 1.2k, and could be easily slimmed down to 1k or less if I ran half sized tac squads, which is probably what I'd do in smaller games. The real trick here is that I get to use the Assault and Devastator doctrine twice, and the Tactical doctrine 3 times in a game. That's a lot of re-rolling missed shots, which should keep the plasma gunners less dead and let me put out more dakka.
I've got a few questions I'd like to pose to the community at large, but any general feedback is welcomed.
1. Should I put Flakk missiles on the devs?
2. I've got a lascannon and a few spare missile launchers in my bits box. Would those make more sense than plasma cannons?
3. Should I cut down one Tac squad to half size, and use the spare models for a command squad, then shove them all in a transport? The captain is sort of the odd man out, since I can't really give the model I'm using a jump pack. I could always attach him to whatever allies I'm running, too.
4. Just how much of a smug little s**t do you think Cato Sicarius is, and would he add anything to this list, or the potential allies?
*Edit*: Forgot to add the dread.
|
|
|
Post by cheminhaler on Dec 29, 2016 11:17:18 GMT -5
I thought only Full Battle company gets to use the Ultra doctrines completely - if you're using 1/2 a company then you only get to reuse Tactical. The rerolls for the Devastator doctrine are essential if you're up against a super heavy so this is where Full Battle Company shows its advantage by giving you so many points of free transports plus the full suite of rerolls.
If you trim everything down to the bare minimum it's easy to make a Full Battle Company with MSU style 5 marine squads but it hamstrings your choices. You can trim down points by taking land speeders over assault/ bike squads, although that is probably your only option other than auxiliary choices and HQ.
1. Only if you're liable to face flyers. Even then an anti-air defence force of 2 stalkers and a hunter are better. 3 stalkers (full squadron) means no jink saves = bye bye flyer.
2. Yes. Plasma cannons are terribad right now, they even must be stationary to fire and you can only snap shot with bolt pistols when charged, Lascannons have long range and can kill any vehicle.
3. Only if you go for the full company to get an extra vehicle. Other reason command squads are great are spamming special weapons but that is more of a biker advantage because they get relentless too. Drop pods with lots of special weapons work wonders but its an expensive suicide squad especially against a horde army like orks.
4. I'd just go for a regular captain, don't see what advantages Sicarius can give you for those points (it's Storm Raven points cost right?)
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 29, 2016 11:33:07 GMT -5
I'll need to reread stuff when I get off work, but I thought...
- One full set of doctrines from being Ultras
- One full set from the 'decurion" formation of the Gladius strike force
- One extra Tac doctrine from the half battle company. I think the full company just gets the free transports as the extra buff (in addition to the tac doctrine from the demi-companies).
I have an anti-air defense force with my normal marines (being Iron Hands proxies, they're better at vehicles) that I could always put down, but my thinking is to pay for the upgrade to the Devs, which can be multi-use if the opponent doesn't bring flyers, rather than plunk down a formation that's more or less anti-flyer only in utility.
The assault squad is in there to give a little more muscle to the allied force, particularly Sisters. I ordered some Vanguard Vets to use, in order to make them look "Ultramarine" levels of fancy.
I'm actually building one member of each full tac squad as what I'm calling a "quintanus" (See GW? I can use faux latin too). Basically he's a regular bolter marine with a small crest and slightly fancier appearance. That way I can run six 5-man tac squads if I want and still have distinct squad leaders. When I run them as full squads, I'll pretend he's the assistant squad leader who runs the other half of the unit when they split into combat squads. I know these things won't matter to my opponent, but they do to me.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 29, 2016 16:31:26 GMT -5
Also, forgot about Cato: He has some rules to help him in CC, but his advantages are +1 to reserve rolls, and a rule called Battleforged Heroes that allows him to grant one tactical squad one of the following rules: counter attack, tank hunter, infiltrate, or scout.
|
|
|
Post by cheminhaler on Dec 29, 2016 16:46:16 GMT -5
Just read it - only the full company gets all three. Demi company gets the Tactical on top of the three turns of rerolls as per the Ultra chapter tactics. I mean it's not too shabby having 4 turns of rerolls. The demi company gets 4 turns of rerolls and the full company gets 6 turns of rerolls. The key to this is actually remembering to use them. In all my games with full company against Empty I always forgot to use the Assault doctrine and I was getting potentially 3 turns of rerolls for being Imperial Fist.
Flak missiles could work but if you're facing lots of flyers it won't work even with 4 turns of rerolls. M/ls are kind of Meh now because you need Ap2 or the target vehicle to be open-topped in order to be able to roll a 7+ for the vehicle explodes result. Otherwise you're only chipping hull points off potentially squadron(s) of flyers if your opponent went nuts on the Death from the Skies supplement. Eldar, Dark Eldar and Necrons have strong flyers so they're probably the ones to watch out for the most.
The corporal type of idea is good; ideally full squads breaking down into combat squads would have been better but the full company as it stands just encourages MSU builds. Mainly because you need to take so many squads to get the rhinos you can just about barely make one at 1500 points. It's more suited to higher points levels, even more so if you take full sized squads.
|
|
|
Post by cheminhaler on Dec 29, 2016 17:48:14 GMT -5
OK. I'm wrong, you're right. So the Ultra's get 7 turns of rerolls with formations. Still think Fists get a better deal with the devastators having tank hunters and potentially 4 turns of rerolls.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 29, 2016 22:10:50 GMT -5
You're right about Fists generally being the best dakka marines from the standard codex. I just can't bring myself to do that much yellow, though! I went Ultras because they're the second shootiest, and because that's sort of what I wanted to build/paint out of the options. Will swap in the lascannon for one of the plasma cannons. Even if MLs are meh, are they preferable over plas cannons? I only have the one lascannon I think.
|
|
|
Post by nutty on Dec 30, 2016 4:30:02 GMT -5
It's hard to imagine a big blue gunline as a competitive army, but I get where you are coming from fluffwise though.
The problem with armies like that is that they often don't 'check' all the boxes which makes it hard for people to give feedback.
The main benefit from the 'decurion' are the free transporra and extra re-rolls: you are taking enough marines to get free transports... but no free transports. Likewise you are building a gunline dependent on bolters and heavy weapons... but are not taking the chapter tactics that benefit those weapons most.
So it is hard for people to look past those obvious points and give feedback on the list itself.
Anyways:
Personally: I wouldn't bother with Flakk missiles on devs unless they have 'Tank Hunters' and/or 'ignores cover'. Paying almost double the points for a single shot autocannon just doesn't do it for me. An Aegis Line with quadgun would serve this army better IMHO. After all: one of the main things people seem to judge lists on is the abillity to kill marines in the open, and putting that many marines in cover will be tricky.
Plasmacannons on the other hand, I do like: it might be branded as an anti-infantry weapon, but it is very flexible. It's to bad you can't 'snap' it, but it is AP2 so you can actually explode light vehicles with it. And it works almost as well as a ML vs monsterous creatures. I will almost always take one over a ML.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 30, 2016 8:00:51 GMT -5
The main benefit from the 'decurion' are the free transporra and extra re-rolls: you are taking enough marines to get free transports... but no free transports. Likewise you are building a gunline dependent on bolters and heavy weapons... but are not taking the chapter tactics that benefit those weapons most. I think you mean Battle Company, but your point is well taken. What I'm hoping for is saying "here's what I've got to work with, how can I make them as shooty as possible". Were I to borrow Rhinos from my other marines, that would leave me with about 600pts for plug and play stuff like the AA defense force, an Armored Spearhead, or a 1st Company strike force full of combi weapons in pods.
|
|
|
Post by cheminhaler on Dec 30, 2016 9:02:27 GMT -5
I prefer spamming m/ls to plasma cannon just because you can snap fire. Think about Dark Angel Lions Blade formation; they can snap fire at full BS as their Decurion rule. That rocks so much better with m/ls even though plasma are supposed to be their trademark weapon. Nutty is right about Flakk being overpriced; I'd rather take them without flakk and roll lots of 6s... Same points as plasma cannon that way.
You don't have to paint yellow Fists - they can be dark blue (crimson fists), dark purple (Soul Drinkers), metallic (Subjugators) or camouflage (Invaders). Also ultras can be almost any colour - they have the most number of successors. Some good ones are Howling Griffons (who feature in one of the Soul Drinker novels), Black Consuls, White Consuls, Novamarines, Masters of Protelus, etc, ad infinitum. Black Consuls are easy peasy to paint. Just black and then company colour shoulder pad trim, then weapon casing in blue, chapter symbol in Celestra Grey and go over it in white.
The AA defence force is good - 3 stalkers and a hunter is 295 points. I'd give them stormbolters just in case they get weapon destroyed. They add loads of cheap extra tanks to your rhino horde.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 30, 2016 10:29:14 GMT -5
Would it be worthwhile taking a squad of Centurion Devs instead of normal devs?
|
|
|
Post by cheminhaler on Dec 30, 2016 16:57:24 GMT -5
I prefer normal devastators because you can put them in rhinos and still have them firing out. Even though it's better for them to be stationary the rhino acts like a mobile pillbox until it gets inevitably wrecked/ explodes. Centurions have Relentless so they can fire on the move but the only transport option they have is dedicated land raider. If you're considering grav cannons centurions might be a bit better because they can shoot on the move and still benefit from not moving for the purposes of salvo shots. GCs are also good for tactical squads in rhinos on the move and it makes them a deadly threat to vehicle and heavy infantry alike. Very expensive wargear..
|
|
|
Post by nutty on Dec 31, 2016 6:08:46 GMT -5
Decurion as in formation based detachment Not saying you should run a battle company like that though, but when you already have that many marines on the table.. you are pretty close to the infamous msu+razorback spam. Imho you are pretty much reached the shootyness ceiling, without going with a battle company though. You could use the Angels of Death book to replace the scouts/dread/Cato with devastators squads and or thunderfire cannons, but those would not not be part of the gladius and could not use all the re-rolls. You could add vehicles/fortifications. Maybe a couple of psykers to shoot mind bullets & hand out buffs Not a lot of other ways to get more firepower out of the list though Edit: If you can live with the look & price of centurions.. the devastator variant can pack quite a punch. The lascannon & missile variant might be worth looking into. The grav guys tend to need a fair bit of support (or transports) to do their job.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Dec 31, 2016 9:37:32 GMT -5
Thanks guys. I'm not a huge fan of the look of Centurions, but I've already got one of just about everything else in the SM codex, might as well get them (especially since I found them for about 20% off on Amazon). That gives me a bigger "toolbox" to swap units between my armies. In practice, if I run Ultras, it probably will be the Razorspam battle company with half squads. I don't have any spare Grav Cannons for regular troops, nor a spare Land Raider, so I might as well give them the ML/LC combo and hide them in a building or something.
Next list I post will be more filled out, I promise.
|
|
|
Post by mccaptain on Jan 8, 2017 4:54:50 GMT -5
I just can't bring myself to do that much yellow, though! I Ha! You don't say......
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Jan 8, 2017 9:34:53 GMT -5
I just can't bring myself to do that much yellow, though! I Ha! You don't say...... You're a braver man than I.
|
|
|
Post by mccaptain on Jan 8, 2017 12:57:21 GMT -5
You're a braver man than I. Or just stupid.
|
|
|
Post by RedsandRoyals on Jan 8, 2017 21:17:03 GMT -5
Well, they aren't mutually exclusive...
|
|