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How to improve our competitiveness


GreyCrow

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Gotcha !

 

No, we won’t talk about whether or not Marines need improvements.

No, we won’t wishlist about what changes we’d like to see in this thread either.

I kindly ask the moderation team to please use the full force of the Inquisition to ensure this stays on topic please :)

 

What we’ll discuss instead here is : with the units we have, how do we improvement OUR competitiveness as players?

How do we up our list building skills ? How do we up our maneuvering skills ?

 

It’s easy to complain about the lack of performance of Marines. It’s harder to suck it up and train hard and GET RIPPED!

But it’s more glory in the eyes of the Emperor!

 

Let’s share and drive the threats to our glorious Imperium far away from our borders !

 

On my side I’ve seen 2 things :

- Look ta units for what they are, rather than what we want them to be.

Examples : Assault Marines I played a lot and found they are extremely efficient little buggers to harass and delay isolated targets.

They won’t do anything else.

 

- The 500 points paradox : Now when army building, whenever I want to have a unit out, I don’t use it unless I have 500 points worth of it. I found that it helped tremendously to reach expected statistical outcomes. It was much easier to manage when playing these units groupes together.

Example : 30 Assault Marines is 450 points barebones with Jump Packs.

10 Assault Marines in a flank is crap.

30 Assault Marines in a flank is a serious annoyance that you have to deal with.

 

That’s all for me for now ! What’s your trick ?

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Bring 999 points of imperial guard in my 2k space marine list.

 

In all seriousness I've found lots of "x" seem to do well. In your case assault marines, I bring a lot of vanguard. I think of you are going to bring 5, be prepared to being 30.

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Dreadnoughts!

 

They get overlooked for their goofy looks, but they're tough, they pack firepower and they draw fire.

 

I've found that 2 of them usually suffice to do what they're meant to do, but you should be able to fit 3 into 500pts.

 

Love that rule btw. I play by 'take at least 2 of everything', but especially with my more successful units, cranking them up to 500pts seems like a good idea when expanding my forces :)

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I don't think they get overlooked because of their goofy looks. In fact I know few units that are so much liked as Dreadnoughts across the whole community. It's just that Dreadnoughts haven't been good for the longest time aside of FW ones thanks to their invulnerable save and frankly it's still pretty much the case.

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Dreadnoughts like Tactical Terminators are interesting but in a bit of a weird spot.

 

The only way I can see running the base Dreadnoughts efficiently is alongside fully geared Tacticals, where everybody is blobbing together.

 

Speaking of blob, here’s another trick I found useful :

- Don’t bother gearing your Tactical Marines unless you plan to go for a Troops spam list.

Example of a Troops spam list :

2 Captains, 2 Lieutenants

100 Tacticals with 10 Plasma Cannons, 10 Plasma guns, 10 Plasma Pistol/Power Fist sergeants.

 

All deployed within 1” of one another to benefit from the rerolls, and moving the whole blob at once.

 

Can replace some tactical Squads with Dreadnoughts or Terminators depending on Flavour and Preference.

The whole point is to move this as a blob and use them as a single large unit.

 

Try it, it’s fun and it works !

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Dreadnoughts like Tactical Terminators are interesting but in a bit of a weird spot.

 

The only way I can see running the base Dreadnoughts efficiently is alongside fully geared Tacticals, where everybody is blobbing together.

 

Speaking of blob, here’s another trick I found useful :

- Don’t bother gearing your Tactical Marines unless you plan to go for a Troops spam list.

Example of a Troops spam list :

2 Captains, 2 Lieutenants

100 Tacticals with 10 Plasma Cannons, 10 Plasma guns, 10 Plasma Pistol/Power Fist sergeants.

 

All deployed within 1” of one another to benefit from the rerolls, and moving the whole blob at once.

 

Can replace some tactical Squads with Dreadnoughts or Terminators depending on Flavour and Preference.

The whole point is to move this as a blob and use them as a single large unit.

 

Try it, it’s fun and it works !

 

I don't think this is all that good an idea.

 

If an army can deal with 120+ Boyz, It shouldn't have a problem tearing through 100 power armor marines.  

 

My "below average competitiveness" Ultramarines army can kill 35-40 tactical equivalents A TURN.  And the majority of that comes from weapons with greater range than a bolter. 

 

Not to mention that 10 Plasma Cannons are barely enough to kill a single 10 wound vehicle a turn if it has an INV save, and at least one of those cannons is going to blow itself up each time they fire.

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I'm sure other armies can do the objective secured game better than Marines though. Maybe it's a niche list that works for you at the moment because nobody expects it but I don't think it's generally a good list.

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Yeah it's the constant circle. But reading the missions from Chapter Approved 2018 and the armies that are difficult for Marines armies to face off against aren't suited to those missions very much.

 

As an example, the Tau Caslte with Drone spam isn't moving into the centre of the board for Narrow the Search any time soon.

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@sfPanzer : The list as pasted is bad. The more proper way to run it would be with Lascannons and Flamers and keeping the PP/PF on the Sarge to pick off whatever comes close.

 

Keep in mind the following :

- All 100 Marines will be within 6” of the Captain/Lieutenant, so ALL of them will get the reroll bonuses.

That’s a flat +35% upgrade on their firepower.

That means you’re effectively running 14 Lascannons in your list.

- That’s only a circle with a footprint of 12” diameter. Extremely easy to hide even without high terrain density. So you drastically limit the enemy incoming fire

- You deploy all objectives close to each other (12” losange) so your full blob can Obsec 4 objectives at any given point by spreading out your Bolter guys

- You have 13 command points, so one of your Captain can become Chapter Master and you get even sweeter rerolls

- You keep your heavy weapons per squad until that squad has taken 70% casualties. It forces the opponent to deal 1 squad at a time

- Nobody’s getting close to that density of Boltguns + charge + Flamers and rerolls.

 

It’s functionally not as weak as it seems :) I ran a 1000pts variant with Missile Launchers and Plasma Guns, and I have killed 2 Armigers, 2 Rhinos and almost the third Armiger.

 

Although, it’s not so much my style. These days I prefer barebones Troops to spread out across the board and put pressure on objectives, while I concentrate my ganking squads taking out the enemy piece by piece.

 

—-

 

Idaho is so right about the scenarios. It’s critical to design lists that can win scenarios, rather than maximizing firepower.

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As an example, the Tau Caslte with Drone spam isn't moving into the centre of the board for Narrow the Search any time soon.

Yeah and I'm pretty happy about that. The T'au Sept castle is about the most boring list I can imagine. I'm a T'au player as well but I always build mobile lists that want to leave the deployment zone (Stealth Suits and fish of fury ftw). ^^

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Indeed there is far too much of an emphasis on Killhammer in the minds of many so it'll be good to see these sorts of changes come into the mindset of the hobby further.

 

It would be hilarious if players start losing games after wiping out opponents.

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Wouldn't Vanguard vets be a better investment than assault marines though, or are they a different slot, or are you specifically choosing ASM because you are leaving the bling off of them and structuring them as harrassment, where with Vanguard you'd be tempted to bring claws, or hammer and shield, or fancy pistols, or power weapons, etc and that would "confuse" the issue?

 

 

Something I want to ask (got a marine project building) how useful is something like combat Squads? That always seemed cool to me (coming from chaos marines and tau primarily) but that may be 'grass is greener' viewpoint, but using your 30 assault marines, you could make that 6 units of assault marines and make 6 fast moving targets.

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Something I want to ask (got a marine project building) how useful is something like combat Squads? That always seemed cool to me (coming from chaos marines and tau primarily) but that may be 'grass is greener' viewpoint, but using your 30 assault marines, you could make that 6 units of assault marines and make 6 fast moving targets.

It's retty much completely useless unless you run out of non-Troop slots or reach the 3 unit limit on tournaments (which rarely happens for Marine infantry).

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[...] you could make that 6 units of assault marines and make 6 fast moving targets.

 

That's a possible total of 6 VP for your opponent instead of 3 and each VP will be a lot easier to score.

Otoh, just as mobile roadblocks, those 6 squads could earn you their points and the VPs they're giving out back - provided your opponent uses a list that's reliant on the mobility of a few units.

 

I've said it before somewhere else, but I'll say it again: Devastator Squads are better candidates for CSing - if you treat each squad as a S4 T4 W5 unit you want to keep out of CC.

With 2 Lascannons, you're at 115pts for that S4 T4 W5 'model' packing 2 LCs.

A S6 T7 W8 Dread with Twin Lascannons costs you 132 points.

 

Combat Squads don't really boost our competitiveness a lot it seems. Bummer :/

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