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Looking for thoughts/feedback on the below Salamanders list.

Designed to be competitive, fluffy and fun!

I'm aware that this would probably get ripped apart by anyone with a ok of interceptor but none of my usual opponents do. With chapter tactics and Vulkan's rules this list has a large amount of re-rolls to hit/wound with melta weapons/flamers and should be fun to play. List as follows:

CAD

HQ
Vulkan He'Stan

Elites
Command squad (Vulkan goes here) with melta bombs and melta guns x4
Apothecary
Drop pod

Ironclad Dreadnought with seismic hammer, power fist and 2 heavy flamers
Drop pod

Troops
Tactical squad x5
1melta gun
Sargent with combi-melta
Rhino

Tactical squad x4
1melta gun
Sargent with combi-melta
Rhino

Fast attack
Stormtalon gunship with skyhammer missiles

SKYHAMMER ANNIHILATION FORCE

Assault squad x4
1 flamer
Jump packs
Sargent with mc eviscerator

Assault squad x4
1 flamer
Jump packs
Sargent with mc eviscerator

Devastator squad x5
4 multi-melta
Sergeant with mc bolter
Drop pod

Devastator squad x5
4 multi-melta
Sergeant with mc bolter
Drop pod

1497 pts

Thanks!

First, Welcome to Dakka.

Not a bad looking list. If you are going drop heavy is there a reason you are taking a pair of rhinos rather then going full drop? Two 5 man squads in metal boxes is not a lot of board presence, I’d just start everyone up in orbit. If you do want to start something on the table, I might go with some scouts. I feel they work better in small squads then marines.

I was under the impression that Vulcan's ability did not extend past his own detachment, making the Meltas of the Skyhammer not receive Master Crafted. I'd give this a double check, and if I'm right would highly recommend reinvesting into Grav over Melta or alternatively doing away with the Skyhammer and taking Legion of the Damned with Melta.

 Cieged wrote:
I was under the impression that Vulcan's ability did not extend past his own detachment, making the Meltas of the Skyhammer not receive Master Crafted. I'd give this a double check, and if I'm right would highly recommend reinvesting into Grav over Melta or alternatively doing away with the Skyhammer and taking Legion of the Damned with Melta.

You are correct about Vulcan. Still, 4xMM that are relentless from the skyhammer is nothing to sneer at, even if not TL’d. Grav cannons might be better overall, but are also significantly more expensive.

From a practical POV, it might be worth finding the points, as acquiring 8 MMs is either going to require going to trading/ebay/3rd party, or a lot of Dev boxes. Running the devs one MM squad and one grav squad can be done with just two boxes. But that’s the modeling side of the hobby, not the gaming side, so might not be a major consideration.

Hi - and thanks for your input. I appreciate the critique/rules clarification.

I'm reasonably new to the game so it seems I may have misinterpreted Vulkans rules. That being said, here's my logic:

Rhinos were for a bit of manoeuvrability/ objective grabbing (figured they could sit in reserve if I was going second). I was concerned that by going all drop pod I might be too static if I wasn't dropping on an objective. What're other people's experiences with this?

Scouts could be a good shout - I'm not convinced I like the models for them, however, but might be able to save me a few points for the Grav Devastator squad suggestion.

As I mentioned above, thank you for pointing out that Vulkan's Twin-linking doesn't extend beyond his own detachment - I didn't realise that. I'm not too concerned by this as the Skyhammer rules are pretty powerful on their own and I can use the sarge ants signum. Tbh I thought that MM's might be fluffier than grav weapons so that was another consideration. That being said, I might revise the list and see if scouts/a squad of grav devastators also fit into 1500 points

Isn't the skyhammer a formation? Or is it a separate detachment?

It's a formation... Does that mean that it is part of Vulkans detachment?

Marques1 wrote:
It's a formation... Does that mean that it is part of Vulkans detachment?

I don’t think so, but would have to sift through the relevant rules looking closely at the verbiage.

From searching around I found this:

From the basic rulebook, pages 117-121

A battle forged army must organize all the units they want to use into Detachments.
All units in your army must belong to a Detachment and no unit can belong to more than one Detachment.
Formations are a special type of Detachment, each a specific grouping of units...

So no, the MM's in the SKYHAMMER would not benefit from Vulkans forgefather rule.

Flamers on the skyhammer are pretty useless except in a circumstance where you'd have locator beacons next to your enemy turn one. The only way to do this is with scout bikers, which aren't amazing in a drop list.

You're a LITTLE heavy on the melta lol. I'd recommend switching the weapons on the skyhammer. Keep the assault marines stock, as I said, flamers aren't good, since you've gotta be within about 4-6" of a squad to make good use of them, and your assault squads should be going for a first-turn charge to tie up something.

Heavy bolters could be good, since you lack dakka, grav-cannons are expensive but pretty worth it, plasma cannons are kinda meh, when people spread their guys out(which they usually do, unless they're really new) you get off maybe 1-2 hits with a plasma cannon. Lascannons are pretty good but they're pricey for their 1 shot. Missiles are decent multi-purpose, I'd probably go with 1 grav-cannon squad if I were you. And a combi-grav on the sargeant.

Make your skyhammer Ultramarines CT, so that they can get Devastator doctrines and just OBLITERATE something with TL grav-death.

Instead of the tacticals in rhinos, take scouts in Land Speeder Storms. 2 of those are REALLY fast objective grabbers, and you can even deep strike them or outflank them if you want to do a null-deploy.(start with nothing on the board, dunno if you know that term since you're new.) give the sargeant a combi-melta and take a MM on the LSS, with TL it's BS 3 isn't that much of an issue. you can also keep it as a heavy bolter for long-range dakka. The heavy flamer is hilarious if you deepstrike it in with a locator beacon on one of your drop pods.

That's another thing I should mention. Locator beacons are AWESOME if you have LSS or other units that can deep strike. I'd recommend it on the skyhammer, you can drop the scouts in turn 2-3 and provide some bodies and bolters to deal with stuff that would tie up your devs. The assault marines are already doing this job, but they're probably gonna die pretty fast. Scouts with CCW are nearly as good at holding the line as Assault marines are, but I'd recommend bolters for utility.

I'm not sure about taking the heavy flamer over Melta gun on the dread. 2 rerollable heavy flamers are pretty deadly, but he's str10 in melee and should be tasked with fighting your opponent's big bads, monstrous creatures, tough melee characters etc. The meltagun will be more effective vs those, and is TL to boot... And you are pretty heavy on melta already.

Anyways, cool list, good luck and welcome to 40k

I run a full drop list. You are correct that it could become static. But i have found that with a fairly aggressive play style from the beginning of the game will usually have the effect of opponents focusing on whats right in front of them rather than trying to move around much. (Though very few of the players in my area play very fast/highly mobile lists such as DE)