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Ive been looking at a few tactics and weapons within a number of armies (that are not sm obviecly) in order to find which is the best weapon and or army to enierlate a sm army, keeping in mind im talking aboutgames that are not apoc. So far i found that on foot a nice big or a few squads of vespids (tau) with ap3 weapons seem to be the way, but for tanks i found that the ion cannon also from tau, but my favourite again from tau are battlesuits who can have a range of weapons equipt along with the great ability to JSJ (jump, shoot, jump), this can prove to be very effective tactic, now im not sure of other weapons atm seings as i mostly focused on tau, so what other weapons can kick the living hell outa the "awsome space marines"

Or if you are that way inclined and are a sm colector, what weaponry will opose these weapons or tactics?

BloodDeathAssualt

Tau suffer the problem of Deep Strike. Marine armies can come pouring into or near a Tau deployment zone, sometimes on turn 1, via teleporting and Drop Pods. The vast volume of fire the Tau can pour out becomes much less of an issue at that point, because if the Marines can weather a single turn of shooting they're going to be assaulting the next turn. Plus the Marine player can shoot when they arrive. You'll loose a lot of Hammerheads and Broadsides to Melta fire and the like. Same with suits. Marines can bring an awful lot to field to kill a toughness 4 character quickly.

Orks or Nids are probably a better bet. Both armies want to be in close combat, so a sane Marine player may well hold back when fighting them. Both have the numbers to take the losses the Marines will give them without a serious drop in there own killing potential. And both have an awful lot of ways to kill Marines once they do reach close combat. Make good use of cover and the lack of armour on both armies becomes a non issue.

Guard can also have it entirely there own way. Careful placement with a guard army and some Inquistors with Mystics makes deep striking near them suicide and they can put down enough Marine (and Terminator) killing pie plates to leave some very large chunks missing out of a Marine force very fast.

Step 1: Get a Nuke
Step 2: Detonate Nuke next to SM Army

Arheiner wrote:Step 1: Get a Nuke
Step 2: Detonate Nuke next to SM Army

QFT

Moving to Tactics...

Hand-to-hand units with siginificant amounts of rending and power weapon attacks and high initiative to prevent the marines from voluntarily falling back and shooting you some more.

willydstyle wrote:Hand-to-hand units with siginificant amounts of rending and power weapon attacks and high initiative to prevent the marines from voluntarily falling back and shooting you some more.

Sounds like a broodlord with some genestealers. Got any of those handy BloodDeathAssault?

Soup and a roll wrote:

willydstyle wrote:Hand-to-hand units with siginificant amounts of rending and power weapon attacks and high initiative to prevent the marines from voluntarily falling back and shooting you some more.

Sounds like a broodlord with some genestealers. Got any of those handy BloodDeathAssault?

Broodlord and genestealers cost too many points and are too vulnerable to bolter fire.

Plus, you have to be able to destroy the rhinos before you can kill the space marines.

It's a tough combo to beat with most armies.

the best way to kill space marines is to either

a) force lots of armor saves with many basic attacks, shots ect.

b) a medium number of power weapons in a dedicated close combat unit. Space Marines don't have very many units that are specialized in CC to counter them with. they have assault terminators, dreadoughts and assault marines, and the assault marines are debatable.

I've always found the best way to kill space marines is to make them fall back off the board. That way you can kill whole units at once and don't have to actually shoot or assault them very much.

Since we don't have doom sirens anymore, maybe guard with spammed PBS and colossuses? Hit them with a weaken resolve and cause enough casualties to force the break test, then use something fast like valks to stay close and herd them off the table.

It's a gimmick, though, tooled specifically against space marines and won't work against a mech force until after you bust the transports open. And doesn't take psychic defense into account.

With Tau, the best thing to use is massed firepower from str6+ weapons at long range (don't bother with burst cannons). Max your crisis suits with missiles and plasma, use your str10 heavies to open the transports, and torrent past their armor saves.

In my experience nothing kills marines quite like a leman russ executioner

As far as tau go, bring lots of shots and mix AP3- with them. Crisis suits are ideal, I usually run plas/miss, most people will suggest a fusion instead of the missile but i've found that it encourages getting too close, no one wants to have the 3 surviving marines with a Pfist sergeant tear your suit squad apart. I usually run 2-3 3 man teams in this configuration.

Team Leader with Plas/miss/TA, HWMT HWDC 1-2x shield drones.
2 Suits with Plas/miss/MT
a bit over 200 points for the team. I would take 1/2/3 in 1000 or less/1500/1850+ respectively.

For tanks, I always run 2 Railheads with SMS, TL, MT, DP. I have always gotten my milage out of them when it comes to taking out vehicles and provinding 6 S5 AP5 shots at separate targets to aide in taking out infantry.

One thing to consider are Broadsides instead of 1 or more hammerhead, for marines. Upgrade them to a TL plasma rifle. If the marine player tries to move up on you, you can move in and fire away. Don't forget that even without an ASS, a broadside is considered stationary when firing Rapid Fire weapons. Broadsides with a MT are the only unit tau have that can fire more than 1 AP2- shot per model farther than 12", and they can get 3 shots at 12 if they get that close.

Pathfinders are nice too, the markers will help those BS3 plasmas hit more, and you can put a couple rail rifle/TL finders in there to help pick off marines.

ML's are also going to be important for removing the cover from your low AP shots. This is an edition that gives cover away like candy so you have to work around that.

On the subject of Deepstriking marines, I have always had luck keeping my army in reserve. You're allowed to see your opponent's list before the game so if they decide to deep strike everything you can play along. This greatly reduces the opening fire the SM player gets.

Here's what you do, if they are DSing everything, keep your stuff in reserve and go second, most players who win the roll are going to choose to go first, and if you win you can choose to go second. By doing that, the SM player DS's half their pods first turn, nothing happens your first turn, second turn some of his other stuff might come and, and you get to come in and get first shots off. Try to keep your stuff away from him until you get more stuff on board. If he spread out, which DSing marines tend to do, focus on one thing. If you get 2 hammerheads or a squad of melta piranha in on your 2nd turn, have them fly in toward one of his DS'd ironclads and wipe it out, that will help you establish a foothold. If you get a plasmiss crisis team and/or some FW's and kroot, go after his infantry or try to secure a position in some terrain for next turns shooting. This kind of tactic typically requires a more mechanized list though.

If he was smart and DS'd in a close formation and didnt split his forces, do the same as him when you come on board, as far away as you can comfortably maneuver, then you have a straightforaward fight on your hands, the bulk of his tricky DSing is on the table and you can deal with what he has left as it trickles in.

2nd and third turns with this strategy are key, you will have the most stuff in reserve at the start of these turns so you will have the highest chances of getting more stuff on board. You ahve to be careful and conserve what comes in these two turns. If you let your opponent wipe out what comes in early, he won't have much trouble killing what comes in slowly later.

Basically if you do this it boils down to two choices. Depending on what you get in 2nd and 3rd turn and how he deployed his DS'ers you either have to hit him hard and fast where what you have can do the most damage and establish some momentum, or you have to play it carefully and build up your forces for the attack.

I can't speak for how to kill SMs with tau, but in general, the guard is definitely the best army for taking out marines. I mean, the guard has 8 different weapons that are AP3 or better and are large blast template weapons in their HS slot ALONE (two of which also ignore cover saves). That's not even beginning to include things like rough riders or the absolutely massive amount of plasma spam that the guard is capable of.

Otherwise, I guess I'd just suggest taking full advantage of your 4+ bolter-proof save, and bring lots of nasty weapons to deal with their specific nasty units (like drop pod dreds and terminators, etc.)

Plasma Cannons kill SM transports and the SM themselves, take so much plasma you can't possibly fail to kill many, many, many marines.

And get some huge cheap unit like drones or conscripts to place around your army's more valuable units, this will act as a shield against deep strike and assault.

PLASMA!

Plasma, AP3/2 weapons, kill marines good and proper. I can say as a marine i do not like transports being popped, Drop pods not so much, but watch out for locator beacons on drop pods- Don't want landspeeders or more DP's dropping on you where they want without mishap.

rdlb wrote:Plasma Cannons kill SM transports and the SM themselves, take so much plasma you can't possibly fail to kill many, many, many marines.

And get some huge cheap unit like drones or conscripts to place around your army's more valuable units, this will act as a shield against deep strike and assault.

PLASMA!

Plasma weapons are Str7, which is a 33% chance to pen, 16.7% to glance on a Rhino (AV11).

This means that aside from the cannons, they aren't too bad. Cannons, however, are blast weapons, and as such their scatter makes them very poor tank hunters.

As a note Tau plasma is only set to maim, so its S6.

Cheers
~Volkan

In my experience, My chaos daemons tzeentch based list usually quites marine players fairly fast Nothing like 60 s4 shots and 6 breath of chaos coming down on turn 1 to make your opponent shutter... unless i scatter on top of something (the dice god like messing with me from time to time)

My way would be a couple of Daemon Princes with lash, a few units of Thousand Sons (AP3 Bolter FTW) and a couple of vindicators. Add some antitank in the form of Chosen with meltaguns in rhinos and you're fine and dandy.

Ummm an amy of tyranids should work most times.

Questions like this are almost completely redundant. The Space Marine codex is so diverse and has so many possible builds that there is no "best way" to beat a SM player. There are efficient ways of taking out a Mech list, there are efficient ways of taking out a footslogging list, there are efficient ways of defeating a Drop Pod list...but none of those suggestions are going to be viable against the alternatives. Makes sense?

Nonetheless I'll try to help.

1. You need to take plenty of long range, high strength weapons to take out their Rhinos, Razorbacks, Dreadnoughts, Land Speeders and other low AV spam-able units. The latter two should be your top priority, particularly if they have a Multi-Melta and are part of a Vulkan list, as they will hurt you if you leave them alone.
2. You need a decent amount of S10, AP1 or Melta weaponry to take out their Land Raiders and AV13 units. Most Land Raiders you see on the table will be transporting something big and scary such as Assault Terminators, which you don't want hitting your lines as they will walk through unit after unit. You need to be able to destroy or immobilise the Land Raider before it gets to your lines, so either your S10 weapons need to be extremely long range or your Melta units need to be faster than the LR, or have the ability to Scout or Deep Strike in quickly.
3. You need low AP Blast weapons or torrents of fire to take out the marines once their transports have been destroyed. This means things like Plasma Cannons, Demolisher Cannons and the xeno equivalents. Marines on foot aren't particularly difficult to take down, you really just need torrents of fire to force the SM player to make as many armour or cover saves as possible.
4. Deep Striking defense. This means taking cheap cannon fodder to surround your expensive units, lots of mech for redundancy, or taking an Inquisitor with Mystics. This is more optional that the first 3 as not all SM armies will be taking Drop Pods or DSing units, or won't be taking them in enough numbers to warrant a counter.

I hope that helps more than "Get Plasma or AP3 weapons".

Another thought, if you like to play up close and personal tau, you might be able to melee their TAC squads. You have to make sure the TAC doesnt have any power weapons, in a lot of friendly games a lot of players i see don't bring too many PW's in TAC squads, but in more competitive play they prolly will. A 3 man crisis team with a shas'o joined to it is pretty nasty in melee against non melee units suprisingly enough.

You can run plas/fusion teams, run up, blast a transport then assault the squad inside. The shas'o gets 5 attacks on the charge and with 3+ armor you can weather their single attack each as long as there isnt a pfist or pweapon on the sergeant.

This tends to work better against IG infantry but against TAC squads it works pretty well.

I think against Space Marines you either want to take tonnes of heavy firepower (eg Tau), or you want to rip them to shreds at close quarters (Tyranids)

Chaos warriors.....hmmm maybe a few Defilers and Daemon Princes would work.

normal chaos marines have an edge due to having 2 ccws against space marines

What's an edge when you need 3:1 superiority?

Im reffering to some of the comments about plasma seeming to be the best way, i agree with this to an extent, now i know for sure that Tau's plasma weapons DO NOT heat up wich is one hell of a handy thing meaning more damage to the enemy and no more risk of you getting blown up. Correct me if im wrong but as i understand, tau are the only race that posses this advantage, so this gives tau an advantage over other races.

Now to a few other peoples comments that said that if a sm player deep strikes behind tau and assualts then tau are well"stuffed", this comes into tactics mainly becuase

1) Deep striking may not work the first time or work the way you want it to, aka you might deep strike of the edge of the board.
2) whos telling that all of the assaulting unites are in the front line, not for all but for possibly half of tau players, yet again i may be wrong, keep some sort of closs combat unit sitting tightly defending any units who try to deep strike, because of the lack of assaulting power normal units posses.

Eldar I believe can provide a real problem for SM, Howling Banshees, Dark Reapers, lots of AP 2 Star Cannons, Fire Prism, all very effective and nasty.

I run mainly mech SM lists now and therefore hate my transports beingdestroyed early as this forces me to completely re think my tactics.
However when I want to be competetive I run a drop pod heavy list and have found that three drop pods appearing in turn 1 with Sternguard and dreadnaughts really upsets opponents who end up diverting attention to them and not considering what will happen when the other drop pods turn up or dealing with the LR Reedeemer with five assault terminators in it that is steaming towards them.

I'm sure some of the more experienced players don't get sucked into this but I have never failed to annihalate Tau and Eldar using this tactic.

That right, there was a weapon thats name escaped me, from the eldar race, its a weapon that is i think on a walker, it reduces any armour of a vehical over 12 to 10, does anyone know the name of it????? and its one that can prove a bloody problem to any race, but i think its costly, once again im not sure.

BloodDeathAssault wrote:That right, there was a weapon thats name escaped me, from the eldar race, its a weapon that is i think on a walker, it reduces any armour of a vehical over 12 to 10, does anyone know the name of it????? and its one that can prove a bloody problem to any race, but i think its costly, once again im not sure.

Brightlance?

Also, it doesn't affect Monoliths by the ways you mentioned, IIRC.