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What does it take to make a footslogging/infantry SM force work?

I have Tacticals, Devastators, Scouts, AA Captain, PA Librarian, Sternguard, Tactical Terminators, Assault Marines, one Rhino, and two Speeders. I have heavy/special weapons enough to change loadouts and my speeders aren't glued yet so the weapons on them aren't set in stone either. I realize without armor saturation the speeders and rhino might get a lot of attention if I even take them. My list isn't set in stone either, these are just the models I own.

I will, over time, keep collecting and eventually have armor, dreads, and infantry to make different lists; but for now I'm a college student who can only get a new unit every once in a while so I'd like to make what I have work, at least until I can grow my force. Games are mostly casual FLGS, but I'd like to be at least somewhat competitive.

So what are some guidelines or things to keep in mind on making a footslogging list work?

Can it be as simple as having three tac squads, a jump captain w/ assault marine entourage, 5 sternguard, and 5 tac terms march up the field while sniper scouts, devs, and maybe a HW tac combat squad sit back and camp objectives/shoot?

Can infantry based footslogging lists be viable in an all comers sense at a less than hyper-competitive level?

What makes footslogging lists work?

Your opponent having crappy firepower.

Martel732 wrote:
Your opponent having crappy firepower.

Pretty much. You have to hope that your opponent doesn't bring a list that's optimized for maximum firepower, otherwise your proposed list is just going to lose horribly. 3+ armor saves are weak at best against anyone who brings an army with proper upgrade weapons and vehicles, and any C:SM unit that doesn't wear terminator armor die instantly against any real assault units. You don't really have a plan for dealing with those threats besides "hope they can't kill fast enough to table me before the game ends".

Also, don't be fooled by the name "assault marines". They're a very weak unit that has no chance against a real assault unit, and are only good for killing other weak units. Don't take them.

Try running the Horus Heresy list.

If your response is:

-No.

-I don't want to use forgeworld

-My meta doesn't want to use forge world

then you are pretty much out of luck.

 TheCaptain wrote:
Try running the Horus Heresy list.

If your response is:

-No.

-I don't want to use forgeworld

-My meta doesn't want to use forge world

then you are pretty much out of luck.

He did ask about Codex : Space marines, not Horus Heresy.
Why not recomend Codex : Chaos space marines?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would add, it might be worth taking a decent amount of shooting in order to wipe out the biggest threats to your infantry (pie plates).

How about a drop pod with some suicide sternguard to take out big threats?

Get Codex : Space Wolves and you'll be fine

Windir83 wrote:
Get Codex : Space Wolves and you'll be fine

That's becoming the answer to everything loyalist related. I'm having flashbacks to 2nd now, where they were the only viable chapter. I hated them then, and I'm beginning to hate them now.

For the models he has it might just be the answer though.

Mmkay... so the OP doubtlessly understands now that footslogging is not ever going to be truly competitive for C:SM, so maybe solutions as opposed to witty re-iterations of the same opinion would serve best here .

anyways. MR OP person! I have some quesitons for you.
1) do you, or the people in your meta, object to you using another power armored codex?

2) can you use the infamous coke can drop pods?

If the answers to both of those questions are no, then... well... sadface for you... But lets look at your options for now.

Warhammer armies need a delivery system, the more efficient the system the easier a time you'll have of winning. Transports are the primary delivery system of marines, weather it's Land raiders, Rhinos and their sharper backed cousins, or drop pods. Other than that, we have teleporting terminators, deepstriking assault/vanguard squads, infiltrating scouts, outflanking via Khan, a single infiltrating TAC squad via sicarius, Gate of infinity, infiltrating a squad of your choice with shrike, deep striking land speeders... aaaaaaaannnnnnndddd I think that's about it.

Shrike could work for you, but he took a big hit in 6th edition. Fleet is a little better, but infiltrate on the whole is so much worse than it once was.

Khan... ehh... outflanking can screw you real bad... it can win you games too, but I've seen screwed a lot more than win with this unreliable rule.

Deep striking any of the things I mentioned will be dicey at best, with the exception of terminators piggy backing off of scout teleport homers. This is an option that you could consider, though it's still far from great... maybe with shrike so you could get some assault terminators on their board for a turn two charge, then have terminators come down turn 2 for a turn 3 charge..? that's still less than optimal though.


There are armies that can footslog though. IG come to mind here. The way they win is they are built to footslog. Then, they blow away all of the enemies transports so that they too are forced to footslog, the difference being that they are not built for such a "strategy". IG have vendettas though... and you have devastators.

Somehow, you're going to need to max out on Long range anti-tank guns. This will help you both against tanks (derp), and MC's. So that's two threats that you'll be decent against. Problem is, our most efficient vehicles for that kind of weapons are, you guessed it, vehicles. which you have none of.. feth.

I agree that taking two landspeeders will only get them killed turn 1, and I'm not sure that that's enough time to make them useful... You might want to consider 5 man assault squads with melta bombs. these are cheap units that can kill tanks or tie up shooty units until the end of time.

then Missile devastators. They are probably inferior to an auto-las predator, but can dish out almost as much firepower... for 25 more points... *sigh* infiltrating scouts with snipers, ML, and locator beacons might help... then drop in a squad of terminators with a cyclone missile launcher or an assault cannon.

OH! I didn't mention this but: stock up on las cannons in all your TAC squads. You need em.

for... 170 + 140... 310 *winces* points you could get a 10 man las cannon squad... they will really really hurt transports... and you could throw your librarian in there to give em prescience... and you'll have a 44% chance of blowing up an AV 12 vehicle a turn... wow that is so amazingly underwhelming... forget I even said that. It's just that none of the options I listed above are actually good ones.. they are just the only ones i can think of...

get us answers to the questions above, and that will open a bajillion new paths to you.. provided they say yes of course

I appreciate all the constructive input.

Even before asking this question I had a hunch that an all footslogging list wasn't really going to cut it, but I figured I'd ask before I bought more models.

To answer your questions Lord PoPo -

Yes I would like to avoid using the other Marine codices, I know that right now C:SM isn't quite as strong as some of the other codices but I have faith that the 6th ed codex will make them a bit better. The fluff of the other chapters isn't overly attractive to me either, which is a bit dumb I realize, but fluff adds to my enjoyment of the hobby so that's my opinion on that.

I am pretty sure the people I've played with wouldn't mind some proxy's. I've considered using plastic cups for pods already.

Can transports for troops be exchanged for higher priority targets to keep my opponents attention off the infantry?

Some things I've been considering:
-2 Vindicators to advance behind an infantry line to draw fire off the troops and hit hard for 2-3 turns before they expose side armor or get destroyed.
-Locator drop pod w/HF Ironclad followed by the Tac Terms to provide distraction while troops advance.
-Buying two Predator kits and magnetizing to use them as transports or tanks as time goes on and I change lists.

I am getting the feeling that any of these options would be better than trying to bumrush my marines across the table.

This article was written for the tail end of 5th. A lot of concepts will still apply.
You should note, that the amount of anti-infantry firepower since the end of 5th has increased considerably.

http://11thcompany.blogspot.com/2012/04/kill-point-denial-lists-intro-and-space.html

 labmouse42 wrote:
This article was written for the tail end of 5th. A lot of concepts will still apply.

None of it applies. Now that kill points are only relevant in 1/6 missions instead of 1/3 the idea of building a kill point denial list makes even less sense than it did in 5th. Focusing on defense and not giving up kill points produces a bad list in objective games (which are now 5/6), and gives your opponent full control over how the game goes since all you can do is hope to avoid dying long enough.

 Lord PoPo wrote:
Warhammer armies need a delivery system, the more efficient the system the easier a time you'll have of winning.

That's only half of it. You need a delivery system and something worth delivering. Delivering tactical squads just means helping your opponent put them in rapid fire plasma range and kill the tactical squad, for example. C:SM do have some units worth delivering, but the fundamental problem is that a list based around foot tactical squads is a bad list.

UltraTacSgt wrote:
The fluff of the other chapters isn't overly attractive to me either, which is a bit dumb I realize, but fluff adds to my enjoyment of the hobby so that's my opinion on that.

So paint your models as Ultramarines and use the GK rules. Fluff and painting are entirely independent of rules.

-2 Vindicators to advance behind an infantry line to draw fire off the troops and hit hard for 2-3 turns before they expose side armor or get destroyed.

Hit for one turn, you mean. On turn 1 you're out of range of the best targets (unless you go second and your opponent moves up into range), on turn 2 you might get to fire if you aren't dead already, and on turn 3 you've been killed by a Vendetta/melta/etc. Meanwhile you've probably done some damage (which is why you take Vindicators), but since the best anti-tank weapons aren't necessarily good at killing infantry and the best infantry killers aren't great against AV 13 you haven't really drawn much fire away from your infantry.

To make Vindicators work you need three of them, you want four (from allies), and you need other vehicle threats on the table to provide target saturation. With only two and no other tanks it's too easy for your opponent to focus all of their anti-tank weapons on the Vindicators and immediately remove them.

-Locator drop pod w/HF Ironclad followed by the Tac Terms to provide distraction while troops advance.

Not much of a distraction, since you just drop straight into melta range with a unit with very limited firepower. If you're going to drop pod something it needs to be sternguard, which actually have a good chance of killing something on the turn they arrive and can justify their points even if they immediately die after that first shot.

I like how Vindicators are bad because things will shoot them. Well, things you use to kill Vindicators are bad, because things will shoot at them.

And, I'd like to see a melta get in range of a Vindicator without it doing anything to it.

And yep, Vendettas have a good chance of killing it. One armies overpowered unit has a strong chance of taking out the tank. In fact, it'll cause about 1.25 Glances/Pens per round of shooting! The Vindicator is guaranteed to be killed!

Vindicators have an effective range of 30". If you deploy the full 12" up, anything that isn't hanging out in the back 6" of the board has a chance of being hit. (The exception being the long table edge deployment, of course.)

Not to mention the ease of getting cover saves this edition...

But, however, if Vindicators are the *only* tanks in your army, with no other Rhinos, Ranged Dreadnoughts, Speeders, etc. to be shot, yes, they will die very quickly. But, Vindicators got much better this edition, as a glance won't take them out of commission for a turn. But, no, don't not take them because of their range limitation. Most boards will allow you to get first turn shots easily, unless your opponent is humping his back table edge. In that case, you pop smoke, hide behind ruins, or move 12" to some decent cover to wait out till the next turn.

EDIT:

In a vacuum, things may seem like mediocre/bad units. However, depending on your army list, they may be a great addition, or they may actually be a mediocre one. My 1500pt army runs a Librarian, 3 tactical squads (las/plas squadsx2, 1 melta/plascannon squad) w/ Rhinos, 3 Typhoon Speeders, 2 Vindicators + a Contemptor Mortis. The Vindicators can get cover saves from the Rhinos if no available hill crests/barricades/ruins are available, and my opponent has to pick between removing my Rhinos speeding towards the objectives, the speeders ruining the day of light vehicles/infantry, the Contemptor with his 12 shot Assault cannon + CML, or the Vindicators.

Vindicators also benefit from Night Fighting first turn, so try to roll on the Strategic Table. (not to mention if ruins are on the board, and you roll a 1, Stealth(Ruins) + Move through Cover(Ruins) for your entire army is pretty freaking useful.) The second one is a Night Fighting one which lets you choose if it'll be nightfighting (and a roll for it you decide to not take it)

Crazyterran wrote:
I like how Vindicators are bad because things will shoot them. Well, things you use to kill Vindicators are bad, because things will shoot at them.

Sigh. You completely missed the context of that comment (including the part where I said that Vindicators are good, and the problem is using them wrong).

If you have no vehicles in your army then single-shot anti-vehicle weapons like lascannons and melta guns are worthless. They're more expensive than anti-infantry weapons (so you have fewer of them) and don't have a high enough volume of fire to effectively deal with infantry units. By removing vehicles entirely you minimize the effectiveness of those anti-tank units, and reduce them to spending the whole game killing a meatshield tactical marine every other turn.

If you have lots of vehicles then anti-tank weapons are great, but your opponent doesn't have enough of them to deal with every threat. No matter what they shoot at some of your threats are going to get through and do the job.

If you have a couple vehicles, like a pair of Vindicators in an otherwise foot-only army, then you have the worst of both situations. You have vehicle targets to make your opponent's anti-vehicle units earn their pay, but you don't have enough of them to keep them from going down immediately to focused fire from a giant pile of lascannons/melta/etc that has nothing else to shoot at.

And, I'd like to see a melta get in range of a Vindicator without it doing anything to it.

Storm troopers/drop pod sternguard/etc would like to say hi. Also, if your Vindicator is always forced to shoot in self defense against incoming melta threats then it isn't shooting at the things you want to be killing.

And yep, Vendettas have a good chance of killing it. One armies overpowered unit has a strong chance of taking out the tank. In fact, it'll cause about 1.25 Glances/Pens per round of shooting! The Vindicator is guaranteed to be killed!

That's just one example. Killing a pair of AV 13 tanks is not exactly difficult.

Vindicators have an effective range of 30". If you deploy the full 12" up, anything that isn't hanging out in the back 6" of the board has a chance of being hit. (The exception being the long table edge deployment, of course.)

And yet another person fails to understand that 40k is played on a 6x4 table, not on a one-dimensional line where the only distances involved are forward and back. If you want to shoot at something that isn't straight ahead of the Vindicator you quickly discover that a 30" threat range puts a lot of the table out of range on turn 1.

If somebody knows that Storm Troopers / Sternguard in Pods are coming down, they should be put in reserve. Especially if one is going on the second turn. In which case, the Sternguard get nothing to shoot at but Rhinos or Combat Squads hanging out in cover. Congratulations! Only an idiot plays high value targets when facing Drop Podding / deep striking meltas (especially when they are going second)

And yes, killing AV13 tanks is not difficult. Especially when considered in a Vacuum. I mean, the Vendetta can get a side armor or a rear armor shot if it outflanks, making it easier. However, it can also get shot down by Interceptor. Or, a Manticore could take the Vindicator out.

And, generally, I would operate under the assumption that you are going to be moving towards what you want to shoot. Yes, if you deploy your vindicators on the opposite side of the board from another unit, they are probably not going to get a shot first turn. However, There still will be things to shoot, and if you have more than one Vindicator, there's a good chance that what you want to shoot will be in range of a Vindicator.

I fully understand that tables are played on a 6x4. No need to be a condescending douche. A first turn shot is not hard to get, whether one is going first or second. And, an AV13 Vehicle has a strong chance of surviving the first turn, unless there is a pitiful amount of terrain on the board, or the person who deployed them deployed poorly.

I've had Vindicators survive 7 turns, facing Lascannons and the like. I've also had Vindicators get glanced to death turn one by lucky shooting from a Quadgun. I've also had Vindicators take out many times their point values in models, or have my opponents focus an astonishing amount of firepower on them and allow the rest of my army to do significant damage.

How much armor saturation do you think is necessary for Vindicators to survive then?

Are 2 Vindicators, a Rhino, and 2 Typhoons enough? Especially if I were planning on DSing some Tac Terms onto the opposing backfield anti-tank squads?

Calm it down, folks. If you can't discuss politely, you're going to lose the opportunity to discuss at all.

UltraTacSgt wrote:
What does it take to make a footslogging/infantry SM force work?

More bodies than your opponent has bullets.
If I were going to do pure infantry, I'd run melta/multi-melta tac squads, and combat squad them. Dropping 12 scoring units on the table with some ability to kill a tank is pretty useful.

Windir83 wrote:
Get Codex : Space Wolves and you'll be fine

The Sons of Russ are the best way to go

With the vanilla book, more heavy weapons and more supporting fire. Thunderfire cannons, Devastators, Tactical Marines, Devastator Scouts (sniper rifles and missile launcher), and the like; then field it against assault-oriented armies since trying to play against an enemy's strengths doesn't work for vanilla Marines.

 Peregrine wrote:
None of it applies. Now that kill points are only relevant in 1/6 missions instead of 1/3 the idea of building a kill point denial list makes even less sense than it did in 5th. Focusing on defense and not giving up kill points produces a bad list in objective games (which are now 5/6), and gives your opponent full control over how the game goes since all you can do is hope to avoid dying long enough.

I'll admit I linked the wrong article, but I disagree with you. KP still has some use.
If your playing book missions, KP denial is key for winning 'First Blood'. Given that killing the other persons general is often difficult, and linebreaker is very easy, first blood is what will be used more often than not to break ties.
I don't suggest making KP denial specific armies in 6th, but it is something that you should consider in games where "First Blood" is useful.

In regards to your statement 'None of it applies'. You should avoid using absolutes when making arguments. It puts you in the position to defend very difficult positions. For example, you said none of this applies to "Making a footslogging/infantry C:SM list work"
" troop bikes are awesome because they are both your speed element and potential scorers"
" (bikes) They also bring a decent amount of anti-tank capability"
" Darnath Lysander - ... he's a beast in combat."
" Darnath causes your opponent to have to bring something bigger than just an above average assault unit if he wants to dislodge you. Grey Hunters just won't cut it! "
" Gate of Infinity could be used to run away from the enemy or used to contest objectives late game"
" Master of the Forge + Conversion Beamer - Here's a unit that has an incredible range on a weapon that can easily gib a tank"
" Terminators .. with Storm Bolters .. have a pretty good squad at taking down 5 man infantry squads "
" Against a very fast moving assault army, or drop army, you may find yourself in trouble as you have little to hold them back with"
I doubt you disagree with every one one those statements. I expect you just skimmed the article and dismissed everything out of hand.

Lysander is awsome with footslogging sternguard.

Keep in mind that Vanilla Librarians can not take divination powers as proposed above

Asarath Redth can. He is 165pts from IA10, and gives the infiltrate rule to your army.

(I know, ewwwwww Forgeworld.)

spartiatis wrote:
Keep in mind that Vanilla Librarians can not take divination powers as proposed above

we can't..?

Yes, its in the Space Marine FAQ v 1.0. For some reason, they didn't repeat this in the FAQ v 1.1 for them.

The FAQ still says what psychic schools we can generate from, look at page 2, left column, 6th paragraph under Psychic Powers.

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2570050a_Space_Marines_v1.1.pdf

Okay I was not finding that FAQ somehow. Weird. I must have been loading a *different* 1.1 FAQ. At any rate, for some godawful reason, vanilla marines can't get divination. But they still can get null zone and avenger

okay thank god i was worried.. cause.. prescience on sternguard is beastly

My BA have that combo, and its non-trivial to employ. You don't get it on the turn the drop pod comes in. Don't get me wrong, its good, but it also sucks up a 100 pt model that can be casting spells from turn 1 on other units. BA assault teams suddenly get good again if they get a 4++ from the libby to go with 5++ FNP.