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So to sum up the thread so far:

OP, what are competitive marines running?

Team marines suck: This one particular build (RG, tiggy, stormravens) is the only one placing well at tournies currently. Some random suggestions

Team Nuh-uh: Nuh-uh, I do good in my local meta and before other codexes were released. Dubious list of good units

Team marines suck: That list sucks, marines are tied for 19th place out of 29 armies (6 of the armies behind them do not have codexes...) other facts

Team Nuh-uh. Nuh-uh, strange silence and still no lists or suggestions...

So now that that's done instead of focusing on how bad I think my marines are lets try to get back to the OP's question.

I've been running something like this recently, my local does not allow Forge World or it would look different (would love to play with some sicarians, Lias Issadon, fire raptor, xiphon or a leviathan dread) 2x batallion + vanguard + regen is a lot of CPs.

Ravenguard - bat
HQ
LT - JP, storm bolter, chainsword
Captain on bike - storm bolter

Troops
2x scouts w/ boltguns, sarge with storm bolter 1 heavy bolter
1x scouts w/ bp + ccw, sarge with storm bolter + chainsword

Elites
Aggressors - bolters
vanguard vets w/ 2x chainswords, JPs

Heavy
2x 5x hellblasters

AM battalion
tempestor prime command rod
tempestor prime command rod Kurov's aquila

Troops
4x guardsmen, sarge w/ boltgun

Elites
2x MT command squads 4x plasma guns
harker

Heavy
3x basilisks

Inquis vanguard detachment
Inquis grefaux (was celestine + seraphim but had to drop a lot to fit her)

elites
3x eversor assassins. (had a culexus but with char targeting change not sure if he is still worth it)

Very soupy but builds on a core of efficient marine units.
Lots of deepstrike so pressure on enemy to not make deployment mistakes.
Raven guard infiltrate can make a fire-island of agressors, vets and hellblasters for great GEQ, MEQ and even light armor destruction (eff you reapers). Basis and plasma are good for anti armor if necessary.
Guard and scouts provide great board control and push alpha strike CQC armies way back and then can counter drop with deepstrikers. I like the cap on a bike for a few more points than a cap with a jp because with the mobility its almost as good as deepstrike and all he really needs to do is get to the fire island.
Eversors are blenders, greyfax provides denies but I could make that a "black templar" detachment led by the EC for that 4+ deny strat (2 chances to deny that warptime or jump or vital power?)
Basis are great to sit back so then opponent needs to decide to come after my armor and split up/spread out their army so I can find good spots to deepstrike and making the enemy move means they will make mistakes. No LOS means hard to hide. Harker gives re-rolls cheap.
Got marine plasma to deal with flyers and -1 to -2 hit units.

Anti horde - IG troops, vanguard vets, eversors, aggressors, plasma
Anti armor - basilisks, hella plasma
objective camping - rg infiltrate, back field basis, deepstrike scions, scouts
board control - scouts, ig
bubble wrap - scouts ig.

Puts a lot of bodies on the table. Has good deepstrike firepower for beta strikes. Good alpha with RG hellblaster, basis, vets and aggressors. Very little armor (basis are way back hopefully out of LOS for most) and lots of bodies requiring a lot of shots.

Performs better than anything I've run revolving around Gman but it is most definitely soup and not SM. Would love to squeeze in some mortars but I can't find any fat to trim. Still get beat down by well tuned lists but at least I feel like I get to use strategy when I play instead of line everything up and shoot.

But this is where I find myself ready to cut the entire SM group because I think other elements would perform their roles much more efficiently but I'm trying to find a way to make my guys work.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Fight the good fight Primark. It's refreshing to see someone stand up against the total delusions of the usual suspects. Space marines are absolutely a competitive codex, the fact that had the same amount of wins as the "overpowered" imperial guard last years, including a list that had 6 squads of tactical marines should be enough to show that the claims of marines being the worse are bald faced lies but they're keep on going.

Remember how in 6th edition there was a list with 3 Rubric Marine squads and Ahrimam and people talked about how that was proof that Thousand Sons were competitive?

Yeah, me neither.

I remember that thread, I thought it was a good thread. I didn't come away from it thinking that Rubric marines were the best thing ever, but that skill does play an important part of the game despite our (including me!) grumbling that list building is the only thing that really matters. That even decidedly meh units can be used smartly and with a purpose, and having a plan with even an okay army is still better than the endless debate about cost effectiveness which is what so much of the "X marine unit is the worst" mentality is based on

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Fight the good fight Primark. It's refreshing to see someone stand up against the total delusions of the usual suspects. Space marines are absolutely a competitive codex, the fact that had the same amount of wins as the "overpowered" imperial guard last years, including a list that had 6 squads of tactical marines should be enough to show that the claims of marines being the worse are bald faced lies but they're keep on going.

Remember how in 6th edition there was a list with 3 Rubric Marine squads and Ahrimam and people talked about how that was proof that Thousand Sons were competitive?

Yeah, me neither.

I remember that thread, I thought it was a good thread. I didn't come away from it thinking that Rubric marines were the best thing ever, but that skill does play an important part of the game despite our (including me!) grumbling that list building is the only thing that really matters. That even decidedly meh units can be used smartly and with a purpose, and having a plan with even an okay army is still better than the endless debate about cost effectiveness which is what so much of the "X marine unit is the worst" mentality is based on

So from the one time an army with trash units (pretty sure he had Kairos in there as well, who was pretty damn good IIRC) won you drew the conclusion that it's more worthwhile to work on having a good strategy than to build a good list? That sounds a bit backwards, surely the lesson to learn should be "oh, so this guy won, but it's once and it's a statistical anomaly, Eldar Wave Serpents are still so much better and dominating everything", which is the exact opposite of what you just said.

I usually cast MoH on one of my Redemptors and use Tiggy to make it -1 to hit. Been working great so far.

I fail to see how that was the exact opposite of what I said. What I'm doing is not dismissing everything that might not align with a singular world view. In this case it's not just the six tac sqaud list that's been able to win, there's been several that didn't have gilliman, weren't Ultramarines, and/or didn't spam asscanbacks. And everytime it's resisted with guys saying "Oh that doesn't count" because the arbitrary metrics of what a marine army is or what would make the marine codex "good" is "not this thing that proves me wrong"

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
I fail to see how that was the exact opposite of what I said. What I'm doing is not dismissing everything that might not align with a singular world view. In this case it's not just the six tac sqaud list that's been able to win, there's been several that didn't have gilliman, weren't Ultramarines, and/or didn't spam asscanbacks. And everytime it's resisted with guys saying "Oh that doesn't count" because the arbitrary metrics of what a marine army is or what would make the marine codex "good" is "not this thing that proves me wrong"

Just to be clear we are talking Codex Space Marines here not all varieties of lower case space marines right? If not then there is that dark angels list and some guy was doing pretty well with blood angels (dante and storm ravens, pretty much same basic concept).

The only top 3 space marine lists since CWE codex (late october, I believe that warzone was the first major to use CWE codex)
dark angels: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Sid-Sidhu-3rd-Overall-Blood-and-Glory-2017.pdf
sisters soup: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mike-Kiser-2nd-Overall-Steel-City-Showdown-2017.pdf (600ish points of marines out of 2k, not sure if this one counts)
Assasins with some space wolves: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Jamie-Grisgby-3rd-Overall-Steel-City-Showdown-2017.pdf
This one looks like it counts and is the Tiggy, rowboat and stormravens mentioned: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Trent-Northington-2nd-Overall-Renegade-Open-2017.pdf
this one looks like it was overlooked Celestine + rowboat and asscans/fireraptor: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Edward-Walker-1st-Overall-DaBoyz-GT-2017.pdf
--I really don't understand how this one won a major with that many people in it and challenges some of the assumptions I have about SM. Only 25 devastator bodies should have been easy to kill, 3x razor backs should have gone down in a turn or two. Either that fire raptor + celestine did major work, the dice gods smiled upon him, he's some sort of tactical genius or something happened that we should talk about because that list seems an outlier for sure.
Another RG + stormraven list: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Tom-Leighton-2nd-Overall-Seven-Circles-of-Hull-2017.pdf

This data is pre-CA nerfs so the most successful lists on this list wouldn't be playable with 10-15% point increases.

If your argument is that the meta hasn't changed since the CWE codex then we can argue that but it doesn't seem the case to me. Which would mean results from before that point would seem to not be relevant to what competitive marine armies are running CURRENTLY. I fail to see the utility of a thread what have marine armies run in the past unless we're talking about how changes to the meta have changed SM unit value.

You guys keep fighting the data that marines are tied for 20th out of 29 factions as far as tournament performance goes.
Six of the factions behind them not having codexes yet.
A lot of that performance inflated by the first couple months of marine codex vs everyone else index.
Which is it, facts matter or personal anecdotes trump thousands of tournament results?

I can't provide any more clear PROOF that marines are an under performing faction. The competitive lists that are winning revolve around guilliman, tiggarius, scouts and flyers (pre CA stormravens, not enough data post CA) except the exception from Da Boyz (which could be a valid counter, I would love to see some analysis on this list). This will most likely change as more codexes are released and the meta adjusts.

My angst is that 20 out of 30 with more codexes to come and the points adjustments in CA punishing the most successful SM builds we sill fall down to the bottom 5 of 29 which will relegate SM to either some niche counter-meta build or we will be at the mercy of whatever new primaris/primarch kits GW is trying to ram down our throats. The more people fight against the FACT that sm are a bottom 1/3rd faction the less likely it is that future adjustments will help this situation and we will end up with even more adjustments like CA which punish an already poorly performing faction while leaving units which are actually dominating alone.

You can’t really make a strong case for or against Sm in general on the basis of a couple months. Once all the codices have dropped then yes. I play almost pure Sm with two assassins. I have nothing against soup lists and they are popular but they are not Sm.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Fight the good fight Primark. It's refreshing to see someone stand up against the total delusions of the usual suspects. Space marines are absolutely a competitive codex, the fact that had the same amount of wins as the "overpowered" imperial guard last years, including a list that had 6 squads of tactical marines should be enough to show that the claims of marines being the worse are bald faced lies but they're keep on going.

Remember how in 6th edition there was a list with 3 Rubric Marine squads and Ahrimam and people talked about how that was proof that Thousand Sons were competitive?

Yeah, me neither.

I remember that thread, I thought it was a good thread. I didn't come away from it thinking that Rubric marines were the best thing ever, but that skill does play an important part of the game despite our (including me!) grumbling that list building is the only thing that really matters. That even decidedly meh units can be used smartly and with a purpose, and having a plan with even an okay army is still better than the endless debate about cost effectiveness which is what so much of the "X marine unit is the worst" mentality is based on

Except if the imbalance were not that bad, we'd have more of those "off" units showing up in every tournament. These are once-in-a-blue-moon moments for a reason.

bananathug wrote:
The only top 3 space marine lists since CWE codex (late october, I believe that warzone was the first major to use CWE codex)
dark angels: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Sid-Sidhu-3rd-Overall-Blood-and-Glory-2017.pdf
sisters soup: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Mike-Kiser-2nd-Overall-Steel-City-Showdown-2017.pdf (600ish points of marines out of 2k, not sure if this one counts)
Assasins with some space wolves: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Jamie-Grisgby-3rd-Overall-Steel-City-Showdown-2017.pdf
This one looks like it counts and is the Tiggy, rowboat and stormravens mentioned: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Trent-Northington-2nd-Overall-Renegade-Open-2017.pdf
this one looks like it was overlooked Celestine + rowboat and asscans/fireraptor: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Edward-Walker-1st-Overall-DaBoyz-GT-2017.pdf
--I really don't understand how this one won a major with that many people in it and challenges some of the assumptions I have about SM. Only 25 devastator bodies should have been easy to kill, 3x razor backs should have gone down in a turn or two. Either that fire raptor + celestine did major work, the dice gods smiled upon him, he's some sort of tactical genius or something happened that we should talk about because that list seems an outlier for sure.
Another RG + stormraven list: http://bloodofkittens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Tom-Leighton-2nd-Overall-Seven-Circles-of-Hull-2017.pdf

I'm going to repeat something for emphasis. "--I really don't understand how this one won a major with that many people in it and challenges some of the assumptions I have about SM"

Perhaps your assumptions - and the arguments you're making based on them - have an inherent flaw. It comes across quite poorly to keep making accusations about how bad they are when they have clearly winning lists out there...lists that you admit to not understanding how they work. I'd also caution you against making the "Well, it's an Imperial Soup" argument on one hand while saying X other faction is superior when it is also running soup lists. Either it's a guideline we should apply to all factions when debating this, or none.

 Primark G wrote:
What about Primaris with two wounds apiece. I know they cost more points but are definitely more robust.

One can build an anti-infantry army with Primaris Marines.
The problem with Primaris is that they have no real anti-tank shooting.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
What about Primaris with two wounds apiece. I know they cost more points but are definitely more robust.

One can build an anti-infantry army with Primaris Marines.
The problem with Primaris is that they have no real anti-tank shooting.

Hellblaster unit with plasma incinerators. A mate has them and they shred anything.

 Dr. Mills wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
What about Primaris with two wounds apiece. I know they cost more points but are definitely more robust.

One can build an anti-infantry army with Primaris Marines.
The problem with Primaris is that they have no real anti-tank shooting.

Hellblaster unit with plasma incinerators. A mate has them and they shred anything.

You have to walk them towards the enemy. It will be the opponent's primary target.
With S7 or overloaded S8 they are quite good vs. heavy tanks like LRBTs with T8.
But the enemy will try to remove them at first sight.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Dr. Mills wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
What about Primaris with two wounds apiece. I know they cost more points but are definitely more robust.

One can build an anti-infantry army with Primaris Marines.
The problem with Primaris is that they have no real anti-tank shooting.

Hellblaster unit with plasma incinerators. A mate has them and they shred anything.

You have to walk them towards the enemy. It will be the opponent's primary target.
With S7 or overloaded S8 they are quite good vs. heavy tanks like LRBTs with T8.
But the enemy will try to remove them at first sight.

Hellblasters do excellent under the buff of Guilliman, but everyone now would throw everything they had at these guys. So to ensure that enough of them can unleash at least one volley of fire at optimum range under the buff of Guilliman, I would take 2 squad of 5 and put them in a dakka Repulsor.

BUT, Damn, that is over 630pts already, plus 385pts for Guilliman, and total 190pts of Tiggy and Techmarine running on foot following it to keep the Repulsor alive Turn 1 and 2. It is already 60% of the army of 2000pts...

 wuestenfux wrote:

Hellblaster unit with plasma incinerators. A mate has them and they shred anything.
You have to walk them towards the enemy. It will be the opponent's primary target.
With S7 or overloaded S8 they are quite good vs. heavy tanks like LRBTs with T8.
But the enemy will try to remove them at first sight.

SftS or Lias would work right? 36” threat range with the regular incinerators.

I didn’t realize that the base incinerator was 30” until now. I haven’t picked up any Primaris stuff up yet but man Hellblasters seem alright.

They are underrated for sure as well as some of the other PSM units.

For some reason Lias doesn't roll with primaris marines (no termies, cents or primaris).

I really wish there were cheaper PSM transports, a drop pod or some other way to keep them off the field until they are ready to shoot. Everyone knows they are good so they don't tend to live very long in my experience.

Maybe next edition we will see more transport. Luckily foot slogging is viable.

 Primark G wrote:
Maybe next edition we will see more transport. Luckily foot slogging is viable.

No it really isn't?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

No it really isn't?

It is not quite as bad for Primaris as it would be for other marines, as their guns have longer range and they can drop Reivers or Inceptors on objectives. Though neither of those have ob sec, so they're pretty questionable for that job.

bananathug wrote:
For some reason Lias doesn't roll with primaris marines (no termies, cents or primaris).

I really wish there were cheaper PSM transports, a drop pod or some other way to keep them off the field until they are ready to shoot. Everyone knows they are good so they don't tend to live very long in my experience.

That sucks. I didn’t realize Lias wasn’t buddies with Primaris Marines.

To be honest, GW would probably sell a ton of Primaris if you could put them in any SM vehicle. But I imagine then people would complain about regular Marines being “phased out”.

Who cares about regular marines being phased out? Except for a bunch of people that aren't going to spend money anyways? Speaking strictly from a business perspective they shouldn't care about that.

I think GW had a good plan to pigeon hole primaris into exclusive transport options. The part they were to stupid to figure out is when you do this you can't have that exclusive option suck horrific dong. I mean really...A fully decked out repulsor should be 250 - not 350 - same can be said for any land raider really.

Also - not making a drop pod primaris is idiotic. fluff wisse how the heck are these guys even getting down to the surface? They aren't allowed to ride in any of the transports! LOL.

I wonder...are they even allowed to ride in Battle Barges?

 Crimson wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

No it really isn't?

It is not quite as bad for Primaris as it would be for other marines, as their guns have longer range and they can drop Reivers or Inceptors on objectives. Though neither of those have ob sec, so they're pretty questionable for that job.

It's not good. Period. Having slightly longer range is very meaningless in this situation.

Also everyone knows Objective Secured is an overall useless rule.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Maybe next edition we will see more transport. Luckily foot slogging is viable.

No it really isn't?

I heard Tyranids are doing just fine.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Who cares about regular marines being phased out? Except for a bunch of people that aren't going to spend money anyways? Speaking strictly from a business perspective they shouldn't care about that.

I think GW had a good plan to pigeon hole primaris into exclusive transport options. The part they were to stupid to figure out is when you do this you can't have that exclusive option suck horrific dong. I mean really...A fully decked out repulsor should be 250 - not 350 - same can be said for any land raider really.

Also - not making a drop pod primaris is idiotic. fluff wisse how the heck are these guys even getting down to the surface? They aren't allowed to ride in any of the transports! LOL.

I wonder...are they even allowed to ride in Battle Barges?

I'm fine with a phase out in a couple years. Mainly cause I just built and painted my marines shortly before 8th lol
Which I suppose I just entered the hobby at the wrong time

 Primark G wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Maybe next edition we will see more transport. Luckily foot slogging is viable.

No it really isn't?

I heard Tyranids are doing just fine.

Tyranids don't foot slog, they deep strike.

 fraser1191 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Who cares about regular marines being phased out? Except for a bunch of people that aren't going to spend money anyways? Speaking strictly from a business perspective they shouldn't care about that.

I think GW had a good plan to pigeon hole primaris into exclusive transport options. The part they were to stupid to figure out is when you do this you can't have that exclusive option suck horrific dong. I mean really...A fully decked out repulsor should be 250 - not 350 - same can be said for any land raider really.

Also - not making a drop pod primaris is idiotic. fluff wisse how the heck are these guys even getting down to the surface? They aren't allowed to ride in any of the transports! LOL.

I wonder...are they even allowed to ride in Battle Barges?

I'm fine with a phase out in a couple years. Mainly cause I just built and painted my marines shortly before 8th lol
Which I suppose I just entered the hobby at the wrong time

I'd be totally fine with you using mini marines as intercessors if they phased out minis marines. They also got you pretty good there at the end of 7th. You needed a lot of tactical squad + Devastator boxes to run Gladius properly. Makes sense to get ride of back stock when you are about to invalidate an entire model range in the next year.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:


Also everyone knows Objective Secured is an overall useless rule.

Maybe that is for marine only at the current stage. Because more often than not marine troops comes in low model counts compare to IG / Nidz / Orks or even cultist heavy CSM. They usually will be out-contested.

December 2016 I had all my marines to run a gladius then boop gathering storm, boop 8th lol

But yeah the wording on Defenders of Humanity needs to be changed to either All infantry/Dreads, or marine troops override the frankly biased numbers game

I don’t understand what you’re saying.

 Primark G wrote:
I don’t understand what you’re saying.

Marines are always outnumbered. Defenders of Humanity never comes into play.

I also just finished my army at the end of 7th