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Since my Blood Angels will be getting this rule soon I thought it would be a good idea to find out how its being used. So what options are working and which aren't? How many squads are you using? Devastators seem to benefit the most from this rule, is it true in practice? What are your thoughts and experiences with the combat squads?

Well, I've only played a couple games so far, but splitting Dev squads is obviously a pretty good tactic. Against some opponents, being able to split your assault squads to go after separate targets but use the same FO slot. If you are using a "doublewing" army, you can split your bike squads and put them in different locations to hide where your termies will be landing. Another one that I used to great effect was splitting scouts. Now that they are elite, they are in more competition, but you can take 5 w/ CCW or Shotgun and Powerfist and 5 with Sniper Rifle and deploy them separately using only one Elites slot.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Well if you are having trouble fielding scouts because you are bringing terminators (which is something DA's should be doing more of now adays) just spend the 130 points to make terminators troops choices, then use the scouts to split up. Dev squad splits are really good, especially with plasma cannons, maybe even with rocket launchers.

I guess the real situation is deciding when to split and when not to split. If splitting your forces would endanger your combat squads from being able to achieve their mission (IE splitting assault into groups of five, making them more likely to get annihilated from focused fire before assaulting) then you've made a mistake.

So far, for me, testing the 10 man Dev squad split has been inconclusive. In general, the little five man squads are bloody fragile. The Dev squad has done better than the Tacticals in that form, but it's bloody expensive. Bearing in mind that I'm now paying 245 for ten men (including a largely useless Vet) with 4 MLs instead of 200 for eight men with 4 MLs, I'm torn on whether it's really worth the points.

I'm starting to think that I might be better off taking cheap AC/HB preds in my Heavy Support, and using Lascannons (despite the 20pt cost) in Tacticals, supplemented by Meltaguns and Multimeltas on bikes and speeders, for antitank.

This new codex is definitely effective at making me want to buy and try out some new units, because my old ones definitely don't work as well in the roles they used to play.

I can see the use of a five man lascannon squad, but what to do with the other five? Razorback? Or maybe Marines are moving into the era of combined arms. If you have several small squads advancing together that might work. It looks to me like the best thing to do is to keep your tact squads as full units and not use a heavy or at least have a cheap one. Lascannons may be only for vehicle now.

I use Codex marines, but have created my own "virtual" combat squads.

Take a 5 man dev squad, and a 5 man tac squad with a hidden fist. (This would all be one squad with combat squads)  Add another full 10 man tac squad.  Drop in 2 transports (i use razorbacks when i have the points, but combat squads would mandate at least 1 rhino)

Deploy the 5 men with heavy weapons about 4 inches onto the board, the 10 man squad 4 inches in front of them, and the last 5 man squad as far ahead of that as possible.  Put the 2 transports on the flanks of the heavy weapons to control enemy lines of sight.

Basic plan is the heavy weapons are protected by target priority rules, and lines of sight, so they can fire with general impunity.  Assault squads need to think twice before charging down the barrells of that many marines, and if they do they need to "Massacre!" the leading squad to have a chance to get to the middle squad.

If they don't massacre, then the large squad stages a counter charge on your turn, preferably bringing another hidden fist or at least a power weapon.

If the thing that usually hits the fan happens to hit the fan, or it gets to be late in the game and you need to grab table quarters, you should be able to mount up on the transports and make a run.

 

The plan has drawbacks, limited fire line for the devastators, and it is very points intensive.  Indirect fire can still hammer the devastators. 

And when things go wrong, they go really wrong, as in once i pushed my forward squad up too far, and a daemon prince "hurdled" them, charge the middle squad, killed most of them, and then killed more when they thought about breaking.  So my devastaors had no choice but too pile in, or they would be charged the next turn.  Oh well, it usually works...

A pretty decent load out that I have gone up against is the 5 man squad with meltagun and sgt with PF. Then the other 5 man squad with lascannon. The combat squad with the meltagun takes a razorback with HB. I went up against x 3 of these units in a 2k game, along with the combat squad Devs. A lot of shooty on the move backed up with essentially 4 dev squads. I don't recall what else was in the list other than the tornado speeders.

Capt K

Seems like the thing to do would be hold the heavy weapon back in a firing line like normal and drop pod the other half of the squad with a melta and powerfist.

Of course for the new BA's I'm not sure how this will work out points wise.

Unfortunately that is illegal. You cannot use the combat squad rule if the unit is in reserves, hence no splitting the unit if they are given a drop pod.

This rule also makes the squad CaptK mentioned really bad in escalation, becuase now the fist and MG is forced to stay with the lascannon, all 10 men are in reserve and they can't hop in the razorback until they've taken casualties.

I feel the split DA dev squads are similar to the SW longfangs.  I don't know if that unit was considered effective, but I would believe it has similarities.  Paying for the mandatory longfang sergeant compared to the mandatory DA vet sarge, splitting fire, etc.  One advantage the DA has over the longfangs is that you have the choice to keep it a 10-man and the fact that splitting now gains the tactical advantage of having two scoring/quadrant holding units as opposed to one while only absorbing one HS slot.

I agree with you about the cheap preds, multimelta speeders/bikes, and tacs with lascannons/plasma guns.  This is an extremely effective force configuration.  The tactical advantage of keeping the 10 men with las/plas or splitting the mobile assault weapon element from the static heavy weapon is so choice.

As far as the wanting to buy more units, they do have a business to run.

Rumors for BA Vet Squads is that they can take 0-2 flamers or meltaguns along with the 3 powered close combat weps. Dump 3 powerfists in one squad and have the other squad of 5 bounce around with 2 meltaguns hunting vehicles. viable?

jump-pack equiped of course

Posted By Lancer on 04/24/2007 4:35 PM

Rumors for BA Vet Squads is that they can take 0-2 flamers or meltaguns along with the 3 powered close combat weps. Dump 3 powerfists in one squad and have the other squad of 5 bounce around with 2 meltaguns hunting vehicles. viable?

jump-pack equiped of course

The rumor is that they're 30 pts. per model with the jump packs, so that may throw a damper on things.

From my armchair, the best thing to come out of combat squads is the possibility of having 6 devastator squads or four and a vindicator or whirlwind.

Escalation isn't that bad since you can hold your entire army off the board if you like. In this guys list he had enough flexibility with his other unit choices, that it wouldn't have been a problem.

Capt K