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Fair point. I wasn't really considering order of gameplay but as you astutely point out, it's a valid consideration.

So we've established that without tactics, Combat Tactics is a marginally useful rule. That means that if you rely on Combat Tactics to get you out of situations you didn't expect, then you will fail because it's not reliable.

With tactics, on the other hand, I think it definitely gets something. Here's a tactic that I've used with success: you pair each Tactical squad with a Dreadnought, and there's various configurations to use the Dreadnought as cover and so on.

If the enemy wants to charge the Tactical squad, then they'll be facing a counter-assault by the Dreadnought. If the enemy managed to charge both, then the Dreadnought can fight rearguard, lock the unit, and prevent a Sweeping Advance, leaving the Tactical unit free to Fall Back without worry of Sweeping Advance or Consolidation, and holding the enemy unit in place for a another counter-assault unit.

Nurglitch wrote:So we've established that without tactics, Combat Tactics is a marginally useful rule.

Now you're just being pedantic. Tactics[!] only compensate so much for a marginal rule.

Here's a tactic that I've used with success: you pair each Tactical squad with a Dreadnought, and there's various configurations to use the Dreadnought as cover and so on.

If the enemy wants to charge the Tactical squad, then they'll be facing a counter-assault by the Dreadnought. If the enemy managed to charge both, then the Dreadnought can fight rearguard, lock the unit, and prevent a Sweeping Advance, leaving the Tactical unit free to Fall Back without worry of Sweeping Advance or Consolidation, and holding the enemy unit in place for a another counter-assault unit.

This says very little about the viability of combat tactics. If I created your same scenario with, say, 10 GH and a SW Dreadnought, or 10 CSM and a Defiler, I can claim identical benefits with a unit that beats more face in CC. If they win the combat, they've no need of voluntarily falling back, and if they lose the Dread/Defiler can counterassault anyhow. IG Vets, of course, can simply sit at 25" and let their support shoot everything dead.

USE TACTICS should yield roughly equivalent valreturn for all units, and will not create a clear winner in the case of Combat Tactics vs. BP+CCW.

sourclams:

Quite the contrary: this is a Tactics forum, therefore discussing how particular tactics affect the value of a particular rule is paramount.

In particular the tactic I have described does not work for either Chaos Space Marines or Grey Hunters. In the case of Chaos Space Marines it should be obvious that surrounding a Chaos Dreadnought with friendly troops is suicidally stupid. You will either maximize fratricide during a Fire Frenzy, or prevent a Rage result from doing anything use. Chaos Dreadnought are useless at counter-assault, and should be used as shock assault, creating a spearhead to proactively lock units for Chaos Space Marine assaults.

Likewise Grey Hunters want to get into combat, not out of it, so a Space Wolf Dreadnought will either imitate the Chaos Space Marine Dreadnought and lock enemies in combat for follow-up assaults by Grey Hunters, or it should be following them up into combats the Grey Hunters themselves have locked.

It's interesting how this goes: Chaos Space Marines must act very aggressively and stay behind their Dreadnoughts. Grey Hunters can act aggressively or defensively and can front or support a Dreadnought. Finally Tactical Space Marines should stay in front of their Dreadnoughts (or at least their main-firepower should), and act defensively.

Nurglitch wrote:sourclams:

Quite the contrary: this is a Tactics forum, therefore discussing how particular tactics affect the value of a particular rule is paramount.

Semantics when the tactic is as universal as putting a CC walker behind a fire base.

In particular the tactic I have described does not work for either Chaos Space Marines or Grey Hunters. In the case of Chaos Space Marines it should be obvious that surrounding a Chaos Dreadnought with friendly troops is suicidally stupid. You will either maximize fratricide during a Fire Frenzy, or prevent a Rage result from doing anything use. Chaos Dreadnought are useless at counter-assault, and should be used as shock assault, creating a spearhead to proactively lock units for Chaos Space Marine assaults.

Which is why I picked the Defiler.

Likewise Grey Hunters want to get into combat, not out of it, so a Space Wolf Dreadnought will either imitate the Chaos Space Marine Dreadnought and lock enemies in combat for follow-up assaults by Grey Hunters, or it should be following them up into combats the Grey Hunters themselves have locked.

Not true in the least. Grey Hunters want to comfortably rapid fire and flame/melta units down in the shooting phase, knowing that they can rely on Counterattack to yield more attacks in total between the shooting and assault phases instead of resorting to initiating the assault. They're a very reliable short range firefight unit for exactly this reason. And as to your assertions about what the Space Wolf Dreadnought "should" do, that's a completely false distinction from a regular SM Dread based on nothing empirical. The Space Wolves do not have to play as an agressive close combat army, quite the opposite; they are able to maximize shooting because they don't have to worry about being assaulted.

Tactical Space Marines should stay in front of their Dreadnoughts (or at least their main-firepower should), and act defensively.

What they "should" do is sit inside of their rhino and play area denial because they're too vulnerable to assault to really be allowed to just hang out in a gunline, which has its own plethora of weaknesses. The Tyranid Codex will be the death of a MEQ foot-infantry gunline.

I'm not sure why people are talking about falling back out of rapid fire range as something that the Marine player wants to have happen, since only a fool would use Combat Tactics during his own turn, assuming there are no crazy objective shenanigans going on.

Phryxis wrote:In general, it seems to me that in most competitions the guy that's reacting is the guy that's losing. If your army is geared around being reactive, to me it's a strike against it being a top tier list. That's all meta type thinking, but still...

I find that this is absolutely false, and the exact opposite holds true. The best armies in my book are ones that can react/adapt to any situation on the table. Ones that rely on a particular method of fighting get RPSed into oblivion by opponents who can adopt a method that counters it, scenarios/tables that prevent that method from being used, etc.

sourclams made an excellent point when mentioning there are few units that tactical Marines can reliably beat in close combat. There aren't many units they can reliably beat in close combat. So obviously tactical Marines aren't meant to fight in close combat unless you have properly designed your army to do or there is some situation where they have numerical superiority. I think it's safe to say the majority of the current SM players don't kit their tactical squads with a power fist so they are really hurting in general when it comes to the assault phase. Tactical squads should be screened by the rest of your army so that your opponent really has their work cut out for them to destroy them. Tactical Marines are for the most part just an objective holder the way most people play them now. As a BA player I am in a unique position as my tactical squads can really hurt you in close combat by granting them both furious charge and preferred enemy (if you do it right). BA tactical squads are a big exception to the current trend.

On the subject of math hammer - it's very important and all good tacticians take this into account. The thing is math hammer is only part of the equation. You also need to take synergy into account, a well designed list is built knowing that the sum is greater than the whole. This is how a good Space Marine army works, it's like a Swiss army knife... You've got all the tools you need so it's just a matter of putting it all together. That said SM armies are not great tournament armies in general because they are a Jack of all Trades but a master of none. You can talk about how awesome is a landraider, null zone Librarian and your thunder termies but at the end of the day it always comes down to your troop choices and tactical Marines just aren't all that really. It used to be you could field small las/plas squads that were quite useful and there was lots of scoring units. Now you have to pay a premium for your tactical squads and they aren't all that useful for the points you are paying. I know some of you are true blue to power armor but if you were really honest with yourselves and opened your eyes you'd see this plain as day. The new SM codex was poorly conceived with lots of eye candy that is quite dear pointwise. It used to not be the case when you could get away with lots of cheap MSUs but it just doesn't work anymore. Armies like CSM and SW have troop choices that are much better all around for the points you pay. You have to take a lot of things into consideration... Like for instance that squad of scouts in cover with camo cloaks for the 2+ cover save are suddenly pull out into the open by a lash prince then soaked by two Oblits morphing plasma cannons. SM got a raw deal in my opinion and that's why i don't play them anymore.

G

/agree

I think SM is a very fun and flexible codex with lots of different builds. But as for Top Tier Competitive, I'd rather run IG or even SW (and to a lesser extent CSM).

Hmm, I don't think the main use for combat tactics is in hth, but to "avoid" hth or to "avoid" shots.

Let's say a chaos unit is about to charge. Typically, before charging in, the chaos player will take advantage of uber grit and shoot pistols and melta, hoping to whittle the squad down before charging. You lose enough models for a leadership test.

You choose to fail, "falling bacK" out of hth reach.

Your opponent, now wary of this after getting burned a couple times, won't shoot a unit the turn he is going to charge them. How useful that is is extremely hard to quantify.

It's not really that great.

G

Though it's better than nothing, it's not something to rely on and should be used with care.

It's a tool you can use to capitalize on opponent mistakes...<---this happens every now and then.

The best armies in my book are ones that can react/adapt to any situation on the table.

Well, at the risk of going too far down the semantics/metagame rabbit hole, I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

There's a big difference between seeing what the other guy is going to do and defeating it, and having it done to you and then trying to recover.

With Combat Tactics (and your view of it particularly), you're just trying to hurry up and kill off the Tac squad so you can get to shooting the assault unit. That's not winning, that's mitigating a defeat. That's not turning lemons into lemonaid, that's throwing the lemons away quickly, and then hoping you have enough apples left to make a pie.

The job of his assault units is to kill off your models. You win by preventing this. You lose by allowing it. All Combat Tactics is doing is trying to make it minimally painful when you've already allowed it. It's an ability that prevents you from screwing up twice in a row, and limits it to just once. And even then, it only works some of the time.

SM got a raw deal in my opinion and that's why i don't play them anymore.

Meh, I feel like they play like they always have... They're very forgiving, very easy for a mediocre player to get good results with, but they lack the tricky/undercosted powergame stuff that the top lists have.

Very true Phryxis. The combination of CT and ATSKNF is very forgiving of both mistakes and unavoidable bad situations. This fits in perfectly with the C:SM theme. Its a very forgiving army, but also lacks glass cannons that can make some of the top lists so hard.

C:SM are less likely to lose big, but are also less likely to win big.

SM used to have very powerful librarians, could spam assault cannons and field small las/plas squads.

G

Space Marines are much better in the new Codex.

And less interesting. I miss traits.

ph34r wrote:And less interesting. I miss traits.

I dunno. As a Marine player I find the new options, including Combat Squads and Combat Tactics, to be more interesting and tactical than the old Trait system allowed, and without the potential for abuse.

the potential for abuse

Aka, powerful.

IMO, Nurglitch's points about how SMs, SWs and Chaos play is a good one. The designers have done a fantastic job of making the rules match the fluff. I think that's what you're identifying. SMs are very "by the Codex," in their options and abilities, and that makes them feel balanced and interesting.

But they're not really open for abuse, and abuse is how power builds are made in 40K. Oh, the Vendetta is ridiculously undercosted? I'll take 9. What? The Dakkafex gets 500 shots for 114 points? I'll take 3. Etc. Etc.

So, I hear what you're saying, I just don't think you're being totally accurate. They're not "better" in a powergame context. They're less powerful. But the more balanced, less powergamey core of the army is enhanced. So if you want to play Codex Marines, yes, they're better. If you want to win tournaments, they're worse.

Phryxis wrote:

the potential for abuse

Aka, powerful.

Nah. Traits weren't too overpowered, but their purported downsides didn't really exist, since you could take negative traits that eliminated things you didn't have, like the "no allies" traits for armies that didn't include allies. It basically meant that each Marine army got to pick 2 extra options, which wasn't exactly good from a design perspective. Like Doctrines, Traits were a product of an older-- and in my opinion, inferior-- design mindset.

Phryxis wrote:But they're not really open for abuse, and abuse is how power builds are made in 40K. Oh, the Vendetta is ridiculously undercosted? I'll take 9. What? The Dakkafex gets 500 shots for 114 points? I'll take 3. Etc. Etc.

Disagree-- the best lists are generally versatile. Vendettas are actually a great example of this. Vendettas are, as you say, ridiculously undercosted. They should probably be 175 points at the very least. However, people *don't* take nine of them in the best lists I've seen, despite them being such a good deal. Taking nine Vendettas would overcommit you to a certain style of play and actually weaken your list against many opponents. Although the Vendetta is powerful and efficient, and perhaps one of the most "objectively undercosted" units out there, it still isn't worth spamming out completely.

The Vendetta isn't undercosted: It's costed just right for a vehicle with AV12 and difficulties gaining the benefit of cover.

Regarding power-builds, I think these things only exist because most players are more Angron than Fulgrim when it comes to tactics: They figure how hard a unit can hit is more important than how well an army can support itself, and that leads to the current state of Tactics discussion where what you have seems to count for more than what you can do with it.

Of course it's easier to deal with the numbers and the rules than the behaviour of models on hard-to-define potential boards, so I personally find it's useful to keep a unit or two on my desk at home so I have a direct reminder of how the objects on the tabletop work - experience of games is good, but that tends to fade when they're put away and you're sitting at a monitor. But there's a reason an army that looks good on paper can do badly on the table-top, and that's because the person writing the army list wasn't able to connect what happens in a game to the resources available on the table.

Now someone who shall not be named had an interesting point about Space Marines some time ago, and their relation to Eldar. The conventional wisdom, he said, put Space Marine units as being flexible and thus supporting themselves, and Eldar units as being specialized, and thus supporting each other. However he pointed out, quite correctly, that if a unit is a generalist then it needs the support of another unit to achieve what a specialist unit can do alone. It was actually the other way around, the Eldar units were best suited to acting independently while Space Marine units needed to co-ordinate.

Now, these characterizations are inordinately broad when compared to the facts of the matter: there are specialized Space Marine units and there are generalized Eldar units*, and whether a unit should act independently or in unison with other units depends on factors such as the power of units in accomplishing particular tasks, the likelihood that task will be accomplished, what accomplishing that task will achieve from a game-winning perspective, and so on.

Me, I started as an Angron in 3rd edition (I played 1st and 2nd, but only periodically as the memory of the previous experience wore off): I just threw my army into the game confident that it was just a matter of lists and dice. And got my ass kicked. A lot. It didn't help that one of my regular opponents went onto win the Canadian Grand Tournament, because I wasn't prepared to learn what he wanted to teach me about tactics.

So I decided the problem was the game and I decided to make a better game. The following experience of writing, play-testing, and re-writing encouraged me to go back to Warhammer 40k and to take a second look at it. This was just when the last Codex: Chaos Space Marines had come out, and I had finally sat down to give the rulebook the same attention and close reading I would give serious work. Getting back into the game I tried to apply some of the tactics that I had learned, which was easier for 4th edition thanks to charge-clipping and model-sniping enabled by the casualty removal rules. There were also more subtle tactics, such as the placement of Melta gunners to deter tank shock which survive in 5th edition.

My point is that when I started from the premise that there were tactics in 40k, besides strategies and dice, and that they involved the careful placement of the models on the board, and not from the premise that list-building and dice were the end of it, I suddenly became a lot better at Warhammer and it became a lot more fun.

So I think if the utility of Combat Tactics is going to be apparent, we really need to consider it not only in terms of what other rules the Tactical Space Marines have, but in terms of how they can co-ordinate with other units on the board. I've offered my point about how each type of Space Marine co-ordinates differently with a Dreadnought, that Combat Tactics is 100% effective when there is another unit to lock down any Sweeping Advance while the Tactical Marines escape.

You can say "Well, a clever opponent will just position his assaulting unit so that the locking unit isn't charged!" But that misses the point: What will that opponent do to avoid the locking unit? It's like saying a good sleeping pill will knock you out, but how?

Given the fact that units in 40k have Fall Back corridors defined by the footprint of the unit and the relative direction of their home table edge, a player can predict where a unit will Fall Back and be able to exploit any Fall Backs made by a unit of Space Marines (or any other unit that can rally upon falling back) by placing another unit close to that corridor. You can escort a unit of Tactical Marines that is falling back right off the table in this fashion, if you have the resources, or you've attacked them in the right place at the right time.

*Even better, some Eldar units specialize in supporting other units! E.g.: Shining Spears, Farseers, etc.

Nurglitch wrote:The Vendetta isn't undercosted: It's costed just right for a vehicle with AV12 and difficulties gaining the benefit of cover.

Vendettas get cover automatically and for free at the start of each game with their Scout move. Compare a Vendetta's cost to that of a tri-las Pred and you'll see why everyone thinks the Vendetta is undercosted.

The new codex lascannon predator is obviously overcosted, they should have stayed with the old costs. The Vendetta is only undercosted when compared to an overcosted unit. Everyone thinks that the Vendetta is undercosted because the closest thing they can compare it to is overcosted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fetterkey wrote:

ph34r wrote:And less interesting. I miss traits.

I dunno. As a Marine player I find the new options, including Combat Squads and Combat Tactics, to be more interesting and tactical than the old Trait system allowed, and without the potential for abuse.

The new Combat Squads/Tactics to me seem gimicky compared to the traits which seemed flavorful, fun, and interesting. As a non-marine player my desire to start a marine army was highest when the 4th edition codex came out, and now it is back down to zero.

Wasn't the old cost 150? The Vendetta is still clearly better and for less.

Fetterkey wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:The Vendetta isn't undercosted: It's costed just right for a vehicle with AV12 and difficulties gaining the benefit of cover.

Vendettas get cover automatically and for free at the start of each game with their Scout move. Compare a Vendetta's cost to that of a tri-las Pred and you'll see why everyone thinks the Vendetta is undercosted.

"A Skimmer that has moved flat-out in its last MOVEMENT PHASE counts as obscured..."

Since the Scout Move is not the actual movement phase, they are not actually allowed to claim cover bonuses.

GW FAQ'd this somewhere.. let me see if I can find it. Any Turbo-boosting or Flat Out moving units can pick up the bonus save on a Scout Move.

I honestly don't recall GW FAQing it like that. I'd be very interested in seeing it if you can find it.

Wait, no, I'm not as cool as I think I am. There was no ruling, and I'm just remembering a debate about Turbo-boosting in the Scout Move. So, apparently you are right sourclams. God damn psychosis.

Bummer. :(

sourclams wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:The Vendetta isn't undercosted: It's costed just right for a vehicle with AV12 and difficulties gaining the benefit of cover.

Vendettas get cover automatically and for free at the start of each game with their Scout move. Compare a Vendetta's cost to that of a tri-las Pred and you'll see why everyone thinks the Vendetta is undercosted.

"A Skimmer that has moved flat-out in its last MOVEMENT PHASE counts as obscured..."

Since the Scout Move is not the actual movement phase, they are not actually allowed to claim cover bonuses.

INAT FAQ lets them claim it.

Fetterkey:

So apparently you're wrong about whether Vendettas can have a cover save thanks to moving Flat Out during a Scout move: It can't because there is no movement phase prior to Turn 1. Kudos to sourclams for pointing that out.

Similarly, why would I compare a Vendetta to a Predator? The Predator is not a transport, has AV13 to its front, has Smoke Launchers, can be easily obscured by terrain and other vehicles, and most importantly don't overlap in the same army list. They don't share the same capabilities, battlefield role, or army list.