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had this crazy idea about fielding a bunch of elites, a couple of scouts and an infiltrate Hq unit for my next army of marines. i figure i can get plenty of extra fire power etc. where it is most needed as well as close to 60 marines in a 1500pt list. will this work. should i bother trying.

The biggest advantage of infiltrate is that you get to set up after your opponent so its useful from that perspective. I suppose if you are facing a shooting heavy force and you set up in a way to send the whole of your force against a portion of your opponents it would be useful. A clever opponent wouldn't spread out in those situations though, they'll just castle against you and it'll be tough for you to win.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

You should give it a try, but you also shouldn't get too attached to it as it will probably be impossible to field come 5th edition 40K and the accompanying bland-o-rific Marine codex...

A couple of problems.

1) Scouts suck. The 4+ save is just not enough to cut it when you are at short range. It is very easy to penetrate and even things that don't penetrate it don't have much difficulty killing you off with massed fire (which is very easy to get at short range).

2) What happens when your opponent goes first? If you have infiltrated very close to his lines, you get swarmed and shot to pieces, that's what happens. An all infiltrating army really turns the game into one die roll, the one to see who goes first. Everything after that is just the second player going through the motions of getting killed.

3) Hand to hand horde armies will mop the floor with you as will mechanized armies. You just don't have the tools to deal with either of these army builds and they are going to destroy you.

All in all, the army could be interesting to play for a little while, but it's not going to be very powerful and it will have serious issues against some (increasingly popular) army builds.

The all infiltrating marine list never works. my friend used to run an alpha legion list with round 100 infiltrating marines and they lost nearly every game. the opponent shouldn't mind them being closer to him/her, and as long as they don't freak out about the enemy being really close then they will have no trouble at all dealing with your forces, especially since you can't deploy within range for a 1st turn charge.

Mind you, a couple of infiltrating units to act as Teleport Beacons for Terminators and/or Daemons is pretty fun. Codex Space Marines can do this with their Scout squads without sacrificing the number of Terminator squads they can bring down.

Phoenix wrote:A couple of problems.

2) What happens when your opponent goes first? If you have infiltrated very close to his lines, you get swarmed and shot to pieces, that's what happens. An all infiltrating army really turns the game into one die roll, the one to see who goes first. Everything after that is just the second player going through the motions of getting killed.

I disagree, I used to run all-infiltrating chaos in the last codex and going first or second, it didn't matter to me. If they moved forward for shooting, they got slaughtered by my assault early and if they stayed put for some shots, the daemons would get them anyway.

In the new codex that's less of an issue though, due to lack of infiltrate and lack of decent daemons, but oh well.

As someone else already said, it's great if you infiltrate all in one spot so that the units on the far

Phoenix wrote:
3) Hand to hand horde armies will mop the floor with you as will mechanized armies. You just don't have the tools to deal with either of these army builds and they are going to destroy you.

Mechanized armies wouldn't be able to start with as much distance between them, making them more vulnerable to shorter ranged weapons that are still capable of popping armour. You in effect give them less room to maneouvre. Hand to hand horde armies.... who says you have to infiltrate CLOSE to them? Infiltrating back in your deployment zone in the best spot for cover while avoiding their firepower is perfectly acceptable, and still preferable to allowing them to react to your own deployment. Infiltration isn't all about getting close to the enemy. In the army I mentioned before, versus tyranids I'd infiltrate back and use my blastmasters at range before going in to mop up the less dangerous targets.

Spellbound wrote:Mechanized armies wouldn't be able to start with as much distance between them, making them more vulnerable to shorter ranged weapons that are still capable of popping armour. You in effect give them less room to maneouvre. Hand to hand horde armies.... who says you have to infiltrate CLOSE to them? Infiltrating back in your deployment zone in the best spot for cover while avoiding their firepower is perfectly acceptable, and still preferable to allowing them to react to your own deployment. Infiltration isn't all about getting close to the enemy. In the army I mentioned before, versus tyranids I'd infiltrate back and use my blastmasters at range before going in to mop up the less dangerous targets.

Against mechanized armies, if you show up close to them, they do one of several things. They either run away from you (which could mean tank shocking though you) to increase the distance between you and them. The other option would be to move most of their forces to wherever yours are weakest and wipe out a good chunck of your army before you can do much if anything about it. If you deploy in (or very near) your deployment zone, the only benifit you gain from the infiltration is deploying last (which is valuable) but you sacrifice the ability (or chance lets say) to use the very useful and powerful units from your codex that do not infiltrate. In that case, your opponent just does what he would do against any other army and manuvers to you at high speed.

Only the ignorant assume that infiltrate will be used to get close to an opponent. Infiltrating shooty armies can do very well, even when they're being placed back in your own deployment zone. You get to choose your fire lanes after your opponent sets up, which can be key vs. some lists (skimmers). However, infiltrating assualty marines don't do very well.

It's not a good idea to go completely infiltrate, as if your opponent has infiltrating units, he can limit your deployment options. Usually you should take some reasonably fast units in addition to your infiltrators. That way they can keep clear areas for your infiltrators to deploy in, and can still make it across the board in time to support your troops if you choose to deploy outside your deployment zone.

Also, I have found scouts to be a reasonably good countercharge unit for cheap. Infiltrate means that they can set up out of LOS initially, and still be positioned where they can countercharge if your opponnent makes it to your gunline. Vs. another static shooty list, they can threaten a flank if he chooses to spread out.