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Does it work or not? A list of melee heavy Marines, will it work against the likes of Orks, 'Nids, or even manage to close distance with the Shooty armies?

I ask this to put to rest a small debate between a friend and I.

Black Templars

And yes.

Oh god yes. That is IF you do it right.

I was thinking Blood Angels since they have so many jump infantry units to choose from:

Death Company
Honorguard
Veteran Assault squads
Regular Assault squads (count as troops automatically)

Plus you can take the special characters Dante, Mephiston and Lemartes to lead your army... they all come with jump packs or in the case of Mephiston a psychic power that allows him to move as if so equipped (Wings of Sanguinius). If you run the Dante/Corbulo combination it makes for an extremely hard hitting army. Blood Angele also have access to the Furioso dreadnaught that can be upgraded to venerable. If you run a mech list the Blood aangel rhinos come with overcharged engines which is very useful for reaching the enemy lines.

Black Templars are great choice as well.

Blood Angels do a solid Jump Pack list, better than anybody else in the game, due to their assortment of totally undercosted Assault Marines (Veteran Assault Marines and Honor Guard).

Black Templars have gone from mediocre to very strong, thanks to the changes to the Favored Enemy rule. Whole army re-rolls missess in CC, making the whole army (roughly) 50% more effective in CC. That's a huge bump.

That, and enormous crusader squads.

Size does matter.

G

Sure, size matters, but the main thing in 5th is that they now know how to use it.

Thank you for the replies and advice everybody. From what I can gather, it seems Blood Angels are the speedy jumpy types, while Black Templars are like rampaging berserkers.

However, I should probably have been more specific. I meant the Codex: Space Marines, Ultramarines, Smurfs. The boring blue guys with the better alternate colour schemes. Can they be as effective as the other races, or even their own comrades?

SM marines are not nearly as good in close combat as Space Wolves, Templar, Angels, or Chaos, unless you count Terminators with storm shields.

Kantor can juice units with the +1A.

G

Marines are generally not really geared towards cc. There are better melee fighters out there in the 40k universe.
Thus I wouldn't bother about choppy Marines.
Marines excel at medium range and can stand some incoming fire and the charge of a non-premium melee unit. It is better to keep the enemy at arm's length.

I have to disagree with you there. Blood Angels, Black Templars and Space Wolves are all good cc armies. They can shoot well too.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:I have to disagree with you there. Blood Angels, Black Templars and Space Wolves are all good cc armies. They can shoot well too.

G

Well, not sure what opponent armies are you facing?
Orks, Nids, and Chaos are far better in cc.

Orks are *not* better than marines in HtH.

Orks tend to beat Marines in hand to hand because Marines are geared toward shooting. Black Templar and Space Wolf Blood Claws in crusaders will absolutely bury Orks in melee by getting the charge with I4.

Assault heavy squads in rhinos will also beat Orks. The whole deal with beating Orks is denying them the charge and putting wounds out. Marines can actually do that quite well *if they are built for it*.

I would think three Assault Squads baking two Tac squads and two Termies with TH/SS woudl make for a decent CC Nilla Marine Army. Especially if used with either Kantor or Shrike, though Shrike would probably be better.

In the old codex it was easier to create cc marines because of the trait system but its still possible to do a decent one in the new dex.

wuestenfux wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:I have to disagree with you there. Blood Angels, Black Templars and Space Wolves are all good cc armies. They can shoot well too.

G

Well, not sure what opponent armies are you facing?
Orks, Nids, and Chaos are far better in cc.

Actually with a mix of mech and jump infantry both Nidz and ork horde are fairly easy to beat. Orks are not really that good in h2h anymore except for the PK. Also you can juice BA such that they are better in cc that Chaos.

G

wuestenfux wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:I have to disagree with you there. Blood Angels, Black Templars and Space Wolves are all good cc armies. They can shoot well too.

G

Well, not sure what opponent armies are you facing?
Orks, Nids, and Chaos are far better in cc.

Crusader squads CRUSH orks in melee. Nids? What are nids going to do? If you're talking genestealers, I'll pile rends onto scouts, while murdering them with preffered enemy. Hormagaunts are easy kills. Carnifexes don't throw out NEARLY enough attacks to cut down every last neophyte before being powerfisted and poked to death.

Chaos zerks are the only thing that can stand a chance, and even then, it'd be ten initiates/ten neophytes to the chaos players ten zerks. At that point, it's probably whomever got the charge. Any other chaos troops would just be swamped.(Plague marines would wobble abit beforehand)

From personal experience, I can promise you that not a whole lot can take templars 1vs1 in CC, save maybe witches and zerks.

BA with preferred enemy and furious charge can also go toe to toe with Crusader squads... lots of meltaguns to pop the LRCs as well.

G

Black Templars have wonderfully large squads to pile Battlecannon, Demolisher, and Plasma Cannon shots into.

Just sayin'...

Are we only talking loyalist marines? There are Chaos variants, and I think they're quite overlooked.

Khorne Berzerkers are absolutely nasty in CC, especially if they get the charge. They're 5's across the board when they charge, with 4 attacks at WS5. Each.

Against horde Orks and Nids, they're going to be winning combat. It's hard to lose with them.

On top of that, the models look cool.

." Blood Angels, Black Templars and Space Wolves are all good cc armies. They can shoot well too. "
Are space wolves any good in this edition. I played SW 1st and 2nd ed. Is the codex worth getting?
From what I have seen BA and Black Templars Seem to be the best. The BA and Templars seem to show up a lot on army lists or reply postings.

Nurglitch wrote:Black Templars have wonderfully large squads to pile Battlecannon, Demolisher, and Plasma Cannon shots into.

Just sayin'...

Meh? Fifty points of scouts die per giant pie plate? Much better than say 105 points of zerks. When I know an opponent is going pure anti-meq I'll bring templar to even it out, chaos tends not to do extremely well for itself against pure anti-meq lists as each troop is expensive and dies just as easily(Save tsons but I don't use the expensive buggers.)

Green Blow Fly wrote:BA with preferred enemy and furious charge can also go toe to toe with Crusader squads... lots of meltaguns to pop the LRCs as well.

G

I didn't know they auto received preffered enemy this edition, my mistake.

No problem it is built into Dante as an area of affect ability. I was playing against another BA army and my opponent wanted to use it for his army as well. LOL!

G

sourclams wrote:Orks are *not* better than marines in HtH.

Orks tend to beat Marines in hand to hand because Marines are geared toward shooting. Black Templar and Space Wolf Blood Claws in crusaders will absolutely bury Orks in melee by getting the charge with I4.

Assault heavy squads in rhinos will also beat Orks. The whole deal with beating Orks is denying them the charge and putting wounds out. Marines can actually do that quite well *if they are built for it*.

Very rarely will marines get the charge against a good Ork player. If he's smart he'll get the with trukks and a waghh (if even needed). Hit the hardest marines with a charge by a squad of tooled nobz and they don't stand a chance. 'Ard boyz in a trukk with a nob w/PK getting a charge will hold their own against even BTs. Throw in a warboss with the 'ardboyz and even a character can't save the marines for sure.

The short answer for the question whether vanilla marines can be good in CC is NO. The assinine lack of CCW for base marines is a travesty. CSM have them, and it makes them among the best 'base' CC troops in the game. Marines in CC are ranked as such (IMHO):

CSM (khorne or choosen with multiple PWs)
BT (hatred)
BA
the rest

Blood Angels are a little too expensive to be truely effective in CC as an army, but there's no denying that they are good indivivually.

Thalor

If you're running CC oriented Marines, ala Black Templar or any other variety (except possibly jump infantry), you will have Land Raider Crusaders.

And marines in raiders versus orks in trucks, you will be getting the charge.

sourclams wrote:If you're running CC oriented Marines, ala Black Templar or any other variety (except possibly jump infantry), you will have Land Raider Crusaders.

And marines in raiders versus orks in trucks, you will be getting the charge.

Point to sourclams. You won't get the optimal charge though. You can equip 5 ork squads with trukks for the price of one LRC, and they have a 19" move. I am the one that introduced elements of transports so I can't complain, but the sheer number of attacks a 6pt Ork gets is phenominal. A base marine just can't match that without an additional CCW (even with 3+ armour), and only chaos gets that (unfortunately). We can go all day with "my 6 attack str 10 Deff Dredd blocks your landraider" and "my combi-melta melts your deff dred" but the fact is that base codex, troop choice marines are OK all-around combatants but can not be included amongst the best CC fighters in the game.

Thalor

PS. I often overlook SM landraiders because my buddy that plays marines rarely uses them. He has had an unlucky streak against my chaos lascannons and Ork PKs.

Hormagaunts are easy kills.

A 32 man homugaunt squad is going to pack in between sixty and ninety attacks, if they have adrenal glands they will be doing it at initiative 5. They even count as cavalry so they are almost assured the charge. How are they easy kills again? If they get in a good full charge you're looking at over twenty wounds to the squad, thats more than one wound per man.

And a good close combat fex can take a powerfist for four turns or more before going down, all the while beating you in combat repeatedly.

Yeah, genestealers wouldn't do to well though, they're built to kill terminators and small squads.

With C:SM there are some good options for a melee list, but you have to understand that you will not be as good as SW, BA, or DA.

IMO, Shrike is your best bet for an HQ, then load up on Assault Termies and Assault Marines. They get Fleet and should be able to do some damage in HtH.

But you still need a shooting aspect to your list.