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I've got the AoBR box set of marines, an extra Dread (venerable), and another set of tactical marines. I obviously need a few more choices. I was initially thinking of running with MotF and a few more dreads but now I'm not sure. I don't know how I should outfit the SM I've got to excel/focus more on CC. Any ideas?

My list thus far is
Space Marine Captain
2X Tactical SM Squads (20 SM)
Five Terminators
Dreadnought
Venerable Dreadnought

What I was thinking of adding
At least 1 more Dread, either Ven or Ironclad
Another HQ and/or command squad(but who?)
1 more Tact squad.

I'm not sure how to outfit most of this, or if I should change whats in the box. Any help would be appreciated.

What is a "punch you in the mouth and steal your jacket" army?

Doesn't this belong in the army lists section?

Well, one thing you need to consider is with three dreads and a squad of Terminators you need to field a Master of the Forge to have them all fielded. Which is always entertaining.

However, you may want to start looking at some of the Fast Attack and Heavy Support choices. A trio of Land Speeders of Attack Bikes can add an alarming amount of anti tank or anti horde weaponry, and are relatively difficult to kill. Even though a Dreadnaught is tougher than a single bike or speeder, it's harder to kill all of them.

And a Vindicator, Land Raider or Predator are great at 1 - killing things and 2 - drawing fire away from the slightly easier to kill Dreadnoughts. Especially the Raider, although a Vindicator will often scare people into focusing there fire on it...especially after a strength 10 AP 1 blast takes out a hundred points of Marines in a single blast.

I guess the questions to ask would be.

1-What chapter? There are five rules sets and additional variations in the vanilla codex. SW do CC as do Blood Angels and DA (if you want to do terminators).

2-What kinds of units did you want for close combat? Dreadnoughts, assault squads, terminators, scouts, or what?

If you want to do a CC oriented army you need at least one chaplain. The rerolling of misses on the charge turns is very important. DA have the best chaplains. Blood Angels as is can take assault squads as troops and have veteran assault squads as well.

You will probably want as distracting an army as possible if you want to get in a punch and steal your opponent's jacket. Model wargear in illegal combination, take strange unit sizes and gear, and take as many different units as possible.
Deploy in formation, and paint your army bright and varying colors. If you do all these things then your opponent will probably be distracted enough for you to take him out the Space Marine scout way: destroy your opponent before he even knows he is fighting.

You may just want to read over some of the other Space Marine list construction threads over in Army Lists. There's just too much to really go into based on what you have. If those are the models you've got, I'd say you need 1- MOTF (pst, think about putting him on a bike) 2- Transports of some nature. Drop Pods are great for Dreads, then, max out on Dreads (well, 5 plus Terminators is a good mix, too). A mix of Rhinos, Razorbacks, and Drop Pods work wonders for Tactical Squads, running does not. I can suggest the Cyclone Missile Launcher for your Terminators, though.

Work out some list ideas before you buy anything and drop it in the Army Lists section. I'm sure someone can help you iron out the specifics.

Oh, don't forget to model your Master of the Forge with a really sweet jacket. Y'know, from the last guy he clocked.

A land raider would be very good. Also, some drop pods or rhinos for the troops as they are crunchy and easy vulnerable to templates and hordes.

Some land speeders would be, I think, a next logical choice though. Either that or get a couple of razorback boxes and use them as rhinos (since the sprues include the top hatch cover, its 2 vehicle options in one).

If you want to make a really hard SM list, here's the first piece of advice: don't take a captain unless you're making a bike list.

If you're looking for a cheap HQ, librarians and masters of the forge add a lot more utility to an SM army.

If you're looking for rules that make your army better and killing power, look at any of the special characters.

The only use captains have in the SM list is to unlock bikes as troops.

I thought the way you describe it was "Bend you over the chair and take you from behind" SM army....oh wait, that would be the Chaos Space Marines... my bad.


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The only use captains have in the SM list is to unlock bikes as troops.

And a lovely thing that is.

You'de probably want a Vulkan type list as he gives a big buff and isn't a pushover himself. Sternguard, TH/SS Termies, Land Speeder, Bikers. All will provide a large amount of damage dealing (and can benifit from Vulkan.

PS. Demolisher Cannon was AP2 last time I checked. Orbital bombardments are the AP1 ones.

Sanctjud wrote:I thought the way you describe it was "Bend you over the chair and take you from behind" SM army....oh wait, that would be the Chaos Space Marines... my bad.


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The only use captains have in the SM list is to unlock bikes as troops.

And a lovely thing that is.

Yes, bike marines is actually one of the stronger builds out there. Why it doesn't get more credit is beyond me.

If you want a "Punch you in the mouth and steal your jacket" army, look at the OTHER HALF of the AoBR box, assemble those orks, and if you need to, orkify the dreadnoughts into killa-kans with some gubbins and spiky bits.

Voila.

@willydstyle:

I think it's because of the cost.
A single biker costs $15.
The box set for 3 is $45.
Attack Bike is $25.

The best deal is for the Ravenwing battle force for $90, but includes no special ranged weapons.

ARRRGGG.

So I got a biker army, but I've cheated and used horse back, so instead of $60 ish for 5 bikers I got WFB Chaos Knights for $45 for the 'bikers'....
Bleh....

Also there's the whole "OMG STAIRS, RUNAWAY" issue with biker heavy armies, which nearly demands a foot element to help with that .


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In addition, it's not a forgiving army with respect to guestimating ranges poorly and bad deployments...at least in my experience...goes downhill fast