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Timmah wrote:Why do people insist on giving their sergeants CCW/pistol, power weapons, powerfists, ect?

Why do you want your marines to win/draw combat? Seriously. I want my marines shoot, not sitting in combat where they do absolutely nothing. ATSKNF is amazing, why would you not want to use it?

Absolutely, I don't want my Tactical Marines to enter cc,
only if its absolutely necessary.

Absolutely, I don't want my Tactical Marines to enter cc,
only if its absolutely necessary.

And no doubt, when you do enter combat with them you want them to have a powerfist in their. The salient point is that you are not including powerfists because you want to be an assault army. You are including powerfists for when you have to make an assault to secure a critical tactical objective---be it destroy a tank or take down the last mega armored nob, etc. Adding fists to Tactical squads makes them better overall and certainly does not commit you to be an assault only Army.

I couldnt imagine living without power klaws lol, not only are they great for krumpin dem weak oomans, but they open canned food too >.>

25 points is a bit yea, but do you really want that tac squad held down by a lone killa kan? lol even if you choose to fail the check and break, ill just follow them off the board with an empty trukk or something lol.

kill dem stunties wrote:I couldnt imagine living without power klaws lol, not only are they great for krumpin dem weak oomans, but they open canned food too >.>

25 points is a bit yea, but do you really want that tac squad held down by a lone killa kan? lol even if you choose to fail the check and break, ill just follow them off the board with an empty trukk or something lol.

Are all you people forgetting Krak Grenades and Meltabombs? Really? Every marine has Krak grenades. BTW Orks =/= marines. Orks NEED PK's because they need every extra kill they can get and suck at shooting unlike tacs.

The reason why you SHOULDN'T take PF and just take Meltabombs (this upgrade is extremely necessary) is because your damn tacticals SHOULDN'T be getting charged by an MC and honestly 2-3 WS4 PF attacks a turn isn't worth 25 fakkin points. OMG I CAN MAYBE HURT AN MC! Why the hell did you let your tacs get into combat? That's also why you BACK THEM UP with such units as TH/SS terminators and Dreadnoughts!

Meltabomb suffice. Everything else gets assaulted by a support unit and the tacs ATSKNF out.

War never goes according to plan. It's also good to have a PF in case of some sort of unforeseen event. What if your opponent knows that you won't be able to hurt his MC since your squad doesn't have a PF and assaults them? All of a sudden they have a free KP and you're out a Tac Squad.

Just because something shouldn't happen, doesn't mean it won't.

True, but if you keep your army together, then there's no chance they will be out of range of counter attackers.

In addition I wouldn't call it a 'free' KP if an MC is in combat with a tac squad.
There are many different types of MC's. It's the 2+ armor T6+ kind that can live past Tacticals, but anything under is fair game (IE Daemon Princes of some kinds).

That's true, but like I said, there's lots of unforeseen events that can occur. For instance you could have 3 marines left and get charged by a Wraithlord with 1 wound left. I mean the likely hood of something like that happening isn't very great, but it is still possible.

So like I said, I'd rather have it just for the insurance and even when fighting another infantry unit, its generally an assured 1-2 kills (which helps, and of course adds up depending on what you're crushing).

Reecius wrote:For 25 points, the mandatory fist in my squads (which nearly all of them have) have always been worth while. They give you the ability to react to and deal with changing table top conditions.

Theory hammer is great, and I love to analyze units in the vacuum or theoretics, but in my gaming experience, the fist in a squad is nearly always worth the points. The reason being that the plan we come to the table with, of using our specialized squads just right, rarely happens.

Does it mean the tac squad will be able to take on a tooled up assault unit?

Nope, but it does mean that in the last turns of a game if they need to take on a weakened assault unit that is trying to push them off an objective, destroy a vehicle that is threatening them, take on some termies, oblits, or whatever, they can. I find that having that flexibility in the squad means that they can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Besides, a squad going from 160 to 185 and gaining so much flexibility, is not the end of the world, IMO.

Besides, the power fist is sweet, who doesn't want to throw a dragon upper cut to the chops of some alien with a giant, electronic boxing glove?

Though I rarely take powerfists myself, I completely agree with this line of reasoning. If you have the points sitting around it might be worthwhile to give your tactical squad the added flexibility of taking down a wounded Fex or making it easier to take down a vehicle in HtH. You must be disciplined though to not use the fist as the impetus to throw your tactical squad into a big combat, especially against a dedicated HtH unit who is untouched.

Meltabombs would do it yea, but krak grenades usually just dont cut it, hit on a 6 glance on a 5, its usually enough to keep you locked up and not shooting for 2-3 turns.

Krak grenades rock against dreadnaughts... First I need to roll a six to hit then another six to glance then another six to immobilize it. Meltabombs you still need to roll a six to hit... They are both at best a desparate measure versus walkers.

As a CSM player I can agree PF's are pretty essential... depending.

Like others said, diff squads fill different roles. Like when I run khorne, course I give em a PF! no other way to run em. When I run normal CSM's I RARELY give them PF's because they normally run around and melta things, and typically the champion in the squad will die as a sacrifice for a GD. However, plague marines I always try and PF them because most things rarely can kill them, so I get a lotta PF pewage.

Its all about thinking tactically; does your squad need the pf for its role? will it benefit more from just a power weapon? My buddy runs a PF in all of his tac squads and it normally serves him pretty well. Even if the squad is gonna die, 2 PF attacks against things like termis, MC's, named chars, etc. can at least put some damage down.

CSM don't have ATSKNF and so don't want to lose combat. They also all have 2CCW's. So you usually/always want a powerfist or power weapon with CSM.

Ive heard the whole "well i didnt take upgrade x because that unit shoots/assaults and if the opposite of what its supposed to do happens i have counter attacks." These people lose. I take power fists for the same reason i take combi weapons. They give me an extra bit of insurance. The competition quality must be extremely low if you can insure your shooty units just shoot or your assaulty units just assault.

The man who wins battles often isnt the one who uses the best tactics, but the one who has planned for everything that can go wrong to go wrong. Sun Tzu said something to the effect of preparing for battle is more effective then what actually happens at the battle. Sure you have counter assault units, and what not. But if someone is running 6 or 7 MCs in a nid list you better have quite a bit of TH/SS terminators, because 5 or even 10 likely wont stop them. And MC>dread in hand to hand any day. So that MC moves up to my tac squad, ill shoot it, take a good 3 wounds off, and then it assaults. I only have to take 2 more wounds off to kill it, something much more likely with a fist.

Today I had to kill a devilfish in a game. I had tac marines with combi melta and power fist, that extra melta let me immobilize the thing, and the fist killed it. Another combat squads fist let me insta kill a tau commander. I probably would have lost combat if i didnt have any special weapons. So that 25 point upgrade let me take out a 100+ point character who would have mauled my squad in hand to hand otherwise. Yesterday I had a tac squad lose all but the sargeant and a bolter to space wolves, that sarge insta killed Njal the storm caller, and though i lost the squad, they made up their kill points, made up their game points. 25 points to take out a 245 character in one round. Sure i could have hypothetically stopped his crusader from getting close enough, but I didnt.

If you want an army of specialists run eldar. My seer council charges, my dragons blow up tanks, my war walkers kill infantry, my wave serpents take objectives. I love my marines for the fact i can rely on the humble tac squad to ALWAYS be able to contribute to the battle. Not true if I need hand to hand assistance against terminators with my dragons, or if my war walkers need to stop a land raider.

Finally, i played against a kid once who only ran plasma guns and heavy bolters in his marine squads. His idea was they are only shooting, why bother with the fist. He wasnt happen when two units of outflanking war walkers shot up a predator and a land speeder squadron, he didnt have effective anti tank, and the walkers finished off both tac squads in hand to hand.

So please, dont take your fists. That means my shooting has one less assault unit i need to stop. Along with the fact my characters are no longer getting IK in hand to hand, my walkers are practically immune etc. Ill enjoy the free win, because you chose to rely on 'tactics' without making the obvious choice of insuring yourself against every eventuality.

@timmah. Like I have said, ATSKNF is only good in the enemies deployment zone. I tend to drop 30 tac marines down in my deployment zone and plink away with lascannons and meltas. If i run, im off the table. Id rather not use it.

Timmah wrote:CSM don't have ATSKNF and so don't want to lose combat. They also all have 2CCW's. So you usually/always want a powerfist or power weapon with CSM.

This is true. Even if I had ATSKNF I'd still not wanna lose, fearless saves are the suck :(

@Eidolon

I agree.

Whilst ATSKNF is amazing and certainly have its uses, theres been more than one situation where I _dont_ want to lose the combat.

Most of the time I dont understand the "I want to lose this combat" idea. Most of the time I'd rather win, make them take fearless wounds or run away or maybe even sweep them.

I take powerfists on my sergeants when I have extra 25p that I dont have a better use for.

Exactly. The average roll on 2d6 is 7. So ill chase after you, stay within 6, but barely. You likely move out of 12 inch, enjoy not shooting. And i will park a wave serpent/razorback or whatever within 6 to keep you running. I have seen ATSKNF work out a few times, but rarely. And then theres the issue of getting caught. If you are fighting Yriel in hand to hand and dont have a fist you arent going anywhere. Initiative 7 means you need at least a 5 to get away, thats if he isnt accompanyed by warlocks. Now if you have a fist, I suddenly have to worry about my 155 point wrecking machine getting KOed by some joker with an overgrown hand. Its another threat.