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It's a question of how many points you're willing to spend on ablative wounds and whether or not you consider those extra wounds to be a good value.

Personally, I'm currently finding they're not worth the expense. You can get about 4 minsize marine units in razorbacks with the good, 35 point upgrades for about the same as 3 full sized units in rhinos in armies of 1750 and more. Those 4 extra las/plas/AC volleys not only protect your transports by suppressing enemy antitank fire, but also kill the enemy while they do it, which IMO is better than just being able to soak up more wounds.

I don't really have a "meta" since I play at half a dozen places in two states. But it seems to me that if you meet a lot of armies with anti-transport fire, it would be better to have more transports (razorbacks) rather than fewer (rhinos).

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:But he is not playing Space Puppies, is he? So that really isn't relevant. If the game revolved around only killing things rather than taking objectives (66% of games in the standard rulebook are objective based) then I would agree with you.

Well, actually, it is relevant. I'm differentiating between Tactical Squads (average, all-rounder) and Grey Hunters (excellent, assault machines). If the OP is looking for PA bodies, he may as well take the best, or at least be aware that some are better than others. Strangely enough, it's also what OP asked.

Let's break down the standard missions:
1/3 don't require any troops to win.
1/3 only require one troop alive to win, so long as you are contesting the second.
1/3 require one troop alive to win, so long as you are contesting the rest, or have taken down your opponents troops. This is where combat squadding comes in handy, turning 2 troop units into four.

As I said, I'd rather take units that are actually going to kill things. From my point of view, I'm taking the better odds here.

unbeliever87 wrote:Strangely enough, it's also what OP asked.

Sort-of, I only mentioned them because I was trying to list all the MEQs...but that is a good point, Grey Hunters can cause a lot more damage than a tactical squad, I'm not surprised when I see 60 of them in 2000 point lists.

Now all we need is someone to chime-in about plauge marines and we have a thread xD j/k

Continuing on, 3 tacticals is not 500-600 points, It's exactly 480 before any upgrades. (for generic space marines) and I don't really include transports in the cost of the unit, your buying a separate unit/vehicle to ferry the other around. The transport can act on it's own if you want it to, even drop pods get to shoot at what they want.

Good advice so far though.

I agree with the mechanized and I think 30 marines is just about right in 1500+ games.

starbomber109 wrote:
Continuing on, 3 tacticals is not 500-600 points, It's exactly 480 before any upgrades.

And for those 480 pts, you get 3 mediocre heavy weapons + 3 flamers. Not the most awesome way to get firepower. Those 480pts also can't fight well against most of the stuff out there, as they don't have any powerfists/weapons and very few attacks.
I think it is false to not include cost of transport, you are buying it to give them protection and mobility, if you're not, you just like paying 35pts for a stormbolter. So at 480, they have bad mobility and are vulnerable to ordnance etc.

conlusion: 480 pts lets you hold objectives in your own DZ very well - unless the enemy has something fast and choppy

If we add in the obligatory 95pts for transports, you are now better protected, you have the ability to take far away objectives, you can get in rapidfire range etc. You still suck at cc though

So we add in 75pts for powerfists. Now your guys can at least somewhat hold their own.

And because melta is king, we add another 15pts for either melta or other weapon upgrades.

We now hit 665pts to get three useful tactical squads, this is much closer to the real minimum cost IMO. And while this is not a horribly bad way to spend pts, it is a lot of your pts in 1500 tied up in units that still doesn't kill stuff really well. I wouldn't go for that third tactical before 1750+

My 2k vanilla marine list has 2x10 man tac squads and 1 5 man IST squad.

30 marines is the most anyone should take in the 1500-2k range.