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Seconded.

Don't listen, OP.

Space Marines are badass!

i second that motion and thanks to the super awsomeness of sphess mureens and by the authority of the Adeptus Gamus Workshopious bypass the voting process and declare 1/2 of all players must buy Sphess Mureens as at least one(1) of their armies.

It would certainly cut down on the complaining.

So I've never played as space marines, but I've destroyed them enough to know that one of your problems is, in fact, your list.

You're playing a 4th ed. list that spends as few points as possible on troops, and then spending the rest on really expensive stuff because it has more power than tac squads. Without troops, you're going to have a really hard time in 2/3ds of the games you play. Without lots of units, you're going to find that you're often not going to have enough power in any localised spot, or you're never going to have the right unit in the right place at the right time. This list is very easy to divide and conquer (and if you ever face against a basilisk happy guard player, you'll find this out really fast). Low unit counts constrain you in movement and deployment, and good players can work around these constraints, but newer players definitely can't.

As such, the first piece of advice I can give you is to rebalance your list. For example, get rid of those devestators and turn it into a third tac squad and give everybody rhinos. This will give you more to work with and allow you to actually have options out in the field.

The second thing I've noticed about newer players is that they tend to get scared, and when they get scared, they abandon their tactics and start doing stupid stuff. One of the ways around this is to come up with a few basic strategies and always follow them to the letter, regardless of casualties, or seemingly strange or disarming stuff your opponent does. Before you get a knack for the game, you're not going to be able to do well thinking on your feet. As such, you just have to ignore your opponents' attempts to make you do just that. Obviously just sticking to a set-piece attack every game for the rest of your gaming life will be bad, but it's going to be better for you starting out. I mean, you can't get a feel for how to lead a grand assault without actually seeing a few go all the way through (regardless of the result). Running and hiding when you start taking casualties isn't going to be that educational.

As for the race-specific stuff, I can't give you a whole lot of advice, not having played marines, but I don know a bit of their weaknesses upon which generalities can be made.

Against orks, it is easy for your choppy-heavy stuff to beat their serious assault units (I've seen lightning claw terminators do very unfortunate things to armored nob squads before). While your line units aren't going to be as choppy against their line units, you have BOLTERS. When that 30-mob of boyz bears down on you and you step forward and unload two full tac squads of bolters into the mob, that mob is suddenly cut in half. 30 boyz waaaaaghing a single tac squad is scary. 15 boyz waaaughing 20 space marines is not. Right now your list is nearly entirely devoid of good anti-horde. Freeing up points from your heavier stuff for more bolters and flamers will help you a lot.

Against tau, obviously they are out-mobilizing you. The reason that tau have so much mobility is that they're SO vulnerable to aggressive players. If you get in their face (and especially if you get into close combat), their units will start folding like a hand of jack-high. They are paper tigers, which means they do a LOT of damage so long as you don't get in close. The way you're describing it, it seems like your opponent's plan is working. Under no circumstances should a space marine player ever run and hide from a tau player. Those MSM stealth suits are a bother, but if you charge at them, and flush them out of cover, and properly manhandle them, you'll do fine. Just as when you face off against necron, the strategy is to desperately try to make them phase out instead of focusing on what's really doing the damage, likewise, the way to beat tau is to desperately try to get them into close combat, regardless of the casualties you must take along the way. For this end, rhinos will definitely help.

Against CSM, I have no idea, as I've only played against them twice, and that was in the old rules edition and their old codex.

So yeah, get more troops, get more rhinos, and play more aggressively, even if you have to conform to rigid battle plans to make it so that you don't start getting phased by what your opponents do.

Get some more tactical squads as you need to ability to take more objectives and they are good at almost every battlefield role so are worth their points. You could change there configurations for every battle.

Dashofpepper wrote:Friends don't let friends start playing MEQ armies.

Switch to Orks.

*BAP!* No! Down boy!

Dashofpepper may have been joking, but there is a hint of truth in what he says. You might want to ask your buddies if you can play with their armies occasionally (swap with them or some such) as you can learn quite a bit about how they need to work that way.

As to general advice versus your stated opponents: Tau dislike drop podding dreadnoughts or other fast units that get right in their face, Orks are better only when they control the terms of the engagement (i.e. try to outnumber/equal them on a point on the table and you'll tend to win every fight there, this is good advice for SM versus almost any opponent).

Jack

I second the motion for more tactical squads. I won my first three games with marines [back in 3rd ed] but then didn't win for a year. I played bigger and bigger games, and I added terminators, assault squads, predators, vindicator, devastators....

I finally started winning again when I added more tactical squads.

Mathhammer again: 10 tactical marines is what, about 160 points? If they move to within 12" of orks they'll fire 20 shots, 14ish hit, 7 wound. Heavy Bolter devastators would fire at long range 12 shots, 8 hit, 5 wound. The heavy bolter devastators cost about 135, but you're only at half the number of guys, they can't take objectives, and they can't do squat in assault.

If you're specifically looking for something to throttle orks, a thunderfire cannon does WONDERS. Fire the cover-ignoring shot and watch them crumple. Firing your missle launchers as frag missles would work well too. I say replace one of the dreads with a thunderfire cannon, and the terminators with as many more tactical squads as you can buy. Flamer/missle launcher is probably a better bet than flamer/heavy bolter, as a frag missle can potentially hit more orks than a heavy bolter [max 3], has a longer range, and can also kill tanks if you need them to. Rhinos are also nice. Being able to redirect your troops is a nice thing.

Also beware spreading out too much. As another poster said, deploying in "refused flank" style where all your army is on one side is the way to go when the enemy outnumbers you. The orks have to either SQUEEZE into the side of their deployment, which is a GREAT thing for your thunderfire/missles/vindicator, or they have to spread out across their deployment zone, which means that their army is coming in piecemeal, so you can spend a turn or so focusing on one squad, then the next, then the next as each one gets near.

Also, to save yourself some valuable fire: Don't think you absolutely have to kill every single ork before he gets to you. Once a squad is down to about 5 or so, you can probably risk leaving it. Odds are when they charge you that you'll kill a couple before they get to swing, and then it really comes down to how well the nob hits you. Plus, while they're fearless at 11+ models, they go down to Ld 7 of the nob once they're below 7. This means winning in cc by even 1 makes them take a Ld 6 test, and improves the odds they'll run away.

The drop pod idea for the dreadnought is also a good one. Deepstriking on the far side of the board away from your refused flank and hosing a few orks with a heavy flamer may not seem like it does much, but if that squad moves over and charges it, that delays them a VERY good portion of time. Also, only the nob can damage the dreadnought, none of the boyz can hurt it. He's got good odds, don't get me wrong - but if he fails to blow it up, it'll get them stuck in combat. He'll do a number on them too. Assault cannon + heavy flamer can kill like 7 or more if they're packed in tightly. When they charge he could kill a couple too. If he wins combat, then they take wounds because they're fearless. Last another round, kill 2-3 more... now when they finally get out of combat, they've gone from 30 to about 20, a much easier number to deal with.

The average horde ork player comes with cover due to the KFF. So where the devestators line up doesn't really matter. That is why I prefer the heavy flamers on the land speeders or wirlwinds, or my new favorite the techmarine with the thunderfire cannon. All can ignore cover saves.

This thread is great in that it focuses on the enemy armies as much as your own. I think "information is power" is very applicable to 40k. Play games, watch games, read reports, read reviews and stay in the know. The hardest part in starting out is the total inability to predict since you don't know all the rules/abilities. Even knowing the rulebook doesn't help, you need to know every codex you face as well.

I started collecting alone (not a bunch of buddies going out and learning the game). When you face some players they will just laugh at your mistakes and then tear you a new one with their uber-unit that didn't look like it had FC and all power weapons. Even worse are the guys who use proxies and just say: This is a command squad/tervigon/other weird term that definitely wasn't in the rule book. Thanks for that.

Learn what people are using and if they aren't forthcoming then ask to see their codex. Never feel bad about asking for time to figure out what the hell that 350pt illegible scribble on their hand-written army list can do.

The next step for you army would be to post ideas of lists on websites. Forget the "Space Marines are awesome. Pew Pew." glitter GW throws in your eyes and let some hard-core list people tear your ideas to shreds. The result is almost always worth the abuse.

Don't give up hope!

There are a few questions that I think should be asked before too much criticism should be taken or given.

1) do the other players use generalized lists, or do they modify their lists to fight yours. If they do then it will be harder to win no matter what your relative experience levels

2) if you both take generalized lists, does his list happen to be the rock to your scissors (it doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does)? Or is it that he is using a tournament level list and I am not?

3) as many have said, learn the capabilities of your opponents units, their strengths and weakness. Do your opponents know your units better than you do?

4) After gaining experience you should be learning how to get the charge on the opponent, can you do it consistently?

now after you have answered all of these questions the answers are probably crap. However reading these threads and playing games will help you a lot with these 4 questions. Post up some lists, have people who play a lot more than you tell you what you have done wrong when making it. Perhaps even more importantly ask your opponents after the game what you might have done better. I know when we introduced one guy to our group he usually underestimated or overestimated certain units which caused his downfall.

My roomate is in the same boat as you, he simply can't beat me, some tips.

1. make sure you aren't using too much terrain, we were victim of this for the longest time without realizing this, against hordes, if he's always getting a cover save, its like playing against a million marines instead of a million paper thin orcs.

2. Focus your fire, don't spread it out, you want to force morale checks and at a certain point their LD drops ( I think its 11? iirc)

3. PLAY AGGRESSIVE, pepper them at long range, and then take the initiative and "charge" (not literally) a rhino can drive up, unload your marines onto the edge of cover, and let them all rapid fire at close range, when you get charged you are going first because the orcs have to move through the cover, thats like 3 rounds of long range bolter fire worth of wounds in 1 turn. Space marines aren't a gunline army, at some point you have to commit.

4. Make sure he's assaulting properly. With big orcs squads you have to do it 2 ways, one is to clump all your guys together and become template/blast fodder, the other is spreading them out and the rear end of your group is NEVER going to reach the front lines in the first round, new players are almost always guilty of measuring the assault and then just piling everyone into a big mass, this give cc swarmy armies a huge advantage.

5. FIREPOWER. Speeders are your friends, if you can protect them they can put out a grievous amount of firepower, remember they can move and shoot 1 gun, some other things that carry a ton of firepower for the cost are predators and to a lesser extent terminators. For a little more than cost of your 2 dreadnaughts you could have 6 speeders put out 12X3... 36 heavy bolter shots, PER TURN.

6. Don't play his game, engage on your terms. Force him to make hard choices, is he going to double back and attack those speeders chewing him up from behind or continue towards the objective? If you manage to potshot the powerklaw in one of those squads or he doesn't run them, tie up the squad for the entire game with a dreadnought they cannot hurt.

7. Tank shock, Pin, do whatever it takes and make sure he is taking those morale checks as often as possible, all it takes is one fail and you can escort that unit off the table, one failed morale check can be devastating.

Read this tactica in its entirety, then read it again.

unbeliever87 wrote:Read this tactica in its entirety, then read it again.

Oh god... no.

That "tactica" basically boils down to this:

Move backwards sometimes, when it's to your advantage.

But he just uses bunches of pseudo-tsun-tzu-BS to make it sound like he knows wtf he's talking about.

Moving backwards when it's to your advantage is good advice

To a new player it's a fantastic guide. Most new players look at a game with tunnel vision, without really planning ahead or looking to consider what their opponents next move will be. The great part of this tactica is it makes you think about the game as a whole, rather than just individual turns or actions. The whole 'Beatdown vs Control' is a bit of a spank and is mostly intuitive, but it's still good advice.

It's coherent and well thought out. If more people put this much thought into the advice that they gave on forums there'd be a whole lot less stupidity on the internet.

It's not going to change my playstyle much, but it was an interesting read. Oh, and I'm a water type I guess.

Comparing 40k to elemental themes = fail.

This isn't MTG. I'd like to think it's more complex than that. I don't think that article is helpful any more than "The Art of War" is. A lot of generalization and speculation that you should know anyway, if you are a competitive type.

Dash has a point. I play both Space Marines and Orks. My best way to sum it up is playing Space Marines is like playing chess and playing Orks is like checkers."

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:Comparing 40k to elemental themes = fail.

This isn't MTG. I'd like to think it's more complex than that. I don't think that article is helpful any more than "The Art of War" is. A lot of generalization and speculation that you should know anyway, if you are a competitive type.

Exactly. People need specific advice, as that's what actually helps them get better.

what willydstyle just said x2

general advice is, well, general advice. without knowing specific instances one can't give specific advice.

there are some things that are bad ideas and some things that are good ideas.

the problem is 95% of questions deal with the BIG grey area between good and bad ideas.


the best way to get better at this game is through trial and error. you say your army got tabled because your opponents mob of boyz caused 38 wounds on your 5 TH/SS termies and you failed 5 saves allowing the boyz to charge 2 tactical squads you had sitting on your objective next turn?

now you know that TH/SS termies don't kill boyz really well, you somthing in that game. How NOT to use TH/SS terminators.


here is somthing all players(not just newbies) should ask themselves every time they lose(or somthing doesn't go to plan)

Did i learn anything?

if the answer is yes then it doesn't matter if you lost. you learned somthing that will make you a better player.

if the answer is no then you obviously missed somthing. there is always somthing to new to learn, even if it's that the new guy in the club is a TFG.

It wasn't really General advice in that tactica though, was it?

It was written for GK players.

and poorly at that.

the GK tactica here on dakka is way better

I mean, to a really new player that would be good advice.

Anyone who had been playing for any amount of time would know all that stuff anyway(I hope.)

BrPrometheus wrote:I have found that the difference between good players and great players is that the great players do not make mistakes. Ever.

Truth, sometimes I notice my movement mistakes in my shooting phase

There is a lot of good advice here.

It sounds like you like to win so as a life-long Ork player I can't help you much!

I can tell you vehicles are fun to paint and easier to move around.

You should get one of those deathstorm drop pods from forgeworld and plop it down right in the middle of a group of orks. You could probaly kill quite a few before the orks managed to blow it up.

Spellbound wrote:I second the motion for more tactical squads. I won my first three games with marines [back in 3rd ed] but then didn't win for a year. I played bigger and bigger games, and I added terminators, assault squads, predators, vindicator, devastators....

I finally started winning again when I added more tactical squads.

Mathhammer again: 10 tactical marines is what, about 160 points? If they move to within 12" of orks they'll fire 20 shots, 14ish hit, 7 wound. Heavy Bolter devastators would fire at long range 12 shots, 8 hit, 5 wound. The heavy bolter devastators cost about 135, but you're only at half the number of guys, they can't take objectives, and they can't do squat in assault.

If you're specifically looking for something to throttle orks, a thunderfire cannon does WONDERS. Fire the cover-ignoring shot and watch them crumple. Firing your missle launchers as frag missles would work well too. I say replace one of the dreads with a thunderfire cannon, and the terminators with as many more tactical squads as you can buy. Flamer/missle launcher is probably a better bet than flamer/heavy bolter, as a frag missle can potentially hit more orks than a heavy bolter [max 3], has a longer range, and can also kill tanks if you need them to. Rhinos are also nice. Being able to redirect your troops is a nice thing.

Also beware spreading out too much. As another poster said, deploying in "refused flank" style where all your army is on one side is the way to go when the enemy outnumbers you. The orks have to either SQUEEZE into the side of their deployment, which is a GREAT thing for your thunderfire/missles/vindicator, or they have to spread out across their deployment zone, which means that their army is coming in piecemeal, so you can spend a turn or so focusing on one squad, then the next, then the next as each one gets near.

Also, to save yourself some valuable fire: Don't think you absolutely have to kill every single ork before he gets to you. Once a squad is down to about 5 or so, you can probably risk leaving it. Odds are when they charge you that you'll kill a couple before they get to swing, and then it really comes down to how well the nob hits you. Plus, while they're fearless at 11+ models, they go down to Ld 7 of the nob once they're below 7. This means winning in cc by even 1 makes them take a Ld 6 test, and improves the odds they'll run away.

The drop pod idea for the dreadnought is also a good one. Deepstriking on the far side of the board away from your refused flank and hosing a few orks with a heavy flamer may not seem like it does much, but if that squad moves over and charges it, that delays them a VERY good portion of time. Also, only the nob can damage the dreadnought, none of the boyz can hurt it. He's got good odds, don't get me wrong - but if he fails to blow it up, it'll get them stuck in combat. He'll do a number on them too. Assault cannon + heavy flamer can kill like 7 or more if they're packed in tightly. When they charge he could kill a couple too. If he wins combat, then they take wounds because they're fearless. Last another round, kill 2-3 more... now when they finally get out of combat, they've gone from 30 to about 20, a much easier number to deal with.

In an objective based game place most of the objectives on 1 side of the map, and choose to go 2nd and concentrate all your forces on one side of the map. A horde army can not concentrate their forces in the same way a SM army can. Also when doing a refused flank tactic against orks place most of the terrain on the side of the table that your army is not going to be on, thus forcing the orks to fight out in the open without cover.

The thunderfire can also fire a round that puts orks in difficult terrain for their next turn, which will really slow down ork movement. When dealing with 2 large units of orks have the thunderfire slow down 1 unit of orks, and the rest of your army focus firepower on the other unit of orks.

willydstyle wrote:Learn the rules well. Play the game with a rulebook open at your side, and any time you have a question about how something works, look it up immediately.

This is how you get the basis for good tactics, is by learning the rules upon which these tactics are based.

After you've got the main rules down well, start learning the different codices. These rules are not as important to know in detail, but it is very important to know the capabilities of your enemies as this knowledge will inform your decisions in the game.

This is the best advice. In my opinion 40k has a steep learning curve. You can't typically expect to start winning right off the bat. While many people consider SM any easy army to play I think they require a fundamentally sound understanding of the basic tactics. It is a good army to start with since SM in general have good stats and access to all the right tools. If you want to start winning on a regular basis just keep playing and learn. You will find some good advice on the Internet but it is never a substitute for playing the game.

I remember when I first started to play. I won a total of two games during the first six months and it was very frustrating for me. I am a very competitive person so I stuck with it and eventually started to win some games. I think it took me a couple of years to finally win an RTT and that seemed like a big accomplishment at the time. I constantly poured over the rules and read every codex front to back. This was back before the Internet so I had to learn everything through experience. If you stick with it you'll start to win more.

List building, strategy & tactics are the three cornerstones to winning. First focus on building a balanced list, don't design your list solely to beat orks or Tau. I almost exclusively played against orks when I was first starting and I remember all those arse lickings I was on the receiving end. There are just so many and they are pretty darn fast so they can swamp you quickly. What you have to do is learn to identify their inherent weaknesses and exploit them.

One thing about SM in general is their troops are pretty much blah. Here is my quick and dirty advice in regard to your current list. First your tactical squads should have power fist as it makes them decent in close combat. I would swap the heavy bolters and flamers for lascannons and plasmaguns. These squads should definitely have rhinos, it can make a huge difference! I am not sure if you are running tactical terminators or assault terminators. If you are running standard terminators then take cyclone missile launchers. The inclusion of these heavy weapons will help you to pop trukkz and battlewagons before they move into charge range. You have to slow down the orks. I would also run a couple of landspeeder Tornadoes for the mobile fire support. One of my philosphies is that every SM army should have a landraider and this will give you a couple more lascannons plus a pintle mounted multi-melta. I would drop the dreadnaughts... They have a low number of attacks in close combat plus they are slow and easy to destroy. I think your list should have one more troop choice. 30 tactical Marines is a solid staple for any an Space Marine army. Finally why not add a thunderfire cannon? It's cheap and very potent versus hordes.

So those are some basic tips from a veteran SM player. You can learn everything you need to know about the game playing SM.

: )

G

Monster Rain wrote:I mean, to a really new player that would be good advice.

Anyone who had been playing for any amount of time would know all that stuff anyway(I hope.)

I think 11 games in total would classify the OP as a really new player. You have to learn these basics from somewhere!

A couple of Land Speeder Typhoons would work wonders here I think. I take one in pretty much every game I run and it earns back it's points almost every game, very versatile.

unbeliever87 wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:I mean, to a really new player that would be good advice.

Anyone who had been playing for any amount of time would know all that stuff anyway(I hope.)

I think 11 games in total would classify the OP as a really new player. You have to learn these basics from somewhere!

Absolutely.

It can't hurt to read it, and the tactica does make some pretty good points. It's certainly more constructive than some of the posts I've seen in this thread that basically told the OP to learn to play. *facepalm*