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I find 1 per 500 pts sufficient honestly depends on which list im running

My default answer is 6. Then again, that consists of either six small packs of Grey Hunters, or three 10 man squads of Blood Angel Assault Marines (who can combat squad to give me six scoring units), so I'm very much in the vein of loading up on Troops and having them do the heavy lifting for my army.

For armies with less capable Troop choices, I would go with the "1 per 500 + 1" rule.

If you are playing space marines... 2

If your opponents take the advice above and take 6 scoring units (and they're not orks or __wing) you'll mop the floor with their inferior units. If they are orks or ___wing, then having 6 tactical squads or 6 platoons will screw you over so bad that you'll be worried about being tabled, not capturing objectives.

2 full tacticals or 2 scout squads will combat squad into 4. You don't need to take them all, just a couple and contest the rest.

3+ scoring units that aren't on bikes will end your battle before it starts

Lobukia wrote:If you are playing space marines... 2

If your opponents take the advice above and take 6 scoring units (and they're not orks or __wing) you'll mop the floor with their inferior units. If they are orks or ___wing, then having 6 tactical squads or 6 platoons will screw you over so bad that you'll be worried about being tabled, not capturing objectives.

2 full tacticals or 2 scout squads will combat squad into 4. You don't need to take them all, just a couple and contest the rest.

3+ scoring units that aren't on bikes will end your battle before it starts

I lol'd.

I've found six 5-Man units in transports to be ideal at 2k points, and 4+ to work alright at 1500.

In most armies, troops supply you with vehicles, cheap meltas, and the ability to control objectives. And if you are playing most of the newer armies, they are actually pretty good as well. When i write a list, i generally start with what 6 troops i want to bring. If you could take more than 6, i would probably think about it, lol.

If you only have 2, chances are the enemy will just kill them and almost auto-win.

I always run 6 squads of 5 grey hunters with wolf guards attached riding in rhinos and have never had anyone "mop the floor with me", have only lost a few games over the last 2 years playing SW, and can't remember ever actually being tabled, so while i may not be an "expert," i can attest that bringing troops in large numbers to being very competitive. And, if you look at any other competitive lists/webistes about competitive 40k, you will find that most others agree.

Spidey0804 wrote:I can run Scoring units up to 20 models in a single unit. When you say 4 units are you talking of putting 20 scoring bodies in 4 transports or would 40 scoring bodies in 2 units still work?

Most scoring units are 5 man in a SMU style with GKs being 3 man. You can stretch 40 scoring models the length of the board if you need to.

I'm looking at it from a unit perspective, not the number of bodies.

For Seize Ground, you have D3+2 objectives which yields an average of 4 locations that need to be captured or contested. C&C has 2 and Annihilation has none. Regardless of the number of objectives, you need to hold at least 1 while having the ability to deny your opponent the others (between 1 and 4). So, at the absolute minimum you need 1 scoring unit. Because the standard FOC requires 2 troops, that base is covered.

The underlying question here is: what more is "necessary"? If you only have 2 troops in a mid size game, then they are going to be a prime target... but that *may* not matter.

Assuming you take the bare minimum, there are various ways to help increase their survivability. If they are fast (DE) then you could reserve them on transports. Marines could be in drop pods. Nids could use Tervigons as a scoring unit delivery mechanism... (risky, yes, but certainly one tactic).

jcd386 wrote:

Lobukia wrote:If you are playing space marines... 2

If your opponents take the advice above and take 6 scoring units (and they're not orks or __wing) you'll mop the floor with their inferior units. If they are orks or ___wing, then having 6 tactical squads or 6 platoons will screw you over so bad that you'll be worried about being tabled, not capturing objectives.

2 full tacticals or 2 scout squads will combat squad into 4. You don't need to take them all, just a couple and contest the rest.

3+ scoring units that aren't on bikes will end your battle before it starts

I lol'd.

I've found six 5-Man units in transports to be ideal at 2k points, and 4+ to work alright at 1500.

In most armies, troops supply you with vehicles, cheap meltas, and the ability to control objectives. And if you are playing most of the newer armies, they are actually pretty good as well. When i write a list, i generally start with what 6 troops i want to bring. If you could take more than 6, i would probably think about it, lol.

If you only have 2, chances are the enemy will just kill them and almost auto-win.

I always run 6 squads of 5 grey hunters with wolf guards attached riding in rhinos and have never had anyone "mop the floor with me", have only lost a few games over the last 2 years playing SW, and can't remember ever actually being tabled, so while i may not be an "expert," i can attest that bringing troops in large numbers to being very competitive. And, if you look at any other competitive lists/webistes about competitive 40k, you will find that most others agree.

He said "Space Marines" and you are talking about "Grey Hunters". While Tactical Marines are arguably one of of the worst troops in the entire game Grey hunters are quite possibly THE best troop unit in the game. As a space marine player 2 full tactical squads is all you should bring to a 2k game, let alone a 1.5k game.

3 squads of 30x boys on foot with 3x big shootas and a powerclaw nob is the right answer.

Even if you're playing tau.

Depends on the army.

Horde armies do well to have as many as possible. Things like Craftworld Eldar usually have the minimum because their best units aren't in troops.

Regardless of the army, you still want to have three to four Scoring units at 1,500pts. The prime differences are whether you take units you expect to kill things (Space Marines, mechanized Eldar, Dark Eldar, Orks, and Chaos tend towards this approach) or space-filler units that sit on objectives while all the elites go off and do the hard work (Necrons, Tau, 'Nids, and Daemons tend towards this approach).

Never, ever take the minimum number of small Troops units to save more points for bigger stuff. Your enemy will ignore the bigger stuff, blow your Troops units to hell, and sit there grinning at your struggles to bring the game from a loss to a draw.

Taking too few can be an issue, regardless of how good the rest of your army is. If you are planning to use two small troops choices to hold two objectives and try to just contest the rest with your other units, you need to watch out that your opponent doesn't simply seek out your troops and wipe them off the board. Then you get 0 chance to hold an objective and your opponent only needs 1 uncontested. I have done that to my opponents before when they went too heavy on elites and too light on troop choices. The 1 per 500 (maybe +1 more) is a fine general rule.

I find that my Eldar can get by quite well with just two troop units at 1500, so long as one of them is an unit of 6 Guardian Jetbikes. The bikes are so fast and cover so much board space they can usually capture 3 objectives. And, since they're so poor at killing things, I never feel the temptation to expose them and get them all killed so I almost always have a full unit at the end of the game.

I can usually barely manage to get by at 1500 if my two troop units are both 10-man Dire Avenger squads in Wave Serpents. It's a bit dicey, though, and in objective missions I really have to protect them. At 2000 with two Dire Avenger squads and the Jetbikes I never feel that I'm lacking troops.

you get get by with just 2 troop choices but the troops have to be equiped to survive 5+ turns. For Marines this means a 10 man squad in a rhino prefereably in cover. For eldar it means either really fast units, large units or both.

For those that are advocating lots of MSU, there are pros and cons of each. Sure in BA and SW your MSU properly equiped are pretty strong and you get access to razorbacks. Razorspam is a good build but at the same time lots of Av 11 armour = lots of relatively easy kill points for your opponent.