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Freman Bloodglaive wrote:
Tactical marines are a bad unit. Unfortunately they're a bad unit that you have little choice about taking. Scouts lack the marine armour and transport options. Bikes require you to take a biker Captain so have their own tax (it is a pretty awesome tax though). Space Marines are a mid tier codex, and the tactical tax is one of the reasons for that.

Tactical marines are not a bad unit. They are better than just about any other troops choice in the game, overpowered other chapter specific marine codecies not withstanding. No they are not assault marines. They are also not devastators. So why would you expect them work like it? The fact that they are not as good as specialists doesn't make them bad or useless. the simple fact is that a 4 Ws on a charge will cause trouble for all but the assault specialists out there. The fact they *can* have a special and/or heavy weapon in their unit gives them adaptability against all different kinds of targets. An army made up entirely of tactical squads would do quite well against most armies except for other chapter marine lists full of specialists. The simple fact is that your "bad unit" is still better than some army's "good units".

Sure you can complain about what tactical troops are not, but your closed view of them isn't the only view.

The only thing that makes the space marine codex a mid tier codex is because there is zero attempts made to balance any books at all. Even the space marines, with a baseline codex to work from are completely unbalanced with each other. That is what makes space marines a mid-tier book not tactical marines.

Skriker

Grey Hunters, Ork Boyz, Necron Warriors and Immortals, IG Vet Squads, and Tervigons are all way better than Tacticals. They aren't as bad as Eldar or Tau options but they are far from the best troop choices out there. If somebody lined up with 1500 points in Tactical Squads I would be happy to face them since you could either overpower them with long ranged weaponry or beat them up in assault very easily.

No such thing as too many troops. Tactical Squads are the backbone of any Space Marine army. They are resiliant, hard hitting, and most importantly can secure objectives.

Any army needs a solid core of troops. Tyranids need plenty of Termagaunts and Hormagaunts, Orks require large mobs of Boyz, and Necrons must have huge amounts of Warriors, or possibly Immortals.

I agree, the more the merrier! I have 7 tac squads painted up which I can use in big games but will usually use 3 tac squads kitted with flamers and missile launchers or heavy bolters. Having that many mean I can field a range of heavy options depending on the foe.

i am of the theroy that the more troops you have on field, the better. you need troops to claim objectives and win the game. they also act as your backbone, and do the majority of the work in your army. i personally try to spend about 50% of my armies points on troop selections. if you can change what counts as troops and get bikes, termies etc as troops then awsome. otherwise a tac squad with a razorback or drop pod can do a pretty reliable job. obviously back them up with some heavy hitters. but here is how i reccommend running them:

- the free missile launcher is win. kraks for vehicles or ID stuff, and frags for troops and swarms.
- the cheap plasma or meltagun is also decent. combat squad if you want, 4 marines and the missile in one group the rest in the other.
- dont bother with power fists or power weapons on the seargent. seriously... if they get into combat with a dedicated assault unit, the srg wont turn things around. he wont make a loss into a win, and probally wont make a tie into a win either. and vrs other units, having s/t 4 and 3+ armor is respectable. save the points for other stuff.

just my 2 bits.

If you ignore the fact that they are scoring units (two missions override this, as does one special character), tactical marines are really not that great. They're not bad, but points are better spent elsewhere.

Think about how many objectives there are on average in all the missions put together. Do you REALLY need 4-6 scoring units? You don't need to capture every single objective unless you massively screwed up, like losing First Blood, losing Warlord, losing Line Breaker, and not getting any of those for yourself. As long as your opponent doesn't have an objective, that's one less VP you have to worry about, so if you deny enough objectives, that's one less objective you need to capture. And denial units are ALWAYS going to be much better than tactical squads.

If you don't use scouts, the best amount is 20-30.
If you do use scouts, never go above 20.

I would argue that 2-3 Tactical Squads per FOC is ideal. In everything except for Kill Points games, each model you bring should, from a fundamental standpoint, be doing one of two things, scoring or protecting your scoring models. Protecting scoring models is done one of two ways. The first is the role played by transports and screening units, they keep your enemy from shooting at your scoring models for as long as possible. The second way of protecting your scoring models is to remove threats which can harm them before they are able to. For example, a squad of 5 melta sternguard in a drop pod which comes in on turn one and blows up a Leman Russ is protecting your tactical squads by removing a gun that can tear them to shreds from the table. A Thunderfire Cannon which takes care of a Guardsmen squad sitting on an objective so that your tacs can move in and capture it is protecting your scoring models. In an ideal world, your scoring models would be able to protect themselves against all types of attacks, since they are rarely able to do so we must often bring other units in to support them. Tactical squads are at least a good start as they are very strong defensively. Being T4 with a 3+ save is quite good, and they have access to strong, cheap dedicated transports to provide them with even further protection. However, they aren't the best at removing things that do threaten them, as they can't bring very many good guns (yes you do get one heavy and one specialist weapon per 10 man, but even if you take max tactical squads, 6 ML and 6 MG aren't going to hold off the enemy army, especially when they have over 1,500 points to spend on toys). That, more than any other reason, is why you normally see the number of tactical squads cap out at 2 or 3. You need to spend the points on other things to ensure that your tactical squads are not only alive at the end of the game, but are actually able to move into a scoring position.