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^My thoughts exactly. I saw a GK player at a recent tourny lose 2 dread knights and like 10 grey knights in the first turn before his other two dreadknights and 30 knights came in. He had to huge victories before that, and it completely wrecked him.

I think labmouse's list has potential but not as written. It needs a blob of IG and less tac marines. You could drop the bastion, a talon and raven and add in the requisite blob and a vendetta. I think that would be more efficient overall.

 labmouse42 wrote:
HQ
Librarian w/Force Axe

Troop
10 man TAC squad w/MG + ML
10 man TAC squad w/MG + ML
10 man TAC squad w/MG + ML

Fast Attack
Storm Talon w/SkyHammer ML
Storm Talon w/SkyHammer ML
Storm Talon w/Heavy Bolter

Heavy Support
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles

Fortification
Bastion w/Comm Relay

Army Strategies
* Notice how I did not take rhinos for the 10 man TACs. These can either start in a stormraven or on the board. The idea is you have options depending on what you want to do.
* The librarian will sit in a storm raven and cast "Null Zone" when facing daemons/helldrakes/wraiths/etc.. This gives a large footprint for the AoE of the power
* The bastion is to keep one unit safe while your stuff starts in reserves. AV 14 is extremely hard to dislodge at range. I would combat squad and stick 2 MLs there. One on top, one inside.
* The comm-relay is critical when bringing 6-9 items from reserve. You must be able to bring them all in on turn 2 to maximize your force multipler
* Your storm talons and storm ravens do the heavy lifting. The idea is to drown your opponent in flyers. Take out enemy anti-flyer power, then focus on his ground forces.

I have no doubt that as you play this list, you will need to adopt your strategies. Nothing is ever 'perfect' the first time around. For example, I was 25 points shy of putting the missiles on the final storm talon.
If you want to try it, proxy to start with. Use cardboard cutouts to measure the flyer bases and test it with that. Use a shoebox for your bastion. The idea is to see how it works. It might completely flop, it might be awesome. I would suggest trying 5 proxy games to see. By then you will start to figure it out if its doable.

There are ways to flex the army. You could drop a storm talon and turn a TAC squad to a scout squad, then bring either an ironclad dread or squad of TH/SS termies. Remember the stormtalon is an assault vehicle, so you can drop the TH/SS termies onto a target of oppertunity near the enemy flanks (though you must go into hover mode) This could be a significant advantage.

I think this is a good starting point, but the initial on-field presence is too limited against many lists. For instance a single Sternguard Drop Pod has a fair chance of killing your Bastion and everyone inside, losing you the game instantly. Remember that the Building Damage Table is unforgiving-- 4d6 strength 6 hits to the unit inside the Bastion and the same number of strength 3 hits plus Impact tests for the guys on top? Ouch.

 labmouse42 wrote:
List....

So I have to ask how you get around the reserve rules on pg 124 of the BRB of only having 50% of your list that can reserve be in reserves? Your going to have to have some combo of two of the four from your troops and HQ on the board at turn 1, unless your troops are in dedicated transports... but I have the feeling Fast Attack slots and Heavy Attack Slots are not dedicated transports. Even in you combat squad, you have 7 units, only 3 can be in reserves and that is alot that will be exposed to fire for 2+ turns against possibily the full force of your opponnet.

Mind you I do not own the new flyer codex... did they include rules to get around the reserve rules then? Those /are/ flyers, right?

Yeah, after seeing the new Stormtalon rules, I'd have to say Stormtalons w/ Skyhammer launchers are probably the new go-to Fast Attack Option for Codex: Space Marines.

125pts is pretty much a steal compared to the old version. I'm seriously considering replacing my Landspeeder Squadron with 2 Skyhammer 'Talons. Find somewhere else to invest the other 20pts. maybe drop a few points elsewhere

I modded the list a litte, using IG as allies. The idea was to swap out the bare bones storm talon for a vendetta.

Crazyterran wrote:
Yeah, after seeing the new Stormtalon rules, I'd have to say Stormtalons w/ Skyhammer launchers are probably the new go-to Fast Attack Option for Codex: Space Marines.

125pts is pretty much a steal compared to the old version. I'm seriously considering replacing my Landspeeder Squadron with 2 Skyhammer 'Talons. Find somewhere else to invest the other 20pts. maybe drop a few points elsewhere

Edit : I hear that the most expensive version is 10 points cheaper than before.

 BlkTom wrote:
So I have to ask how you get around the reserve rules on pg 124 of the BRB of only having 50% of your list that can reserve be in reserves?

Flyers do not count for this limit.
Therefore you have the following units, and 50% of them must start on the board.
Librarian
Psyker
10 man TACs
10 man TACs
10 man Vet Squad

That's 5 units. You split up one of the TACs, so you have a total of 6 units. You must start with 3 of them on the board.
Librarian
Psyker
5 man TACs
5 man TACs
10 man TACs
10 man Vet Squad

This is what I place in the bastion for round one.
- 5 man TAC Inside
- 5 man TAC squad on top
- Primarias Psyker

 Kingsley wrote:
I think this is a good starting point, but the initial on-field presence is too limited against many lists. For instance a single Sternguard Drop Pod has a fair chance of killing your Bastion and everyone inside, losing you the game instantly. Remember that the Building Damage Table is unforgiving-- 4d6 strength 6 hits to the unit inside the Bastion and the same number of strength 3 hits plus Impact tests for the guys on top? Ouch.

Lucky for us, we can look at our opponents list ahead of time right? If you see a sternguard drop pod with lots of combi-meltas, deploy your TAC marines on the board. That's the whole idea right? Flexability.

One of the big reasons you want to keep your marines off the board is due to the armies that are very bad matchups. Wraithwing. Dark Eldar Beast Pack of Cheese. Helldrake spam. Those are the units that are extremely dangerous to your marines. Those are the armies where you want to protect yourself as much as possible. If your facing a C:SM list, then you don't need to worry about your opponent wiping the floor with your army so you can deploy on the ground with your 20 TACs to secure board presence. In those cases your just using the ravens/talons/vendetta as a fire support thats hard to shoot back at.

The biggest concern I see right now is going second and facing triple helldrake. The drakes can fly in and roast both the squad inside a bastion and the squad on top. You would be forced to add 2 extra squads on foot to ensure that not everything can be roasted. Being able to put the librarian in terminator armor would help significantly, as you could put him closest to the front in the bastion to eat the AP3 hits.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chancetragedy wrote:
You'd have 10 models(tactical squas) and a bastion on the board till turn 2 when stuff comes in from a re-rollable 3+ for reserves from comms relay.

Edit:although I personally think you'd need more than that to avoid getting tabled in a turn the more and more I think about it.

I've ran a bastion with IG as allies for my daemon army for a while.

As first I tried a 30 man blob, but found that the blob was clobbered in one round of shooting. It was surprising the number of opponents that could wreck a blob when their entire army was given focus on it.

I tried a bastion and found extremely good success. AV 14 is extremely hard to dislodge at range. Don't forget you can put your bastion behind a ruins or large hill and it gets cover.
There are some hard counters (combi-melta sternguard) but I did not encounter them often. Mostly I face Necrons, GK, Orks, Daemons, DA, and CSM -- none of which have a hard AV14 ranged counter on turn 1. As I mentioned, everyones meta is different. You might see manticores in every list, which means a different approach is needed.

That's why I suggested the bastion. As mentioned, try it out and see how it works. You might find it helpful, you might find it useless.

I feel that Combat Tactics is one of the strongest in game abilities. for instance it allows you to fail a morale test to avoid melee, and then use atsknf to instantly be back in the opponents face to shoot, or give free movement. Also as an added bonus you can go to ground, and if you loose 25%, fail your leadership and regroup on your turn, and not be pinned!.

This may sound weird, but I have not found Heldrakes to be a very bad matchup for my SM. In fact I have yet to lose to an army containing them (though I've had more draws than normal)-- overall they are not a big deal for me. Hence these measures seem perhaps more extreme than necessary. Why are Heldrakes such a presence in your area? In my experience Stormtalons alone are sufficient to combat them.

This may sound weird, but I have not found Heldrakes to be a very bad matchup for my SM.

Flyers are a problem if you don't field flyers yourself. Two heldrakes are not excessive and can indeed be dealt with but you are using two flyers of your own. A list that has three or four flyers neuters a lot of your opponents heavy support as they cannot deal with the spam ... hence multiple night scythes, vendettas, etc. The list I'm testing has three flyers, three skimmers and three rhinos. Any one of these elements are easily dealt with but nine become a problem for opponents. Labmouse's list is an illustration of this ... it simply overwhelms because truthfully skyfire is not an answer - you need your own flyers and if you are out manned three to one it's a problem.

 Kingsley wrote:
This may sound weird, but I have not found Heldrakes to be a very bad matchup for my SM. In fact I have yet to lose to an army containing them (though I've had more draws than normal)-- overall they are not a big deal for me. Hence these measures seem perhaps more extreme than necessary. Why are Heldrakes such a presence in your area? In my experience Stormtalons alone are sufficient to combat them.

I am curious as to your list. What are you bringing?

This was my last tourney list. I've been making some tweaks to it. (though a discussion of CSM is off topic, so I won't go any further)


I've not had any problems with MEQ spam, in fact that list usually clobbers MEQ spam. I use the long range elements (havocs here, I've changed them to predators) to crack open the transports. Once the rhinos are opened up, the helldrakes are usually killing 2 squads per turn.

If someone brings talons, Ill vector strike them, but Ill still focus on removing squads. A talon will kill a helldrake in 2-3 rounds of shooting. By that time, the helldrakes has weakened the enemy enough to where my plague marines can overpower the enemy.

MathHammer Alert
Typhoon ML Shot : 2/3 hit, 1/2 effect, 1/3 save = 1/9 chance of stripping HP (or having pen roll)
TL Assault Cannon Shot : 8/9 hit, 1/6 effect, 1/3 save = 4/81 (~5% per shot)
This shows that your going to be stripping HPs off the helldrakes, but its not going to happen in one turn. Over the course of a few rounds you can expect to kill them.
End MathHammer Alert

The list I proposed earlier would clobber my list. 2 storm talons is not enough to deal with 2 helldrakes rapidly. Im going to fry ~3 or 4 of your squads before they are removed. 3 storm ravens, 2 talons, and 1 vendetta would destroy 3 helldrakes in a single round of shooting. The air force would then have their way with my army -- as I would be hitting them on 6s while they hit me on normal BS.

 felixcat wrote:
. Any one of these elements are easily dealt with but nine become a problem for opponents. Labmouse's list is an illustration of this ... it simply overwhelms because truthfully skyfire is not an answer

Excatly. I call it 'extreme lists'.

Extreme lists are an excellent way to counter your opponent by removing some of their tools and to overwhelm them. 6 flyers is just as extreme as 180 ork boys. Both limit the capacity of enemy tools. Even in 5th edition we had extreme lists, as people were taking transport spam.

6th edition has opened up the gates for what can be done in extreme list building. What this has done is created a rock/paper/sissors/lizard/spock method for 40k. If I bring that 6 flyer build, I will do extremely good against wraithwing. However, I will have a very hard time with the 180 ork boys sitting on all the objectives.

So the trick is to find what builds you can create that limit your number of 'bad matchups' while maximizing your 'good matchups'.

I'm afraid I will have to agree with Labmouse on his list: it is effective as it puts a large aerial force on the board. The bastion give protection to your ground troops as template weapons can only target the top level.

It does make me a little sad inside: this no longer looks like a space marine list. Only the two tactical squads are C:SM unique units.

I'm afraid I have to join me LFGS in leaving 40k on a competitive level. This game used to be about 40k battles and it seems it moved toward dogfights around some ground objectives.

El_Jairo wrote:
It does make me a little sad inside: this no longer looks like a space marine list. Only the two tactical squads are C:SM unique units.

I'm afraid I have to join me LFGS in leaving 40k on a competitive level. This game used to be about 40k battles and it seems it moved toward dogfights around some ground objectives.

If you don't want to play on a hyper-competitive level with lots of dog fights ... don't!

Tell people you are looking for fun, casual play. There are even tournaments geared for that. (Warhammer 40K: The Friendly 2013 (It's One Louder) )
Some of my favorite 40k games are causual games with my non-competitive friends. We just bring cool models and goofy stuff because its fun. The models are just an excuse to hang out, drink some beer and laugh.

It should not make you sad that competitive MEQ does not have many boots on the ground or 'unique C:SM units' Look at previous editions. It was all razorspam or bikes. You still did not see a lot of TACs on the board.

Sounds like you guys have been thinking along the same lines as me. My current list has been, at 2000 points

Libby, PA, Nullzone and GoE
2x Tact squad, Flamer, ML
1xTact Squad, Plasma, ML
2x Predator, HB sponsons
2x Land Speeder, CML, MM
1xShooty Term squad, CML, Assault Cannon
1xAss Term squad, 3xTH/SS, 3xLC
1xLand Raider Crusader, MM Heavy slot

It's been very good to me. Demons aren't that scary when you can cover half the board and make them reroll saves. Plenty of dakka for hordes. I take the LRC in a Heavy slot because then I can deliver a tact squad to an objective in it. The LRC does occasionally get scragged by a Lascannon or suicide melta squad, but if they're shooting the LRC, they aren't shooting other stuff. It scales down pretty easily, as well. For 1750 or even 1500 I just remove the LRC, a Land speeder, and terminators.

I'll give this list a test run and see what it does.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
This may sound weird, but I have not found Heldrakes to be a very bad matchup for my SM. In fact I have yet to lose to an army containing them (though I've had more draws than normal)-- overall they are not a big deal for me. Hence these measures seem perhaps more extreme than necessary. Why are Heldrakes such a presence in your area? In my experience Stormtalons alone are sufficient to combat them.

I am curious as to your list. What are you bringing?

I have been running SM with Tau allies these days, though I think this is suboptimal. Typically I have three "layers" of air defense before we get to desperation mode:

1. Quad-gun. The quad-gun is not the most effective against Heldrakes, but from time to time I've lucked out and seriously damaged them. The fact that it gets to go before the Heldrakes do really helps. From time to time it can negate the target easily.

2. Stormtalons. I noticed that you did the math for attacking from the front. What I've found more effective is flying completely over the Heldrake, then firing the Stormtalon's twin-linked assault cannon (which has a 360 degree arc of fire) into its rear armor. This prevents you from being hit by Vector Strikes and allows you to keep your Talons nice and cheap, since you don't need to upgrade your secondary weapons system. At 110 points per Talon, you'll have 3 Talons and points left over for the price of two Drakes.

3. Twin-linked missile pods from Crisis suits and twin-linked railguns from Broadside suits tend to threaten flyers as a strong soft counter.

All of these (except the Quad-Gun if used to Intercept) grow even better when combined with Null Zone. In my experience, many players will end up Evading with their Heldrakes to avoid having to reroll their saves. In that situation the Heldrake cannot fire its Baleflamer in the next turn and hence becomes much less of a threat. Overall these factors combine to make Heldrakes not a huge deal. Ultimately I am happier seeing Heldrakes on the field than other strong anti-MEQ units like Colossus Siege Mortars.

The only hard thing for me is how to really justify C:SM over any other variant (aside from BA) these days. DA are cheaper and better, BT's have 4th edition bonuses, Space Wolves have been good for a while. I'm not sure though.

IMO C:SM is better or at least on par with any marine codex not of the grey variety. Especially with the ability to take storm ravens and storm talons getting a price reduction. There is just too much synergy in the book now to think its anything but very good. The only thing keeping it from being top tier is lack of divination psykers. And I don't think that the dark angels are better at all. They are certainly cheaper and have some cute tricks. But meh I just feel C:SM is solid all the way through even without those tricks and gimmicks.

Yeah, C:SM isn't flashy and one could argue that there are better units out there (Terminators as scoring troops, Ork bike deathstar, Clowns, Plague Marines, ect), but it is solid and consistant and solid and consistant is what wins. Being able to Combat Squad can be huge, doubling your number of troops for objective games or consolidating them back into 10 man squads for killpoint games. You have additional flexibility from game to game that most other codexes wish they had without having to change a single thing on your list. Having 4s for stats and 3+ saves is also pretty hot. Good guns, good equipment options for the Sarges, ATSKNF... you get spoiled. You don't think your that great at times and then you play Orks, IG, Chaos Marines and Eldar and you don't have the lows that those codexes have. You see why your the benchmark.

Things about C:SM that keep me playing.
1)Combat Tactics
2)Null Zone
3)Having every tool I could need.
4)Assault cannons!
5)Null Zone

Yup, I mentioned it twice.

Nullzone is pretty good. Unfortunately my ability to run Stormravens and Stormtalons is sorely limited because of not having the DFTS compendium.

 ImRightBehindYou wrote:
Nullzone is pretty good. Unfortunately my ability to run Stormravens and Stormtalons is sorely limited because of not having the DFTS compendium.

Ditto...as well as having a couple hundred bucks.

3 stormravens, 3 stormtalons, and an allied vendetta. Get a bunch of IG troops, a manticore, and an aegis defense line with comm link, and whatever else you feel you need, and you're set.

ImRightBehindYou wrote:The only hard thing for me is how to really justify C:SM over any other variant (aside from BA) these days. DA are cheaper and better, BT's have 4th edition bonuses, Space Wolves have been good for a while. I'm not sure though.

Chancetragedy wrote:Imo C:SM is better or at least on par with any marine codex not of the grey variety. Especially with the ability to take storm ravens and storm talons getting a price reduction. There is just too much synergy in the book now to think its anything but very good. The only thing keeping it from being top tier is lack of divination psykers. And I don't think that the dark angels are better at all. They are certainly cheaper and have some cute tricks. But meh I just feel C:SM is solid all the way through even without those tricks and gimmicks.

Basically this. The reason Necrons and IG (to an extent) are good nowadays is the Air-spam of Flying French Bakeries, Vendetta Brigades, and now Raven-Talon Storms for C:SM. I am certain that as we see time go forward, we see more and more competitive lists use the Raven-Talon StormTM

I don't think the flyers are what make C:SM a good book, it's the versitility. There is literally a tool (and sometimes more then 1) to handle any kind of threat out there, not all armies can say that. What keeps C:Sm from being top tier is that they don't have any extremely powerful units that you can effectively spam like GW, GK, Necrons, and IG have. But after that C:sm are right there.

@ace, I actually dont think you will see C:SM armies spam fliers. The Space marine fliers are too expensive (Raven) or to fragile (talon) to effectively spam. I was really hoping they would give the Talon +1 HP but as it is an AV 11 2 HP vehicle will die to quad gun fire, or vector strikes easily.

Pony_law wrote:
I don't think the flyers are what make C:SM a good book, it's the versitility. There is literally a tool (and sometimes more then 1) to handle any kind of threat out there, not all armies can say that. What keeps C:Sm from being top tier is that they don't have any extremely powerful units that you can effectively spam like GW, GK, Necrons, and IG have. But after that C:sm are right there.

@ace, I actually dont think you will see C:SM armies spam fliers. The Space marine fliers are too expensive (Raven) or to fragile (talon) to effectively spam. I was really hoping they would give the Talon +1 HP but as it is an AV 11 2 HP vehicle will die to quad gun fire, or vector strikes easily.

I think what holds it back is a finer point, but along the same lines as the one you made; troops. We don't have cheap and effective troops. Compared to strike squads, grey hunters, and blobs, our tac squads are pricey! Every game I feel like the tactical squads are the weak point. In 5th it was manageable taking min squads in razorbacks. In 6th I've had to make room to take max squads without transports.

I guess I'm lucky, we don't have many flyers at all in my area. My 5th edition worked with small tweaks, taking out razorbacks and adding more terminators, so I still have a good tool bag to take whatever is across the table.

Pony_law wrote:
I don't think the flyers are what make C:SM a good book, it's the versitility. There is literally a tool (and sometimes more then 1) to handle any kind of threat out there, not all armies can say that. What keeps C:Sm from being top tier is that they don't have any extremely powerful units that you can effectively spam like GW, GK, Necrons, and IG have. But after that C:sm are right there.

@ace, I actually dont think you will see C:SM armies spam fliers. The Space marine fliers are too expensive (Raven) or to fragile (talon) to effectively spam. I was really hoping they would give the Talon +1 HP but as it is an AV 11 2 HP vehicle will die to quad gun fire, or vector strikes easily.

Flyer spam works so that target priority is a problem. If one has 4+ flyers, you have to take your pick as to which flyer to ATTEMPT to shoot down. The advantage of a spam list of almost any kind is that the opponent cant completely stomp all the units thrown at them. You can bring 6 flyers while the CSM can bring 3, and the only thing useful against your flyers are VS, and there are too many targets for a quadgun to completely kill your flyers.

Pony_law wrote:What keeps C:Sm from being top tier is that they don't have any extremely powerful units that you can effectively spam like GW, GK, Necrons, and IG have. But after that C:sm are right there.

This is what I've found as well. Space Wolves enjoy taking Gery hunters, Grey Knights enjoy purifiers and strike squads, necron immortals are cool too, and guard veteran are seemingly ubiquitous across the 40k universe. Tactical squads feel like a hindrance rather than a beneficial tool in my army.

Tactical squads were downright bad in 5th. Now, with the changes to rapid fire, they are "average" in my opinion.

For C:SM, I'd try to combat squad out a lascannon, and put sarge with a combi plasma with the plasma gun guy in a razor back with a TL lascannon. Now you've got two lascannon and two plasma gun shots out of a troops choice on your alpha strike. It is grey hunter good? Hell, no. It works for my BA pretty well, though, and I don't even have combat tactics. (I rock a las/plas razor, but that's a BA thing).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, if you compare tactical to other armies *troop* choices, they are not the worst thing ever in HTH. They just have this tendency to be visited by elites and fast attacks and such, and get hoovered up.

 ImRightBehindYou wrote:

Pony_law wrote:What keeps C:Sm from being top tier is that they don't have any extremely powerful units that you can effectively spam like GW, GK, Necrons, and IG have. But after that C:sm are right there.

This is what I've found as well. Space Wolves enjoy taking Gery hunters, Grey Knights enjoy purifiers and strike squads, necron immortals are cool too, and guard veteran are seemingly ubiquitous across the 40k universe. Tactical squads feel like a hindrance rather than a beneficial tool in my army.

I guess I'm the outlier here as I LOVE tactical marines after the change in meta and rules from 5th to 6th. Are they GH cheap or strike squad strong? Nope. Does that matter? Not really, I run 4 tacticals in my 2k list 2 in rhinos, 1 in a pod, and 1 footslog. they tend to do really well for me because of the numbers pressure I put on opponents. Try killing 60 space marines in 5 turns with something you love being eliminated first turn(thank you sternguard Swiss army squad).

Sure they can feel like a crap unit if you compare it to the best units in the game but what doesn't? But if you take it in comparison to the good and bad troops units in the game they are decidedly upper middle lower top tier troops units.

My son wants to get into the game, so this whole thread was on his behalf, but he is toying with the idea of 5 or 6 rhinos full of marines, sternguard, and pedro that trundle up, unload everyone and blast the bejeezus out of the opponent. The opponent then has to trade fire with the marines, or charge them. Both are risky as their force would likely be highly depleted after 60 marines open up on them. Then, the marines could fire again, or charge in after shooting pistols and get as many attacks as a charging assault marine with the Pedro bonus. On the flipside, if they want to charge, after they've been shot they have to weather the overwatch and then still face marines with two to three attacks a piece. Thoughts?