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Okapi wrote:
Do you find plasma to be preferable to grav?

I'd use plasma over grav. Grav only goes on relentless platforms, imo.

Plasma is sort of my default, and I have a lot more of it available (bits wise) than I do grav. I run grav on my Bikes, but besides that I don't have any. The problem is that I had a large force before grav was even introduced en masse. I haven't bought one of the latest Tactical Marine kits, or any of the new Devastators, nor do I plan to. I have 40 or so Tac Marines and 2 squads of Devs already, with heavy weapons parts enough to make another unit or 2. Simply put, GW's marketing "strategy" didn't work on me. I'll live without it.

If they did a bitz pack of grav guns like they have for melta and plasma, I'd probably pick some up and refit some of my Marines. Until that day though (which we probably won't ever see anyway) I'll be fine. As an aside, where can we find grav bits? I'll list where I know:

Latest Tactical Squad box; 1 grav gun, 1 grav pistol, 1 combi-grav

New Assault Marine box; 1 grav pistol

New Devastator box; 2 grav cannons

Sternguard box; 1 grav gun, 1 grav pistol and 2 (or 3?) combi-grav

Then the plastic Captain clampack has one, but it's hardly swappable.

10 man squad, 5 combi plasma, 5 combi melta in a drop pod.
combat squad them so the two groups can shoot at different targets but can still deploy together in the drop pod.
drop by a tank, pop it with the melta shots then whipe the squad with the plasmas or special ammo

Aedgar Perri wrote:
10 man squad, 5 combi plasma, 5 combi melta in a drop pod.
combat squad them so the two groups can shoot at different targets but can still deploy together in the drop pod.
drop by a tank, pop it with the melta shots then whipe the squad with the plasmas or special ammo

Awesome, best loadout ....last year.
Till the 6th ed. codex hit, this was the best combination. Now with 10 pts per combi, i prefer to run them in 10-man squads, naked and shoot infantry.
I leave the melta drop to a command suad

 Nevelon wrote:
The St. Tylus battle force is Cassius, 1+ TWVs, and 0-6 stormtalons. The vets are not allowed to take pods, but can take LRs as DTs. They can’t normally take rhinos/razors.

While fluffy and cool, I dislike the rules for the TWVs. And I say that as an Ultramarine player who owns the minis. Outside a few niche cases, regular sternguard are the same or just better. Which is a shame.

As for my sternguard, they normally work in a 9 or 10 man squad in a pod. Usually with a pair of HFs, occasionally a handful of c-meltas. With the 1st co formation, full 10 man squads are more attractive. Combat squadding on the drop will yield 3 units, enough to trigger the special rule.

The formation clearly states that they may not take drop pods as a dedicated transport. But what about allied in FA drop pods? This could make for some good turn 1 alpha striking ignores cover shots right?

I also think that 10 pt combi-weapons is super pricey.

Okapi wrote:
Do you find plasma to be preferable to grav?

I do prefer Plasma over Gave for a few reasons.
>Plasma Has a better Range, especially when being Mobile.
>Plasma Wounds models up to T5 on a 2+ no mater the armor.
>Can do a lot of damage to Light Vehicles and to the Rear Armor of most Tanks.

Martel732 wrote:
I also think that 10 pt combi-weapons is super pricey.

Yup, 4-6 is all you need in most cases anyway. And after that you are primarily using the special ammunition for most everything else.

I like 9 Sternguard in a Rhino with Mephiston. I put a powerfist on the Sgt because the old Sternguard model with a powerfist is one of my fave and it helps if anything attacks that mephy can bully (I.e anything with a 2+).

2 or 3 Combi Plas, but generally rely on the special ammo, they're an expensive unit but they can do a lot of heavy lifting. Good for threat saturation with DC.

D

As a command squad with five meltaguns in a pod.

If I'm going to have them suicide, might as well be cheap about it. And if they live past the first turn they then get to shoot their meltas again.

I was going to put combi-weapons on mine, but decided to run them naked instead, seeing as you already pay four points for the special ammo. They land, wipe out a squad of infantry or a monster, and usually die. If I wanted melta I think I'd try the command squad, maybe do proper meltas instead of combi, just in case one of them survived the return fire.

In my group i do not face vehicles that much. Its more high tougness creatures like Tau, Nids and some Dark eldar etc

So i take the first company formation, 3 sternguard squads of 5 men. 1 combi melta per squad and one combi grav. Rest takes Hellfire rounds and go for mass wounds over AP wounds.

I drop them behind enemy lines, locator beacon attached to the pod. Turn 2,3,4,5 i can drop whatever i want next to those pods tro assist since my army is 80% deepstrike ;P

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
In my group i do not face vehicles that much. Its more high tougness creatures like Tau, Nids and some Dark eldar etc

So i take the first company formation, 3 sternguard squads of 5 men. 1 combi melta per squad and one combi grav. Rest takes Hellfire rounds and go for mass wounds over AP wounds.

I drop them behind enemy lines, locator beacon attached to the pod. Turn 2,3,4,5 i can drop whatever i want next to those pods tro assist since my army is 80% deepstrike ;P

Those are my favorite kinds of armies to play against. You volunteer to get within my assault range! Non-skyhammer marine alpha strike lists rarely do enough damage to me to win.

 Lord Corellia wrote:
Plasma is sort of my default, and I have a lot more of it available (bits wise) than I do grav. I run grav on my Bikes, but besides that I don't have any. The problem is that I had a large force before grav was even introduced en masse. I haven't bought one of the latest Tactical Marine kits, or any of the new Devastators, nor do I plan to. I have 40 or so Tac Marines and 2 squads of Devs already, with heavy weapons parts enough to make another unit or 2. Simply put, GW's marketing "strategy" didn't work on me. I'll live without it.

If they did a bitz pack of grav guns like they have for melta and plasma, I'd probably pick some up and refit some of my Marines. Until that day though (which we probably won't ever see anyway) I'll be fine. As an aside, where can we find grav bits? I'll list where I know:

Latest Tactical Squad box; 1 grav gun, 1 grav pistol, 1 combi-grav

New Assault Marine box; 1 grav pistol

New Devastator box; 2 grav cannons

Sternguard box; 1 grav gun, 1 grav pistol and 2 (or 3?) combi-grav

Then the plastic Captain clampack has one, but it's hardly swappable.

Wait, they did a bitz pack for meltas?
How did I ever miss that? I've been looking for a convenient way to get lots of meltas for my MT for ages
All of the websites I found were either out of stock or didn't deliver to Europe.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/Space-Marine-Meltaguns

Martel732 wrote:

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
In my group i do not face vehicles that much. Its more high tougness creatures like Tau, Nids and some Dark eldar etc

So i take the first company formation, 3 sternguard squads of 5 men. 1 combi melta per squad and one combi grav. Rest takes Hellfire rounds and go for mass wounds over AP wounds.

I drop them behind enemy lines, locator beacon attached to the pod. Turn 2,3,4,5 i can drop whatever i want next to those pods tro assist since my army is 80% deepstrike ;P

Those are my favorite kinds of armies to play against. You volunteer to get within my assault range! Non-skyhammer marine alpha strike lists rarely do enough damage to me to win.

I understand what you mean, though i dont see tau charging that fast ;P And im called the dicsciple of the dice gods in my group... i rarely miss, rarely fail to wound/penetrate Getting assaulted can be a biatch yes... But i dont mind that much, 9/10 times enough damage has been done

Martel732 wrote:
Those are my favorite kinds of armies to play against. You volunteer to get within my assault range! Non-skyhammer marine alpha strike lists rarely do enough damage to me to win.

I love these lists too. Nobody seems to expect assault units these days, but I always bring some Wraiths/Striking Scorpions/Crusader Squads. The Marines pod in, kill a few models, and are annihilated next turn. Sure, they'll keep me from advancing as fast as I'd like, but it does cost them a couple of points.

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
In my group i do not face vehicles that much. Its more high tougness creatures like Tau, Nids and some Dark eldar etc

So i take the first company formation, 3 sternguard squads of 5 men. 1 combi melta per squad and one combi grav. Rest takes Hellfire rounds and go for mass wounds over AP wounds.

I drop them behind enemy lines, locator beacon attached to the pod. Turn 2,3,4,5 i can drop whatever i want next to those pods tro assist since my army is 80% deepstrike ;P

Those are my favorite kinds of armies to play against. You volunteer to get within my assault range! Non-skyhammer marine alpha strike lists rarely do enough damage to me to win.

I understand what you mean, though i dont see tau charging that fast ;P And im called the dicsciple of the dice gods in my group... i rarely miss, rarely fail to wound/penetrate Getting assaulted can be a biatch yes... But i dont mind that much, 9/10 times enough damage has been done

Have fun killing my Rhinos, and everything else being out of LOS. In my play group, you bring a list and THEN find your opponent. So you don't know if you are dropping against Tau or against assault Tyranids. That's one reason I've quit going drop heavy; they force you to commit very early and mobile opponents like Eldar chew you to pieces.

Martel732 wrote:
Have fun killing my Rhinos, and everything else being out of LOS. In my play group, you bring a list and THEN find your opponent. So you don't know if you are dropping against Tau or against assault Tyranids. That's one reason I've quit going drop heavy; they force you to commit very early and mobile opponents like Eldar chew you to pieces.

Hence on of the reasons I am happy I don't play with your group. Some of us though get to decide what and what we play against and usually know who that is a week in advance.

 Anpu42 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Have fun killing my Rhinos, and everything else being out of LOS. In my play group, you bring a list and THEN find your opponent. So you don't know if you are dropping against Tau or against assault Tyranids. That's one reason I've quit going drop heavy; they force you to commit very early and mobile opponents like Eldar chew you to pieces.

Hence on of the reasons I am happy I don't play with your group. Some of us though get to decide what and what we play against and usually know who that is a week in advance.

That seems absolutely insane to me. Every list is tailored, and you don't have to take any kind of generalized capabilities. So out of curiosity, what would your list against a blind opponent look like? Or would you insist on at least knowing the codex?

Martel732 wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Have fun killing my Rhinos, and everything else being out of LOS. In my play group, you bring a list and THEN find your opponent. So you don't know if you are dropping against Tau or against assault Tyranids. That's one reason I've quit going drop heavy; they force you to commit very early and mobile opponents like Eldar chew you to pieces.

Hence on of the reasons I am happy I don't play with your group. Some of us though get to decide what and what we play against and usually know who that is a week in advance.

That seems absolutely insane to me. Every list is tailored, and you don't have to take any kind of generalized capabilities. So out of curiosity, what would your list against a blind opponent look like?

To be honest I do not know, I don't play in your META. Most likely my Plasma SPAM List.
As for the "List Tailoring", we both have completely different concepts of that definition.
To me "List Tailoring" is knowing that next week my Space Marines are fighting Orks so I will leave the Grav at home. It is not like we look over each others list and make adjustments from there. We also tend to have the following conversation.

Anpu42: So what do want to play next week?
Nycus: I got me some of those Spore Pods I want to try.
Anup42: Cool I want to try a new List formed around Arjac's Shield Brothers.
Nycus: Cool I have wanted to see that Formation in action.

I know I am facing Nids in Pods, I don't know what will be in those pods, it couold be Fex's or Guants or even a Hive Tyrant.
He know that I am going to have a -ton of Thunder Hammers and a LRC, but that is about it.
To me this is not "List Tailoring"

Yeah, that's exactly what list tailoring is. If taking out grav from your list against Orks is NOT list tailoring, what IS list tailoring, then?

All my lists have grav because I don't know when I'm going to need it. This makes Orks a much harder match up for me than you because I don't know to leave the grav guns at home. The Ork list could just have easily been tri-Riptide. In my view, this gives you a skewed view of the effectiveness of Orks compared to how I face Orks.

This reason is why Eldar are so disgusting. They don't have to make these choices because the scatterlaser is so UNIVERSALLY effective.

Interestingly, plasma spam is not a horrible TAC choice, but mech could be a serious problem. It's pretty good against non-Riptide MCs. Riptides won't let you within range if they are any good.

Martel732 wrote:
Yeah, that's exactly what list tailoring is.

All my lists have grav because I don't know when I'm going to need it. This makes Orks a much harder match up for me than you because I don't know to leave the grav guns at home. The Ork list could just have easily been tri-Riptide. In my view, this gives you a skewed view of the effectiveness of Orks compared to how I face Orks.

This reason is why Eldar are so disgusting. They don't have to make these choices because the scatterlaser is so UNIVERSALLY effective.

No that is your Definition of "List Tailoring".
Your META has made it so it is hard to have a good "TAC" list, because such a thing does not exist anymore (as someone put it and I agree).
There is also some logic to how we do it. If Space Mares are about to Assault a Ork force, they are going to leave the Grav at home. Very rarely does one attack a completely unknown force. You should know if you are face Orks or Nids or Necrons.
Now Chaos and Dark Eldar are another issue...

"Now Chaos and Dark Eldar are another issue..."

Why are they special?

"Your META has made it so it is hard to have a good "TAC" list"

Eldar can still do it.

"No that is your Definition of "List Tailoring". "

So what is list tailoring to you?

Martel732 wrote:
"Now Chaos and Dark Eldar are another issue..."

Why are they special?

"Your META has made it so it is hard to have a good "TAC" list"

Eldar can still do it.

Chaos and Dark Eldar can either be Summoned or just show up out of the Warp.

Eldar have the 'Stigma" of being broken. And they are in the right hands.

As for my META making TAC so hard, no it is how the game is now. Unless you are reaching the 3k mark it is hard to effectively have enough units (in Redundancy) to counter everything.
The Closest I have come to that is My Plasma SPAM List, but Flyers and AV14 counters that real quick.

Doesn't much matter with BA. If I played in your group, I wouldn't have many good choices anyway. Plus, they'd know I'm BA and bring all anti-meq tech and I'd die. So every game would be like playing Eldar. Hooray.

Martel732 wrote:
Doesn't much matter with BA. If I played in your group, I wouldn't have many good choices anyway. Plus, they'd know I'm BA and bring all anti-meq tech and I'd die. So every game would be like playing Eldar. Hooray.

This is also the big difference between our META's, if you were not having fun we would try to change that by talking to you about what would make the game more fun for YOU.
If this involves Scenarios, Letting you set up the terrain, giving you extra points to work with, what ever it would take.
This does not mean we would take 'Scrub' List, though we just tend to play with what we want to play with that week. We just play to Socialize, Have Fun, Show off out Newest Models and see who picks for the Pizza next week. And pretty much in that order.

Right now we may be taking a page from AoS and have a 'Bring and Battle' where I am going to bring 4 Strenguard, one loaded with Plasma, One With Melta, One with Flamers and one with Grav. With a mix of Stormravens, Land Raiders and maybe some Razorback or Rhinos. I think I am going to be facing buckets of bugs.

I like the comment about yeah if you face me this, and that. Fact is that i dont have to adapt to your Meta, i have to adapt to mine where half plays gun lines (Tau, Crons, SM) And the other half plays MC nids, SW Rhino charge and Spamdar. Only Spamdar is a real problem for me but hey... its a challenge.

But dont worry, i have 2 demi companies with a first company sternguard. Sterns go in pods, Devs go in pods, tacts all go in twin linked lascannon razorbacks and move up. Plenty of threats. My stern and devs are sacrificial lambs to try and take out the high prio targets. Succes or fail, they have enemies in their deployment to deal with which leaves my armoured advance alone for a turn.

 Anpu42 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Doesn't much matter with BA. If I played in your group, I wouldn't have many good choices anyway. Plus, they'd know I'm BA and bring all anti-meq tech and I'd die. So every game would be like playing Eldar. Hooray.

This is also the big difference between our META's, if you were not having fun we would try to change that by talking to you about what would make the game more fun for YOU.
If this involves Scenarios, Letting you set up the terrain, giving you extra points to work with, what ever it would take.
This does not mean we would take 'Scrub' List, though we just tend to play with what we want to play with that week. We just play to Socialize, Have Fun, Show off out Newest Models and see who picks for the Pizza next week. And pretty much in that order.

Right now we may be taking a page from AoS and have a 'Bring and Battle' where I am going to bring 4 Strenguard, one loaded with Plasma, One With Melta, One with Flamers and one with Grav. With a mix of Stormravens, Land Raiders and maybe some Razorback or Rhinos. I think I am going to be facing buckets of bugs.

Making things for fun BA might be too much of a sacrifice Also, it's hurtful to me to have to rig the game in my favor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
I like the comment about yeah if you face me this, and that. Fact is that i dont have to adapt to your Meta, i have to adapt to mine where half plays gun lines (Tau, Crons, SM) And the other half plays MC nids, SW Rhino charge and Spamdar. Only Spamdar is a real problem for me but hey... its a challenge.

But dont worry, i have 2 demi companies with a first company sternguard. Sterns go in pods, Devs go in pods, tacts all go in twin linked lascannon razorbacks and move up. Plenty of threats. My stern and devs are sacrificial lambs to try and take out the high prio targets. Succes or fail, they have enemies in their deployment to deal with which leaves my armoured advance alone for a turn.

If you face lots of gunlines, pods are awesome. If you play a random grab bag of power builds, they start looking like more of a liability.

Martel732 wrote:
Making things for fun BA might be too much of a sacrifice Also, it's hurtful to me to have to rig the game in my favor.

It has nothing to do with 'Rigging'. It has to do with making sure you are having FUN.