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Okay, I like tactical marines a lot (planning on getting another box after I get some devastators - love those bolters).
I would really like to know how to do the three main mission types with them well, specifically against orks. Daemons I may also face, and perhaps the odd marine or tyranid player.
I'd love it if all you brilliant tacticians would share your knowledge.

against orks, its not hard... don't ever let them get within 18" of you, and try to ensure you get the charge, and they do not.

a squad of 10 tac marines with a flamer can take a squad of 30 orks, if the tac marines get to fire (pistols) before hand, and then can initiate the charge.

I know the basic, 'charge them to rid them of their bonus', but are there any other cool, if cheesy, strategies I could use?

Well in a general case scenario against orks/nids I like to load out 3 tactical squads with flamer and plasma cannon and put them in a rhino. Then I sit in my rhinos and lob hot plasma as the orks approach. Just before they are in striking range themselves I drive the rhinos up, unload the marines, double tap, and flame. Then get back into the rhinos next turn and go grab objectives or sit pretty and start the tactic over again.

Now I generally have other things backing these three tacticals up, most notably a rhino containing five marines (1 flamer, 1 PF Sgt.), 1 Tech-marine with full servo harness, Cassius and a Librarian with Avenger. Which on its own can destroy a 30 man ork mob withs its firepower alone. The unit produces up to four flamer templates, one plasma pistol shot, and eight bolter shots when they pop out. So my tacticals fit right in with my plan. They may not work as well in your army load out, but that gives you an idea of how I use them to great effect.

As an Ork player the only flamers that ever bothered me were the ones the eldar warlocks on jetbikes have. It's really easy to have a ork list with only 4+ or better saves. With proper spacing plasma will hit 1 or 2 boyz tops.

When you ask how to beat orks it really depends on what types of orks you're playing against. The ork book can make some very different styles of play that will require different units and tactics to beat. You best bet though it to do what orks do. Shoot the fighty stuff and fight the shooty stuff.

Honersstodnt wrote:a squad of 10 tac marines with a flamer can take a squad of 30 orks, if the tac marines get to fire (pistols) before hand, and then can initiate the charge.

lol 10 tac marines can take down 30 Ork boyz... ok...

10 tac marines vs 30 orks... mathhammer time!

9 pistol shots + 1 flamer shot... assume flamer hits 6 orks... you'll kill 6 or so with shooting.

22 attacks on the charge = 5 dead orks.

18 orks swing back... 2 dead marines. Nob swings... kills 1 more marine. marines win by 3.... 3 orks die to fearless.

now your at 7 marines vs 16 orks...

marines swing first, with 10 attacks... kill 2 orks. Orks swing back, kill 3 marines. marines break off. auto-rally next turn, come back in with a flamer and more bolt-pistol shots.... kill ~4 or the remaining orks with shooting... now your at 10 orks v 4 marines. Marines deal 10 attacks in hand to hand... kill say 2 more orks. its going to be close at this point, and neither unit is coming out ready to fight again.

best way to go is to pepper the orks with support fire before that first charge. If you can bring them to 20 bodies instead of 30, before you charge in... your marines are going to definitely win.

To add more anti-infantry punch to a small combat squad, you may also want to consider giving the unit a combi-flamer.

So against say 30 Shoota Boys:

The flamers fire and everyone else fires their pistols.

You'll kill about 8-9 orks if the flamer hits 6 orks, honestly though, its typically more likely to be 7-8 @ that range. YMMV

Seems to me you could do well by Combat Squading your Tacs to have one with flamer and one with ML or Plasma Cannon. If you keep them together and let the Orks come to you, you'll have one unit to RF/template and one to pistol and charge. Bolter shots are more reliable than CC attacks vs. normal Boy armor due to AP, so more bolters = more dead Boyz. I don't have the stats to back up this concept, but it might be worth taking a look at.

I don't know if Honersstodnt was assuming Shoota or Slugga Boyz in that mathhammer above, but I should also point out that these assaults won't be happening in a vacuum, and the Boyz will be shooting back. Shootas are better ranged than your Bolters while being Assault weapons, so if you're even thinking about charging a mob of Shoota Boyz, you're going to catch quite a bit of flak before you make it. Sluggas are less of a threat, but they will almost always be deploying out of Trukks, anyway, which bring their own problems.

Just 2 things to consider, coming from an Ork player with some experience preventing Marines from getting charges...

Combat Squads are unbelievably annoying for the ork player. There's nothing like tying up a serious close combat mob with a 90-point gang of marines with boltguns for three turns, all while there's a jerk with BS 4 and a missile launcher hiding in some ruin all the way across the board fragging 2-3 boyz per turn. GRRR!

Drop pod them next to enemy lootas. Lootas fear the rapid-firing boltgun more than they care to admit.

If so, try to mass your attacks on unwounded mobs. It's difficult, but I've seen this happen. A space marine player puts two tac squads into assault with a massive slugga boyz mob. Their high initiative allows them to kill about fifteen boyz and win the combat by twelve. And now the fearless wounds kill off the remaining 4/5 of the mob. You have to be careful with this one, because it can backfire, but it's good stuff when it works.

Rhinos and drop pods are a great way to make tankbustaz waste their AP 3 shots on something way less valuable than your devastators. I once saw a friend running a non-mech marine army lose 9 assault marines and 7 tac marines to tankbusta fire, even after they'd blasted his only vehicle, a dreadnought, to bits. Not fun ever.

JSK
you said:
"I know the basic, 'charge them to rid them of their bonus', but are there any other cool, if cheesy, strategies I could use?"

that's the big 1... honestly if you concentrate on that and pull it off you've pretty much got the 1 trick you need.

itry tank shocking them. If you do it just right they have no choice where they move the models (has to be the shortest distance possible to avoid the vehicle) so you can basically move them into a flamer friendly formation, deploy, and then flame them. It wont make you any friends but it will kill the orks

Against demons your #1 strategy is to stay in your rhino and use your hatches to flame them. they really have a hard time with moving vehicles.

a command squad on bikes tooled out with flame throwers is pretty rough on orks, since they have the maneuverability to deliver the flame attacks. if vulkan is in your army you'll probably kill every ork in the squad except for the nob. as long as you have a relic blade waiting for him you're fine.

you said:
"Okay, I like tactical marines a lot (planning on getting another box after I get some devastators - love those bolters)."
hardy har har

AF

Well, I'd take 2x 10 Tacticals (with missile launchers and flamers) in Rhinos.
When the Rhino is stationary at the beginning, the missile launcher can be shot.
When an Ork mob is close enough, drive by disembark, flame and rapid fire.

Against Orks it really depends on the army you are fighting. Rhino tacs can bring serious hurt to swarms, but not so much against Battlewagon boys.

Always take flamers if you know you will be facing Orks, meltas are nice to have, but it really doesn't help much where it is needed. The range afforded by the BW is really tough to get around, and having something to take care of BW early is important, tacs aren't going to do a very good job of that. Vindicators are the most practical way to take on AV14 (those BW are really quite easy to hit, massive bastards... ), and the route I would prefer if I played Meq. Landspeeders are another option, but not something that seems practical in large numbers. You can take both Vindicators and Landspeeders, leaving plenty of points for Rhino tacs, which will rely on their transports in most situations.

Hitting vulnerable parts of an Ork army with your tacs is a great way to make use of them. Tacs aren't going to do much heavy lifting, and they rely on mistakes, or forced error to make large dents. When a BW drops 20+ models in a neat little patch after getting wrecked/sploded', those tac marines with rapid fire and a flamer template are going to be the last thing an Ork player wants to see.

If you play with a lot of tanks, make sure you take full advantage of the tanks abilities. Tank shock, Ram, tank walls, staggered formations, etc... all of that amounts to a real compromise to an Ork players mobility. With 80-100 models in most sizable Ork armies, it really isn't hard to make movement a pain in the ass. 4 rhinos can block 2 lanes easily, leaving you a third lane to funnel things into. If the Orks have to attack tanks before they can assault, and assaulting the tanks makes it next to impossible to run into combat with the units behind those tanks... exploding tanks can be a major pain to Orks, just wait until that 20-man squad has 10 wounds to deal with before getting shot in the face with a flamer, and assaulted. Hilarious.

Rhinos are cool. Make sure they work against your opponent in any way possible.

You can also do Combi-flamers on all your sergeants.

Sternguard can take more then their fair share of flamers too.

Combi-flamers are not a great option against Orks. They are expensive and two flamers have the habit of shooting your targets out of assault range anyway. It is nice when you want to fire two flamers out of your top-hatch, don't get me wrong.

I don't feel that 10 points for a one-shot flamer is a good deal. Giving the option to take a combi-flamer on your sarge for free would be a good fix for tacs in general.

You can probably get good use out of one or two combi-flamers, but more than that will probably be a waste of points.

This thread makes me giggle.

I hope to see more of these "anti-ork tactics" presented against my Pink Waaaugh! at tournaments.

Tactical Marines do not want to be in combat. That's pretty much the basic start to learning how to use them. They suck in combat so shouldn't be in combat unless it's to tie something up to allow another unit that's actually good in combat to come in and take over the combat.

Using units by themselves is pretty much not a good idea as using multiple units in a supporting way to each other, in order to cover their weaknessess and enhance their strengths, is much better.

Tactical Marines are there to hold objectives and thin out units before they get into close combat. If they're wasting all their resources to close in with the Tactical Marines, then that's even better as their attention is drawn away from the stuff you want to survive. Distraction is an important tactic for many units as it can allow you to use stuff to it's potential by possibly sacrificing something less desirable.

Put them all in Rhinos and they'll be shot at before they make it to the objective. Now put the points for Rhinos into a Predator or two and generally they foot slogging marines will avoid most of the incoming fire as they go to the objective. This does come at the price of speed and the ability to react to the changing positions of the enemy though and is mearly an example of how you could use distraction to your advantage (using them in Rhinos is much better than on foot). However the more skilled the opponent is the harder it would be to make an adequate distraction.

Basically tactics should change depending on who you are versing, what army they're using, what they have in the army and the shape, size and terrain density of the battlefield.

Pretty much just keep them out of combat and use their shooting to thin out advancing units. Probably give them a Melta gun and a Rocket Launcher allowing them to have a dual role. Same with the Devistators you mentioned, give them Rocket Launchers and keep them back with a Tactical Squad to protect the home objective. As a note I'd say get something like a Predator or Vindicator instead of the Devistator Squad, but it all comes down to personal preference in the end.

Flamers are an 8" range weapon, you do not want to be within 8" of an Ork sqaud unless you're an assault oriented squad, have statistics on your side, lucky and are actually within 6" and not the other 2" of doom.

Dashofpepper wrote:This thread makes me giggle.

I hope to see more of these "anti-ork tactics" presented against my Pink Waaaugh! at tournaments.

Especially since quite a bit of it is pretty much list tailoring advice. "Yeah, spam flamers if you know you are facing orks" C'mon guys, I know 40k isn't exactly serious business, but I know you can give better advice than that.

How about some useful advice against orks, and stop assuming that people are still playing horde orks. Horde orks are really easy to kill, dakka them and stay outside of Waaagh range. You did remember to bring enough dakka, right?

Here is some real questions to answer facing orks:

1: How do I stop 3+ battle wagons with rollas and boyz inside from destroying me? AV 14 is a tough nut to crack, and tacs don't really get the job done (a recurring theme once you really explore space marine's options)

2: How do I stop 4+/5+ FNP nobs? Flamers do diddly, you need mass AP1-2 fire, ID weapons, or the ability to put massive PW wounds on it in CC.

3: How do I play against a biker list? How do I deploy against a turn 2 mass assault?

4: What about can walls and/or buggy/kopta spam? MSU of decent fire support units can really put the hurt on you if you don't have enough effective fire platforms to target with.

I'm not saying orks are exactly the best book out there, in fact I usually say the are pretty bad. But if you can't answer these questions you ARE going to lose. A skilled general with orks will easily slay people who think one size fits all solutions will work.



As for making tactical squads more useful against orks: Take min sized units in razors. Maybe give the sarge a combi weapon of some sort (doesn't really matter which one, all of them are potentially useful given the right target) Use them as speed bumps against orks buying your actually important units time to do their thing. Sure you want some left to score with, but if the killing part of your army dies, you won't exactly have the ability to stop the enemy from scoring.

1: How do I stop 3+ battle wagons with rollas and boyz inside from destroying me? AV 14 is a tough nut to crack, and tacs don't really get the job done (a recurring theme once you really explore space marine's options)

2: How do I stop 4+/5+ FNP nobs? Flamers do diddly, you need mass AP1-2 fire, ID weapons, or the ability to put massive PW wounds on it in CC.

3: How do I play against a biker list? How do I deploy against a turn 2 mass assault?

4: What about can walls and/or buggy/kopta spam? MSU of decent fire support units can really put the hurt on you if you don't have enough effective fire platforms to target with.

Nice questions. Depends also on the army.
My Eldar army can handle Orks quite nicely.

To answer these questions.

notabot187 wrote:

1: How do I stop 3+ battle wagons with rollas and boyz inside from destroying me? AV 14 is a tough nut to crack, and tacs don't really get the job done (a recurring theme once you really explore space marine's options)

Best way is to get around their sides. if they are in the center put some Lascannon or Autocannon on your flanks to get at the sides. TFCs can slow them down. if they have a KFF the best thing to do is keep shooting.

2: How do I stop 4+/5+ FNP nobs? Flamers do diddly, you need mass AP1-2 fire, ID weapons, or the ability to put massive PW wounds on it in CC.

Vindicators and Hammer Bro's

3: How do I play against a biker list? How do I deploy against a turn 2 mass assault?

Hide in Area Terrain so he will be taking Dangerous Terrain tests to assault you.

4: What about can walls and/or buggy/kopta spam? MSU of decent fire support units can really put the hurt on you if you don't have enough effective fire platforms to target with.

Kans are easily taken down with Auto-cannons and Vindicators can take the Boyz behind down. Buggy/Kopta spam is the same as a Bike heavy army

there we go.

It is difficult to talk specifically about tac marines without accounting at all for the rest of your army. List-building is basically strategy in WH40k, while tactics would mainly focus on small adjustments to your list, as well as more complicated factors like deployment and formations. The best part of tac marines is that they can take pretty cheap transports that act as a buffer to incoming damage. While an Ork player can rely on their deffrollas to clear transports, the actual threat range presented by BW is minimal. 13 inch movements are not amazing, and that is the extent of a deffrollas threat range. If you are facing three BW, try to take out 2 of them, focusing on the contents of each BW to make your target priority effective.

Staggered tank formations will make it difficult to coordinate multi-pronged attacks, since large squads usually compose the bulk of an Ork army. Their mobility is great, but you can use that to your advantage as Orks will generally rely on that mobility. As long as your tanks are more than 13" away from deffrollas, they aren't in a huge amount of danger. Landraiders can pose a serious problem to any squad lacking in mass PKs, which generally arrive in the form of Nob bikers.

When your opponent spends 20 points x3 on Deffrollas, and you flatly deny the use of 2/3, that is a direct and cheap counter to one of the more common ways Orks can clear a bunch of tanks. It doesn't matter that the assault range on the squads inside those BW is rather large, when they have to attack cheap transports in the hope that they can clear them out of the way entirely, just to get at the stuff behind. You have to coordinate your army to react to that kind of face-to-face combat. Block the major part of an assault with rhinos, causing a traffic jam to your opponents model saturated army, allowing you to jump out and drop a flamer template, bolt pistols, and an assault to take away FC from Orks. Tac marines are not bad against Orks on their own, you just need to thin the large squads out a bit with assistance from other parts of your army. Making sure that Orks can't use their FC and Waagh! to assault your tacs is key, lacking S4 can make a pretty big difference, especially when you have already taken a 5-10 models from the squad before assaulting.

Dashofpepper wrote:This thread makes me giggle.

I hope to see more of these "anti-ork tactics" presented against my Pink Waaaugh! at tournaments.

I recommend you add something useful to this thread.

notabot187 wrote:Especially since quite a bit of it is pretty much list tailoring advice. "Yeah, spam flamers if you know you are facing orks" C'mon guys, I know 40k isn't exactly serious business, but I know you can give better advice than that.

Insert list specific questions here...

As for making tactical squads more useful against orks: Take min sized units in razors. Maybe give the sarge a combi weapon of some sort (doesn't really matter which one, all of them are potentially useful given the right target) Use them as speed bumps against orks buying your actually important units time to do their thing. Sure you want some left to score with, but if the killing part of your army dies, you won't exactly have the ability to stop the enemy from scoring.

It's ironic that you suggest people are giving too much list building advice, while the substance of what you have contributed to the thread is really no less than that.

It would be great for the thread if you could just answer you own questions, instead of vainly attempting to make all advice in this thread seem worthless. Both you and DoP, especially DoP, because leaving such snide remarks makes him look rather snobby. It would be interesting to actually have you guys add something serious.

Seriously.

Don't get too worried when your Tact marines are getting killed as they are very cheap for their stats and 3+ armour. I'm pretty sure they cost 15 points each. You shouldn't worry to much about an ork squad but a fully tooled up sarge can really make a difference. To really make them effective they work best with support eg: Predator

chr15t09h3r

you are off a little and we can't say the exact costs per model on the forum.

you are correct in that they are cheap for the Stats.