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right im going to be honest. i am a rubbish GW player any advice would be greatly appreciated will post unupgraded army list if needed. thank you in advance

You sound like you are actually looking for generic tactics and considerations. I've noticed a lack of generalized ideas on just about every form.

Off the top of my head:

Specialize squads for specific tasks: Don't try to make jack of all trade squads, they are masters of none. Assault troops should be given pistol and CCW when ever possible with a tolerance for assault weapons but NEVER heavy weapons. At the same time Heavy Weapon teams should never leave a HW weapon slot open.

The right tool for the right job: Plan to use weapons as they are intended. A Missle Launcher may be great for killing tanks and heavy infantry, but an autocannon has more shots at roughley the same killing potential each.

Know your armies special rules inside and out: Esspecially for SW players these make or break the army as a viable choice. Hang out in YMDC and learn to recognise the RaI players from the RaW ones and see what both sides have to say. You will run into both in the real world so it helps to plan ahead.

Start small: Large armies are hard to control for a beginner, keeping it simple will prevent you from becoming discouraged.

Know that you will lose: For a number of reasons ranging between the complexities of this game to D-bag WAAC players picking on you, you will lose a lot of games at first but make an effort to learn why you lost.

Welcome to Dakka: This site is one of the best out there for 40K stuff, the community has a good balance of players from every catagory and many of us play more then one army. Keep coming back here and you'll learn a lot even if you don't find time to play.

EDIT: Grammer and such.

Everything written above is true.

But for learning the game there is no better place than your FLGS . try to play as often as possible and you will see that you will become better. Because practice makes art.

Sillyboy

Yes, posting your list would help tailor tactics advice to it.

Fight the Shooty things. Shoot the Fighty Things.

skipmcne wrote:Fight the Shooty things. Shoot the Fighty Things.

Essentially, yes.

As far as general space marine tactics go, atsknf is your friend, say somebody that wants to assault into you but makes the mistake of shooting first. If they drop enough of your marines to force a leadership check, auto fail, auto regroup next turn and then shoot and assault into them. Also combat tactics is a very useful tool. And as far as list building goes for them, there strongest points in my eyes are HQ choices that can buff your army and they have good fast attack and elite choices.

thanks guys i will post a list later bit busy now

Check out the article section here on Dakka.

has some good articles. may sometimes be pretty specific, but the general ideas are good to soak up.


read your Codex and rule book over and over. don't memorize, but familairize your self with them. read your opponents Codexs too. read the books on the shelf.

Combat tactics can be great for getting out of hairy combats. Use combat tactics to break away in their turn, not yours, so in your turn your marines can regroup and rapidfire those suckers with some support fire from another unit or two to take it out.

Librarians are good take all comer HQ choices. Psychic defense and some tough powers. I would go a captain over a chapter master, as you are really paying for the orbital bombardment which is mediocre at best and a little stat increase. Chaplains work good with assault units, and make very good friends with assault terminators.

Tank's can ruin your day- especially guard ones. 72" range battlecannon's that wound on 2+ with no armour save's will tear chunks out of your marine squads, literally. Basilisk's and manticore's can be just as bad- one direct bombardment from a basilisk can annihilate a marine squad in a single shot. Your best bet against this kind of is to use fast stuff. Drop pod dreadnoughts with melta weaponry (even a assault cannon will do on the rear armour), speeders with multimelta's, bikes, are solid choices for taking out armour. You need to get there FAST, and you to bring the best tools available, to take them out before they, as i said, tear chunks out of your forces.

Just some general things

Dont forget that bikes give relentless. multi meltas and conversion beamers are very cool when mobile. plus you can use plasma guns as assult weapons

i really like drop pods and have a few of them. any ideas or just the obvious plant them near the enemy and blast away

If you are going to pod, consider dreds and stern guard. Both can take powerful close in weapons, both have weapons able to make up for the potential suicidal nature of dropping in so close.

As for how to equip said squads... Well that is a matte of taste and what the rest of the list is doing.

if you do a dreadnought then send it in with the stock MM and nothing else(well, maybe a Hvy flamer on the DCCW) have it try and Melta a LR or something else. it will die afterwards.


for Sternguard you should set them up for a particular task. i go for a Tank killer or a infantry toaster squad.

Tank killer squad has a Power fist, 2 Melta guns, and 8 combi-meltas.

infantry toaster has a Lightining claw, 2 Hvy flamers(yes, they can take them) and 8 combi-flamers.


Combi-weapons are amazing when massed.

With drop pods you can't go wrong as long as you don't drop them in the middle of the board. When using generic Infantry drop anti armor troops onto the board off center to what ever corner they can immediatly flank a tank from and shoot its side armor. Use terrain when you place them to block LOS to other enemy squads. Remeber the Drop pod it self can be used to block LOS of your troops and it allows unloading from any side. If your opponents tank survives the initial barrage of fire then he will be forced to choose to either face his front armor toward the Drop pod squad or leave it facing forward toward the rest of your army. If you didn't scatter horribly then advancing with his tank would be suicide as it would expose the rear armor to your next round of fire from the DP squad. If nothing else this can be devistating to his train of thought; I like the term psych-hammer for this method of play.

The choice of squads to use for this is not limited to just Devistators, the Tac squads have Krak grenades by default, this is a Str 6 against his tanks rear armor, add to that a Sgt with a PF and you've got most tanks smoked in one assault phase.

you do realise putting a Dev squad in a pod and sending them in is one of the 7 deadly sins of 40k.

if your army is a Drop pod army it shouldn't have ANY devestator squads in it.


it takes quite a bit of argumentative ability to justify Devs in ANY marines army.

Grey Templar wrote:you do realise putting a Dev squad in a pod and sending them in is one of the 7 deadly sins of 40k.

if your army is a Drop pod army it shouldn't have ANY devestator squads in it.

This is very true. Drop Pod armies are very sound in concept, but Dev Squads are very hampered in them. Unless you start them on the board at the beginning of the game, this is an expensive unit that might not get to be used for a good portion of your game.

Don't get me wrong. I love Dev Squads, and use them a lot with some of my lists. However, using the Drop Pod idea, they do inherently work against the concept of the Drop Pod army. If you go with the Drop Pods, using a Master of the Forge would be more suitable, and you can then have up to 6 Dreadnoughts in your list, making the Drop Pod army more effective.

At any rate, to contribute my own idea of tactics, I love the ability to Combat Squad my Tact Squads. Reason being is b/c of the ability to have a Heavy Weapon being used potentially every turn, and having another Special Weapon being used with another squad that can engage the enemy.

Obviously, this can be a double edged sword technique, especially when playing a Kill Points game, as you are adding more Kill Points to the table. You're also weakening your total numbers in a squad, which could require your squad to make more morale checks due to death in the shooting phases, and fewer attacks while in CC. Used correctly though, it's what makes Space Marines the most versatile army in all of 40K, IMHO.

yeah i keep my dev squad back with my whirlwind for supporting fire

Well, I'd play reactively. This is eventually the easiest way to improve your game.
I'd take a shooty SM army, with Devastators (missile launchers please), Dreads, Tacticals in Rhinos, Predators.