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Alright I have a couple critical decisions on picking weapons for use with my vanilla space marines. I am playing 1000 points of marines exclusively against my friends space wolves. He really likes blood claws and my strategy right now is to keep my tactical squads static in superior firing positions and use their heavy weapons to take down as many vehicles and infantry as possible. So i'll break it down to what into which squads need weapons picked out and what my options are. Keep in mind I've only played one game so I don't really know how alot of these choices play out. I'd really like some advice from people who know how the stats work and who have experience with this stuff.

Tactical Squads- people recommended meltas but I found them almost totally useless. There range is too short and i'm trying to keep my tac squads at a distance to his blood claws. Lascannons seemed to really help me take out his rhinos which tremendously slowed down the advance of his men. I could save points and use missiles but frags don't do much damage to MEQ. I'd rather have a good chance of inflicting one armor penetrating wound (las) vs having a slim chance of inflicting 3 wounds which could be saved (frag missile) plus las is slightly better at dealing with vehicles vs krak. Also since I never plan on letting my tac squads get into assault range would it make sense to replace the melta with a plasma rifle to thin out infantry with still having some chance of damaging vehicles.

Terminators- I want to try out assault terminators because I will be using Librarian HQ (gate, avenger or might) attached and will gate them into areas where blood claws are getting close. That way they can take the brunt of melee combat while the tac squads pick off vehicles and distant infantry. Should I use SS/TH or LC . I know that the SS gives the terminators a chance of surviving heavy weapon hits but the TH doesn't seem that cool. If I just kept the LC I would get to reroll failed wounds. Everyone always recommends SS/TH termies but to me it seems like if your opponent lacks heavy weapons it makes more sense to use the LC's and perform better in close combat

Predator- Gave the predator an AC and sponson las. AC basically did nothing. All the wounds it did manage to inflict were armor saved. With the las I wouldn't have this problem and killed alot more guys with the side las vs the main AC. Can i just use a las instead?

Dreadnought- How do dreadnoughts do in close combat vs blood claws? I would be willing to drop a missile launcher off the dreadnought and give it a close combat weapon if it could effectively fight blood claws but i'm not experienced enough to know how this head to head would work. Also I could give it a heavy flamer if that would help. It would help alot in the close combat department and let the shooting components of my army keep shooting. Then for it's other weapon should I give it a las (vehicles), or dedicate it to assault w/ assault cannon or flamer?

Tac squads-Lascannon is far more expensive than the missile launcher for only a little bit more power, stick with the missile launcher and you can use the point you save to spend on something else
Terminators-Assauult terminators are great but if a large uni of BC charge you they will drown you in attacks so watch out, TH+SS termies are popular due to their 3++ but will die quickly to hordes, LC are better against hordes but will die easily against deathstars
Librarian-Gate and Avenger are good powers
Predator-The AC is powerful and can be used to take out light vehicles and is very cheap whereas the Lascannon is not
Dreadnought-The dread should be okay unless there is a powerfist in the unit, it should be able to bog down a large unit easily

Thanks, That all makes sense. Any suggestion on what I could use to counter the blood claws? Jump Marines? I'd like to still have a unit that I can effectively attach my Librarian to but otherwise i'm open to suggestions on what to do to beat the blood claws in close combat

On Tacticals the Missile Launcher tends to be the best option, it works fine for stopping transports and generally being annoying from the backfield. Against MEQ I would only be shooting Frags if he is nicely bunched up (as in you would get 4+ hits) and sitting in cover, otherwise just stick to krak and remove 1 Marine per turn. Melta tends to be the special weapon of choice as it lets you deal with AV12+ (which is where the Missile Launcher and Lascannon start to struggle), add a combi to the Sarge to give you two shots when you need it. . Bolters usually cover your anti infantry needs, most people tend to go with flamers (again with an optional combi on the Sarge) if they need more than that as they are cheap. I can't say I recommend plasma on Tacticals as you can only get one, probably better to take Sternguard, Plasmagun Command Squads or Las/Plas Razorbacks if you want to remove MEQ from the board quickly.

I would highly recommend Rhinos if you aren't taking them already. Without actually seeing both of your lists I can't be sure, but it sounds like both of you are still fielding primarily foot based lists. For the most part Mech is the way to go in 5th, which is part of the reason why you will see everyone recommending meltas, Autocannons, Missile Launchers etc. If he isn't taking many vehicles then you probably don't need to have everyone using melta, but there is no reason why you shouldn't mech up yourself. The likes of Tactical squads should always have a transport of some kind (most likely a Rhino or Razorback, Drop Pods if you are going down that route). Combat squad your Tactical squads, put the Missile Launcher back in cover somewhere and push forward with the meltagun or flamer. He has to destroy the Rhino to get to the guys inside and if they charge it and destroy it in combat then you get to Rapid Fire him in the face/assault him before he hits you.

Lightning Claws are helpful, but standard Marines should always take more TH/SS guys than LC guys in a unit. TH/SS can smash their way through anything, can take being hit by just about anything and are generally awesome. LCs are nice because they shred standard infantry, but almost everything else in your list can deal with infantry anyway (you will always have Bolters everywhere). For BA and BT they are great because they can get Furious Charge, making them very scary at S5 I5 (it gets them to the point where they can reliably deal with most vehicles etc) but for standard Marines just stick with 1-2 LCs per units to get some kills in at initiative and let the TH/SS guys do the heavy lifting.

The AutoLas Predator's main role is anti light tank, the Autocannon and Lascannons are perfect for stopping Rhinos and Chimeras. If you run out of tanks to shoot at it has probably done its job/got its points back so just fire it weakened units to finish them off. Don't worry too much about Marines passing saves, they do that sometimes but if you dump enough wounds on them they will drop. Under no circumstances should you take the tri Lascannon Predator, its massively overpriced to the point that you aren't that far away from buying a Land Raider. The other common loadout for Predators is Autocannon with Heavy Bolter sponsons, purely an anti infantry platform which dumps wounds on things until they die.

Dreads will do fine in combat with Blood Claws even if they do have a power fist (if they don't have a fist then they can barely touch you at all). You can't expect to win combat/kill/break them but you will squash a couple per turn. If they have a power fist its either going to be getting 1 or 2 attacks per round, which doesn't give him very good odds of destroying you (4's to hit, 4's to do some form of damage and you ignore a big chunk of it while you are in combat anyway).

Why do you have to beat the Blood Claws in combat? Aside from Assault Terminators, Ironclads, properly loaded out Bike Command Squads and a few other units nilla Marines are essentially a shooting based army. Your main advantages are Combat Squads and Combat Tactics + ATSKNF, which assuming you don't have any special characters changing Combat Tactics around (its still going to be major advantage obviously), both lend themselves to lists based around shooting. Combat Squad everything so everything is easy to kill in assault, but spread out properly so that only one squad can be assaulted at a time. If you get assaulted you should lose combat, auto fail your morale and either get away (then regroup and shoot him in the face) or die to Fearless wounds if you get caught (as you lost combat so should only have 1-2 guys left in the first place). Either way the enemy assault unit ends up in the open in front of the rest of your army and you keep shooting him.

dspur15 wrote:Tactical Squads- people recommended meltas but I found them almost totally useless. There range is too short and i'm trying to keep my tac squads at a distance to his blood claws. Lascannons seemed to really help me take out his rhinos which tremendously slowed down the advance of his men. I could save points and use missiles but frags don't do much damage to MEQ. I'd rather have a good chance of inflicting one armor penetrating wound (las) vs having a slim chance of inflicting 3 wounds which could be saved (frag missile) plus las is slightly better at dealing with vehicles vs krak. Also since I never plan on letting my tac squads get into assault range would it make sense to replace the melta with a plasma rifle to thin out infantry with still having some chance of damaging vehicles.

Meltas are good if there's a lot of mechanised transport and tanks. Against nids for example or even dark eldar they are a bit useless. Tac squads get the missiles cheap. However in a dev squad lascannons are quite expensive for that extra point of strength. hence the popularity of 4 missile man squads.

Dreads are good unless they've got power fists. However if you're against marines - plasma. It's cheap and abundant. Bikes w/ plasma guns, rhinos wiht drive by plasma tac squad, devistaor plasma cannons. If he's not got a lot of mech then they're the job.

Dreads are good even if they have the fist. Most sarges get 3 attacks on the charge with a fist, and need a 4+ to get any result even when they hit. A dread is more likely to chew up a squad than get destroyed (though it will take awhile, since dreads are limited in attack numbers.

As for the plasma, you don't need it as much as people are advocating. Its nice to have, if you can get it cheap. Which you can't other than on razorbacks and bike squads. Their should be a fair amount of cover, so plasma's ability to ignore the 3+ save is often limited to forcing 4+ cover saves. I'll just try my luck with other weapons, like bolters and flamers. Of course this relies on you being more mobile than your opponent, which is hard to do when he flies, and you walk. So take a rhino for your tacs, when he gets close, make him make bad decisions. If he has to assault the rhino, you will get first shots at him. If he tries to position so he can charge next turn, drive away, or drive up and flame.

As for the TH wounding complaint, THs wound on 2+ vs virtually anything you should be fighting. And 3+ or 4+ against the crazy stuff. LCs need 4s against the most common, with a reroll. So LCs wound 75 percent against marines, while THs wound 83 percent. LCs get the extra attacks, but their attacks are not very good against high toughness enemies. THs are generally wasted on low toughness units, but can instant kill up to toughness 4 multi wound models. LCs can't wound some of the more extreme units, and scratch the paint of tanks (glancing against rear armor) while THs can kill even wraithlord level creatures, and make short work of tanks.

So having a better save, and a larger and more important range of enemies, makes the THs a generally better choice. LCs are still nice, but their application is narrower. Also the things that LCs are better at killing (hordes) should probably be dealt with with templates and massed fire power.