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For as long as I can remember I've been a Codex Marine player.

We aren't the best at much, but we can do a bit of everything. Where I'm finding this falls flat on it's face is in dealing with the Blood Angels.

They have almost all the toys the Codex boys enjoy, but then get spiffy things like Stormravens, Fast Vindicators, Fast Attack tanks, Descent of Angels for precision strikes, and Razorbacks that chew up Combat Squads like swiss cheese (for only 20 some-odd points when you drop your jump packs), just to name a few things.

I've found it incredibly hard to compete with them. I know there are ways, but the Blood Angels I find have a very good codex at dealing with what we Codex Marines bring to the table.

For instance:

Combat Squads: One of our big advantages is being able to squad the troop choices to hold more ground and be able to fire your heavy weapon and still move the special choice. The problem is cover saves don't work against Heavy bolters. If I can see you with my Missile Launcher/Lascannon, then you can see me and shoot me with twin-linked Heavy Bolters that hit accurately and hard against small groups of Marines. Even in 1000 pt games, it's very very easy to be facing at least 3 razorbacks that will dump 9 shots into a heavy weapon combat squad.

Descent of Angels: Assault squads jumping behind your lines accurately with a re-roll to enter the fight can be devastating. Your vehicles can't outrun them, so you have no option but to turn and shoot them or they'll assault you. If you can't kill them, which, depending on the amount of them dropping is hard to say the least, they will assault your vehicles that moved 6" to try and shoot them, hit on 4's with krak grenades on rear armor (AV10 most of the time) and cause significant damage. The only reasonable solution is to leave something in the back field that is then not doing harm up front. This also ignores the fact that a good BA player will be driving mech down your grill too.

Librarian/Furioso/Flying Dreadnoughts: Magna-grapple/melta at this range means that odds of them making their points back first turn is pretty high even if they get podded in.

Mephiston: Immune to ID, Psycher with lethal weapons and skills. Just rediculously good. You can kill him for sure. But the amount of high-strength fire he'll take to bring down means you're not removing squads from vehicles as fast as you need to.

These are some of the things I've found to be big problems in dealing with the Blood Angel menace that infests my gaming group.

I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom, but what strategies have you found for dealing with them, with the good ol' classic codex marines?

Well make sure to target the Sanguinary Priests in close combat with attacks that ignore armor saves. BA armies tend to be small so the faster you can get rid of their FNP the faster theyll die. Against DoA armies you can pretty much bet they will be charging you so make sure to setup your army so that you'll be able to counter charge - no Furious Charge puts you more on level ground versus BA in close combat.

I agree wuth Afrikin, down the Priests fast. Also Mephistons not immune to ID, for example a force weapon will kill. Now its hard to even get this attack off on him, but it could work.

Thunder hammer termies eat Mephiston, trust me no invul save means he is vulrable, Lysander can pretty much solo mephiston as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As to the rest of the army, plasma plasma plasma, hits drops every fast vehicle there is, and ignores FNP, also Tellion the scout captain with the ability to pick out any 1 character with his shooting means power weapons and priests can die before they can really be effective.

if you're worried about stormravens i would reccomend Rifleman Dreds.

2 TL-autocannons will shred AV12 easily.

if you go first you should be able to down the ravens pretty easily, unless the BA player is a sneaky git and reserves them.


Codex: SM does mobile Gunline better that any other army.

Assault Terminators will get rid of his FnP so use them to rip his squads up.

The vindicare assassin will be out in April, and every Sanguinary Priest will have a bullseye on his forehead...

Yeah, i will probably have at least one.

Grey Templar wrote:if you're worried about stormravens i would reccomend Rifleman Dreds.

2 TL-autocannons will shred AV12 easily.

if you go first you should be able to down the ravens pretty easily, unless the BA player is a sneaky git and reserves them.

Codex: SM does mobile Gunline better that any other army.

Assault Terminators will get rid of his FnP so use them to rip his squads up.

+1 to all this.
C:SM has some very good tools still in its disposal. Its far from doom and gloom for C:SM.

OP

What do you normally bring/have? This will help out alot more then just randoms

Mhephiston is not imune to ID but I do not think SM have anything that can kill him outright. (Top dog would be a broodlord.)

However you can bring much more longranged firepower then other marines can, so do it!

Grey Templar wrote:if you're worried about stormravens i would reccomend Rifleman Dreds.

2 TL-autocannons will shred AV12 easily.

if you go first you should be able to down the ravens pretty easily, unless the BA player is a sneaky git and reserves them.

Let's examine this. A Rifleman dred will get 4 TL autocannon shots. Let's assume that the BA player is a sneaky git, so the first opportunity to fire will occur after the Stormraven has moved flat-out. So, it has a 4+ save, but it will be destroyed if immobilized. If it survives, next turn it should be able to move 12" and drop off a double cargo of pain.

Under these assumptions, each shot has a 1 in 6 chance of penetrating and a 1 in 6 chance of glancing. A penetration has a 50% probability of destroying before the cover save, or a 25% chance overall. A glance has a 1 in 6 chance of destroying, so 1 in 12 with the save. Thus, the probability of a hit getting a destroyed result is (1/6) * (1/4) + (1/6) * (1/12) = (2/12) * (3/12) + (2/12) * (1/12) = 6/144 + 2/144 = 8/144 = 1/18 = 0.055. Thus, the probability of a shot getting a destruction result is 8/9 (the probability of a hit) * 1/18 = .049.

Finally, we have 4 shots, so we apply a binomial distribution with p = 0.049 to get a probability of destruction = 1 - (1-0.049)^4 = 1 - .951^4 = 0.182.

So a Rifleman dred has an 18.2% chance of destroying the Stormraven. If the SR doesn't have a cover save, the probability is 1 - (1-0.098)^4 = 0.338, which is reasonably decent I guess. If you have 3 and are willing to shoot all three at a Stormraven, the probability is 1 - (1-0.338)^3 = 0.7098, again without the cover save.

This seems low in general, so let's compare to some meltaguns to judge. Let's assume there are 3 that can be brought to bear, which is probably generous.

A meltagun will probably have a 2/3 chance to hit, it will penetrate 1/3 of the time and glance 1/6. When it penetrates, a roll of 3 or higher will immobilize or worse, so a penetration has a 2/3 chance of destroying. A glance destroys 1/3 times. So, a hit will destroy with probability 1/3 * 2/3 + 1/6 * 1/3 = 2/9 + 1/18 = 5/18 = .278. With three shots, the probability of destroying is 1 - (1-.278)^3 = .624, without cover, and 1 - (1-.139)^3 = .362.

So 3 meltaguns are 1.5 - 2 times better at destroying a Stormraven than 1 Rifleman dred. Of course, the Rifleman is cheap, since it's hard to get 3 meltaguns in a unit for non-IG armies. Still, I wouldn't rely on Rifleman dreds for taking down Stormravens. Massed missile launchers are probably better. Not having worked it out, 4 missile launchers are probably at least as good as 3 meltaguns and are easy to get for MEQ armies at least.

Thanks to everyone who reads this long post!

Range and probability to hit factor in too, though.

Yeah, I feel bad for loyalist SMs in this regard. To befair, the OP wasn't even counting 30" charging blood talon dreads, the fact that they get wave serpents (that can transport dreads), or the fact that they can pin-point accuracy deepstrike AND THEN ASSAULT straight out of it, or the deep striking land raiders.

At least other armies can spam long range shooting or can be tooled to be better in close combat.

From what I gather about SM, lascannon predator spam and the like may well be your only option. That or combi-plasma sternguard.

doubled wrote:Thunder hammer termies eat Mephiston, trust me no invul save means he is vulrable, Lysander can pretty much solo mephiston as well.

This is an interesting statement to me. Why is a jump-pack capable model getting bogged down by TH/SS termies?

jmurph wrote:Range and probability to hit factor in too, though.

Just to be clear, probability to hit is being accounted for in my analysis. Range is tricky, I admit.

I also agree with Ailaros' statement. Vanilla marines really have very few advantages over Space Wolves and Blood Angels at the moment. With the exception of the special characters, most of the C:SM exclusive units really aren't very good (Thunderfire Cannon, Land Speeder Storm) or have something comparable in another codex (Ironclad Dred vs. Furioso). From a pure effectiveness standpoint, the only reasons to favor C:SM over BA or SW are bikes as troops and the special characters. Maybe Null Zone if your local meta has lots of Daemon and Eldar players.

Just to be clear, I am aware that Meph doesn't technically have Immunity to ID or Eternal Warrior, but very few things can kill him outright, just meaning that high strength shooting while yes, will force saves, or cause him to take wounds, he unlike many special characters cannot be killed by a single anti-tank round.

His toughness also makes it very hard to wound reliably with high volume low strength shooting, the other typical way of dealing with a monster at range.

While I do agree that Terminators and Lysander can kill him, I've rarely seen this done in practice as he almost always has initiative and wipes out a slew of them before they even get the chance to hit him - greatly reducing the odds they will kill him.

I'm happy to have this discussion though. I posted this at BoLS as well and the result was...underwhelming.

I just find that there are in fact counters to specific Blood Angels problems - and you can deal individually with each one no problem. Which is exactly what the guy who did reply at BoLS pointed out to me. "Do X to beat Y" for each problem.

The real dilemma is when you play a real game with real people and you invariably end up in a sub-optimal match up because he knows his army as well as you know yours.

If I put each fight in a glass jar and fought each independently I doubt any of us would have complaints with the codex. As it stands - Good luck dealing with a quality player fielding a competitive list with multiple threats.

When our threats line up with theirs. I just don't see it working out so well unless you get a little lucky or are just the better general EVERY time.

@Ailaros> The best assualt range of a D Comp dread with a 6 rolled on the fleet would be maybe 28 inches, thats 12 inch raven move, disembarking so just the tip of the base is within two inches to count in the disembark action, 6 on the fleet and 6 to charge, ignoreing all terrain effects, Your post makes it sound like the Storm Raven and Land Raider benifit from the DOA rules and can assault the turn they deepstrike, this is not the case, DOA only applies to Jump Pack troops and it specifically states that if a transport Deep Strikes, then it's embarked units may not assault that turn. Unless we are miscommunicating and thats not what you meant in which case I apologize.

Mephiston is a pain; the best options for dealing with him are TH/SS terminators, and Sternguard with combi-weapons. He can deal a bunch of wounds, but against a 3++ save, and with a Librarian in 24" to negate half his powers, he's not as scary.

Now, Terminators of course have less mobility than Mephy, but since he's got to come to you to hurt you, you can still intercept him. Bear in mind that you can move + assault 12" in any direction, so you're looking at a 24" radius assault coverage area, plus the width of the unit's footprint. That's a pretty broad zone for Mephy to try to clear, and it's impossible for him to do it unless terrain gets in your way. Which SOME will, of course, but since he's coming to you, you can set up the area you're defending to give the termies the best possible paths.

Against an army mixing deep strike & units starting on the table, it comes down to the exact units/army lists in question, as well as the terrain. Often an enemy starting part on the table is to your advantage, as it allows you to engage a part of his army with all of your shooting, while still maneuvering to assault the Deep Strikers the turn they land.

Their stuff is faster and fightier than yours, but all of their units cost more than your equivalents; the only things cheaper are the discount transports, but said transports start more expensive than yours, and the assault marines inside are 100pts for the first five and +18pts per model after that. Their assault terminators are more expensive than yours, and yours have a Null Zone Librarian to make them better.

When Blood Angels deepstrike, proper formation discipline is key. By castling up, behind dedicated CC troops, you can really make his life very difficult. In my attached example, I am using a modified form of this list
http://kirbysblog-ic.blogspot.com/2010/07/thunderbubble-sm-mech-wthss-bubble-wrap.html

By using the bubble effect created by the LSS disruptor beacon, you can virtually eliminate Vanguard vets first turn assaults and Stormraven deepstrikes. If a squad of plain assault marines drops close, move the terminators out of the way and allow the dreadnought to assault them. Yes you lose the shooting, but he will likely tie them up for the remainder of the game.

All the while you can be shooting unimpeded over the heads of the terminators who get some minor cover from the storms. Each turn move the storms flat out side to side, shifting the 6 inch bubble you can't cover from one side to the other. This gives them a 4+ cover and 6's to hit in cc. Any attacks on those units are wasted as they are not going into troops, transports or termies.

By combat squadding the termies and the 2 dreadoughts you should be able to deal with most assault threats and you should be dropping 2-3 AV12 vehicles or 1 combat squad of assault marine w/FNP per turn.

Once you have weathered the inital storm either camp on your objective and gate the termies to go contest, or break your shell and go mobile.

Hope this helps

razor

EDIT Realizing that I spread that formation out a little more than it needed to be. To fit in the pitched battle, you may need to square it off a little, but the storms can still scout to their current positions

I think the real threat of Blood Angels lies in their cheap (in terms of point cost) Razorbacks. Taking assault marines without packs inside Razorbacks gives you the freedom of a fast transport for the same cost of a slower SM version.

Five tactical marines with a flamer and TL assault cannon Razorback comes in at 165pts. for C:SM and a mere 160pts for Blood Angels (with pack-less assault marines in place of tactical marines.) Crazy stuff.

or the deep striking land raiders.

Yeah, those are REAL scary. 500pts of death with:
1 - a big chance of dying to a mishap
2 - a chance of being stuck in reserves until turn 5, unable to assault until turn 6
3- the ability to simply drive to the same place on turn 2

I don't fear Deepstriking Land Raiders... the size of the model almost always prohibits it.

What I do worry about with Thunderbubble is Razorbacks.

Yes, Razorbacks. The humble and rediculously cheap razorbacks mech heavy lists could very well chew threw termies no problem.

Remember there are basically two ways of dealing with big targets. High Strength shooting that ignores saves, or lots and lots of low strength shooting that forces lots of dice into their hands.

When you shoot at TH Termies with Heavy Bolters, they don't get to take advantage of the cover the speeders offer or the invulnerable save the shield gives them. 2+ is very good, but every time you fail one, and you will, it's costing you 40 points. Double the cost of the razorback when you drop jump packs.

Let's say someone who is playing a descent of angels list with some mech - like what I played most recently. Our game was smaller but I've played plenty of higher points games. In this game he still had 3 razorbacks in addition to his deep striking squads.

3 Twinlinked heavy bolters will reliably hit at least 2 times each - likely 3 based on their ballistic skill. Assuming only 2 times though, Terminators are still only T4, so they are still wounded on a 3+, so about 66% chance of those dice wounding. Means you're still averaging about 4 wounds, assuming you're average. I don't know about you... but if I throw 4 dice, there is a pretty ok chance I'll toss a 1. I know it's only 1 terminator... and the squad is there to absorb some hits and protect them... But that's only 3 razorbacks, it's just easy to hand them points this way unfortunately.