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i have been a marine player for a while now. (about a year or so) so i am fairly well versed with the mainstream marine tactics.
my question is has anyone found some very effective tactics with marines??? bonus points for taking your opponent by surprise.
i have had some success with using my raiders as bait for traps etc...
also have found the usefulness of assault marines.
i currently have the following units if that helps anyone (plus would be willing to expand the army to get the shock and awe effect )
3x tac squads (10 men each)
1 assault squad (10)
1 terminator squad (10)
1 assault term squad (5)
1 devastator squad (5)
1 dread
1 predator
1 rhino
1 whirlwind
2 land raiders
calgar
captain model (usually use as varro tigirious)
as a side note i often use the tanks as different than they actually are (ie use whirlwind as an extra rhino or pred) as the shop i play at is very lax about models.
also load outs of the squads do not matter so much as, once again, actual models are not a huge deal.

thanks in advance

-Kane

Emperor protects

The latest and great tactic I see more and more is play them as Space Wolves...

I have lately been toying around with taking a squad of Children of the Damned and deepstriking on an objective just to waste a lot of opponent time trying to move them. They cost a ridiculous amount of points, and their damage output is not great, but they are so difficult to kill plus being low-prority targets as far as potential threat goes, I thought it might be fun to try seriously just sitting them right on top of an objective in the open just daring someone to waste their time trying to uproot them.

General_Chaos wrote:The latest and great tactic I see more and more is play them as Space Wolves...

And that annoys me to no end. Worse yet, when the GK drop, those SW will suddenly be Inquisition AND SW

There's always this too...

Hehe! That made me snort my coffee!

I like the wings on the LR. Hilarious.

aside from going to a cheese list (BA or space puppies)
i am more looking for stuff like taking a land speeder with multi melta and zipping it up to pop tanks from the flank.

tho tru dat about the BA and wolves

btw dont forget about deep striking a land raider.

also thoughts about bikes? drop pods? speeders?

thanks again

-Kane

Emperor Protects

Learning how to use combat tactics tricks.

* Squad is getting hit by demolisher cannon in the open. Go to ground with the squad so you get your 6+ save. When rolling the morale test for falling back, choose to auto-fail. This lets you rally on the next turn and you are no longer 'gone to ground'. This is a free 6+ save when the fit hits the shan.

* Fall back when shot at before assaulting. Many times I've had a big nasty DP or other MC close near my models. That squad will take a few causalities from shooting and I will have the squad auto-fail its test to fall back out of assault range.

* Fall back out of combat. When you fail combat vs a bigger foe, try and fall back out of combat. If you succeed, you can auto-rally, then fire into the squad you were just in assault with.

Because the marines are such a middle ground army, I think it is best not to focus too much on upgrades. When you come close to outnumbering a horde of weaker troops, the overall slight superiority is really noticable.

I completely minmax my armies emphasised on the min. A couple of power hard hitters like Ven-Dread or wad-o-assault termies chomps points but a couple are okay as focused units for a specific job in a game and nothing else. I prefer to focus on what I can get for the cheapest, take advantage of all those MLs and flamers and let the numbers do the talking as best I can. Sarge-with-extra sarge upgrades, lazorbacks, huge assault termie squads, command squads, vehicle upgrades beyond extra armor for dreads, all of them are eggs-in-a-basket stuff to me.

I know it isn't really tactics, but army comp, but when your tactics involve mostly stand-and-dish-it-and-take-it-when-they-close it is important. It is unproductive to think you can make an army better at maneuver than others because you are dishing out a lot of points doing so, where most armies can do it better and cheaper. Surprise minimal land speeders with heavy flamers have their charm but they are a suicide unit. The best I have done in games is to maneuver early then sit back and let them do the maneuvering while I sit in a nice clump around whatever spot or spots you feel are worth holding. Taking the fight to them has never worked well when I play because other armies just do it better. Here's a tactic: understand that your Rhinos just get you there. Love your Rhinos for dying in the perfect spot you leave them, affording a nice wall of terrain to block off whatever you from harm.

Either the opponents have faster or cheaper or better exploitable super characters, are better armed for it, open topped fast skimming transport having - there's always something dedicated offensively for assaulting a position that is just better than SM.

Our biggest strength is just sitting and taking it, choosing when to run, shooting a lot, but swinging hard and not going down easy when charged, and being a pain in the but to kill. Most stand-and-shoot armies cannot put up the numbers and be able to take a charge at the same time.

Striker units decked out with lots of points are fun, but a horde of power armor is really discouraging to chew through when it just sits there shooting well until you charge it - then taking more punch and hitting back harder than most other sit-n-shoot armies when it gets to melee.

so what you are saying is take everything without kit. no upgrades whatsoever. interesting.

No. That's a bit extreme. Kit out a couple of things to be as tough as you can, but take advantage of all the minimal (or free) things that are still pretty good and find out the difference it can make when you can squeeze in two more tactical squads, or whatever other numbers catch your fancy (I like tactical squads w. razorbacks, basic melta dreads, naked librarians, etc).

Just a couple of for-instances:
A "Lazorback" costs almost twice as much as a Razorback for instance. The Razor with the plain unupgraded TL heavy bolter still performs its task of transporting a combat squad (plus optional character), has a decent gun, just not an AT option, and dies just as easily as its very expensive variant. The gun isn't as nice as having a lascannon and plasmaguns, but they both die with the same ease and become terrain anyway.

Dakka Predators are one of the the best buys in the game, still have an autocannon for AT work, but a lascannon Predator costs twice as much, dies just as easily. I would rather have 2 Dakka preds than one Lascan pred. The middle ground one with the sponsons is nice too for price, with about the same punch as a devastator squad but a lot more durable. IMO Durability is more important than punch with Marines. 2 tanks are harder to kill than 1 tank.

A regular dread with the stock multimelta is still fearsome, a ven dread moreso - but the difference in cost to utility, besides the urge to upgrade the ven dread more than its already heavy cost is so extreme, again its almost a 2-1 ratio.

Tactical squads give you a free missile launcher and flamer (or some other weapons too that I don't bother with) those are both perfectly good weapons used at the correct targets. Sure the cheese marines do it better on all fronts but they do everything better - I'm talking about matchups with armies that aren't just broken uber variants of our own. Once you start giving sarge a power weapon, a combi weapon, meltabombs, whatever, you are cutting into points that - between the tac upgrade, the razor upgrade, the artificer on your captain, the extra armor on the dread, HK on the ironclad, extra heavy bolters here and there, etc etc you could have squeezed in an entire extra tactical squad, scout squad, and so on.

The temptation to put a combi weapon on a tac squad sarge for instance, is there to give it more punch, but when you look at it, most people think 'its 10 points for a melta hit' - maybe - if it gets used, if he doesn't die first, if his transport isn't shot out early leaving him far out of range. Extra armor on a Land Raider... IF it gets penned and shaken.. sure.. Epistolaries in terminator armor.. hell you may as get 2 librarians for that cost, as keeping them in squads for safety anyway. All these little bits and pieces add up to a staggering amount of points that makes the difference between fielding an army of just-in-case little bonuses, or an army that is just big.

hmm. very true and very interesting. thanks much