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Basically, do you think that a vanilla space marine force would/could be competitave at tourneys these days? It just seems that if your not a space wolf, blood angel, etc. with all the bells and whistles, you just can't win. What do you think?

Oops, shoulda put this in general discussion

They can easily be competetive at tournaments.
They simply have fewer uber competetive builds/units.

In your opinion what would be the best build for a vsm tourney army?

There are 3 AFAIK.
All bikes (With or without Khan)
Dread heavy (MotF and a feck loaf of dreads, they can be in drop pods if you like, varyng weapon load-outs)
Vulkan-ey goodness (Vulkan and TH+SS termies in a raider with LS equipped with MM and HF and everyone else wth as many Meltas and flamers as possible, Tac squads go into rhinos)
I'm not sure on the details as they tend to depend on how the local meta is...

The dropping dread army sounds kinda cool. And Vulkan is always a crowd pleaser

Just don't suck at the game and just about any build is ok for SMs.

Marines are hard to screw up with. Conversely, they're hard to do absolutely incredible with. As long as you don't cherry-pick one of everything you'll be alright, generally.

FWIW A vanilla codex space marines list came in the top three (can't remember where exactly, I think it actually won...) at a 78 player tournament I attended last weekend.

We get Null zone Librarians (one of the top powers in the game)

Vulkan, Lysander, Pedro, Shrike - (all amazing special characters)

Cheaper TH/SS then BA and SW (one of the top assault units in the game imo)

All bike armies

Scout bikes/Storms (great alpha strike/disruption units)

All dread armies (ironclads)

Easy ways to get bolster defenses making great gunlines (TFC, Lysander, MOTF w/t conversion beamer, all giving bolster)

FWIW A vanilla codex space marines list came in the top three (can't remember where exactly, I think it actually won...) at a 78 player tournament I attended last weekend.



Do you know what kind of list they were running?

One of the more potent marine lists out there is maximum tac squad count. They are very cheap for what you get

I'm interested in seeing this list. What's the theory behind it? I would love an excuse to use more tacticals in my list, but the points for a squad with 10 men, a rhino, melta, and powerfist...You can do a lot more killing or a lot more soaking with that 200+ points than a tac squad.

To the OP: Yes. Vanilla marines are worth it, HOWEVER: Pick it because you like the appearance of <insert codex chapter here> or their backstory. DO NOT pick it because you want marines but "SW/BA/GK are cheezy!" This is not an invitation to be a complete <Censored> and bring the hardest hitting list you can to random games with people who have never played the game before, but YOU need to be the one picking and choosing. You are the one shelling out a lot of money for it after all. If you want SW/BA/GK/BT, go get them, and let the people who cry cheese either forfeit their tournament game or find someone else to play with.

Now, as others have said, we have the cheapest TH/SS terminators around. We have Nullzone, which is worth its weight in gold the very first time you hit opposing stormshields or daemons. Only two marine codices have Sternguard, and we are one of them. We have ironclad dreads and can pull off wierd 6 dread lists. We can take bikes as troops. We have a wonderful assortment of special characters, including a mini-vindicare in the form of Mr. Telion. We can pull of first turn charges with land speeder storms, for those so inclined. We also get to play no end of morale games with the ability to voluntarily fail a morale check. Yes, this does mean our flavor of marines default uber-ability is that they tuck tail and run REELY-GUD, but it does open doors that are closed to a lot of armies.

Now for the bad: Between codex marines and the other chapters (I can't speak for DA...but as far as BA/SW/BT/GK go) ...their troop choices are at minimum as good as ours, point for point, and it's not much of a stretch to say that the others have better direct combat power. Some, in my opinion are hilariously better.

Our devastator squads are by far the worst of the codices, except the Black Templars, who forgot how to make them. (Sometimes when two heavy bolters love each other VERY MUCH...)

Our access to FNP is limited to two command squads (one Apothecary per) and Sicarius. Not good compared to the rampant morphine addiction I tend to see in BA lists.

We don't get land raiders as dedicated transports, so that's something to keep in mind.

One of the more potent marine lists out there is maximum tac squad count. They are very cheap for what you get


Sounds like a marine hoard army. I'd like to see the list also.

I'd say SW would do a marine horde better than Vanilla...

I'd say SW would do a marine horde better than Vanilla...

True, but I just can't find any other way to describe such an army like that

Can definately be viable... They have a LOT of solid tools to make a wide variety of lists. However I would highly recommend playing a custom chapter. That way if you decide you want to try another codex you will catch less nerd rage. /ducks

I play Vulkan, and have noticed that although very powerful, they playing gets repetitive, Codex Marines are really hard to do terrible with. Although the other marine codex's perform better in some areas, C:SM is without a doubt able to be competitive as they are good at just about everything.

Don't be afraid to experiment with them, they have tons of builds that can do decent.

Their most competitive units being:
-Librarians
-Sternguard
-Dreads with either Autocannons or MM/CCW
-Assault Termies
-Tactical squads (Almost always take these over scouts.)
-Land Speeders
-Predators
-Land Raiders (Every varient had a different role.)
-Bikes if taken as troops with a captain on bike.

Yea, sadly that's some pretty good advice. Depending on the up-tightness of your group, showing up with say...ultramarines, and running BA or SW rules may or may not cause metal hive tyrants and fruit to become projectiles.


(Never mind that the 8th Ultramarines company is almost wall to wall assault marines...Wonder which rulebook I would have to use to emulate THAT...)

Yep, I can see it now "Yea, it's Ultramarines but I'm using the Blood Angels rules" , then the REAL battle begins!!!

necroplayer wrote: Yep, I can see it now "Yea, it's Ultramarines but I'm using the Blood Angels rules" , then the REAL battle begins!!!

It's perfectly legal...
Cheesy but legal.

purplefood wrote:It's perfectly legal...
Cheesy but legal.

Recession proof and legal...

Gornall wrote:

purplefood wrote:It's perfectly legal...
Cheesy but legal.

Recession proof and legal...

See that is the bit that makes people okay it...
I wouldn't bat an eyelid personally as long as the list is legal and if someone has made an army that they want to count as 3/4/5 different armies then that's fine.

See that is the bit that makes people okay it...
I wouldn't bat an eyelid personally as long as the list is legal and if someone has made an army that they want to count as 3/4/5 different armies then that's fine.

So true.

If you want to make your own chapter, resurrect an already listed chapter or a few other things, vanilla is the best bet. So long as you don't also bust out the BA and SW codexes as well for the same. exact. army.

I've been making an iron hands setup with the normal marine book and really enjoying it.