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To point out, i dislike space marines. However i want a second army that my little bro would want to play. And space marines are cheaper then most armies, and he likes them, no idea why. So i need a codex that has the most ranged combat. Basically i want to run them as elite ig in power armor. So lots of shooting, and lots of tank, seeing as im a tread head. I dont care about the fluff, as i will ignore it. I dont care about the armor color, as they will be painted in either woodland or urban camo.

My thoughts so far are either vanilla marines or space wolves as they seem the most capable of ranged combat.

Thanks for the help.

Title edited to reflect thread.

Space wolves, from what I've witnessed, can do it all and do it very well.

Dark Angels are a more shooty SM army as well. And painting their robes in acmo might look quite cool!

Raptors. If i remember right then their chaptermaster's ballistic skill is higher than his weaponskill

Don't forget, for long range Killy death, you can't really top the Tau. Ok, not so many 'treaded' tanks but still.....

Edit: just read your OP... on the otherhand Tau are kinda like Marines....ish....from a distance....

SW, BA, and Vanilla all do shooty well. Vanilla uses some rhino bunkers with a razorback or two (normally to hold your HQ of a stock librarian) with some riflemen dreads, speeders of the MM/HF or typhoon variety with some dakka or combi preds.

Space Wolves have Long Fangs for cheap missile spam and do MSU razorback really well with excellent psychic powers from rune priests.

Blood Angels also do MSU razorback really well with fast vehicles and still have a strong CC punch with FnP and furious charge.

I'm a fan of Vanilla marines, myself.

If you want good shooting on the cheap, also consider which codex is going to require less vehicles. Most Space Marine shooty armies are good in MSU with lots of vehicles, and a 35 point rhino at $33 is an awful points-per-dollar ratio.

The Grey Knights are probably the power armor codex that would require the least vehicles (unless you wanted to do DoA Blood Angels, but buying that many assault marines would also be expensive). And if you don't use Rifleman dreads, you can easily do a list with no vehicles at all.

Id say Imperial Guard. hands down the best shooty army out there and if you dont believe me ask someone who has played a guard player, any guard player who knew what he was doing. Odds are that if the terrain was flat, the opponent got his backside handed to him.

For shooty armies in general, go with Necrons or IG, for Space Marines you have several builds from different codex's that could work;

Black Templar (my army so I know it best): MSU Laz-back Spam, laz-backs have POMS and the five man squads have 1 special and 1 heavy weapon each, this will be cheaper then say BA as the laz backs are 30 points more each but can always shoot one more weapon then the normally could, even if stunned. You could also do BT termy spam, each squad can have 2 heavy weapons with 5 men (or four in the command squads) and they can buy drop pods if you really want.

Blood Angels: razorback spam again, lots of fast razorbacks, really awesome, tourney level list.

Space Wolves: a lot of long fang spam is what i have seen, but i could be wrong, but the can be nasty and shooty all at the same time.

vanilla: here you have a more well rounded aproach, at least in what i have seen, a good combination of various shooty units can bring some hurt.

Gray Knights: psi-cannon dreadnoughts, six of them, need i say more?

Dark angels: you have some ok shooty builds here, but they are more of a combined arms apoach, they mix cc and ranged very well, but lack in both when focused on alone.

chaplaincliff wrote:
Gray Knights: psi-cannon dreadnoughts, six of them, need i say more?

Please point me to the page that gives you that option. ive looked over the book just now, several times and have yet to find this option.
You can have 6 dreads, but their not that much better from the usual ones. granted they have psychic powers and special ammo that adds 1 to the weapons str, but appart from that, i fail to see the combo that puts them at the top

tarnish wrote:

chaplaincliff wrote:
Gray Knights: psi-cannon dreadnoughts, six of them, need i say more?

Please point me to the page that gives you that option. ive looked over the book just now, several times and have yet to find this option.
You can have 6 dreads, but their not that much better from the usual ones. granted they have psychic powers and special ammo that adds 1 to the weapons str, but appart from that, i fail to see the combo that puts them at the top

You replace their arms with 2 sets of twinlinked Autocannons and buy them Psybolt Ammo to make them S8. Each Dreadnought puts out 4 twinlinked S8 shots per turn. It's actually one of the better things in the entire game, honestly.

I recommend IG, sure, you won't be able to have the power armour but for lots of tanks and other dakka I think they're a good choice. If you use Veterans you can at least shoot as well as Space Marines (BS4), and they have good transports that make them more survivable.

I think he meanst the TL AC dreads with Holy Ammo for 4 S8 TL shots.

I would say it goes something like this:

1. Space Wolves

2. Imperial Guard

3. Dark Eldar

4. Grey Knights

5. Necrons

6, 7, 8, 9: DA, BT, BA & vanilla are all about the same

10. SoB

11. Orks

12. Eldar

13. Tau

14. Tyranids

15. Daemons

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:

tarnish wrote:

chaplaincliff wrote:
Gray Knights: psi-cannon dreadnoughts, six of them, need i say more?

Please point me to the page that gives you that option. ive looked over the book just now, several times and have yet to find this option.
You can have 6 dreads, but their not that much better from the usual ones. granted they have psychic powers and special ammo that adds 1 to the weapons str, but appart from that, i fail to see the combo that puts them at the top

You replace their arms with 2 sets of twinlinked Autocannons and buy them Psybolt Ammo to make them S8. Each Dreadnought puts out 4 twinlinked S8 shots per turn. It's actually one of the better things in the entire game, honestly.

the question i was asking is where the psy-cannons are for dreads. as for the riflemen dreads, sure their decent, but still only ap 4. as for light tank busting, its a good choice, but as people play mahreens here, its not much good to be honest. way too many saves to paddle through...

for psy-cannon dreads we wont see them until they make forgeworld stuff legal in 40k which might happen in 6th edition.

tarnish wrote:

Mr. Self Destruct wrote:

tarnish wrote:

chaplaincliff wrote:
Gray Knights: psi-cannon dreadnoughts, six of them, need i say more?

Please point me to the page that gives you that option. ive looked over the book just now, several times and have yet to find this option.
You can have 6 dreads, but their not that much better from the usual ones. granted they have psychic powers and special ammo that adds 1 to the weapons str, but appart from that, i fail to see the combo that puts them at the top

You replace their arms with 2 sets of twinlinked Autocannons and buy them Psybolt Ammo to make them S8. Each Dreadnought puts out 4 twinlinked S8 shots per turn. It's actually one of the better things in the entire game, honestly.

the question i was asking is where the psy-cannons are for dreads. as for the riflemen dreads, sure their decent, but still only ap 4. as for light tank busting, its a good choice, but as people play mahreens here, its not much good to be honest. way too many saves to paddle through...

You clearly don't understand how good 4 S8 twin-linked shots at BS4 is. They may be AP4, but most of those shots are going after vehicles. S8 high rate of fire laughs at AV10 and 11, chuckles at AV12, and smiles a little at AV13. Shooting at marines means you've killed all the vehicles and forced them out of their metal boxes, which is what you want anyways.

Yes i do get how the armor pen system works and the values you describe are more then threatened by a str 8, but as people play in my area, they hardly ever use transports in greater numbers. A footslogging marine army is hardly worth taking a rifleman dread against.

Vanilla marines with thunderfire canons, devastators, and sterngaurds with special ammo is a shooty army but can be treaded up with predators, razorbacks, and land raiders.

Orks can be insanely shooty if you take 2 SAG, 45 lootas(3 units of 15), bikes, and boyz. Of course, you have a very real chance of vaporizing yourself and doing absolutely nothing as you do to kill the enemy.

-cgmckenzie

No army is going to put out more raw firepower than the Imperial Guard.

That said, several SM armies can pack in a ridiculous amount of AT fire, at hilariously cheap costs (e.g. Long Fangs, Psyrifleman dreads, etc). SW's, GK's, and BA's can make ridiculous gunlines if they want to (odd given their supposedly assault oriented nature... )

pizzaguardian wrote:for psy-cannon dreads we wont see them until they make forgeworld stuff legal in 40k which might happen in 6th edition.

You have your wires crossed somewhere. There is nothing, absolutely nothing illegal about using Forgeworld models in normal 40k games that actually have normal 40k rules. Buying a Space Marine dreadnought and putting forgeworld autocannon arms on it will not be illegal anywhere. If someone makes a fuss about it, they're deliberately being a gak.

He was commenting more on putting actual Psycannons on the arms rather than magical autocannons. So Forgeworld rules rather than models.

Take an assault cannon, give it psybolt ammo, voila, identical to a Psycannon in terms of rules. Use psycannon FW model, profit.

Look at dreadnought-full Vulcan lists. If you count twin-linked heavy flamers as "shooty", I'd say that Vulcan is your man.

Thanks for all the replies. I should change the title to most shooty marine codex. I play guard and i know we are the kings of shooting.

A guy at my game place uses Imperial Fist (the Ronald McDonald army) and SM can outshoot SW I've watched. SM gunline is strong.

Blood Angels can make the best vehicle-based shooty list.

Space Wolves and Grey Knights make the best infantry-based shooty lists.

Codex Space Marines can shoot about on par with any of the above lists, except they won't hold up so well if an assault army manages to get all up in your face. That's what really makes the BAs and SWs and GKs better: going shooty doesn't sacrifice their ability to stand up to assault. SMs almost have to include an expensive dedicated counter-assault unit with mobile transport (i.e. assault terminators + land raider).

Not a fan of the gk. The look of the models especially. Too archaic imo. I might do vanilla marines, most likely at 1000pts. I hope i dont anger some of the more traditional space marine players when i set down my camo marines. Lol.

Space Wolves.

Some of the best shooting all around. And counter-attack really removes the need to be "on the charge", worry much about distances or positioning or, infact, "waste" points on counter-assault units to protect your shooties, as your shooties double up as counter-assault without even trying.

Just stand and shoot till' you get charged. And if charge, proceed to beat the opponent at that too. Even Imperial Guard requires some thinking on positioning, sequencing and target priority to pull off its shooting magic. Space Wolves get it all for less and without having to burden your brain with any semblance of tactic or strategy.

Vanilla SM are shooty as hell if built right. I think a list similar to this could work well but I don't have codex on me atm so can't talk points:

HQ

Librarian
Boltgun
Gate of infinity
Smite

Librarian
As above

Elites

10 sternguard
Razorback
TLLC

10 sternguard
Razorback
TLLC

10 sternguard
Razorback
TLLC

Troops

5 tactical marines
Razorback
TLLC

As above

As above

As above

Fast attack

Land speeder squadron
Heavy flamer/multi melta

As above

As above

Heavy support

TFC

TFC

TFC


Lots of shooty goodness, anti tank, anti infantry, anti everything!