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So, this may have been covered a million times, but I really haven't been playing a lot in this edition and this weekend I've played two really great games with me daughters.

We played annihilation,since neither of my older girls want to play anything else yet. I started them a few years ago, but neither one could last a whole game. I learned some better painting techniques and stripped my ork and SM armies to repaint them. Since then, we haven't played. They're older now, and really hooked.

Now my middle child, nine, is mean and only wants to play orks. She even goes so far as to say things like, "Dad, I'm not a a pansy, at least I don't play Space Marines"

First game, I won with the marines. 5 victory points to her three. Next game today, she killed me and my oldest daughter 5 to 1. The kid rolls 5s and 6s like other people roll 7s on 2d6. Which fits her ork play nicely.

I am trying to get more units into play, but it isn't the fact that some aren't just not painted, but that they are disassembled. I have a huge selection unassembled:

We had:
Ironclad Dreadnought
Dreadnought
Tactical
Tactical
Captain
Vindicator
Assault Termies


She had:
Meganobs
Warboss
Big Mek w/ Shokk Attack Gun
Deff Dread
3 Killa Kans
20 Sluggas
20 Shootas
10 Lootas


So today she got a Shokk Attack Gun for the first time ever. First turn, 2 sixes on my vindicator and liquified it. after that, her ork army, read MY ork army, took out my two dreads, assault termies, although they hammered her army good, and the captain but what shocked me in both games - The tactical squads did hardly any damage.

Even shooting, when they had the 12 inch bolter advantage, killed maybe four orks a turn. May be my bad dice rolls, but what happened to Space Marine firepower? I've only played a few dozen games in 5th, and it has been a year or two, but what should I reassemble first? Sternguard, devastators? land speeders, assault squads? I have all of those waiting in the wings, as well as scouts, command squad, tactical terminators, rhinos, a razorback, and a predator.

Now, I am not trying to out do a nine year old, just want my 11 year old to have a more even playing field. The shokk attack gun crushed us.

Any thoughts?

what are you fielding and at what points cost are you playing at ? are you playing small games, larger ? How are you equiping your squads?

Also deployment might be where you are affected. You are outnumbered 2-1 at least when playing orks, so you cant spread yourself out. You need a hammer and anvil tactic with marines or a castled up gunline in a corner. Orks can just swarm at you in waves.

Crap sorry.
Also, 1200 - 1500 points.
SM list:

Dreadnought - Assault cannon, heavy flamer, DCCW
Ironclad - Hurricane bolter, Siege hammer
Captain - Storm bolter, relic blade, artificier armor
Assault termies - 3 thunder hammers/Storm Shields and 2 lightning claws
Tactical squad - melta gun, heavy bolter SGT - storm bolter/ power fist
Tactical squad - plasm cannon, plasma gun, SGT Power fist
Vindicator

Now, I forgot to mention, the captain/assault termies did great. The dreads held their own until the shokk attack took one apart, the other lost a duel to the deff dread. Vindie, slaughtered orks the first game. Shokk attack gun killed it ont he first turn, second game before it got to fire.

Both games the tacticals just flat out sucked. Either dying horribly after being charged ( I know) or being shot to death, but the fact was, they just didn't deliver on the kills.

Edit: SIGH, I also forgot to mention, that the first SM turn on the second game saw my oldest roll ones for both the plasma cannon and plasma gun, killing them both and eradicating their firepower. I think I want to say that it is only the tactical squads that I have not been happy with, so it should be SM Tactical Firepower in question.






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TheLionOfTheForest wrote:what are you fielding and at what points cost are you playing at ? are you playing small games, larger ? How are you equiping your squads?

Also deployment might be where you are affected. You are outnumbered 2-1 at least when playing orks, so you cant spread yourself out. You need a hammer and anvil tactic with marines or a castled up gunline in a corner. Orks can just swarm at you in waves.

Point. I think we spread out too much and didn't support the assault termies/captain. I'm not used to SM tactics.

I played 1st and 2nd mixed between orks and SM, third completely Orks, skipped fourth, and 5th has been a mix of Orks and SM again, although I haven't been playing as much. Missed the dickens out of it though since we started up a again. The kids an I had a bunch of wrecks and had to flip them over. I told them about some tutorial I saw about making smoke out of cotton badding, we did that last night, made up about a dozen. So we used them in today's game. Man what a game changer.

Sooooooooo cool having smoke on flipped over models. Oh and we started the game with one whole building on fire. Pretty cool looking.

Strangely enough that Marine list has almost no long range firepower, which means you can't directly counter the SAG (i.e shoot it). Only the one Plasma Cannon and one Heavy Bolter have more than 24" range. Once you throw in the Lootas as well it actually means the Orks will outshoot the Marines which really shouldn't happen. At the very least I would swap out the sub par Heavy Bolter for the much more flexible Missile Launcher (can still deal with hordes but can drop vehicles as well and has a longer range).

Neither army has any transports, and adding them will give the respective armies a huge boost. At the risk of starting an arms race this is 'mech edition' (at least for the next ~2 weeks until 6th arrives) Tacticals without Rhinos or Razorbacks are static and very vulnerable to anti infantry units (notably Mobs of assaulting Orks in this case). Inside a transport you have a 0+ save, absolutely nothing can hurt you until they destroy it (or you get out).

I'm assuming you are combat squading the Tacticals? This will let you keep the heavy weapon further back and able to provide fire support while the special weapon + Sarge can move around. It should also ensure that you don't lose the entire unit at once if you get assaulted (push 5 guys out in front to act as a speed bump).

Also just to double check, you are playing equal points, standard deployment and standard board size (6'x4' for 1500+, 4'x4' for 1000pts) right? Any of those not being right will massively unbalance the game.

Your list seems adequate enough for casual play to beat the ork list, or at least win half the time, which is what I am assuming you are going for here... 2 balanced and fun lists.

You should be using the Tactical squads to hold objectives. The meltagun/heavy bolter squad is a bit confusing as it has 2 roles. The meltagun wants to hunt armor, and the heavy bolter whats to shoot at ork boys. Unless you are combat squading them, in which case they will get mobbed by orks pretty quick. You also have to remember that Tactical squads role (fluff wise) is to draw the fire of the enemy allowing your other units to mop up. In your situation I would probably just combat squad Tac squad 1 and run the melta and SGT together and utilize one or more of your dreads as cover and then to assist that dread in going after the enemy cans or deffdread. The plasma tac squad is a decent setup tho.

Whatever you decide to do though I would not change anything until you have played some more games and learned how to deploy, learned how to know what your strategy is each game, tried out different things. Only through experience will you learn where a particular unit will excel. Tac squads are not that great. Sternguard squads can be devastating when droppodding down / combat squading and taking out 2 vehicals on your first turn, but do you want to demoralize your child who was previously giving you a good go with some good rolls. Then your orky kid needs some new units and before you know it each kid has over 5000 points of 40k minis and your wallet is empty.

One last point, if you do replace the tactical squads you still need 2 troop choices and scouts are generally not a better choice, they do have good tactics you can use, but are a little hit and miss especially when outflanking.

Thanks guys.

As far as escalation goes, both sides have huge numbers. Not that I have deep pockets, just 20 years of collecting. I have a little over a full company of marines and my ork horde delves into the 4000 plus point range. The current groups are what is assembled after the great refit of 2009.

I think as far as space marines go, I am pretty out of touch as to what makes a good tactical squad. Or well, good shooty squad. I have a mix of weapons on all four fo my squads, I think just for fun modeling purposes. And yeah BTW I only play with the kids or friends, always casual.

I have a hugely stressful and competitive job that eats up most of my time. Gaming is meant to be fun and casual. I have no desire to be the best gamer in the world, table top or video, this is recreational.


My current load outs for my tacts are:

Plasma gun/plasma cannon
Heavy bolter/melta
plasma gun/lascannon
flamer/plasma cannon

Now I kept away from building up devs since I saw so much bad press for them, but I did build up a four missile launcher squd since one of the scarriest marine armies I ever played against had three dev squads of four missile launchers.
I have completed the squad I have.

BUt I guess my question, is everyone just fielding missile launchers? Or what is the best load out for the tacts? I have a plethor a of orky units that we haven't even used yet, and if the rumours or 6th are true, we'll add some chaos to the mix, but I want to be able to rely on my tacts to hold the lines.


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Powerguy wrote:Strangely enough that Marine list has almost no long range firepower,

Yes that is not what I expected when I picked it. Once again, long time gamer, but not recent and things have definitely changed.

Oh, and we are currently on a board of 6x4 and playing 1250 points on each side. or maybe it is 1200, they are equal points armies.

4 ML or 3 ML with 1 LC, the SRG has an ability to make one weapon, once a turn hit on a 2+ instead of the standard 3+, the ability is used on the LC.

Yes, forgot about the sgt. Also, I'm thinking that a libby would help, but I am not sure if I want to introduce psychic powers until a few more game. But after the SAG, we've seen it all.


I think the biggest shock to it all was the bolters. The simple fact that orks moving through cover, picked up a 5+, stopped a whole lot of bolter rounds and almost negated the melta. The vindy dying on turn one killed us I think. Oh - And meganobs. Jeeez the meganobs. Those things just don't die.

If you have a 6'x4' and plenty of stuff to pick from I would suggest jumping to 1500pts as a minimum (2000pts as a max). At low point levels Orks do tend to do well since their scoring units are relatively solid (particularly if they don't have to crack open transports) and like most older books they tend to tail off above 2k (since they run out of slots). Personally I try and avoid playing anything less than 1750pts, otherwise the game isn't balanced very well. 1750 allows pretty much every army to get 3-4 scoring units, some specialized anti tank and anti infantry units and appropriate redundancy. Below 1500 you lose out on the redundancy (which makes the game unbalanced) and above 2k everyone just takes every toy they want.

Tactical loadouts vary quite a bit, mostly depending on your HQ and army style. For standard Marines with Combat Tactics and a Captain/Libby as the HQ the most common loadout is probably Missile Launcher, Meltagun, Sarge with Combi-Melta in a Rhino or Razorback. Some people take a Fist but in this case its usually better to try and Combat Tactics out of combat and just shoot things anyway. You can run Flamer/Combi-Flamer if you really need the anti infantry (which is how you bypass those annoying cover saves) and possibly even Plasma if you think you can get reasonable use out of it (the issue is that Melta completely outclasses it as an anti tank weapon atm). The main thing about the Missile Launcher is that it is free and flexible, it can deal with light infantry better than a Heavy Bolter and more efficiently than a Plasma Cannon and is almost as good as a Lascannon against vehicles (particularly light/medium vehicles, you use Melta to kill heavy tanks either way).

If you take Vulkan then you obviously to stick with the Meltaguns/Flamers and seriously consider the Multi Melta as well. The Fist also becomes more effective since you can't run out of combat anymore. Pedro is the same deal as Vulkan and I would definitely recommend the Fist if you take him (since you will get stuck in combat and are more effective there).

Well your Ironclad is tooled out horribly.

The Hurricane Bolter is cool but it takes away the Iclads real advantage, 2 CCWs.


Ironclads should have a Heavy Flamer. Then either a second Heavy Flamer or keep the Meltagun, whatever you need really.

The Seismic Hammer is the best IMO, especially if you keep the Meltagun. Having 2D6 for armor penetration is kinda overkill when you are Str10, and there isn't anything in the Ork codex that you won't be autopenning with Str10 in CC anyway.

Yeah I'm torn on the ironclad, I know I should use it with both CCWs, but the first time I took the hurricane bolter, it ripped into the orks killing 6 orks a turn for the last five turns ofthe games. He does have one heavy flamer, which also ripped up another ten orks in the same turn as the hurricane bolter.

I've had pretty much every unit perform well, BUT the tactical squads, and the more I think about it, it is the bolters that fail. anyone having this issue? Even when they double up, the cover saves, etc. seem to stop the bolters' effectiveness.

One thing that you can look forward to. It has been rumored in several forums that Rapid Fire weapons are about to get a huge upgrade in viability, which means those Bolters in the Tactical Squads that aren't doing much now are going to start rocking a lot more in the future.

Nice,

They just don't seem to do much if the target has cover.

Thanks everyone, I've taken a few things away from this. Should help balance it out. One thing I have noticed is how much better the Orks do with this latest codex. Plus with things like the SAG being back and don't press dat, it is like the olden days where funny things happen again

I think you've run into some of the problems with 5th edition:

4+ cover saves on 6 point Orks is silly
Rapid fire weapons (and thus Tac squads) just don't get it done

Talk them into a scenario mission if you can. Killing the opponent is fun (and Orky) but there is usually more to battle than that.

And Gratz on getting the next generation into the game.

Yep. When I first started playing 5th, I was blown away about how poorly my marines did. But I have learned a few things about how to use them. I think that this thread came about because of the fact that I just can't seem to get my tacts to perform.

Nail on the head about the saves. I guess I should load up my squads with flamers and just advance at the last minute, flamers and bolters blazing.

I really like to mix the weapons up, but I'm really gonna have to rethink plasma guns since I roll so poorly.


It is really neat to have my kids playing the game with me and be excited to play. Especially since they are girls, no offense to anyone, I've known a few female gamers, it's refreshing to have more. They enjoy the mythos as well as the models. I've got them laying Hero Quest too.

@Gorgrimm: your tacs and mine as well. Tactical squad is there to hold objective on high ground while taking pot shot at incoming enemy. They really underperform comparing to other troop choices so it is best they are used in one of the two scenarios:
- Sit on objective with all weapons waiting for your enemy to come and charge them before they charge you.
- 5-man on objective, 5-man in Razorback LasPlas (combi-melta, meltagun)

Just keep them out of combat with Combat Tactics special rule and they have already served their purpose. If you want point-efficient amazing shooty troop choice: you should be playing Space Wolves.

The thing is even with 6th edition dropping soon, you will see your tactical squad becoming better vs Orks. But comparing to other power armour, I am afraid they will remain the black sheep of the family.

So, ork armies have always been dropped by volume of fire - something that your marine army isn't strong in. SM firepower is just fine, if you bring enough of it. As it turns out, you've got a lot of points sunk into a vindicator, ironclad, and assault termies. Throw in the captain for sake of this argument, and you've got a pretty small percentage of your points spent on serious, multi-shot firepower. It should be no surprise, then, that you're complaining about how little firepower you have, given a list that focuses so little on firepower.

It's not the marine codex's fault, though. It has much more to do with the way you've set up your army. Proxy that ironclad as a second assault cannon heavy flamer dread, and swap out the vindicator for a third tac squad, and you'll see a lot more of that firepower you were looking for.

That and, as mentioned, use combat squads and combat tactics+ATSKNF. They're the two reasons to play a marine army, really.

Also, be glad the little one isn't packing a KFF mek yet. Unfortunately, lucky ork players are the hardest army to beat...

Also, I'd add that if you really want to beat ork face in close combat, I'd swap out the termies for a command squad, if in any way possible. You know that W3 captain with a 2+ save? Why not add FNP? In fact, FNP makes all those 3+ saves the same as a 2+ against most ork weapons, and, unlike the termies, the command squad not only boosts the captain, but can also take flamers.

Alternately, you may want to consider switching them for regular termies. A few turns of storm bolter and assault cannon fire will do a lot to an ork player, and a SB+PF termie does exactly as much damage as a TH+SS one.

I know you're limited with models, but those would be easy to proxy.

TFCs can also be pure gold against Orks.

The Tremor shells do both damage and make them move in difficult terrain. It can really slow a mob down.

I use the chapter master, it can give you some support at range, then take scout bikers, it can stem the flow of irks ALOT, it's how I do it and I'm an orks player!

I don't use Tactical Squads; they're too unreliable. Put your Captain on a bike, and replace the Tacticals with bikes and you have better scoring units as well as more firepower. also, vindicators work better in pairs of two or three.

How are they "unreliable"?

I agree with Grey Templar: TFC is your go-to against GED. Take 2 if you have the money.

The solution I have always seen for tac squads is really simple:

MISSILE LAUNCHERS

Especially against Orks. Need to take out armor? Krak missile. Wanna kill a few boyz? Frag missile.

Get as many MLs in there as you can. I know they devastate my Tyranids, and the tactics for fighting the two are reasonably similar.

when you verus orks or tyranids with space marines (assuming the mission is just ahnalitate) get all your marines and put them in cover all 20 of them together and just shot for as long as you can. marines are pretty crap in close combat so i would never really be moving them. you should be deepstriking your terminators IMO

I disagree about both the TFC and the ML here. The TFC gets shots, but your daughter is only going to need to get shot at by one roughly once to realise she can just spread out to avoid the damage. That and it might drive her towards a KFF, which would make things worse for you over all. Plus, lootas END TFCs in a single round of shooting. For the price of two TFCs you could get either a lot more shots, or a lot more durability, either of which would be more beneficial than TFCs.

As for ML's, they're my least favorite choice for tac squads. Against infantry, the ML pales in comparison to bolter fire. If you're out of 24", you're going to want to be moving closer to get in bolter shots, and if you're within 18", you're going to want to move closer to double tap. This leaves a very narrow range where your main infantry killer and auxiliary weapon will be firing at the same time. Plus, it also suffers greatly from being on a small blast template.

Meanwhile krak is okay versus orks, but orks do have access to things like battlewagons (which you may eventually be off against), and nobz, and nobz on bikes, against which you have much better options, like the plasma cannon and lascannon, and multimelta, which you get for free.

Marines may be about versatility in general, but it turns out that the most versatile heavy weapon is just so crappy compared to other heavy weapons you could be taking instead, that it's probably better to take those other ones instead.

@Ailaros: I am trying to follow your argument but it seems you always leave out the conclusion. Perhaps TFC is not up your alley but you didn't provide an example of "more beneficial than TFC". TFC ignore cover save and thus make KFF useless.

RE: ML has its place. If TFC 4 cover save ignoring blast is not good, plasma cannon is way worse versus Ork. ML will ID Ork nobz, nobz on bikes ... the same way Lascannon will and it is 10 points cheaper. Heavy Bolter won't kill Battlewagons and its anti-Ork ability is debatable.

MM is free but it cannot pop battlewagon side armour or trukk from outside of 24". 12" move, wagghh and MM is useless.

Perhaps, I am missing the point you are trying to make. TFC is a very very good weapon against Ork.

Lootas are a yummy target for TFC's 60" range S5 AP6 ignore cover rounds. Once out of the way, blast away at boyz.

BronzeJon wrote:Lootas are a yummy target for TFC's 60" range S5 AP6 ignore cover rounds. Once out of the way, blast away at boyz.

Yeah, TFCs rock against Orks. They rock against most armies, but especially against Orks, as Orks don't have very many units that can engage TFCs at range effectively and have units that are vulnerable to all types of TFC fire.

Nob Bikers or just incoming charges? Subterranean rounds will slow 'em down.

Lootas in cover at range or Boyz hiding in a Battlewagon crater? Airburst time.

Anybody out in the open? Bring out the surface detonators.

Grey Templar wrote:How are they "unreliable"?

They can't kill a thing without spending points on extra weapons. When you buy special weapons they're way too expensive. When they're too expensive you spend too many points on troops. When you spend too many points on troops, your army under-performs. When your army under-performs, you lose games.

DragonRider wrote:They can't kill a thing without spending points on extra weapons. When you buy special weapons they're way too expensive. When they're too expensive you spend too many points on troops. When you spend too many points on troops, your army under-performs. When your army under-performs, you lose games.

...you know Tactical Marines get special and heavy weapons for free or at extremely discounted prices, right?