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So I go my first TAC squad off it's sprues today, and noticed a few things. For one, it is ALWAYS a good idea to file off excess plastic before you start gluing. For two, I got an extra breastplate and two spare bases. Weird.

For three, I got four lovely little combat knives. Not really sure what to do with them. I'm thinkinig of gluing them to the lower backs of my marines, make them look like a sort of backup CC weapon. Any thoughts on it? None of the loose arms seem suited to holding the little bitz.

they are purely for decoration add them where ever you feel like

Make them into baoynets for bolters. Or give one to a sergeant, paint it blue, and say its a power knife!

Keep them for another project, as Tactical Marines don't carry close combat weapons.

AG. wrote:Keep them for another project, as Tactical Marines don't carry close combat weapons.

yes they do... the combat knife is the tactical marines CCW

glueing them to their lower back is one of the best options but you can also glue them so the handle sticks out behind his shoulders
i dont like having them hanging from their belt or anything, unless your playing SW, WS or something els that can be more savage

No they don't - in game/codex terms at least.

If they did they would have an additional attack.


Most of the fluff talks about Tactical Marines punching people in the face and using their bolt pistols in close quarters.

Standard loadout for a Tactical Marine is:

Power Armour
Bolter
Bolt Pistol
Frag and Krak Grenades.

True, but they can wear the knives as well (ever seen a tac squad with all bolt pistols?). Gkue them on those backpacks.

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:Make them into baoynets for bolters. Or give one to a sergeant, paint it blue, and say its a power knife!

I have not though of that good call, exalted.

You can always turn them into relics and put some scrips on them
Or if you want moveable knife, put it between shoulderpad and exaust fan on backpack, the hole/gap there should hold blade together, depending how you glued your mini
Easy to draw from your shoulder

In my meager time in the hobby i have come to the idea of Do what looks nice and makes you happy... Thus Screw the codex... besides its just fluff, nuthin says you have to "use" the knife in a game. I am building an Ork bikker with a side car full of weopns and Grenades/stickbombs so it looks like he is delivering them to the front lines... Doesnt mean i plan to "use" those weopons and stuff in a game/on the biker when i build him out and tally points...

when not looking at the space marine codex but the Codex Astartes it says:

"With combat knife, boltgun, and grenade, the Space Marine shall assail his foe. The chainsword is the will of the Space Marine made manifest. The Space Marine shall master all weapons, and all battlefields. When harried, the Space Marine shall drive his enemies back. The Space Marine will never know defeat."

Another good place for the combat knife is on the bottom greave with maybe a thin strip of plasticard wrapped around it. You can make the marines hold them too. The arm thar holds the bolter grip is easy to modify to hold a knife. When I get home from work I'll upload a picture of a marine I made holding a knife. It's not weird to have those extras, they put them in their for options. The one extra chest armor with the high collar is a Mk. VIII (I usually put the sergeant in that) and the extra heads just for variety (most people, myself included, put the ones with no helmets on sergeants a lot of times). The same goes for all the pouches, grenades, purity seals, litany scrolls... Extras to spice up boring marines!

DijnsK wrote:when not looking at the space marine codex but the Codex Astartes it says:

"With combat knife, boltgun, and grenade, the Space Marine shall assail his foe. The chainsword is the will of the Space Marine made manifest. The Space Marine shall master all weapons, and all battlefields. When harried, the Space Marine shall drive his enemies back. The Space Marine will never know defeat."

The Codex Astartes refers to all marines - Tactical, Assault, Devastator etc.

Tactical Marines tend not to carry CCW's - as that is not their battlefield role.

True, but they can wear the knives as well (ever seen a tac squad with all bolt pistols?)

Lots of my marines have bolt pistols - or holstered pistols.






I'm just being a pedant really - all of the suggestions on where to mount the knives are good.

I found that the grenade holding arm works great for a combat knife wielding arm. All you have to do is shave off the pin and spoon from the grenade and flatten the bottom a bit then cut the pommel and blade at the hilt removing the handle and glue those two pieces to the remainder of the grenade, the texture even looks like a knife handle and the hand is posed correctly for gripping the knife. Unfortunetly you cant see the handle but here is a pic of one i did with the grenade arm as mentioned above. hope that helps

Space Marine (the game) used the knife as a weapon alongside of the bolter, which is logical within Codex's rules so they're not bashing their rifles against things, maybe damaging them after prolonged use.

Knives are also viable as tools.

I have done a few marines in the past where they have 'maglocked' the blade on the lower leg, After reading a fair few novels they can maglock helmets to their armour so why not blades?

Ekoi wrote:Space Marine (the game) used the knife as a weapon alongside of the bolter, which is logical within Codex's rules so they're not bashing their rifles against things, maybe damaging them after prolonged use.

Knives are also viable as tools.

This!

I like to use them as bolter bayonets - clip/file off the nub below a bolter's barrel, similarly remove the knife's handle, and then glue both together bayonet-style. It looks pretty good, and calls back to the older bolter models (possibly from Space Crusade?) that came with the angled foregrips.

Here's the finished product. This guy is probably my favorite out of this squad, and though there are definitely imperfections, (the studded shoulder pad got glued to the newspaper I was working over, and took some of it with it, and I forgot to shave off a LOT of excess sprue plastic) I still love how he came out. Thus, I name him Rico the Child. A little bit of fluff for y'all, he's probably the shortest, thinnest SM in the Crimson Fists, at ONLY 6'8", and ONLY 460 pounds, unarmored, and underneath his beak-head helmet, he's a long-haired pretty-Marine. He's also one of the most unblooded full brothers, with only forty years of service Part chapter mascot, part symbol of the Crimson Fists' slow but steady recovery.