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I'm a big warhammer 40k fan and LOVE the world and all that goes with it, I also LOVE playing the game and quite enjoy the fun of painting and building armies, now what I HATE is tanks or rather painting them, so NOT fun at all, I've made a few but really don't like, really, I'd much rather get my marines, paint 'em and play them but with the way the game is I feel like this is not really possible. Still I have much more fun with painting non-tanks and I really am not interested in making non-marine armies so any help with making a good running non-tank army would be helpful.

The ideas I have so far are:

Biker list, white scars, fast moving and fun running but I think it's to fragile.

Jump pack marines, blood angels, same pluses/negatives but with the FNP being knocked down I think their not as good anymore, maybe?

Foot slogging? don't really know how to make this and not sure which codex to use but if you got any ideas this would be my fav. list.

As for tanks I would use: Land Raiders/ Storm Ravens, just one or two max, was thinking of a biker list with two land raiders to make a hammer/anvil army, one or two long range tanks for shooting back up is fine too, mostly I just don't want to run any more then three tanks and really I'd rather have less then that.

Any ideas/ help would be awesome.

I think you can do it. Marines are really quite good and I think marine spam could work if played right.

I would start with at least 3 tactical squads, you want to max numbers as ,uch as possible. These are scoring, can lay down bolter fire as they close with the enemy, and can pack a close combat punch by giving sarge a power fist.

The other things I know are that thunderfire cannons are amazing - I would take at least one for dealing with hordes.

Also - termines are so much better in 6th ed. Cyclone missile launchers are brilliant, and once the termies get up close their power fists will take most things apart. TH/SS is a particularly deviant combo for terminator squads. Imagine attaching a librarian with this unit with some biomancy powers.. very nasty!

I suppose this would lead to 2 problems - lack of mobility, and dealing with vehicles/ flyers. I don't have an answer to mobility without using a LR. Vanilla jump troops are comically bad compared to the BA equivalent, and probably not worth the points sadly.

As for flyers, maybe the answer is an aegis defence line.. only 50 points.

Also SM will probably get some sort of amazing new flyer when the codex gets replaced.. maybe you should save that as being your 'tank'.

My tuppence!

How do you feel about Land Speeders? Do you just dislike the rhino box? Dreadnoughts? Drop pods?

You basic gunline is infantry based. Just get a lot of guys, and shoot anything that moves. Your main problem is getting objectives. Without rhinos your options are limited. Scouts help, particularly if you pick up a LSS. A librarian with GoI can teleport a tac squad out. Normally I use this tactic with sterngaurd, but you can grab objectives as well. Allies is a third option. Find a mobile troop pick you like, and grab it.

Without a box to hide in, your troops are going to be open to fire. Picking up a fortification and taking advantage of terrain are going to be important. Marines are pretty tough, so this is only really going to be a problem if you face someone with better long range shooting then you.

Lack of mobility is going to be a general problem. Take some kind of mobile force so you can react to changes in the battle, or learn to castle up really well.

Bike armies are alive and well in 6th. Jump BA might not be as good as it used to be, but unless you are going for hypercompetitive tournament play, should still be fun on the tabletop.

I actually rather like land speeders and drop pods, dreads are fun too but from what I've tried so far they are rather on the weak side. Anti-tank just rips them open and they arn't fast or anything.

Rhinos and Razorbacks are the main problem mostly the fact that I'd need like 4 or 5 of them if I wanted to run a 2000 army, still one or two won't put me off so maybe having them as objective grabers would be fine.

Thanks for the advice, might try a foot slogging list in the future.

A salamanders army that drops in a million dreads and tacticals and a stern-guard squad or two?

A black templars gunline with as many 5 man lasplas crusader squads as you like, as many typhoon landspeeders as you can take and maxed out double typhoon tactical terminator squads. You could even have a hammer of assault terminators in a landraider led by a champion and a marshal.

A standard Deathwing list maybe?

Blood Angels with a lot of assault marines and full compliment of devastators.

Reecius has some new batrep up vs JY2 and his list features many a tactical without rhino. There are a couple vehicles though.

Beyond that you might want to look into allies. SM make for okay bubble wrap sometime, and better scoring units or access to weapons than most armies get these day.

To be honest, 6 squads of 10 marines combat squading, 3 squads of devastators (and/or a thunderfire cannon?) and 3 squads of termis is a lot of rather resilient firepower in the end... I don't see it being a problem running with that.

 Ovion wrote:
To be honest, 6 squads of 10 marines combat squading, 3 squads of devastators (and/or a thunderfire cannon?) and 3 squads of termis is a lot of rather resilient firepower in the end... I don't see it being a problem running with that.

I'd say add some sort of fortification to that, if you are going to be only waddling around or plopping in your deployment zone (unless you find some love of drop podding a portion of your army) you might as well use some of the stationary enhancements. Sounds like a real "come get some" kind of plan to me, that many bolters. A dread in a pod to wreak havoc on fringes or exposed bits might not be a bad addition to that plan.

You might also consider splashing an ally in order to get more long ranged non tank support fire.

 Ecstasy in Service wrote:
I actually rather like land speeders and drop pods, dreads are fun too but from what I've tried so far they are rather on the weak side. Anti-tank just rips them open and they arn't fast or anything.

Rhinos and Razorbacks are the main problem mostly the fact that I'd need like 4 or 5 of them if I wanted to run a 2000 army, still one or two won't put me off so maybe having them as objective grabers would be fine.

Thanks for the advice, might try a foot slogging list in the future.

If you are willing to do up a few, it will help dramatically. I'm not going to claim to be a hyper-competive person, but I win my share of games. And I only ever field 2 rhinos, max. I only have one more vehicle based on the rhino chassis (my predator, which spends most of it's time as an auto/las) Also in the motor pool is a stock land raider and two drop pods to help move troops around. You don't need to be fully mechanized, spamming razorbacks and the like. But you do need a mobility element for grabbing objectives. There are a lot of different ways to get that, but rhinos are the cheapest and easiest way.

And how you can like drop pods and not rhinos is beyond me. From an assembly/painting standpoint, so much hate for those things.