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So I am making my first army in Warhammer 40k.
I have decided to go Space Marines and I dont have the book, codex, paint or anything.
Ive been going over a starting army thats cost effective and kind of gets me started. What do you think:

20 Space Marines (tactical/combat)
5 Assualt Marines
5 Scout Marines
1 Rhino
1 Dreadnought.

All of this gets me the Rulebook, Codex and some paints with a basic guide as well for between $325-$350.
I've also been thinking of replacing the Dreadnought with a Predator.
Let me know what you think, any advice is appreciated to this ultra-noob.
Thanks

The biggest thing that stands out is a lack of a HQ choice!

The rest of the list is a pretty solid start. Bear in mind which actual box sets you're getting for weapon options - two Tactical squads can be made much better with the right heavy/special weapon options.

To me, the thing that stands out it the 5-man Assault squad. SM Assault squads aren't all that great - except as a way to deploy an anti-armour weapon like a melgagun to the back of the field.

I'd either tool them up with a Melta and a Powerfist for anti-tank duty, or hoard all your power weapons from the other sets and convert the squad into a Captain with Jump Pack Command Squad (Solving your lack of HQ). You could pick up the required bits from a bits site...

Have you already decided which codex? There are 5 choices each with a different flavour. Then grey knights and chaos space marines(maybe even sisters of battle) which could be called space marines.

I would buy dark vengence as you'll want the templates, dice and rulebook. This will give some perfectly serviceable bikers and marines, with characters and terminators that can only really be used as Dark Angel space marines. It also gives some cool looking chaos models.

Find some assault on black reach marines, they should be dirt cheap.


Assuming codex space marines:
You need a HQ and 2 troop choices. I would suggest either AoBR captain as he is cheap or a librarian as he is flexible and a good start as the HQ. Your troops are scouts or tactical squads(or bikers).
Realistically you will have at least 2 tactical squads. You get one in assault on black reach and one in dark vengeance.
Tactical squads need some form of transportation. This will be rhino or razorback or drop pod. If buying a rhino buy a razorback and keep the lid unglued.
If going scouts use sniper scouts and Telion, as they will make you happy.

Now this is not the way I would go about doing any of this. I would work in reverse. Read and reread your codex. Write a 1500 point list, post it maybe here. Then when you are happy with it start buying models for it.
1500 points sounds a lot but marines only make sense at larger point values, it is hard to expand 750 points worth of marines.
I find the best way to write a list for marines is to start with the cool options, so the elites, heavy and fast. Then choose troops and HQ in a format which boosts the other slots.
So you choose the coolest models, say sternguard in a drop pod, then choose tactical marines in drop pod and scouts and a librarian in terminator armour as they work well with the sternguard.

Quickly covering the boxsets. All the boxsets have some models that I dislike. I dislike assault marines by the way.
The best boxset is probably ravenwing. You can not glue on the ravenwing parts and it will give you a good number of bikers. Bikers can be troops though biker armies are hard to use well.

Good luck enjoy your army(pick a chapter whose fluff/story you love the most)
Peace out, Fletch

The main thing your Missing is as stated an HQ choice. Every force is required to take one. I would suggest starting out with a simple Captain which is a fancy marine with cool bits on him to make him stand out. For purchasing this you can either buy one of the fancy kits which is basicly one Marine with some neat looking bits on him, or ask some one else in your gaming group if they have some extra fancy bits (yes they all do) and you can make a normal marine / Assault marine into your HQ.

While assault squads aren't the best they can work however at only 5 your going to be to easy to knock down to effectively useless, even a guard unit would be willing to assault a group of 3 assault marines and expect to hold his own. So I'd either get up to 10 of them or leave them out. I'm guessing your looking at the battleforce to get them, which is fine but it intentionaly made them 5 men so you go out and buy more just to round your force out. Or as stated you can modify them with fancy bits to turn them into an assault command squad, which can bring a good bit of punch

As for what you've bought it's a good start you haven't picked anything that won't later be used in your future games. If you can still find them the Assault on Black Reach box set was an amazing deal especialy if you can find an ork player to help split the cost. While the models are very static and don't come with any weapon options it was a great way to get bulk basic models that could be fit into squads made effective with over building special weapons from normal box sets. This came with a 5th ed rule book so thats not going to work but still.