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I'm pretty new to the game and I am playing Salamanders. Any good strategy's for running them?

Aren't these guys just regular SM painted green?

If you're running salamanders, you should run Vulkan. Drop pods work well with salamanders, as you get into melta and flamer range right away. The key here is to have some empty pods so that all the drop pods you want come in on the first turn.

Salamander lists are usually defined by lots of melta and flamers. Often with Vulcan, but not required. Both these weapons require getting close to your opponent. Drop pods work very will for this, as do rhinos. You need some sort of transport for everything.

Sone Salamander lists focus more on the techmarines, so you see the MotF or some TFCs. These work better in a gun line. If you combine this with the aggressive burning part, you have a nice balance. Half you army sits back, covering home objectives, and projects fire across the table. The other half moves up/drops down on your foe, and burns him out.

As with any list based on the basic codex, there are many ways you can build an army. Just run with what sounds cool to you.

Salamanders are a cool army variant but can lack a bit of long-range firepower. You'll need to advance proiperly and support units with other troops, so you're not staring a mass of charging beats in the face after your melta shots.

Vulkan is a very good HQ. He has amazing saves and good offensive power. He won't do much against 2+ armor, but that's what his terminator guard with TH/SS is there for. He makes their hammers master-crafted, too!

A Land Raider with the flamer sponsons is also a good calls from his unit. Get a multi-melta for it and it'll become twin-linkwd and help you crack vehicles for the passengers to assault.

Sallies -really- do well with Land Speeders of the HF/MM kind, as it makes both weapons twin-linked and works both against mech and hordes. It's unfluffy as they are not supposed to have any, but...eh. It's not like they bothered to write a full codex for the chapter so go wild.

Stern guard in a drop pod is also very good. Getting 2 combi-flamers, 3 combi-meltas and 2 combi-plasmas gives you a unit that can land anywhere and threaten absolutely everything in the game for a decent price.

As stated, the main issue with the army is that is can lack lascannons and missile launchers to cracks the big stuff from far away; you best weapons (the ones buffed by Vulkan) are all rather close range. There are two ways to mitigate this:

-Predators and Drop Pods: Predators are not expensive and their guns hace very good range. Find a place where you can prop one withgood fire lanes and unleash lascannons and autocannons on whatever needs to be cracked, starting with rhinos and working your way up; Drop pod melta units are better for AV14, but that usually means sacrificing the unit inside, so be sure to nab a Land Raider, Monolith or Hive Tyrant.

-Brute Force. Who needs range? Just advance and focus multiple units on each threat with overwhelming close-range firepower. Get a couple of Vindicators and see if the enemy will care to stick around close when you can pulverize anything from 24 inches and closer with demolishers, multi-meltas, meltaguns and flamers.

Wow good stuff, I am probably going to pick up some drop pods in the future!

A fun little tactic I will throw out there, simply because a friend of mine who happens to play Salamanders pointed it out:

Use Rhinos as mobile pillboxes. Park them at a vital spot on the battlefield and have the passengers fire powerful weapons out of the top hatch. It's fairly viable and often unexpected.

Not Salamander-specific, but still not too bad.

just one more thing, if you're thinking about running assault terminators, you probably want to run a mechanized army, this will play in a pretty straightforward way. you have terms in a LR crusader, you have 2 vindicators, then buncha guys in rhinos and razorbacks. You the drive forward and kill as much as you can, thereby protecting your scoring units.

the other option is to go pods. If you do this, then I'd suggest locator beacons so that you can also pull down HF/MM speeders with accuracy. Also, ironclads and sternguard both can work great in a vulkan list, okay... not totally sure about the iron clad, but certainly the sternguard.