Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I already have a fluffy 10th company army that I enjoy, but what is the best TAC list I can make with marines? I'm not opposed to using allies, but if it is competitive, I'm interested in Storm Talons. Ideas?

Not sure you're going to get a lot of positive responses right now. "Win at all costs" has a very negative meaning to most people, and is associated with cheaters and unpleasant players. By applying the label to competitive army lists, you seem to be insulting the people from whom you're asking assistance.

Perhaps the OP meant to say "Competitive TAC" and got simply mistyped "WAAC" on accident?

Right now the most nasty list for C:SM would incorporate 3 storm ravens, 3 stom talons and maybe an allied vendetta

 labmouse42 wrote:
Right now the most nasty list for C:SM would incorporate 3 storm ravens, 3 stom talons and maybe an allied vendetta

As a Blood Angel player, I'd suggest that spending 600 pts + all 3 heavy slots on Ravens to the exclusion of TFC is not something I would do. If I could I would always field a TFC or two.

The best builds I've seen from Codex: Space Marines of late have been very shooty, using Combat Tactics & ATSKNF to get out of bad assaults and keep their scoring units alive, while blasting the crap out of people. A Librarian with Null Zone makes an excellent cheap HQ who helps you kill durable enemy units with invulnerable saves. Alternately, some SM armies employ a bit unit of assault terminators with TH & SS (which they get cheaper than any other army) as a HtH beatstick unit/shield for the rest of their army.

Jesse has had some good battle reports in the last year in the Bat Reps forum, showing a couple of such lists and how he's used them in tournaments. Let me dig up a couple of links...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/506204.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/445880.page
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/436105.page

Yess in general the best options for SM are shooty ones. also you'll be better off allowing FW too, as that will make your life a lot easier.

Here's a list I've been working on

HQ
Azra Redth. Gives all infantry infiltrate, level 2 pskyer, gets to re-roll failed rolls, gates aroudnn and can give his squad the equivelent of shroud and defensive grenades. Pretty nifty guy. Expensive tho but, potentially worth it. (the infilrtrate helps loads, loses combat tactis tho *shrug*)

alternatly: justa normal libby rocks, gate is a KEY spell, as its null zone

Elite:
Seige dread in a pod. 1 heavy flamer, 1 epic str 6 ap 3 flamer, extra armour to help vs shooting, good point cost.
5-6 sternguard: no combi weapons (maybe a combi-mg or 2), just poisoned shooting goodness, works best due to infilrate, otherwise you'd want to pod them or have more like 8

troops:
3 10 man tac squads. 1 with pg/lc, 1 with pg/ml, 1 wigh MM and MG. Just some varied shooting, good for wherever and solid all around. Again better with infiltrate

FA
2-3 hyperios launchers. interceptor missile shots, relativly cheap, and sturdy. Think of them as how a devastator squad should be
one squad 3 Attack Bikes with MMs, going to pop whatever tank they get close too, pretty sturdy and cheap.

HS:
- Contemptor mortis dreadnought with 2 kheres assault cannons and CML .the big boy, our best all arounder. bs 5, av13 in the front, 12 interceptor AC shots and 2 itnerceptor missile shots. takes down anything
- 1 vindicator. Another threat, another thing to worry about
- 1 TFC, anti-horde, anti-skimmer/anti cover, also boosts ruins to make our hyperios/concemptors harder to kill

ADL with icarus gun. Something out of range of the contemptor? have him man the icarus to bs5 something down.


So far it's been solid, though myself/people i play with are still realtivly okay at the game, still those are the kind of tools you'll need, this also only comes out to about 1750, so at 1850 things heat up even more. stormtalons are useful though you just have to be careful since they are only 2 hp and thus have a 50% of being one shotted by a quad gun, which hurts for something so expensive.

when i asked a similar question, there is very much that is good, and not much that isn't in this codex, although, keeping it non, forge world is what i prefer, even in armies like tau

Yea, this all seems good. Sternguard are looking nice.

 tomjoad wrote:
As a Blood Angel player, I'd suggest that spending 600 pts + all 3 heavy slots on Ravens to the exclusion of TFC is not something I would do. If I could I would always field a TFC or two.

Thats one of those cases where the grass is always greener.
TFC are great against some tools. They bring a cheap techmarine for your gunline as well.

However, currently there are many armies that will crush MEQ that are not protected. There is an expression "Helldrake does as helldrake pleases", because these models crush MEQ armies. I play an army with 2 helldrakes and when I play against MEQ, I'm destroying 2 squads of turn with them. Its just not fun for him to play me with helldrakes.

Another big problem for MEQ right now are daemons. Flamers/Screamers will just clobber marines. Null Zone helps, but as someone who plays daemons, let me assure you its easy to just fry the offending HQ. Putting that HQ in a stormraven gives your null zone a large area of effect that I cannot touch.

Storm ravens are a great counter to both of those problems. They pack enough firepower to stop helldrakes. They can deliver a lot of shooting to ground targets like daemons without getting flamed in return. More importantly they let you keep 30 marines safe until the ground is clear!

In a game of "Helldrake does as helldrake pleases" I assure you that if you start your squads on the ground they will become "Kentucky Fried MEQ" by turn 3. With triple helldrakes there is enough flamers to burn down 30 MEQ and 3 TFCs. Starting in the storm ravens lets you keep those 30 MEQ alive while you shoot down the hell drakes. It might take you 2 rounds to do it, but helldrakes can't go toe to claw with stormravens. The multimelta/AC/missiles trump a STR 7 vector strike.

The real beauty is that you don't need to start in the storm ravens. You can use them for fire support. But, if the situation calls for it -- like when a DE beast pack of cheese is coming at your face -- you can get off the ground to avoid becoming "MEQloaf"

Very good points about the stormraven, I must admit. It still just seems like way too many points tied up in an AV 12 model that must come in from reserves.

I fear that for every time it saves me from daemons, I'll just crushed by a list with lots of turn 1 and 2 throw weight. Maybe this will be less of a problem for non-BA marines, as they have higher model counts in general. Maybe the problem really is the BA and not the stormraven. Still... 200+ points for 3 lousy hull points.

My middling position is to hide in metal bawkses until the stormraven(s) can show up. I'm not confident in this plan either.

^True.. It's hard to tell if Space Marines can compete right now, but Storm Ravens seem like a good start.

Thats just it, 3 SR 30 MEQ+HQ and Storm Talons?!?! Thats a lot to be reserving. I don't really like that plan. You would be better off bringing a fortress of redemption to hide your 30 MEQ+HQ in, that thing is a severe PITA.

C:SM has combat tactics. They also have cheap TH/SS terminators, 12 man drop pods, null zone, and a plethora of effective special characters.

There's an entire thread about this, but I'd say C:SM are right there with the DA as a middling list, well ahead of BA (a poor list), and behind the GK, CSM and Space Wolves (great lists). This might change a little if the Vendetta gets a significant nerf, because that's what Space Wolves count on for anti-air.

Don't let the CSM guys complain about ATSKNF. It doesn't do a thing when the helldrakes are hoovering up your army. CSM lack of ATSKNF doesn't matter if they never are in a position to get swept in HTH. Go take your vanilla marines and let me know how beating CSM in HTH works out for you. Hell I can't even beat with in HTH with BA.

True. The 12 man drop pods and null zone are huge in of themselves. Hmm, maybe I should make a list.

I'm kind of blindly putting C:SM with DA. I don't know *exactly* what DA can do now, other that what I read on here. I haven't heard too much bitch about how much cheese the DA bikers are, so I'm guessing they are middle of the road. Which is where I put the vanilla marines.

Well, I suppose a vanilla marine list gun line could be good, but tanks are hard to include, so I'm not sure what it would look like.

Hello ImRightBehindYou. I apologize for upcoming wall of text, but I really recommend to you to find some time and read it all. I am quite experienced Codex SM player and I have been actively playing with it since beginning of the 5th edition in VERY competitive area achieving somewhere in between 60-70% win percentage. Many of our clubs are allowing forgeworld rules and most of our players like to test new things and abuse as much as possible out of rules and totally slowed allies combinations - if there is some stupid combo you noticed on the internet, someone probably already tried it here. Mass flyer list, allies synergy builds, crazy deathstars, whole forgeworld armies are common sight here and it really tests your army thoroughly.

Before passing my experience I would like to say that I am occasional lurker of WH40k forums and rarely post, because I do not find joy in inevitable flamewars - and some flames are going to come in reaction to my post. WH40k is quite expensive hobby (as you have surely noticed since you already have an army) so every advice should be well calculated and then presented in best intentions - because there is really no worse possible harm done here, than a bad advice from people like Labmouse (and some others), which might be very appealing to less experienced players, but is otherwise just pile of random letters put together. Normally I wouldnt care - because everyone has right to express his/her opinion, but here it can cost you a lot of money and then lead to a big dissapointment and frustration from bad investment. You are of course expected to make your own opinion on the matter, because there is no universaly good answer to your question and everyone is making some mistakes - but just try to think about it with calm head. I will give you a good example:

Labmouse is saying that one of the best (or nasty to be precise) C:SM builds is 3xStormtalon and 3xStormraven. Information that you can use Stormravens in C:SM is new and noone even tested it yet. I could tell you at least 50 of my own personal opinions why I think that this list will never work in competitive enviroment, but I am sure that by using simple common sense you can come to your own conclusion, that it is absolutely ridiculous because it is yet to be playtested and then adjusted and tweaked accordingly. He didnt even suggest rest of the list and why...

And now to the matter...If you want competitive TAC list which can lead to good results at tournaments - you need not only to know your metagame, you need stability. TAC lists do not build their whole armies on high risk and high reward units, or weird special characters which lacks focus - they build mostly boring armies witch clear synergies and stable results. If you want to meet these requirements, it reduces amount of available options in your codex drastically.

I will now list some units and tactics which are often suggested, but have no real place outside of friendly games or are simply plain weak:

Sternguard - extremely expensive, short-ranged and per-point fragile beefed up version of Tactical marines. Sternguard are either big win or big loose - nothing in between and their efectivness scales down rapidly against experienced opponents. They do not work on feet, they do not work in Rhinos - they CAN work only in drop-pods and their killines is completely dependant on a list which your opponent will bring - and you do not want that, you want stability remember? Units like these have no place in TAC lists, you need to build your army either on achieving objectives or on denying objectives for your opponent. Sternguard will bring you 50/50% win ration at BEST at the tournaments which means no constant prizes from tourneys for you. Sternguard can bring amazing results in friendly games and are brutal punishment against beginners, but in tournament they will bring you dissapointment, because every second player will be prepared against deepstriking units-cheesy Daemons lists taught them so. You might get other suggestion to combine them with Lysander for twinlinked bolters (and thus advising against combat squading and using combi-weapons which are Sternguards biggest advantages, besides over 500 points for 10 twinlikned bolters-LOL?) or with Pedro to be able to score with them ( they will not survive and Pedro is weak character which bring controversional "buffs" to your army) - both of these characters are very situational and again have no place in TAC lists...

Ironclad - good on paper, weak outside friendly games (but is interesting option with Lucius drop pod) and requires Drop-pods to be even remotely effective (and their disadvantages were covered). Drop pod army is not a TAC list and if you play one Ironclad it will fail again any TAC list since opponent will have tools how to deal with it. Stay away from it or anything in pod outside of friendly or forgeworld games...it will be big win or big loose, you will not have control over it. You will depend only on dice and on what your opponent will bring.

Combat tactics - you will be told that it is powerful. You will be told that it is amazing and that it will keep you out of close combat and then allow you to shoot your opponent and cause pain. You will be told that it is a reason to play space marines and that it makes tactical marines decent,,,and you will be lied, every time. This ability is only essential for Bike armies - everywhere else you are better to trade it off for something else. Youre playing C:SM, your troops suck in combat AND shooting. You are expected to avoid your enemy and to engage only weakened targets or hit one target with several tactical combat squads and pray to the dice gods. Combat squad everything (unless playing kill points), spread out to cover maximum amount objectives and keep opponent busy with the rest of your army. You really need to play the mission - your troops will loose to most of other troops point for point. You should leave area terrain or your metal box only when youre going for an easy kill or objective at the end of a game. Seriously Combat tactics will NOT get you out of close combat, its bull*hit. You will have 5-man squads, if you will get charged and when you will loose, what do you think will remain of your squad? One or two marines? Well thats some firepower I tell you. And who even says that you will get out of close combat? You still have to outroll your opponent on the initiative. Never forget on your Combat tactics if you keep it, it CAN be very useful ocassionaly, but you cannot build your army around it, you should build your army around chapter tactics...that can make tactical squads at least remotely useful...

Seriously lets cut the crap...these options are mostly used for C:SM

If Forgeworld is allowed - look for Badab war and use any special character who either improves durability or deployment options of your troops, or allow powerful units to score (assault terminators, I am looking at you right now). As already mentioned, Ahazhra is amazing - why? Because he is symbol of stability and helps you to win objective war. You can build whole army around him and you know which psyker powers you will have- his version of invisibility + nullzone/prescience will NEVER let you down and will come out when you NEED them because he can re-roll psychic tests. If you go first, you infiltrate all infantry and your opponent will have to deploy before you with most stuff - if you go second abuse outflank rule. Put your objectives on sides of the table - and if you have two, put every on different side of the table, and if three or more, then continue to put them at right/left side of the table as far as possible from each other and profit - very few armies can cover this with their troops. I play Ahazhra with Imperial guard with Astropath (to gain control over outflank) and Officer of the fleet (to cause opponents reserves to come at 5+ or even 6+ if I am lucky on warlord table) and I am yet to loose again any mass flyer list and keep over 80% win percentage vs the rest. Funny thing is, hes not even that expensive and you will have many points left to include any support options for your army from either codex.

Other interesting units are Mortis contemptor dread (be careful, kheres assault cannons are useless as anti-air, you cannot move to be able to skyfire and intercept, no solid opponent will every fly to 24 inch bubble of contemptor, its either twin.lascanon or autocanon for antiair- NOTHING ELSE), sabre platforms for area denial or lucius pods which makes ironclads competitive.

If forgeworld is NOT allowed you have really only these solid HQ options for TAC list - barebone librarian (which got worse but still packs decent effectivity and nullzone), biker captain (because bikes still work) and Vulkan (yes Vulkan, he is still competitive and even without allies).

First thing you need to solve, is to somehow mitigate crapiness of your troops - to do that either use allies (guard will give you cheap bodies to hold objectives and company command squad is cost effective by itself, or space wolves which gives you killines in troops and good psychic protection - but I prefer guard, because when I add grey hunters I ask myself why I am not playing space wolves in the first place). THEN fill remaining slots with most cost effective units from allies codex (longfangs, vendetta...) THEN add aegis defense line with your weapon of choice (because they are cost effective and help you in objective games) THEN add at least one Thunderfire cannon (because they help you to hold your home objective and help to clear enemy objective full off go to ground infantry -its a win-win) THEN do not be afraid to run 2 tactical squads in metal boxes with melta/plasma/flamer depending on your metagame and THEN either add assault terminators in Land raider (which got considerably more resilient since melta is less used nowadays) OR possibly in Stormraven (I am going to test it but I expect solid results) OR flood board with cheap vehicles/ infantry platoons. Do not be too afraid of enemy flyers. You can beat them on objective games easily if you bring lot of resilient targets. Flood the board with AV 11-13 metal boxes or lot of cheap allied bodies. Your goal is not to table your opponent but to win on objectives. It does not matter if you would be tabled on turn 8 if game will end on turn 7. Stay in cover, stay outside line of sight if possible, kill opponents mobility and lure opponents killy unit to go after your long-range support instead of troops which does not present a threat. IF you want to run Stormtalon - be my guest. Its not a bad option, its only problem is that it is very fragile and its a hybrid unit (antivehicle and antiinfantry in one mediocre package). From my experience I highly recommend to escort some nasty looking unit which will attract firepower - vendetta worked perfectly for me and Stormraven should potentionaly work too and THEN playtest and learn to play your army.

If you play Vulkan its different - first do not include any allies, you need to get most of him for his high price. Second Vulkan armies plays a little differently - almost every Vulkan list should include one unit of Hammernators in Landraider of choice (or maybe Stormraven - I am looking forward to testing one stormraven in my list), not because you expect it to destroy opponents army, but because you need to bring fight to the middle of the board, where you will be putting your objectives to get maximum effectivity of your weapons - and that will not be hammernators, or tactical marines, or stormtalon/stormraven - but your fast attack slot options, which needs desperately to remain out of line of sight, or they will die. Multimelta attack bikes or land speeders with Vulkan are one of most cost effective units in the whole game, and you need to protect them. Attack bikes can hide behind Rhinos, but speeders can hide ONLY behind terrain or landraider. They are easy first blood, but landraider is not...you need to get to the middle of the board, push your opponent out of it and then try to survive till the game will end. its actually pretty solid tactics. Just dont chase your enemy with your whole army, stay on the objectives and dont let him nearby. When playing on kill points, you can hide tactical squads with many casualties into empty landraider or at least behind it. DO NOT forget that flyers can shoot ONLY under 45°degrees. When they will get close, and you will be behind transport or wreck, they will NOT be able to target you. Know the rules, play by the rules, have fun.

^Wow, great post with great insight. Thank you.

It's advice that many players don't want to hear, but I'm in agreement with most of it.

Combat tactics is probably not as good as I am thinking for 5 man units. It's probably because BA don't get it, and most of my units in combat are 10 men. That's what I was thinking of. Still, I'd rather have combat tactics than nothing, which is what the BA tacticals get.

Martel732 wrote:
It's advice that many players don't want to hear, but I'm in agreement with most of it.

Combat tactics is probably not as good as I am thinking for 5 man units. It's probably because BA don't get it, and most of my units in combat are 10 men. That's what I was thinking of. Still, I'd rather have combat tactics than nothing, which is what the BA tacticals get.

You could get Red Thirst. Very useful for tactical marines lol.

RE: Chrysaspides

Nice post! I agree with most of what you said, though I personally still like sternguard.. but not for the common reasons. I dont personally give them much of any combi weapons, nor worry so much about podding them or making them an expensive one shot unit, I prefer to combine them with azhra's infiltrate to get them in rapid fire poisoned range. They help with anything high toughness or in cover and at 125 for 5 are still reasonably priced. They only get nuts when you start tacking on the upgrades.

I also have been using a siege dread in a normal pod with some sucess, mostly because of the ap 3 flamer and his relative inexpensiveness.

Welcome to the forums Chrysaspides. That was quite a long block of text that you wrote, and I am sure that people will gleam useful pieces of info from it if they spend the time to read it.

Chrysaspides wrote:
Labmouse is saying that one of the best (or nasty to be precise) C:SM builds is 3xStormtalon and 3xStormraven. Information that you can use Stormravens in C:SM is new and noone even tested it yet. I could tell you at least 50 of my own personal opinions why I think that this list will never work in competitive enviroment, but I am sure that by using simple common sense you can come to your own conclusion, that it is absolutely ridiculous because it is yet to be playtested and then adjusted and tweaked accordingly. He didnt even suggest rest of the list and why...

Respectfully, your drawing up a strawman here. Why don't you ask me why I said what I said what I did? I don't mean this as a flame, but I feel like I should comment on this.

Chrysaspides wrote:
Combat tactics - you will be told that it is powerful. You will be told that it is amazing and that it will keep you out of close combat and then allow you to shoot your opponent and cause pain. You will be told that it is a reason to play space marines and that it makes tactical marines decent,,,and you will be lied, every time. This ability is only essential for Bike armies - everywhere else you are better to trade it off for something else. You're playing C:SM, your troops suck in combat AND shooting. You are expected to avoid your enemy and to engage only weakened targets or hit one target with several tactical combat squads and pray to the dice gods.

I also played C:SM for most of 5th edition, in particular a bike army. I can tell you that combat tactics is extremely useful, when used properly. Its advantages are the free movement that you can gain from it whenever you are forced to make a break test. Most often this is from enemy shooting.

While it is not hit and run, it does allow you some excellent oppertunities to escape assault. As I am sure you have noticed, one of the big changes of 6th edition is the ability to rally within 6" of an enemy model. Previously if you fell back from an assault, usually you would fall back again on the following turn. This has changed significantly.

There are a number of units in the game that are normally quite deadly in the assault if you remain caught in them. One example of this would be wraiths. Necron wraiths will tear apart TAC squads in assault. You cannot say "expected to avoid your enemy" when your facing a unit that moves 15.5" a turn and ignores terrain. That strategy does not work.
Combat tactics, however, will let you fall back out of the wraiths assault and allow for you to rapid fire the wraiths in the face -- taking advantage of their weakness vs bolters.

Chrysaspides wrote:
if you will get charged and when you will loose, what do you think will remain of your squad? One or two marines?

One or two marines can hold an objective just as well as 10 at the end of the game. In NOVA missions, they secure quarters as full points.

Chrysaspides wrote:
If Forgeworld is allowed

Forgeworld is not allowed in most events. I would suggest against reccomending it to people due to the high cost. One can proxy out models until they have the money to buy them (and I suggest it highly, try before you buy) However, forge world is simply something that you won't be able to use in the vast majority of your games.

Chrysaspides wrote:
First thing you need to solve, is to somehow mitigate crapiness of your troops - to do that either use allies (guard will give you cheap bodies to hold objectives and company command squad is cost effective by itself, or space wolves which gives you killines in troops and good psychic protection - but I prefer guard, because when I add grey hunters I ask myself why I am not playing space wolves in the first place).

You add space wolves because they can bring things to the table that your TAC marines cannot -- yet you like the advantages of C:SM -- such as bikes for troops, thunderfire cannons, storm talons, null zone, etc....

Chrysaspides wrote:
its only problem is that it is very fragile and its a hybrid unit (antivehicle and antiinfantry in one mediocre package). From my experience I highly recommend to escort some nasty looking unit which will attract firepower - vendetta worked perfectly for me and Stormraven should potentionaly work too and THEN playtest and learn to play your army.

Its amazing the different meta's that we live in. I have no doubt that where you play a single stormraven and your opponent brings 3 vendettas, then it will appear to be extremely fragile. Where I play most opponents are bringing a few night scythes, but mostly I'm seeing helldrakes. In those cases, a stormraven is extremely durable.

You can also increase the durability by adding a force multiplier. Adding 3 storm ravens makes them much more durable, as your opponent's anti-air firepower must now be split between 3 targets. 3 vendettas vs 1 stormraven will always result in the stormraven being destroyed, 3 vendettas vs 3 stormravens is more in the storm ravens favor.

Did you know that an assault cannon as actually better at damaging vehicles than a LC? This means your SR with a TL MM/TL AC and missiles is actually quite good at destroying vehicles. Adding the points to get hurricane bolters is an extra added bonus that doubles their role. This is critical in the meta today (at least where I play) as foot armies have become much more common.

Chrysaspides wrote:
DO NOT forget that flyers can shoot ONLY under 45°degrees. When they will get close, and you will be behind transport or wreck, they will NOT be able to target you. Know the rules, play by the rules, have fun.

Again we are seeing a different meta between where we play. There is a phrase that is common around my FLGS called "Helldrake does as helldrake pleases" They are not limited by any degree angle, and they can wipe out a single TAC squad per round of shooting. When combined with 3 helldrakes this is tabling you by turn 3. Combat squadding is of limited help as each drake can vector strike one squad then flame another.
I am seeing (and playing) helldrakes very often. This is because they are a very strong counter to MEQ lists.

That is the reason I suggested triple stormravens. It gives you the ability to deal with the 3 helldrakes and secure 3 squads until the proverbial cost is clear. They also protect you against flamers/screamers (though they will be nurfed in a few weeks). That is why I suggest them so strongly in today's meta. It is also a hard counter against the eldar/dark eldar beast pack of cheese.

Have I tested it? Of course not. However, I can easily see how it would be a hard counter to my triple helldrake list. That is why I suggest it. It gives you the ability to do the following
* Protect troops from targets than can obliterate them.
* Take out enemy flyers.
* Destroy enemy heavy armor
* Destroy enemy light infantry
In today's meta its a very strong advantage.
The storm talons are optional. I admit I'm an extreme list builder so I would add them to increase the aerial threat -- yet they are not required, so long as you have enough guns to do the heavy lifting of your army. If you would like to see how I would build a C:SM 1850 list today I would be happy to share that with you.

Unfortunately I own nothing FW related, but I hope tournament scenes switch to that so it will become more diverse.

The 45 degree thing applies to the Stormraven, of course.

Chrysaspides has some pretty good advice. I would listen to him.

Labmouse, I would be interested to see your 1850 build. Also, I'm not in possession of Death from the Skies so I don't know any of the Storm Raven costs or its functionality.

 ImRightBehindYou wrote:
Labmouse, I would be interested to see your 1850 build. Also, I'm not in possession of Death from the Skies so I don't know any of the Storm Raven costs or its functionality.

This build uses the following assumptions
* The costs of the storm raven do not change from BA costs. One storm raven costs 230 for the BA, when you add on hurricane bolters.
* You like lots of TAC marines. I understand wanting to put a lot of marine boots on the ground. This list will focus on that.

HQ
Librarian w/Force Axe + Terminator Armor
Primarias Psyker

Troop
10 man TAC squad w/MG + ML
10 man TAC squad w/MG + ML
10 man IG Vet squad w/3 MGs

Fast Attack
Storm Talon w/Typhoon ML
Storm Talon w/Typhoon ML
Vendetta

Heavy Support
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles
StormRaven w/TL MM, TL AC, Hurricane Bolters, 4 missiles

Fortification
Bastion w/Comm Relay

Army Strategies
* Notice how I did not take rhinos for the 10 man TACs. These can either start in a stormraven or on the board. The idea is you have options depending on what you want to do.
* The librarian will sit in a storm raven and cast "Null Zone" when facing daemons/helldrakes/wraiths/etc.. This gives a large footprint for the AoE of the power
* The bastion is to keep one unit safe while your stuff starts in reserves. AV 14 is extremely hard to dislodge at range. I would combat squad and stick 2 MLs there. One on top, one inside.
* The comm-relay is critical when bringing 6-9 items from reserve. You must be able to bring them all in on turn 2 to maximize your force multipler
* Your storm talons and storm ravens do the heavy lifting. The idea is to drown your opponent in flyers. Take out enemy anti-flyer power, then focus on his ground forces.

I have no doubt that as you play this list, you will need to adopt your strategies. Nothing is ever 'perfect' the first time around. For example, I was 25 points shy of putting the missiles on the final storm talon.
If you want to try it, proxy to start with. Use cardboard cutouts to measure the flyer bases and test it with that. Use a shoebox for your bastion. The idea is to see how it works. It might completely flop, it might be awesome. I would suggest trying 5 proxy games to see. By then you will start to figure it out if its doable.

There are ways to flex the army. You could drop a storm talon and turn a TAC squad to a scout squad, then bring either an ironclad dread or squad of TH/SS termies. Remember the stormtalon is an assault vehicle, so you can drop the TH/SS termies onto a target of oppertunity near the enemy flanks (though you must go into hover mode) This could be a significant advantage.

It's Interesting, but I'm not sure what the missiles do. Also, don't you have to have models on the board or you lose?

You'd have 10 models(tactical squas) and a bastion on the board till turn 2 when stuff comes in from a re-rollable 3+ for reserves from comms relay.

Edit:although I personally think you'd need more than that to avoid getting tabled in a turn the more and more I think about it.