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I put together a 1500 points Vanilla list some time back, which was intended as a "general purpose" list, with maybe a bias toward shooting.

Now I'm wondering if there is room in 1500 points to include specialist units for assault, and specialist units for shooting. That way, they could support each other, without giving up the advantages that come with tooling up for shooting or smashing.

I suppose Salamanders Terminators would be a good start for Assault, and some combination of Devastators/Thunderfire/Whirlwind for shooting.

But I thought I would bring the question to Dakka.

1500 points of Marines and allies (Fists, Salamanders, etc)

No special characters, because they're mostly overpriced. How would you set it up so that there is a roughly equal mix of assault and fire support units?

Also, if the Moderators feel that this would be better in "Army Lists", feel free to move.

To be honest, going for an 'equal mix' of assault and shooting in a SM list is a bad idea, but what is perfectly feasible is having a couple of good assault units. 10 ASM with a chaplain and 2 flamers runs just over 300 points and is great for killing infantry, termies in a LR with a beatstick character is more expensive but also good. The core of your list should be shooty, but there are plenty of good assault units available. A rough core for this sort of thing would be:

2 tac squads, weapons/transports as wanted.

TFC, 4x LC devs for shooting

Chaplain assault squad for CC.

Add whatever else you want to take this up to 1500.

Our shooting units tend to be a lot better then our assault ones, so it makes sense to focus on them. But by all means include some assault specialists in your list, just don't go crazy and compromise the shooting side.

If you want a stronger CC presence in your army, you can also look at units that do well in both roles. Tactical terminators all have powerfists and a veteran stat line. If needed they can pile in and crump some heads. Keeping the DCCW on a dread will give you a unit that can both shoot and fight.

Common internet wisdom will tell you to spam to your strengths. This leads to a lot of rock/paper/scissors match ups. I'm more a fan of a well balanced TAC list. The nature of your local meta can impact this, so YMMV.

Huh. That's pretty much what I've got: Lascannons mounted on Predators for better mobility and maybe a little better protection: IMO, Devs are hard to justify.

Terminator Chaplain with Terminator squad. AC and chainfists.

Other fun things, too. Seems I'm on the right track.

Thanks, guys!

If you are going to try and keep a mix, you need to be very selective in your assault targets. Go after smaller units that have either taken casualties or were small to begin with. Use TH/SS termies to go after vehicles and small but hard hitting squads such as Broadsides or even MCs.

Use ASM to finish off smaller troop units that your shooting has softened up, or tie up tougher shooting units until you can get some heavy hitters over to finish the job.