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I've been meaning to do a foot-slogging Space Marines army as a kind of challenge. My questions are, is this viable, and if so, how would you make it work? An extension of the question I'm most interested in would be if you could justify Sternguard Veterans on foot, bare, used solely as anti-infantry units? This is in a Crimson Fists army where they and the Tactical Marines will be dedicated anti-infantry, while Devastators and the like handle anti-tank.

It can work, and I have run foot-marines with some success. However, I am leaning more and more towards the transport side of things as it allows you to keep your guys safe for another turn and apply better force concentration.

However, for a foot list, you're going to be relying on numbers to provide defence, so you should be looking at in the region of 40 marines per 1000 points. This means going fairly light on HQ and termies and the like until you have a solid core. 4 tactical squads would make a good basis.

You're then going to have to consider how to counter the weakness that pure footslogging brings. You'll therefore needs Devastators for AT, preferably with LC, and some ASM for mobility, as otherwise you're stuck with a gunline of tacs and devs.

The basics, then, are to get a good number of marines and try and cover all the bases.

As for running sternguard on foot, it again can be done, but the problem is that they die like tactical marines, so you really need to be hiding them until they are in range to jump out, shoot up a squad and then probably get shot to bits. running them as just another part of your gunline is not going to see the living particularly long, simply because, in the absence of vehicles, your opponents will have no better targets for their big guns. You'll want to go light on combis here, just stick to the bolters.

Just to clarify, are you wanting to go pure-footslogging with no vehicles at all, or just no transports?

Yeah I agree completely on the transports, it makes for a better army overall. Epsecially en masse, taking lots of Rhinos or lots of Drop Pods (or both) tends to boost your army a lot and, in the case of the latter especially, provide you with an incredible alpha strike if you do it right.
Well, in the army list I plan on running, it is Crimson Fists and has 81 infantry models in total at 1850 points. There's twenty Tacticals, thirty Sternguard, thirty Devastators, and Pedro himself. Minus the Scouts, it is supposed to be a good representation both of there being mostly Tacticals/Veterans left in the force, and instead of Scouts I am using Devastators as my "power-armoured Initiates" to make full use of the Chapter Tactics.

Yeah it is tough, but I'm hoping that with (for example) thirty tank-hunting Devastators with twelve lascannons between them I should be able to draw some heat off of the Sternguard and maybe abuse their kraken bolts until opponents get into their effective range. At 1850 points having 81 Marines seems like it would still be a lot for opponents, especially when there are thirty Sternguard in total.

For cost-cutting and for theme purposes (as a sort of tribute to the Space Marines under Pedro that made the gruelling trip from their fortress monastery to New Rynn City) I wanted to make it without vehicles of any kind at all, but if the army can't be made to work decently well without them, I'll cave in. I just really loved the theme behind Pedro and the Crimson Fist survivors from the fortress monastery and wanted to have a sort of representation of that. I guess it is also a general question about whether such armies can work even with Heldrakes, Riptides, Ionheads, Eldar and so on around.

As I say, no vehicles is entirely possible, they are by no means essential, especially as you have AT covered well by LC.

With 81 models, you're certainly on the right lines regarding numbers, but there are a few things I'd suggest. One is that, for this type of lists with lots of relatively expensive bodies (Sternies and Devs) and ADL will work wonders, as a 4+ cover save massively boost their durability against the likes of battle cannons and ion cannons. Of course, drakes and tau will still ignore cover, but against most armies it will be 50 points well spent. To cut points, try dropping some of the extra marines on the dev squads, as they are really only bullet catchers. 2-3 extra wounds per squad is nice, but this could go towards an ADL and a quad-gun for some anti-flier.

As for the idea of dev 'scouts' (and this has nothing to do with tactics), I think perhaps a more fluffy idea would be to have them as tacs that have been reassigned to the devs to make maximum use of heavy weapons. All tactical marines do at least 10 years in a devastator squad, and are trained with the weapons, so I can easily see a commander reallocating the bulk of his tactical marines into dev squads to use the extra weapons they have lying around. That said, it's your army, so do what you want, I just thought I'd suggest this as I don't think the idea of putting scouts in PA is something that is likely to happen, especially considering the lack of resources the CF have.

On the whole though, that list sounds good, and perfectly playable. It should do well.

Sternguard Veterans on foot are totally justifiable, especially in a Crimson Fists army where they can be scoring.

I'd like to see a good foot slogging list of Marines, please!

Paradigm wrote:As I say, no vehicles is entirely possible, they are by no means essential, especially as you have AT covered well by LC.

With 81 models, you're certainly on the right lines regarding numbers, but there are a few things I'd suggest. One is that, for this type of lists with lots of relatively expensive bodies (Sternies and Devs) and ADL will work wonders, as a 4+ cover save massively boost their durability against the likes of battle cannons and ion cannons. Of course, drakes and tau will still ignore cover, but against most armies it will be 50 points well spent. To cut points, try dropping some of the extra marines on the dev squads, as they are really only bullet catchers. 2-3 extra wounds per squad is nice, but this could go towards an ADL and a quad-gun for some anti-flier.

As for the idea of dev 'scouts' (and this has nothing to do with tactics), I think perhaps a more fluffy idea would be to have them as tacs that have been reassigned to the devs to make maximum use of heavy weapons. All tactical marines do at least 10 years in a devastator squad, and are trained with the weapons, so I can easily see a commander reallocating the bulk of his tactical marines into dev squads to use the extra weapons they have lying around. That said, it's your army, so do what you want, I just thought I'd suggest this as I don't think the idea of putting scouts in PA is something that is likely to happen, especially considering the lack of resources the CF have.

On the whole though, that list sounds good, and perfectly playable. It should do well.

Yeah that sounds like a great idea, I'll do that to the list I'm working on. I drop four Devastators across the three squads to get the Aegis Line in. Hell, I could even drop a fifth Devastator and add an Icarus Lascannon in, or try and get a Quad Gun which would be a lot better with Tank Hunter. I dunno, what do you think; drop four Devastators for an aegis line, drop five for an icarus lascannon line, or drop seven for a quad gun line?

Oh sorry, I didn't actually mean scouts in power armour per se, I was more referring to the training regime with Space Marines. I've read that Devastators are the lowest ranking power-armoured Marines, is that true? If so, I thought that to make sense of the the Crimson Fists blooding a lot of new talent - represented as Scouts in the fluff - I could instead have a lot more Devastators than I do Tactical Marines, ditto Sternguard.
Cheers for the assistance!

Kingsley wrote:Sternguard Veterans on foot are totally justifiable, especially in a Crimson Fists army where they can be scoring.

That's good to hear, and was pretty much the only thing stopping me from really wanting to do the army. Cheers.

I think it can work, personally I would go with Iron Hands to get the 6+ FNP, I know it doesn't seem like much but getting that extra chance to save a few guys every enemy shooting phase can make a big difference.

Crimson Fists with Pedro would also be a very powerful combo. Tank hunting Devastators with Las Cannons is amazingly effective.

Regarding icarus or quad, it depends on how many fliers you see, and what types. Either are good, against the low-armoured fliers with 2/3 HP (dakkajets, stormtalons, eldar fliers, DE razor-thingy) then you're better off with the QG, as you have a great chance of glancing them to death, especially with Tank Hunters. Against the higher AV targets like drakes and stormravens, there is more of a debate, but it depends on whether you want the chance of a single hit that is really all-or-nothing, or the potential for multiple glances. It's up to you really.

You're right on the devs being the newest-ranking marines, I just misunderstood what you meant a bit. As I said, either way is cool. If you want to be ultra-fluffy, then I'd still consider getting some scouts in there, but they're not essential, and your explanation for more devs is perfectly justifiable.

If you mean viable as in usable, yes. If you mean viable as in invincible, no. Using the right words and not trite catch words can make a big difference.

Like a.lot of things, using them correctly is key. Careful use.of cover and LOS denying terrain will allow you to approach objectives. Combat squads will allow you to keep some cheap heavy weapons safe while small squads advance. Large squads can soak up more wounds and saves.