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Hey everyone. I am predominately a tau player, but I do have a space marine army and I've been playing them a lot more recently. However I'm having trouble making an army that feels right. All my armies feel like there is something missing, this is what I could come up with, any regular space marine players, I would appretiate criticism.

HQ
Vulcan he'stan

Command squad
-3x flamers
-apothecary, company champion
-rhino


TROOPS

Tactical squad
-flamer, multi melta
-sgt w/ combi flamer
-drop pod w/ locator beacon

Tactical squad
-flamer, multi melta
-sgt w/ combi flamer
-drop pods/ locator beacon

5 man tactical squad
-multi melta

5 scouts
-sniper rifles, missile launcher

5 scouts
-sniper rifles, missile launcher


ELITES

Dreadnought
-TL lascannon, missile launcher

Ironclad dreadnought
-2x heavy flamers
-drop pod w/ locator beacon

FAST ATTACK

Stormtalon gunship
-typhoon missile launcher

Storm talon gunship
-typhoon missile launcher

Land speeder squadron
-2 land speeders
-multi melta, heavy flamer

heavy support

Thunder fire cannon

Devastator squad
-4x missile launchers

My plan is to keep everything besides the thunder fire, scouts, devastator, and lascannon dread in reserve, and use those units as a fire base. Other than that I think you get the gist of it. However seems kinda weak to me so if you have any suggestions, please share them.

Your Alpha Strike is too weak. I usually go all or nothing.

I would drop the 5 man tac squad ( numbers are too small to be in the board turn one and would give first blood easily)

Drop the scouts they are completely useless other than holding down objectives

The dreadnought with las cannon and missile launcher will also be to ineffective

And missile launcher devs are pretty rubbish aswell. Why not give them 4 mm and keep with the salamanders theme

The five man tac squad was going to stay in reserves, and come on to hopefully grad a back feild objective, and I know I want to do an all drop pod army, but right now the only models I have other than these are, a land raider crusader, seven assault terminators, attack bike with multi melta, a full tack squad, chapter master, chaplain, and a bunch of captains, I could take the multi meltas out of the tac squads and make a devastator squad with that, would you suggest that? And leave the tac squads without a heavy? Like I said I'm pretty new to space marines

get more tac squads, get 4 of them and use a 5 man scout squad, then a librarian/epistolary and a chapter master,
then 2 dreads then a 10 man devastator squad with 2 missiles
a melta and a plas cannon. then get a squad of 5 assault marines or get 5 termies or 7/8/9/10 sternguards in a drop pod

i agree that the normal dreads gunna be useless, same as the 5 man tac squad, and same as the scouts, stock up on some more tactical squads

I wouldn't take an LR doing a drop pod heavy army whatever is in the board has to weather the storm of all the enemies army firing on your minimal ground force.

I would keep the mm in the tacticals but have a plasma gun instead of a flamer.

Include another tac squad equipped as said

Drop scouts completely. I used to use them but they Re completely ineffective in this codex

You could add in the LR with cc termies in there but keep them out of sight until the army drops then rush forward. And maybe drop pod sternguard with heavy flamers to keep with the theme

The thing about asking others what feels right for your army is it may not fall into what you truly feel is missing. I've been playing marines for nearly 2 years now and I love em. But my experiences with em will be completely different then yours, which I'm sure you know already. An example is I never put flamers in tac squads. I think flamers should be reserved for hand to hand units that will inevitably get into hand to hand at some point in the fight. Then you either get your full template or the wall of death. No use putting a close in weapon on a shooter squad that's camping in the back or moving around to objectives. But you may be combat squading that squad and using the flamer to suicide a squad and the mm to pop one piece of armor. Another example is putting flamers on speeders. I want as much ground between my speeders and enemy units as possible so I run hb/cml speeders and stay at max range in cover. You may have a different role for yours to field em with hf/mm.

What feels right should be a very fluid thing with marines. I've never fielded the same list twice. I'm always mixing it up. This does 2 things...keeps it different for you making it interesting and fresh. And it also keeps your enemies guessing so they can't cater a list to fight your same go-to list you always field. Keep a good bit of priority targets in the mix for your enemy to choose from and mix em up every game. But ultimately you have to decide what you think is missing so you can be happy and have fun playing your salamanders.

RavenGuard55 ... that was inspirational +1

You need lot more tacs your taqs with Vulcan and salamander upgrades are awesome if also recommend a crusader whith a vv or command squad with hestan