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So wanting to make a space marine army I've tried to look for the most competitive way to play them and only found white scars although I love them im trying to make a squat army and try to stay away from bikes is there any other competitive way to play them?

From what I gather here, old lists still are good :
MSU in RB
Drop pods with Kantor or Vulkan

You can always take the chaos flavour and look cool to boot.

IF tactics on las devs is lethal. 3 squads of these and you don't have to worry about any mech all game. Even better two squads of these and one with flakk.
Thunderfire cannons are well worth their points, 4 st 6 barrage blasts each a turn, plus the techmarine advantage...
Can go for air superiority, 3 ravens, 3 skyhammer talons and an agies with comms comes to 1045pts, spend the rest on filling out body numbers. With that much air power, dropping into hover for a turn to avoid flying off the board isnt a huge worry.
Vulkan with lots of deepstriking melta and flamers. Pods and LotD working best.
Cent star with tiggy or loth.
I came up with one that everyone seemed to like a short while ago which I never ran which involved 6 chapter masters on bikes. A hero hammer list. That works on paper but got no experience of it irl.
None are on the level of the most competitive eldar, tau or deamon lists. But should give everything else a good go.

SM bikes can compete with top tier lists, especially with WS chapter tactics....

the units that are good are storm talon thunder fire or devi squad, if i max them out with either what would the best hq choice followed with troops choice be?

Can't emphasize the awesomeness of Drop Pods and Salamanders. Siege Dreds, Ironclad Dreds, Sternguard, Devastator Centurions, and Assault Terminators are all good picks.

I've got a Clan Raukaan list in my signature that received nothing but praise in the List subforum, if you like mechanized armies.

Jimsolo wrote:Can't emphasize the awesomeness of Drop Pods and Salamanders. Siege Dreds, Ironclad Dreds, Sternguard, Devastator Centurions, and Assault Terminators are all good picks.

That's basically a list of stuff that is good, but not the best. Call it "B" rank choices.

shiny magikarp wrote:the units that are good are storm talon thunder fire or devi squad, if i max them out with either what would the best hq choice followed with troops choice be?

Devastator squads are bad....skip them for pretty much any other Heavy Support choice.

Basically, Space Marines do have a lot of very solid units. Jim Solo listed a bunch right above. They also have a handful of excellent units in Storm Talons, Thunderfire cannons and a few other hidden gems. The main problem is, and always has been troops. Tactical marines are just bad in a competitive environment. Walking, rhino or razorback borne they are not even worth fielding, and scouts really aren't any better. They can be made passable with drop-pods, but drop-pod focused armies are a bit on the inconsistent side for top level competitive play. They aren't BAD, but they aren't going to win you any tournaments unless you are extremely lucky or come across mediocre players/armies.

Bikers is the big thing these days. Not only are they excellent on their own merits (Fast, tough, invul save with jink, double grav + combi grav on a 3 or 5 man unit, hit and run, better firepower than tactics marines, scoring with a bike commander....etc) but they also let you get rid of the mediocre tactical marines. It's a win-win for taking bikes really. White Scars bikes is the best the marine codex can do at the moment, and I don't see that changing for the next few months.

jamin484 wrote:
SM bikes can compete with top tier lists, especially with WS chapter tactics....

Sort of. They still die like slime to weight of fire. What are scatter lasers/shuriken cannons?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Carnage43 wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Can't emphasize the awesomeness of Drop Pods and Salamanders. Siege Dreds, Ironclad Dreds, Sternguard, Devastator Centurions, and Assault Terminators are all good picks.

That's basically a list of stuff that is good, but not the best. Call it "B" rank choices.

shiny magikarp wrote:the units that are good are storm talon thunder fire or devi squad, if i max them out with either what would the best hq choice followed with troops choice be?

Devastator squads are bad....skip them for pretty much any other Heavy Support choice.

Basically, Space Marines do have a lot of very solid units. Jim Solo listed a bunch right above. They also have a handful of excellent units in Storm Talons, Thunderfire cannons and a few other hidden gems. The main problem is, and always has been troops. Tactical marines are just bad in a competitive environment. Walking, rhino or razorback borne they are not even worth fielding, and scouts really aren't any better. They can be made passable with drop-pods, but drop-pod focused armies are a bit on the inconsistent side for top level competitive play. They aren't BAD, but they aren't going to win you any tournaments unless you are extremely lucky or come across mediocre players/armies.

Bikers is the big thing these days. Not only are they excellent on their own merits (Fast, tough, invul save with jink, double grav + combi grav on a 3 or 5 man unit, hit and run, better firepower than tactics marines, scoring with a bike commander....etc) but they also let you get rid of the mediocre tactical marines. It's a win-win for taking bikes really. White Scars bikes is the best the marine codex can do at the moment, and I don't see that changing for the next few months.

This is 100% true, but the downfall is every "1" or "2" you roll for armor costs you 21 pts at minimum. Bikers are making an elite list even more elite. From a BA perspective, C:SM are infinitely more manageable than Tau or Eldar. Caveat: SoS and FNP both work vs grav. So my BA are not melting away. And S7 wounds them on the same number as tac marines, and so serpent shield fire is taking 50% extra points off the table.

I honestly don't think the utter lack of offense of marine troops can truly be overcome. Substituting in bikers is a bandaid.

 j31c3n wrote:
I've got a Clan Raukaan list in my signature that received nothing but praise in the List subforum, if you like mechanized armies.

Nice list refinement. Got it modeled up for pics? It gave me some fun ideas for the my MotF with beamer based around a mobile weapons platform for the beamer piloted by the MotF for the MoTF on bike with beamer.

 Carnage43 wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Can't emphasize the awesomeness of Drop Pods and Salamanders. Siege Dreds, Ironclad Dreds, Sternguard, Devastator Centurions, and Assault Terminators are all good picks.

That's basically a list of stuff that is good, but not the best. Call it "B" rank choices.

Sorry, can't agree. Drop Pod Salamanders are far from B list.

I only mentioned the other things because they are what other people consider competitive.

barnowl wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
I've got a Clan Raukaan list in my signature that received nothing but praise in the List subforum, if you like mechanized armies.

Nice list refinement. Got it modeled up for pics? It gave me some fun ideas for the my MotF with beamer based around a mobile weapons platform for the beamer piloted by the MotF for the MoTF on bike with beamer.

Sadly, not yet. I doubt I'll have it modeled anytime soon because of budgetary reasons, but when I do, expect a thread in the modelling subforum and a link to it in my signature.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Carnage43 wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:Can't emphasize the awesomeness of Drop Pods and Salamanders. Siege Dreds, Ironclad Dreds, Sternguard, Devastator Centurions, and Assault Terminators are all good picks.

That's basically a list of stuff that is good, but not the best. Call it "B" rank choices.

Sorry, can't agree. Drop Pod Salamanders are far from B list.

I only mentioned the other things because they are what other people consider competitive.

You mean they are more like C list, then. Because they don't sniff the "A" bracket. Drop salamanders have nothing on SW, and SW aren't A list.

If you're trying to highly competitive, then White Scar Bikers are the only good build. For Medium to Low Competitiveness there are a few such as Salamander Drop Pod spam, Iron Hands tanks spam, and Iron Hnads Raider spam to name a few.

The guy that won at Las Vegas recently ran White Scars Bikes with Grav Guns I think. If wining is your game you might try that in small lists to see if you like it. If you dig around in the Tournament forum I'm sure they still have the top five or ten lists posted.

he got second. Eldar got first.

Martel732 wrote:

jamin484 wrote:
SM bikes can compete with top tier lists, especially with WS chapter tactics....

Sort of. They still die like slime to weight of fire. What are scatter lasers/shuriken cannons?

Weight of fire is indeed the way to kill bikes. They need protected either by tanking characters with artificer armour on command squads, or sneaky shenanigans to get that 2+ cover such as skilled rider combined with WS chapter tactics, a dark shroud, invisibility or other silly nonsense. They are not the best army (necrons I rekon) but they can reliably have a go at eldar, tau, daemons and even the mighty necrons (just not when I'm playing with them!)...

So you don't think weight of fire is the best way to kill bikers? I'm assuming you don't have low AP ignore cover fire readily available here.

Martel732 wrote:
So you don't think weight of fire is the best way to kill bikers? I'm assuming you don't have low AP ignore cover fire readily available here.

I said weight of fire is indeed the way to kill bikes....

My bad. I somehow misread it.

No bother mate.

 Seb wrote:
From what I gather here, old lists still are good :
MSU in RB
Drop pods with Kantor or Vulkan

You can always take the chaos flavour and look cool to boot.

Rofl! I wouldnt exactly call csm a competitive army!

Atleast c:sm gets dpod, rback, storm tlon/ravens, n better lr. Csm only gets the "u may have 1st blood" rhino n slowed lr.

A friggen plague marine cost as much as a biker.

Tac are so much better than csm bcuz of atsknf n combat squads, n combat knives for the whole unit for only 5 flashlights compared to 2flashlights per model.

C:sm has strong aa to shoot down 4 turkeys.

Csm just has more expensive troops or worse than guardsman cultists.

Ok so SM are a very competitive army. They only thing they really struggle with is the re-rollable 2++ death stars out there, but so does everything else. A smart SM player can pretty much murder tau as you can erase Tau troops with Thunder fire cannons by hiding out of line of sight and out ranging SMS. Serpent spam is another tougher match up but you have a punchers chance in those games as well.

I was just at a GT in Dallas and 2 of the 4 armies at the top 2 tables going into the last round were SM, and SM won best general. To be fair those armies were white scars bike army and a vulkan drop pod list. But I definitely think there are some other really good lists to be built out of that book.

Grav-Stars are starting to see some love. 4 Grav Cents with a tanking Chapter Master and a Tau Buffmander. It can be pretty disgusting

SM have a fighting chance against the top-tier armies, but it's definitely an uphill battle. Equally skilled players, one piloting Eldar/Tau/Combination vs one piloting SM? Former wins, but at least SM can put up a fight.

 obsidiankatana wrote:
SM have a fighting chance against the top-tier armies, but it's definitely an uphill battle. Equally skilled players, one piloting Eldar/Tau/Combination vs one piloting SM? Former wins, but at least SM can put up a fight.

No things like mission, first turn, amount of LOS blocking terrains will determine the outcome.

Pony_law wrote:

 obsidiankatana wrote:
SM have a fighting chance against the top-tier armies, but it's definitely an uphill battle. Equally skilled players, one piloting Eldar/Tau/Combination vs one piloting SM? Former wins, but at least SM can put up a fight.

No things like mission, first turn, amount of LOS blocking terrains will determine the outcome.

I would love for that to be the case.

Grav+Plazma Bikes with Khan, Tfc, Scout scoring, Gravcents, Tigurius. That's it.

Actually, I think C:SM is incredibly competitive right now. So many good units, so many good lists. Synergy became much more important from the last edition codex, though. That MotF list is a pretty good example. That list would give even the most competitive lists pause.

In an army that can't outshoot the top shooting armies at range, nor out-assault top assault armies in the charge, you've got to make your jack-of-all-trades trait work for you, not against you. So focus is vital.

I fought against nasty SM lists, Salamander drop pods, WS bikers, IH LR spam, UM Rhino wall(which sucks against Serpents, but is still a tough army to take down) and UM Cent Gravstar, stuff like that. All those lists are nasty in their own way. And all of them have focus.

SM definitely aren't the easy-mode army anymore. You now actually have to be very careful what you're doing, because you're not as tough anymore.

Martel732 wrote:

Sort of. They still die like slime to weight of fire. What are scatter lasers/shuriken cannons?

This is 100% true, but the downfall is every "1" or "2" you roll for armor costs you 21 pts at minimum. Bikers are making an elite list even more elite. From a BA perspective, C:SM are infinitely more manageable than Tau or Eldar. Caveat: SoS and FNP both work vs grav. So my BA are not melting away. And S7 wounds them on the same number as tac marines, and so serpent shield fire is taking 50% extra points off the table.

I honestly don't think the utter lack of offense of marine troops can truly be overcome. Substituting in bikers is a bandaid.

Sure, bikes die to weight of fire easily. But bikes have a smaller footprint, better range, better damage output, and vastly better mobility. So while on paper they die just as easily, this isn't nearly the truth in practice.

Further, against anything that's AP1, AP2, AP3, and S3 bikes are actually more durable point-for-point than tactical marines, thanks to T5 and 4+ Jink in addition to the aforementioned advantages.

And I think recent tournament results disagree with your assessment of the offense issue being able to be overcome, considering C:SM lists are placing quite well and with a variety of lists.

Pony_law wrote:Ok so SM are a very competitive army. They only thing they really struggle with is the re-rollable 2++ death stars out there, but so does everything else.

Gravstar lists handle some 2++ death stars quite well, and it can maul popular Tau deathstars.

astro_nomicon wrote:Grav-Stars are starting to see some love. 4 Grav Cents with a tanking Chapter Master and a Tau Buffmander. It can be pretty disgusting

I ran this at LVO and went 4-1 (and my only loss, well, was due to a judge call rather than the results of the game). It's quite an effective list that has a great matchup against many Tau lists and a respectable matchup against many Eldar lists.

obsidiankatana wrote:
I would love for that to be the case.

It is. Just look at recent tournament results (LVO, ToF Invitational, etc) - C:SM players are placing respectably, consistently. I think that's exactly what you want to see out of a healthy codex.

koooaei wrote:Grav+Plazma Bikes with Khan, Tfc, Scout scoring, Gravcents, Tigurius. That's it.

There's really no point to Plasma when you can have Grav on a bike. Plasma's niche over Grav is so narrow that it might as well not exist. Melta do have a purpose, and to a lesser extent, flamers. I really think Scouts are a terrible choice, and should only be taken in min-sized squads to satisfy FoC requirements, but YMMV.