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I've noticed on the boards and watching bat reps that people seem to take more scoring units than my friends and I do.

I play SM/DA so Tactical squads and scouts are pretty meh. We play usually 1250-1850 points range and at those levels I tend to have 2-3 scoring units. My friend who plays Salamanders also usually has only 2, as does my Tau friend (2 FW or kroot in backfield). My DE buddy usually has more (4 ish), mostly i think of because how effective warrior boats are. similarly, my eldar friend only usually has 2 serpents with guardians or one and some jet bikes.

So my question to the community is, how do your local meta's stack up in terms of troops, and why do you think that is?, compared to mine...

I run Tyranids, and generally have 4-6 at lower points levels. Always 6 at 1850, if at all possible.

Meta: minimum almost always. Sometimes there's combat squads...

Wel, the rule of thumb is one scoring unit per 500 pts. If you play SM, then the 1500 pt level you could take two full Tacticals and a small sniper Scout unit.

If I take the minimum 2 units they are almost always bloated to their maximum size, whether they are CSM or cultists. Usually I'll take several smaller units though, around 4 in games up to 1850.

For me it depends on which army I'm running. My CSM almost always do better when I spend as little on troops as possible and sink all my other points into fast attack and heavy slots where I tend to get the most bang for my buck. My Tau on the other hand almost always have two full Fire warrior squads and a crap ton of Kroot (so typically 4-5 scoring units). My SM and DE all tend to have a ton of scoring bodies as well.

EDIT:
The rest of my meta tends to be more or less similar. The two exceptions I see are with Tau and SM. A few Tau players tend to run two bare bones Kroot squads so they can sink more points into troops, and there are multiple SM air force armies running a full compliment of kitted out fliers supported by some heavy armor and minimum troops (like two min tac squads or two scout squads).

6 Combat Squads in Pods at 1850

For my eldar i typically run 4 troops. 2 Davu, 1 guardians for back field camp, and a 3 jet bike squad.

personally i need more bikes =P

For my logan wing every model is a troop so 4-6 depending on points.

my BF plays Farsight enclave with tau allies so he has 7

With my Dark Angels, everything tends to be a scoring unit unless we're at 1500 or more. Bikes, everywhere! So many bikes.

I think one of these days I'll run them as White Scars instead just to see how much better the army is without having to waste 6 points a model on teleport homers. And then I'll be really sad again I decided to go with a gimp space marine chapter.

Hmm, lets see. In the last 1,850 tournament I went to:

I had 2 full tac squads, a 5 man sniper squad, and 2 5 man bikes squads (with the captain to make them troops) So 5 scoring units. Potentially 7 if I combat squadded.

First game was orcs w/ farsight allies. He had 4 units of boys (3 in battlewagons, one loose) and a unit of grots (they scoring?) plus one from his allies. So 6 units. I might be wrong about what’s what.

Second game was vs. pure demon list. I think he had 3 plaguebearers and one bloodletter unit. So 4. Not the strongest list that showed up, I might have miscounted, his units tended to evaporate (I feel bad saying that, he was a cool guy to play, but the game was brutal)

3rd was CSM/demon flying circus. Minimal troops (2 cultist squads, one pink horror squad) with the rest being either on the wing (he said about 1,500 of his 1,850 list flew) or obliterators.

So a random, I might be wrong, sample of 4 armies I happened to play at my local meta yields :6,5,4,3. for an average of 4.5 scoring units @ 1,850.

We all vary our lists a lot from game to game, but I do tend to focus a lot on troops, as A) objectives and B) it makes sense from a fluff standpoint. The first core of any SM list I build above 800 points is a HQ and 3 10-man tactical squads, usually in pods or Rhinos.

My IG usually bring around 60 Platoon Infantry and a pair of vet squads.This can be anywhere from 4-8 scoring units.

At 1850:

Nids: 4 troops - one is terv for popping out more troops
Crons: 4 warrior units all in Night scythes
WS/SW: 5 troops. 4 bike units and a grey hunter squad.

I play Drop Pod Salamanders primarily, and usually run about one tactical squad per 500 points, although I may skip the fourth one when going past 1500.

With my Dark Eldar I usually run one warrior and one wych squad, but that's because it's all I CAN field. If I had my druthers I'd run 1-2 warrior squads and 2-4 wych squads.

With Tau I usually run two squads of Firewarriors.

With Grey Knights I run 2-3 terminator squads, or 2-3 Henchman squads if I'm running a Coteaz list.

I tend to build Marine lists with an eye to 1 per 500 point

I'm an Eldar player and I have 4 at 1500-2000 level.

And rather than just going by the 1 per 500 points, I take troops depending on their roles. Usually one backfield, 2 midfield and 1-2 forward contesting. But Eldar troops fit perfectly into those roles, Rangers for backfield, Guardians/Avengers(foot or meched) for midfield and WRJ for forward contesting.

All in all, my troops take up around 400 points of my army, without their rides.

With my orks im allmost full scoring xD

I run two at 1000 points for thousand sons, which is the required amount, and the only reason I run two. At 2000 points, I will only go up to 3 squads, and the 3rd squad will just be 10 pink horrors.

I feel every army needs 1 squad of cheap troops to throw on an objective that is somewhere out of the way, and the rest should be higher quality and move up to aggressively take objectives.

The two armies I play are mechanized Guardsmen and Necrons on foot, both of which I try to keep 1 scoring unit for every 500 points. It works really well for me.

I'm still trying to find the sweet spot for my salamanders army. I like the idea of one scoring unit per 500 points as a general rule. however, with tactical marines being rather lackluster, I've been scaling back on marine units in favor of more killy stuff (grav cents, plasma cannon devs with a prescience inquisitor, etc.). I've played 1500 point games with anywhere from 2 to 4 10-man units of marines and it's really hit or miss. I haven't had much luck using combat squads to increase my scoring presence, either; 5 marines just aren't that hard to kill when there are heldrakes or a bunch of plasma on the board.

I almost always take 5 or 6 troops for my Eldar at 1500 and above. My standard list features 3-4 Dire Avenger units in Wave Serpents and 1-2 Guardian Jetbike Squadrons.