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ManwithIronHands wrote:Put your marines on hte table and know how to play them and dont get out played and you'll probly come out with a W

You're a genious. Seriously. GENIOUS

Oh, and try not to suck. Sucking is bad, and if you suck too much you'll never win.

Winning tactics are harder to outline, because it depends so much on the exact table position.

I'm not sure if you intended to mean tactics or strategy. Note there is a difference - tactics are actual in-game maneuvers and utilization of abilities, while strategy is going to be an overall plan.

For tactics, the most common tactic that wins me the game is to try to lure my opponent into spreading his forces in a way you can isolate part. In chess, a common tactical theme is to gain a superiority of forces in a localized area so that its impossible to properly defend. This translates rather well into 40k- maneuver in a way to try and separate your opponents force into smaller portions, then hit one of those portions with the majority of your forces. Of course, this only works well if you have greater or equal mobility.


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@ Nurglitch: That's not necessarily true. I found it to be a great distraction technique.

Oh wait, you meant something else i guess...

All jokes aside there's a number of tactics that you can use to implement your strategies. The fact that there's a lot of them simply means two things: (1) There's an element of skill to playing 40k measurable in your familiarity with the tactics available for implementing particular strategies, and (2) We have something to talk about besides list-building.

Marines have some of the best mobile anti-armor around: Attack Bikes with multimeltas, and Land Speeders with multimeltas. I prefer the latter, as it tends to keep me out of close combat if some of the squadron does survive the odd charge after dispatching its target. Vehicles are unengaged, whereas attack bikes can be tarpitted and they're pretty lackluster in H2H. And also, don't forget that you can use this to contest objectives late in the game. I've won more games, and salvaged more losses into draws, with this technique. IMO, Land Speeders or Attack Bikes armed with multimeltas should be a component of every competitive Marine list. Every single one. They're simply the best thing Marines have going for them in regards to armor.

Razorbacks as opposed to Tac Marines in Rhinos. If your local metagame consists of heavy mechanization, consider swapping out 10-man Tac squads in Rhinos for 5-man Tac squads in Razorbacks. Almost every Razorback heavy weapon is better than anything a Tactical Squad can carry. They're cheaper too, so you can afford a 3/2 ratio of 5-man Razorback squads to 10-man Tactical squads with points to spare. 3 5-man squads in Razorbacks is going to be more useful for you than 2 10-man squads in Rhinos.

Don't forget templates. BS4 doesn't help you if you roll a 1 or a 2, and I'll take a Heavy Flamer on a Speeder over a Heavy Bolter on a Predator any day of the week.

Think of your opponent's priorities when using your fast attach choices. Say you've managed to maneuver a HF speeder behind a group of Boyz in a truck. The Boyz' target was originally a tactical squad which remains less than 12" in front of them. After you pop the transport and flame his guys, the survivors have a choice: hit the land speeder, or charge the tactical squad as originally intended. He can't do both. So you've either got an unmolested Tactical Squad, or a Speeder that can do its thing next turn. Either way, you're doing well. In other words, when you don't have a metric ton of models, you need to think very carefully about placement and be sure to avoid getting multi-assaulted!

NuggzTheNinja has a good point, and it's to do with tactics, thank god. By making the Ork mob choose between moving in one direction, towards the Tactical squad and the other direction, towards the Land Speeder, you make any choice suboptimal to moving towards both.

Force the other player to make choices, because otherwise they'll just take the obvious choice: the one that will obviously defeat you.

Since you're asking for general Space Marine tactics, I'm going to assume you're not totally immersed in the netlist jargon trickydick metagame. Some of what you're hearing in this thread is that, some of it is more fundamental advice... But it sounds to me like you currently want to focus on the fundamentals.

And I don't mean to disparage the trickydick stuff, it's just that it's useless without a good foundation. If you ask for advice, a lot of times you're going to get the "in crowd" spiel, where everyone is talking the latest fads, and they not speaking to the fundamentals, lest it appear that they're not, like, totally over how simple they are.

What the hell am I talking about?

A fundamental is something like this: you want to lose combats in his turn.

Pretty simple, right? Losing in his turn means you can now shoot his squad. This is why SM's Combat Tactics are so useful.

Maybe this isn't news to you. But if it is something that you feel like you need to work on, or if you generally feel like you need to master the fundamentals, here's what I'd suggest as a list:

3x Tac Squads. Give them Rinos and/or Razorbacks.
A unit of SM Bikes.
A Dread.
A Predator.
A Captain.

Give it all whatever you think is fun, but make sure to have at least one Power Fist, Melta, Flamer and Missile Launcher.

With this sort of list, you have an army that is impossible to play too badly. You won't win every game, but you will be in every game long enough to watch how it all works out.

Playing this list right will be all about the fundamentals. When to Combat Squad, how to hold and take objectives, how to win combats, or lose them on your terms, etc. etc. etc.