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Now that all units score, I noticed assault marines might be pretty useful in small point games to get more MEQ bodies in Rhinos on the table. I was thinking about adding a few in to an Iron Hands mech list.

I was hoping some of you could share your opinions on the idea. I'd be using them in tandem with tactical squads to clear and capture objectives and to mix things up from a typical mech gunline.

trephines wrote:
Now that all units score, I noticed assault marines might be pretty useful in small point games to get more MEQ bodies in Rhinos on the table. I was thinking about adding a few in to an Iron Hands mech list.

I was hoping some of you could share your opinions on the idea. I'd be using them in tandem with tactical squads to clear and capture objectives and to mix things up from a typical mech gunline.

In my experience throwing Tactical Marines at objectives in a bid to clear usually doesn't work anyway unless you're up against something like non-Fearless Guardsmen, and Assault Squads don't destroy most units, they bully them.

They also only work, when mechanised, if your opponent doesn't have the firepower to shoot them off the board in a turn or weaken them to uselessness. Particularly the Tau will never fail to meet that challenge, especially since if your unit survives the bucket load of S5, they'll put multiple units worth of overwatch into the assault squad.

It'd probably be far better to invest in things that actually wipe units off objectives reliably - Thunderfire Cannons, Vindicators, flyer support, etc.

Assault marines probably won't clear anything.

However, they can be used to harry objectives in maelstrom, and depending on your list, can give you some nice options to secure the flanks.

Try them out. They might work with a neat Raven Guard list focusing on high mobility (with something scary to take hate).

Their pointless if you can take bikes that are in any way special. Their a waste of points in dark angels or white scars armies. Might be okay in other forces tho

Anything moving faster than infantry is golden i maelstorm scenarios.
The best thing to do is probably to ally in BA assault marines.
With sanguinary priests they are resilent, fast and keep your objectives secure along with great movability.

True, they might not clear objectives from enemies on their own, and as BA they get kind of pricey. Still, I can see a use for assault marines for objective grabbing these days.

There pretty much hasn't been a purpose to include assault marines in anything other than BA since 4th edition when they had traits.