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I've been considering picking up Space Marines as a second army to compliment my Orks, and to play them in a rather Orky fashion with a huge number of marines (tactical or assault) either on foot or in vehicles. In addition, Terminators are cool, and very good dollars to points when picking them up second hand. So I'd like to be able to field these in large numbers as an alternative playstyle.

I very much want to avoid Centurions and Bikers, which seem to be a very popular way to run marines, as I'm not a fan of the concepts

What I'm wondering is, are marine horde or terminators any good? I don't mean top tier, because I'm not much of a fan of the game as it plays out at that level. I mean just able to give a solid semi-competitive performance without being erased from the board en-masse in a decidedly unfluffy manner. If they are viable, how does dakka run them?

My other question involves chapters. As far as I can tell there are only two that generally advocate "marine spam" as their doctrine, which are the Black Templars and Minotaurs. Coincidentally these are my two favourite chapters ever, as they both hate heretics and xenos and prefer to cut them up with chainswords as opposed to allying with them like certain other pansy marines are want to do. So I'm torn as to which one would work better. Both get Crusader (rolling 1 for run sucks), Black Templars can take bargain bin marines for sheer mass and Minotaurs are immune to shooting casualty/pinning morale tests so they don't wimp out before hitting the enemy.

Currently leaning towards Minotaurs, mainly because of their fluff - being able to rationalize blue on blue is a hell of a thing. They don't beat Templars in sheer ballsiness though

Would appreciate any advice on this, even going bargain shopping on ebay the games too expensive to pick up that many marines only to find out one riptide will kill them all

foot sloggin marines will make it less often than orcs will.

also, Imperial fists, and or Sentinals of terra are a very marine spammy army as well. (though, they are the shooty spam type)

Even black tide (crusader spam) is sub par, terminators, are usually sub-par, and your chapter tactics are sub-par with whomever you select.

I Have to suggest this-
If you want to run spam marines, ultramarines, and or imperial fist do this very well, and if you run allies, can be a very strong "fire support" and wound soak for your ork boys.

Massed terminators - you can field either Deathwing (Dark Angels) or Archangels (Blood Angels)

They're not exactly tournament-breaking, but people who rag on Deathwing can often get caught off-guard by them once you get used to them - the entire army teleports in on turn one, and has twin-linked guns for the turn - so it's a question of managing to capitalise on the alpha strike.

Deathwing-specific units, like the Command Squad and Deathwing Knights are useful but come from a specific box, whilst normal deathwing can be made out of generic terminators off ebay.

locarno24 wrote:
Massed terminators - you can field either Deathwing (Dark Angels) or Archangels (Blood Angels)

They're not exactly tournament-breaking, but people who rag on Deathwing can often get caught off-guard by them once you get used to them - the entire army teleports in on turn one, and has twin-linked guns for the turn - so it's a question of managing to capitalise on the alpha strike.

Deathwing-specific units, like the Command Squad and Deathwing Knights are useful but come from a specific box, whilst normal deathwing can be made out of generic terminators off ebay.

Deathwing don't carry firepower for the cost though. People should thank you when you load up on those Stormbolters. What good is an Alpha Strike when you don't really DO anything?

If you want mass Power Armor, Calgar would be the way to do it with mass Drop Pods. Or Sentinels Of Terra.

So long story short, waste of time?

Droppod ultramarines with Calgar are definitely a top-tier army in 7-th.

For a 1850 pt game you take 4-6 squads of marines in pods, 1-3 squads of sternguard with specials in pods and Calgar.

Not much variety, but they're pretty powerful. Awesome board controle - A LOT of ObSec units with sturdy 12-12-12 cheap pods and a lot of msu marines here and there. Very flexible - you can choose to combat squad or not, you can choose to retreat or not, you're very likely to get a warlord trait you need for a specific situation as Calgar generates 3 traits and can reroll them with battleforged. 2 turns of twin-linked for tacticals and reroll 1-s to hit for sternguard are pretty decent and help them out with their initial mediocre firepower.

Salamanders can do something like this but not as good as ultramarines, imo. They can get more variety, however. Like double HF dreads with TL flamers or plasma that's always twin-linked and master-crafted weapons on sarges - even mastercrafted meltabombs if you wish.

If you don't like smurfs, ravenguard or white scars can cut it with massed scout. Yep, white scars are not always about bikespam. They swarm the board with lots of rhinos and tacticals. ASM are pretty decent for ravenguard as they can both fly and still use jumppacks for charging. And get something for HOW iirc.

I'm pretty sure that droppoding ultramarines can even hold their own vs new eldar thanks to null-deployment, msu and concentrated fire on whatever you need dead the most. Will be an uphill battle still but they at least stand a chance unlike footslogging boyz, eh.

If you want pure footslogging, i'd go for black templars + allies. You're aiming for scout moves. So, ravenguard footslogging indeps or inquisitors with Liber heresius. Inquisitor can also make them pretty terrifying in mellee with all those nades and hammerhand (not fluffy to have psychers in there, however). Why black templar? Larger squads with ccw and Crusader usr. They can be quite fast with scout. Or you could get mass infiltrate with Liass Issodon. Can also ally with BA for FNP and even Cypher for Shrowded and H&R...

You could also use a Bunker with Escape hatch to get your guyz up the front asap. With a disembark + run they're gona get in charge range turn 2.

I think that footslogging marines can cut it but you need allies with neat tricks.

Another thing you can try is a scout spam army. Scouts are very fast with infiltrate + scout move. Can get dedicated assault vehicles. But mellee-oriented foes will likely crubstomp poor guyz with ws3 and 4+ save.

Not sure bout termies. Haven't seen them in a while, to be honest. Heard that SW have a formation that makes TH/SS termies t5 with ability to strike s8 ap2 free blows when they roll a 6 on a shield save or something like this.

Long story short, you're gonna have a really hard time making spam marines good even at the friendly level.

Large Templar Crusader blobs with allied Sororitas Priests will hold together well and will do some good damage in CC. But even a non-competitive Tau or IG fire line will drool over the amount of damage they will inflict on you before you get close to them. And any of the fast armies (Eldar, DE...) will run circles around you.

It's a very tough choice. If you haven't looked into it and if it's accepted in your area, you may want to explore 30k, you can run large marine blobs on the cheap and still have room for cool elite units or shootty options.

Take my word with a grain of salt but i've tried out BT footslogging crusaders in vassal.

They're pretty fast with scout + Crusader to make further runs and pretty darn scary in mellee with allied xeno inquisitor with nades, liber heresius (for scout, hatred, counter-attack) and hammerhand/divination. Though, i'm not sure if it's right using psychers to help BT.

4+ DTW on large blobs is also good. And SM dex opens up a lot of good ranged support units!

You should also consider Blood Angels. They have that one detachment that gives them +1I on the charge, and I think they all have Rage? I seem to remember being excited even about their scouts in melee for some reason.

The other thing is they get Death Company. They're guys with jump packs and FNP and can take a bunch of melee weapon upgrades. You might still be able to get some cheap because a bunch of them were sold in that box set. (I know I grabbed about 10 for way less than GW was selling the squad for.)

BA also have access to Sanguinary Priests who can give a squad FNP.