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I was just wondering could i have a space marine sergeant with combi bolter and have him with a power fist/sword etc?

Yes you can swap your pistol for one upgrade and the chain sword for another. Just FYI Melee upgrades are almost never worth it.

Not every sergeant has access to all the wargear lists either. Assault marine sarges can’t take combi weapons for example. This is for the vanilla codex, DA/BA/SW may or may nor be different.

I’ll second the point that it’s rarely something you would want to do. But for the most part, are allowed to.

I find the Combi weapon to be the best bang for your buck on tacticals/scout squad sergeants. Can't speak much for Assault marines since I don't use them much. I always keep the devastator sergeant bear as he's their to take the first bullet for the guys with the real guns.

Definitely Combi-bolter to match the Special Weapon if you must upgrade them, otherwise bare.

Though I always feel crappy not upgrading my sergeants beyond the combi-melta. I play a Fists army with only a single power fist, and that is on Pedro Kantor (though I do have a Terminator squad prepped for an alternate to my Honour Guard, so five Power Fists at most). What saddens me the most about this is that my Blood Angels have more Power Fists than my Crimson Fists. Something about that seems alien to me.

Of my eventual six Tactical Squads, I want to make alternate Sergeants equipped with the different pistols or close combat weapons. Something like a Power Fist and a Bolt Pistol, Chainsword and Plasma Pistols, Grav Pistol and Chainsword, and everything in between. But probably half of them would end up with Power Fists, because I LOVE Power Fists. I could make nearly an entire squad of Tactical Marines into Sergeants.

That's because Veteran Sergeants get no love compared to the ever-lovely Aspect Sergeants.

And because GW has gradually lost the ability to write and balance rules, which is why a power fist costs the same on a Chapter Master as it does on an IG Sergeant, much less a marine Sergeant, in spite of the huge disparity in usefulness (among other pricing issues).

What I'm saying in general is, if options were priced appropriately for each unit entry, you'd probably see more people taking those weapons. Any time you have a "must take" or "never take", something is wrong with your game balance.

It might be wise to hand your Sergeant a cheap CCW like a power sword depending on what your tactical squad is doing. If they're running with meltaguns and thus getting danger close to the enemy- you might want a sergeant with a solid melee weapon in case the unit gets assaulted and you don't want them turned into roadkill.

The challenge mechanic killed sergeants.

If you give a melle upgrade to a marine Sargent I think a power maul is your best bet. 15 points is steep but sometimes you have 15 spare points to spend once you have your army composition. There are a lot of challenges you can win with a str 6 maul at int 4 with ap4. I give them to my sky hammer ASM sergeants and it's worked pretty well.

This edition I've found melee upgrades rarely being worth it. Getting into assault is hard and tactical marines are terrible in combat against anything harder than a guardsman they're going to obliterated in short order. Shame that all my fist sergeants have been reassigned to shelf duty.

I find that the lowly lightning claw is actually a pretty good upgrade for a tactical squad sergeant/veteran sergeant that looks to be in melee most games (drop pod squad). This holds especially true if you plan on giving him a Combi-Weapon of some kind, as being a two handed weapon precludes him from having the bonus second CC attack for two melee weapons, thus negating the loss of an extra attack because of a single specialist weapon as well with the lightning claw. Also, it gives him Shred, for the same cost as a power weapon, meaning when you do hit, you have better odds of getting wounds through, while still swinging at the model's normal initiative step.

Just my thoughts on that. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

 Red__Thirst wrote:
I find that the lowly lightning claw is actually a pretty good upgrade for a tactical squad sergeant/veteran sergeant that looks to be in melee most games (drop pod squad). This holds especially true if you plan on giving him a Combi-Weapon of some kind, as being a two handed weapon precludes him from having the bonus second CC attack for two melee weapons, thus negating the loss of an extra attack because of a single specialist weapon as well with the lightning claw. Also, it gives him Shred, for the same cost as a power weapon, meaning when you do hit, you have better odds of getting wounds through, while still swinging at the model's normal initiative step.

There's that too. Even if you're likely to lose the sergeant in melee, depending on your opponent and how many points he's sunk into his sergeant, it might be viable to slap a lightning claw to at least bring down the leader's health, allowing him to get shot to pieces once the unit breaks/dies.

Plus if it's an HQ that's initiating the challenge, you might get a wound in on a pricey model.

On assault squad sergeants, you could give him a plasma pistol in place of his chainsword so you can fire both pistols and get the extra attack. Then you throw an Eviscerator on another dude for your S8 AP2 Armourbane

Combi weapons are great for sergeants, make sure it match his squad's special weapon. CC weapons should only be considered if your squad is very likely to end up in melee anyways (normally you want to avoid this for tacticals and devastators). In that case, a CC weapon could kill some enemies or injure a special character and so make its points back.

Im giving my sergants the veteran.sergant upgrade plus conbi weapon and melta bombs. One of my sergants will have a power fist instead of melta bombs

Note that the Vet upgrade doesn't do a whole lot for a combi/melta bomb sarge. I still take it for fluff reasons, but know that it won't do much.

The Sarge that hits the table for me is actually a combi-plas/Pfist vet sarge, but again for fluff reasons. Combis are typically great, but the pfist usually doesn't matter (especially when he cooks himself with Plas). It gets the most milage, though, when I have a CC IC in the unit.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
CC weapons should only be considered if your squad is very likely to end up in melee anyways (normally you want to avoid this for tacticals and devastators). In that case, a CC weapon could kill some enemies or injure a special character and so make its points back.

It could, but more likely it was just wasted points since the stupid Challenge (aka known as "who can sacrifice more Sergeants) means that special character gets to kill your Sarge first for free. "But challenges are supposed to show how heroic characters are", people say - generally people that can field some facesmasher CC powerhouse special character. And yet that character will immediately hide behind HIS OWN Sarge and attack a softer target the moment he thinks it advantageous for winning the close combat...

Nope, IMO sarges should spend nothing extra unless it's a combi-weapon or a CC weapon in a squad that you know can avoid enemy SCs.

I take a combi weapon and melta bombs. That's all they need.