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Hey guys,
Been out of playing for a while, could use some help. Planning on some pickup games at Adepticon with friends, so looking for some fun but still solid stuff. 1000, 1500 and 1850 lists would be fantastic. I've got a lot of basics, tac marines, terminators, assault marines, some dreadnoughts and have no problem getting more stuff, GW or FW.

How competitive do you want to be? What style list do you enjoy playing? Single player, or doubles games? What are your favorite units?

If I was building a number of lists to bring to an event, and was unsure about what points I’d be playing, I’d build in blocks. Formations make this easy. I field a battle demi-co at 1,000 points. 10th company TF at 250. Then just put blocks together until to make the points. The optional slots can be used to trim, so things like a dread or command squad in the demi co.

My go-to suggestion for salamanders is probably a hybrid drop list. But that’s just how I see them.

I want to be competitive, but not going so far as super top tier levels. I'd like to do a 1000 point team list, 1500 and 1850 singles list, which can include Knights. I stopped playing much about the time formations took over the game, so not super familiar with which ones are worth taking.

Are there any units you want to use? Refuse to use? Pod/mech/bike? While the top-table competitive lists might be a little restrictive, once you step down a little to “competitive, but fun” a ton of options open up. So finding one that fits your style and collection is key.

Some of out more competitive formations are the full company gladius and the skyhammer annihilation force. But you can put a powerful list on the table still with bikes and a CAD.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is more heavy stuff on the table these days. So you need a plan to deal with SHVs and GMC. Either spamming bodies and transports (gladius) or drop pod grav (skyhammer, cents) But depending how casual a game you are playing, you might not have to deal with that.

Definitely more of the "Competitive but fun" list. I love termis and dreads, but my understanding is they are not worth it at this point. I'm not anti-bike, but seems out of the Salamanders wheelhouse for the most part.

You could run a “It’s raining dreads” list. Cram as many dreads as you can into drop pods, carpet the field with them. Or field all the stompy robots. Dreads, Imp. Knights, etc. Some of the FW dreads put out a chunk of pain, but I’m less familiar with them. Trick to both those lists is that they double down on armor saturation. Sure, dreads might be mediocre, but there are a ton of them, and they are in your face.

Terminators are a little harder to work into a list. You are right about them being a little sub-par these days. I think you can either take some CC ones in a LR, or just a squad of tactical ones for fun. The LR might have a lot of hard counters out there, but assault termis in return are an answer to a lot of things. And while LRs might be a lot of eggs in one basket, they are the rock to people relying on spamming S6-7 to HP out tanks. If you do want to go down that road, I’d go full mech, and just spam armor. A knight running along side them would take a lot of the heat off.

Tactical terminators I’d just DS and have fun with. I believe that you can take any unit, as long as you tighten up the rest of your list to help compensate. For example, you could take a squad of them and two squads of sternguard in pods as a 1st company TF. The SG are going to be doing most of the heavy lifting, but the termis can be fun and surprising, as people don’t expect to see them and often underestimate them. They might be overpriced/underpowered, but they are not useless.

hi. in low points games (below 1500) terminators are certainly suddenly pretty pricey

Dreadnoughts........1 base one will cost you 100 points. then it depends what you're doing with him. Is he a close combat dread or a long range fire support? If he's close range you'll want flamer maybe assault cannon if you're wanting him against infantry, or multi-melta if against vehicles and infantry.
In any case the best way to get him into combat is by drop pod so his cost is a minimum of 135 points.

If you're looking at having one at long range you'll need to tank him up with some long range guns. Cheapest (and still very effective) is double t-l autocannons.which brings him up to 120 points. That gives you 4 t-l 48" str 7 AP 4 shots.

Terminators on the other hand...

Well they've had a price drop (FINALLY) and AV2 is always nice..but they are a priority target in any game.
Start adding on even one heavy weapon and their rank as prority target goes up higher.
And AS for assault terminators.......Storm Shiedls and thunder hammers are now 10 points a pop so the getting 5 of them for the total 3++ save is now a massive 50 points! 225 points in a 1000 point game for a single unit!

HOWEVER there is a way you could do this.

UNBOUND

nothing but Terminators and Dreadnoughts!


Librarian (Telekinesis)
Terminator Armour
Auspex
95

Librarian (Telekinesis)
Terminator Armour
Auspex
95

Terminator Squad (5 man)
Heavy Flamer
Chainfists x 2
195

Terminator Squad (5 man)
Heavy Flamer
Chainfists x 2
195

Dreadnought
Multi-Melta
Heavy flamer in place of storm bolter
DT: Drop Pod w/ locator beacon
135

Dreadnought
T-L Autocannons
120

Dreadnought
T-L Autocannons
120

1000

you'd have to play pretty carefully and be prepared to get a LOT of saves but it would be fun to see this list perform!

Just throwing out a bit of tactical "fun" for Salamanders...

Try out Vulkan in a pod with 5 Sternguard, 2 of which also have heavy flamers (so they all can fire their 3 heavy flamers in the unit at once).

Then, take some Legion of the Damned (3 units is a blast with him!) with melta, combi-melta, multimelta and benefit from some twin-linked, ignore cover melta! That will make any Imperial Knight list sweat, and still leaves room to fill the rest of the list with whatever you enjoy.