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I'm trying to make an 1850 point Space marine list for semi-competitive matches. I can face any army so I tried to make it as well rounded as possible. I could use some help on how to equip my tactical squads and the overall make up of the force, are the bikes a good idea? Would centurion devs be better then the Las devastators? Is the armored task force the best auxiliary to take with this force, if not which one would be better?

Its pretty standard as far as Space Marines go, a Gladius with one battle company with an Armored task force auxiliary and an Air superiority detachment.

Gladius Strike force: Chapter tactics-not yet determined

Battle Demi-Company

Captain on Bike W/Artificer armor, Storm shield, Relic blade-190 pts

Bike squad-135 pts
-2xBikers, 1x sergeant
-2x Grav bikers

Devastator squad-225 pts
-Razorback W/Twin-linked Lascannon, 4x Lascannons

2x 10 man Tactical squad W/ Rhino, Heavy bolter, Plasma gun- (200x2)-400 pts
1x 10 man Tactical squad W/ Drop Pod, Multi-Melta, Meltagun, Combi-Melta- 205 pts

Auxiliary-Armored task force
2x Predators W/ Twin-linked Lascannon, Heavy bolter sponsons- (120x2)- 240 pts
1x Vindicator W/ Siege Shield-130 pts
1x Techmarine on Bike-85 pts

Air superiority detachment
Flyer wing
2x Stormtalon Gunship W/ Skyhammer Missile Launcher- (115x2)- 230 pts

Total 1840 pts.

Flyer wing is from DftS? A lot of people are not fond of that book, so check with the locals to make sure that’s a OK option at your FLGS.

Overall, I really like your list. It is very fluffy, looks fun to play, and feels like a marine armored column, smashing into the enemy. You look to have a decent balance of firepower. How well you fare depends a lot on how competitive “semi-competitive” is. You have no psychic defense, no answer for deathstars, and due to your TAC nature, nothing to answer very spammy lists. That said, someone who brought out a list with a similar feel to yours would be a great match.

For CT, I think any of the “general” ones would work well. UM, IF, IH. Probably Iron Hands, due to the vehicles and the tech.

Your captain is generically useful. He’s not geared up to take down the big stuff, but should be fine for most normal-ish stuff. He could use the Teeth of Terra (basically a relic blade plus) and a melta bomb.

Bikes are fine. C-grav on the sarge would be gravy.

I’m a little torn on the TLLC razor. I like the fact that you are fully mechanized. But it seems that the points spent there could buy you a real tank elsewhere. I’d keep it for fluff reasons. Another option if you wanted to go that way would be to swap your captain for one in capheracti TDA, and stick him with GC/MM devs in a pod.

Tacs are fine

Auto/Las is generally my pred of choice. It’s guns have more synergy then the TLLC/HB pred. Full LC is great if points allow.
As someone who’s Vindi’s main gun was blown off first turn last time I fielded it, I recommend the SB. 50% chance to soak a weapon destroyed result. The game before that I got hung up on some rubble, so am glad to see the shield.

The tech might enjoy his c-beamer. Otherwise fine.

Skyhammers are my talon weapon of choice, so good there.

 Nevelon wrote:
Flyer wing is from DftS? A lot of people are not fond of that book, so check with the locals to make sure that’s a OK option at your FLGS.

Overall, I really like your list. It is very fluffy, looks fun to play, and feels like a marine armored column, smashing into the enemy. You look to have a decent balance of firepower. How well you fare depends a lot on how competitive “semi-competitive” is. You have no psychic defense, no answer for deathstars, and due to your TAC nature, nothing to answer very spammy lists. That said, someone who brought out a list with a similar feel to yours would be a great match.

For CT, I think any of the “general” ones would work well. UM, IF, IH. Probably Iron Hands, due to the vehicles and the tech.

Your captain is generically useful. He’s not geared up to take down the big stuff, but should be fine for most normal-ish stuff. He could use the Teeth of Terra (basically a relic blade plus) and a melta bomb.

Bikes are fine. C-grav on the sarge would be gravy.

I’m a little torn on the TLLC razor. I like the fact that you are fully mechanized. But it seems that the points spent there could buy you a real tank elsewhere. I’d keep it for fluff reasons. Another option if you wanted to go that way would be to swap your captain for one in capheracti TDA, and stick him with GC/MM devs in a pod.

Tacs are fine

Auto/Las is generally my pred of choice. It’s guns have more synergy then the TLLC/HB pred. Full LC is great if points allow.
As someone who’s Vindi’s main gun was blown off first turn last time I fielded it, I recommend the SB. 50% chance to soak a weapon destroyed result. The game before that I got hung up on some rubble, so am glad to see the shield.

The tech might enjoy his c-beamer. Otherwise fine.

Skyhammers are my talon weapon of choice, so good there.

I REALLY appreciate the feed back. it made me think more critically and showed the gaps in its composition.
To answer some questions
1. The Rules of DftS wont be used; but my shop has a "If its written its official" view on formations so I'm assuming no one will have too many gripes about using the flyer wing.
2. By Semi-Competitive I mean that my shop doesn't really have a distinction between the two right now so there are super-competitive players that only play the best units combined in the best ally-matrix playing against super-fluffy armies. I personally wanted to strike a balance between the two because I can modify my list later if i choose to play more competitively. I don't plan of winning all of my games, as long as I have a chance and can at least not get tabled turn 2 I'm fine.


since I already have 2 chapter tactics IH will probably be the best option here like you said

You are right on having a hard time with death stars and the like, which I will most likely have to. Is there any way I could modify the force to fit this role?

I'm torn on the Captain, I have contemplated giving him the ToT but decided the bikes would be best at shooting then after testing them in smaller games I found that it's pretty dangerous to put your bikes 18 inches away when there are only 6 of them because if the enemy doesn't charge you the'll just rapid fire you and even though your toughness five that still hurts a lot so just shooting then charging denies them their full ballistic skill and since there is only 6 the ToT would actually shine in this situation, HOWEVER, the cataphractii armor with devs is also something I've contemplated. the reason why I'm skeptical of that tactic is that I don't want to throw away a unit of expensive devastators and a Term captain when the enemy gets to shoot back at me. It might be worth it but I fail to see it working very well, perhaps you can tell me otherwise.

I'll see how I can change the predators load-outs, it might save points.

One answer to deathstars is to reply in kind. Take your captain to 11: TH, gorgons’s chain (or SE if non-IH) Put him in a command squad on bikes. Give them some gear. Try to work in a librarian conclave. You’d probably have to cut the talons for points, which would leave you vulnerable to flyer spam. But just aim to dominate the ground game, and ignore everything on the wing; they can’t score objectives up there.

Alternatively, go full company gladius MSU spam. Put 25+ units on the table. Even if he kills 2-3 a turn, over a 6 turn game you still have more units then there are objectives. Play the mission, keep an eye on the VPs.

Switch to a Fist of Medusa TF. Take a skyhammer. Kill everyone who doesn’t have there anti-pod tactics squared away.

There are a number of more competitive SM lists out there.

--

Bikes are pretty tough. Especially if the have a reasonably well equipped captain tanking wounds for them. And don’t forget, anything you are shooting is going to get mangled with the grav. So return fire won’t be that bad. And if you have spare bikers, they can act as ablitive wounds for the grave gunners. On that note, consider an attack bike. They are 2W. So if you have your captain tanking on his 2+ artificer amor, he can always shuffle a wound off on it via LOS! if things get ugly, and the squad won’t loose any firepower.

The drop pod devs work like any other pod tactic. Don’t do it alone, that way lies a suicide drop (which can still be worth it) Multiple pods dropping together (even just two helps a lot) Land hot, land hard, and mangle anything near the LZ. The idea is that anything that survives the onslaught will be so crippled that they can’t fire back effectively, if not dead outright. If you do a flank drop, and kill the unit hanging out there, you are probably only going to be exposed to 1-3 units. You should be able to weather that. The rest of your army should be putting pressure on as well. If you need to do a suicide drop into the killzone, put your faith in the Emperor and hope it was worth it.

A CTDA captain is also a pretty tough nut to crack. You can have him on point to tank wounds. This should preserve the devs. Who should have killed something on the drop. Even if you go cheep with the MMs, 4 of them is enough to pop a tank reliably. And while very expensive, 4 GCs will murderize almost anything. So the squad already has probably made its points back (assuming you shot something better then a rhino)

You are going to take return fire. We are not Tau who get to hang out at the back of the table and shoot things at extreme range. Or Eldar, who skitter away like a stabbed rat whenever you look at them. As long as you keep an eye on the AP2-3 and keep some cover between it and you, or just kill it first, you should be OK. But don’t be so risk-adverse that you give away the game.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.”

Go forth and crush the xenos and heretic. Emperor protects.

 Nevelon wrote:
One answer to deathstars is to reply in kind. Take your captain to 11: TH, gorgons’s chain (or SE if non-IH) Put him in a command squad on bikes. Give them some gear. Try to work in a librarian conclave. You’d probably have to cut the talons for points, which would leave you vulnerable to flyer spam. But just aim to dominate the ground game, and ignore everything on the wing; they can’t score objectives up there.

Alternatively, go full company gladius MSU spam. Put 25+ units on the table. Even if he kills 2-3 a turn, over a 6 turn game you still have more units then there are objectives. Play the mission, keep an eye on the VPs.

Switch to a Fist of Medusa TF. Take a skyhammer. Kill everyone who doesn’t have there anti-pod tactics squared away.

There are a number of more competitive SM lists out there.

--

Bikes are pretty tough. Especially if the have a reasonably well equipped captain tanking wounds for them. And don’t forget, anything you are shooting is going to get mangled with the grav. So return fire won’t be that bad. And if you have spare bikers, they can act as ablitive wounds for the grave gunners. On that note, consider an attack bike. They are 2W. So if you have your captain tanking on his 2+ artificer amor, he can always shuffle a wound off on it via LOS! if things get ugly, and the squad won’t loose any firepower.

The drop pod devs work like any other pod tactic. Don’t do it alone, that way lies a suicide drop (which can still be worth it) Multiple pods dropping together (even just two helps a lot) Land hot, land hard, and mangle anything near the LZ. The idea is that anything that survives the onslaught will be so crippled that they can’t fire back effectively, if not dead outright. If you do a flank drop, and kill the unit hanging out there, you are probably only going to be exposed to 1-3 units. You should be able to weather that. The rest of your army should be putting pressure on as well. If you need to do a suicide drop into the killzone, put your faith in the Emperor and hope it was worth it.

A CTDA captain is also a pretty tough nut to crack. You can have him on point to tank wounds. This should preserve the devs. Who should have killed something on the drop. Even if you go cheep with the MMs, 4 of them is enough to pop a tank reliably. And while very expensive, 4 GCs will murderize almost anything. So the squad already has probably made its points back (assuming you shot something better then a rhino)

You are going to take return fire. We are not Tau who get to hang out at the back of the table and shoot things at extreme range. Or Eldar, who skitter away like a stabbed rat whenever you look at them. As long as you keep an eye on the AP2-3 and keep some cover between it and you, or just kill it first, you should be OK. But don’t be so risk-adverse that you give away the game.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.”

Go forth and crush the xenos and heretic. Emperor protects.

Again thanks for the feed back I appreciate it, your thoughts are very insightful.

What I think I'll do is try out two different lists
-One is a small modification of the shown list with all the squads in rhinos/razorbacks along with a better commander
-The other will also be pretty much the same but the Tacs/Devs would be in drop pods and the captain will take terminator armor and accompany the Devs with grav

For both these formations I might try to see if the Librarius conclave works with the army better than the flyer wing it might just be worth it.

The idea would be that I would eventually just figure out what I like playing better and tweek it, but that sounds pretty obvious.

Hey, if you're looking for a super cheesy unkillable Iron Hands HQ read up on this guy:
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Chapter_Master_Smashfucker
Not even The Emperor can kill him. The bike version fits in with your list.