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I'm in the midst of building an Imperial fist army (leading to 2k points) and I really want this army to be fun for myself to play and for people to play against.

Are there any particular marine units or themes you see on the field and get excited to play against?

I only ask because I have this feeling towards other armies. I love playing against Tyranid hordes, Astra Militarum with artillery blobs, tank-heavy Tau, and so on.

There's probably a few ways to play a fun, and fun for the enemy Space Marines list.

To start off with what isn't fun; min-maxed Ultramarines with Devastators and Asscans as far as the eye can see, under Guillimans fun-bubble. I use a list similar to that, not as optimized, but it's still overpoweringly strong for casual matches.

It'll be a line you'll have to tow, between optimal and fun.

I find Space Marines to be most fun when they're built as a theme, rather than as a list. The times I've really enjoyed my Marines, have been playing them as an All-Terminator list, or as my current favorite, an all-Primaris Fulminators(UM, Ultima Founding chapter) army.

Something that goes along with your chosen or made-up chapters fluff also tends to be fun. For Imperial Fists, that would typically mean castling up and making use of an unholy amount of bolters. Slow, defensive units, make a wall that the enemy will break upon, ect. Which could be described as a boring gunline, but that's sort of what Imperial Fists like to do, in the fluff.

The Space Marines line, in both GW and FW are their biggest. You'll have no shortage of fun toys to pick from and build armies around great centerpieces.

About anything without Rowboat.

How about starting with 20-30 Tactical Marines. For IF I'd expect some devastators or centurions, probably a close combat terminator unit led by Lysander.

Personally, I think it's always more fun when lists lean towards infantry rather than tanks.

And avoid Girlyman.

I have an IF army, primarily for narrative/ new player games.

My collection is currently:
Captain or CM on bike (TH/SS)
6 bikers
10 sniper scouts
~40 tac marines, various loadouts + spares
3 rhinos
drop pod
sternguard (need painting)
TFC + techmarine gunner
librarian
chaplain w/jump pack
Land Raider (Godhammer)
Terminator assault squad
Lascannon or ML devastators
2 stormtalons
stormraven

I would suggest buying some bunkers, fortifications etc. to fit the IF fluff - they are supposed to be masters of fortification!

Shame geederps can't write rules for toffee and messed up their chapter tactics.

As suggsted above - at some point I'll scratch-build a Lysander proxy.

1.) Don't take Lord of Wars. I find that they almost instantly make the game unfun by their very nature (either unfun for the opponent for steamrolling them, or unfun for you for eating up a chunk of your points and doing jack squat).

2.) Use a Battalion FoC. This avoids spamming OP units, as with very few exceptions (Conscripts) almost no OP troops exist. Troops also eat up a lot of points, preventing you from spending too much of it elsewhere.

3.) Use generic characters. A lot of OP builds are the result of Named characters, who usually have weird rules attached to them because there would be no other reason to use them.

4.) Stick with a single Chapter. This means staying within Space Marines too. Another source of OP combos is people using stuff from all of the Imperium units, creating unintentional combinations. sticking with a single chapter (for ALL detachments) mitigate this.

Pretty much anything that doesn't involve some kinda cheese tactics (luckily fairly absent besides scion spam, and now dead flyer spam) and girlman.

I personally love playing against mixed-arms SM. Spamming anything just feels bad.

I had good fun playing against an army of Guilliman, Sternguard, a Leviathan Dreadnought, and a Land Raider.

I also played against a Space Marine army of Land Raiders and Razorbacks, which wasn't much of a challenge, but wasn't actively un-fun either.


As a whole, I'm not really a fan of playing Space Marines [and Chaos Space Marines] at all. I don't like them in the first place, and they're everywhere. "Fluffy" Space Marines don't really do it for me because it's just kind of boring to play against. I say "fluffy", because "fluffy", at least where I live, seems to be a code-word for "terrible list, and I'm blaming my inevitable defeat on lore-compliance". I seriously doubt most of these lists are actually very fluffy, since it would seem odd to me for there to be a wealth of units in the Space Marine codex that aren't actually ever deployed by the Space Marines in battle. You can be both fluffy and good, and if you really think you can't get both, err on the side of good, because we'll both have more fun in the end.


I can't say what you should be specifically to make use of the Imperial Fists tactics, but I'd recommend fielding something built around a core of Sternguard and Razorbacks, with Leviathan Dreadnoughts, Predator Annihilators, and Land Raider Crusaders for support, and a few Tacticals for capturing points. As a rule of thumb, lean towards having more tanks than more infantry. Saturation with armor generally works better than saturation with infantry, and tanks are more fun to play with and against than infantry.

Sadly i will never have a game more fun than a 7th ed White Scars vs my Corsairs, b.c WS and Corsairs are basically completely different play styles now.

Between the SW move out > in Rhinos and Corsairs move/shoot and move and counter charge moves.

We both move to counter movements and re positions of each other over and over again, picking off models when and where we can, it was like masters of chess.

It was literally the greatest game i've ever played and will ever play ever again. I truly wish i had recorded that game.

Dreadnoughts. Predators. Tac squads. Scouts. Speeders. Terminators. Land raider. Couple rhinos. More dreadnoughts. Love marine dreadnoughts...

Boots on the ground. I love to fight Marine armies with Marines in it! Other than that, I always enjoy there being a smattering of vehicles to help back them up. Space Marine Captains and other HQs offer some nice spice to it too.

The more variety you have in your list, the more fun it will be to play against, guarantee. Spam isn't fun, since it feels like slogging through the same stuff over and over again.

Also, don't take Bobby G. He's frustrating to fight against, from what I've seen.

I like fluff respecting lists. So for IF a lot of devs, which are strong, is not a bad thing. Sternguard work well with the if theme as well.

Don't make an bad list for the sake of your opponents

drbored wrote:The more variety you have in your list, the more fun it will be to play against, guarantee. Spam isn't fun, since it feels like slogging through the same stuff over and over again.

Also, don't take Bobby G. He's frustrating to fight against, from what I've seen.

I'd say that's not entirely true. If you don't "spam" units, the resulting lists are very boring.

Space Marines can't really spam anything anyway, because everything is expensive and has sort of silly rules like the "Relic" rule. You can't really viably run more than 2 or 3 of any given thing and still have an army that can handle all comers.

jeff white wrote:Dreadnoughts. Predators. Tac squads. Scouts. Speeders. Terminators. Land raider. Couple rhinos. More dreadnoughts. Love marine dreadnoughts...

Dreadnoughts are cool, but Predators are cooler.

But hell, those Relic Leviathan Dreadnoughts are awesome. I've tried to get the guy who owns 3 to field it with Twin Stormcannon Arrays, because I've yet to see it make it into CQC to use it's claw, but he likes the claw piece and doesn't have a second Stormcannon piece for the 3 of them.

Honestly, avoiding Guilliman would be enough.

But if you're going Imperial Fists why it go all out with it? Emphasize bolters and take a defensive emplacment or even a fortress!

I'd recommend slashing in a small detachment of Black Templars lead by the Emperor's Champion. They're IF successor but play very differently, allowing your IFs to stay defensive but keeping your list from being to much of a boring gunline to play against.

Fists hold the line, Templars purge some heretics.

A list that imitates the fluff. Tacticals + support.

Hooraay! Tacticals!

And dont believe the haters, Tacticals can be quite good.

So I'm picking up a theme in the comments.
-20+ tac marines,
- Bring my Lysander,
- ..and a few Centurions for theme.
- Limited/mixed vehicles (I'll probably take a pred/Vindi and/or Whirlwind).
- No cheese spam, girlyman/LoW.
- Probably throw my leviathan in for some teeth too.

I'm getting the idea!

Thanks all!

The 3-1-1 Tactical/Assault/Devastator ratio is a big one.

At a thousand points, take three tac squads, one Assault, and one Devastator.

At two thousand, double it.

Leave off Chapter Masters and named commanders. At 1000, use a Chaplain or a Librarian (Or Lieutenants, now that they're back! YAY!) as the boss and back 'I'm with an Apothecary ... you should always have an Apothecary for anything over 500 pts, to bring back Geneseed.

At 2K, take a Captain along in addition to the sub-commander from before. At 3K, Captain, Chaplain, and Librarian, because you're fielding a whole company at that point.

One squad of Terminators and/or Scouts in a supporting role (loaned out from 1st company or 10th, respectively), then sprinkle in Rhinos. (Razorbacks are only for comman squads, everybody else gets Rhinos!)

Remember: Bike and Landspeeder squads come out of your Assault Squad allocation. If you can keep it to a proper 10 man volume, you then win all the respect. (For instance, three landspeeders plus a four-man Bike Squad, or two Landspeeders and a three-man Attack Bike squadron)

Follow the Codex. Love the Codex. BE the Codex!

 Insectum7 wrote:
Hooraay! Tacticals!

And dont believe the haters, Tacticals can be quite good.

Yeah, I'm quite happy with my Tac Squads. But I have to add that I'm playing Salamanders, and the rerolls are really helping the nonbolter weapons. I like em as backfield "twin-linked" Lascannons with shred or as dual melta squads in a Razorback. dual plasmaguns should also work quite well instead.

 daBIGboss wrote:
So I'm picking up a theme in the comments.
-20+ tac marines,
- Bring my Lysander,
- ..and a few Centurions for theme.
- Limited/mixed vehicles (I'll probably take a pred/Vindi and/or Whirlwind).
- No cheese spam, girlyman/LoW.
- Probably throw my leviathan in for some teeth too.

I'm getting the idea!

Thanks all!

20 Tacticals sounds good, I wouldn't go more, and I wouldn't go less than 15. I might go around 15 to make room for other things and still make the Battalion detachment, like possibly 15 Tacticals and 5 Sternguard.

Lieutenants, who give the re-rolls to-wound are good, so you're going to want one of them to babysit your support elements.

I'd recommend mounting your troops in Razorbacks, since Razorbacks are pretty good, then maybe picking a Predator and Leviathan Dreadnought for heavy support. I would have recommended Vindicators and Whirlwinds for the siege army theme, but they're pretty bad.

A list that actualy moves around.

None of this putting half the army in a ruin with characters for rerolls

 daBIGboss wrote:
So I'm picking up a theme in the comments.
-20+ tac marines,
- Bring my Lysander,
- ..and a few Centurions for theme.
- Limited/mixed vehicles (I'll probably take a pred/Vindi and/or Whirlwind).
- No cheese spam, girlyman/LoW.
- Probably throw my leviathan in for some teeth too.

I'm getting the idea!

Thanks all!

If you bring a lot of tacs and centurion devs be prepared to lose almost every game. Tacs lack teeth and centurions are badly over priced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Amoras wrote:
A list that actualy moves around.

None of this putting half the army in a ruin with characters for rerolls

He's IF, bunkering up IS the theme. Also a lot of Marine armies move in a reroll ball.

And everytime a marine player does so the games over whenn my incubi charge the ball.

Having themm spread out makes it much harder to kill even if you lose out on some rerolls.

Amoras wrote:
And everytime a marine player does so the games over whenn my incubi charge the ball.

Having themm spread out makes it much harder to kill even if you lose out on some rerolls.

only if you don't know how to block.

Sacrificing a tac squad to incubi really means nothing in the balance.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
1.) Don't take Lord of Wars. I find that they almost instantly make the game unfun by their very nature (either unfun for the opponent for steamrolling them, or unfun for you for eating up a chunk of your points and doing jack squat).

2.) Use a Battalion FoC. This avoids spamming OP units, as with very few exceptions (Conscripts) almost no OP troops exist. Troops also eat up a lot of points, preventing you from spending too much of it elsewhere.

3.) Use generic characters. A lot of OP builds are the result of Named characters, who usually have weird rules attached to them because there would be no other reason to use them.

4.) Stick with a single Chapter. This means staying within Space Marines too. Another source of OP combos is people using stuff from all of the Imperium units, creating unintentional combinations. sticking with a single chapter (for ALL detachments) mitigate this.

This is garbage advice and you should be ashamed.

1. Lords Of War aren't broken.
2. Spamming is only spamming if the unit is off, otherwise it fits an actual theme and makes the army look good and cohesive, compared to garbage one-of-everything lists. So no Razorbacks basically. Nothing else in the codex is actually broken.
3. Like who? Roboute?
4. Who cares? If I want a list of a Spearhead with Imperial Fist Devastators and then a Outrrider of White Scars bikers, what am I actually breaking? The answer is nothing.

A generic army that would probably exist. I'm sick of seeing papa smerf on ever field in the imperium! I build my list around a general Ork merc group so people have fun. Therefore it annoys me when I'm squished by the head space marine, a legion of elite space wolves and mega tanks... It makes no sense! Not only would girly not fight with any of the units on the table but they wouldn't waste their time on a simpe ork group... All I want is a general space marine army with a tank or two! Maybe a captain or librarian in lead... but these lists just seem to be dead...