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I'm working on an Emperor's Children army. I have 3 squads of 6 man Noise Marines. 6-man unit to stay fluffy. It seems to me that they are a bit weak to being volleyed off the field due to low model count and the prevalence of high AP weapons. It would seem like going first is kinda crucial unless you start hidden, but for footslogging infantry that means possible starting back well behind a more forward deployment to get into 24" range on the first turn.

I'm looking at adding Rhinos to help with going second. Helping with mobility and to give something of ablative armor to survive a first turn hammering and give some options to starting behind cover and unloading in range. Is this viable or just a waste of points for a unit that wants to stay at mid-range?

Unfortunately, unless you're running a lot of mech units allready, adding any sort of transport will only lower your durability.

Rhinos are fine if you have tanks or other big things to absorb threat. If your only armor is rhinos, you are just inviting your opponent to mass their heavy fire on that unit. If you wanna bring rhinos they WILL protect turn 1...But bring some other big stuff to distract.

Crunchtime wrote:
I'm working on an Emperor's Children army. I have 3 squads of 6 man Noise Marines. 6-man unit to stay fluffy. It seems to me that they are a bit weak to being volleyed off the field due to low model count and the prevalence of high AP weapons. It would seem like going first is kinda crucial unless you start hidden, but for footslogging infantry that means possible starting back well behind a more forward deployment to get into 24" range on the first turn.

I'm looking at adding Rhinos to help with going second. Helping with mobility and to give something of ablative armor to survive a first turn hammering and give some options to starting behind cover and unloading in range. Is this viable or just a waste of points for a unit that wants to stay at mid-range?

Why not putting your 6 model noise marines in the rhinos, reducing your deployment count, to get the +1 to initiative ? Or even going first right away, the +1 rule to initiative only applies to the CA missions. Unless you house rule it the player who deploys first, goes first.

That is the problem. Busting a few Rhinos is not hard with even modest amounts of anti-tank firepower. Once they are gone, your opponent then turns his anti-infantry guns on the Marines inside same as if they started in the open.

I understand your intention to use them simply as ablative armour but they are just not durable enough for the role unless there is something else competing for the attention of your opponent's anti-tank weapons.

Now if you want to mech-up and use tanks, daemon-engines etc for your heavy firepower needs, that could work. Here your objective is to deny your opponent any good targets for his anti-infantry weapons. If he concentrates on your transports to try and get at the soft filling, your tanks can blaze away while your Daemons and Engines roll up to his lines. If he shoots the more threatening targets, your Rhinos can slip through unmolested.

Sadly it is all about target saturation. There is no point playing a balanced army competitively in 40K as that simply means an opponent will have viable targets for all his weapons. Either go infantry-heavy and deny his anti-tank guns a good target or mech-up heavily. This denies his anti-infantry weapons a good target.