Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey all,

I'm in the process of finishing off several squads from a Marine army I started ...a little while ago at the start of 3rd edition. It was only ever a small force, and was set up back when you could have undersized squads, so I had several 7-man squads. Later I put together (some) models towards bumping them up to 10-man squads but never finished the job, and they got put away for years.

So I'm now wanting to finish them off. I'm not overly-concerned about min-maxing or them being especially competitive as they will pretty much entirely be used for friendly and thematic games - and probably against me on occasion as I'll be supplying a lot of the forces for many of the games (playing against wife in the time of COVID)

I barely got a chance to play 8th, and now with COVID I haven't played 9th at all yet. I'm almost entirely unfamiliar with current stuff like doctrines, CP, and the various more advanced rules, though I played a lot back in 2nd and 3rd, I'm well aware that all of the details from those days have been long washed away.. As I said, I'm not overly worried about it being the best, nor things like "Tactical Marine Tax" or the like.


I have two unfinished Tactical Squads, both armed with Plasma Guns as their special weapons. One hasn't got a sergeant yet. I'm wondering on advice on what synergises decently with the plasma?

I know the obvious answers are "whatever you like" and "what's your overall army composition?"

For whatever I like, I get that - I'm just wanting to go with "these work decently together" rather than "WTF did you put those with plasma guns, dumbass?"

The army so far (aside from these two squads I'm wanting to finish first) is

Tac squad with Plasma/Missile Launcher
5-man Scout Squad with Bolt Pistols and CCW (I may bump this to 10, add a Heavy Bolter?)
Dread with Plasma Cannon and Power Fist/STB
Librarian with Lignhing Claws and Jump Pack (like I said - 3rd edition - friendly games so I think he'll be okay)
Chaplain with Crozius and Bolt Pistol

2x (Unfinished) Assault Squads with 2 Plasma Pistols, Sgt Power Fist


Main opponents will be MEQ, but also capable of take-all-comers as there are also IG, Orks, Nids, etc in the pool and that will only expand.

I'd like to finish the existing models/squads first, then work out what it comes to in points or power level, and then move onto adding a little more (vehicles/primaris/apoth/tech/whatever) afterwards to get the whole shebang to 2k or 2.5k - then call it "done" for the most part. Lots of other forces to work on, you know how it goes.

thanks!

because you have a lot of plasma already you could go with plasma cannons (thematic army) or misslelaunchers because those you can use for at and ap ( anti tank anti personel)

Thanks mate!

Multi-meltas seem to be in a decent place right now. I’ve got a full melta tac squad that’s been my MVP in my crusade list. Plasma spam is great, but sometimes you need the extra S/D. Lascannons can also work, but the way the points are these days, and the fact that the tacs are probably going to be front and center, I’d go melta.

I would rather give my unit two plasma rifles AND a grav pistol than one plasma rifle, one plasma cannon.
The rifles don't suffer a penalty for movement, and the grav cannon's average 2 shots don't improve at closer ranges. Its still a mild 4 wounds off the enemy army, when the combination of another plasma rifle + a grav pistol is doing 3 x 2 or 6 at shorter ranges, with full accuracy, while racing forward to get the firing angle or the objective.

The multimelta puts out an average of 7 points (12 to 24 inch) or 11 (1.01 to 12 inch) ranges. The grav cannon a smooth 8 points out to 30 inches. Neither rolls 1 on its shot count when you needed it most, which is an annoyance of plasma cannon use that can't be overstated.

So the plasma cannon, I feel, is the weakest of the 3 in a meta where large machines have become rare, and 2 or 3 wound marine elite infantry common.