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They suck GW should not make them troops thats stupid steals of BA and even synergised ba is going to crush them and their expensive el sucko.

Muppas wrote:At least they look awesome. That's a plus, eh?

+ 1 to that!

SOFDC wrote: wiggle your stick more.

Haha that's what she said!

OK, this is a hypothetical, but lets presume that vanilla Space Marines get Stormravens, or that you houserule them in.

In that situation - vanilla assault marines can use a Stormraven - are they more viable, or still not useful? Obviously, they won't have the BA special rules, like Bloody Skies Blood of Blood or whatever...

Well,

they would be better, but if i had stormravens i would be packing them full of Assault Terminators and Ironclads not assault marines.

Yup, the point of Assault Marines is that they have their own integral movement bonus, one that makes them more mobile than if they had Rhinos. Assault Terminators, on the other hand, waddle everywhere, and need all the transports they can get. But despite the similarity of names, these units function differently. Assault Terminators are about hitting an enemy elite unit and killing it, while Assault Marines are about mopping up the survivors of your shooting, and generally harassing since they can redeploy rapidly.

I agree with the above. The Storm Raven does not actually effect the usefulness of Assault Marines. I'd say that it actually makes other choices a more obvious pick over them as it now lets things like Terminators gain a transport with more movement than before.

What assault marines would need to be on the level of some of the other units for hand to hand is something that opened up new avenues of damage to them.
Furious charge, rending, or maybe adding melee weapon options instead of gun upgrades.

As it is now they are gap fillers and counter charge. And as said previously instead of using them to bail your models out of CC you can buy more models with those points.

Cheers,
~Volkan

If Assault Marines could take something like paired LCs or Melta guns on the regular dudes(maybe if and only if the Sergeant also had the upgrade)

Not even that much, think of it like this if you could pick up just basic power weapons on 2 models it would help quite a bit on the charge. it goes from a potential 4 PW attacks to 10 when charging.
I'd think those LCs would be rather expensive for regular joes to pick up.

Cheers,
~Volkan

Volkan:

I agree that the Storm Raven makes other choices more "obvious", but I don't think it makes them any better.

Consider, for example, a squad of Assault Terminators in a Storm Raven. If they assault something on the flanks of the board, then they need to spend a turn embarking on the Storm Raven before they can assault another unit at least 18" away towards the centre of the board. In addition, they don't depend on the Storm Raven surviving to get them places. This ability to re-deploy the next turn makes them excellent trouble-shooters.

Anti-vehicle-wise, Krak Grenades and Plasma Pistols are enough for most vehicles, particularly the kind that tend to lurk far enough away from the objectives and the enemy to be annoying.

If you want Power Weapons (or Melta Bombs...), then take Vanguard Veterans: They hit hard and can have the mobility advantage of Assault Marines.

Speaking of wargear, two template weapons on Jump Infantry are exactly the kind of wargear you want for sweeping up infantry lurking in the wreckage/crater of their transport.

They aren't actually ideal Melta Gun carriers, which is something I've discovered by fielding lots of Chaos Space Marines with a pair of Melta Guns. Fistly, two shots is reliable, but you can only expect 1.32 to hit. Then you need a 4+ to destroy the vehicle. That leaves you with 0.66 reliability in that unit destroying the vehicle. They need a third, and the Blood Angel Inferno Pistol doesn't hack it for reasons elaborated below.

A further problem with Melta Guns is that they only get the Melta effect if the target is within 6". An Inferno Pistol needs to be within 3". If you kill a transport with Melta Guns, then the occupants usually fall out and murder the unit which is considerately camping at rapid fire range. I mean, they work to kill vehicles, but not the occupants. Trading a 110 point squad for a 35 point vehicle is not good.

In fact, if you can get close enough to shoot effectively with Melta Guns, then your unit was close enough to assault the vehicle. If you surround the transport and kill it with Krak Grenades, Melta Bombs, and Power Fists, then the unit inside can't even benefit from emergency disembarkation.

You can even do this without assaulting the vehicle. You run to surround the vehicle, and use another unit's Melta Guns to blow it up. That said, you can assault more than one vehicle in a turn...

In addition you're doing the transported troops a favour by enabling them to disembark their vehicle prior to their own turn, and use it for cover. Remember, Jump Infantry still take difficult terrain tests when charging. A unit holed up in wreckage is harder to kill than a unit that can't execute an emergency disembarkation.

So what's the catch? These advantages require less-than-obvious tactics. They require you to put your anti-vehicle firepower in other units (but that's okay, because other units do it better, such as Attack Bikes, Devastators, Land Speeders, Predators, etc). They require you to be able to eye-ball the distances involved accurately. Finally, they require the kind of cost-benefit analysis that most people can't do on the fly.

Basically you have to ask yourself if the potential value of an action, multiplied by its likelihood of occurring, outweighs the potential value of another action multiplied by its own likelihood of occurring.

It's more difficult to kill both a transport and its embarked unit by shooting than it is to just kill that transport. It's still more difficult to do by surround a transport with one unit and shooting it with another. However, being able to kill two units at once with a single unit's shooting is fantastic because you may be able to use the wreckage as cover, and get an assault move or run move for the Assault Squad, increasing their mobility.

Not sure if anyone said this yet (didnt feel like reading 4 pages of this post) but couldn't you jump your assault marines behind an enemy squad that you were about to decimate. Then if the entire squad is not wiped out and fail moral. they then can't fall back at all (or atleast thats wat i thought rule book said) so are stuck to just be destroyed since being sandwiched between to squads makes it really hard to run away

dmthomas7 wrote:Not sure if anyone said this yet (didnt feel like reading 4 pages of this post) but couldn't you jump your assault marines behind an enemy squad that you were about to decimate. Then if the entire squad is not wiped out and fail moral. they then can't fall back at all (or atleast thats wat i thought rule book said) so are stuck to just be destroyed since being sandwiched between to squads makes it really hard to run away

This. This is the perfect example of what I am talking about - a thinking player taking what makes a unit unique and applying it tactically to gain an advantage.

Guys, no, they are not BA, No, they do not have an "easy" button. Guess what, not everything is a Colossus. No, they are not stern guard, they are not a bloody mega chain saw.

They are a specialized scalpel that in the hands of a very good player are absolutely indispensable. Sadly, too many powers and units in recent codices are just to easy to use...

I saw a vanilla marine player use them in a game against another very good player....both players had set up great kill zones, with lots of over watch and great flanking maneuvers.

The guy with the marines won, as he had them in right position at the exact right time. Some players would say "wow, you got lucky".

Charge them in mindlessly, or use them where they will get shot to pieces before they can attack...yeah, "they suck!".

A master uses different tools for specific applications of the art. Its not luck.

As Obi-won says "in my book, there is no such thing'.

LOL Starwars Quotes!!!