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I have a squad of 10 assault marines plus a Chaplain with a jump pack that I wish to incorporate into my army but I have a few questions on how to use them.

•First, what are the role of assault marines in vanilla space marines? They aren't the best in close combat so what are they used for?

•How do I field them?

•What war gear is viable on them? Should I spend allot of points on them or keep it simple?
(I see Powerfists spent on them so they can deal with Mechs and armour, but how often does that happen? Should I pick up a meltabomb and get a power weapon instead?)

•How are they changed in anyway with 6th edition?

I'm looking into putting together a Raven Guard force and and I was hoping this would be a fuffy choice while being fun to play. Thank you for the help!

In a C:SM army, an Assault Squad shines at basically one thing - getting into your opponent's backfield and beating up on the squishy units there. They also aren't bad per se in a counterassault role, but will be outperformed in combat by TH/SS Termies against anything worth counterassaulting.

The generally accepted loadout is power fist and 2 flamers in a squad of 10. The weapon on the Sergeant might have changed since 6th, I haven't played with the Assault Marines enough to judge. The flamers are hands-down necessary - now, in addition to giving the squad some infantry-stopping power, they also act as a disincentive to charge, which is good because Assault Marines really want to be the ones charging. Melta bombs generally aren't necessary, because most vehicles die to krak grenades in assault anyways. However, an argument can be made for using them as MC hunters with melta bombs.

Hammer of Wrath is really nice, but to get it off you either need the enemy to run forward into your charge zone, or you need to expose yourself to a countercharge, because re-roll or no re-roll your potential assault range is the same as the enemy's. Sometimes it's better just to take the 12+2d6 charge range. Assault Marines will falter against more than a couple MEQ, or TEQ (read: anything nasty in assault), but are especially good on the charge with a Chaplain against hordes and small squads of MEQ.

All in all, they're not a bad unit, but definitely aren't a competitive unit choice either. I like them, even though they consistently underperform for their points.

How much more useful is a Vanguard squad?

I have a Chaplain and 5 jump packs to give to a C:SM squad, but I did like the look of the A2 on the veterans.

They don't need to be better then TWC, they just need to be better the long fangs. If you slam them into other armies CC specialists, you will be disappointed. But anything that is a normal troop/HS looking thing, they can take. As Roboute said, they excel at backfield disruption, and are a OK countercharge unit.

You have a chaplain leading them, which I consider necessary. I commonly field a 5 man squad, with a bare-bones chaplain leading them, power sword on the sarge, and a flamer. If I have spare points after building my army, they get first dibs on melta bombs.

10 man squads are a little unwieldy. You have trouble keeping them behind cover, at least with the amount of terrain I generally play with. Yes, they have more wounds and can take more hits, but get shot more. I'd rather take a smaller squad and save the points.

Don't deep strike them. The turn you spend twiddling your thumbs is the turn you die.

I'm not sure how necessary the power fist is these days. Most vehicles are AV10 on the rear, so krak grenades should be enough, especially now that they are easier to hit in CC. Your primary target is going to be MEQ, so I think a stock power sword should work just fine. Might be worth experimenting with the different weapon options out there, power spear/lance could be fun.

6th in general made them better. I've not fielded them enough under the new rules to give personal details. They worked for me in 5th, when they were regarded as sub-par. They might not be the best unit out there, but they can still work, if used properly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Skinnereal wrote:
How much more useful is a Vanguard squad?

I have a Chaplain and 5 jump packs to give to a C:SM squad, but I did like the look of the A2 on the veterans.

A 5 man Assault squad, power weapon on the sarge, is 115 points
A 5 man Vanguard, with jump packs, free PW for the sarge is 175.
Jump Chaplain is 115 himself, assuming no extras.

Odds are, you are not using the heroic intervention, unless you have some aggressively deployed locator beacons. BA can pull it off with their DoA rule, but for codex marines, it's too risky to try. The sarge with the PW in the normal squad already has the extra attack. He and the Chap are going to be doing most the the heavy lifting in the squad. Is 60 points worth the extra attack for the four backup marines? Not for normal attacks. If you start gearing them up, their attacks become more worthwhile, but the price gets out of hand REALLY fast.

Everyone is giving you sound advice here. Assault marines aren't heroes. They aren't really soldiers. Don't make them fight even battles. This 230 or so point unit is there to draw fire as it advances through cover and attack the women and children.

What you'll find as you continue to use this tactic, is that people will get wise and start playing around this, holding stiffer units back to reinforce against your harriers. This can be manipulated to your favor too, but that's a much more complicated discussion topic.

One thought I'm having in your case, is the benefits and costs of making your harriers scoring. With an allied BA detachment, you can have a scoring version of just the unit we are describing, at the cost of fielding an additional HQ.
Making it scoring elevates it to a new level of target priority though, and means the enemy is accomplishing more by neutering it. Though you gain great benefits at little cost from the potential for them to take enemies home objectives late game or run away to a distant one after they've done their job vs a target and would be over extending themselves otherwise

Thanks for the help. The idea of the Assault Marines sounds much like how the Raven Guard would deal with their enemy, by disrupting the backfield.

 Lucre wrote:
One thought I'm having in your case, is the benefits and costs of making your harriers scoring. With an allied BA detachment, you can have a scoring version of just the unit we are describing, at the cost of fielding an additional HQ.

This is an especially good idea if you're already taking a Chaplain, as the Blood Angels Reclusiarch can fill the HQ role for just 30 points more and is better in combat to boot.

The power weapon and melta bombs route is viable when you consider that vehicles are much easier to hit now. As already said, krak grenades will help there too.
The power fist will fare better against high-Toughness troops that aren't MC's, or 2+ save units. To be honest, these aren't the kind of units you should be sending the Assault Squad against.

The only down side to taking BA allies is that you lose the ability to auto fail moral, which can be very helpful on an assault unit. You loose combat by one? Choose to fail your check, and charge the unit next turn.

Do not expect them to do too much. Making their points back for example is an unrealistic expectation.

As a disruption unit, they have their charms. This role should really need them to make points back if they do a good enough job.

I think krak grenades are now their most effective weapons, with flamers a nice touch for wall of death.

Armadeus wrote:
The only down side to taking BA allies is that you lose the ability to auto fail moral, which can be very helpful on an assault unit. You loose combat by one? Choose to fail your check, and charge the unit next turn.

Except Chaplain makes them fearless, so auto-failing morale is not an option anyway.

The only downside to fielding this as blood angels is that you can't take a cheap chaplain, you need to take a reclusiarch instead. Also, how often are they really going to survive to score?

I never had much success with Assault Marines in my Vanilla Marine army. For backline harassment, Land Speeders were always so much faster, cheaper and more reliable. Now with the change to assault ranges, they're even less reliable than before. They might be okay accompanying a bike army or something that wants to put on fast pressure, but the rest of the codex is built to be a strong mid-range gunline, and the assault marines just don't fit well in that composition.

Or take an SM chaplain and a blood angel librarian for those divination powers? Battle bro it up.

divination is amazingly sexy.

If you get lucky, and get a 4+ invulnerable save on Divination, and put the librarian with a squad of death company... the unit becomes horrifyingly effective.

 Lucre wrote:
Everyone is giving you sound advice here. Assault marines aren't heroes. They aren't really soldiers. Don't make them fight even battles. This 230 or so point unit is there to draw fire as it advances through cover and attack the women and children.

That's a bit derogatory innit? The pointing a lascannon at you is a pointing a lascannon at you, doesn't matter if their a man woman child or purple monkey dishwasher And Purple monkey dishwashers sitting in the backfield holding lascannons gots ta die!
Assault marines are bullies. They need to bully units. They find the little scrawy fella's and pick on them. They don't mess with the big bad boys. They don't charge TH/SS terms. They don't charge the swarmlord or 30 boys or a block of bloodletters or anything thats decent in melee.
They excel at getting into soft squads fast and doing the chainsword tango. 10 IG vets are good and all and gun down marines with their plasma, but they hate doing the chainsword tango. Firewarriors are not fans of the chainsword tango. Hell, Tactical squads are not fans of the chainsword tango.
You can charge them into non soft units, but at the right time. Your assault terms got charged by 30 boys. Bail them out with assault marines. 10HoW then 30 S4 attacks are going to be welcomed by your 5 terminators fighting 30 odd orks. There's that DP beating up your tac squad, he has one wound left, your ass marine sarge has a fist... go stick it to him (Yeah, I said it ). Assault marines are all about being bullies and forcing units to do the chainsword tango when they DON'T want to ever do the chainsword tango, or to charge targets of opportunity such as bailing one of your units out of CC or an enemy tank in charge range. If you keep this in mind and can plan ahead, assault marines can be fun enjoyable useful units. If you hurl them into the teeth of the enemy in an assaulting fashion you will get cut to ribbons and whinge like a little girl. Don't assault the enemy army with your assault marines! Pick on the whimpy units instead.

Its the 40k mantra- shoot the choppy ones, chop the shooty ones

-note- my only success in using assault marines is using raptors for CSM

 Lucre wrote:
Assault marines aren't heroes. They aren't really soldiers. Don't make them fight even battles. This unit is there to draw fire as it advances through cover and attack the women and children.

This is comedy gold.

And I agree, Assault Marines can be useful in a lot of random situations, but they really shouldn't be considered a true assault unit. Pick on the weak. Pick on the stragglers.

The only downside to fielding this as blood angels is that you can't take a cheap chaplain, you need to take a reclusiarch instead. Also, how often are they really going to survive to score?

BA can take a cheap chaplain it just fills an elite spot instead of an HQ.

Well, yes. But as you need a HQ anyway, taking that Elite slot would just put the points of the detachment up. If points aren't an issue, I'd still argue that it'd be better to take a Reclusiarch and put a Priest in the Elite slot anyway.

Actually I would use a BA librarian rather than chaplains. Precedence for the win.
Without a priest the assault marines are very much lack lustre(apart from the whole carrying meltaguns, then having furious charge 1/6 of the time anyway.)

vanilla chaplain only makes the BA troops fearless not the LoH stuff. Which is a very raw deal.

If your gonna take BA allies, go all out... librarian riding with death company in a storm raven.

Like 530 points (if you take 2 power axes), but thats a LOT of destruction for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thats actually not to bad, when you consider a reclusiarch + 10 assault marines is probably going to run you 400 points anyway.

Gonna be the hipster of this thread and say that I'm quite fond of Assault Marines

While I agree that they aren't the best in cc, you can still use them to beat the ever-holy gaksnot out of the mediocre masses. That's just how they work. I've had much success dropping them in turn 3 with a few dreads (for fire support and priority-stealing) behind my opponent and watching with glee as squishes, and more than a few mechs, get pulped.
I don't know if I'm missing a crucial part of common assault marine tactica that makes them less than satisfactory, but I have had enough success with them to warrant buying an additional full squad.

Anyhow, need to give an answer to the original point:
- Running with a Chappy is beautiful
- Infantry = P-sword and flamers, mech = P-fist and meltabombs (depends what you want to run them against, personally I'd go sword-bombs to cover both)
- Field them as an accessory, don't base your army/ tactics around them
- Harrass, contest and otherwise do what you can to be an annoying

I would not bother with Vanilla SM Assault marines mainly for the following reasons

Blood Angels
- can get fearless roll
- scatter 1d6 on deep strike
- Can get divination librarian for the rest of your army
- Can get meltaguns in regular assault squads (SMs can not)

MFletch wrote:
vanilla chaplain only makes the BA troops fearless not the LoH stuff. Which is a very raw deal.

You're slightly confused here. Chaplains and Reclusiarchs DO give all BA troops rerolls to hit on the charge. It's just that only Death Company get the wound rerolls as well. However, this makes them just as effective as a normal Chaplain when paired with Assault Marines.
I'll grant you that with a Priest for FNP and FC, they're even better still.

 Super Ready wrote:

MFletch wrote:
vanilla chaplain only makes the BA troops fearless not the LoH stuff. Which is a very raw deal.

You're slightly confused here. Chaplains and Reclusiarchs DO give all BA troops rerolls to hit on the charge. It's just that only Death Company get the wound rerolls as well. However, this makes them just as effective as a normal Chaplain when paired with Assault Marines.
I'll grant you that with a Priest for FNP and FC, they're even better still.

Not vanilla(ultrasmurf) chaplains. Which I believe was the suggestion at the time. Obviously LoH works on their own troops, then doubly so for Death company.

Does anyone else, apart from someone trying to be cool, want to suggest a set up for vanilla marine assault squads?
Anyone want to suggest combat squadding to cause maximum disruption?

MFletch wrote:
Does anyone else, apart from someone trying to be cool, want to suggest a set up for vanilla marine assault squads?
Anyone want to suggest combat squadding to cause maximum disruption?

My set up suggestion is above, but I wouldn't advise combat squadding them, unless maybe you're deepstriking them (which IMO isn't a good idea anyways). To do their job, Assault Marines need bodies. 2 5-man squads are less effective than a single 10-man squad at everything. Combat squadding means the enemy has to deal with two separate threats, which can threaten two of his units instead of one, but this is outweighed by the fact that he only needs to cause 2-3 casualties to each squad to effectively remove them as a threat. 2 or 3 Assault Marines aren't going to do much unless you're fighting, say, an IG HWS. I'd prefer to give my opponent one threat that I know he's going to have to react to, rather than two threats that will cease to become threats after someone sneezes at them.

I think that Assault marines are only really good in Blood Angel armies. Mostly, because the entire BA army is based on hitting fast and hard. If you are taking Astorath the grim as one of your HQ chociesi definatly suggest that yout ake at least two ten man squads of assault marines, but for Vanilla, i don't believe that they are worth the points...

Its best to use them to assualt weak units such as termaguants, eldar rangers and pink horrors

I normally use my Assault Squads to either charge weak units, to get linebreaker, or counter assault. For my list Im using right now, I use them in five an squads to protect my more valuable units, such as Lascannon Tacticals, or ML Devastators. If you want to, you could go and tackle your enemies scoring units with a Chaplain, and hopefully wipe them out, or keep them held up for a while.

 Grayspear wrote:
Gonna be the hipster of this thread and say that I'm quite fond of Assault Marines

While I agree that they aren't the best in cc, you can still use them to beat the ever-holy gaksnot out of the mediocre masses. That's just how they work. I've had much success dropping them in turn 3 with a few dreads (for fire support and priority-stealing) behind my opponent and watching with glee as squishes, and more than a few mechs, get pulped.

Thank you for reading my post.

And then repeating it, except in hipster fashion