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.

Don't hang up your C:SM just yet.

I'd actually argue that with Vulkan, Kantor, or Sicarius, Codex Space Marines are actually better than Blood Angels in almost every situation.

Blood Angels lost so much more than any other Imperial codex in the transition from 5th to 6th. I think Dark Eldar might be the only ones who got kicked in the teeth harder. Razorspam sucks now because it relies on spending huge amounts on non-scoring vehicles and having lots of little, fragile squads. Jumper armies got hurt by RCL, the FNP change, the FC nerf, the multiassaulting nerf, Overwatch, the changes to power weapons, and the challenge mechanic. Really, the only thing Jumper BA armies got was an armor save and FNP for dangerous terrain.

Codex: SM got Vulkan twin-linking for meltaguns for improved snapfiring, big buffs to Combat Squadding, the changes to the rallying mechanics made Combat Tactics a lot better, can have relatively cheap flyer support without requiring allies, and maintained the advantages they already had.

Vanilla Marines are fun and viable with the 6th changes, don't feel bad about taking them.

If your army gets nerfed though, it makes you that much more proud when you beat a supposedly better one.

The only thing about C:SM that is bad is you probably be spending more money. Because of the options you have, you will be tempted to buy and try them. By comparison, a SW army will be a core of long fangs and grey hunters with a smattering of Wolf Guard. The only decision is personnel carriers or none. Drop pods or rhinos.

SM have a lot of different focuses that can be successful. Pedro lists, Vulkan lists or vanilla marines mean you will be collecting a lot of spare troops or magnetizing. The heavy options are all viable for their purpose. Land Speeders, Storm Talons and we haven't even talked about a bike captain and biker army. You

 wuestenfux wrote:
Leaning towards C:SM is a good decision.
What's good are among others:
Librarian w/ terminator armor, stormshield, nullzone,
Hammernators,
Termies with cyclones,
Tactical Marines in Rhinos- still a staple,
Tornado Landspeeders,
Stormtalon,
Thundercannon.

I will second all of this. The only thing I will add is Cassius as a HQ also. The guy is a tank.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sasori wrote:

The SW don't cheat, they just have a very balanced and internally synergized codex at the moment.

This is the exact opposite of what the SW codex is.

I second this. SW have great stuff, but very few options that are that great. Everyone brings GH only, and LF's only, pepper in a psyker or two and that is pretty much what you see from SW.

Any of my friends can tell you I like to "switch up" my armies a lot...so having gotten married recently and being more on a budget having many options through 1 army as opposed through multiple is a really big + in my favor

I really like what I'm hearing.

As far as those "key units" why are other options really considered for C:SM in the Elite slot? I would assume that 3x Rifledreads would be the most competitive/best units to field in that slot. Is there something I'm missing?

Space Wolves are cooler. Easy to get in to, fun to model, fun to paint. You can buy a SW pack and two SM Tac Marine boxes and be able to make 2 squads of Grey Hunters, one with 2 Melta and the other with 2 plasma, some wolf guard, a rune priest, a wolf priest, and two of the missile launchers towards your Long Fangs. You can add tails, teeth, skulls, beaky helmets, guys with beards, wolfy heads, the list is endless. I love sitting at my modelling table and making Grey Hunters. Then you can paint them up in one of those pretty grays, and go crazy with the gold and silver on all the little details.

Oh, wait, we were talking about competitive units. One of the most competitive units now is Space Marines mounted upon Giant Wolves. Another one is a single marine in TDA with a couple of rabid wolf pets that your opponent has to kill, and by doing so gives you a VP. Then, you have scouts that can come in from your opponents table edge, with plasma or melta. Add to that some of the most crazy badass characters, like Logan and Njal, and you don't have to run a strict GH/LF army to be successful.

And, did I mention how cool they are?

syypher wrote:
Any of my friends can tell you I like to "switch up" my armies a lot...so having gotten married recently and being more on a budget having many options through 1 army as opposed through multiple is a really big + in my favor

I really like what I'm hearing.

As far as those "key units" why are other options really considered for C:SM in the Elite slot? I would assume that 3x Rifledreads would be the most competitive/best units to field in that slot. Is there something I'm missing?

TH/SS terminators being lead by Vulkan. They will just crush face.
Drop Podding Sternguard with a few combi meltas in it are your swiss army knife of ultimate alpha strike destruction.

syypher wrote:
Any of my friends can tell you I like to "switch up" my armies a lot...so having gotten married recently and being more on a budget having many options through 1 army as opposed through multiple is a really big + in my favor

I really like what I'm hearing.

As far as those "key units" why are other options really considered for C:SM in the Elite slot? I would assume that 3x Rifledreads would be the most competitive/best units to field in that slot. Is there something I'm missing?

Tactical terminators with cyclone missile launcher
Sternguard

Both did well out of 6th

Whats not mentioned above is the feel of your army. Im not a fan of named characters. Logan seems to have to be killed by my guys at least once per tournament, yet the dude is hundreds of years old running the largest imperial marines grouping and im against him at 1750? Take this a step further, there are space wolves, and blood angels. But there are so many players running those lists, all addicted to their named characters and cheese. What i like about C:SM is you can play a nobody chapter and give it your own feel.

Space vikings? Space vampires. Please, that bit of the fluff is a bit pathetic.

So cant argue with effectiveness of wolves, but yes all the lists look and feel very similar.

For that reason i would also say dont play Salamanders. There are a half dozen Vulkans at every tournament, Yep they all feel pretty similar too.

 tetrisphreak wrote:


Basically Grey Hunters are your stock-standard marines, plus a CCW, and only 15 points each. Grey Knight Strike Squads, on the other hand, only have a storm bolter/force weapon, so just 1 base attack and are 20 points each.

The difference levels out to Space Wolf razorspam has cheaper units filling each razorback, which get more attacks in CC if the enemy gets close and they need to duke it out (plus counter-attack), and GK's strengths lie more in the infantry shooting with psycannons and storm bolters with psybolt than relying on razorbacks.

Both can do the razor spam list but I personally believe that SW going that route will come out on top thanks to the troops inside being cheaper with more attacks.

Nah, GK do it better with psybolt ammo and cheap henchmen spam. Remember they can do henchmen as troops with a psyback for like 68 points or something.

Personally I'd suggest Wolves with BA/GK/IG allies to grab a flyer/anti flyer and some extra toys. Wolves are a great backbone with GH being better than tax marines, long fangs better than devs and access to dreads and speeders just like other marines. Add in a vendetta and a couple of hydraz with a guard blob for the home objective (make em fearless with a wolf priest) and you have a very strong army.

For variety and cheap army changing they are also pretty good as they play very differenly f you keep the same core and just change the dressing (different allies etc.) Wolfguard and Wolf scouts also make pretty good deep strikers/outflankers with flame/plasma if you like that sort of thing.

syypher wrote:
Any of my friends can tell you I like to "switch up" my armies a lot...so having gotten married recently and being more on a budget having many options through 1 army as opposed through multiple is a really big + in my favor

I really like what I'm hearing.

As far as those "key units" why are other options really considered for C:SM in the Elite slot? I would assume that 3x Rifledreads would be the most competitive/best units to field in that slot. Is there something I'm missing?

Drop Pod MM/HF dread

Assault termies or regular termies (in 6th I think regulars will be making somewhat of a comeback)

Sternguard with combi-weapos in drop pod

Sternguard with no upgrades to sit back and shoot up infantry.

Techmarines are less so but the building up of terrain to bolster defenses for say scouts in camo cloaks and then to baby a dreadnought or vehicle across the board.

BTW dreads can be venerable or ironclads too. I particularly like droppodding an ironclad. It is enough armor that it is immune to krak grenades.

Ok so I've looked at both Codexes and apart from Storm Talons I'm not really sure why I would choose C:SM over SW right now.

Librarian for SW is better (Rune Priest) IMO since I prefer that 4+ psyker spell cancel.

Troop choice is better because of the Grey Hunters over Tacticals. Unless someone wants to argue for why Tacticals are better...however, I believe GH are just way better priced and come loaded out with better wargear for very similar or even cheaper cost.

I can still take all the same Speeders (in fast)/Vindicators (in heavy)/Rifle Dreads (in Elite) just like I was going to for my C:SM except have better HQ + Troop choices like above.

I don't get the Stormtalon but I don't see very much people saying it's that great anyways...and I'm going to take Allies that can handle anti-air better. And I lose combat tactics. But is combat tactics worth losing out on a better HQ + Troop choices...

Sooooo...why would I take C:SM over SW? Anyone?

Drager wrote:
Personally I'd suggest Wolves with BA/GK/IG allies to grab a flyer/anti flyer and some extra toys. Wolves are a great backbone with GH being better than tax marines, long fangs better than devs and access to dreads and speeders just like other marines. Add in a vendetta and a couple of hydraz with a guard blob for the home objective (make em fearless with a wolf priest) and you have a very strong army.

For variety and cheap army changing they are also pretty good as they play very differenly f you keep the same core and just change the dressing (different allies etc.) Wolfguard and Wolf scouts also make pretty good deep strikers/outflankers with flame/plasma if you like that sort of thing.

Wolves + IG are great, it's my current set-up when I want to have a flexible and strong list.

Vanilla Marines are all about the long ranged firepower game. Yes, the book can do other builds (Vulkan and Bikes), but IMO that's when you expose the book's major weakness of combat. When a Vanilla list is constructed to sit at the 36" - 48" range, that's when the differences between the books (Vanilla and SW) become rather obvious.

I'll break it down though:

- Heavy weapons in their Tacs. Simple enough.

- Combat Tactics. Saying Combat Tactics isn't great is a gigantic statement saying that you've never seen it being used properly. When Grey Hunters get charged, they're staying there. Vanilla Tacs have the capability of getting out, regrouping, and then double tapping into the enemy unit they just broke from, or charge them back and firing Pistols in.

- Ld9 base in their troops. If you want Ld9, you have to decide between having double special weapons or purchasing a Wolf Guard, which makes the Grey Hunter unit have one special weapon and a combi-weapon (if you so choose). Plus, you use an elite slot, and have to buy 3 Wolf Guard minimum.

- They have no long ranged firepower beyond Long Fangs and Living Lightning. Missiles and Autocannons drop off in reliability at AV12 and above.

- Their combat powerhouses (Wolf Lords and Thunderwolves) get expensive extremely fast.

- Anti Flyer in their codex, forcing you to bring allies, which is a double edged sword. A major list design challenge is presented when allies are brought into the equation.

EDIT:

Wolves don't have cheap access to Terminators as well. If you want an equivalent to a Tac Termie squad, you're paying 3 points more per model except the "Sarge" model (the Power Sword Wolf Guard). If you want TH/SS, you're paying even more.

Ares points reflect why wolf lists all look similar

Effective but i would find playing various wolf players similar and would not want to be limited but such a focused codex

Vanilla all the way. Resurrect some obscure chapter and build your own story.

Long fangs are great because of split fire and 5 cheap heavy weapons. That said if we are talking a one-on-one of devastators versus longfangs, I will put my money on the devastators.

LF - Splitfire SM - 10-man devs can combat squad.
LF - Cheap HW SM - 6 ablative bolter carriers.
LF - Nothing SM - Sgt can give one troop BS-5

Typical LF 5x ML 140
Typical Dev 3x ML 1x LasCannon 250

A long fangs - untouched- is definitely superior but when we start taking casualties, the long fangs lose a lot of power fast.


Now comes the real problem 3 x long fangs for 420 2 x devastators 500 - combat squaded to be 3x ML and one with Sgt and 1x Lascannon.

Tacticals versus grey hunters. Tacticals have the heavy weapon so it is more reach out and touch whereas the GH is superior in HTH and get nasty as they get closer because of the two special weapons.

If you like aggressive play and getting in your opponents face, SW are the better choice. If you like varied tactics, I would say stay with the C:SM. They can do either sit back and fire or with special characters get into their opponent's face. (Vulkan, Shrike, or Khan comes to mind as an in-your-face SM leader)