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So I just finished putting together my Terminator assault squad and my landraider (I only have the LCs right now, theyre magnetized but i'll have to wait a bit to get the other bits). Now that I have them though, I am unsure how to field them. I was wondering which would be the better option:
A) Transport in landraider and drive it at the enemy?
B) Teleport homers- in a rhino or with a group of scouts?
C) Infilitrate and run with Shrike?

Those are the only methods I could think of, if theres another option I haven't thought of thats better please let me know. I usually dont use Termies, so I'm hoping for some advice.

You want the Land Raider option. Its the best way to get them where they need to be IMO. I've been using a squad of termies for a while, and tried footslogging and deepstriking them, and never had any fun with the unit until I plopped them in a Land Raider Redeemer and sick them on the biggest, nastiest unit the enemy's got. I don't even use assault termies, though I eventually will. I load up 5 regular termies in with Marneus Calgar, let the Land Raider mosey around for a turn or two and get it close to where I want to be, then I dump them out.
This does two things for me. One, having a Redeemer full of so many points is almost guaranteed to draw all the heavy weapons fire, which will most likely only scratch the paint for a turn or two, and it leaves my other units relatively free to move up on objectives, kill off smaller units or take buildings. The second boon is that once the doors do open and Papa Smurf charges directly into combat with 5 terminators on his heels it makes the enemy completely s#*! the bed and dump everything into that combat. If they're smart, they'll avoid it like the plague, but often times if the termie squad starts pummeling an HQ or a death star unit with power fists, people will dump every model within 12 inches into it.

Now, deepstriking termies does have a place in the game, but IMO its a very limited one. Basically its good for dropping them right next to a big points unit, either a vehicle or again an HQ or something pricey in points. Everything on that half of the board will try and drop them, but it buys all your other units a lot of time since the termies are pretty survivable.

TL;DR termies are only useful when they can get a fast turn of shooting in, then go straight into combat. Otherwise they die.

Assault terms in my book get used well in one of two ways.

First covered above well.

Second, plonk infront of enemy. Enemy spends entire army shooting phase killing them, you get a free round of shooting to cause as much damage as possible. A belial list did this to me once. While i killed Belial and his FNP, SS terminator retinue, it took everything i had. Next round his two autolas preds, two typhoon speeders and remaining 3 or 4 CML termi squads tore a gaping hole in my army. So similar to post avove in that sense.

Well, I am intrigued at the idea of having a sacrificial unit of terminators. Albeit a tad expensive. I do have a couple of questions though, what happens when your opponent doesn't shoot the squad and instead focuses on what I assume is a gun line or some other form of shooting goodness?

What if your opponent has mainly vehicles and can just avoid the terminators?

Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield termies are really the way to go in my opinion. That shield makes them much more likely to live through the potential unloading they'll receive and the hammers are good for killing tanks as well as people. Maybe do a mix squad of claws and hammers with the hammers in the front.

I would have to agree with Papasmerv, thunder hammer storm shield is terrifying, I would suggest though, that the best counter to that would be vehicles and anti tank (anti tank to get rid of LR) and vehicles to run around them. So keep that in mind when deploying.

Teddy183 wrote:
Well, I am intrigued at the idea of having a sacrificial unit of terminators. Albeit a tad expensive. I do have a couple of questions though, what happens when your opponent doesn't shoot the squad and instead focuses on what I assume is a gun line or some other form of shooting goodness?

What if your opponent has mainly vehicles and can just avoid the terminators?

That's kind of the beauty of termies. If you do deep strike them, and your opponent actually does ignore them (which is really dumb unless they've got Abbadon or Lelith or a ton of AP 2) then you get to charge a minimum of 4 power fists and a power sword into an opponent you see fit. Its a guaranteed death sentence for an ill-equipped unit. Its even better when you put them in a large yet squishy unit like Tau or IG, since then you won't lose any termies and you can then spend a turn or two happily munching through his unit, hopefully either killing HQs or contesting an objective.

40k is all about weighing the importance of your units IMO. A good mindset to have is "if he/she's not shooting that, this other unit will survive." You want to field several nasty threats to keep your opponent splitting fire between your best units. Hopefully you can throw in a little misdirection and make a lesser unit seem more dangerous, when its really not. That's were I think terminators shine. They aren't a great unit, points wise, but they are some of the scariest things you can put on the board.

For an army that is highly mobile, such as a mechanized Dark Eldar army, assaulting termies at their vehicles. AP 2 is really easy to come by for them, and they will hose you done with it before you're close, only to skip off again out of reach. Tau are also annoying at this. I've chased Tau tanks across the board before finally cornering them with a Wolf Guard termie squad. In these situations I think its best to find different ways to bring them down.

Land Raiders are fairly expensive; TH/SS Terminators are capable of surviving the return fire if you Deep Strike them, and you've got Scout Bikes for Teleport Homers. I may be biased on this front since I use Dark Angels and Deathwing Assault makes my Terminators' Deep Strike timing more reliable (as well as permitting TH/SS and assault cannons/cyclone launchers in the same squad), but I see no reason why you couldn't pull it off with vanilla Marines.

IMO, there are just too many things that can go wrong when deep striking, which is where redundancy comes in, but you can't really do that for terminators. They are expensive (not that I really have to mention it) and if you lose one to a mishap, then that can be enough to lose you the game, I have won when people trying to deep strike terminators in my deployment zone role poorly on the mishap table and I won because of it. Even though we were playing an extended game 15 turns, it took him 9 turns to get near me again with them. Maybe though, the size of the game matters, smaller games, take the safer option of using a Land raider in larger games, maybe go with redundancy if you can afford it. though you probably don't want to spend too many points on so few models. Sorry, now I'm just rambling and thinking out loud.

I didnt say it was foolproof, i said its effective.

If you want foolproof use multiple locators. 10 pts in a pod, or the beacon on a tac squad for 15. Cheap certainty. I used scout bike locator recently then gated onto it with a libby. Loved it.

Regarding ignoring the unit, thats up to where you put them.

Deepstrike on target in the middle, run and spread out. If well positioned its a brave opponent who ignores them because a thunderhammer team in your backfield is a terrible liability to winning the game.

See, I personally would give them locators, an extra 10 pts sounds totally worth it to me. I'm a guard player and I'm not exactly an encyclopedia when it comes to space marines so I am not entirely sure what is worth what. What I do know, is that this thread is giving me the idea that working on stopping this kind of thing is as I feared, highly important.

Guards role is to hold things in check till marines arrive. Heaven forbid they get on the wrong side.

Thanks for the advice guys. There's a lot of good ideas in here, I guess I'll just have to try em out. I have a game tonight so i think I'll try leaving my las cannon land raider in my back field and deep striking my termies. If they don't end up smacking up some units at least they're drawing fire from my other guns. We'll see how it goes.

Drop pods with locator beacons on them are good for shooty terminators and getting them into the fight quickly because they can port in quickly and start slinging bullets. Your land raider is going to be your best for your assaulters because they can come charging right out of that beyotch and bring the pain instead of just standing around like a bunch of chumps for a turn getting every gun in range pointed at them.

Vanilla Smurf Terminators have so much going against them at times. The fact that they're vanilla. The fact that they're always blue. The fact that they got molested by he-who-must-not-be-allowed-to-write-another-space-marine-codex during their induction as Smurf Marines. And the fact that they roll 2D6 during DS. Go for Blood Angels instead. Sure, he-who-loves-smurfs-and-hates-women did mess up some points in their Codex but the precision of their DS because of DoA allows them to wedge right behind an enemy HQ or Heavy Support. Plunk down a Furioso in a Drop Pod and execute Heroic Intervention using Veterans to clean up the remaining mess.

Deep Strike them in a LRC for good measure. Go flying tanks and Dreadnoughts of the sons of Sanguinius!

So I tried deepstriking them behind a group of tac marines, but they didn't do anything other than draw fire. They very durable, but they still died.

So now it comes down to landraider or shrike.
Is shrike viable for a vanilla marine army if i'm not really using the fleet rule anywhere else?

 AtariAssasin wrote:
So I tried deepstriking them behind a group of tac marines, but they didn't do anything other than draw fire. They very durable, but they still died.

So now it comes down to landraider or shrike.
Is shrike viable for a vanilla marine army if i'm not really using the fleet rule anywhere else?

Land Raider, assuming you can deep strike that. I have no idea what a shrike is and the closest I can find is a pirate vessel...

Vanilla Marines specialize in few things. Holding objectives, huge shooting arsenal, being vanilla and walking with diapers because they were butt-f*cked so hard by he-who-must-not-be-allowed-to-write-another-codex. I suggest you focus on capturing objectives with your vehicles and tac squads while using your terminators to either hold the objectives or drop down as a major distraction.

 AtariAssasin wrote:
So I tried deepstriking them behind a group of tac marines, but they didn't do anything other than draw fire. They very durable, but they still died.

So now it comes down to landraider or shrike.
Is shrike viable for a vanilla marine army if i'm not really using the fleet rule anywhere else?

Blood angel fanboying aside, I think a land raider is better for you.

A heavy vehicle with tough infantry? Opens up ways for your army to advance (say, get vindicators up close and in range or have some Tact squads get to more adventitious positions. ) and can provide more firepower. With things like the redeemer, you can charge the Land raider at cruising speed and take pot shots w/ melta or the assault cannon thanks to power of the machine spirit.

I would suggest you take whichever chapter tactics that tickles your fancy. that makes vanilla marines fun

Sounds good then. Landraider it is.
The Shrike I was referring to was Kayvaan Shrike. He'd give my terminators infiltrate and fleet.

Also, I wasn't aware it was possible to deesptrike a landraider, at least with codex marines.
You mean to say that I would deepstrike my terminators inside of my landraider, and drop my landraider in my opponents back field? I didn't think that was legal...

 AtariAssasin wrote:
Sounds good then. Landraider it is.
The Shrike I was referring to was Kayvaan Shrike. He'd give my terminators infiltrate and fleet.

Also, I wasn't aware it was possible to deesptrike a landraider, at least with codex marines.
You mean to say that I would deepstrike my terminators inside of my landraider, and drop my landraider in my opponents back field? I didn't think that was legal...

it isn't if your playing vanilla marines. the blood angels can do this (it isn't too good.)

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

 AtariAssasin wrote:
Sounds good then. Landraider it is.
The Shrike I was referring to was Kayvaan Shrike. He'd give my terminators infiltrate and fleet.

Also, I wasn't aware it was possible to deesptrike a landraider, at least with codex marines.
You mean to say that I would deepstrike my terminators inside of my landraider, and drop my landraider in my opponents back field? I didn't think that was legal...

it isn't if your playing vanilla marines. the blood angels can do this (it isn't too good.)

Deep Striking Land Raider Crusaders filled with Death Company or Assault Marines works very well. I usually do this after dropping my Furioso up front just so the enemy has much more to deal with.

I think fleet is wasted on stuff without jump packs or wings...

TL lascannons are not for getting close to the enemy. You really want the crusader or redeemer versions for delivering assualt termies to the fray - advantage of crusader is that it can hold 8 termies while redeemer has those flamers.

If you D/S you have to suffer a round of shooting regardless and fleet is not going to help much - you can't run/assualt and so need to drop pretty aggressively with them. Beacons are a possibility and I've tried them on my scout bikes but where the bikes needed to be and where I wanted the termies to come in were rarely in the same place. Drop-pods are potentially the only place for these - and also the cheapest. So drop some sternguard in and then support them with termies.

Landraider lists do benefit from multiple vehicles on the table though as a single LR is going to get every lascannoon/melta in the army targetted at it, where as a wall of predators, razorbacks, vindicators will give the enemy decisions.

More good advice guys, thanks. The homer on the drop pod sounds pretty good to me. Terminators DS in with their support already there. The idea however of keeping my brand new land raider on the shelf just because I don't have the flamed cannons is a bit depressing though... I'll be doing some play testing in the mean time. That's for the help.

you could use a regular land raider for now if you want, atari.

or proxy.