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thinking of 2 options to infiltrate with Huron Blackheart:

I could fit a 10 man noise marine squad with 10 CCW and 10 sonic blasters and icon of excess.
or
a 3 man obliterator squad with MoNurgle.

They would essentially always inflitrate wherever I can get the best kills out of them- 12" if out of sight. Always in cover. They would need to make a useful alpha strike and still be a potent fighting force.

What are your opinions about either squads abilities?
survivability?
most damage output?
Most threateneing?
Most versatile?
Any other thoughts?

Thanks in advance.
-Mark

why limit yourself to 10 noise marines. why not 20?

How about 20 noise marines, 10 sonic blasters, 10 with bolter, 10 with CCW, 2-4 blast masters, and a champ with doom siren. It will kill anything it shoots at and cannot be dislogged with combat easily.

I would go with the Noise Marines, mostly based on the fact that the Obliterators can and should be walking up the board whereas the Noise Marines must remain static in order to fire to full effect.

The Noise Marines seem like the obvious choice, as you want them staying stationary rather than moving forward to benefit from salvo. The oblits can deep strike if you deem necessary, though they have some long range firepower at their disposal, so they're almost never worthless wherever they are at on the battlefield. I'm sure there may be a situation where I'd think otherwise, but 90% of the time, I'm going to want to infiltrate the noise marines...

 Exergy wrote:
why limit yourself to 10 noise marines. why not 20?

How about 20 noise marines, 10 sonic blasters, 10 with bolter, 10 with CCW, 2-4 blast masters, and a champ with doom siren. It will kill anything it shoots at and cannot be dislogged with combat easily.

You can sadly only have up to 2 blast masters in a single unit.

Well, a 20 man squad would be awesome, but within a 1500 pt list, would be very difficult. Plus that is alot of firepower which can only shoot at one target. I think I'd end up with overkill or underkill (trying to hit a single av 13 vehicle with 2x S8 weapons)

However, would the "obvious choice" be even more obvious if I dropped a few sonic blasters adn the IoExcess in exchange for a blastmaster? ie is a blastmaster a must have?

Mark_Autarch wrote:
Well, a 20 man squad would be awesome, but within a 1500 pt list, would be very difficult. Plus that is alot of firepower which can only shoot at one target. I think I'd end up with overkill or underkill (trying to hit a single av 13 vehicle with 2x S8 weapons)

However, would the "obvious choice" be even more obvious if I dropped a few sonic blasters adn the IoExcess in exchange for a blastmaster? ie is a blastmaster a must have?

I would rank Noise Marine upgrades in the following order (assuming a static squad):

#1 Blastmasters
#2 Icon of Excess
#3 Sonic Blasters

Mark_Autarch wrote:
Well, a 20 man squad would be awesome, but within a 1500 pt list, would be very difficult. Plus that is alot of firepower which can only shoot at one target. I think I'd end up with overkill or underkill (trying to hit a single av 13 vehicle with 2x S8 weapons)

However, would the "obvious choice" be even more obvious if I dropped a few sonic blasters adn the IoExcess in exchange for a blastmaster? ie is a blastmaster a must have?

If you are going to infiltrate, then go with a 20 man squad with sonics and IoE, and put a doom siren on the champ (cause why not). For 455 you get 57 shots a turn to annihilate a squad. This is great for taking down death stars, as even with 2+ FnP if you force them to roll a bucket of dice it's going to neuter the unit. Being in cover, with FnP makes the unit hard to displace. Best option to deal with them is to tar pit in cc, but even then you have to make it through a doom siren, huron's flamer, and 57 over watch shots.

Non-infiltrate, a blastmaster in a 5 man or 2 in a 10 with nothing else, sitting in the back field. The general consensus has been you either get all sonics, or blastmasters and naked. Mixing and matching makes picking a good target difficult.

As for IoE, the unit size really dictates when it's necessary and when it's a point sink. In a squad of 20, it's 1.75 points per model for FnP, which is an easy pick. In a 5 man squad it's 7 ppm, which is very meh.

As fun as the 20 man unit would be, just not sure how to make it work. At 1500 this one unit would cost you 1/3 of your army. Multi charging could easily avoid the Over watch problem, then you have most of your army doing something you don't want it to. Plus, a heldrake will almost nullify the unit single handed. Blobs are great if they are cheap, but put out lots of shots/attacks. 20 man noise marines really only fulfill half of that requirement.

Now, Typhus and Huron with a couple of infiltrating zombie blobs? That's got potential.

remember, only 1 blastmaster per 10 man squad now. none of this min-maxing.
unless im wrong, which would be great.

Mark_Autarch wrote:
remember, only 1 blastmaster per 10 man squad now. none of this min-maxing.
unless im wrong, which would be great.

The most recent FAQ for C:CSM allows one Blastmaster per squad regardless of size and a second one at 10+ NM's.

 Magc8Ball wrote:

Mark_Autarch wrote:
remember, only 1 blastmaster per 10 man squad now. none of this min-maxing.
unless im wrong, which would be great.

The most recent FAQ for C:CSM allows one Blastmaster per squad regardless of size and a second one at 10+ NM's.

so 1 at 5 and 2 at 10, and 2 at 20

A 10 man squad kitted out with Sonics Blasters and 2 Blast Masters is like 260 points. A 20 man unit with ccw and a Siren is a Huge point investment.

I do like the Idea of Huron outflanking them, but I think it's a one trick pony and an easy way to feed your opponent 300+ points to kill off maybe 200 of their points.

I still haven't foot slogged Oblits, just seems to slow. Deepstriking draws a lot of fire off of you for a turn or 2 to get a lot more units into position.

 Wingeds wrote:
A 10 man squad kitted out with Sonics Blasters and 2 Blast Masters is like 260 points. A 20 man unit with ccw and a Siren is a Huge point investment.

I do like the Idea of Huron outflanking them, but I think it's a one trick pony and an easy way to feed your opponent 300+ points to kill off maybe 200 of their points.

I still haven't foot slogged Oblits, just seems to slow. Deepstriking draws a lot of fire off of you for a turn or 2 to get a lot more units into position.

sure 20 guys and the siren is 365 points. Sure giving them the icon makes them more so. But 20 init 5 bodies with a ton of attacks and FNP just does not go away.

outflanking is silly these days. You have to wait to come in, you cant assault, your sonic weapons count as moving so can only fire at short range. Boo

Oblits dont want to get into combat, so having them start back and walk up is good. They fire the lascannon or plasma cannon first turn and maybe take soemthing out. Then as they walk up they can use their shorter range stuff.

But the question is about infiltrating, not deepstriking or outflanking or walking. So would the 2 blastmasters be worth outflanking? Or is the chance for side armor lascannons a better bet.
Right now I'm feeling the blastmasters would be more interesting.

Mark_Autarch wrote:
But the question is about infiltrating, not deepstriking or outflanking or walking. So would the 2 blastmasters be worth outflanking? Or is the chance for side armor lascannons a better bet.
Right now I'm feeling the blastmasters would be more interesting.

you cannot fire a blastmaster on the move, so you walk onto the board, cannot fire(well you can fire the assualt heavy bolter) then enemy tanks turn to face you / vunerable squads spread out to avoid your blast weapon.

Mistype. I ment infiltrating the blastmasters. Point being they set-up to threaten the enemy flank from turn one. Seems a farily threatening squad, sturdy enough considering.