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Hey Dakkanaughts!

I was wondering how many anti-tank, anti-infantry, anti-cover, anti-scoring, scoring (etc.) units I should have in a Space Marine list (I am trying to build a 2000 point one)? Would 3 Tactical Squads (2 in rhinos, 1 in pod) and a Camo-scout squad be sufficient? Also, what is good for persistent anti-tank (meaning anti-tank that does not come in the form of melta suicide units)? I am kind of a beginner to 40k, in that I know the rules back to front and have tactics ideas, however have only played about 10 games! Please Help!

Thanks in advance.

I think it's less about the number of units and more about how good they are at their job. Only 2 Thunderfire Cannons should be enough to cover most of your anti-infantry because of how strong they are...much better than taking 3 or even 4 units with bolters and flamers. Just make sure you're covering all your bases. Do you have something to deal with flyers? How about 2+ armor?

4 Troops is plenty at 2k, especially with combat squads (assuming at least some of those units are a full 10).

In general, I would probably say that Bikes with Meltaguns and a Meltabomb is one of your better anti-tank choices. They're fast enough to catch any vehicle. They can potentially hit and run away (White Scars). They're more durable with T5 and a jink save, but they're still cheap. With Tau allies, Devastator Centurions can be extremely powerful anti-everything. And Storm Talons are actually very good at popping tanks - easily get into rear/side armor with a BS5 assault cannon and 3-shot autocannon.

Heirophant101 wrote:
Hey Dakkanaughts!

I was wondering how many anti-tank, anti-infantry, anti-cover, anti-scoring, scoring (etc.) units I should have in a Space Marine list (I am trying to build a 2000 point one)? Would 3 Tactical Squads (2 in rhinos, 1 in pod) and a Camo-scout squad be sufficient? Also, what is good for persistent anti-tank (meaning anti-tank that does not come in the form of melta suicide units)? I am kind of a beginner to 40k, in that I know the rules back to front and have tactics ideas, however have only played about 10 games! Please Help!

Thanks in advance.

Wait, let me get this right. You want space marine anti-tank AND you want it to not be a suicide squad. How do.... I don't... um..
.
Seriously though, the best option is suicide melta. Alternatively, lascannons work nice, but are spendy. Laz preds, laz devs, and centurions in a land raider with lascannons is pretty much it.

Your scoring units should be enough depending on what you are relying on them for.

Make sure you get something for anti air, either a couple storm talons, some of the new tanks, a storm raven, or some combination thereof. You could always go with fortifications, but it is really meta-dependant, and besides an aegis defense line with quad gun, I dont personally go for any of that.

Tons of stuff for anti infantry (pretty much EVERYTHING in the SM codex). Anti-cover is a bit of a problem, flamers or a TFC as well as a few other things can deal with it. Everything else is really dependent on the formulation of your list. Decide on what you want your army to do, check out the chapter tactics, and then look at some popular renditions of a few of the chapters.

Best of luck!

ps. I am actually selling quite a few space marine stuff myself, pm me for details if you wanna.

Edit: Had to make the paragraph less chunky and easier to read.

For troops, 1 per 500 points is a good guideline. What you have sounds about right.

How much of everything in a TAC list really depends on your local meta. As more stuff gets added to the game (flyers, superheavies, mega forts) it becomes a very difficult balancing act.

Generally, I like to have at least one fast melta unit. This can be bikes or speeders.

One of my core tac squads is MM/M with a combi-melta on the sarge points permiting. In either a rhino or pod.

I like to have at least some lascannons. Could be an auto/las pred, or a TLLC/ML dread.

Suicide drop still has a place. Ironclads or melta dreads, or sternguard with c-melta can work here.

At 2k I’d want to make sure I had around 3 solid answers for AV 14 targets. And possibly a backup plan like a melta bomb stashed somewhere.

A lot of those things also work well for popping light/medium armor. But then you can also add some MLs. And a lot of AA stuff overlaps here as well. A quadgun from an ADL or a stromtalon do a number on light tanks. TML/HBs work well for both light armor and hordes.

One of the tricks is redundancy and overlap whenever you can. But you have to be careful about paying extra for stuff you don’t need.

I’d recommend going over to the army list section and pokeing around. There are a lit of different design philosophies, so take everything with a grain of salt. But it does offer a perspective on how other people play.

I’m a fairly casual guy, but here are links to two of my latest 1,850 lists, not 2k, but should give you an idea on how I balance things.

Vs. nids
Last tournament

I still think marines are too expensive to suicide. Particularly sternguard. And especially against lists that can bubblewrap well.

Depends on objective, yes expensive but it only takes one good move to disrupt a entire plan. Block right choke point, one lucky hit can imobalise even toughest tanks, or take it out for a round at least,

jhe90 wrote:
Depends on objective, yes expensive but it only takes one good move to disrupt a entire plan. Block right choke point, one lucky hit can imobalise even toughest tanks, or take it out for a round at least,

I find these events far too unlikely to be worth throwing away expensive ass meqs. How do I disrupt Eldar scoot and shoot, or Tau "just shoot" with one good move? They'll just shoot the offending units to death. Meqs costs too much to be relying on luck.