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Title says it all.

I am a fan of running as many tactical squads as I can in a game, full ten mans with at least a special weapon if not a heavy as well and rhinos to cart them around.

Is the tactical swarm viable?

Ultramarines with Calgar are undoubtfully top-tier in 7-th with maelstorm.

White scars have potent tac squads when combined with bikers and Khan - hit and run helps them a lot.

Raven guard have marines in scouting rhinos - they're really great for board controle.

Salamanders can be decent with droppods but i feel that ultramarines with Calgar do tac spam better.

Don't know bout others. Wolves and angels seem to have their own directions and prefer more specialised units. Black templars could probably make a few tough lists with LR + crusader squad spam or black tide privided you support them with allies. Imperial fists are more of a gunline and bolter drill ain't so great - they're more about devastators and centurions imo. Iron hands are a bit tougher than others with 6+++ but they have no offensive bonuses and so far i've mostly seen them in biker spam lists to get Smashfether. Not sure about what Dark Angels can do with tacs - they're mostly either bikerspam or deathwing.

DA capable of PFG protected Land Raider with 20 tacs within, add Sacred Standard of Devastation for more spice.

Old razorspam can be viable alot of times too.

Imperial Fists make bolters that bit more potent.

I run IF Tactics and always find the core of my army is two 10 x Marine squads, one with melta gun and a combi melta and one with a flamer and a combi flamer.

Put them in Rhinos and get those objectives!

sentinels of terra is IMO better CT for IF. twinlinked bolters when in half max range. (works for heavy bolters)

BA tacs are used for cheap heavy flamers, You can run them for assault, but there are better things. (namely, BP/CCW scouts)

DA tacs are very lackluster with "stubborn" as a CT... horrible. But they have some of the best fluff!.

The Dark Angels gunline built around the Standard of Devastation is truly ridiculous - the amount of bolter fire you can put out is devastating.

The problems are that it's also bloody static - you've got to keep said unit within 6" of the standard, and you've got to keep the standard itself alive - plus, of course, you need to actually deal with other threats than massed infantry.

I think that dark angels holding a Fortress of Redemption might work well - giving you a safe, potentially void-shielded safehold to place the command squad in, and a load of heavy weapons into the bargain. The problem, of course, is that you have to come out of your unassailable fortress to capture objectives, and that's where it all comes unstuck.

Tactical squads are tough and can have pretty decent turn 1 board control with drop pods or scouting rhinos. They're crap in a deathmatch (they don't do a lot of damage for their cost), and they're mediocre in missions where you have to control objectives at the end of the game (Eternal War missions), but they're pretty good in missions where you score points for objective control every turn (Maelstrom missions). I think tacticals are stronger in 7th than they were in 6th.

No, they aren't. Especially with scatter laser jet bikes on the way.

Drop-podded GH with double dose of plasma/melta + combiplasma sarge are great.

Martel732 wrote:
No, they aren't. Especially with scatter laser jet bikes on the way.

The sky is falling!

 Grimdark wrote:
Drop-podded GH with double dose of plasma/melta + combiplasma sarge are great.

Martel732 wrote:
No, they aren't. Especially with scatter laser jet bikes on the way.

The sky is falling!

Not as great as they used to be. Melta got a pretty significant nerf in 7th.

Tact marines are great at most games, lots of different fun ways to play them. You might find small amounts die to easily but at some critical mass they become very effective.

Eldar in general is just stupid (their worst units have all rending weapons, good armor, able to run and shoot at the same time, and are under-costed) if you don't want to play that kind of game then don't. Problem solved.

"You might find small amounts die to easily but at some critical mass they become very effective. "

Actually, the more you add to your list, the weaker it becomes.

Cheap BA tac squads with heavy flamers could do well behind a pipe line. Fast rhinos to push forward fast when needed in reserve behind a BA sanguine wing for stealing your opponents objectives.

jpevansiii wrote:
Cheap BA tac squads with heavy flamers could do well behind a pipe line. Fast rhinos to push forward fast when needed in reserve behind a BA sanguine wing for stealing your opponents objectives.

But they don't. Because any level of mechanization nerfs heavy flamers hard. And feeding BA piecemeal to an opponent is not a real good plan.

Martel732 wrote:
"You might find small amounts die to easily but at some critical mass they become very effective. "

Actually, the more you add to your list, the weaker it becomes.

That's not true, you may find that a list with just 20 tactical marines and a bunch of fancy toys like thunderfire cannons, Vindicators, storm tallons, etc. gets overrun easily or shot off the table. But then 60 tactical marines with rhinos doesn't and 6 full squads with melta / plasma and combis and a rhino is only 1170-1200 points.
Assuming you don't bonzai them into a meet grinder

The meat grinder can come to you. And you don't have the firepower to stop it. Tac marines can't take enemy models off th table, so you have to weather the full fury of the enemy list for 5+ turns. 60 tacs works magnificently against poor lists. But those are poor lists.

Depends on your meta.

For top competitive play, Tac spam is uncommon, but not unheard of, at the top end.

If you like Tacs, use them. If you just want to win games, there are other ways to min/max, but Tacs can perform.

Perform their way into the grave, maybe. They won't be performing much against the new jet bikes pretty soon anyway.

I swapped armies with a blood angel player (I play orks). I do really well against all armies in my locale, including against this blood angel player.

I brought primarily tacticals and assault marines, and he used one of my lists (primarily boys, some lootas, etc.) I didn't bring any special weapons at all on the tactical marines.

I was able to beat my orks with good fundamentals, focusing on fast movement and deep striking to focus all of my firepower in one spot at a time. I was really impressed with how flexible tacticals with boltguns and drop pods are.

If I made a space marine army I would almost certainly use a good chunk of scouts or tacticals in it.

pickled_heretic wrote:
I swapped armies with a blood angel player (I play orks). I do really well against all armies in my locale, including against this blood angel player.

I brought primarily tacticals and assault marines, and he used one of my lists (primarily boys, some lootas, etc.) I didn't bring any special weapons at all on the tactical marines.

I was able to beat my orks with good fundamentals, focusing on fast movement and deep striking to focus all of my firepower in one spot at a time. I was really impressed with how flexible tacticals with boltguns and drop pods are.

If I made a space marine army I would almost certainly use a good chunk of scouts or tacticals in it.

Now imagine taking on a Decurion with some Wraiths with those same tactical squads.

Never mind that second place LVO was a ton of bolter scouts...

 Reinokarite wrote:
DA capable of PFG protected Land Raider with 20 tacs within, add Sacred Standard of Devastation for more spice.

Old razorspam can be viable alot of times too.

Um, LR have 10 capacity, unless you upgrade to 16 and tactical squads are max 10.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
With the Ultramarines tactcs, Tactical marines in Drop Pods are a lot of fun. Rhinos are nice, but I feel they die too fast to be better than Drop Pods for transports. Plus Drop Pods are same hull points AV 12 Objective Secured flags. Drop em near something and laugh while your opponent either lets you have it or has to shoot it, allowing something else to live.

Kisada II wrote:
Never mind that second place LVO was a ton of bolter scouts...

Scouts have more wounds/pt than tacs. Also, what else was in the list?

If the tourney allows FW, the red scorpions are the best, Tac Sqds with fnp owns. But truly to be successful in competitve tournaments scenes your list needs to be flexible enough to deal with serious threats. So taking Loth with a deathball of gravcents is like mandatory, while your drop pod fnp Tac squads takes board control. And if you can fit GK and draigo in would be even better

Martel732 wrote:

Kisada II wrote:
Never mind that second place LVO was a ton of bolter scouts...

Scouts have more wounds/pt than tacs. Also, what else was in the list?

The list was basically a spin on null deploy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the Tactics thread that talked about it. But from what I remember, it was SoT with TFC+GravCents+Lysander, along with BA Mephiston, regular Librarian with the WT relic, and I think a couple of other things- the idea seemed to be that it used a couple of beatsticks, null deploy options, and the extra WT from the BA relic to gain advantage.

Combined with TFCs+GravCents, it managed to tag second. First place was an really strange 'Nid list that was Lictor-heavy.

Whiskey144 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Kisada II wrote:
Never mind that second place LVO was a ton of bolter scouts...

Scouts have more wounds/pt than tacs. Also, what else was in the list?

The list was basically a spin on null deploy. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the Tactics thread that talked about it. But from what I remember, it was SoT with TFC+GravCents+Lysander, along with BA Mephiston, regular Librarian with the WT relic, and I think a couple of other things- the idea seemed to be that it used a couple of beatsticks, null deploy options, and the extra WT from the BA relic to gain advantage.

Combined with TFCs+GravCents, it managed to tag second. First place was an really strange 'Nid list that was Lictor-heavy.

Kind of. The Lictors were for Deepstrike advantage. The majority of the list was some Mawlocs and like 5 Flyrants.

LunaWolvesLoyalist wrote:
Title says it all.

I am a fan of running as many tactical squads as I can in a game, full ten mans with at least a special weapon if not a heavy as well and rhinos to cart them around.

Is the tactical swarm viable?

Skewed lists will always have good and bad match ups.

in my game on Sunday a 10 man squad wiped out a quin troupe plus 2 characters in one turn with rapid fire, a melta shot and storm bolter rhino.

on the other hand I have had a whole squad wiped out in one psy scream.

So it can go both ways.

DA also have banner that gives FNP without forcing them to be static or stick Azrael in a squad and laugh as they march over the enemy with 4++ and fearless. Stick Zeak in too and they gain +1 WS plus he can use powers to boost them further. Re-rolls to hit with ignores cover anyone?

I think the issue with tacticals is not that they are bad persay its that they are strongly affected by any extreme.

So for example as jack of all trades they have a problem dealing with strong shooting or strong assault as they are paying for a lot of things they are not taking advantage of. I think against most balanced lists they are nice.

I look forward to seeing if they nerf the wave serpent so I can run tacs in rhinos again with sentinels of terra. I miss those units.

The scouts were a life support system for a grav star. Shocker.