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Hi guys, like I said in my introduction post, I am new to the game, so please don't kill me on this. But in looking at the rules some models can vary their number in a single unit. What are the pros and cons of having a larger vs a smaller unit? For example, under the 8th ed rules, a bike squad is a "standard" 1 sergeant and 2 bikers, but it can be 6 (1 sergeant and 5 bikers) or 8 (1 sergeant and 7 bikers). It can also include an attack bike. What is the advantage to this? Is there one? In theory, couldn't the same result be had by creating two 3-man units and running them generally in the same directions? Or is my noob self missing something?

First, you might be limited by detachment slots, 2 units, 2 slots, even if thats quite rare in this edition.

Other thing is buffs, quite a lot of spells is targeted at "a unit", a bigger unit - more people get affected by the buff. Same applies to bubble auras, its usually quite hard to have many small units hug a character for bubble compared to a single big one (remember, only one model needs to be in range). Same applies if you commandpointreroll charges or just the "fight utf of order" theorem

A more double edged sword now is long charges, if you charge with 2 small units and both fail you suffer 2 rounds of overwatch compared to 1 big.

The disadvantages is quite big though, you often want to fill more slots, enemy fire gets more effective and morale hurts more.

For marines, you typically want to take the smallest squads.

Sometimes there are bonuses for taking a bigger squad, like a tactical squad can take a heavy weapon and a special weapon if they take ten guys. However, this is typically not as good as good as 2 five man squads, since the sarg can take a combi weapon, and you only get one sarg per squad.

There might be some exceptions to this, such as vanguard veterans being pretty good in 10 man squads, and then having the ability to combat squad into two 5 man squads.

Then like he said, most stratagems and psykic peers only effect 1 unit, so the bigger the unit the better.

It really depends on the unit, your army, and what you need to do with the unit, but normally the small squads are just fine

Spells, Stratagems, detachment slots and unit deployment for first turn are probably the primary pros

the cons for large units would be more susceptible to overkilling with moral and focused fire.

 Desubot wrote:
Spells, Stratagems, detachment slots and unit deployment for first turn are probably the primary pros

the cons for large units would be more susceptible to overkilling with moral and focused fire.

Expanding on this: the bois over at Frontline Gaming made a comment on how armies will start to be made up of many different units but one big maxed out unit that is kind of your "main force" and what you focus your stratagems on. I know I'm already doing that with my Kharybdis + 20 Berzerkers + Warptime model. You shouldn't only have maxed out squads and you shouldn't only have min squads. Taking a mix is where the Space Marine Codex is pointing towards.

Thanks guys. I'll report back once I have a better idea of what I am going to field.