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Hey everyone. I have a decent sized tau army as it is, but i've really wanted to have a marine army since the beginning. In hindsight i should ahve started with them, but alot of my friends told me not to start with space marines because everybody and their dog's fleas has space marines. Anyways, i bout a tactical squad the other day and i'm wondering what would be the best way to start decent sized space marine army? I want to be able to get up to 2k points fairly quickly, and i want to do it for as little as possible. I've though alot about buying a black reach kit and dtrading someone the orks for their marines, but the problem is i dont really have anyone to trade with right now. I'm thinking getting a battleforce (or two) or the strike force, but none of them come with termies or dreadnoughts, both of which i love. theres also the problem with black reach in that it's customizability is dreadfully low. I plan on buying a librarian (havn't decided on which one yet) and a techmarine (and field as a master of the forge) as HQs, so those are sunk costs as it is.

So what's the best plan here?

I wouldn't mind trading the Marines from AoBR, but shipping costs would be pretty elevated.
If you're interested, PM me.

Getting an assault on black reach set and trading the orks for marines is probably your best deal for starting marines.

After that you will want to flesh out your army with other units.

If you have no one to trade with Assault on Black Reach won't help you much. It comes with only one tac squad, the wrong kind of terminators, and a dreadnaught. If they were assault terminators it would be worth it, but shooty terminator squads suck now for the points. They were gimped hard when the five man unit lost a heavy weapon.

I would buy more tactical squads and make a very grunty army. You can get each squad up to about 300 points and have 2k points of marines for under $200.

You can make characters out of the models in the tactical squad box and even though missile launchers suck, they're a good place to start in terms of heavy weapons. You can always pick up more weapons later as well as add things like rhinos and drop pods after your initial investment.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1050001&prodId=prod1060242


I got one of these and it came with enough parts to make 10 marines. There are enough parts to make 5 marines on each sprue and I got two sprues. There are also extra terminator legs that will make you extra terminators when combined with a terminator box set. Not sure if that's how they ship these days (you might only get one sprue now). If they do send you two sprues, it's 10 marines for $20, cheapest price around. You can call GW mail order and ask them how it comes. They come out as robed Dark Angel marines, but they look cool and you can always make your marines a different color and just have them wearing robes.


I would also invest in two assault terminator box sets and a land raider. This is $150, but it could also come out to 1000 points if you use the parts to make some characters. You would probably need to spend $250 total in order to get to 2000 points, but it would be worth it. 10 terminators with storm shields and hammers is one of the best units in the game right now...

You can still carry an assault cannon, heavy flamer, or Cyclone missile launcher with a 5-man unit of Termies. However, I do agree that Assault Termies (especially in a LR) are made of pure win.

What I did to start was buy AoBR, a Battleforce, and then started buying boxes. To have a solid SM force, you're going to need 2-3 Tactical Squads with Rhinos/Razorbacks/Droppods, some heavy hitters (Sternguard, Assault Termies, etc), and some heavy firepower (Tanks, Speeders, etc). Personally, I think the Strike Force is a good buy and gives you some solid options (like converting a Tactical Squad to Sternguard, or buying bits to make a Rhino/WW into a Razorback or even a Predator). I would probably recommend it over the Battleforce, as a lot of people don't end up using the Scouts or Assault Marines, reducing the price break. You can pick up Termies and Dreadnoughts from the AoBR set pretty cheap on EBay if you can't find someone to trade with to fill out the Strike Force. Also, the Ravenwing Box (Bikes and Speeder) is great if you want to add a unit of bikes and gives you a TON of bits that you can use to pimp out models.

Gornall wrote:You can still carry an assault cannon, heavy flamer, or Cyclone missile launcher with a 5-man unit of Termies. However, I do agree that Assault Termies (especially in a LR) are made of pure win.

Yeah this is true, but you used to get two heavy weapons in 5 man termie squad. This made them almost sort of good as deepstriking with two heavy flamers or two assault cannons was a pretty strong option. Now that they dropped the number to 1 per 5 (screwing over everyone who made 5 man dual heavy weapon termie squads from the last two editions), 5 man non-assault termie squads aren't worth the points. Now that Storm Shields are a 3+ all the time, they're the only option worth taking. Two boxes of assault termies are some of the best money you can spend in 40k dollars to points to effectiveness, I think. Although there are a bunch of tanks which have a better ratio.

I think you are talking about a pretty high level of competition for the shooty termies to be "not worth it". First of all, in 1k point games they are exceptionally hard to get rid of and put out a lot of firepower. I took them in an army to a local con (1.5k), 6 termies inc 1 assault cannon. They either made their points back every game or caused so much attention to be diverted their way that the rest of the army was free to roam (I went 2-1-1). Perhaps at a high level of competition they can be countered too effectively. But for smaller games, friendly games and lower level competition (events that are not only dual lash/nob bikers/Nidzilla) they are fine

One box of Devestators will give you 5 marines and WAY more heavy weapons than you really need, including two Lascannons and two Plasma Cannons; IMHO, the premier Tactical heavy choices. Those Rocket Launchers, ironically, tend to weigh in best when grouped by fours into Quad Dev squads.

Roght now i'm thinking of getting:

The codex
A tachmarine ( to be used as a master of the forge)
aobr (and trade the orks for marines)
battleforce

This doesnt give me alot on the way of transports, but i've come up with what i think is an effective army list. i'll post it in the army lists section in a few minutes. also, would it be reasonable to think that the termies from aobr could be easily converted into assault termies? I have a bunch of green stuff and i think i could make some neat looking storm shields and hammers with it. plus it'll give me some storm bolters to put on other models.

edit: here's the list: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/241727.page#737847

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/241066.page

There are two Space Marine ideas in the thread for approximately 2000pt lists for $300 USA. Might help.



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i personaly don't like the space marine boxed army sets, because i don't feel that tactical squads are worth the price considering AOBR. The Battle Force: do you really need 15 tactical marines? Devastators or bikes would have been better. Strike Force: where are the assault terminaters, what about fast attack?

Good luck building you SM army, let's see WIP and when it's done.

It's worth it if you want special / Sarge weapon options or to be able to pose your figs.