Nevelon wrote:
Flyer wing is from DftS? A lot of people are not fond of that book, so check with the locals to make sure that’s a OK option at your FLGS.

Overall, I really like your list. It is very fluffy, looks fun to play, and feels like a marine armored column, smashing into the enemy. You look to have a decent balance of firepower. How well you fare depends a lot on how competitive “semi-competitive” is. You have no psychic defense, no answer for deathstars, and due to your TAC nature, nothing to answer very spammy lists. That said, someone who brought out a list with a similar feel to yours would be a great match.

For CT, I think any of the “general” ones would work well. UM, IF, IH. Probably Iron Hands, due to the vehicles and the tech.

Your captain is generically useful. He’s not geared up to take down the big stuff, but should be fine for most normal-ish stuff. He could use the Teeth of Terra (basically a relic blade plus) and a melta bomb.

Bikes are fine. C-grav on the sarge would be gravy.

I’m a little torn on the TLLC razor. I like the fact that you are fully mechanized. But it seems that the points spent there could buy you a real tank elsewhere. I’d keep it for fluff reasons. Another option if you wanted to go that way would be to swap your captain for one in capheracti TDA, and stick him with GC/MM devs in a pod.

Tacs are fine

Auto/Las is generally my pred of choice. It’s guns have more synergy then the TLLC/HB pred. Full LC is great if points allow.
As someone who’s Vindi’s main gun was blown off first turn last time I fielded it, I recommend the SB. 50% chance to soak a weapon destroyed result. The game before that I got hung up on some rubble, so am glad to see the shield.

The tech might enjoy his c-beamer. Otherwise fine.

Skyhammers are my talon weapon of choice, so good there.

 Nevelon wrote:
One answer to deathstars is to reply in kind. Take your captain to 11: TH, gorgons’s chain (or SE if non-IH) Put him in a command squad on bikes. Give them some gear. Try to work in a librarian conclave. You’d probably have to cut the talons for points, which would leave you vulnerable to flyer spam. But just aim to dominate the ground game, and ignore everything on the wing; they can’t score objectives up there.

Alternatively, go full company gladius MSU spam. Put 25+ units on the table. Even if he kills 2-3 a turn, over a 6 turn game you still have more units then there are objectives. Play the mission, keep an eye on the VPs.

Switch to a Fist of Medusa TF. Take a skyhammer. Kill everyone who doesn’t have there anti-pod tactics squared away.

There are a number of more competitive SM lists out there.

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Bikes are pretty tough. Especially if the have a reasonably well equipped captain tanking wounds for them. And don’t forget, anything you are shooting is going to get mangled with the grav. So return fire won’t be that bad. And if you have spare bikers, they can act as ablitive wounds for the grave gunners. On that note, consider an attack bike. They are 2W. So if you have your captain tanking on his 2+ artificer amor, he can always shuffle a wound off on it via LOS! if things get ugly, and the squad won’t loose any firepower.

The drop pod devs work like any other pod tactic. Don’t do it alone, that way lies a suicide drop (which can still be worth it) Multiple pods dropping together (even just two helps a lot) Land hot, land hard, and mangle anything near the LZ. The idea is that anything that survives the onslaught will be so crippled that they can’t fire back effectively, if not dead outright. If you do a flank drop, and kill the unit hanging out there, you are probably only going to be exposed to 1-3 units. You should be able to weather that. The rest of your army should be putting pressure on as well. If you need to do a suicide drop into the killzone, put your faith in the Emperor and hope it was worth it.

A CTDA captain is also a pretty tough nut to crack. You can have him on point to tank wounds. This should preserve the devs. Who should have killed something on the drop. Even if you go cheep with the MMs, 4 of them is enough to pop a tank reliably. And while very expensive, 4 GCs will murderize almost anything. So the squad already has probably made its points back (assuming you shot something better then a rhino)

You are going to take return fire. We are not Tau who get to hang out at the back of the table and shoot things at extreme range. Or Eldar, who skitter away like a stabbed rat whenever you look at them. As long as you keep an eye on the AP2-3 and keep some cover between it and you, or just kill it first, you should be OK. But don’t be so risk-adverse that you give away the game.

“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships were built for.”

Go forth and crush the xenos and heretic. Emperor protects.