Marines - a discussion

[Vaaish]

Over the past couple of months I've been looking at getting an admech fleet, but with a few playtests under my belt, I can't say I'm overly impressed with the results against my usual chaos opponent. I felt, well, outgunned and rather flimsy (PK is a rough thing to deal with). I plan on tweaking a few things and giving it another go in the future, but in the mean time my thoughts have wondered over to Marines.

I know the traditional builds are all SC and escorts or two BB and escorts, but I'm curious on how the upcoming FAQ may change that. Secondly I'm trying to keep this pretty cheap since I don't have the budget I used to have for models and I already have a pretty large chunk of epic backlog and a bit of 40k outside of my commission work. Finally I'm looking for decent variety so I can pull in parts for an armageddon fleet when I get bored.

What I'm thinking about doing is picking up the GK cruisers from FW for conversion since they are about $10 USD. I seem to remember them coming in packs of two, but the site doesn't list that as the case anymore so does anyone know if they are singles or doubles? I'm also looking at the FW escorts and a Battle Barge.

What I'm thinking is something along these lines:

Battle Barge
4x Strike Cruisers
6x Gladius
3x Hunter
MOF, 2x rerolls.

If my figures are right, that will clocking around 1495 points and be about $125 USD including shipping. My thoughts are the strike cruisers can squadron and avoid bracing with the numbers keeping things from losing too much firepower and do good damage up close with the change to to the bombardment cannons and maybe some teleport attacks. It gives me a 6 strong gladius squadron for hunting and whatever I need and a good amount of boarding torpedoes with the hunters and BB as well as a bit more AC than I'm used to with my IN fleet. Not really so much with the range, but it does have speed. I think it also gives a good range of models to play with in an armageddon fleet.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[horizon]

FW Strike Cruisers are 1 per pack (I bought one over two years ago).

AdMech: tricky fleet. But I am getting hang of them. But they fare better in larger games. In small games they ain't impressive at all.

Marines & FAQ, dunno if FAQ changes them a lot.

With Marines I hear varied stories. Powergamers tend to go BattleBarge+escorts (Hunters, Firestorm RSV), no strike cruisers.
Very unfluffy of course.

I think the 3/3/3 part goes well enough and is character. 3/3/3 meaning 1 third of pts to barge, 1 third to cruisers, 1 third to escorts.

Again a tricky fleet to use. Very fast, good boarding & teleport. So the main doctrine is straightforward.

However they are very vulnerable across the board.

[Vaaish]

Yeah, I was playing 1500 with admech. First game was utter disaster since we tried fleet engagement and I got sphere for my formation. Couldn't get anything into position. The second game was better but without any NC the PK was a tough nut to crack having it's perfect accuracy multi-hit NC. I just couldn't focus enough weapons to be a serious threat and the added range for the cruisers didn't really add much to my overall engagement capabilities. Not having to worry about AC so much was a nice change though. I do agree that the endeavours are a nice little cruiser. 3 turrets and 45cm wb are nice for something that maneuverable. I'm plannng on trying again sometime in here with the Ark Mechanicus to see if it gets me much of a firepower boost. 4 lances, 10 batteries and a NC at 60cm looks nice, but I could see how the ret you favor would be almost the same.

I may have to proxy out the marine fleet as well as try some more stuff with admech.

[Zhukov]

I have played a SM fleet very close in construction to your proposition. My fleet was as follows:

2x Devastations
2x Murder
2x Slaughter
3x Idolators
3x Iconoclast
3x Infidel

Chaos Warmaster Ld 8 w/Mark of Tzeentch

VERY close battle. I sent everything I had down the left side of the table directly towards him while my Devs went to the right to provide long range Lance support. He completely ignored the Devs and surged forward against the main bulk of my forces. My Idolators and cruisers picked on his Strike Cruisers and I went through them like butter. Game ended due to turn limit cause what was left of my fleet after the main pass couldn't touch the BFI Battlebarge.

-Zhukov

[horizon]

Regarding AdMech,
this was my most succes yet:

Retribution
Gothic
Lunar
Endeavour
gladius x3
hunter x3

Nova on Retribution, ranges on Lunar & Endeavour.

Make sure to give AWR to the Retribution. Make the ship finally a gunnery ship.

This went up vs Chaos list with 3 carriers and won. High turrets worked. Great gunnery from Retribution and Gladii made the day.

BatRep on the forum.


But not ideal fleet, I'd like to add Dictator for balance sake.

I only lost twice to Marines. First games with Tau in a breakthrough & convoy scenario, both times Marines defended.

All other games I won vs Marines (Eldar & Tau CPF).

[Vaaish]

Zhukov: I have a good respect for murders. I've talked through a lot about the chaos fleet with my friend and he's been trying to find ships that work vs my primary fleet (2 vengeance and an empy). What we've found is the common wisdom for Chaos fleets just hasn't held true. I think we've tried at least 10 games using slaughters in various roles to little effect. Carnage have failed miserably at long range gunnery and haven't really held up close range either (slaughters outperformed them). When he started taking murders and hades it became more difficult. What you say though, is encouraging.

Horizon: it seems you are going for fewer cruisers and more escorts in admech. I was thinking about the possibilities of foregoing the battleship completely to maximize numbers of cruisers. Taking 2x lunar +range, 2x gothic, 2x endeavour +range+ lance, and 2x Endurance +lance. three turrets across the board and a few options for squadroning. (lunar+ endeavour or 2x endeavour and 2x lunar).

[horizon]

All cruisers would work well for AdMech, since it makes better use of the single dorsal lance.

[canucks fan]

Make sure to also check bartertown or Ebay for buying the fleet.

[Vaaish]

I watch ebay, but I've yet to see a really good deal on BFG stuff. most of the stuff I see ends up going for MORE than the cost new.

[Zhukov]

Ebay used to be great before it switched to PayPal only...

Chaos... Well Slaughters I use as a second wave/mop up weapon and they do really well at this role. Carnages are a problem for me though. I only have one in my collection and I contribute it's problems to that. I can see two or more of them squadroned working really really really well though.

The things I noticed about the Space Marine fleet is that their strength really lies in their bombardment cannons. I lost most of my stuff to them. T'Hawks aren't great because they don't do a lot of damage, they are more of an annoyance to capital ships, and you can easily outnumber them in terms of total output of ordnance. Boarding is good if you have the skill to get the base-to-base on a regular basis. It's definately a hard fleet to play.

-Zhukov

[Vaaish]

Yeah and I think the cannons will be even nastier now that they don't have to choose shields or column shift. Should make things much nicer with marine shooting, I think. My friend and I've used carnage in pairs before, the result wasn't nearly so good as one would think. Maybe murder against eldar, but against IN the result was... lackluster in the times we've played.

[horizon]

Odd, I've seen a Carnage on lock on crippling an IN cruiser in one salvo. Good results around here. Where as Murders are more 50/50.
Both ships have strenghts and it is the full fleet which decides which of the two is better for you and your tactics.

[RayB HA]

If you're going the 'Geddon' route for a SM list (which is easily the most competetive) exploit the strengths of both IN and SM's!

Consider using Strike Cruisers to fullfill fleet requirements (still buy them in squadrons though!), 3 SC's would allow an Emperor BB and a Vengeance GC(as a reserve) for example!

If you use SM escorts put IN fighters on CAP!

Mix the odd Gladius in with RSV Cobras.

NC's are good, but you'll find it hard to field more than a couple.

Nothing else off the top of my head I'm afraid. Slaughters are great! Don't knock 'em! 

Cheers,

RayB HA   

[Vaaish]

Ray, I'm not using the armageddon fleet with this list. I just want to have options so that I CAN use it when I want to or play with marines alone. I'm also just telling my experiences with slaughters too.

[Seahawk]

That's actually extremely close to how I use my marines. The only difference is I swap the Hunters for Swords.

Squadroning the SC's is obviously a good idea, as you already know. My first turn I wall up with them and launch a massive wave of thunderhawks...kept backish, they are a low-priority target for opponents. Punish at least one cruiser, doing at even 2-3 damage is fine, and that wave of thunderhawks can swoop in and really cripple it for a while, leaving you to focus on the rest of the fleet while it tries to repair 6-8 criticals. Then keep further launchings for defense.

Has always worked for me anyway.