Space Marines 101 - Terminators & Assault Terminators

Terminators


The normal variant of the terminators are extremely durable and can put out a good amount of storm bolter shots, whilst being effective in close combat with powerfists and the sergeants sword.

These guys really don't need a land raider transport, as the land raider doesn't have any firing points. They are better used as fire magnets whilst walking towards the enemy line. This can be pretty effective combined with their relentless rule, allowing them to shoot their heavy weapons whilst moving forward.

With their 2+ and 5++ they can take a lot of beating, but once the AP 1-2 or other armor ignoring weapons start showing up, their 5++ only last for so long. But if you add a independent character (like Lysander) you can use their better invul save to take some pounding, at least if its only a lascannon or two, just make sure its a IC with the eternal warrior rule.

But overall they are a good versatile unit as they can take on even some of the best close combat units with their power fists, and then lay out some good firing with heavy weapons and storm bolters.

Wargear


For each five terminators in the squad you can take an additional upgrade weapon: the heavy flamer, assault cannon or a cyclone missile launcher.

Heavy Flamer
This is used best against hordes, and will do pretty good against them as well, due to the fact that it ignores cover saves, and 4+ or worse armor saves. The upgrade itself is very cheap, and an okay choice if you don't have more than 5p to spare on upgrades for them. But due to the template range it will only get to fire once or twice per game, and sometimes it might have been better laying out more storm bolter shots. But I think its worth taking if you only have 5p to spare, and only in 5 man squads of terminators.

Assault Cannon:
This weapon is great, it lays down 4 rending shots a turn at strength 6 and AP 4. Its best used against elite infantry and tanks. You actually have (statistically) better odds of destroying a land raider with an assault cannon, than a lascannon. But the range is only 24", but that isn't really a problem for terminators as the rest of the squad have 24" storm bolters, and the fact that they can move 6" and still fire them. The problem with this upgrade however is that it makes the assault cannon wielding terminator cost a whooping 70p. So you might not want to take these on smaller cheaper squads of terminators.

Cyclone Missile Launcher:
My favorite upgrade choice for the terminators. This weapon basically shoots like two missile launchers, whilst the user moves and fire his storm bolter on the side. This is great as you don't lose anything when taking the upgrade. The CML can take down light transports, and if lucky even tougher targets. And if there are no tanks to shoot at, then you can fire small blasts on hordes. If you have two of these, in a 10 man squad you get a total of 20 storm bolter shots and 4 small blasts, it really puts a lot of hurt on infantry.

They also have the chainfist upgrade, which basically grants the user 2D6 against armor penetration. I usually take one of these in case I got the points, as it adds to the versatility of the squad, and thats always a good thing.


Assault Terminators


Often thought as one of the best, if not the best choice for an elite slot in the space marine army. And this is due to the fact that they get free thunder hammers and storm shields or dual lightning claws. With thunder hammers and storm shields they are a great unit against other elite units, with 2+ and 3++. If you take the lightning claws they are better versus less elite units as they lose the 3++ and str 8, but gain extra attack and reroll to wound.

If you plan on bringing assault terminators, you really need a transportation for them. Their only choice is a land raider variant, and if you want the most transport space the Crusader variant is the one you should consider. You can deep strike them into enemy territory, but you have to remember that they get one turn of shooting, and if they are a shooty army you'll just get shredded to pieces before being able to assault. The land raider is a great transport for these guys, as you can drive 12", disembark 2" and assault 6" making a effective 20" 'bubble of terror'.

Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield:
This are the guys you want if you need to take down monsterous creatures, (mega armored) nobz or basically any other elite unit. The reason I say "any other elite unit" is because you will get ripped to shreds by 30 ork slugga boyz on the charge, not due to the fact that it ignores your armor, but because you only have 1 wound and with every 1 you roll, one terminator dies. Oh and on the charge you only get 3 attacks per terminator AND the boyz strike first. If you plan on going against a lot of boyz you'll want to take lightning claws instead.

But overall this is the favorable choice of weapon load out for these guys. You'll really show the enemy what terminators are made off.

Dual Lightning Claws:
This load out is great for taking down hordes of things. But you will lack against other elite targets as you still only have your 5++ to keep you alive, and against monsterous creatures your strength wont be great (however the reroll to wound might help).

Combination:
The preferred way is to take most thunder hammers and storm shields, but with some lightning claw terminators thrown in the mix. This way you might pick off some units before they get to strike, but put the armor ignoring wounds on the shields. Sometimes if your in a tight spot you might want to put the armor ignoring wounds on the 5++ lightning claw terminators as they might already have struck and you need every thunder hammer to strike back at them.

Sidenote:

Always remember that one assault terminator squad and one terminator squad in your army can take a land raider as a dedicated transport, meaning it doesn't take up a heavy support slot. This way you could field 5 land raiders, or 2 land raiders and 3 predators/vindicators/whirlwinds etc.

Space Marines 101 - Assault Squad

The marines in an assault squad are all normal marines, but equipped with jump packs and chainsword instead of boltgun. This means that they keep their 1 attack in their profile but gain an additional attack due to the chainsword.

Many people will claim that the assault marines are worthless and you can spend your points on better more effective things, and whilst I don't think they are worthless, I do understand why they don't like them.

The positive side of the coin is that the marines are all equipped with jump packs and power armour, meaning you have a fast moving 3+ armor save melee unit. This means that they are more mobile than your units in transports, as they can jump across terrain with ease.

The downside is that if your units aren't in transports they can be shot at. Meaning your assault squad will get a constant rain of fire against them. And a 3+ armor save will just last that long. This means you'll want to bring a full squad (10man) so that you have lots of attack left when you get the charge. This will cost you 190p without any additional upgrades.

The idea is to use them to get an early charge against a unit that would stay back and lay down fire. One example would be Necron Warriors or Immortals, they wouldn't be fast enough to move away from your marines and your marines would eat them up in close combat. You'll want to keep them in cover or out of line of sight whilst advancing to reduce the number of casualties.

However if your opponent is using a close combat focused army, you can use them as a counter attack unit. This way they can protect your other units that would get eaten up in close combat. But the marines tend to die against elite close combat squads, as they often wield armor ignoring weapons. Sometimes that extra round or two that they keep the enemies off your other units can be valuable.

Upgrades:


One of the best upgrades are the flamers, as you are able to take two of them in a 10 man squad. As the flamer is an assault weapon, you can weaken the squad properly before charging in to them. The sergeant should get a power fist or thunder hammer. You can give him a pair of lightning claws as well, but most of the time you'll want something with high strength in the squad, as the rest of the marines can hurt the weaker targets.

You could buy the sergeant a storm shield, however I think you shouldn't be risking taking saves on him and instead pick off your normal marines to make sure your fist or hammer sergeant will get to strike (I:1 :( ). So personally I don't recommend getting the storm shield for him. You'll want to try to keep the point cost as low as possible.

A standard assault squad with 2 flamers, 1 power fist will cost around 230-240p.

Space Marines 101 - Predators

The Predator is a great support choice for your SM army, capable of killing of infantry and tanks alike. The weapons on the Predator have all decent range, that combined with AV 13 on the front, can be a real pain for every opponent. And the best thing of all, is the price.

The point value for the Predator is great, but if you only include one, the enemies might pick it off early in the game. You are more likely to have better results with 2 or even 3 of these. And they don't have to compete for land raiders for Heavy Support slots (Terminators can take those as dedicated transports), unless you take many raiders of course.

Predator Patterns:


The Destructor pattern Predator is armed with a Autocannon as its main turret. You can upgrade it to carry Heavy Bolter side sponsons, or lascannon sponsons.

The Autocannon/Heavy Bolter variant is the cheapest of all the Predators (unless you don't take any sponsons at all, which I dont recommend). For a mere 85p you get a high armoured, heavy infantry, killing tank. These Predators can lay down 8 med/hi str shots a turn each.

However sometimes you want something that can penetrate other tanks. And thats when you take the Autocannon/Lascannon variant. For 120 points you get 2 str 7 and 2 str 9 shots that can mess with any vehicle in the game. But this version of the Predator is a lot more expensive than the heavy bolter sponson variant, and it can sometimes fail to get its point value back. This is because you can easily fail both lascannon shots a turn for several turns.


The Annihilator pattern Predators main turret is a twin linked lascannon. This version is pretty expensive and costs 105p without sponsons. You can add the same sponsons as you can on the Destructor. But the role of the Annihilator is a tank buster, and should be used accordingly.

The T-L Lascannon/Lascannon variant is the best anti-tank version of the Predator. Being able to put out 3 lascannon shots (one t-l) per turn. This version is extremely expensive (165p) and most opponents that have vehicles in risk will keep it at least shaken for most of the game.

The T-L Lascannon/Heavy Bolter variant should not be used as its too expensive for what it does. With this variant you either waste low strength heavy bolter shots at a high toughness/armoured target, or waste a high strength shot at easy targets. I think you'd be better of with just the T-L Lascannon on it, if thats what you wish. This way you can keep moving 6" a turn and still firing all your weapons.

Space Marines 101 - Land Speeders

Land Speeder Squadron


The Land Speeders are great choices for a space marine army. They can move fast, ignore terrain and deal a lot of hurt on anything the opponent can field. They aren't too durable however, and in certain setups they can cost quite a lot per speeder. This balances it out nicely, as you can still claim a 4+ cover save by moving flat out.

Even if the opponent manages to destroy a speeders weapons, you can always move up to 24" and contest the enemy objective. This is a useful tactic that can win or draw some games.

Wargear


There are several ways to equip a Land Speeder. The ones people tend to use in 5th edition are : The Tornado Heavy Flamer/Multi Melta Land Speeder or the Typhoon Land Speeder.

The Tornado HF/MM Speeder is a great choice when you need something fast to stop the enemies advance. You can move 24" towards the enemies transports on turn 1 and hope that the cover save keeps you alive. On turn 2 you can move 12" and shoot a multi melta shot into their tank. The key is having a 24" 2d6 melta threat range. The other use for this is to burn hoards of enemies in one go, as the heavy flamer is strength 5 and ap 4, and it ignores cover! This is great for taking down reinforced hoard units, like upgraded genestealers, 'ard boyz etc.

One of the main points about the HF/MM speeder is that you rarely want to fire both weapons at the same target, which means that you can move 12" every turn and still fire that one weapon.

The Typhoon Speeder is a more defensive version of the speeder, keeping range to stay alive. This is a totally different version than the HF/MM one as you have 48" range and can move 12" whilst firing it. You may only move 6" if you want to fire the heavy bolter, but most of the time speed is better than the heavy bolter. This version of the speeder is excellent at destroying light armor or shooting small blasts into hoards. Theres really no place for transports to hide from this speeder when it moves 12" and fires 48".

The idea is to stay just a round your max range taking pot shots at whatever is harassing your main force. The Typhoon is a expensive version of the speeder, as it costs more than your basic heavy bolter sponson predator, but the speed and range makes up for it all.

Other setups can be good, but point wise those two versions are the one that pack the most punch for the buck. One Tornado pattern speeder equipped with an assault cannon might not be the best, but three of them can shoot a rain of shots with the assault cannons and heavy bolters (12 assault cannon shots & 9 heavy bolter shots). This might not be the most competitive setup but it can be fun to play with it.

Space Marines 101 - Scouts & Land Speeder Storm

Scouts

There are several ways to equip your scouts, depending on what you want them to do.

If you want your scouts to hold your own objective or other objectives nearby your deployment zone, then you might want the extra range from the sniper equipped scouts.

If you take sniper rifles then 10p extra for a heavy bolter or missile launcher is well spent. Its also good to take camo cloaks on static sniper squads, as they will most likely be in 4+ cover giving them a 3+ cover save.

However if you want your scouts to be on the offensive then you'll want to keep them with their boltguns or then exchange them for a combat blade. Some people equip them with shotguns, but personally I don't think its worth it.

Camo cloaks aren't needed on forward positioned scouts, as they don't really get a cover save at all anyways.  Yes you get a 5+ if you go to ground, but if you need to do that, you're almost certainly dead anyways.

All scouts come with the infiltrate, scouts and move through cover rule which all greatly help them to do what they need. Infiltrate combined with scouts makes your units able to go almost anywhere they need to on the deployment phase.

Sadly scouts cannot take rhinos or razorbacks as dedicated transports (however they may chose to use another squads rhino/razorback). This is one of the reasons scouts aren't as viable as objective holders as the tactical squad. One heavy flamer and your scout squad cries.

Land Speeder Storm

You can take a Land Speeder Storm to carry them around, however it takes up a fast attack choice. As it is a open topped vehicle, your scouts can disembark 2" from any point of its hull AND assault on the same turn. This tactic, combined with the cerberus launcher and combat blade equipped scouts (and sergeant with power fist), can be truly devastating against  non assault oriented armies like Necrons.

You are almost guaranteed to get a turn 1 or at least turn 2 assault and if you win, you have a good chance of catching them with sweeping advances.

You can upgrade the heavy bolter to a heavy flamer, multi melta or assault cannon. I think that the heavy flamer or multi melta are the best choices as you will want to get close to the enemy with the scouts. The assault cannon is a bit price and increases the price of the speeder by too much.

The bad side is that the storm can only fit 5 scouts, which means that you need to chose your targets carefully or your scouts will get heavily outnumbered. Another negative side is that its AV 10 all around AND open topped. Which means it will go down pretty fast just to standard small arms fire. And against melta weapons (and other AP 1 weapons) it will go down even faster.

Space Marines 101 - Tactical Marines & Transports

Going to talk about all the different choices in the Space Marines codex. In this part I'll start out with the tactical marines and dedicated transports.

Tactical Squad


The main guys in your army, the ones who will make sure you can win objective games. I'd take at least 20 of these in any sized army. However personally I rarely take more than 20. As they are quite expensive and in my opinion not that great at killing stuff.

Also you really need some sort of transportation for these, be it Rhino/Razorback or Drop Pods. I'd rather take Rhinos and Razorbacks for my tactical marines and use drop pods for more specialized squads.

Theres several ways to use tactical marines, but my favorite one is just to bunker down around an objective with them and/or move them up towards the enemy objective escorted by the rest of your assault force. This is one of the reasons scouts aren't as good as objective holders, tactical marines can get where they need to with less losses on the way.

Wargear

Always remember to take the free upgrades (Flamer/Missile Launcher etc), as even if you take a missile launcher marine in a squad that is moving around, he can shoot 1 shot (bolt pistol) to the same range as the rapid firing boltguns, which means that they only lose 1 shot, but gain the heavy weapon.

The wargear options that I think are the most price worthy are, the flamer (free, anti-horde), the meltagun (cheap, anti-vehicle), the missile launcher (free, versatile), the multimelta (free, anti-vehicle), plasma cannon (cheap, anti-elite). However the plasma cannon is debatable, as you risk killing the firer with the weapon. But if it lands on meganobz, terminators or something like that, it can be devestating.

Sergeant Wargear

On the sergeant I highly suggest taking a power fist if you have the extra points. If you dont, running him vanilla with just chainsword and pistol is good. But the power fist can really be extremely useful! Some people think that codex marines shouldn't win close combat (Combat Tactics, ATSKNF), but honestly I don't feel the same way.

I'll try to explain why: Yes its true, we can chose to fall back, yes we can also auto regroup even if we're under 50% squad size. However what if you roll poorly on your fall back move, and the enemy conscolidates towards you. Its actually pretty easy for them to get within 6" of your squad, which means you can't regroup. And you continue to fall back, and once this has started he'll just escort you out of the table.

Another reason is what if you get charged near your own table edge? Losing combat then means you'll lose the entire squad.

A power fist in the squad often means that you tie or even win close combat, unless its against specialized assault squads. But then you can at least kill someone in the process, and then fall back. Also making tyranid monsterous creatures fear your tactical squads can be extremely valuable!

Transports


As already mentioned, your tactical squad will need transportation of some sorts. And trust me, they really need it. If you decide to footslog with your tactical squad, they wont be half as effective. There is several reasons for this, but the most important ones are: faster movement, and protection from low-strength infantry fire.

But luckily the space marines have several really nice transport options:

The Rhino is the most basic transport, armed with a normal storm bolter. It is a really cheap choice and one of the best choices to carry tactical marines.

The Razorback is a ideal choice for a squad that is set up to camp an objective in the own deployment zone. The normal razorback comes with twin linked heavy bolters which can hurt infantry squads. Most of its armaments got long range, which further improves its defensive role. One of the other popular choices for the razorback is the twin linked lascannon, however this is a expensive upgrade, but it does help to destroy incoming transports. The only problem with the razorback is that it can only carry 6 models, which means tactical squads need to combat squad, to use them. Giving more possible kill points for the enemy.

Drop Pods are actually great for many units, and is a way for units to deep strike relatively safely. As long as you are 12" from the table edge you can't really fail your deep strike down. The main problem with the drop pods are that once you are down, you are walking. This is why I think drop pods are better suited for specialized units, like sternguard or dreadnoughts. Sternguard can kill off the most dangerous threat around them and hope to survive a turn. And the dreadnoughts can pop smoke or kill something on the turn they come down. I don't think dropping tactical marines down are the way to go, as they really need to get from point A to B fast, and a drop pod only lets you get to point A fast.