JOURNAL SUBMISSION ELDAR AND MARINE TRICKS IN EPIC40K Dear Sir: Here are some tricks and tips about Eldar and Marines in Epic40K. Yours faithfully: Emil Kartalov attached material follows contents: THE ELDAR: The Eldar Tactics 1.Encirclement. 2.Containment. 3.Redeployment. 4.Monofilament. 5.Morale Harvesting. 6.Disrupt Cohesion. The Eldar Strategy 1.Intro. 2.Stomp Chaos! 3.Stomp IG! 4.Stomp Marines! 5.Stomp Squats! 6.Stomp Tyranids! 7.Stomp Orks! THE MARINES: I.Intro. II.Marine Tactics: 1.Rhino shield. 2.Firefight sneak. 3.Suppression. 4.Fake Disruptors. 5.Hard points. 6.Mechanization. 7.Imperial terror. 8.Containment. 9.Morale dumps. 10.Titan armament. 11.Attrition. III.Detachment samples. IV.Marine Strategy: 1.Stomp Chaos! 2.Stomp Orks! 3.Stomp IG! 4.Stomp Tyranids! 5.Stomp Eldar! The Eldar Tactics in Epic40K ---------------------------- Through my experience as an Eldar Epic and Epic40K player, I have developed some new tricks or have acommodated old ones. I have mostly played on 2000 pts in Epic40K. 1.Encirclement. In many battles against Chaos I have continually faced the problem of a high-assault mobs of the opponent rolling down the field towards my thin line of precious Eldar troops. In response to that menace, I developed the ideas of combining the high speed of my jump-packed aspects and my bikes. Suppose you are facing two slow demon det of about 15 units each and you have a det of 10 jump-packed aspects and two det of 10 jetbikes. Put both of your dets on assault. Win initiative in normal movement. In your normal move, pull back the aspects to just outside 30cm away from the demons, but retain direct apposition with them. Pull the bikes away to the left and to the right of the aspects at about the same distance - barely outside 30cm away from the demons. At this point, your line should look like a crescent open towards the enemy, where the aspects are in the base, the jetbikes are in the horns, and the demons are between the horns. If Chaos wins initiative in the assault phase, he can get a little bit closer to you, but cannot engage, since you are outside 30cm, and the demons cannot double their 15cm unless they can engage. In your assault, hit demons frontally with the aspects. Try to two-on-one the demons. You do not need casualties from hits; all you need is to to win the assault. Remember, a demon supports with 1, but fights with 4. The bikes engage with one or two bikes of each det, so that you can count most bikes as support. The unengaging bikes position themselves about 10cm away from the demons so that they can support and prevent retreat. Ideally, you should be able to close the crescent into a circle, whence the name - encirclement. Winning the assault should not be difficult when you support with so many bikes and apply two-on-one. Then everyone within the circle of death is lost. The added bonus is the ability to score all blastmarkers you have inflicted immediately denying the opponent the chance to recover them. If you have doubts that some enemy stands can manage to get outside the 15cm gun-down, choose them as the casualties in the assault. If this happens next to a table edge, you will need only one det of bikes. If you lose initiative in normal movement and you are made to move first, you just need to pull back keeping in mind the most the demons can move on assault. If they move their most, very little changes; if they don't, you still win, since your superior firepower will have more turns to shoot before the demon wave hits. A fact to remember is that sometimes it will be beneficial to engage with more bikes at assault penalty, if that will allow other bikes to move further and close the circle. The example here is against Chaos, since the trick was originally developed against Chaos. However, the general idea and geometry are applicable against all other armies. 2.Containment. Encirclement is a fine thing, but you should not expect to succeed for long singly by it, especially if you have such worthy opponents as the ones in my gaming group. An expensive but effective countermeasure is to have a long solid line of troops stretching from one end of the board to the other, since then the bike horns cannot flank the enemy and close the circle. The aspects can hit a segment of the line, but its neighbours can encircle the aspects to avenge their comrades. An easy solution to that problem presents itself against high-assault zero-firepower units like the demons. By careful positioning and choosing your target of jump-packed aspect hit, you can assault and break the central det and firefight and break its neighbours - the aspects do have a gun. That makes sure the demons do not counterattack in the same turn. Iterate next turn. This little thing will only work against a dense demon line of single-det depth. A Chaos player quickly learns to echelon his wave. You hit the front echelon but the second demon line will jump out from in-depth to stomp your aspects. Additionally, Chaos will start taking engines/silver towers/cultists to protect himself from firefights. Thus I have become much more careful with the aspects and I have developed the containment trick. It involves two different strategies applying to different constitution of the enemy echeloned wave. Suppose the enemy wave contains only two lines of demons. Then I do the Glorious Sacrifice of the Lonely Bike. Take a det of 10 bikes. Put them on assault. In the assault phase, a lonely bike separates from the group, jumps right in front of the demon line guns-ablaze, and firefights the entire demon line back. The second line comes in and vengefully rips the bike to pieces, which results in one BM for you and a broken det, which retreats a little bit to recover BM and rally. To recapitulate, Chaos loses its entire assault move, since the two lines have effectively exchanged place at the cost of one bike per turn. That buys more time for your shooty units. Just do not roll snake-eyes for BM/rally. Suppose the enemy wave contains a sandwich - antifirefight line between two demon lines. Then hit the front demons with the aspects. Put the bikes right behind the aspects and engage with one or two bikes so that all bikes support. That breaks and drives away the front demons. Together bikes and aspects should win the firefight with the antifirefight line, break it and drive it back. Now if you are lucky, the second demon line may be close enough to be firefought and broken too. If not, they will jump on your aspects, kill some and break them, but then they will lose the firefight with the bikes, who are assault-shielded by the aspects. To recapitulate, you kill a bunch of demons, you break the entire wave and drive it back 15cm, at the expense of several aspects. That does buy a lot of time for your shooty units. 3.Redeployment. In many cases, against slow armies which fail to form an edge-to-edge assault wave, it pays to sacrifice a turn of shooting to redeploy your entire shooty defense line to the other side of the map by putting most units on march. That buys you several more turns of shooting, before the closeness of the enemy assault wave necessitates a new redeployment. You simply move in a big circle, whereas the opposing army mostly tries to follow you along a path in the shape of an expanding spiral concentric with your circle. If you manage to gun the down or reduce them to assault-manageable amount before the spiral crosses the circle, you win. 4.Monofilament. The Eldar lost all barrage weapons. Fortunately, they seem to have the best disrupters in the game. Use Night Spinners on dets you want to pin down, so that they do not move or go on assault; on war engines, so that you shut down death rays and megacannons; on enemy artillery, so that you shut down artillery pieces; on dets you are going to wipe out, so that you score the BM; on shooty dets, so that they do not go on overwatch. 5.Morale Harvesting. This works against armies which have trouble taking ground. Distribute a det of 10 scouts in a 60cm-radius semicircle centered at the HQ. If skillfully done, that should ensure several capture-and-holds, with all scouts still in command. The enemy has to divert precious firepower to the scouts to pick them out one by one, or let you soak up morale every turn. 6.Terrorization. If you play enough, you will discover that some units have considerable psychologically terrorizing effect on the opponent. In many cases, what they threaten to do and the opponents' panicky countermeasures are much more valuable than what the units can really do. Good examples of Eldar terrorizers are the Warlock Titan, the jump-packed aspects, and the night spinners. Exploit that psychological factor to the full by preserving such units until as late in the battle as possible. 7.Disrupt Cohesion. Many armies need to advance in a strict formation to protect themselves against tricks like encirclement or containment. Use that to your advantage. Let him advance, while shooting him from afar and bombing him. The opponent must make a choice - he has to advance cohesively, i.e. in formation, at the speed of the slowest unit, or he has to lose cohesion to move at full speed. You win in both cases - you either shoot/bomb him longer or take advantage of the exposed formation weaknesses. The Eldar Strategy in Epic40K ----------------------------- 1.Intro. The Eldar army is a sum of fast, high-quality, expensive, highly-specialized units. This predestines that the backbone of Eldar strategy is severe customization, profound planning, high discipline, and very flexible and mobile field behaviour. The Eldar come unexpectedly from nowhere, deliver a backsnapping lightning attack, and retreat as fast as they have arrived before any retaliation. In my opinion, an Eldar general must feel and act like a raider and a terrorizer, rather than an old-school field-bureaucrat, a religious zealot, or a bloodthirsty beast. The minute an Eldar general gets any stupid ideas into his head, e.g. staunchly holding his ground, gallantly engaging in an artillery duel, or heroically charging with his handful of aspects into the enemy hordes, is a minute of great grief and bloody levy for his Craftworld. The Eldar strengths: high speed, good firepower, decent cannon range, profuse anti-tank, best space fleet, best jump-packed assault infantry, best disrupters, a lot of skimmers, a lot of psykers, good walkers, indestructible titans if the dice are with you. The Eldar weaknesses: small infantry and bike range, bad tank armour, bad war engine armour, small damage capacity, automatic titan criticals, lame and expensive command units, ridiculous flak, no affordable transports, annoying det structure, seriously overpriced tanks, no drop pods, wipe-out penalty, small dets, no barrage weapons, no megacannons, no death rays. Enemy-specific musings follow. 2.Stomp Chaos! Jump-packed aspects are your terror troops. Bikes encircle and firefight; night spinners pin down the demons. Anti-tank on support platforms and scorpions to kill that annoying supreme commander that keeps prodding the chaos horde forward, the engines and silver towers that protect the demons from firefights, and those scary CSM land raiders. Nightwings must instill Chaos flyers with unholy awe. Phoenices allow you to play the waiting game and smack the Chaos artillery. Dark Reaper Exarch is Chaos's nightmare - long-range, profuse firepower and high assault in one. Be a sport - never ever take battletitans - Chaos cannot kill them without many land raiders. I took a Warlock once and felt terrible afterwards. The strategy is: give ground slowly but steadily; be ready to sacrifice bikes now and then; preserve the terror troops as much as possible but sacrifice them if you can save dark reapers, scorpions, and artillery; buy your time at the expense of containment troops. Be ready for redeployment if need be. Try to deny double assault movement to the enemy as much as possible. If you think your nightwings have splashed enough doomwings in the past for Chaos to get the message, try gambling - take only bombers some day. Ignore cultists, beastmen, and CSM bikes as much as you can. 3.Stomp Imperial Guard! Jump-pack terror and space fleet are valid as usual. Dreadnoughts are great since IG does not have much anti-tank and has bad assault. War Walkers are downsized dreadnoughts. Definitely a Warlock Titan as a deterrent against IG titans and tanks. Take falcons only as means to get walkers. Night spinners are a gamble, since siege artillery has bigger range. Maximize armour and range. IG cannot take ground - assign scouts to morale harvesting. The strategy is: hope that your maximized armour and the IG anti-tank deficiency will decisively increase your longevity. Hope that the titan does not fail his holo save too often. Load up on 45cm ranges - shoot those 3+ guardsmen/ 4+ rough riders dead before they close in. When they are too close, stomp them with the dreadnoughts and the aspects. Bomb his artillery into oblivion. Pulsarize the leman russ and anti-tank support weapons. Keep pressing him with your aspects - there is no point in holding back since his artillery range is too big and you jump on him from outside his infantry range. You can really push him off the board if you try hard enough. And, most importantly, for God's sake, spread out! He will find his barrage artillery next to useless when he can get only one unit under a template - the Eldar are a few, they can do it. If you gamble with night spinners, mostly try to shut down/keep from overwatch artillery pieces and leman russ; if he is silly enough to arm a titan with death rays and megacannons only, shut him down completely - I bet that is a lesson he will not forget. 4.Stomp Marines! Jump-pack terror and space fleet are valid as usual. Night spinners are nice unless you play with a cheeseball who takes IG artillery companies. Definitely a Warlock titan. Dark reapers seem a good idea. Scorpions are very good in skillful hands. Armour is pointless against the land raiders. Bikes may be useful for encirclement and defense if your opponent likes the ravenwing but hates terminators. I like including anti-tank support platforms in the night spinner det to discourage drop pods with assaults. Stress nightwings heavily to splash those thunderhawks. Do not bother with bombers unless you feel lucky. The strategy is: make sure those land raiders are silenced by the Warlock Titan and the scorpions. Once the land raiders are down, move in with the titan and the aspects and stomp the marines det by det. If the land raiders get too close to shoot back, do not be ashamed to turn tail and run even with the titan; you can still shoot backwards due to good firing arcs on both titan and scorpions. Dark reapers seem an excellent choice since anti-tank does not have advantage against them, they are cheaper than tanks, and they have 45cm to pick out the tacticals and terminators safely. Anti-tank support platforms in the night spinner det will spoil the fun of the assaults any day of the week. Scorpions require cold blood and skill to use since two land raiders will pop one every turn on overwatch if you venture within range. Spread out to make whirlwinds useless. Hold back the aspects until the land raiders are down and the assaults have dropped. 5.Stomp Squats! (just before you die of tedium) Squats are a dull boring army, so you need to play dully and boringly to win against them. Just pick two Warlock Titans, thirty jump-packed aspects, a scout det and two phoenix dets. Scouts do morale harvesting. Phoenices bomb. Titans advance, make holo saves, pulsarize around, and recover blastmarkers. Aspects hold back out of range of megacannons until the titans are about to hit the enemy line. Then the aspects join the festivities. You will ALWAYS stomp them as long as the dice are with you. You will always get vaped if you start rolling 1's. This is so dull it makes me weep! You might just as well roll 30d6 at the beginning of the game. If you roll less than five 1's, you claim victory. If you roll above five 1's, you concede the game. I must stop before I die with dehydration due to weeping. 6.Stomp Tyranids! Titans, jump packs, anti-tank, and night spinners are your friends. Use bikes for encirclement. Phoenices and dark reapers are next to useless against such armour. Nightwings may blow up the harridan but the gargoyles will victimize them. Better try the Eldar lamest new unit - the Fire Prism - neither a prism cannon nor a firestorm, but a little bit of both, just too little though and way too expensive. In this case though, they seem useful since they will flak when the bombing comes and will anti-tank in the other turns. Most obviously, anti-tank the synapse creatures. You might consider distortion cannon, since it causes an automatic critical and no save is allowed if you hit. If you manage to protect the scorpions, they can be worth it. Tyranids may be susceptible to disruption of cohesion depending on how many mycetic spore dets and assault spawns they have. 7.Stomp Orks! No info available. I have not fought them in Epic40K yet. THE MARINES ------------ I.Intro. II.Marine Tactics: 1.Rhino shield. 2.Firefight sneak. 3.Suppression. 4.Fake Disruptors. 5.Hard points. 6.Mechanization. 7.Imperial terror. 8.Containment. 9.Morale dumps. 10.Titan armament. 11.Attrition. III.Detachment samples. IV.Marine Strategy: 1.Stomp Chaos! 2.Stomp Orks! 3.Stomp IG! 4.Stomp Tyranids! 5.Stomp Eldar! 6.Stomp Squats! I.Intro, or "Let the marines be marines". After playing Eldar for quite a while in Epic40K, I bought and started playing the Marines. One of my motives was that the marines are an army which works very differently from Eldar; thus the experience would help me broaden my horizons. If there is one single dominant feature in the marine army, it unquestionably is versatility. The pillar of the army is the marine tactical and its upgrades, all of which combine excellent armour, good firepower, decent range, and savage assault. The upside of versatility is that if you lead the marines, you do not need to spend nearly as much time in your Reclusium customizing your army for the different opponents, since whatever balanced force you choose should be able to do well against any opponent. The marines are the least surprisable army in the game. The downside of versatility is that you always pay for it in points regardless of the fact whether you have customized your force or not. Suppose for example, that you buy marines to shoot with. Unfortunately you pay not simply for their firepower and range, but also for their other boosted stats. Thus the marines are never cost-efficient if assigned to specific tasks, but are always cost-efficient if they end up doing almost everything in a battle. The conclusion to be drawn is that you must let the marines be marines to maximize efficiency. This means you should not be afraid to be shot or close-assaulted while you keep your marines on overwatch to utilize rapid fire. Most bullets bounce off marine armour. Even if you lose the close combats, it will not be by much, and stubbornness ensures that next turn you will be on overwatch again. Thus you simultaneously use all marine specials. If you thusly lead your marines to do their best and most, is defeat really a possibility? This profound wisdom is at the heart of the fighting methods of my marines. It asserts the worth of big tactical companies, which should be kept on overwatch. That means they should be quickly deployed in good firing positions, so that they can spend the rest of the battle showering the enemy with torrents of rapid fire. The way to do that is to employ that rare gift - the cheap, fast, and spaceous rhino. All you do is march on the first turn and unload in a broad front. Then let the bolters do their job. The marines have many fine vehicles, e.g. the best tank in the game - the land raider. In my opinion though, their mission is to support the infantry, which should always be the bulk of the force. Resist the temptation to build your army around land raiders, predators, and whirlwinds. It is not that infantry exists to protect the vehicles, it is that vehicles exist to support the infantry. Due to the unreliability of reserves, drop pods should be used sparingly, only for very specific tasks, e.g. take out the enemy artillery or encircle his flank. The good news is that they are free. Thunderhawks are definitely too expensive to be used for transportation when you have free drop pods. They are the best bombers though. Unfortunately, I very seldom get to see them more than once per battle on 2000 point scale. By the fourth turn, the battle is usually already decided. The only good use they have is to show up once to take out a key enemy detachment, e.g. artillery. The marines are a 45cm range army, so THawks are the marine siege artillery rangewise. II.Tactics. 1.Rhino shield. This curious marine property was first noticed by Glenn. Once the marines have marched and unloaded to good firing positions, the rhinos lose a lot of their worth, since their main task, transportation, has been fulfilled. A way to utilize the empty rhinos is to advance them in front of the marines, so that they catch bullets instead of the marines, since they have the same armour of 5+. The problem that Glenn saw with this was that if the marine line gets assaulted, the rhinos being in front will really lose the assault for the marines with their value of zero. In the opposite arrangement, the rhinos will support with one each. I developed that idea into the conviction that it is in fact preferable for the rhinos to be in front unconditionally. Since shooting happens before assault, chances are that many rhinos will be shot dead before the assault phase instead of marines. Then the enemy assaults and kills rhinos instead of marines, but puts more blastmarkers (BM) since the rhinos fight worse. The summary goes like this: a. rhinos back - more marines are shot dead, more hits are put on marines in close combat, fewer marines on overwatch next turn; b. rhinos front - fewer marines are shot dead, fewer marines take hits in close combat, more marines on overwatch next turn, a couple more BM are put on the marines. In my opinion it is much more important to preserve the life force of the tactical company rather than receive a couple fewer BM. Combat experience has proven the wisdom of this conclusion against most armies. The tyranids are a notable exception and are discussed specially in the strategy section. 2.Firefight sneak. A problem that the marines face against close combat armies of low firepower value is that it is so beneficial to be on overwatch that it is a waste to put them on assault just to firefight back the assault wave before it hits them. A marine tactical has four times (!!) less firepower on assault than he has on overwatch. One way to deal with this is to buy a ravenwing or jump-packed assaults to do the job, while the tactical companies are invariably on overwatch. I stumbled over a subtler and sneakier way to do it, which helps the tacticals to do everything by themselves. In many cases it is possible to sneak up on the enemy using the overwatch 5cm move to close up on him within 15cm. Then overwatch goes normally, but winning initiative in the assault phase means the overwatching marines firefight away the wave. Thus no ravenwing or JP assaults are necessary. 3.Suppression. This is a counterintuitive effect of firing rules. We stumbled over it in my gaming group. Suppose your marine line of six tacticals and two devastators faces a triangle of orks, which points towards them with one of its vertices. Suppose all tacticals are barely in range only for a couple orks, whereas the devastators have all orks in range. According to rules, you roll eight dice in the open on overwatch and allocate hits regardless of the fact that all six tactical are really too far away from all but two orks. This is very counterintuitive at least for somebody like me, who comes from the point-to-point shots system of Epic Space Marines. A way to think about it is that the devastators effectively increase the range of the tacticals to 45cm. Barring cheese, you should consider this effect in creating your marine tactical detachments. The devastators suddenly became even more attractive just now. The term 'suppression' derives from the rationale Sean Upchurch came up with about this effect: the tacticals fulfil a "keep their heads down" order by providing suppressing fire, which allows the devastators the breathing space necessary to take very rapid and accurate pot shots. 4.Fake Disruptors. This is the way the marines compensate for not having any disruptors. You basically split the firepower of each of your tactical detachments among as many opponent detachments as possible, but still having a good chance to get hits. Thus each enemy detachment gets a BM for taking a hit. The next tactical detachment repeats the procedure. The result is a big number of enemy detachments with a lot of BM each. To increase this effect and also supply my tactical companies with a certain degree of autonomy from my panzer company, I include a support weapon (tarantula/rapier) in each, since a hit bestows an additional BM as from a superheavy weapon. The only downside of this trick is that it assumes there is not an enemy detachment which you really want to unload on before it has fired back. Barring this exception however, this is a pretty useful trick. 5.Hard points. This is the property of the marine army to have the highest availability of units with saves among the humanoid armies. Terminators, captains, and librarians form hard points in terms of survival ability against fire, close assault and wipe-out. I like boosting up my tactical companies with all three types. The +10 points for a captain are more than well spent on a save, 6 assault, and free jump packs. The librarian is the same deal since 10 out of the +20 is the standard for being a psyker. A terminator's doubled longevity is more than well worth the +4 points. Glenn was the first to make the most spectacular use out of all this. His tank company got stomped by a tyranid assault. The tyranids were ready to declare a wipe-out, score the BMs and add half the company's MP to their morale, when the marine captain ejected from the wrecked command land raider and ran away on his jump packs with all BMs. 6.Mechanization. This is how you fully mechanize a tactical company solely with rhinos. I got this trick from Glenn. The problem is that the detachment structure does not allow you to buy extra rhinos to transport terminators and AT. A way to go around it is to buy land raiders, but a lot of land raiders quickly approaches cheese, and also slows down the entire company to 20cm from the 30cm of the rhino. Razorbacks are fast, but inefficient. The trick is to sacrifice the free jump packs of both the officers in the company and make them buy a rhino each. That opens two spaces for terminators and/or AT. 7.Imperial Terror. As I had the chance to mention in my writing on Eldar strategy, some units are much more worth it for the purely psychological terrorizing effect on the opponent, than they are for what they can actually do. The whirlwinds being the only barrage weapon in the marine army are an example of terror troops. Whenever you have them, the opponent always thinks twice before bunching up his troops. The fact that the entire enemy assault wave is staggered over 30cm in depth rather than 10cm for fear of the whirlwinds is much more valuable to me as the marine commander than the extra die or two I would roll otherwise, since low wave density means many will not make it to assault my marines. Thus more marines survive and more marines overwatch next turn. All you have to do is find the ballance between not being cheesy and having enough weight in whirlwinds to scare the opponent. Up to this point, two whirlwinds in each of my three mechanized tactical companies have always been enough. That will probably change if my gaming group reads this ;) . The imperial battletitans are another example. They are tough enough to convince the opponent that they are practically indestructible, so they are ignored, which ironically makes them indestructible. Contrary to expectations, the land raiders are not terrorizers. They are just as dangerous as they look. Treasure them, but beware of cheese. THawks as bombers are the terror of any interceptor but a gargoyle. 8.Containment. I already talked about containment in General Eldar Strategy. The same idea can be utilized by the marines with two important corrections. First, the marine jump packs are not nearly as cool as the Eldar ones and the marine assaults are more expensive and less savage than fully upgraded swooping hawks. Since most of the casualties in JP dets come from close assault, the marine assaults are just not that good. In my opinion they are just too expensive to be used as containment troops, since expendibility is a primary requirement. There is no point to sacrifice a more expensive unit to protect a less expensive one, and that is exactly what you will end up doing if you protect the tactcals with assault marines. Second, the normal bikes and attack bikes, while not skimmers are in my opinion better than the Eldar jetbikes and vypers. At least in my gaming group, we almost never play on a map where skimmerism is of big value, since we do not want to get the slow-moving armies handicapped any further than they are by nature. We also pop up at the beginning of the shooting phase for realism. With skimmerism out of the way, the attack bike beats all records of efficiency at mere 10 pts a pop. It is as good as a vyper at less than half the price! In my opinion, containment is the primary role of the ravenwing, so it has to include attack bikes. Against units of low assault, a ravenwing of normal bikes supported by vindicators is worth trying. 9.Morale dumps. At the advent of Epic40K, all Imperials were pleasantly surprised by the toughness of the imperial battletitans. They are tough to shoot down and reasonably tough to kill by assault. That makes them a nice storage facility for morale. Against most armies, reasonable BM removal rolls mean the titan keeps you in combat for one extra turn when everything else of yours is broken. Beware of taking them against tyranids. Once they realize that they are the army which kills imperial titans most easily, the titan will switch roles from the hunter to the hunted. The same effect can be achieved by means of big and/or tough air detachments. I cannot remember the last time my THawk 'nuclear death' detachment got broken. The really big win for the marines in this respect is the ability to have very big companies of very tough troops. My standard mechanized tactical companies contain over twenty units of armour 5+ or better. Such a detachment costs a lot and is very tough to break. Thus a well-constructed marine force has this dump effect intrinsically and at no extra cost; in fact, you are paid for it since you buy fewer HQs. 10.Titan armament. In my opinion, the only two worthy weapons are death rays and heavy weapons batteries. A vortex is good only if you are absolutely certain that the opponent will take shielded war engines. Close combat weapons would have been worth it if they doubled the assault value against any unit. Titan barrages are a waste of points when you have whirlwinds, and you always will if you are wise. Besides, titan barrages lack the artillery special. Finally, the opponent will be spread out due to your whirlwinds, which further decreases the effectiveness of your titan barrages. Megacannons seem lucrative for extra BMs, but this is only an illusion - DRs do it better. What would you prefer, 2 BMs and a hit 5 out of 6 times or 1 always with some chance for another and a hit? The combination of HWB and DR means you can handle anything. You cannot lose DR shots due to BMs. You are unlikely to lose firefights. 11.Attrition. Some armies have very high assault troops without saves (e.g. genestealers and exarch aspects). For those, a marginal victory in close combat is a loss, since they will be the first to receive hits, and hits kill them. The size of the marine companies and the marine high assault are truly devastating against such troops. It is even worse if you follow my example to take as many officers as possible with a lot of terminators, since saves negate a lot of the bad consequences of losing an assault. It is a unique property of the marines to be most able of all armies to survive and recover from assault losses exactly due to such factors. Attrition is most effective against Tyranids and Eldar, but Chaos can also be affected since a terminator is basically just as good as a daemon in assault (3 instead of 4) particularly due to the save. III.Detachment Samples. mechanized tactical companies: capt, lib, 2 term, 6 tact, 5 rhinos, 1 AT, 1 razorback, 2 whirl capt, lib, 2 term, 4 tact, 2 dev, 5 rhinos, 1 AT, 1 razorback, 2 whirl capt, lib, 1 term, 1 AT, 4 tact, 4 dev, 6 rhinos, 2 whirl ravenwing: 3 bikes, 9 attack bikes lib bike, 12 attack bikes lib bike, 10 bikes, 5 vindicators panzer: capt JP, 4 LR, 3 Pred capt JP, 5 LR, 2 Pred terminator drop: capt JP, lib JP, 10 term assault drop: capt JP, lib JP, 14 assaults JP IV. Marine Strategy: 1.Stomp Chaos! Attack bikes are a must as containment for the daemons. The assaults are terribly expensive for this, especially since daemons have saves. The second biggest threat are the nurgle engines and THawks are the only way to get rid of them. A reaver can hold a flank against anything but greater daemons. Use the land raiders to pick out the knights and CSMs; leave the daemons to the tacticals since their armour is 4+ anyway. Have a good number of devastators or your tacticals may end up defenseless against noise CSMs and knights. Death-ray that annoying supreme commander. Terminators and officers are a must due to attrition effects. Fake disrupters are very effective since nothing is more devastating to Chaos than daemon waves frozen with BMs. Rip daemons with HWB and DR the CSM land raiders from a safe distance. Try to keep your infantry in buildings since then they are untouchable to cavalry-class daemons. Always consider prep-barrages since the marines will be on overwatch anyway, especially when facing greater daemons who will otherwise run away out of range. Firefight sneaks can be frighteningly effective. Bloodthirsters and lords of change is how imperial titans die; only shielding helps since those monsters can charge 75cm! In my opinion that is quite unreasonable. Nobody can convince me that something should be able to charge my titan from outside his DR range. Fortunately, our Chaos player takes them very rarely in a homogeneous detachment. 2.Stomp Orks! I am afraid the orks are the army designed to be beaten by the marines. The marines just are better in everything. The only challenge is presented by the big guns and the pulsa rockets, but there are enough AT and DR to pick them out. DR the warlord and AT the weirdboys (no save!). There is no point to drop. There is no point to bomb, since there will always be enough shielding. Containment with attack bikes may be necessary only to keep the land raiders safe. It is my hope that there can be a greater challenge if I do not take an imperial titan and the orks take a gargant and DR speedstas. Recently our ork player started developing a gretchin shielding. Basically gretchin catch bullets for the nobz, skarboyz, shooty boyz, big gunz, and pulsa rokitz of the same detachment. The strategy seems pretty effective. A way to counteract it is firefight containment with a ravenwing of attack bikes. One must be careful to be barely within 15cm of the gretchin, so that the bikes firefight only the gretchin rather than the entire orky wave. 3.Stomp IG! I have not led my marines against IG yet, but here is what I expect. The only real problem is IG artillery and there are four good ways to deal with it: assaults drop, terminator drop, ravenwing assault and Thawk 'nuclear death'. The titan and the land raiders should dispatch the leman russes. I expect the tactical companies to wipe out the IG infantry line in two turns of overwatch. Then the rest is a mop-up. The marines are particularly resistent to IG artillery since the marines have tank armour. The IG infantry is particularly sensitive against rapid-firing marines since army structure makes IG dets small, i.e. susceptible to wipe-out. This is probably the only case when rhinos should be back, since once the IG line collapses, you may want the rhinos to be alive to transport the tacticals to the IG artillery. 4.Stomp Tyranids! The chief problem with the bugs is their ability to drop in large numbers. They can drop all their infantry plus disruptors. This means that establishing a line will only get you encircled and eaten. In my opinion, mobile strategy with the marines against bugs is fictional, since they are very slow without their rhinos and loading and unloading leaves too much to initiative counters. A loading and unloading rhino moves 20cm, which is less than the move+charge rate of any bug. You also need base-to-base contact and you sacrifice rapid fire. It just does not work with tactical companies. The conclusion is that you need to form a bubble of tacticals and terminators, with all the guns sticking out like the barbs of a hedgehog. The core of the bubble is devastators, whirlwinds, and land raiders. Ideally the bubble should be in open ground, so that different dets can support each other with fire, and at least 30cm away from any buildings or forests, so that nothing can assault without being shot first. A titan is definitely necessary for morale storage. HWB are great against little bugs. The terror factor makes the bugs try to go around the titan, so a titan can hold a flank. This will work until the tyranid commander realizes how fragile in close combat the titans actually are. Two big things you pay in your titans for are reparable void shields and armour, but none of these will help you when the genestealers jump on your reaver, followed by a hyve tyrant. In the best case the bugs will be only +1, but if they use biovores on the titan, they may be +4 easily. That is one broken and quite likely dead titan. The hunter has become the hunted. The bugs have one bane and his name is 'marine tactical'. Just keep on overwatch and put as many BMs as possible, since those are what loses the battle for the bugs on the fourth turn. Fake disrupters! The big tactical companies are hard to wipe out, so the bugs are really suffocating towards the end of the third turn. Forget about containment, bikes, assaults, and all vehicles but land raiders and whirlwinds. Attrition is the way to kill tyrannids. Once the genestealers are dead, the assault total of the tyranid detachments drops by half. Since the tyranids are fast, devastators are a must especially for suppression as described above. Sad battle experience has indicated that the rhino shielding does not work against the bugs. Six rhinos in front means 12 more positions for the bugs to bite at undisturbed. The average assault of the bug is 4, so that means +48 in assault; that probably means another +1 modifier and more hits diverted to tacticals. It also increases the depth of the your belt without improving the range. Thus bugs, which normally would not have made it, will. Forget about rhinos altogether against the bugs, or they will lose the battle for you! Unfortunately, the lack of rhinos means you are very slow. Hence you must consider a ravenwing and JP assaults especially to take out that annoying biovore det that will always drop in a forest out of range of your whirlwinds and shell you for the rest of the game. Now something completely counterintuitive: do not try to AT synapse creatures, instead kill carnifexes. He will always have enough synapse creatures. Carnifexes are rampaging tanks and it is assault dice that kill you most. Putting hits on a tyrant just asks for the bug to make its save. Every shot counts, do not waste any. A dead bug now is better than a chance at a dead bigger bug. Mow them down quickly, methodically, and guaranteedly. In the same way, do not put hits on tyranid warriors in close combat, but on genestealers. Make it a goal for yourself to break as many dets as possible by the end of the fourth turn. Then it is very likely that you will emerge battered but victorious, which is very typical for the marines. A standard bug strategy is to hide behind hills and in forests in expectation of the assault phase, when they are guaranteed to move. A sure way to spoil their fun is to load up on whirlwinds. I am always extremely tempted to do so and it does take me a lot of effort to limit myself to two whirlwinds in each of my three identical tactical companies. Finally, I must fulfil my sacred duty to the Emperor by warning you about the bug artillery. All have 60cm range. That means that if you, like me, try to lead a pure marine force, you are always at a great disadvantage, since the marines are a 45cm range army. Thus a dactylis at 32 pts is as good a barrage against marines as an IG basilisk at 41 pts, is twice harder to bomb since it has 6+ armour, and is much tougher with assault of 2. I cannot think of a more efficient unit in the entire bug army! The biovores can drop and will exactly where they need to. They will literally bleed your morale out and there is nothing you can do about it unless you take assaults, but then guess who gets disrupted. With five BMs even stubbornnes means less than 1 in 3 chance that the det will move. It is all very sad. 5.Stomp Eldar! I have not faced Eldar yet mostly because I was the regular Eldar player in the group before a switched to marines. Here are some ideas though. Assault aspects should be susceptible to attrition due to lack of save. The Eldar have the blight of small dets and a wipe-out penalty; that should make them really hurt when they face the marine tactical companies. The marines have enough firepower to make titans fail holosaves enough. The land raiders should sneak in range under cover or they will really regret those pulsars. The mission of the land raiders is to blow up the titan and those aspect-laden wave serpents. An imperial battletitan should stay ready to deathray any engine of Vaul which is foolish enough to pop up; that will be a death sentence since they do not have void shields and a deathray causes an automatic critical. Night spinners can be really dangerous in large quantities; a big Thawk bombing group should be able to penetrate the nightwing screen and nuke the spinners. Alternatively, a terminator or assaults drop should be very discomforting. A ravenwing is pointless against jump-packed aspects, since they will attack from too far deep. However, an Eldar army based on wave serpents can be seriously hurt by a heroic ravenwing. It is my opinion that a balanced Eldar army is very unlikely to win against a standard marine force.