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Faith Without Deeds is Worthless - Vivi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
BeginningIt was one of those days, just finished work and started the walk up to Bugmans then we heard the cry of “You guys go on, I’ll be up in 5 minutes”. 40 Minutes later he eventually came up to Bugmans and wouldn’t say what he’d been up to. 3 Drinks later we decided to call it quits and head home. Walking back into the Direct Sales area of Games Workshop I picked up my bag and watch him grab someone from the top desk (who were still reading it) and put it in an envelope. We got in the car and I started driving, while going under the Dunkirk flyover I eventually asked, “what’s in the envelope”, all I heard was “New Marine Codex, what’s it to you?” All I could think of was what’s it going to do to my Salamanders, I’d heard rumours about what was going to happen to them but all that was put at rest, I could still have my two flamers in each squad, in fact I was thinking about changing one of them to have two melta-guns as that would only be a small change to the army as I had three of those tactical squads anyway. The rest of my list stays similar, but the loss of the Thunder Hammer to the Chaplain was a blow, but I’ll recover from it so from a Salamanders point of view, not a bad thing really.Dropping him off at home I went home and began thinking about what I could do to alter my marine list within the new rules, this and that came to mind but with that I’d already seen I knew that the list could be made into a more competitive tournament list if only I didn’t have to use the Salamanders rules and fluff, so then it hit me, a new list, a new army, a new marine chapter. A few days later of begging I eventually managed to get the marine codex for a couple of nights and started working out a list. The Army Selection ProcessThe first thing I looked at was how I could get the core requirements of the army filled and still get an assault based force. Due to the Rhino Rushing going I decided that I’d have my firepower of the army in this section. Stepping to the front of the line were two small 6 Man Tactical Squads, each armed with a Plasma Gun and a Lascannon. Thinking about a theme I decided that the army (as most of my 40k armies are) should be able to be mounted so able to deploy as they wish quickly in response to a distress call on the given planet. Quickly selecting two Razorbacks saw me able to accomplish that, upgrading their weapons to Twin-Lascannons also added that little extra punch I was missing for tank hunting. With those out the way I could concentrate on the important bits, I still had 1090 points to blow on the assault element of the army, that’s a fair few points especially when you consider that the assault marines and bike squads have been reduced in points by 3 making them 22 and 32 respectively.First port of call though had to be what is now, in my opinion, the best tank in the game, the Land Raider Crusader. Speaking of New and improved the beast now get 4 shots, no jamming rule and is Rending, yes, that rending, the same as those Genestealers and Daemonic Talons, but from 24” away. Quickly I added one of these to my force, only having to pay 3 points for upgrades (smoke launchers) also kind of justifies its new slightly higher price (265 points). With the 3 units in my list so far I think it’s time to recap what we’re got. First off are a pair of Tactical Squads, these are anti tank and anti nasty stuff, if these can just crack open an APC or two then my assault troops should have an easier time. I’ve also added a Land Raider Crusader to the list; this will be used to transport one of the combat based squads into assault.
 I felt the next thing to add to the list had to be a combat squad to go in the Raider; this could be the full 10 men strong because thanks to the transport capacity of the Crusader I could still add a nasty character into the unit if I wanted. Looking though the list I decided that Assault Marines would be the best choice, due already being armed with Close Combat Weapons and Pistols these were going to be the first choice, the fact that they can still remove their jump packs also helped because this makes them a mere 15 points each, brilliant. One of the best parts about the new marine codex is the reduced cost of certain weapons and wargear for Veteran Sergeants which meant that he can get a Power Fist for 15 points, a Power Weapon used to cost that much, so strapping that to his arm was a must have. A new piece of Wargear choice to the marines was the much rumoured about Assault Shield, this is actually named the Combat Shield and works in a similar way to the Storm Shield by providing the user some reduced protection of a 5+inv in combat instead of a 4+ but the main advantage of it is that it doesn’t take up a weapons slot meaning that you can take one of these and take a 2nd Close Combat Weapon. These come at a vastly reduced cost for Veteran Sergeants of 5 points instead of the normal 10, however when you think about it due to the fact that (even characters) have to kill the rest of the squad before you have to remove the Veteran and the fact that if the squad took 20 wounds in combat then you’d still have to remove the Sergeant (majority armour saves) it just isn’t worth it, so unless I was going to add it to make it look cool this wasn’t going to happen. Another worthy addition to the assault squad is the ability to take either a pair of plasma pistols (+5points) or a pair of flamers (+6points). This is a decision I still haven’t come to and I doubt I will till I’ve tried both out a fair few times, the chances are I’ll paint up both options (only 4 extra marines overall) and then decide after a few games or even change them depending on opponent. Though the decision will have to be taken when it comes to tournament time. Currently the flamers are just winning out as the Tacticals can take care of the armour leaving the these squads to use the flamers, after all 2 extra attacks on the charge won't make that much of a difference. The squad now adds up as shown below.
It was around this point I realised that I still hadn’t got a legal army, I was missing a HQ choice. This is the section of the Marine book with the biggest change around, for example the Force Commander, Commander and Leader ranks are no more, and they have been replaced with Commander and Chapter Master. These are the best choice for a shooting based Marine army due to their ability to let every unit on the table use their Ld value. However in this assault based Marine army the choice is down to two - first the vastly improved Librarian and secondly the still nasty and very cheap Chaplain. I decided that first port of call hard to really be the Chaplain. This was due to his ability to let the whole squad re-roll misses on the turn they charge, which with the Crusader they should be doing a lot of. Also due to the wonders of the new codex it also states that he gets to re-roll misses as well (solving the old Blood Angel High Priest Problems) meaning that there’s not need to spend 15 points on a Master Crafted Weapon. The next choice was really deciding on what type of Chaplin to have. You see in the new rules there are two levels of Chaplains and Librarians, the old style 2 wound character with Ld9 and the new 3 Wound Ld10 Character. After considering it for about two seconds I went with the 3 Wound Ld10 Character as it’s just better. Looking though the Wargear section there wasn’t a lot more he really needed, but I just threw on Terminator Honours anyway as they’re fun and always seem to come in handy. This meant my Chaplin came in as below.
This little addition to the force left it looking like you see blow, a full army and a very dangerous one at that, especially at a points level of around 1000, though in all honesty while it shoots and assaults it’s not really the best at either, so I had to move up the points level, to the magical 1500pt level.
Next - Moving to 1500pts |
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