Going back to 40K - Part 2 - Initial Thoughts.

I'm going with Marines for the one reason that I have no intention on spending any money whatsoever on this project. Though I still enjoy the whole 'Grimdark' thing I have no intention of supporting GW's massive price hikes or 'buy this we've made it broken' policies just to see if something can be done. That's the preachy bit done with...Lets get into the list building part of this thing then. I'll be starting with something fairly traditional though if after play-testing I feel that something a bit more radical will do the job then I'm happy to field 100 Marines and see how that does, lol.

Lets start at the top with HQ choices. I've never been a fan of most 'special' characters and I also have issues with tooled-up versions of basic characters as whatever job you give them that job can invariably be done better by spending the points on an actual unit. So I'll be taking a generic HQ and as Librarians or their other codex equivalents are pretty much the same in role and points cost that doesn't take much thinking about.

As with all balanced forces I'll require a variety of weapon strengths in order to deal with infantry, armour and will also require either some twin-linked or skyfire equipped weapons to sort out flyers. As a personal preference I'll go for the twin-linked option to deal with the pesky flying things as those weapons are also useful against other enemies as well. Firstly though we'll need some troops and fortunately that's easy with Marines. Though I've had a lot of success in the past with minimum size units in transports I think this edition I'll be served better by larger (10 man) units and will go with the a few Tactical Squads or equivalent in Rhino's. There's also a lot of Terminators and other heavy infantry about these days so they would most likely be needing some Plasma weaponry on those units. I'd like to get away with just the two squads of ten men but realistically I'll need at least three.

I need a rough idea of points spent so I'll use the standard Space Marine codex values for now and I can tweak them if I codex hop.

1 Space Marine Librarian in Power Armour, 100 pts (Force Axe; Warlord)

9 Tactical Squad, 220 pts (Plasma gun; Free Weapon)
1 Sergeant (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Boltgun)
1 Rhino (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter)

9 Tactical Squad, 220 pts (Plasma gun; Free Weapon)
1 Sergeant (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Boltgun)
1 Rhino (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter)

9 Tactical Squad, 220 pts (Plasma gun; Free Weapon)
1 Sergeant (Melta Bombs; Bolt Pistol; Boltgun)
1 Rhino (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter)

That's 760 points spent so far

Something I used to do a lot in 5th edition was to deploy a couple of Dreadnoughts armed with Twin-linked Autocannons in each corner of my deployment zone to give myself some long range mid-strength fire-power and supplement those with two or three Predators with either Lascannon Sponsons (for anti-armour duties) or Heavy Bolter ones for anti-infantry duties. With the revised vehicle damage rules those armour 12 Dreadnoughts are far less survivable than they were so those Predators will now most likely need to be parked right in front of them in order to give them an effective armour value of 13.

1 Dreadnought, 125 pts (Twin-Linked Autocannon; Twin-Linked Autocannon)
1 Dreadnought, 125 pts (Twin-Linked Autocannon; Twin-Linked Autocannon)

That's another 250 points bringing our total to 1010 spent

Though I'm still going to occasionally be vulnerable to side shots from flyers it at least gives them a chance of doing some damage before they get taken out. Normally I'd take three of each but in this case it's going to be difficult to deploy them in a manner in which they're all protected so I'll take two of each for now and as currently the list is lacking anti-armour we'll give them Lascannon sponsons.

1 Predator, 120 pts (Lascannon (each side))
1 Predator, 120 pts (Lascannon (each side))

Those additional 240 points bring us to a pleasingly round number of 1250.

So far that gives us 10 S7 shots (8 of which are twin-linked) and 4 S9 shots for dealing with armour at range and three Tactical Squads worth of anti-infantry fire-power. I have to be honest...that's not enough guns for my liking but I still have some points to spend.

So is this going to work as a core?

Probably...but lets be honest it's a bit dull...Maybe I need to think this through a bit more and look into allies.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.