Ponderings and Musings...

Naturally, I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about the tournament and my army's performance over the last few days. My original plan was quite simple; to get my army forward into optimum firing range, and then blast the hell out of it, while using my close combat forces to deal with anything particularly heavy. The plan only really worked once - against the Tyranids. It might have worked against the Tau, but with my Rhinos wiped out on the wrong side of the battlefield, there's no way to really know!

I actually think that there is nothing wrong with this as a basic strategy. It must be faced that Space Marines are not close combat monsters. They will survive in close combat, definitely – the battle with the Tyranids is proof enough of that – but their best weapon is their humble bolter, and their best defence is their power armour. Taking out a squad of Space Marines is not an easy task, especially if they have the advantage of some line-of-sight cover.

I reckon that the key thing I am missing is sufficient heavy support. I only had four heavy weapons across the entire force, and that rather hurt. I probably should have taken that Predator after all...I suspect it would have had rather more of an impact than the Scouts ended up doing, though that was as much my placement as anything else. I still think that there is a key role for a Scout Squad in a force, but I don't think I'll be using the Land Speeder Storm as the delivery system. Too fragile, at least as things stand.

Definitely I need some more heavy support; it also has to be faced that the Command Squad did not have the impact on the battle that I had hoped. So even in a 1k force, I have points to play with. I need the third Rhino to get my characters into battle...(the Techmarine, as usual, justified his points and then some, but he does need transport) and having some marines to accompany them as human shields/fire support is not a bad thing...so I think a Devastator Squad might be the idea.

Yes, they are expensive, I know that much. But for 255 points, I get another ten-man squad with a Rhino and four Missile Launchers. I can put the Sergeant and four bolter marines with the Techmarine and the HQ, and leave the other unit standing at the back providing heavy support. A single bolter marine can provide, well, something for the enemy to hit first, realistically. I can also use the Techmarine to improve their cover as well, as a nice bonus.

On the subject of HQ...I really want to take the Captain, but this new configuration just doesn't have the points, so I think I'm going to switch down to the Librarian. At close range his powers should have a lot more bite to them, and the Techmarine is perfectly capable of providing a nice hard close-combat beast – the Librarian isn't exactly shabby on this score, either. The 1k list now looks like this:

• Librarian (Force Sword)
• Techmarine (Servo-Harness)
• Tactical Squad (Flamer, Missile Launcher, Rhino)
• Tactical Squad (Flamer, Multi-Melta, Rhino)
• Devastator Squad (Missile Launcher x 4, Rhino)
• Predator (Autocannon, Lascannon, Lascannon)

That leaves me with forty points for additional wargear; probably a Servitor for the Techmarine, Melta Bombs for the three Sergeants, and maybe a Plasma Pistol for the D-Squad Sergeant, to give him a little extra close range punch. Those last points I am still pondering, though. As for pumping this up to a 1.5k list, that will be for a future post; it's going to be a few weeks before I have another 1.5k battle.