Marine Horde?

[Perturabo]

I was sat here thinking about different tactics and army lists one night and started thinking about counter Tyranid tactics.I kept coming back to the Marines problem of not enough firepower/men on the table then i came up with the idea of the Marine horde-sacrifice tanks/elites/overpowered units to just get men on the field.
I ran this through my interactive army list and found that for 2000 points you could get 121 Marines on the field-now thats allot of fire power.
OK you don't have massive Devastator Squads (but i always found them to be an under used resource) or Elites but this is just a wall of bolter death

I have posted the Army list HERE so you can see how it breaks down and where the Marines and what special weapons I have taken are.

Deployment wise I would set the Tactical squads as a wall to do the main bulk of the firing with the Heavy Support choices acting as a tactical reserve to plug gaps in the lines/add weight of fire at closer ranges and let the Fast Attack choices hang back to provide counter charge capability.
The commander is purely on the table to keep the army legal and give the higher leadership-not as the usual close combat monster that they become.
Don't forget the idea here is to shoot the proverbial out of the enemy before they reach you and mop up the close combat with your superior numbers.

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

thats cool

id love to see a tyranid counter to this... the 400 spinegaunt army of doom?

[Perturabo]

Well hopefully thats where the Marines increased range,ablilty to shoot and armour save will win the day!

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

either that or 200 hormagaunts of death. keep in mind you only get 1, maybe 2 if youre really lucky, shooting phases against them.

though its a very interesting army and one that will look great on the table. You do know if thats a codex army, youll have to have different coloured shoulder pads in the army because theres more than 1 whole company! i guess one of the assault and dev squads will need to be from the reserve companies. (well i say devatator swuads - theyre sad excuses for devs really! lol)

[Perturabo]

It did occur to me that it was more than an entire company!Quite a scary thought!
In two turns of shooting you could get a few hundred bolter shots of though and that should do some damage!
I know that they are sad excuses for Devastator Squads but they fulfil there purpose (every Marine should be able to fight no matter what the circumstance),perhaps they have been fighting the horde for a long time and are out of heavy ammo and this is the last stand-as I say in the Army list its the points used for arming them that put me off.

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

only problem i see with the list is a normal shooty enemy army which can just sit back out of bolter range and shoot the pooh out of the army. I know the marines can avance, though itll still take a few turns for them to get within decent range and by then a more shooty enemy army will have taken quite a few guys out. though the size of the units (all 10-man) means its hard to cause them to flee

[Perturabo]

The list was originally developed for a Tyranid horde but can easily be modded to take on long range armies.
If they are going to stand back and shoot you I would drop one or more of the Assault Squads and use the points to provide longer range firepower to the Devastator Squads

[Dan296]

i take it the missle launchers/melta guns will be used for the big guys? besides that, if everyone is in range for rapid fire, you will have 152 bolters. thats sick. but i think that this army could be used for more than the tyranid horde, it would also be good against orks! missle launchers kraking the truks/other vehicles, and with careful timing and moving you could get everyone to double tap. then if you give them the doctrine so they get true grit, you can double tap then charge, cause you dont want a unit of 24 ork boyz charging (72+ attacks=whole lotta ouch)
then bring up the assault squads to help out.

[Perturabo]

I would jut live to see the look on an opponents face when all those marines came out.Imagine an entire Marine Company has just popped out to say hi to you!
Most people facing marines are used to facing only 30 or 40 models plus a few vehicles and characters in a 2000 point battle!

[r4wr89]

Originally Posted by Perturabo

I was sat here thinking about different tactics and army lists one night and started thinking about counter Tyranid tactics.I kept coming back to the Marines problem of not enough firepower/men on the table then i came up with the idea of the Marine horde-sacrifice tanks/elites/overpowered units to just get men on the field.
I ran this through my interactive army list and found that for 2000 points you could get 121 Marines on the field-now thats allot of fire power.
OK you don't have massive Devastator Squads (but i always found them to be an under used resource) or Elites but this is just a wall of bolter death

I have posted the Army list HERE so you can see how it breaks down and where the Marines and what special weapons I have taken are.

Deployment wise I would set the Tactical squads as a wall to do the main bulk of the firing with the Heavy Support choices acting as a tactical reserve to plug gaps in the lines/add weight of fire at closer ranges and let the Fast Attack choices hang back to provide counter charge capability.
The commander is purely on the table to keep the army legal and give the higher leadership-not as the usual close combat monster that they become.
Don't forget the idea here is to shoot the proverbial out of the enemy before they reach you and mop up the close combat with your superior numbers.

yea i've seen an army like that at a GW: 1850 points, easily 70+ marines on the table: i've never seen so many bolters in one place. he also had a dread [only one, fire support set up] and he had two dev squads i think: 4 HB's and 4 lascannons..he was playing a witchhunters/salamanders army and took out a whirlwind in the first shot...not only did he have a ton of bodies, he also had his dice on his side...lol

it's a cool tactic, and i'm trying to pull something like it with my army. well maybe not 121 models, but 50-70 for 2000 points. not nearly as many, but my troops will all infiltrate and be supported by speeders and such. :}
-ant

[Mr Nude]

I like the concept, definitely a different marine army, but i just cant let go of my tanks! It would do well against some opponents, the only thing is that everything in the army moves only 6 inches... Easily outnmanouvered, but then again with that many marines, not gonna be much space to manouver!

[Perturabo]

The idea of this force was never to be the Uber "kill everthing it could ever face" army, it was an idea in giving the Tyranids a taste of there own horde tactics, to do what Marines are supposed to do-be used as a weapon of fear!
There is potential for remodeling to take on different opponents- dropping the 30 Assault Marines will give a sizable chunk of points that can be used to adapt,overcome,survive.
Makes you think of other tacticas though-how many heavy weapons/tanks/ordenance/dreadnaughts/ etc can I get, although with these you are getting into those annoying min/max armies I always seem to face at the local GW
Does the marine horde come across as beardy/cheesy/powergaming?

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

if you ever get crazy enough to try this out with anid player crazy enough to let you try this out... let us know how it went

im intrigued by the idea, mostly regarding a modelling perspective. id like to see the faces of tournaent organisers when i enter with a compete company (-vehicles)

how many do you recokon you could fit in a 1500 point army?

[Icarus Athrasuriel]

I know.

"WTF..?" etc.

Anyway, I'd be interested in trying it out actually. I'll just use my Marines, and my friends Marines (numbering around 130-140 all together), and proxy it

[Perturabo]

Please do as Id love to see the results-take some pics as well cause that many marines (even in different colour schemes has got to look amazing)

[Dan296]

if you dropped the 30 assault marines, it opens the door wide open for the regular squads to take heavy weapons, opens slots for more heavy weapons, and dreadnaughts. with heavy weapons =]
i would only see you doing that if you were going against speed freaks or tank heavy imperial guard

let us not forget that imperial guard can also do this. with 1850 points? 6 squads of 50 conscripts. 300 of em baby. thas what im talkin about! then add in some sentinals and leman russ's n say goodbye. that would be insane. exausting to paint, but still.

[hairyyahoo]

Originally Posted by Perturabo

I would jut live to see the look on an opponents face when all those marines came out.Imagine an entire Marine Company has just popped out to say hi to you!
Most people facing marines are used to facing only 30 or 40 models plus a few vehicles and characters in a 2000 point battle!

my regular opponent uses 4 tac squads in 1000pts games and it nigh on unbeatable! the tac squads only come in at about 700 pts with upgrades so he always has a few points to spare for a cheap captain and a couple of land speeders.

troop heavy marine armies are very tough to beat.

[Killermoose]

I suppose its a mercy that they spend all the points on AssCans. Or not.

[hairyyahoo]

that stuff is nothing compared to lots of power armoured bodies on the table.

i once ran the "immortal" khorne glaive lord of spiky death against my mates troop heavy blood angle army. loaded him up with all the protection stuff i could from the chaos armoury and he still died. not to asscans, lascans or a truely huge death company but to a face full of bolt rounds from 3 squads of marines double tapping their bolters.

mass bolter fire is not the way to make friends.

[CHIAPETOFDOOM]

I dunno man, I would be fearing that many space marines...but not much. I have alot of gaunts and they can get to you before you get off much of a shot with 24" rapid fire bolters unless im not thinking correctly. IG proves that. And in hand to hand your better, but we still hold numbers. You would have to make sure we dont have our consolidation for sure!

Unless your just going to pile everyone in? I dunno.

I use to play 3vs3 games against a trio Chaos space marine folks (Khorne) and my nids ussually massacred them if they werent careful. They were troop heavy too. But thats with alot of other factors lol.

Keep in mind you gotta make sure your guys are all perfectly formationed for nids less that massive fleet o claw/charge gets your first squads off the bat for free

And if I gots me flying hive tyrant I might be a pain in the butt with it too

[hairyyahoo]

lol
troop heavy khorne = military intelligence, the sentence contradicts itself

marines are just as good in combat as they are out of it. gaunts will need to outnumber marines at least 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 to stand a chance of comming out on top. thats a butt load of guants. and if the marine player has any kind of smarts he'll strive to set up more than 24" from the guants.

the flying tyrant would ruin their day though, as would a nidzilla list.

[CHIAPETOFDOOM]

Indeedy...I loves mah sexay flying hive tyrant...er I mean

ANYWAYS I know space marines are mean in CC an all but gaunts can really over run a person quick. I know alot of people who tell me how they are going to double shot my gaunts, or calculate the attacks theyll get on my gaunts.

Honestly, unless your playing someone whose very new to Nids they probobly aren't going to charge in under no cover (if possible) and let you double shot them (if possible). I have wiped out 4 squads of badly placed IG (given that they dont fight as well hand to hand wise) with a cheap brood lord+bodygaurds rush and eliminated an autocannon and heavy bolter with those. So Infiltration can be a pain if I were to get the first turn too

And I still have lots of points to buy gaunts with...or a big fex with venomcannons/ maybe barbed strangler And mah sexy*er Hive Tyrant.

Maybe I'm just insanely impressed with my Nids abilities to kick butt but I do not believe a marine hoard, unless the dice gods really frown on me would do work effectivly.

Am I convinced of the total superiority of my squiggly-crawly-choppy race over the pink-soft-yummy oomans?

Yes

Rawrz!

[Dan296]

woo! go nids! cept that ive beaten down some nid players in 1000 point games with my emerging WE
1000 pts=30 zerkers? fun =]
i think one way to counter the marine horde with nids is to go with an elite list of genestealers, (and broodlord obviously) lictors, and carnifexes.
get the broodlord infiltrating into cover, get him into combat quick and rend em down. then the genestealers get good fleet rolls and get into combat with only 1-2 rounds of shooting

[Perturabo]

Ive just been flicking through my Chaos Space Marine Codex and realised that if the Word Bearers took advantage of the extra troops choices available to them they could take a stageering 240 Chaos Space Marines for approximately 3500 points (its only rough maths done in my head folks so dont start flaming me).

40 Chosen (its an army above 3001 points)
9 Troops choices of 20 Chaos Marines per Squad
2 Havoc Squads at 10 Chaos Marines
1 Chaos Lord

Ouch!It would be one huge battle (I mean its 3500+ points) but WOW!
Does kinda reflect the Legion feeling!