Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Space Marines (section)

==Why Play Space Marines==

Space Marines are perhaps the best army for beginners. Their units are fairly expensive points-wise, so they usually field less bodies and vehicles than most other armies. While you can't bog down your foes in waves of men, this makes army construction cheaper and painting faster. Additionally, Space Marines are dead'ard; their basic troops have Toughness 4 and a 3+ armour save, giving them great staying power compared to most basic infantry of other armies. They're also solid in whatever role they're put in; Marines are good shots, and they're not half bad in an assault, either. Space Marine tanks, on the other hand, may not be as robust or as powerful as those of the Imperial Guard's, but they are dirt-cheap and reliable. Dreadnoughts, while slower than a tank, are slightly better at shooting than predators, present a smaller target and are far better in close combat (unless your luck with Tank Shock is ridiculous...), and are able to take on heroes, units and other vehicles and come out on top.

Other benefits include:
* Space Marines are the jacks of all trades, able to do pretty much anything reasonably well with no particular weaknesses. Whatever an enemy army’s weakness is, Space Marines have something that can exploit it.
* eBay-ability. Space marines are the most commonly auctioned off army. This makes starting out with them second-hand cheap (by Warhammer standards…).
* Easy to paint. The broad, flat areas (legs, shoulders) and defined ridges make painting straight-forward and simple. [[Necrons | Little]] is easier to paint than a space marine. They even drybrush well for the lazy painter who just wants a force finished on the table ASAP. Conversely, they also provide large amounts of open areas for more advanced painters to go ham with freehand and more detailed painting.
* Quick to build, easy to convert. Space marines have the greatest range of bitz available to any army in any game, and not just from Games Workshop. There are several companies out there that make GW Marine conversion bitz. Almost everyone who plays 40k has some space marine bitz sitting around, and they're almost all plastic, so you can easily make a force that's really "you".
* Easy to play for beginners. Your basic troops can take a bit of abuse, so the army is relatively forgiving of noob mistakes, and you won't be horribly FUBAR because of a single poorly-thought out move. Very little in the codex is dead weight, so almost any unit purchased will be a welcome addition to your growing force. 
* Rewarding for experts. Space marines are an army that you can really grow with. Once you learn how to shuffle your metal boxes around, and get the gist of the game, a closer examination of the space marine codex reveals a wealth and depth of available army builds and tactics unrivalled in the current 40k codices.
* Games Workshop has a long history of [[Plot armor|tilting things in the Marines' favor]]. The introduction of AP values to melee weapons was largely for the benefit of Marines and especially Terminators, and the grav gun has been introduced so you can kill heavily armoured troops without burning your fingers. Other armies may have weaknesses, but whenever a weakness is found for the Marines, GW just releases something to patch over it. You also have THREE Codex Supplements (Four if you count Kauyon) to ensure that no two armies play exactly alike.
* Thanks to UNBOUND ARMIES and infinite allies, you can mix and match your Space Marine Army with other Faction Marines. Want some serious firepower for your Space Wolves? Centurions shall work wonders. All the pain of the last few years with various Marine armies lacking decent units or updates has been patched up.

However there are a few draw backs to playing space marines that should be considered:
* Space Marines are the jacks of all trades, but the masters of none. Their non-specialization as an army is in itself a weakness, as pretty much every other army does their particular shtick better than Space Marines. If you don't figure out how to play rock-paper-scissors 40k and end up trying to out-shoot tau or out-assault genestealers, you're gonna get your power armored ass handed to you.
* As the most popular army your codex is the most often to be updated, which can be be seen as a good thing, but it does mean that you're going to be buying codices more often then other armies.
* As the most popular army you're the one most likely to be optimised against. An army geared to fight marines will do decent against most of the players in a tournament simply because most of the players will likely be using some variant of Marine. Killing Space Marines is a hobby among internet army list planners and any army list worth its salt will have a plan to deal with marines.
* In terms of armoured tanks your vehicles are maybe not the worst in the game, but they are far from the best. Any Tank that showed up to the Imperial guard motor pool with only an auto cannon (a weapon found in the guards heavy weapon squad) would be laughed right out of the pool and the Rhino, while good, does not compare well to other dedicated transports - its cheapness is why it's considered good.
* As the most popular army, other players will know most of your tricks. A Drop Pod assault can be powerful, but it's also something almost all the marine players have done at some point so when you show up to a game with eight Drop Pods the other player (Who may have done his share of Drop Podding) will have a good idea how to counterplay you.
* As a small elite army, you don't take large losses well such as those AP3 or lower large blast template from a Leman Russ, Riptide, or Imperial Knight. Tyranids can laugh off the loss of a brood and spawn more from a Tervigon, you can't. What counters Space Marines counters them HARD since they tend to be a smaller army.
*Vanilla marines of all flavors are almost laughably bad in close combat and your specialist melee units (with the notable exception of the Assault Terminators) won't win any prizes, either. Consider yourself in the bottom-middle of close combat overall.
*You have almost universally small squad sizes. This means that while your marines don't need as much support as other armies, they don't benefit as much from it, either.