Editing Warhammer 40,000/6th Edition Tactics/Space Marines (section)

===Dedicated Transports===
*'''[[METAL BOXES|Rhinos]]''' - Very cheap and good transport since space marines are KNOWN TO HIDE IN MEHTAL BAWKSES, DA KOWARDZ! TEH FEWLZ! There's not much to say about it beyond "use it!" Seriously, don't footslog your marines. A walking marine is a dead marine, and dead men hold no objectives. The only upgrades recommended are the Dozer Blade and maybe Hunter-Killer Missiles (if you have a lot of HK's in your army already). Once the guys are out of it, you can basically throw it away in petty dick moves like preventing charges, blocking line of sight (tossing a dozer blade on the sucker will make this glorious bastard even longer, thus potentially blocking even more line of sight), and tank shocking people into tight formation to be hit with flamers, more useful for shielding your own guys as it's side armour is 11, as opposed to the 10 most transports have (*cough* Chimera *cough*) so str 4 weapons (standard infantry power) can't glance it. You can also use its speed to dick around with Necrons if you feel like trolling them and don't really care about winning.
**NOTE: look on the entry for the rhino in your codex and you will notice a rule that no-one ever uses, which is a shame because it totally rocks: opt out of shooting for a 1/6 chance of repairing an immobilized result. Your opponent cries when he thinks he's immobilised your transport and then it starts moving again. I mean, what else are you going to do in that phase? You're not Chaos, you don't get decent guns on your Rhinos.
**Exploit 6-th edition rules: Now you could flat-out Rhinos in shooting phase. This means your tacticals, sternguards and devastators could dakka on enemy and THEN you flat-out nearby Rhino in front of them, basically negating fire back. Its all fair and legal. Guard and weeaboo space communists could do the same, but their transports aren't as cheap as yours and actually have some good guns, so they can not skip shooting as easy as you.
**Using the Raven Guard or Khan-Scars Chapter Tactics a very nasty and potent trick can be pulled with Rhino squads. Start by deploying on 12'', then scout 12'' in your metal box before the game starts. In your first movement go 6'' and disembark your infantry a further 6''. Good at maths? You're now on their deployment line, and you can fire. Your opponent won't anticipate it and it gives you total board control by the end of turn 1 - you can dictate exactly where the fighting goes. That's invaluable.

*'''Razorback''' - The Razorback is a basically a Rhino but you can fit heavier guns on it including anti-tank weapons and of course more expensive than a standard Metal box. It is one of the best choices for a SM army themed on firepower. Best configuration is a Tactical Squad of 10 with Lascannon and Melta gun/Plasma gun. "But you can't fit 10 men in that tiny metal box!!11" Actually, if you check the Space Marine FAQ a Tactical squad can choose a Razorback as a dedicated transport even if it has more than 6 men. So at game start you combat squad them, one with the Sergeant and PG/MG, and the other with Lascannon. The former goes in your transport, the latter stays at the back of the board, providing fire support and capturing your home objective. Give the Razorback twin linked lascannons. The LC/TLPG looks nice but its an illusion. The TL re-roll can win or lose games, and the PG is too much of an oddball for any task you use it for. Its short range, can damage the vehicle and isn't particularly effective against heavy infantry or light vehicles. This combo can be brutal in both low points and higher points games, giving you a lot of firepower. Just remember to be careful with your deployment if you come up against a gunline. 
**The Raven Guard scout gimmick and the TL heavy flamer work well together here.
**Definitely avoid taking the Razorback stock as it is.  The TL Heavy Bolter became very points inefficient this edition, the other weapon options are the same price however.

*'''Infernum Pattern Razorback (Forgeworld)''' - Basically the Razorback with Multi-Melta turret, introduced by the forgeworld to ruin the last thing Sisters of Battle had over the Space Marines.

*'''Drop Pod''' - Also great, mainly because of it's ability to deep strike in the most useful position. Another great reason is the ability to avoid impossible terrain and models, thereby avoiding deep strike mishaps. Excellent tool to hunt tanks with squads of melta, or drop down a dreadnought where they least expect it. These transports suffer from the "Half on turn 1, half regular reserve" rule common to deep-striking forces nowadays (bring an odd number of them if you bring more than one, because the "half on turn one" is rounded up). However, even a single Drop Pod is a major psychological tool. A Deep-striking Dreadnought is almost guaranteed to change how your opponent deploys. Consider this carefully.
** - Also note that the drop pod is one of two units able to take a Locator Beacon.
** - The Deathwind launcher is now cheaper, but no more effective than it was before.  But now with the reduced price you can pay a little more than a tact marine for the ability to lock down a 12" area around a drop pod with a S5 AP- pie plate.  You kill a MEQ, you basically pay off the cost of the launcher.  Put these on your drop pod assault pods otherwise it'll be a waste.  
** 6-th ed. note: drop-pods now can be shot down with interceptor shots, so beware quad guns and hydra platforms. Interceptor shots are fired at the end of the Drop-Pod-equipped player's movement phase, meaning AFTER it lands and the Spess Mehreens disembark. And yes, it still counts as open-topped against Interceptor.
** Units arriving by drop pod CAN fire as normal counting as having moved. BRB page 36 states that they may do this. Units arriving by deep strike are allowed to disembark and fire or run as normal but they may not assault.  Also thanks to 6th edition disembark rules you get 6" of free movement to negate whatever scatter you incurred during the drop
**Advanced tactics on the use of drop pods can be found in the common playing styles section towards the bottom of this tactica page.
**Because of the half on turn 1 rule, it is wise to bring an odd number of drop pods. This usually means three drop pods- two for your tactical squads, and one for turn two or three backup, such as a dreadnaught or some sternguard veterans. Devastators are less effective in a backup role as they can only fire snapshots the first turn, although if you insist upon using them, this is a good time to use the tactical doctrine if you play Ultramarines. 

*'''Land Speeder Storm''' - 6th edition may be where the land speeder storm finally comes out of the back of the model enthusiasts closet and onto the table as a viable and fun model to incorporate into your army. There are a lot of drawbacks to the storm in comparison to the your other choices of dedicated transport. AV10 all around and open topped means that if anything even gives this thing an angry look it has the chance of exploding into a giant fireball that will eat your squad of scouts. On the other hand the fact that the storm is a skimmer means that it gets a jink save and can flat out 30" in a turn and is also an assault vehicle! If you keep this thing behind cover it becomes a decent skirmisher and lets you grab late game objectives with scoring scouts. The BS3 of the storm is rather silly, but totally mitigated by the heavy flamer you can replace it's standard heavy bolter it comes with stock for the cost of zero points, and when running scouts you really don't want to be running them at anything that is tougher than them anyway. Lastly the Cerberus launcher got an overhaul and remains to be seen on the table whether it is anything more than a pointless gimmick. A S2 AP nothing large blast with blinding may just give you the edge on your enemy letting the scouts jump out and suddenly have a half decent chance of being the ones doing the killing rather than being a cheap single turn distraction for a larger unit. giving your scouts shotguns verses bolt pistols depends on what you are planning on fighting. <s>As the storm is open topped this gives you a bunch of extra shots that you can fire off and then decide afterward if you are going to jump out and charge.</s>Open-topped doesn't mean you can assault after shooting out of it, you still have to disembark and ''then'' shoot.  For AP5 and worse the pistols seem like a better deal as they will cut through armor but for marines/firewarriors/guardians and better you are probably better served by the shotguns and hoping for weight of fire to do the work for you. All of this and the scout squad to go with it will only run you about 100 points. even adding every upgrade you can think of this unit won't even cost more than 150. That's savings that you can bank on.
<s>**Remember that tanks have no Initiative value, meaning they automatically fail the blind test from the Cerberus Launcher. A bare-bones Scout Squad in a Storm only costs 100 points, and can effectively neuter an entire Leman Russ Squadron for as long as it's alive. Hell yes it's more than a pointless gimmick.</s> Blind special rule specifically states that it has no effect on models with no initiative value, therefore doesn't work on tanks.